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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Collecting with laser beam accuracy




I figure I'd do my monthly post to make sure I let everyone know I'm not dead.  Especially since I'm on the edge of leaving for 2 weeks to see family.  I'd call it a vacation, but visiting family is never really a vacation.  Ahem.

If you follow me on Twitter, @cynicalbuddha, you know I've been knee deep in a massive Brewers team set organization and documentation this winter.  I've been a member over at the Trading Card Database for almost 10 years, but just recently started using their collector's tools to inventory my collection.  I've had a couple thousand Brewers cards sitting in boxes from trades and acquisitions that I hadn't organized.  My winter project was to start to sort through all that and figure out what I had, what I had dupes of, and rework my team sets needs list.  And I'm happy to say I'm still not even nearly done.
Although  I have made a little progress.
I also got tired of trying to remember what sets were which in my binders so I got a little anal about my organization and started making pocket checklists for each set.
I started doing this because trying to tell sets apart like the Turkey Red, Topps 206, or the thousands of set from the mid-2000's was hurting my eyes squinting on the backs of the cards.

The Night Owl put out a blog bat around a couple weeks ago and while I had thought about participating in it, I didn't, but it did get me thinking about my own current state of collecting.  To save myself a ton of money and space I decided that I wasn't going to do any more set building, at least for the foreseeable future.  I actually stopped last year before the 2017 Update set.  I still potentially plan to pick up factory sets, but building sets from packs and boxes has just become too expensive and I'm running out of space for all my dupes.

I've decided to focus on two main areas of my collection.  My Brewer's team sets and my Robin Yount player collection.   My other player collections have taken a back burner as well, but I still try to add to them opportunistically.

That being said I'm still looking to finish what I started and my set needs are up-to-date.  My Brewer's team set needs are still a work in progress.

So my goals this year is to focus my collecting with laser like precision and minimize and reduce my stacks of unwanted cards.  Will see how I do.

See you all next month.