2018 Year in Review and State of the Blog or Being Left Behind

Greetings my fellow collector's.  It's been awhile since I sat down and just wrote a decent blog post. I have lots of excuses, but the main one is and continues to be I just didn't or don't feel like it.  This blog will be celebrating it's 10th Anniversary this year. I'm not bragging, but I'm surprised as anyone I kept with it this long even if I barely post anymore.  You can look back through my posting history on the side bar and see just how less I'm posting now.  The first 4 years I was pretty gung-ho about it.  It was new.  I was in a good place and really enjoy the hobby.  Over the last couple years though it's been tough getting excited about cardboard.  2018 marked the lowest I've posted on here since I started up the blog.  2009 doesn't count as I started the blog in October.  And most of the posts I put out last year were in conjunction with my 2 annual contests.  But that doesn't mean I've stopped collecting cards, or reading other blogs, or that I plan to shutter Collector's Crack.  It also doesn't mean I haven't been posting elsewhere.  I contribute to A Pack to be Named Later all the time and post pretty regularly on the Yount Collector, my Robin Yount PC blog.

So if you have a few minutes, sit back and listen to me rant and rave I want to just get this all out of my system and talk about what's happened this year and about the hobby that's starting to leave me behind.

I didn't bother to look back but I'm pretty sure I haven't done a retrospective post in a couple years or a look ahead for that matter.  The last couple year's have been a big whirlwind.  We bought a new house, my job has gotten a little more challenging, but mostly in a good way, I got to visit Hawaii for the first time (and loved it even if I got to only small parts of the whole), and I was also finally able to clear off my drawing table and work on some art.  If you're curious of the stuff I do, I do occasionally post on my art blog, 13 Tenets of Cynicabuddhism.

This post really is about me, the hobby I love, and changes.  Both changes in the hobby and changes in me, or more accurately my life.  When I started the blog almost 10 years ago, I was unmarried, mortgage free, and well 10 year's younger.  Oh how the times of changed.  Now I'm married with a child, got a nice house that bank owns most of, and I'm 10 year's older and the hobby has drastically changed.  We are now in entering our 10th season of exclusivity in the baseball card market and a time where every major sport has only one licensed card manufacturer.  The shift from these card makers has gone from sets with large base sets to products that are almost entirely hit driven.  The cost per box has skyrocketed and really the way the hobby works has just passed me by.  I'm stopped buying boxes to break.  The main reason is financial, I just can't afford to waste the money, but secondarily I've just changed the way I collect.

When I started blogging in 2009 I considered myself a 3 pronged collector.  I was a set builder, a player collector, and a team collector.  I really enjoyed putting together a nice big base set, or even a small one, from ripping packs and then finishing that set off with a few trades or purchases.  To me the hand collation of a set was very therapeutic and relaxing.  I've reduced my set building to just a Topps Baseball flagship set and have completely stopped working on any football sets.  I'm still contemplating giving up the set building all together or just purchasing the set. 

I use to love ripping wax.  It's like playing the lottery.  Most of my hits I would trade away or sell to buy the cards I wanted, but with eBay continuing to change for the worse, in my opinion, and the fact that just about nothing I get in a pack or box fits into my collection, ripping wax and busting boxes just doesn't make sense, and getting rid of the cards is getting harder and more expensive..

I've found over that last couple year's I've really started to focus on my team and player collections.  I'm proud that I finally got most of my collection entered into the Trading Card Database.  I still have some organization of by Brewer's team sets that needs to be done, but that's more on me getting the supplies I need to do it.

I've also found that I've started to really narrow what I buy in regards to my primary Player Collections.  More importantly just one, my Robin Yount collection.  As a matter of fact I would say my collecting focus is around 70% Yount, 10% other player collections, 15% Brewers team sets, and just 5% set collecting.

While it may seem I'm complaining about the way the hobby is changing, and I kind of am, I've been collecting long enough to have seen the hobby change, and change again, and change yet again.  Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.  I remember the junk was era, the end of the junk wax era, the almost collapse of the industry, the rebirth of the industry in the early to mid 2000's, the consolidation of the industry in the late 2000's, the start of exclusivity, and the birth of super high end products.  None of these changes has once made want to stop collecting cardboard, but they all had some influence on how I collected and still do.

Wow you're still here?

Let me conclude I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.  I may not post much, but I'm still around,  I enjoy reading other blogs, and using my blog to keep track of my set needs.  I still enjoy holding my World Series and Super Bowl contests and we get a nice manageable turnout for those.

And if you made it this far and read the whole thing, thank you, and thanks to the great blogging community, it's been a great almost 10 years.

Sobering thoughts on the industry or crazy man subway rant you decide...

Exclusivity sucks.  I think we can safely say that.

So think about this.. starting next year all four major US sports will have exclusive contracts with just one card manufacturer.  

Topps has baseball.

Panini has basketball and will have football all to itself as well.  And I'm sure will continue to put out unlicensed MLB stuff.

Upper Deck has hockey.

This might be great for the companies, but for collector's and fans that really sucks. I don't collect hockey or basketball. I've come to realize that we shouldn't expect anything extraordinary from Topps so this is aimed at Panini and it's football license.

As a guy who has really culled down his set building I can safely say I probably won't be putting anymore football sets together in the future.  Panini really only has one brand aimed at set collector's and that's Score and they ruined that this year by taking it upscale.  Hey Panini I'll help you out here. Make a set call it Panini Football, get some good photo's, don't crop out the player and put them on a background, don't use foilboard, make the set at least 400 cards, limit your parallels, put in some inserts that aren't half-assed, create something new, from scratch, don't go back to the same well, we don't need a Donruss football, we don't need Pacific football, don't short print anything in the base set, don't number in autographed rookie cards to the base set. Here's a few more ideas, feel free to use what you want.  How about Ref cards, haven't seen those in a few decades, cards of the head coaches, they don't get enough love, team checklist cards that either feature the full team or perhaps their stadium.  Have the set come out a little later so you know who made the cut and feature those rookies instead of the 100's of guys you get auto's from who didn't make the team.

Whew ok rant over, I've got to get back to work.  

Comments welcome.

cb out

Panini Loses it's NHL license

Come June 30th only Upper Deck will be making NHL cards.  I'm not a big collector of hockey cards, but I still don't think this exclusivity is a good thing.

You can read the official Panini statement HERE.

Now the NFL is the only sport that has more than one company making it's trading cards.  

Thoughts?

I'm feeling hollow.

So i go to my favorite card shop the other day thinking I might buy some of his single Heritage to start filling in holes in my set or maybe buy another box.  When I get there I notice his price has gone up to 90  bucks a box!!  Holy crap.  It's not that much more expensive then the other big card shop in town but wow and blow out has them for 82.  I had sticker shock.   Not because the price was so high, but it was so high for kinda a crapy box of cards.  I'm not saying the set isn't nice, but the inserts and hits aren't all that great.  I did end up buying one box earlier in the month after I bought my blaster for the Cardboard Junkies fantasy league.  I've already put one Topps Series 1 set together and am about 20 to 30 cards shy of another, so I thought maybe I'd give Heritage a try.  The owner of the card shop was totally cool and pointed out if I was just in it for the set I might as well just buy blasters from wally world or target, and he was right.  So I didn't end up buying a box of Heritage, I ended up buying his last sealed box of 206 which was still 90 bucks or so but I did get some nice hits I'll post the break later with pics.

So know we get to the point of my post.  I'm feeling hollow.  I don't know what I want to do.  I'm starting to see the reality of this Topps exclusive MLB deal.  I'm even contemplating trying to put together a UD set of the "illegal card" which are still everywhere.  I'm bored there isn't anything I want to buy, no packs to try, boring.  I don't want to put together a Pro Debut set.  I'm jonesing man!! I guess I can wait for Series 2 to hit next month but man this sucks.  It makes me wonder what the football card landscape will look like this year.   If I had a million dollars I might even try to put a Champs hockey set together.  I really like the looks of these cards but it's the same  problems with Goodwin Champions.  Expensive and not a lot of cards.  Although I do like the mini's.  Especially the oddballs.  Love me them dinosaurs.  Anywho.  My point is I look at this years baseball rack and the cupboard is almost bare.  it was funny looking at the shelf in the card shop and seeing 3 boxes of Heritage left one open for packs, 1 open box of topps series 1 regular and 1 Jumbo and that was it for this year's stuff, he still had some of last years stuff. ung. Well I better get back to work.  Keep up the good work everybody.