State of the Collection: Goals for 2013

I have been setting yearly goals for myself the past few years, which helps to keep me focused. As my collection has grown, I've kind of settled into a routine, which makes coming up with new goals more difficult. Most of my goals are just a continuation from the previous year. I don't think that's a bad thing, its just kind of boring.

GOAL #1: Add the following Cubs team sets as they are released: Topps flagship, Heritage, Opening Day, Factory Team set, Bowman, Allen and Ginter, Chrome, Gypsy Queen, and Update.

GOAL #2: Add the complete sets of the flagship, update, and Allen and Ginter.

GOAL #3: Add an autograph and/or relic card for any current Cub that is not already in my collection. Last year I stayed away from all the flagship autograph and relic cards, adding only new guys. I'm happy with that decision and will continue going in that direction.

GOAL #4: Continue adding to the player collections, with a bigger focus on Darwin Barney and Billy Williams. I still need that '68 Williams OPC card. I'd also like to work on adding some Sandberg cards. I know that there are a ton of oddballs for him out there.

GOAL #5: Add one or two more T206 cards. Last year I bought my first three -- Tinker, Evers, and Chance. Adding a couple more Cubs each year is a long-term goal. Maybe some day I'll end up with all of them!

GOAL #6: Add odd-ball sets. I plan to keep up my daily search of ebay for these.

GOAL #7: Enjoy working on goals 1-6. I'm in trouble when I can't meet this goal.


 

State of the Collection....Looking Back on Last Year's Goals

Happy New Year!!  May 2013 be a prosperous year for you and may your favorite team finished just behind the 2013 World Champion Chicago Cubs!

Each year on January 1, I look back on the goals I set for the previous year and grade myself.

Here's what I wrote a year ago along with my grades and comments in red (after all, I'm a teacher and I still use a red pen to correct my students' work).

Goal #1: Keep up with the new releases. Topps cranks 'em out, I scoop 'em up. That's just the way it is. Warts and all, Topps is baseball cards. I'll continue to add all of my usual suspects. I'll wait and see on any of the new lines, though Fan Favorites is coming back and I do plan to add those to the collection.
Grade: A    
Comment:  This was made much easier for me thanks to BrentandBecca.  I love getting everything though one dealer and in one shipment.

Goal #2: Ease off on the parallels and inserts. I tried in 2011, but when the Platinum diamonds came out, I fell off the wagon. This year I'm going to stay sober....for the most part. I plan to get any insert Cub cards, but no more relics, autographs, fake patches, and parallel sets.
Grade: A  
Comment: In 2012 I didn't stumble and stuck to the plan of buying only autographs and relics of players missing from my collection.  I really didn't need any more relic cards of Marlon Byrd!

Goal #3: Finish the Cubs team-issued set from 2002. I have three cards left and for over a month, not one has seen the light of day. I will continue to hunt them down!
Grade: A
Comment:  One by one, the missing three showed up.  In fact, a reader was nice enough to send me the Lee Smith card I needed.

Goal #4: Add more autographs I picked up several last year and plan to keep that up this year. Instead of adding the entire autograph set from Topps flagship, I plan to only pick up cards of players that I have no autograph of. That way I don't end up with four Tyler Colvin autos. One should have been plenty!
Grade: A
Comment:  I went a little crazy with this one and now my autograph collection is over 100 cards.

Goal #5: More Oddball team sets Every day I do a search on ebay for "Cubs Team set" and I've found some interesting items. My oddball binder is bursting and I will probably need to start a second binder this year. I hope to fill it!
Grade: B+
Comment:  This one gets a little harder each year.  As I do my daily ebay search, I'm having a harder time finding sets not already in the collection. But I was able to add some oddballs like the Shakeys Pizza cards and Sega Card Gen.

Goal #6: Keep adding to the player collections of Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, and Darwin Barney. I stumbled into the player collection arena last year and started to put together a decent assortment of cards. My Barney collection is off to a nice start, so I'm curious to see how it will play out....and how he will play out.
Grade: A
Comment:  The collection has increased to the point to where I needed a second box for the cards....and Darwin Barney played out very nicely in 2012.

Goal #7: Continue sharing, daily. After three years I've settled into a decent routine for blogging and see no reason to slow down.
Grade: A
Comment:  There were 365 days in the 2012 and 368 posts.

I had a nice year!!

Four!

 

The ol' blog has hit the four year mark. If you weren't with me back at the beginning, take a look at my first post. Doing the math from that day, I had 1702 (Topps) + 734 (Fleer) + 527 (Donruss) + 208 (Heritage) = 3171 Cubs cards. Today the total is 11,105. I guess I've been a little busy the past four years!

I've enjoyed sharing my growing collection with you over the past four years. It's gone by quickly.

One thing that I've recently realized is that many of the blogs that inspired me to start Wrigley Wax are either gone or have really slowed down. Wax Heaven, A Cardboard Problem, Bad Wax, Cardboard Gods, Dinged Corners, Project '62, Stale Gum, I Am Joe Collector, Voice of the Collector, White Sox Cards --- all slowed down considerably or stopped (although Mario at Wax Heaven has started up again!).

Others like bdj610's Topps Baseball Cards, Night Owl, Sports Cards Uncensored, Nachos Grande, and GarveyCeyRussellLopes have kept on blogging. And certainly many other blogs have come on the scene since 2009.

I guess the question would have to be---do bloggers have a certain shelf life? Is there a certain time when they'd run out of things to say or lose interest in the hobby?

If so, even after four years, I'm not there. Collecting drives my blogging, but blogging also drives my collecting---it looks like I've created a perpetual motion machine!

So, you can still expect to see something new pop up every day at 9:00 AM EST....and hopefully you'll read something that you won't consider a waste of two minutes of your day!

Thank you for reading and adding your comments.

I feel obligated to post some Cub card, so here is the most infamous Cub to wear #4,
Lee F*@%*# Elia

 

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 11,106 Cubs cards from 76 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1950s / 1960s: 1955 Bowman #242 Ernie Banks This is the second time in a row that the RNG has picked a card from the TV set and it picked a really nice one of Mr. Cub. Ernie looks so young in this picture taken at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. You can see that my card isn't in the greatest shape; most of the corners are dinged. After I win the lottery, this will be one of the first cards that I upgrade.

1970s: 1971 Fleer World Series #6 1908 The card says, "Ty Cobb's only good Series." Who cares??? He lost!! This was the Cubs last World Series win and Fleer gives us a picture of a member of the losing team. Boo!!!!

1980s: 1989 Team Issued #2 Vance Law These cards are actually unnumbered; the numbering used is the players uniform number that's listed on the front. Law was the third baseman on the surprising '89 team that won the division. His career peaked the previous season when he hit .293 and made the All Star team. He fell off in '89, his average losing almost 60 points.

 

1990s: 1994 Fleer Traded #110 Karl Rhodes Good 'ol Tuffy Rhodes...Opening Day Rhodes. He hit three homers on Opening Day 1994 off of Doc Gooden and a legend was born. Tuffy struggled the rest of the season, hitting only five more homers in another 94 games. After tanking in the '95 season he moved on to Japan where he became a true legend.

2000s: 2012 Topps Gold #580 Tony Campana It doesn't happen very often that the RNG pulls a card from the current season. Little Tony is that fly that keeps landing on you and when you swat at it, the bugger escapes and comes back to keep bothering you. He doesn't put up great numbers, but when he gets on base exciting things happen.




 

Cooperstown Fronts....Mistake Free!!

There aren't any logos, and the pictures are boring black and white, but at least they don't have any mistakes!

I found a Sportots seller that had the three other Cubs that I collect in the Cooperstown set, and they were only 18 cents apiece, so I grabbed all three.

A young Mr. Cub posing in the outfield somewhere

Ryno takes a cut at Olympic Stadium in Montreal (at least I'm about 98% sure that's Montreal)

The Hawk rips a drive at Wrigley.  The horizontal cards have a straight line across the top, making it a bit tougher to hide hat logos.  They hide the Cubs logos but the Rawlings insignia on his sleeve gets to stay!

Panini Has Some Knuckleheads, Too

We established in an earlier post that there were some knuckleheads writing at Upper Deck, knuckleheads that moved Billy Williams into the infield.

Apparently, Panini has them too.

Here is the back of Ryne Sandberg's 2012 Panini Cooperstown card

and below is a blown up version of the write up. Check your watch, and then start reading. See how many seconds it will take you to fine the screw-up.

So how long?

I asked Mrs. WW to look for the error on the card. Now granted, she's married to me and has had to endure a lot of Cubbyness over the years, but she doesn't have a head filled with Cubs minutia like I do.

It took her 15 seconds before she said, "South Siders??"

So what's more messed up...Upper Deck moving Billy Williams to first base or Panini moving the Cubs to the South Side??

I've offered my proofreading services to Topps, but they've yet to take me up on the offer. I'll put it out there to my friends at Panini, too---I'd be more than happy to look over any Cubs products you make, to ensure you don't make yourselves look like fools.

Emial me

Yes, I know that I just made a mistake---do you think any card manufacturer would have caught the mistake, too??

2007 SP Legendary Cuts Cubs

The good news from the Legendary Cuts 2007 set:  It was the same size as 2006, 200 cards

The bad news:  HALF the set, 100 cards, were short prints.

The even worse news: Almost all of the short print cards are of players that also have a card in the base set.

What that means, for the most part, is that the set is really only 100 cards and there are two cards of most players.

With only 100 cards, the number of Cubs shrunk down to only four, and three of the four also have a short print....dumb, dumb, dumb!

Here are the four base cards

 

 

A quick question on the team logos....why is Hartnett's different?  He gets just the plain C, though  when he was playing the Cubs used a wishbone C.  Plus, the logo on Ernie and Billy's card was never used during their playing days.  When they played, the blue circle was much skinnier.

Now for the three short prints.

They are all numbered /550.  Ernie and Fergie cards have a different picture than what's on the base card, but Billy has the same one.