4,400 Posts (and counting)!

According to my Blogger home page, this is my 4,400th post here at Nachos Grande!  It is also Barry Larkin's birthday today so a big Happy Birthday to my favorite player of all-time.  I'll have more of a Larkin Birthday Blowout Bash later tonight.  For now though, I'm going to focus on that magical number 4400.

While there are a few of you that have me beat still, 4400 posts is a lot!  Unfortunately, I cannot pride myself on writing quality necessarily...but man oh man, I sure do have writing quantity covered nicely!

The good news for my blog is that despite having well over 4,000 posts, I'm not sick of baseball cards.  In fact, I would even go so far as to say I like cards more now than I did when I began the blog.  I will say that my collecting habits have changed though - and given that this is my 4400th post, it's a perfect time to reflect.

In the beginning, my collecting habits could only be described as scattershot.  I bought a lot of packs (almost all at retail) from a wide variety of sets.  In fact, in 2008 (when I began my blog), I bought Topps' flagship, Stadium Club, Upper Deck Masterpieces, Upper Deck's flagship, Topps Heritage, Upper Deck Timeline, and Upper Deck Goudey (just to name a few).  Most of those sets are still not completed...which goes to show just how hard it is to complete a set in the short print era - and just how unpopular many of those sets ended up being.

Flash forward to 2014 and my buying habits are completely different.  I try to only buy hobby boxes now (though that's been a total fail on my part with this year's Heritage brand - some habits die hard I guess).  In addition, I've drastically cut back on the number of different sets that I buy each year.  Last year's sets that I purchased included Gypsy Queen, Archives, Allen & Ginter's, and Topps Chrome.  This year I've only bought Heritage so far (and I've firmly decided to avoid all things Gypsy Queen from now on).  I will probably still buy Ginter and I'll hold off on saying yea or nay to other sets until I learn more about them.

For now, I'll bask in the glow of the nice round 4400 post number, but it won't last for long.  The next post I write will be number 4401 and the march towards 5000 posts will continue once again.  Things won't necessarily be changing around here - though I doubt they'll stay the same forever either if the last few years are any indication.

Finally, for those that are wondering, I haven't given up on my Great Reorganization plan yet.  In fact, I'm getting dangerously close to having all my cards at least sorted into piles by year - a huge first step!!  I'll be posting more information (and probably plenty of trade bait) as the process continues...hopefully within the next week or so I'll have the first run through of all the cards complete and then the fun will really begin - I'll need to decide:
A.  Which sets to keep/collect
B.  Do I want to keep one of each Red for sets that I don't aim to actually complete ever
C.  How many sets is too many to collect
D.  If I answer "no" to B, then which Reds players do I want to keep (besides birthday boy Larkin who already has his own binder)
E.  How do I get rid of the excess cards - and can I somehow make a bit of money on them in order to fill in some of the gaps in my newly organized collection

I'm sure more questions will arise as my organizing continue...but that's for another post!  Until then, feel free to go back and read through my archives - there are now 4,400 different posts for you to peruse!