The Great Reorganization: Step 29: Taking a Long, Hard Look at 2016

For anyone who has followed my blog, it's no real secret that many modern card releases have failed to excite me much.  Case in point, take a look at my want list for a sense of what I'm trying to collect.  I have a whole lot of sets from the years 2007 - 2010, but almost nothing from 2015 - 2017 (and that's not a case of me simply completing lots of sets and removing them from the want list).  

For today's Great Reorganization efforts, I'm going to take a long, hard look at the year 2016.  A year that, quite frankly, was fairly lacking in terms of card releases that interested me.

In fact, there are really only five sets that I even dabbled in in 2016:  Topps flagship, Allen & Ginter, Heritage, Topps Stadium Club, and Topps Archives.  Out of those, I only really acquired a small number of Stadium Club and Archives via trades, so both of those sets are "out" in terms of me trying to complete them.

A set that is an obvious "must collect" for me is Allen & Ginter. In fact, I've done alright with the '16 edition of A&G.  I have the full base set complete and a big chunk of most of the mini sets (though I also need quite a few, so it's not like I have nothing to still work on there).  

And so, after a brief discussion of the year 2016, it seems there are really two sets that I need to make a decision on.  I'm going to start with the easier of the two:  Topps Heritage.

The 2016 Topps Heritage design is actually fairly nice.  For whatever reason, I kind of dig the green backs.  However, I have sworn off collecting any more Topps Heritage sets until I finish off the ones that I'm currently working on (which is the years 2014, 2009, and 2008).  For what it is worth, I did complete one Heritage set this year if memory serves...but that's not enough.  Sorry Heritage, but those stupid short prints making collecting the set so frustratingly difficult (and expensive) that I won't be suckered into another set for quite some time.

So to recap, at the moment I'm going to keep going after 2016 Allen & Ginter and ignore everything else from the year...but what about 2016 Topps flagship?  This is by far the toughest decision for me - and that's for one simple reason:  I've already completed the entire Series 1 but I didn't buy a single pack of Series 2.

That leaves me with a few options.  I could either try and get Series 2 to complete my set, I could decide to not bother keeping Series 1 and give up flagship, or I could simply keep my Series 1 set in tact and not worry about the other half of the set.

I'll be honest.  I hadn't made up my mind on what to do with Topps flagship when I started writing the post.  I hoped that by the time I made it to this part of the post, I'd have come up with a suitable answer.  Although I'm still wishy-washy, I think that in itself is the decision.  That is, I can't look at the 2016 design and say that it is a "must have" for my collection.  I know that it'll forever bug me if I only have Series 1 in the binder and nothing from Series 2.  And so, I have no choice but to say that I won't bother collecting Topps' flagship offering from 2016.

And so, in the end it's only Allen & Ginter that will make the cut from the year 2016.  That sounds about right though since the year 2016 was fairly poor when it came to baseball card design and innovation.  The good news is that I've already put TWO sets in binders from the year 2017 (Allen & Ginter, of course, but also Topps Archives).  So yes, things are improving ever so slightly!