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Gold from the Sandlot

Over the last three or four months (probably more if I'm being honest), I've been seriously reevaluating my baseball card collection.  For years and years, I kept one copy of every card that I acquired (most of which were stored in binders).  Around the year 2008 (when I started blogging here at Nachos Grande), I quickly learned that my old collecting goal wasn't just unreasonable, it was impossible.  I would have to have a warehouse full of shelves (not to mention thousands of dollars worth of binders and 9-pocket pages) in order to collect "one of everything."  Realizing that, I slowly switched my collecting goals to mostly complete sets (plus any and all Barry Larkin cards).

Flash forward to the current year and you'll find I am still operating under the same collecting goals.  In fact, I still have all of my old binders full of cards from sets that I'll almost assuredly never try to fully collect.  I've also got a bunch of sets that I've completed (and a bunch more that I'm in various stages of completing).
A few of my binders.

That brings us to today.  At this point in my collecting career (such as it is), I've realized that I don't have enough storage room for new cards if I don't start purging some of the extras from my collection.  I've been trying to do that via Listia (which has worked for some cards) but I've still got quite a bit of sorting to go before I'll have the burgeoning collection under control!

Once I have everything sorted, I think I'll have to set some new goals (and be sure to stick to them).  At the moment, I believe those goals will look something like this:
1.  Pick one set per year to complete.  More sets are allowed if I happen to like them enough.
2.  Collect one copy of each Cincinnati Reds card.  This will take some crazy amounts of organizing, but I'd like to acquire one copy of every Reds card made.
3.  Acquire as many Barry Larkin cards as possible since I'll need two of each (one for the Larkin binder, one for the team set binder).
4.  Trade away or sell everything else.

All of that brings me to a recent surprise envelope from Joe over at The Sandlot.  Joe and I have completed a couple of trades in the past, but this particular envelope was an "out of the blue" package.  Joe had a 2012 Topps Allen & Ginter Gold Border parallel of Johnny Cueto for me (see goals #1 and #2 above).

He also sent me a smattering of Reds from various sets (see goal #2).

Finally, Joe added 14 more cards to my Barry Larkin Collection!  Sure, I had a few of them, but I'll need the extra copy for my team set binders (see goals #2 and #3).

Thanks to the surprise mailing, I can now also get to work on goal #4 since I now owe Joe cards!

If only all goals were this easy to work on!

Comments

  1. Good luck to you! I had a smallish collection as a kid (3 binders and a few 800 count boxes) and I grew to like that a lot. When I got real into collecting an trading on the blogs, I ended up getting 12 800 count boxes and pretty much filling them with cards, so along with my 3 (new) binders and my little shoebox of trade bait I started to put quite the dent on my apartment!

    When I moved I decided I didn't want to do that anymore. Sold/traded/donated all my 800 count boxes. Now back down to the bait box and my binders, and I've been using Listia to make room in my bait box and transitional binder (the other two are Seneca and 199 Topps) for better bait/cards I win from Listia.

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  2. I've always been a hybrid set/player collector so I've run across some similar issues. I've really tried to limit my sets to 2 hockey, 1 football, and 1 baseball a year to try and cut down on the space needed. As for my player collection, as soon as I have a copy for one of my sets I consider it complete in both my set and player collections. This way I don't have a bunch of doubles for no reason.

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  3. Your card collecting goals are nearly identical to mine. Well, replace Reds with Cubs and Larkin for Sandberg, and yeah, then they're identical.

    I also only allow myself one set a year, unless I really like something else. The cards don't pile up on me so fast this way!

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  4. Take away the set a year, change Larkin to Virdon, and add Sox to your team and you have my collecting goals.

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  5. That first picture is truly a beautiful sight. You must have so much fun going through those!!!

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