It's Those Resolutions Again

If you are reading this, you are probably thinking to yourself, "great, another New Years list of resolutions for the hobby" and I can confirm you are right.

I mean, it is the first post of the New Year and it's being posted on New Years Day. What else would be posted?

Last year, I set no resolutions for my hobby self and found myself actually lost. I think I needed the goals. I needed something to cross off to feel accomplished.

So, this year I am bringing them back and there are many to do. I may need to also check in throughout the year to make sure I am staying on task. 

I need you guys to keep my accountable!!!

Without further ado or rambling, let's see this year's goals,

1. Sort out all of the Christmas cards. There were many, it will take a while to do this.
2. Do a PC count on Ken Griffey Jr. I am a man of numbers; I need to see where I am at with it.
3. Grow my Ken Griffey Jr PC even more. It's been a while, it's time to return to my glory days.
4. Continue to grow my Eli Manning PC. First, I need the three cards to reach 1K.
5. Sort, organize my rookie card box by player so I can find things easier.
6. Write down my set numbers and update it all on here.
7. Update my Want List on here.
8. Complete my 2023 Rodney Hampton Certified Rainbow. 
9. Continue to add to my Marvel Movie PC especially the Purple PMG's, then binder it all.
10. Trade with bloggers more. If any of you are interested, let me know!
11. Blog Post on here more consistently!!!
12. Comment on more blogs instead of just reading them.
13. Number count my NY Giants PC overall.
14. Continue my numbering binder system. Only about halfway through.
15. Sort my non-sport base cards better. They are all just thrown into a box.
16. Clean up my card area.
17. Keep up with my Beckett articles.

There are some easy goals and some lofty ones to chase. Hopefully I can complete all before the year ends. There will be recap post at year's end to show how far I accomplished.

In comments, let me know what some of your resolutions are for the hobby this year.

Hope all of you have a safe, Happy New Year!

Hobby Resolutions 2020

It's that time of year again, time to make New Years resolutions. I try not to make them for my personal life as I have never once stuck to them with it mostly being weight based. You know the "I will be a better person this year." "I will try to avoid eating donuts" "I will at least lose 10 pounds this year" When honestly, most of these are things we should be doing already every day and not things we set for the beginning of the year only to fail a few weeks later. I know that personally many times.

Even though this year I have set a 15 pound loss goal because it was what I put on the last couple of years. I would like to at least get back to where I was, I could never lose the 50+ my Dr actually wants as I don't like a lot of vegetables and meats. I am a carb-a-tarian.

Last year I set some pretty lofty collecting goals for my collection and they were my biggest ones yet. Let's see how I did.

Before I move onto my 2020 goals, let's take a look back at my 2019 ones.

1. Add 1 set from my 1990's Spx needs (added 3 I need to show)
2. Finish up my three favorite football 90's insert sets (NOT EVEN CLOSE)
3. Finish up my 1996 Spx baseball set (noooooooooppppppe)
4. Finish up more 90's insert and base card sets. (I did finish up at least five sets, but many more to go!)
5. Add 100 more new Griffey Jr's (think I fell well short of this)
6. Add 50 more new Rodney Hamptons (well since it's getting harder to find newer ones, I could only pull in less than 30)
7. Add some new Non Sport Autographs from my list of wants. I will be posting those soon as I revamp my tabs.(added some of those!!)
8. Start my collection overhaul (re-organized my entire collection!)
9. Post updates on my collection overhaul project (think I did some but not all)
10. Put at least half of my Griffey want list onto the computer if not all then upload it to here (finished it all!!)
11. Improve the blog look, appeal, and content (this is always a goal and this year I am really striving to do so)
12. Fix all of my want lists, checklists, and update the face of the blog (on and off I did)
13. Make a list of more late 90's sets I want to finish adding the set number needs on here. (did this!!)
14. Improve the way I write. It's been a habit to type what I write before my pictures, but it seems I have been doing that wrong for the past 6 plus years and it needs to be fixed. I always thought words lead into a picture but it's not as the words must be posted after. I also want to add more words and information to each post. Or even a flashback memory. Something that won't make the articles so short and sweet. (I started to then fell off the wagon again. sigh. I think it's because I strive to do daily content that I just throw something up)
15. Post less mail days on here or find more creative ways of posting them instead of this is this and this is that type of posts. They bug me when I do those. I may move some/most mail days back to Twitter only (we will see) and post more articles on the things I am passionate about instead. (did some of this but gotta strive to do more in 2020) 
16. Work on a new blog name. Yes, I am still at that point of wanting a new one and would love to accomplish it by my blogs birthday in March. I want this title to say what I collect like Eli's Crew or anything you guys can come up with. Wes suggested "In The Cards". I do like that one. But something that covers Ken Griffey Jr, NY Giants, Rodney Hampton, Non Sports and the 90's. (I did and it was a good one but for some reason or another, it hurt this blog in the long run)
17. Use the background my wife picked up to take blog pictures on. I waste so much time taking pictures and cropping. WAY TOO MUCH. With this background it will be just snap and upload which will save me tons of time. (did this and boy does it save time)
18. Cutout/cutback on trading with newbies. I know this sounds odd, but I wasted too much precious time last year digging stuff out only to have a trade fail. This was many, many, many times of spending hours digging out trade bait and having the person preferring to sell or simply just backing out despite liking what I offered. So my trades will happen only with my usual group.(no, I fell for newbie trades again but I would say overall my trading was way down in 2019 due to funds to ship) 

There was a lot to do in that list but I was pretty successful.

Lets check out 2020. We will see some similar goals involved

1. KEEP MYSELF MOTIVATED TO BLOG. (I have been teetering on this for a couple of months and this one will not be easy)
2. Add 1 set from my 1990's Spx needs (really need to get a basketball one done)
3. Finish up my three favorite football 90's insert sets (GOT TO FO-CUS)
4. Finish up my 1996 Spx baseball set (Dennis gets me closer, but I am still not at the finish line)
5. Finish up more 90's insert and base card sets. (so many I want to do)
6. Add 100 more new Griffey Jr's (time to try this again)
7. Add 20 more new Rodney Hamptons (this number gets less and less as I close in on all)
8. Add some new Non Sport Autographs from my list of wants. I will be posting those soon as I revamp my tabs.(will be adding a new list)
9. Add 100 Kerry Collins for that new PC.

That's it for 2020. I set my goals shorter this year in hopes I can accomplish more of the things that have more meaning to me. Makes sense doesn't it?

Well, I hope this starts a train of 2020 goals across the blogosphere as I would like to see yours as well! If you don't have a blog, just tell me them in comments.

Happy New Year to all and have a great one!

Hobby Resolutions

First off,  this post is running a tad late but HAPPY NEW YEARS!! Hope you have a great start to your year!

As a New Year begins all of us have what is called Hobby Resolutions. This is something you set like a New Years Resolution (just hopefully we all stick to these) you may want to fix with your collection, buying preferences, hobby additions and maybe even some hobby subtractions. Everyone’s Resolutions will look different depending on what type of collector you are.

Here are some of my Hobby Resolutions:

1.     Get more of my base cards sorted. Right now I catalog all of my common base cards by number, set, brand and year. I want to do more with them. Maybe sort them by team or take out some more of the star players. I haven’t done a star player update in awhile and players like Aaron Rodgers, Prince Fielder and others have come a long ways since my last update. I store my Star players by player and by sport in a big 8,000 count white boxes.

2.      Re-Teach myself star players from other sports that are not football. This will help improve my reviews and other posts about cards on here. There are some players that are not so obvious anymore and every year there are breakout players so keeping up to date is very important.

3.     Continue to improve my blog. I have reworked it a lot last year in its first 9 months. I like where things are and right now wouldn’t change a thing. However there is always room for improvement in terms of adding even more card content and I plan on doing so. Bring back some more product previews as well as some Flashback Products and Random Cards Of The Day.

4.      Would finally like to add an Eli Manning autograph to my collection. I prefer it be in card form however.

5.      I would like to try and get all of my jersey, jersey-auto, autograph, patch and so on cards typed up and catalogued on the computer with updated pricing as well. I at one time had all of this done then fell behind on both keeping up with the pricing and with keeping them  typed up.

These are only 5 Hobby Resolutions but as we all know, it’s better to start small just like with New Years Resolutions and build from there. I am sure there are others I can add but would like to accomplish these first.

What are some of your Hobby Resolutions?