A look back into a 2019 collecting goal

Like everyone else it seems, I have a yearly set of collecting goals, but maybe it gets too long winded to fully break down on a blog - I feel like a goof when I don't catch up to any of them and so maybe it is easier to keep them offline.

One of the random goals I had for 2019 was wanting to pick up a year’s worth of random cards i.e. be able to count out one per month - something off-the-wall and maybe offbeat.

Maybe a theme was to pick up cards a 12-year old me would be proud of - I may not be able to live in the past, but see what cards can I pick up that the adolescent me would just get a kick out of.

Not all these cards represent nostalgic 'flash back' pick-ups however - maybe I got away from the idea of some nostalgic, definitive finds, so maybe my list got to be a real jumble.

1986 Donruss Jose Canseco #39

1959 Fleer Ted Williams Sharpshooter #24

Old-school A-Rod cards

2019 Topps SSP Greats Variation Vladimir Guerrero #675

2019 Topps SP Greats Variation Will Clark #428

Old-school Garret Anderson cards

1990 NBA Hoops Hoops Mark Jackson #205

1983 Fleer Joel Youngblood #641

2012 Leaf Best of Basketball The Professor autograph #TP-1

2018 Choice Trenton Thunder Chace Numata #18

1988 Classic Eric Davis #213

1995 Raging Color Classics Burlington Bees Jeff Poor #15

Wally Joyner autograph

2019 Topps Gypsy Queen value pack

I don't know if this is really the case but I think I've been pretty 'once in a while' about random pack / blaster / box breaks over the past year or so - this just means cutting off most Target or Walmart trips made solely for cards and walking away when I've had a chance to buy a pack or blaster of something.

On the other hand, I still get impulsive and maybe I was looking for some whoopee out of a random break - there are probably smarter ways to get newer cards in my collection, but things feel stale sometimes and I have to make a choice to grab something off the trading card hanger display at my big box store.

Green parallel pack 
#170 Lou Trivino - Mr. Mem [of Cardbarrel fame] mentioned on Twitter the card numbers printed on the back are tiny and my eyes agree.
#21 Matt Davidson - I saw the base version from browsing on eBay perhaps and because of the image selected off Getty, I was happy to get a parallel of the original card.
#175 Jack Flaherty

Pack one
#196 Yoan Moncada
#271 Trea Turner
#185 Jose Leclerc

#130 Michael Kopech
#29 Dawel Lugo
#229 Zack Cozart

Pack two
#22 Ryan Borucki
#273 Jose Urena
#182 Yu Darvish
#187 Justus Sheffield
#14 Josh Reddick

#257 Jeff McNeil

Pack three
#227 Jose Ramirez
#146 Kyle Freeland
#101 Blake Snell
#81 Trevor Bauer

#23 Xander Bogaerts
#124 Joey Gallo

When more borderline HOF guys get their call

As a baseball fan, I'd probably be more of a big hall kind of guy - but I thought it was a joke when I found out through scrolling through a social media post that apparently Smith and Baines were elected to the Hall of Fame through the 2019 Today's Game Era Ballot.

Baines' election to the Hall of Fame will probably cause just about every numbers oriented analysts' heads to explode - I won't begrudge or bemoan his induction to the Hall since there are too many writers messing around with someone's actual accomplishments in the guise of being objective.

Personally, I consider Baines in the middle of the pack as far as a Hall of Very Good guy, but in a roundabout way - Baines probably got some extra consideration for the 134 hits he didn't get towards that 3,000th hit club he missed out on.

The last card I touched featuring Baines was his 1991 Upper Deck [#562] - it went in my awesome action collection as a game face card; I like the image of him on the on-deck circle, about to swing while doing his high leg kick.

As far as Smith, though he once held the all-time saves record, I've always thought of him as mostly a junk wax era journeyman reliever - however, with Trevor Hoffman getting into the Hall of Fame recently and with Mariano Rivera on the way, someone had to fit Smith in-between the two in order to have a little run of modern era closers.

Maybe an obvious non-Rivera candidate in the next several years will likely be Billy Wagner - depending on who is on the ballot.

My favorite Smith card was his 1996 Upper Deck card [#266] because while it obviously shows him with the Angels - it was also a seemingly more elaborate image setup compared to a typical baseball card picture.