Collecting outlook through 2025

Collecting baseball cards occupies a weird headspace where it ends up being a ride-or-die hobby - on the other hand I feel like cards I've taken in end up literally sitting around, piling up where I get self-conscious, yet don't do much about it most times.

I continue to think about cards, claim cards through online sales, rummage for cards in-person when I make card show trips - but any sort of pulse of the hobby has passed me by, where I might as well be on my own little island somewhere.

I've kind of wished that there was a part of the collecting scene that revolved around what I did - but that never was the case at all and I'm just plodding along, peeking on everyone else doing their thing online.

I’m too far deep into it through at least parts of the past four decades to pull out or pull back just a little for a reset - I feel like all my interests have been spelled out to an extent somewhere, where it shouldn't be the case where I feel down and out, but I really need those occasional reminders why certain things animate me.

It's not really all doom and gloom here and maybe it shouldn't be - there are at least a few things I would to be doing or thinking about going forward, where a part of me is emotionally invested.

1.) Making home brewed sets - from my all-time Top 100s to my so-called curated sets teasing various themes [mini-collections, stadium cards, uniform cards, Angels, etc], there is something about turning random bulk cards into something that I can sort of personalize.

I'm planning to make it where being pickier [all-time Top 100s] and doing more of roundups of themed bulk cards [curated sets] - end up being what I try to work on, in order to keep me sane.

2.) Mini-collections purge - maybe this ends up being a big deal for me, where I've been content to build up my various themed collections as part of a monolithic archive.

The inability to gather up what I've hoarded over the past three years to list and put away has left me in this perpetual bind - it might not be a solution at all, but the plan is to refer to my mini-collection cards as more of a feeder collection towards my home brewed sets.

This ultimately means seeing where I can break down a substantial number of undocumented bulk cards, to turn into Top 100 fuel for my all-time sets or using them to make themed curated sets - maybe it has never made sense to seek out all these bulk themed cards, without really looking to make them part of my own set to display and/or talk about.

One of my goals is to be able to list such cards out again in a spreadsheet - where I have a list to look at and occasionally check in case I might be picking up dupes.

3.) Decade / binder stars material - this is my catch-all collection and I have a tally of the subjects I have most cards of separated mostly by decade debuts.

I can't stop picking up odds and ends for one or more players as binder material - at some point I might need to get the actual cards in pages to update my player binders.

An idea in mind was to list out all the cards I had for 10-15 subjects - where it might be a thing to have something like 500 cards in-hand for any one particular subject.

4.) Regional collections - I'm not a team collector where I'm scoping out all the cards for one team, but having one team I do collect in general just makes sense.

I don't know if I have ever bothered to rein in my Angels collections - but for 2025, it might mean making a curated set out of random team cards, trying to keep up with my regional binder stars and updating loose card projects [Opening Day starters, all-time autograph collection, all-time register and frankenset].

5.) Loose card projects - maybe much of what I'm doing is considered 'loose card projects,' but I think I need to keep up with or revive ones that end up being neglected.

Maybe I need to keep tabs on my Hall of Fame collections, milestone numbers collections and award winners collections - where I can tally up new additions and see where updated numbers.

6.) A-Z singles - it's been a long time since I thought about maintaining this collection where maybe the idea was have a temporary collection of cards that might be keepers, but not at the same level as my personal collection cards.

As is, what I may end up doing is turning my A-Z singles collections into sort of my loose card PCs - where I am able to round up a number of miscellaneous cards that might be misfits at the moment.

7.) Personal collection cards - I don't know if I've maintained an update in recent years, but may end up doing so, just so PC cards do not get lost in the shuffle.

Scattered 2023 thoughts in collecting

I hope to squeeze something in that kind of vents about the past year - before that time to do a recap has really sailed.

It was a long year when I think about it and what animates me at the start of one year ends up being neglected - different things take shape in what I do, where I dwell on other interests and other things get in the way.

I was rounding up goal items for 2022 at some point, but maybe I ended up dropping that, when there were too many items to consider - I don't know how complete my achievements goes and maybe it doesn't matter as long as I have a tease.

After a certain point of the past year, I haven't kept up listing achievements for 2023 when I've been perpetually backed up - trying to catch up with inventory recaps from all purchases I’ve made, where I am obligated to list out every card I got.

Off at least one or two 'card guys' on Twitter, I feel like I was really into the chaos pages idea but couldn't get around to putting things together - I was sorting loose cards at the start of last year, but after a certain time, I just left the loose piles of cards I intended to sort further on the floor in little 'play room,' where I would not even go back in there until the new year.

Tried to get my TCDB account going, where I was trying to create personal galleries for my stadium project, adding some trade bait and listing some wantlist items - despite being a thing for bloggers to trade on there, I couldn't remember what my user name was, didn't want to reach out and have not done a single transaction.

I stopped TTM when I couldn’t find a particular card to send to Steve Garvey - that crashed my operation for the year, along with not getting a response from hit or miss Rick Reuschel or getting an RTS from hit or miss Bob Boone.

I think my last success was from Scott Hemond and to be honest - maybe some of the successes that have come in from mailings end up being clutter of sorts.

I think the card show dates once or twice a month added up - I don't know if I ever have anything to show for it, but I would be bringing back bricks of cards I'd let sit and pile up without getting to doing inventory recaps.

Besides my card show bricks and piles, maybe the biggest thing that affected what I was doing collecting wise was buying into Twitter / X stack sales where since last April, it has been a thing - maybe I never really did Twitter except lurk and see what other 'card guys' did.

The idea of claiming cards on the social media site intrigued me, where to me it was like a free-for-all party - where it was a way for me to get engaged, even if that meant claiming cards I may or may not really need from all these random sellers peddling their miscellaneous inventory, which swung towards the bulk material to some odd singles.

With all the cards coming in, it's been a struggle to keep up with trying to list them all - there are scattered purchases that have not been listed anywhere, though I might have tried to do a better job of catching up with the bigger purchases that need my attention in case there are some mess-ups I need to be aware of.

I can't imagine being a rookie but there were times where I had rookie moments buying cards on social media - because I was impatient with a pending purchase from a seller I'd bought from the first time, I sent funds to a wrong PayPal address that had a similar handle.

I never got a response or that money back from the other PayPal account - I ended up sending funds to the correct PayPal account, but felt really dumb paying twice as much for some odds and ends type claims.

There are the occasional hiccups about missing cards or totals not matching up for whatever reason - I also got held up a bit by a dumb seller [who took a while to ship my first order, shorted me some cards and then ghosted me for at least a few months, before issuing a refund minus the PayPal fees I was charged].

Featured autograph: Garret Anderson

I really haven't blogged about anything autograph related, though I see myself as more of an autograph hound - rather than merely just a baseball card collector.

One of my ideas was to do a dayf style blog about autographs - however, I feel like I wanted to focus on baseball cards more because I can talk about them freely. With autographs, you have questions coming up about authenticity and where you got the item, particularly if isn't a pack pulled autograph. Maybe for 2009, one of my goals is to showcase more of my autographs I've picked up through the mail and in-person [or at least talk about them more in general].

This autograph of the former Halos batting star - was acquired by mailing Anderson an 2008 spring training autograph request through the mail.

I watched an in-depth interview show by Fox Sports West [In Their Own Words], featuring GA - on the show [Nomar Garciaparra, Luis Gonzalez, Jeff Kent, Juan Pierre of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Gary Matthews Jr. and Scot Shields of the Angels are other baseball subjects I remember], home town stars are interviewed by host Bill MacDonald to talk about their lives in a candid one-on-one way.

They reveal their personalities and talk about their careers [besides the usual locker-room speak cliches] - for Angels fans, 'GA' has come across as aloof and not someone you can snag an autograph from in-person [he's virtually automatic TTM however].

In the show, Anderson came across as a pretty humble, low-key guy without the ego of a 'me-first' athlete - or a guy whose been affected by much of the criticism he's endured for being lazy, not showing the right hustle, et al.

Here is a Cliff Notes version of what he spoke about:
1.) By his definition, he is gamer - citing guys who've tried to beg out the lineup one way or the other. For all the critics, GA said to check out his numbers - they speak for themselves.
2.) He can't change the way he plays the game - his body language isn't going to allow him to be like Darin Erstad. He isn't going to show much emotion, because he is going to disrespect the other team.
3.) At one point when he was younger, he didn't know how to play 162 games a year - his body language did show it. At times he said a veteran [Tony Phillips] would get on him for it.
4.) If you are in the media and expecting a sound byte - you've gotta get to know him or else you probably won't be getting it. He said the 'Page Two' guy [T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times] is one guy who gets it since Simers might talk to GA for 30 minutes without even having a purpose.
5.) On the 1995 Anaheim Angels, which collapsed after an 11-game lead - GA said it just wasn't a good enough team and he implied these days there is so much pitching depth available, compared to the 1995 team, where you had guys [filling in] and making [too many] spot starts [to be a serious contender], when the they faced teams like the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles.

Hopefully GA can continue his career - to build upon an opportunity to reach or get close to 3,000 hits before he decides to hang them up for good.