2013 Year in Review - My Report Card on My Collecting Goals

Time to report out on my 2013 collecting goals I set at the beginning of the year.  I decided to grade myself in the traditional A-F schooling format and I will base my grades on whether or not I completed the goal and how close to completion I ended up with a sprinkling of how passionate I remained about the goal throughout the year.

As a quick reminder, in April of 2013 I was approached about a new job that I ended up taking that required me to live away from home during the week for about 2.5 months then uproot and move my family about 100 miles in the middle of summer.  As you will probably surmise from this recap, my card purchases didn't suffer too much but the blog did.

Here we go:
1. Complete Giants Base Team Sets of Following Brands:

• Ultra - Complete
• Stadium Club - Complete
• Allen & Ginter - Complete
• Topps Heritage - Missing 1 SP (2003 Barry Bonds #376)
• Greats of the Game - Complete
• Turkey Red - Missing 1 SP parallel (2005 Barry Bonds Grey Uni #1B)
• All-Time Fan Favorites - Complete
• Upper Deck Retro - Missing 2 cards (#173 & #285)
• Upper Deck Vintage - Missing 4 cards (2004 Rich Aurilia 3D #430, 2004 Jose Cruz Jr. 3D #431, 2003 Barry Bonds SP #98 & 2003 Barry Bonds 3D #269)
• Gallery - Missing 3 cards (2005 #153, 2001 Willie Mays #50 HTA & Retail)
• Topps Archives - Complete

 Grade - A-
I think I did a pretty darn good job on this goal.  I needed tons of cards from these sets and ended up 11 cards short.  I picked up a few SPs and 2 very challenging Ultra Lucky 13 cards that were serial numbered to 500 and virtually impossible to find.


2. Complete 1961 & 1963 Fleer Sets

• No progress, still need all 3

Grade - F
I don't even think I did an eBay search during the year for these 3 cards.  The 2 1961 cards shouldn't be that hard, although 1 is a high number that is fairly rare.  The 1963 card is a Willie Mays and  I have proven in my Topps sets that his cards aren't impossible to obtain.

3. Complete 5 1960s Topps Team Sets

• Completed 7 Team Sets - Finished 1960, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967 & 1969
• 5 cards remaining in 1961, 1 in 1966 and 1 in 1968

Grade - A+
Hit a homer run here. I still have a few posts I need to write to celebrate the completion of these sets.  In the fall I didn't think this goal would be completed but I made a focused effort and exceeded my expectations.

4. Make progress on 1970, 1972 and 1973 Vintage Sets

• Complete 1970 set through 459 - Still need 3 cards (#140 Reggie Jackson, #189 Munson RC and #203 Rudy May)
• Obtain at least 250 different 1972 cards - Complete 346 different cards
• Complete 1973 set through 528 - Still need 3 cards (#450 Joe Torre, #453 Checklist and #482 Rick Reuschel RC)

Grade - A-
Even thought I technically only hit 1 of these 3 I am giving myself a high grade here.  I obviously well exceeded my goal on the 1972 set.  On the other 2 sets I focused on all cards, not just the cards in the range I stated above.  Taking out the variations I have included on my list, I am only 17 cards from completing the 1973 set.  This does include the Schmidt rookie but I still made some amazing progress on this set.  I am about 117 cards from the 1970 set including some key cards. I was able to pick up 29/86 high numbers, I don't believe I had any going into 2013.

5. Add 5 new HOF Autos

• Only picked up 1 new one, Warren Spahn, unless you count autos I have of 2014 inductees Bobby Cox and Joe Torre (which I don’t).  
• I did pick up duplicate autos of Billy Williams, Jim Palmer and Rollie Fingers but that doesn’t count here.

Grade - C-
A C- with only 1 out of 5 you might ask.  Similar to the 60s Fleer Giants sets, I spent virtually no time on this goal and it was not a focus during most of the year. I got the Spahn at a good price which was nice and the lack of new 2013 HOFers really soured me on this.  I am happy I got one and think I will need to be more specific on who if I am to jump start this collection moving forward.

6. Add 1 pre-1910 Giants Card to my collection

Grade - F
Still didn’t pull the trigger, two years running.  My only real effort here is looking at the display case at my LCS with overpriced tobacco cards every time I go in. Maybe I will leave this off the 2014 goal list and it will actually happen.

7. Make progress on my non Giants player collections

• Rickey Henderson - Picked up between 80-100
• Vida Blue - Didn’t keep track but picked up a bunch
• Dave Winfield - Very few, only a few here and there
• Reggie Jackson - Decent progress, maybe 30-50 new cards

Grade - B
Very happy with the jump start to my Rickey and Vida collection. Reggie is starting to come on over the last few months.  For some reason, I haven't focused too much on Winfield.

8. Launch new collections of Ben Petrick and Dave Parker

Grade - B-
I have continued to pick up cards from each of these players.  I haven’t posted a want list yet or posted about the why behind these collections which lowered my grade.

9. Re-energize my USC Football Collection

Grade C+
I wouldn’t say I re-energized it but I did pick up somewhere around 100 new cards mostly from my LCS bid board and dime boxes.

10. Obtain all 2013 Giants base cards from all releases

Grade B
This has been a goal of mine for the past couple years and I got fairly close this year.  I still need 19 regular base cards and 10 SP/Variations.  A couple of the variations are almost impossible to find and when they come up are too costly for my budget.  I did think I had a trade worked out for the 2013 Topps Posey SP with a fellow blogger but never got the card and can't remember who - may need to see if that is one I can track down for a reasonable price as I believe it was a sweet looking card.

These are the goals I set for the blog:

1. Hold at least 20 contests. 


Grade F
Epic Fail - I believe I held 1 contest all year

2. Execute on some ideas that have been brewing in my head for a while and finish some I have started. 

Grade F
Epic Fail - I shared a nice list of vintage card pick ups, my purchases in Cooperstown and the progress on some of my 2013 goals.

3. I would like to get up to over 100 followers. 

Grade A
Up to 117 - thank you to all my followers and especially the newer ones that got me over the elusive 100 mark.

4. Create a banner for my blog. 

Grade F
Epic Fail - Didn’t happen, didn’t even get started

5. Continue having fun and never let this little blog of mine become a chore

Grade B
I still have fun and it never feels like a chore.  However, I think I could have carved up some more time to post and comment and trade more even with all the life distractions.

There you have it, if you made it this far I am impressed.  Looking forward to thinking up and posting some 2014 goals in the next couple days.