2015 Collection Goals - The Year of the Base Cards

I thought about posting about my perfect predictions with regards to the Baseball HOF voting but don't want to come across as someone who gloats.  I was going to share my wallet cards first excursion but I haven't uploaded the photos yet.  Then I looked at the calendar and decided I needed to share my goals for 2015.

A few days back I shared my successes and failures with my 2014 goals.  I was going to post these 2015 goals the next day but decided to take some time to reflect and make sure I was focusing on the right areas of my collection to maximize my fun and enjoyment of this hobby.

In 2014, I was able to pick up just about all the Giants base cards that were released and got a high degree of satisfaction out of that.  I am a list person and really like marking a card or a set off my want list.  While I will have a couple of goals that may not completely pertain to my theme, I have decided that 2015 will be The Year of the Base Card.

Here are the goals I am setting for my collection in 2015:

1. Obtain all 2015 Giants base cards from all releases.

2. Acquire at least 800 Giants base cards from years past.  My want list has about 2800 going back to 1948.  I have no idea if this is a realistic target, I will try and knock as many off this list as I can but want to set some sort of goal.

Recent Giants Base Card Additions from 2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes - why haven't I gone after this set yet, it is great!

3.Concentrate my player collections on obtaining all the base cards of these players.  Certain player like McCovey, Vida and Lott will still get the focus of all cards including base.

• Willie McCovey
• Rickey Henderson
• Vida Blue
• Reggie Jackson
• Dave Winfield
• Ben Petrick
• Dave Parker (as a Pirate)
• Chili Davis
• Ronnie Lott
• Roger Craig
• Dwight Clark
• Chris Webber
• Charles Barkley
• Patrick Ewing

I have started making a few base card only want lists and added them to the bottom of my posted want lists.  I am using Beckett.com so I doubt it will be 100% accurate but should help in my shopping excursions.

3 new Chris Webber Base Cards - It has been a while since I added any new Webbers to my collection

 4. Finish my 1970 Topps set which will include:

• Paying off lay-away balance at old LCS for all but 17 off my want list
• Tracking down the final 17 cards that include: Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson RC, Hank Aaron AS, Hank Aaron, Pete Rose, Willie Mays, Al Kaline, Johnny Bench and Nolan Ryan

5. Knock 150 cards off 1971 Topps want list (currently at 340/752)

6. Knock 100 cards off 1972 Topps want list (currently at 481/787)

7. Complete 1956 Topps Presidents set (currently at 29/36 with 2 on the way)

8. Get all my base cards and inserts that aren’t part of sets or my player and team collections uploaded into Sportlots.  I just finished sorting and inputting about 5000 baseball cards that I have acquired since my move about 18 months ago and have a total of over 48,000 cards in the database.  I have tons of base cards from the early 80s to mid 2000s in a closest that I want to get input as well.  In addition to selling $20-$80/month in cards that I can turn around and use to buy new ones (almost like trading), Sportlots gives me a great database to locate the cards I have.  If you have needs by player or set, let me know and I can do a quick search.

9. Obtain at least 1 Giants card that will be the oldest in my collection.  I currently have 4 1933 Goudeys that are tied for my oldest card.

10. Make significant progress on my 49ers Vintage set collection and have at least 100 different cards by year end.

11. Update USC Football checklist with releases from the past 3-5 years (they are hit and miss) and obtain 50% of all base cards from 2014 and 2015.

12. My first non-base focused goal will be to add 6 certified autographs of players new to my Baseball HOF collection.

13. Maintain set building discipline, try not to collect every set that comes out

14. Have fun with the blog, post 200-250 times during the year, hold a couple contests, comment more on the posts of fellow bloggers, continue to trade and send some “just because” packages.

There you have it, I am pretty excited about these goals and will plan on keeping tabs on my progress through my blog posts.  As a former guy that chased all the big hits and didn't think my player collections were complete without every insert, parallel, relic and auto this is a big change.  It has actually energized me and I look forward to some collecting success in 2015.