The Quest for a White Whale Comes to an End

This quest was a long and frustrating one, but after 17+ years it is finally over. Way back in 2001, Topps released a 10 card insert set featuring some of the more well known stars of the Negro League. From the moment I saw this set staring back at me from a pack of Flagship(series 2, I think), it was one of my favorites. I finished the set relatively quickly and was excited to see that Topps Chrome would apply its shiny base and refractor technology to the set. I immediately knew I'd have to track down a refractor version of my favorite player in the set, Josh Gibson. In the weeks after Chrome was released, I happened to find 2 different copies at my local card show. I was young and the asking prices weren't in my collecting budget so I had to leave them behind. I remember seeing a few more on eBay and the end result was the same, too rich for my blood. As time went by, I had trouble finding any available copies at all. Over the years, I had a few near misses which I wrote about in this post showing my top 5 white whales. I couldn't even find a picture of a sold copy of the card for that post so I just subbed in a picture of the base version. I published that post in early November 2017. Close to six months passed and there were no signs of an available copy on either eBay or COMC. Then it happened. I was performing searches on COMC for a list of cards that I don't usually find available. I typed in '2001 Topps Josh Gibson' as I'd done a hundred times before. Only this time, among the few results was a copy of the refractor I was searching for. It was listed a bit high for my liking, but fortunately I had earned a good bit of credit by doing challenges. I added some store credit via PayPal just for good measure. I wanted to be ready for negotiation. I quickly made an offer I could live with. It seemed like it took forever for the seller to respond(it was actually only a few hours). They countered and I felt it was reasonable(and I didn't want to lose out again) so I accepted. A huge weight was lifted! However, I knew that I wasn't very likely to request shipment until the Black Friday promo. So, seven months after I purchased one of my most sought after cards, I finally had it in hand and here I am finally writing about it four+ months after that. Better late than never I suppose.

I only wish the scan actually did this card justice. It is extremely satisfying to finally acquire a card I'd searched for so long to find. Quite honestly it's a feeling I'd really like to replicate again in the near future(fingers crossed). Anyway, thanks for reading.

Big League Surprise

For several weeks, I've been hot on the trail of retail Stadium Club and each time I've searched another Target or Walmart for those elusive blasters/jumbo packs I have come up empty. This week, I added Topps Big League(BL) to my search. New product, same results...until yesterday. I still haven't found any Stadium Club, but I found these staring back at me from the card shelf at Walmart:

Not only did I find some BL, but the blasters have cards on them!!! I was so excited to see that. I'm pretty sure this is the first time the collecting community has seen cards on packaging since 2009 OPC. The 'box card' set contains 4 cards. I haven't seen a checklist, but I lucked into two pretty popular players.

I can't remember the last time I was so careful about cutting something out. Though the scans don't reflect it, I made sure to keep the dotted lines intact. As cool as 'box panel cards' are, the best part came after I opened the blasters to take the packs out.



They're not just blank backed, they're fully printed!!! To my fellow collectors who are searching this product out, I say being patient on the search for retail will definitely pay off. Now let's move on to the rest of the cards I found.

Here are a few of my faves from the 2 blasters. Manny's sweet swing, the great Pirates throwback, and Benny's concentration at the moment of contact are really cool shots. Albies is having a great rookie season, Mengden looks like he's playing in the '70's with that cool 'stache, and Sano is pretty happy that there's two down in the inning. I love the pic selection. Most of the cards I pulled just have a different feel than flagship's photography choices. The borders are a welcome departure from recent set designs and I like that team colors are incorporated into the framing. Subsets also make a triumphant return.

Though these Player's Weekend and Ballpark Landmarks look like inserts, they're part of the base set. This certainly harkens back to times gone by. He card stock isn't quite old school cardboard, but it does have a different feel than the overly thin and slick stock used for flagship. Add all of this to a 400 card checklist and I feel this is a really solid offering with a lot of positives for set collectors and team collectors alike. If there's one thing I don't necessarily like it's that gold border parallels appear at a rate of one per 10 card pack. They're done nicely, but it makes building the set a bit more difficult.

I don't have much to write about the parallels, though I was happy to pull the Rickey. Each blaster also had a pack of 'exclusive' blue bordered parallels.

I think I prefer the blue borders, they 'pop' quite a bit more than the gold ones. Lastly, unlike most modern sets, inserts aren't a primary draw for this set. That being said, I did pull 4 total inserts from the two blasters.

For me, the inserts aren't much to get excited over. I honestly think I would have preferred 4 additional base cards. Maybe if I find some more of this product, the insert designs will grow on me. Despite mediocre insert designs, this set is really strong for an initial offering. I'm hoping it does well enough that Topps decides to bring it back next year. Maybe they could put all of their 'affordable set' ideas in one basket and move a few of the great insert set concepts from Opening Day over to this set and eliminate OD altogether, leaving behind a really great entry level set that could appeal to kids and any coll chores that aren't interested in all of the crazy bells and whistles that most sets have crammed in these days. (deep sigh)...I suppose that's unlikely, but a guy can dream, right? Thanks for reading.

A Heritage Pick-Me-Up

The past week and a half has been exceptionally difficult at work. It has been both physically and emotionally exhausting. I was looking for a boost so I hit up the local Target on Monday, hoping that there was a chance I'd find some Heritage on the shelf a few days early. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. After another long day yesterday, I decided to try one more time before release day. When I got to the card aisle, I didn't see anything at first glance. As I began to stare at what was there to make a decision on something to settle for, I saw it...a few hanger boxes! I grabbed two of the four that were there and hit the road.

I'm digging the package design on these! Let's check some of my favorites.

I like the cool checklists with player pics and the retro rookie cups are pretty awesome. I chose the Montgomery not only because he is a Yankee, but I think it's great that you can see a bit of the facade of George M. Steinbrenner stadium in Tampa.

Here are a few rookies and a high number SP. I am thinking of beginning a PC of Jose Pirela. I liked him when he was in the Yankees system and was lucky enough to meet him and get an IP auto at the Triple A All-Star festivities in Durham a few years back.

These are probably my favorites of the bunch so far. I'm not an Astros fan, but I love playoff/World Series highlights and these are done really well.

Lastly, I found one of these Deckle edge insert in each hanger. As you may already know, I am a sucker for these and am still trying to complete the original 1969 issue. Inserts like these have twice popped up in Archives over the past 5 years and I am slowly working on putting those sets together(needs will be posted on my set page shortly). These are even better in my opinion, though for reasons that some may really dislike them. They are not faithful to the original set in two significant ways. First, they are full size and not 'mini'. Second, they are done on vintage, thick stock. I'm probably in the minority, but I'm not going to get hung up on those differences. I like these and will definitely be working on putting together the full 30 card set. 

Sadly, I didn't pull any of the All-Star subset. I'm looking forward to seeing those. Since it's officially release day, I think I'll go out and try to find a few loose or fat packs that I can use my coupon(from my series one blaster). Good luck to anyone out there searching for some to rip, I hope you find product on the shelves and pull some great cardboard! Thanks for reading my brief thoughts.

An Incredible Secret Santa Gift

Christmas may be far behind us, but I can still get into the Holiday spirit thanks to the awesome Bob Walk the Plank Secret Santa package I received courtesy of P-Town Tom. The surprises with this package started from the moment it arrived.

While I knew I should be expecting a package from someone in the Secret Santa exchange, I wasn't expecting to find this hulking package on my doorstep(too big for the mailbox). I was thrilled when I opened it too.

Gingerbread!!! Oh yeah! To my slight disappointment, the box didn't actually contain a gingerbread house kit. It did contain a bunch of individually wrapped presents though.

It may be tough to tell from the way I arranged them for the pic, but there were 6 presents within along with a great note(which I didn't scan) that explained how all this cardboard goodness stayed within Matt's $10 limit. I briefly considered turning this into my own little advent calendar, opening one present each night, but that thought went away almost as quickly as it arrived. There was a little bit of everything in here.

First up, a blaster of a set that is about as oddball as it comes. Tom apparently won this as a door prize at a show and thought it would be a great add in to my Santa gift. I'm really appreciative that he did. It was really fun to rip into these packs!

Here are some highlights. I was thrilled to pull the Rivera and Ichiro. Take a look at how young Jayson Werth looks there! The Tino is a parallel. While it's nice to add a new Tino, it kinda hurts to see him in something other than pinstripes. The Torii is an insert and the Rios is from the rookie subset. Sadly, there wasn't a 'hit' in this box but it was definitely fun nonetheless. These kinda remind me of pogs from back in the day. Next up was a random assortments from his collection that didn't fit his PC preferences.

I didn't open much Fire so all of these are new additions for me. It's hard to pick a favorite here. I like the look of the Tanaka and it's always great to add a new DJ. I thought it was especially good timing that the Aaron Boone was in here considering he is the new Yankee skipper for 2018. The Kiermaier may win favorite of this scan though. It's a gold parallel of an insert that showcases his strong suit that has nabbed him a pair of Gold Gloves to date.

Here are some Yankees World Series heroes, old and newer. I particularly love the Jeter Classic Walk-Offs which highlights the night he became Mr. November.

I was lucky to find a few packs and a blaster of Stadium Club before it all disappeared from the shelves of my local Targets and Walmarts. I was not lucky enough to pull a base Jeter from the little I opened. The blue parallel Frazier is pretty awesome too, especially since he hasn't been traded away...yet. The pair of Didi cards represent my first experience with the rebooted a gallery product. I loved the original product and these look nice even if the card stock doesn't mimic the older product. It was pretty cool to see the base and Artist Proof parallel in this package. There was so much more than I scanned here. All in all, these were sent in a 200 count box which was a blast to flip through. As fun as this gift was up to this point, the heavy hitters were still to come!

This 1991 has been on my Cardboard Wishlist since shortly after I started this blog and remembered that I had a copy when I was younger. When I picked up my collection after a few years away, I pared it down a bit in preparation for a move to a smaller space. Shortly after I started this blog, I saw this card on Listia and was reminded how much I liked it when I was younger. I immediately went looking for it. After flipping through several monster boxes, I came to the conclusion that it must have been a casualty of my pre-move purge, along with others from the junk wax era. Once I realized I no longer had a copy, it took up residence on my Cardboard Wishlist. I'm happy to be able to cross it off that list. This gift package wouldn't stop there though.

This UD Vintage Posada comes from a time when there were so many sets available that it was really tough to see all of your team's issues and even more difficult to grab a copy of them all. I didn't know this card existed until I saw it on Dimebox Nick's blog when he was able to cross it off his Dimebox Dozen list. I immediately fell in love. The photo selection is incredible and it's a card of a member of the Core Four! Check off another card from my Cardboard Wishlist! Truth be told, I decided to add these last two cards to my first ever COMC order, but I received them in this package before my order arrived. It certainly didn't diminish my excitement at having received these. However, if there's anyone out there that would like a copy of either, I now have dupes to share. In addition to these wants, my Secret Santa package knocked out a ton of set needs. Three of the sets from my list were completed courtesy of Tom's generosity.

The last dozen needs for my 2015 Chrome set build were included.

Though I only scanned 6 of them, I received a whopping 14 of these to close out my 1993 Hostess set. Last but not least, I was able to finish off another early '90's oddball set.

I once again only scanned 6, but I unwrapped the final 8 of these 1992 Fleer 'The Performer Collection' cards that could be found at participating Citgo locations many moons ago.

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to finish writing this and get it posted, but I have to say one last 'thank you' to both Matt for organizing this Secret Santa operation and to P-Town Tom for sending an incredible gift package! Thanks to all for reading.

Happy Topps Release Day!!!

To be fair, I was able to find the cards I'm going to share here on Monday this week but haven't been able to write about them yet. Today is the day that so many collectors anxiously await, the release of the year's first baseball card product. It's Topps series one release day! As mentioned, I was happily surprised to start my week by finding some new cards sitting on the shelf at Target on Monday.

I decided to try a blaster and a hanger box to kickoff the new collecting year. I was happy to see the 'Target Exclusive' Derek Jeter Highlights cards advertised on the front of the blaster. Others may be tired of new Jeters or new Yankees in general, but I'm excited to chase more cards of the Captain. I was just hopeful that the card design would look nice. I guess its an added bonus that there are also some coupons to use later. I decided to rip into the blaster first.

Here is a representation of the different subsets to be found. Future Stars, League Leaders, World Series Highlights, and team cards are all available. I scanned the Hosmer and Ozuna because I thought they were some of the more interesting photos from the blaster. I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about the design this year. I've heard some people refer to it as the 'Aquafresh' set or the 'wave' set. So far, for me, the design element that my eye tends to be drawn to is the effect found on the right side of the player and team name bars. It reminds me of the movie 'Pixels'. The more I look at it, the more it grows on me.

Here is a smattering of different inserts that I found. We've got Award Winners, Opening Day, Topps Salute, Superstar Sensations, 1983 35th Anniversary, and Legends in the Making. I was really happy to pull two Judge inserts after not having much luck pulling his RCs last year. I love the early career photo of the Straw-Man they used on the Salutes card. Across the bottom row, I scanned Verlander and Darvish because they show them in their new unis. While they may not be the first pieces of cardboard to do so, I still thought it was nice to see. I pulled 4 of the 1983 cards. I decided to scan Devers(despite being a Red Sox) because he is one of the most exciting young players to have RCs in series 1. I really like the way these look. However, they used a more modern card stock which leaves them a bit too slick feeling for my liking. I'm not sure if I'll make even a half hearted attempt at putting that set together. I feel like it would have been a real winner if they had used the same 'old school' card stock they used on the 1987 set last year. 

The Captain!!! I was thrilled to find 4 of these Derek Jeter Highlights cards in the blaster and I'm really happy with the simple, jersey-inspired design. I will definitely need to track all of these down.

While I was excited to be opening packs of the first set of the year, the blaster had left me a bit underwhelmed until the second to last pack I opened. I had only pulled a single gold, a single rainbow foil parallel, and only a few rookies(none of which were the ones I really wanted to pull). However, right in the middle of that second to last pack was a card that helped redeem the box.

Willie Calhoun has been a pretty highly touted prospect in the Dodgers system over the past few years. The Rangers acquired him in the Yu Darvish trade and he was one of their September call-ups, playing in 13 games. This is the Mother's Day Pink parallel and is #/50. I beat pretty astronomical odds finding this in my blaster as they fall 1:694 packs. I still had the 'relic' pack to go too. This year, series 1 includes Manu-relics featuring the altered MLB logo that was used during Players Weekend. I thought this was a pretty fun idea for a 'relic' set which is the main reason I opted to go for the blaster and not just multiple hangers.

I still like the design of the card and I have no issue with pulling a Josh Donaldson. I do have an issue with their photo selection though. One of the most fun aspects of Players Weekend was the use of nicknames on the jerseys. Why have a set that is supposed to highlight Players Weekend if the photo selected doesn't showcase one of the main aspects of said weekend? I just don't get it. I have yet to  see the Yankees from this set, but I sure hope that their nicknames are visible, especially since there is the added novelty of the Yankees never wearing names on their jerseys. I'm hoping they'll be really cool additions to my collection once I track them down. Let's move on to the hanger box.

Ahhh, finally a few of the RCs I will be chasing made an appearance in the hanger box brick. Since I'm a fan of any WS Highlight cards, I had to scan the WS MVP. As I'm sure anyone reading is aware, Kiermaier is one of my favorite players in the league. Robbing HRs has become fairly common for him, but I never tire of seeing photos of him in action. This particular one looks like he is doing his best MJ 'Jumpman' impression. I decided to include the newest Yankee for exactly that reason and I love the gritty detail on that Tapia. It's just a great baseball card. There were no inserts that I felt the need to scan, but there was one card I thought looked a bit different as I flipped through the brick of cards. A quick scan of the minuscule codes on the card backs confirmed my initial suspicion that I had uncovered one of the lower tier photo variation SPs.

I can't even put into words how thrilled I was that I had pulled an SP that would immediately slip into my PC. This is the variation on card #1 in the set. Obviously I love Judge(otherwise this wouldn't be his third appearance in this post), but am I the only one that can see Cameron(Alan Ruck) from Ferris Bueller's Day Off here?

It's not too much of a stretch, right? Anyway, to all who are searching for new product, I hope you find some and have great luck as you rip into the first cards of the year! I think I'll go searching for some loose and fat packs so I can use some of my coupons from that blaster. Thanks for reading.

Discounted Stadium Club and Some Blog News

I'll make sure to get the card related portion of the post out of the way first so that those of you that aren't interested in the blog news can easily skip that.

The other day, I posted about a Bowman 'value pack' that I found at the local Walmart. That pack turned out to be a pretty awesome break, but I found some other packs that same day.

I love discounted packs. As previously mentioned, I'm still trying to put this set together so I couldn't pass up 'clearance' Stadium Club. Oh, who am I kidding? I wouldn't have been able to pass them up even if I'd already finished the set.

This is not too shabby. The gold foil Trout is definitely the highlight of the first pack, but the pics on the Forsythe and Soler are top notch.

Pack two was also pretty darn good! A Kershaw insert, Bryant, and a cool pic of Bumgarner throwing at my head top the second dozen SC cards. I suppose at some point I'll get it together enough to post my needs list for this. Until then, I'll keep my eyes peeled for more discounted product.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few weeks trying to figure out why I've allowed the blog to go for multiple lengthy periods of time with little to no activity. It's certainly not because I'm not interested in the cardboard. Though you wouldn't know(since I haven't written much), I've been acquiring cards at the same alarming pace that has characterized most of my blogging history. Some have been through FB group trading, some through case breaks, and some through my normal purchasing habits. Sadly, there haven't been many acquired through the cardsphere. As I considered the reasons I haven't been as active in the blog community there were many reasons. The constant feeling of being behind on scanning/writing about trades with fellow bloggers, guilt at not packing up outgoing trade packages on a regular basis(though I definitely have the stacks available to send out), and a lack of creative subject matter are all pretty high on the list. Utilizing my 'free' time for other card-related activities(recently discovered COMC challenges and digital card apps) also ranks up there. However, there is one other reason that my mind kept coming back to: my blog feels stale and isolated. The original design of the blog has served me well, but I no longer feel like it is fresh and exciting like I once did. Additionally, I've established multiple collecting communities(cardsphere, FB groups, in-person, etc) and they all feel isolated from each other. This leads me to the conundrum of being extremely excited about recent additions to the collection, but then holding off on posting about it anywhere due to a feeling of paralysis by analysis. I end up feeling unsure of how to tie together the new card(s) when the source isn't a part of the community I'm trying to share with. I realize even as I'm writing this that this reasoning may be rather silly, but it's a glimpse into my thought process. So, what does this long-winded, rambling bit of nonsense have to do with anything? I suppose the short answer is: whatever readers I still have left will probably be noticing some significant changes to the look of the blog. Additionally, I'll be launching a new, blog-specific Twitter account that will hopefully help me to begin integrating the multiple communities I wrote about earlier. In the long run, I hope that these changes will make the blog feel fresh again and eliminate some of the inexplicable hesitancy I've had to write about a bunch of stuff in recent months.

Sorry for the wordy, pictureless announcement. If there's anyone still out there that made it to the end of this, please take a moment to comment. Do any of you feel like your various collecting communities are isolated from each other? Clearly I'm overthinking all of this, huh? Anyway, thanks for reading.

Finally Getting to the 10th Day of Trade Posts

I have finally found a reasonable scanning solution and some time to actually get some scanning done so it's time to pick up where I left off. It's the 10th Day of Trade Posts! In this one, I focus on a PWE from John of Johnny's Trading Spot and a small bubble mailer from Chris over at Nachos Grande. I've still got all of the packaging from each trade package so I could realistically provide an accurate time frame for when each of these packages arrived. I'm not going to do that though. Not because it would take too much time, but rather because I'd be too embarrassed to divulge how long past due these 'thank you' posts really are. Let's just work with the understanding that proper thanks are months over due at this point. For that trade partners, I'm sorry. Without further delay, let's check out the PWE from John.

I love that the use of 1/3 of a nine-pocket page has become fairly standard in PWE shipping. I mean, what better way to maximize content and security?

As you could see, his was a Supertraders package. It contained Rays of all kinds. Many were of the Bowman/Bowman Chrome variety. These four stood out above the rest, each for different reasons. Look at that young David Price, brings back memories of seeing him in Durham. The Floro makes me a bit sad since he is no longer with my local Triple A team. Sonnanstine played locally during a time when I didn't catch many games, but I remember reading about him frequently while he was here on the farm. I love this Finest card highlighting his impressive 10 strikeout performance in his first MLB victory. Finally, I'll always have a soft spot for Carl Crawford. While it's true that he carved out a pretty solid career in the majors, I thought he would do so much more. Oh yeah, I picked that one because it's really shiny too! Let's move on to the contents of the bubble mailer from Chris.

I love it when trade partners include notes. This one made me laugh. I mean what else is one of the ever-present Hector Olivera RCs good for? I don't know anyone out there that actually wants to collect them, so why not use them as note paper?

Here were the contents of the team bag that was inside. Those are two stacks of 2015 Stadium Club. There were ten in all. I did, in fact, still need all 10 for my set build. I purposely selected the Big Mac and the Britton for the top cards in the stacks because they were the best photos in my opinion. I especially dig the Britton. It's just a great shot of team intros with a piece of Camden Yards signage in the background.

Thanks to John and Chris. Sorry the post was so long overdue. I'm building stacks to send to each of you soon. Thanks for reading.

My 2016 Recap/Looking to Head to the Top of the Class in 2017

Here we are almost a full two weeks into a new year and I'm just getting around to revisiting my 2016 goals and setting some for the 2017 collecting/blogging year. Better late than never, I suppose. To start things off, I had hoped to complete both the vintage Topps Game and Deckle edge sets. Well, I succeeded in half of that goal as I was able to finish off the Topps Game set relatively early in the year. There are still a few I'd probably like to upgrade at some point, but it's complete nonetheless. I fell a bit short on the Deckle edge set, but in all fairness, I really didn't put forth much effort towards that end. Most recently, I picked up this:

I found this shortly before Christmas at a relatively new LCS that was hosting a 'trade night'. It set me back a whole $2. Sadly, I'm still at six cards to go to complete the set with Clemente, Gibson, Robinson, and McLain being among them.

My next goal was to increase my post total. Well, I fell significantly short of that thanks to the lengthy post-less time periods that filled the last few months of the year. In the end, I ended the year 30 posts short of my 2015 total. The second part of the increased productivity goal was an aim to write some 'creative' posts. I can't really judge that for myself. I was hoping maybe some of you could help me on that. The idea was to not have to rely on trade, pack or box busting, and eBay/Listia win related posts alone. Perhaps, I'll know better than to set a goal that I can't evaluate on my own for this coming year.

My last goal of 2016 was to control my impulse spending...I can say that I definitely failed terribly in this one. Here is some recent proof:

I found this box at said LCS for a reasonable price and decided that I would pick it up. Why, you ask? I'm not exactly sure. Other than being a UFC fan and the fact that it was there for the taking at a 

decent price, there was no true reason. I guess it fulfilled my desire to break a premium product without spending premium dollars.

Base card #1. Not a bad way to start the box considering he was considered the best pound for pound fighter in the world a few years back. I never really liked 'The Spider' while he was beating anyone set in front of him and I was actually quite happy when he lost to Chris Weidman(twice), but I can't argue with his greatness.

Base card #2. Perhaps the current best pound for pound fighter in the world. McGregor is currently a dual weight class champion. I kinda like his showmanship, but I was also thrilled when he was upset by Nate Diaz a few months back.

Here was my promised 'jumbo' relic. I don't have much to say here besides at least the swatch was two colors.

Auto #1. Teixeira was formerly a big deal. He had some pretty lofty expectations to live up to upon entering the UFC and he hasn't really delivered on any of that potential as yet.

Auto #2 puts the finishing touches on a solid, if unremarkable box break. Mighty Mouse here certainly has the ability to manufacture a win even if he doesn't get many spectacular finishes.

It was a fun break. However, what I'm left with are some high quality cards that I'll eventually be looking to sell or trade in hopes of either picking up BJ Penn/Robbie Lawler cards or making as much of the box price back as possible. I'd actually love to build he base set, but it might be quite difficult with just two per box.

So, where does this leave me for the 2017 collecting year? I'll set some modest goals:

1. Complete the vintage Deckle edge set. I've only got six to go and even though there are some of the biggest stars in the set still left, I know this is easily achievable if I actually put forth the effort.

2. Reorganize the blog layout. With this, I intend to create two separate 'most wanted' lists, one that highlights cardboard that is more likely out of reach for whatever reason(cost, availability, etc.) and the other that focuses on the more easily attainable(but still elusive). Yes, I realize this is not a new concept and I am ripping off several other bloggers out there, but I have come to realize over my 2+ years of contributing to this community that I have only been able to cross off three cards from the current version of my 'most wanted' list(one of those I snagged from eBay). My hope is to facilitate greater success in adding the cardboard from these lists to my collection. Additionally, I will be overhauling my 'who I collect' page. Some of the names will be changing and some other sports/entertainers may be making an appearance. I'll be sure to make a brief announcement once their change is complete and I hope you'll all check out some of my new collecting interests.

3. My third and final goal for the year is to send more trade packages and run more giveaways/contests. Ultimately, I'd like to add a tracker/counter to keep up with the number of trade packages that make their way to my PO. Over the past few years, I have added a good bit of cardboard that simply doesn't fit anywhere into my enjoyment of our hobby. Therefore, that cardboard is better off taking a trip to another home where it will be appreciated more than it is here. I don't think I can possibly move all of the cards that I want to through trade packages alone, so I plan to channel those creative impulses I tried to let loose last year into some (hopefully) interesting contests/giveaways. Details on the first of these will follow shortly(after I can finalize the two Anniversary contest winning packages - should make a serious dent in these with the first card show of the year coming up this weekend).

There you have it. I'm sorry for the lengthy post, but I wanted to get the recap/goals post out of the way before finishing off the 12 days of trade posts and getting into some other content. I've got a few box breaks, repacks, eBay/Listia wins to share soon and I hope to have a huge haul from the show. Oh yeah, I'm several months behind on talking about the grand opening of that new LCS I mentioned. I was quite excited about the first visit haul and the subsequent finds(and wins). Yes, wins...more on that some other time. Here's to big things in 2017! Thanks for reading.