Saturday, February 29, 2020

Am I done collecting?

I’ve been quiet over the last month or so on my blog. Be read plenty of these types of blog posts over the years and it usually results in a post about how it’s time too move on from collecting. That is not the case for me. I am still collecting, but I haven’t spent any money on cards in just over two months. That’s the longest that I’ve gone without spending anything on cards in a long time. If I had to guess I would say that it’s been 18 years since I’ve taken that long of a break from spending any money on cards.

Now, keep in mind that I said I didn’t spend any money on cards. I did have a very small amount of eBay Bucks that I used to get one card. I picked up a 2014 Allen & Ginter SP of Paul Goldschmidt. I bought it thinking I needed it. Even though I have had the card for roughly a month I haven’t actually opened the envelope until today. Here it is.


When I was browsing eBay trying to determine what I would spend my approximately $3 of eBay Bucks on, this card didn’t look familiar and I knew it was an SP so I pulled the trigger. After opening the envelope today and attempting to file it away, I realized I already had it. Darn. Oh well.

Since  I have the cards out I thought I would take a picture of Goldschmidt’s Allen & Ginter cards as a Diamondback. His rookie card from 2011, but Goldschmidt didn’t have an Allen & Ginter card that’s year. He has cards as a Diamondback from 2012-2018.


There are probably a hundred or so parallels and inserts of Goldschmidt in addition to these seven base cards. I only have 17 of those parallels and inserts, so I’ve got plenty of work to do, but I’m glad that I do have all of the base cards.

The reason that I haven’t spent any money on cards for just over two months is because starting January 1st my wife and I started the Dave Ramsey financial plan. If you aren’t familiar with Dave Ramsey and his wealth building plan I will give you a brief overview of his baby steps.

1. Save $1000 as a basic Emergency Fund
2. Pay off all debt other than your home
3. Increase your Emergency Fund to 3-6 months worth of expenses
4. Save 15% of you household income for retirement
5. Save for kids college
6. Pay off your home
7. Live and give like no one else

Baseball cards don’t come into play until step #7 and I’m on step #2 currently. So while I’m still collecting, I will not be purchasing any cards for a while. In fact, I’ve sold some cards and will continue to do that to help me pay off debt and build wealth.

We don’t have a ton of debt other than our home. We actually only owe on a car that has a 0% interest rate. Even so, we had 3 years left of payments. My initial plan was to pay it off in 1 year instead of 3. Once we actually started, we changed our goal to 6 months. Now that we are 2 months in, I am thinking be might be able to pay it off next month. After that is paid off, then we take our $1000 Emergency Fund from $1000 up to around $10,000, which would be roughly 3 months worth of expenses. At that point we start putting 15% away toward retirement and start funding 529 plans for our 3 boys. Anything else extra will go towards paying off our house early. My hope is that all of this is done in about 8 years. This will give me some time  to organize my collection.

Okay, so that is my explanation as to why I’ve been quiet on my blog. The plan is to not purchase any new cards for some time, but that doesn’t mean my blog will go dormant.

How about you? What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without spending any money on cards?

5 comments:

  1. Well that doesn't sound like much fun. But I get it.

    Longest I spent without buying cards is 3 years, between the middle of 1995 and the summer of 1998.

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  2. Recently, I believe I went from July of 2013 (my son was born) to August of 2014 (things settled down) and July of 2018 (moved into a new house) to Feb 2019 (things settled down).

    I always seems to come crawling back. A good break doesn't hurt once in a while.

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  3. I took a few years off between 2002 and 2008. During that time I bought a pack of cards here and there... so it's hard to give an exact amount of time where I didn't buy any cards. I've been cutting back on spending as well. Although for me it's been more about finding less bargains online and at the local flea markets.

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  4. Good plan! The wife and I did Financial Peace a couple years ago. We had trouble sticking to step 4, but we took care of 99% of our debts. Zero credit cards, zero car payments, zero random things like furniture and TVs on credit, etc. We even had the house paid off until we had to take a loan to repair it after Hurricane Harvey. Now we're working on paying that back down, so I'm right there with ya in the "not spending money on cards" right now. It's not that I won't pick up a pack here and there, but we're saving again, and it's just an extra expense I can't make a budget reason for.

    Good for you for sticking with it! It's worth it in the long run.

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