2021 Recap and 2022 Hobby Goals YouTube Video

One of my 2022 hobby goals is to be more active on YouTube. 

You can never have Too Many Goldschmidts

I don’t add very many Goldschmidt cards to my collection these days, but I still collect him and am happy to find a good Goldy that I don’t already have. So when Dennis, of the blog Too Many Verlanders reached out and asked if I needed this Goldschmidt, I was happy to see that I didn’t have it. 

This one is numbered out of 99. I like the gold with the red and blue. I think it goes well. Plus, I’ve always liked gold colored Goldschmidt cards.

Dennis added a couple other Goldschmidt cards. Autographs of two players that I thought and hoped were going to have long, fantastic careers with the D-Backs. Unfortunately neither did. 

Carlos Quentin had a decent career, but his best years were with the Rockies.

Matt Davidson won a Triple A Home Run Derby and I thought he was going to be a power hitter for years (didn’t hurt that I won an autographed bat from him on Twitter), but he only played a few games with the D-Backs before getting traded to the White Sox. He showed momentary bursts of greatness, but injuries have plagued him. Looks like he is currently back in the D-Backs minor league system.

This card has some serious shine! The camera doesn’t do it justice. Thank you Dennis for some great cards!

Who are some players that you thought were going to have a fantastic career on your favorite team, but it just didn’t happen. Max Scherzer is another one that comes to my mind for the Diamondbacks. 

1968 Topps Hank Aaron

A couple of days ago I mentioned I got a new playing era Hank Aaron card in the mail. I picked up this 1968 Topps card via eBay just before the New Year, but it arrived on January 3rd, so I am counting it as an incoming card for 2022.

It’s not in great shape, but it’s not too bad. No major issues. After tax and shipping I was able to add this to my Topps Hank Aaron collection for just under $50. Aaron’s cards have gone up over the last year or so since his passing, so I’m happy with the price.

Going into his 15th season Aaron had already hit 481 home runs, which means he still had 274 homers in him. Crazy numbers!

Very happy to add a base card to my Topps Hank Aaron project. Seems like it’s been a while. I did pick up a 1955 Bowman last year, but other than that I think the only Aaron cards I added were League Leader or other subset cards.

I need to do another post highlighting all of the various playing days cards I currently have and which ones I need. I didn’t include this project as part of my 2022 goals, but I definitely want to make progress on this during 2022.

The 1968 Topps set is growing on me. It’s a very plain design, but I think it works. Plus it’s got some pretty amazing rookie card power. 

What are your thoughts on the 1968 set? Love it, hate it or just meh?

2022 In and Out Tracker

I’m going to use this post to track how many cards come into my collection in 2022 and how many go out. This relates to my goal to reduce the overall size of my collection in 2022, while still adding to my collection.

In               Out

2                 62

I’m getting a Hank Aaron card, so one of you gets a Hank Aaron card!

I am writing this post on my phone. Let’s see how it goes.

I just got a notification that an eBay purchase was delivered today. It’s a playing era Hank Aaron card. It’s a base card, meaning not a League Leader card or checklist or anything like that. It will be new to me.

Those are the hints. Guess the card correctly and I’ll send you a Hank Aaron card (probably not a playing era card). One guess per person and valid only in the United States. Good luck!

Organizing and Reducing my Randy Johnson Collection

Thank you to Fuji for reaching out regarding not being able to comment on my post. I've been getting a ton of SPAM comments and so I made some changes to my permissions, but I think I messed it up. I think I fixed it.

One of my blogging goals for 2022 is to organize my collection. I started to put away some recent purchases including a few Randy Johnson cards, but realized that if I wanted to organize my collection, I needed to document certain cards, so I am less likely to purchase duplicates.

My Randy Johnson cards are in a binder by year, but I have never had a list. I thought it would take me weeks to finish the list, but I finished it in just two days. Not too bad.

I documented 427 different Randy Johnson cards. I usually only add his cards via dime boxes, so I will grab them if they don't look familiar, but having a list will help me going forward.

As I went through the binder and added the cards I bought recently, I ended up with these 6 dups. Who wants them? All 6 to one person. First come, first serve.

This will help me with my another of my hobby goals to reduce the amount of cards in my collection.

2022 Hobby Goals

Happy New Year everyone! 2021 was challenging for many reasons, but there was a lot of positives as well. I expect the same from 2022. 

As far as the hobby goes, I was able to add some great cards to my collection in 2021. Looking back, my focus was on vintage.

Here's a brief recap of some of the highlights. Not every month is represented, but each month I was able to add a variety of cards to my collection. I visited card shows, attended card shows, bought some cards off Offer Up and was given thousands of cards via Facebook.

February - 1952 Minnie Minoso rookie card and a 1960 Topps Carl Yastrzemski rookie card

March - Mike Schmidt rookie card

June - Joe DiMaggio auto

July - 1955 Bowman Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson auto, 1951 Bowman Whitey Ford rookie card, and finished the 1971 Topps set

August - Attended the Tyler Gilbert no-hitter with my youngest son

September - Finished my Topps Page A Year binder by adding 1951 Topps Red and Blue backs

October - Finished the Nolan Ryan Topps run (added 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972 among others this year)

November - Met up with fellow card blogger Angus at a card shop and got a 1958 Topps Roger Maris rookie card

December - 1954 Topps Al Kaline rookie card 

I've got another big "rookie card" coming in that I purchased the last week of December. I'll save that one for another post.

2021 was a great year for my collection!  I expect 2022 to be just as good or even better!

To help my focus in 2022 I wanted to document some hobby goals.

1) Finish 100 sets. This can be a complete sets, insert sets, sub sets, team sets, oddball sets, etc.

2) Add 5 Hall of Fame rookie cards to my collection. I would like to add 1 big one and then at least 4 others. For me a big one would be like Ernie Banks or Rod Carew. I need to put together a list of who I already have and who I still need. That is part of my next goal.

3) Organize my collection. That was my main hobby goal in 2021. I bought a ton of binders and sheets and made a lot of progress. I need more sheets though so I can keep going. 

4) Increase hobby presence on YouTube. I haven't made any videos in almost 2 years, so even making one video this year would accomplish this goal, but I think 1 video per month is my actual goal.

5) Reduce the number of cards in my collection. I will still be adding cards to my collection, so I just need to get rid of more cards than I add to my collection throughout the year. I will do this through trades, sales, giveaways, etc. This should be interesting to track,

I'm going to just stick with these 5 for now. Wish me luck! Hope everyone has a great 2022! Would love to hear what your hobby related goals are for 2022.