Saturday, January 9, 2016

Tis The Season: Cleanup #1 and 2015 recap

Technically, Tis The Season 3 has ended. I am out of cards to giveaway, but I do have a couple groups of cards left to random, so we'll get to that over the next two posts. And since I want to discuss how 2015 went for me, in regard to me goals, as well as set some direction for my collection in 2016, I may was well combine the last bit of housekeeping with those two ideas.

First off - let's random off the stack that had the 2013 & 2014 Allen and Ginter from the discount blasters.


Oh! We were soooooooo close to getting through TTS without a repeat winner, but Random has other plans today. Brandon, you need to fire me an email. You came out on top for both these cards and the random on the pile of Chrome/Archives/Hometown Heroes. Shoot me an email and let me know which pile you want and I'll figure out who will receive the one you are giving up.

I also realized, in some of the winning posts, I failed to talk about what some of the randoms were for. Man - I suck at this blogging thing.

And I didn't have to develop any cyclone technology within you.
Anyhow - Brandon, let me know. And while your at it, include your mailing address, would ya?

Alright - so let's talk 2015 here at 2x3Heroes. In general blog terms, I posted just under 150. For me, that's fine. If I want to get all P-Town Tom on it, I posted 41% of the time. But I don't feel the need to post daily. Yeah , that is a little less than previous years, but 2015 was a bit more active for me, so there were times I wanted to post, but didn't want to put up my ramblings at 1am.

And focusing on said ramblings, the top three viewed posts of the year were:

Free hockey cards that I gave away before the start of the Stanley Cup finals with 269 views.

The 2nd best Blog of the Year voting I ran with 392 views.

And far and above the highest viewed post was me beating everyone to the release of 2015 flagship by finding in at my local big box two days before release with 980 views.

And just cuz I like to remember those at the other end, the post with the least number of views was this Throwback Thursday post. Those always have the lowest view, but you really don't need to click on the link in any blogroll to read so, and I'm fine with that. My personal favorite was this one - I may not collect Archives, but any chance to look up a ton of music on YouTube is fine with me.

So, I had some goals for 2015. And now I get to grade myself.

Organization - I have all my player projects in my Zistle account, along with my bunting, double play and throwback binders. I have my want lists for Sox teams set needs from the 50's through the 70's. I guess I should link to them on my blog, huh? Here: 50's, 60's, 70's - help is appreciated. The only thing I really need to do is catalog my 5000 count White Sox box. It's all sorted by year. I just need to get it into Zistle. This is a low priority goal, so I'm not going after it with a lot of gusto or drive. 

Giving myself a A- on this. I didn't get a single card from the Sox box into Zistle. But I did say that was a low priority, so in a sense, I may have met it. Still, I should have added something. All my Topps and early Bowman base release team set documents are created and up to date. I think I have avoided figuring out the 80's and newer Bowman sets because I still don't understand the numbering. BWCCP? BCP? WTF?

Sets - I have enough on my Wants and A&G Wants to keep me busy. Most of them are really simple, and I just need to get over to JustCommons, Sportlots, COMC or wherever to finish them. That's the plan for a few of them. In regard to 2015, I will for sure build A&G. High chance I will build Stadium Club (depends if they keep it simple like this year or screw it up like Topps tends to do with parallels and inserts). Heritage and GQ are maybes this year. But flagship is out. I'll pick up a team set for ChiSox, but the only thing I may do is buy a boxed factory set. And that's a weak "may". But I plan to focus hard on my '64 set. I'm not going to finish it in 2015, but would love to get past the halfway point as commons are pretty inexpensive and the set has few high $$$ cards.

Yeah, this score is a C. But I blame Topps for really knocking it out of the park with 2015 flagship. I didn't do a lot with my '64 set, though thanks to the help of the traders out there, I am over 65% complete. Still, it was the work of them and not me. I should have picked out a couple higher end cards for the '64 set, and I didn't. I did finish some sets on my Wants page, but I ended up adding some I didn't plan on.

Player Projects - Nellie Fox has stalled, for the main reason is that it's an expensive player to collect. I'll keep hunting for the right Fox cards, though, to keep that one moving. Sherm Lollar should be done in 2015. I hope to get Aparicio to a halfway point. I just started Ted Wilks. I would like to get to 50% on him as well. He's very small and not too pricey. 

Fox, as expected, is going slow. His cards are hard to find and I price I want. Luis, on the other hand, has many out there. I just never drove to pick any up. And was for Wilks, I knocked the entire set off in no time. Going to grade this a B-.

Cost - Speaking of pricey, that is my undoing year after year. I spend money on what I shouldn't and not what I should. I need to get out of the pack rip mindset. It's SOOOOOOO tough. Ripping wax is fun. But in my desire to do that, I buy useless stuff, get useless cards and still have holes I want to fill. So I am going to work hard to tame that pack opening monkey on my back and not hit the card aisle in Walmart or Target every time I visit. Why drop $20 on a blaster, get 3 or 4 cards I want and have junk for the rest of the year? Pick $20 worth of cards at JustCommons or COMC and know that every card I open is a want.

F. Moving on.

Trades - I have no goal on trades. I want to keep on the focus of sending out cards whenever, and get Club PWE back up to a regular mailbox trip. I severely lacked in sending out 6 card envelopes and I apologize.

Another B-. Maybe even C+. I need to stop ripping packs I don't need and use that money on stamps. I have improved on how many I can ship for one stamp, but I don't send out enough. My fault. But I moved from trades to just sending cards, and that's fun. So if you want to "trade" with me, I am all for it. Just know you'll move to someone I'll send cards to when I feel like it, unless I hear otherwise.

Blog - No goal here either. Number of followers is fine. Number of post (about every other day) is fine. I like numbers, but only for the fun of pulling them apart. Having a lot of readers or followers is not so important. Followers not make one great. I do need to get my attention to my 1964 blog. I don't post there on a regular enough schedule. I have enough cards that I could do two post a week and almost make it to the end of the year (104 posts). So that is a higher priority goal - post at least twice a week about my 1964 set. If I get my set to the halfway point like my goal is, I could stop collecting it in 2016 and still have enough to post. I linked it at the top - pay me a visit!

I just mentioned above I posted 41% of the time. That is short of every other day. Again, numbers matter not. But boy, have I failed on my 1964 blog. Just like life took me away from here, it really took my away from the 1964 blog. Let's call this an I. Remember I - Incomplete? You have to be old to remember that from grade school. 

Collection - I will continue to just have fun with my cards. That is the primary goal like it was last year. Though I plan to get more into TTM autographs. Why not use all the generous cards sent by you people to get autographs of current and former White Sox players? In that vain, I am starting a collection called "2005". It just so happens next year is 10 years since the Sox World Series championship. I want to have an autograph from each player on that team. In my collection, I currently have 7. I am basing the 2005 collection on the list this person posted on another forum. Though, I may ignore a couple names there. I wish the World Series trophy was like the Holy Grail and they engraved the player's names on the thing.

Project 2005 is going as well as I can hope. Other TTMs, though..... That goes back to the stamps for Club PWE. If I don't have them there, I don't have them for TTMs. But I think 2016 will be better for all mailing plans. Let's call this a solid C.

Well, that's a quick blast at 2015. The key is I had fun, so overall, even though the average would say otherwise, I am calling the year an A. Because when all is said and done, as long as you have fun, then what's to worry about?

Some buyback are worth the Listia credits. Also - we'll talk more about this card.

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like a great 2015. I have many holes to fill as well but as you stated, it's fun ripping packs. Even though I get excited to find a PC card in my mail box, it's still a tad more fun to rip despite the depressing results.

    Have a good one!

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  2. Ahhhh Yazoo. I have that vinyl in my collection.

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  3. Ahhhh Yazoo. I have that vinyl in my collection.

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