Obligatory 2014 Collecting Goals Slash State of the Blog and Whatever Filler Post

Of course I'm doing my New Year's Goals post three weeks into January. At least I haven't given up on my resolutions like a lot of people have already. I coulda sworn I had posted one of these things last year but looking over my first month's worth of posts it looks like my 2013 goal was "Fuck Topps, Get Non-Sports Cards". Judging by that criteria I was wildly successful last year. This year I'd like to gain some focus. I shall attempt this by writing everything down so I can immediately forget it and go do whatever the hell I want. Why should I remember it when it's written down? So, Goals. First obviously is focus on turning my dragon's hoard of cardboard into an actual collection of things. Here's how I intend to go about doing it:

GINTER

Allen & Ginter is literally the only modern baseball card set I give a flying feather about anymore. When Topps inevitably screws it up that'll probably be it for me. They haven't done it yet though so I'm going to go all in in 2014. I will complete all Ginter base sets from 2006-2013 before the 2014 set comes out. I'm doing a pretty good job on this so far this year. On January 1st I needed 172 cards for that Ginter run, now I need 47. I would prefer to trade for them or find them in the wild, but I've already hit up COMC for some singles and I'm not afraid to start looking online. All I gotta go if find 6 cards a month for 6 months and I'm golden, right?

VINTAGE

I have boxes and boxes and boxes of shiny cards from the junkwax era forward that I don't give a crap about. The old musty cardboard ones that are older than me I like. Time to focus more on those.When I look at that brand new pack of 2014 Topps in a couple of weeks I need to remember that 1956 Topps common I can pick up for the same price at a card show.

BARVES

My Braves collection is still a disaster after all these years. I've got a lot sorted by player, but even more are just sitting in monster boxes all mixed up. By the end of the year I want to have these damn things sorted and figure out something to do with them. I got autographs and relics hanging out in boxes full of garbage commons. I've decided on three things to do to help this situation.

The Topps team sets are all sorted, time to do the same for Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck and Score. All the rest can go pound sand right now, I don't have the time for Stadium Clubz and Pinnacles and SPs and all that mess. At the moment I'm thinking of an '81-'90 run for Donruss and Fleer, '89-'93 for Upper Deck and '88-'92 for Score. If I want to move forward with the rest of the sets after that, I can. I have a wild scheme in my mind of using up some of the oddball cards by putting together sets with one card per player per year of everyone on the Braves' roster ever. That's a longer term thing that I can think about after I get my other shizz in order though.

Two other things I need to do is get all the autograph and relic cards sorted and cataloged and do the same for current Braves players. Now that Kris Medlen is the Dean of the Braves this is an excellent opportunity to get every card I have of a current player cataloged since I don't have more than a hundred of any single player.

BUYING HABITS

No more fucking impulse buys of random packs because they're new or they look cool or they're 40% off or whatever. I have an assload of stupid cards I don't want or need because I wanted to open up some wax. I don't have the time or money for that anymore. There's honestly only three sets coming out in 2014 that I can say with certainty that I actually want: Panini World Cup Stickers, Ginter and the MLP CCG. Depending on how gimmicked up the set is this year, Ginter complete sets might be even cheaper than they were last year so I may just buy the thing outright and save money. Pony and Futbol packs I'll still pick up here and there. Last time I tried cold turkey it bombed when something shiny came along so I'll go on the sticker patch this time. Bottom line is collecting money is better spent on actual stuff I'm going to collect rather than on cardboard lottery tickets. Slipping is going to happen, so I'll set a goal of under 24 packs for the year. A couple packs a month for shits and giggles is reasonable. I may or may not decide to go the hobby wax box route depending on the set or the cheapness. And if I find a bunch of cheap junkwax for a quarter a pop at a show or something, then hell yeah, cheap wax. My main concern is to stop wasting money on full price retail crap.

NON-SPORTS

Thanks to a windfall, I managed to put together an instant Non-Sports collection last year. Quite a few complete sets and even more sets where I'm only missing a handful of cards. I got them all sorted and boxed and on a shelf. And I have no idea what I actually have because they aren't cataloged. I'd like to get at least a list of the complete sets I have together. I'd also like to get a list of partial sets I have. I'd also like to get wantlists up for these sets. If I spent a half hour a week on it instead of fucking around on Twitter (or while I fuck around on Twitter) I could probably knock it out rather quickly.

ORGANIZATION

This is the elbow grease section of this post. I have GOT to get a set of shelves replaced. I have two sets of really good shelves in my basement that have not been put together meanwhile a cheap metal shelf buckled on me last month. Gotta unlazy myself and get that replaced. There's also a bunch of boxes full of random junk mixed up with vintage cards, autos, inserts, random cards I scanned for the blog and threw in a box, 1/1s, T206s, all kinds of stuff. I'd like to get the wheat separated from the chaff this year. I'd also like to get the chaff separated by sport and tucked out of the way so I can have my office back. If there's any goal I'll fail this year, it'll be this one but one can dream.

CARD DISPERSAL

I have too many cards. I need to get rid of some. The best way to get rid of cards is to give them to people who actually want them. I have at least a dozen deals in the works, some probably from 2011 or earlier probably. Gotta send 'em out. Gonna send 'em out. The goal for this is three packages a month at bare minimum and see how many I get out this year. I have a list started of all my pending trades, if you think you should be on the list or just want some damn cards, tell me so I can add you to the list. My organizations skills are lacking so I need help. I'd also like to just flat out get RID of some stuff this year. Sell it at a garage sale/flea market/card show, sell 'em online, give 'em away, something. Just get 'em out of my house. I'll take suggestions on how to do that too.

So, to sum up, My 2014 goals:

• Complete 2006-2013 Ginter by the time 2014 comes out, and finish that before the end of the year.
• Pick up more vintage cards than new crap in 2014. 
• Complete at least 12 Braves Topps team sets. 
• Catalog all Braves MOJO cards.
• Put together Braves team sets for Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck and Score. 
• Put together have lists for current Braves players.
• Stop buying useless random baseball wax - under 24 packs.
• Catalog Non-Sports sets and get wantlists up.
• Get junk sorted and segregated away from the good stuff.
• Send out at least 36 packages.
• Get rid of some stuff I don't want or need by any means necessary.

My goals list goes to 11.

Some of this stuff I've already made a little headway on this month. Some, not so much. Who knows if I'll get to all of this or any of this, but at least I have something to shoot for now. If you read this far, I hope I might have given you some ideas on how to straighten up your ungodly mess of a collection as well.

As for the goals for the blog, well... screw the blog. I'm not shutting it down, I'm not running away to Tumblr or whatever the hell is popular now, but, yeah, fuck the blog. I'll still post shit here and there, but pretty much every blog-saving series of posts I've gotten excited about the past couple of years was dropped halfway through and never got finished. Actually, that's the entire history of the blog in one sentence. Not going to worry about it all that much anymore. Knowing me I'll probably post more often now that the pressure's off.

RIP MAH SHITTY BLOG

LONG LIVE MAH SHITTY BLOG

See ya in a couple days when I post my first pack of 2014.