Trade Pile 6: Adding On and Paging Contest Winners

I'm adding to the trade pile and also paging a few contest winners. I still need to ship out six packages, but I need addresses from all but one of you. (Gavin, I've got your Mookie Betts card set aside, and I'm waiting on soem shipping materials to arrive to my apartment before I ship.) Can the following folks reach out to me via email (alexmarkle05@gmail.com) with their mailing address? Peter S., Bret Alan, Comatoad, Adam K., and Swing and a Pop Up. 

Remember, if you want to claim the Trade Pile, comment on this post (and email me your address) and let me know what you plan to send my way from my want lists. I'm also always on the lookout for cards I don't own of my player collections. All you need to send is a single card I need and the entire stack is yours. 

2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes #188 Rodriguez/Jeter/Cano 

1996 Topps Chrome Alex Rodriguez #3

Trade Pile 6: Baseball Heroes

Another day, another trade pile. These have been moving incredibly quick, so act fast if you're interested. 

Remember, if you want to claim the Trade Pile, comment on this post (and email me your address) and let me know what you plan to send my way from my want lists. I'm also always on the lookout for cards I don't own of my player collections. All you need to send is a single card I need and the entire stack is yours. 

2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes #188 Rodriguez/Jeter/Cano 

Making Progress

It's goal-setting season at work. Time to sit down, evaluate my performace, and check off the boxes to say I'm on my way to accomplishing my goals for 2020.  

Except I'm not doing that.

When I say it's goal-setting season, I actually mean it's time to revisit the goals I was supposed to have made at the beginning of the year. 

I didn't do that either. 

Now before you assume I'm a bad employee, I should mention that I'm actually exempt from setting goals in my role. Most everyone in the company sets goals, but the sales team doesn't have to jump through these hoops. Our goals are numbers based and assigned to us late in Q1. I don't have a say in what my goals actually are. 

Things are a bit different over here in the collecting world. 

I set goals for myself. I have the freedom to adjust them throughout the year or completely drop them if I wish. If I don't meet my goals, I won't be fired or disciplined. Heck, I can have the same goal year after year. It doesn't matter. 

To put it succinctly, my collecting goals are arbitrary. 

And heading into this year, I really only had one goal: make progress on my Dodgers team sets for Topps Flagship. 

And thanks to many of you, I've accomplished that.

Greg over at The Collective Mind recently sent over a handful of Dodgers from various sets, including the 1983 and 1978 cards you see above. Don't be fooled by the scan on these '78s, Greg didn't cut off bottom part of these cards--that was the work of my auto-scanner. The full cards are resting nicely in their binder, and I didn't feel the need to scan them again. 

With these additions, my 1978 set is now 79% complete (23/29) and the 1983 set is now at 66% (21/32). Definitely making progress.

Perhaps the best cards in this package were actually a pair from 2014 Update: Clayton Kershaw and Chone Figgins. Both of these cards were on my Most Wanted list on the sidebar and now that they're in hand, I can officially say the 2014 set is complete.

It's just the sixth team set completed to date, but I'm making progress. 

Bo over at Baseball Cards Come to Life! also dropped some more Dodgers on me recently via PWE. He's made a dent in several of my checklists over the last several weeks, this time targeting 1981 and 1984. 

My progress on both of these sets trails the average for the decade (72% of the 80s completed), as 1981 sits at 56% (18/32) while 1984 checks in a bit higher at 68% (21/31). I've yet to complete my first set from the '80s, though I imagine that will happen at some point this year. 

I'm not exactly sure where I started the year, but I'm currently at 51% total for all Dodgers team sets. I was around 47% just a couple of months ago, so it is nice being over the halfway marker now. Still, with only six of the sets complete there is more work to be done. 

So don't mind me if I continue to have the same goal year in and year out. There's always progress to be made. 

The Card(s) That Got You into Collecting

Back at the beginning of June I ended a post with a simple question: what card(s) got you into collecting? 

Thirty-three different readers responded to that question and shared their stories about the sets and cards that turned them into collectors. Responses mentioned sets and cards spanning decades from the 1960s to the 2010s. 1987 Topps was by far the most popular set mentioned, as five readers named it a set that either got them into collecting or the set that got them back into collecting. No other set garnered more than a single mention. 

Baseball wasn't the only sport named either, as there were a couple mentions of both hockey and football. Even non-sports cards got some action by the way of Wacky Packages, Star Wars, and Pokémon. 

Many of you pointed to sets that got you into collecting while others cited specific cards. In fact twenty-two different cards were mentioned (two these being team cards). Thirteen of these were hitters and seven were pitchers. We can also break this down into NL and AL clubs (by today's organization): twelve cards for NL teams, ten for AL. 

Of the forty-one different sets and cards named, only seven were not Topps products. 

How were the various decades represented? Five mentions of the 1960s, seventeen mentions of the 1970s, fifteen mentions of the 1980s, six mentions of the 1990s, one mention of the 2000s, and one mention of the 2010s. Assuming most of you likely began collecting at somepoint during our childhoods, it's fair to say a majority of you were likely born 60s and 70s. 

I'm sure there are other insights we can gain from this information, and I encourage you to bring up any other patterns you may have noticed in the comments. If you didn't get in on the fun back in June, I invite you to do so now and share the card(s) that got you into collecting in the comments below.

You wouldn't think I'd post without leaving pictures? Below you can find a visual walkthrough organized by decade of all of your responses. 

1960-61 Topps Hockey

1965 Topps Ernie Banks

1968 Topps Tigers

1968 Topps Willie Mays #50

1969 Topps Baseball

1970s Wacky Packages

1973 Topps Baseball

1974 Topps Eduardo Rodriguez

1974 Topps Pedro Garcia

1974 Topps Tommy John

1974 Topps Carl Yastrzemski

1975 Topps Baseball

1975 Topps Darold Knowles

1975 Topps Ron Cey

1975 Topps Hal McRae

1975 Topps John Hiller

1975 Topps Mickey Stanley

1977 Topps Baseball

1977 Topps Star Wars

1978 Topps Bill Travers

1978 Topps Mike Schmidt

1979 Topps Baseball

1980 Topps Frank White All-Star

1981 Donruss Al Hrabosky

1983 Topps Baseball

1984 Topps Baseball

1986 Topps Stickers Dickie Thon

1986 Topps Baseball

1987 Fleer Mike Easler All Star

1987 Sportsflics

1987 Topps Baseball

1987 Topps Reds Leaders

1988 Topps Football

1990 Donruss Baseball

1993 Donruss Elite Barry Bonds

1994 Topps Football

1994 Topps Hockey

1994 Collector's Choice Nolan Ryan Silver Signature

2001 Upper Deck Ichiro

2015 Topps Baseball

Trade Pile 5: It's a Bunt

Three out of the first four trade piles were claimed on the same day they were posted. I suppose I'm starting these piles with cards that are too good to turn down. Let's see if that's the case today as we begin trade pile number five. 

Remember, if you want to claim the Trade Pile, comment on this post (and email me your address) and let me know what you plan to send my way from my want lists. I'm also always on the lookout for cards I don't own of my player collections. All you need to send is a single card I need and the entire stack is yours. 

2014 Topps Series Two Dee Gordon #587 Target Red Parallel

Aficionado I Am Not

Last week's trip to Target netted me a handful of great boxes, including a hanger box of 2020 Panini Diamond Kings which I'll cover today. I typically shy away from Panini's baseball offerings but I was itching to open some packs and figured I'd give it a go.

A hanger box only promises 20 cards (half of the contents of the box are in this post), including one red frame parallel card per box. That's actually one of the cards I didn't scan, though I did send it to Tom at The Angels, In Order so you can check it out over there. 

I knew next to nothing about this set when I purchased it, and planned to consider it a win if I could just add some new Dodgers to the collection. That Mookie Betts cards above (the second card of his I pulled from this Target purchase) sealed the win for me, but I'm pretty happy with the rest of the contents as well.

The cards themselves are fairly high quality with a heavy card stock (more similar to Heritage than Flagship) and canvas-like feel. Of course, the cards lack licensing, but the artsy water-color type design and strong use of color makes up for that in my opinion. The Verlander Aficionado insert at the top of this post is a beauty (but the Astros are still yuck).

I also found a handful of All-Time Diamond Kings inserts which I believe are based on the 1992 design. These are up for grabs if any one is interested. Consider this my entry into Free Card Friday.

Artist's Proof cards are also part of the checklist, and I happened to unearth this blue parallel of Eddie Mathews. I have no idea what makes this an Artist's Proof, but it seems like they just stamped those words on with a small foil stamp. Meh. 

Perhaps the coolest card to fall out of the box--and the most unexpected considering my luck with the Big League blaster--was this Holo Silver DK Materials dual relic #'d /99 of Padres outfielder Trent Grisham. I've also placed this on eBay, but I'm happy to trade it away if anyone's interested.

Will I purchase any more Diamond Kings? Probably not. But at just ten bucks for a hanger box, you could do a lot worse with your money.