whats in store for '11?

Two-thousand eleven huh? Or is it twenty-eleven? Up to the user I suppose. Many of you are talking about what collecting goals you'll have in the next 365 days. I figured I would throw my hat into the ring as well. I suppose we can't set some goals without going over the previous year, no? Well, 2010 saw my re-emergence into baseball card collecting, as something that spawned out of a whim, buying a random pack 2010 Topps series 1 at a local Target. Just to see what they looked like. Sure I could have Googled it, but what fun is that? As I thumbed through the pack, I realized I knew very few modern players. Being that I hadn't looked at baseball cards in some 15+ years, I was quite out of the loop. The more I bought though, the more I got to know who was who. Who retired, who was the new crop of up and coming rookies and some familiar faces too (Griffey, Smoltz, etc.). Then it turned into a full blown pursuit of trying to learn what happened in the past decade and a half since I left, building a collection from the ground up and trying to figure out what to collect. Well with Upper Deck (unfortunately) gone from the marketplace, all that was left was Topps. This was all news to me. Last I knew Upper Deck made white border sets with great pictures. Score/Pinnacle was gone. Donruss no longer made MLB cards, and Fleer was bought by Upper Deck, then dissolved. Wow. Certainly a lot has happened in the seemingly short amount of time I've been gone. So that left me with good old Topps. It was alright though, as I've always had a fond recollection of Topps cards in my youth. Even if it was all junk wax but hey, its the era I grew up in. At first I hadn't learned the pitfalls of Topps, as it was all sunshine, lolly-pops and baseball players on these fancy cards. I remember buying a rack pack of series 1 at a local KMart and pulling my first relic ever:

Now HERE was a guy I knew, everyone knows Cal. I was super excited, like a kid again pulling that Barry Bonds rookie out of an '87 Topps pack.

From this point, I had wanted to find out some information on older Topps sets. I forget what I Googled but one of the first sites to come up was bdj610's Topps Baseball Card Blog. I checked it out and it was a wealth of Topps knowledge that I was pretty much looking for. Then I noticed the long list of blogs dedicated to baseball cards and collecting. I read them for around a month and decided to try my own thing and here we are. You've been reading the blog and you've been reading this far so you know the rest of my story.

Now, I set a few goals in 2010 that I had wanted to accomplish and I hit most all of them. I wanted a Topps set from 1982 to now, that's done. I wanted a master set for 2010 series 1, 2 and Update, those are finished. I wanted each set released in the 2010 format, including Opening Day, Chrome, WWE and football. I stopped on the football but finished the other three. I finished 2009 T206 with the short prints. I have a massive box filled with Blue Jays, thanks to many of you for filling most of that. I gave up on the gold series 1 and 2 set as it proved to be too daunting a task.

So what do I do in 2011? Here is one of the first things I hope to do:

Find 5 more 206 cards to complete this page.

Next:

Complete 2011 Topps series 1 and 2 and what ever they decide to call series 3 this year. I don't think I will be chasing a master set, the base set will probably do just fine. 2010 was a milestone year for me so its nice to have a 'full' set.

I may also try:

Put together the Heritage set from this year. I didn't get into 2010 Heritage as much as I could have but I may change that with 2011. Yes, short prints suck hard but I feel it may be fun, seeing as how I may try to curb what I buy this coming year.

In the process of that, hopefully I'll see this:

Probably not but I can hope.

So that about wraps it up. I apologize for the long-winded post but I didn't explain how this all happened until now. I just want to thank Jaybee for essentially getting me into the blog thing here. A big thanks to you, the readers and traders who I've talked with and dealt cards to back and forth. Here is to another year of collecting, with hopefully more ups than downs from our buddies at Topps!