General Forum

Happy New Year!

My general goal for 2024 is to get back into the hobby by getting my collection better organized. I bucked the trend during the COVID-19 pandemic and lost interest just as many people returned to the hobby (and drove the prices of everything up).

So now I'd like to revisit two of my collection focuses -- John Olerud cards and Toronto Blue Jays team sets -- and double check my wantlists and get my cards properly catalogued on TCDB. Maybe I'll get back into buying cards, but for now I'm focused on trading and organizing what I have.

Changed course midway through last year to focus on building Topps Flagship and Traded / Update sets. Made some fantastic progress and am now at 54.63% complete. I'd be thrilled to get that up to 65% complete by the end of 2024, with these focus areas:

• Finish 1971 and 1975 Topps
• Finish 1994-1999 Topps
• Finish 2015-2018 Topps
• Add 2024 Topps / Update once released

In addition to the above, I'd like to add 80 cards from Andre Dawson's playing days to get me up to 500. That might be a stretch as I haven't actively been seeking his cards unless I see a couple when matching up for a set building trade. My last focus area will be organization. My trade boxes are somewhat mixed up so I would like to consolidate by brand at least. For my set collection, continue on with my organization and display within my office.

Not setting a goal on number of trades this year, but knocked out 333 trades in 2023 and would be thrilled to be somewhere in that general vicinity again as that likely means I am doing well towards my set goals above.

Great topic!  Happy New Year to everyone.

Here are my goals:

1.  Finish 24 sets.  I have 97 sets I have started that I'd like to finish.  17 of those I need less than 10 cards to complete... just gotta find the right trade partners, I guess.

2.  Collect 30 Chicago Cubs autographs, 30 Chicago Bears autographs, and 15 Chicago Blackhawks autographs to continue on my long term projects.  Currently in the process of putting together about 75 customs to send out so hopefully that will take care of a good chunk of those goals.

3.  Not to start any sets from 2024 forward.  I have plenty to keep me busy.

4.  Get all my autographs catalogued on a spreadsheet.
 

I'm currently 2,829 Blue Jays cards out of 1st place on the site. I would like to close this gap and get within 2,000.

I also want to catch up with image uploads and get enough points to go to L8 when I hit my 3 year mark.

Richard,

Remember while you are adding cards, so are the others.....

:)

I would like to start trading again but need to, like most others, get my inventory organized. I have stuff everywhere and was wasting the little time I had searching for cards, most times to no avail. Hope to be back at it in the next few months.

I want to play ping pong!

To accomplish this the cards need to come off the table.  Yes, I could just put all the cards in boxes, but that would disrupt my sorting system that I set out on establishing last year.  I have 50 or so sets that are near completion and so if I can get those complete, put them in set boxes, team set bags or binders, I could get the rest into a 5k box. 

Of coarse I will need to make some trades to complete the sets, but until mid to late January, I am helping out family.  Once I opening back up trading, I hope to make progress and then Success!

In 2024 I am setting four goals for my collection, most very similar to past years...

1) Hard - Thin out the non PC cards I have accumulated over the years This will be top priority this year.

2) Medium to hard- Do more scanning and organizing of my PC and upload scans here. Currently have 54,491 of my Red Sox inventoried here. Have 3,309 cards currently inventoried that are missing scans.
Setting the goal at getting to 57,000 inventoried and get the cards missing scans down to only ones I have available for trade.

3) Medium - Make 100 trades this year.

4) Easy - Pick up 1,000 Different Red Sox cards this year. Starting the year at 62,302

Scott

Hello to you all. I am new to this site but not new to collecting. However, I took a break for 20 years due to marriage and kids and now am getting back into collecting. My major goal is to go through my card collection and mark off what I have on the website.  I would also like to start trading on here once I figure it out.  I collect a bit of everything but primarily baseball and basketball cards.  I prefer older sets as I have not been buying cards for a long time and all the new cards confuse me with parallels, numbered cards, etc. but I would like to start getting some more modern stuff of the teams/players that I like.  I look forward to using this site and corresponding with people when the need arises.  

Welcome to the site. Take your time learning the place, we all learn more about it and it keeps growing and improving every month. As for trading, I'm sure once you are ready to try there are 1000 of us who would love to walk you through it so feel free to reach out...if you don't like the answer you get, that will be an outlier, I promise!