Some Year End Numbers

I was looking through my Piazza collection yesterday and thought to myself "By golly, I wonder how many Piazza cards I have?" So I did a count and the total came to 377. (408 unofficially. I have 31 coming to me from COMC, but until they're in hand 377 is the official count.)

377 different Piazza cards. Not bad, considering when I started this page back in March, I had well under 100. I actually had more Ken Griffey Jr cards then I did Piazzas. Not. Any. More.

Then I counted up my Wrights. 99% of the time when I'm buying cards for a player collection, it's for the Piazza. Most of the Wright collection is either pack pulled or obtained from you guys via trade, so 59 isn't such a horrible number I don't think.

Next I counted up how many Team Sets I've finished off. This is the biggest part of my collection and the vintage (1962-1979) set are what I'm building as the true cornerstone. Overall I have 69 completed Mets sets, with a handful more to be finished once the appropriate packages arrive. 12 of those sets are of vintage flavor.

All in all, I'm extremely happy with what I've done collecting wise this year. I started reading some card blogs late '09 early '10 and found a few people to trade with. From there I started this in March and found ALOT of people to trade with. Then others started up their own pages and I found even MORE people to trade with and I'm still finding more each week.

Having this connection to all kinds of different collectors, whether it be teams, players, or even themes, makes opening a box or pack way more enjoyable. 2 years ago, if I opened a hobby box, I'd get what... maybe about 10 Mets if I'm lucky? The rest of the cards I was basically stuck with unless I'm building sets. Now, I can open a box and know that just about every card is now valuable to me in some way. I've even opened boxes hoping to get a huge hit of a Dodger or Rockie or Twin or just about any other team besides the Yankees or Phillies because God I fucking hate them no matter how many people I know I can trade those fuckers to...

...

Sorry, blacked out for a second.

Wow, midnight already? Hmm.

Anyways, so those are my collection numbers heading towards the new year. I didn't really have any "goals" I wanted to reach this year. Looking at what I have, I guess I can say "I want to get more Piazzas until I get 400, then I'll start building more team sets." Or "Once I get 100 team sets, I'll build up my Wright collection." I've never really played that game before, but maybe I'll try it for a little bit down the road. My real collecting goal for this year was to figure out what the fuck I was doing.

When I first starting collecting again, I was building sets, because since I didn't have anyone to trade with I needed something to do with all those non-Mets! I wasn't too happy with collecting that way after a while, so then I wanted to focus on building my Piazza collection. But what was I gonna do, buy an entire box for $50 and hope I pull the one Piazza base card? But again, with finding and becoming apart of the blog scene here, I've been able to really focus on a few different collections and have a good idea on where they're going.

I know most of you guys have collections that dwarf mine in comparison, but what are your numbers? How many cards do you have of your favorite players? How many collecting goals did you reach this year? Why is it necessary for it to be this fucking cold outside?

(...Joe)