How quickly things can get out of hand.

About 10 years ago, Big Fat Liar came out. It's a fun family movie in which Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes do mean things to Paul Giamatti to try to get him to admit to stealing Muniz's English paper - Giamatti is turning it into a summer blockbuster movie. The plot of the paper (and thus, movie) is about a kid who lies so much that things get way out of hand.

And that is where my story begins! In April, I decided to add just a little bit more to my collection. Sure, I already had Diamond Kings, Baseball Heroes, Team USA, Women in sports, non-sport sets, base sets, 125+ incomplete insert sets, award winners, statistical leaders, Hall of Fame members, and club members (like 3000 hits, 500 home runs, etc). There was a personal collection of baseball autographs and entertainment autographs and memorabilia. And of course, the 30,000+ card type collection.

But for some reason, maybe because I felt left out, I wanted to start a small player collection. I was reasonable with the plan, though, stickin with Topps flagship cards for each player.

Flash forward to last month, where I picked up about 200 cards to add to my player collections. Did I luck into a major stack of flagship Topps cards I needed? Certainly not! Out of those 200 cards, I believe only one - a 2003 Topps Frank Thomas - was on the list. All the rest were inserts and base set cards from a whole selection of releases I thought were fun and shiny.

Looking at that stack of cards, I realize that at even 10 cents a card, I spent at least $20 last month outside of the bounds of that collection. So I have to refocus, and remind myself what that collection is supposed to contain.

So more as a reminder to myself, I'm writing this to say: my player collections have a focus, and I need to stick with it. That $20+ I spent could have been used to buy Marquee, Chrome, Bowman Platinum, or any number of other cards for the type collection. Or saved for this month, or the big November show that I'm really looking forward to.

The updated, correct Player Collection page is located at this address. Each player is listed across the top.

Lesson learned before it got really bad.

(And speaking of player collection, I'm sticking this image here for Greg Z.)

I don't know what's going on with the color or lines, other than my scanner isn't great with foil.