14 Goals for 2014

I can proudly say I've never knowingly heard a One Direction song. However, they are popular here in Japan so I've heard of them - frequently! Gotta love that hair, though.

So, another year begins. My personal resolutions for 2014 have been set, but what about my card collecting goals?

1. Reach 65% on my Japanese type collection. I am at 56% - a gain of about 20% in 2013. The next 10% won't be as easy - at this point the cheap and easily accessible cards have all been collected. As of right now, I need 246 cards to get to 65%, not including 2014 issues. A lot of those can be BBM inserts from the past 10 years or so, but I'll have to get my hands on menko and other vintage cards too.

1b. Find the last fourteen Calbee cards for my type collection. I look everywhere, but nine of the fourteen are from the 1970s and the remaining five are tough inserts or premiums. This isn't its own goal, and I don't see it being successful, but wouldn't it be grand if I could do it?

2. Complete the Calbee Through The Years post series. I got started on this, and got busy. I enjoy researching and writing the posts, and the back-and-forth conversations I get as my (many) errors are corrected are stimulating. I'm sure having this information in English is beneficial for collectors, too.

2b. If I meet my second goal I'd like to do the same idea for BBM. While NPB Card Guy is doing a fantastic job on his blog (Japanese Baseball Cards), I'd like to give my take on the sets BBM has released.

2c. Finally, I created a framework for a table of contents/index for my set posts, but I'd like to refine it and post it to the blog. This is a sort of carry-over from last year's goals.

3. I want to do better with my new release posts. I had gotten into a rhythm by the middle of the year, which I haven't been good with lately (though there haven't been much to write about anyway). I'd like to keep up with those posts.

3b. I used to write a lot about MLB issues, but I haven't really done anything with them in the past year. I'd like to bring back the previews and reviews of new MLB sets. This will probably help me be interested in MLB issues more, too!

4. Do something with Cardboard Zoo. My second blog has become a D-list celebrity at best. It's tough enough right now writing for two blogs, let alone three. But then, I wasn't happy with the posts at the Zoo. After my "experiments" on new release and Calbee posts in 2013, I want to do something similar with MLB issues. Perhaps I can get back to posting once a week over there, at some point...

5. Finish my NPB Live Game Collection. An idea I toyed with back when I lived in America was putting together "sets" of players in each game I've seen live. I found some amazing deals on team sets late this summer and started building this collection for the 12 NPB games I've attended. Other than 66 BayStars and Fighters players (I haven't found cheap sets for either team yet), I'm 21 cards away from being complete (278 cards total). That puts me at almost 70% complete with very little effort. Once I find the two team sets I'll be able to knock out the rest of the cards before the end of the year.

5b. I'm not really ready to start the MLB version of this collection, but I want to start creating a checklist. I don't have a full count of games, the number is over 80 from my first game in 1989 through the 2011 season (when I last saw a game in the US). With an average of about 30 players per game that's 2400 cards to collect!

6. Collect 2014 sets. As always, I'll get the base sets for flagship Topps, Allen & Ginter, Goodwin Champions, Panini Golden Age and Cooperstown, and master sets of Gypsy Queen and Triple Play - assuming they're all issued.

6b. I'll build some insert sets from 2014 too. From Allen & Ginter, it looks like I'll be chasing Pastime's Pastime, Fields of Yore, World's Capitals, and Natural Wonder, plus mini insert sets Larger Than Life, Into the Unknown, Where Nature Ends, and perhaps Little Lions. I'll dabble in some Panini retro and take a look at Archives.

7. Post more details about Japanese card shops. There are a few dozen card shops scattered around Japan and I've been to many of them. Some of them have posts here, and some of those posts provide good information, but I want to be more consistent with the information and create an index page for the posts.

8. Finally, I want to post about the various awards and their winners in NPB. We'll see how that goes!

Those are my fourteen goals for 2014. Just as ambitious as 2013, I think; perhaps even more so. I would like to post a few times a week this year - I averaged two posts per week last year and about 2.5 the year before, but sometimes I posted every day and for a month the blog was dark. I hope for more consistency this year.