Blog Bat Aroundish: My Various Projects

I want this card.

Today's post comes from another question/discussion posted on another blog. Night Owl wrote about his various projects a week ago, and others have chimed in. So while I spent yesterday hinting at the multitude of boxes that fill up storage, my mother's house, and my apartment, let's look at the baseball card side of things.

While Night Owl speaks of less than a dozen projects, my collection isn't that easy.

Are you ready?

• Type collection (focus: base cards, insert cards, and oddballs)
• MLB
• MiLB
• NPB
• KBO
• CPBL
• whatever else!

• Base set runs (focus right now: Donruss and Score, plus current sets)

• Topps
• Donruss
• Fleer
• Score
• Upper Deck
• Stadium Club
• Ultra
• Allen And Ginter
• Goodwin Champions
• Gypsy Queen
• Diamond Kings

The base set collection is so extensive that I rarely focus on building single sets. That said, I will eventually start a new old Topps set.

• Thematic sets
• Olympics
• Team USA
• World Baseball Classic
• Women In Sports
• Any other sets
• Diamond Kings and other art sets
• Upper Deck's Baseball Heroes
• other sets that pique my interest

There are over 100 sets in my want list right now, which are the sets I focus on card-by-card. A large percentage of those are from the Diamond Kings series, though there are plenty of other insert sets scattered throughout.

• Thematic collections
• Award Winners and Clubs
• In-Game Collection (one card for every appearance of a player in a game I've attended)
• Archives Collection (one card for every player ever)
• Tobacco Mini Frankenset
• Player Collections (mostly needing figures here)

My Award Winners and Clubs collection stays pretty much complete, though there are always a few holdouts from the prior year, and many older players with only one or two obscure cards or no cards at all. The In-Game (~2300) and Archives (~19,000) collections are massive undertakings, and I don't put much effort into the minis, due to availability here.

• Non-Sport collections
• Movie and TV sets
• Hits for celebrities and non-baseball athletes that interest me

I don't do much with the movie and TV sets, though there are many I'd like to get. It's too expensive with shipping right now, but occasionally something shows up at the right price. But I'm always on the lookout for certain memorabilia and autograph cards.

• Other Japanese collections

• Hits for certain athletes
• NPB Players (Motonobu Tanishige and Alex Ramirez)
• Pokemon (gotta catch 'em all!)
• Japanese MLBers
• Foreigners in Japan
• BBM and Calbee set runs
• I'm working on a few Calbee sets card-by-card right now, as I mentioned in a recent post
• A bunch of sets, for baseball, other sports, non-sport, and idols

Okay, that's seven collections, with a bunch of pieces, many with sets of their own lists. Baseball card collection inception: a list in a list in a list in a list. And then Freddy comes to get the Shepherd out of your dream because you've been hoarding old toothbrushes and maggot-covered sandwiches in your locker and then your father becomes a butterfly... oh, sorry. I had a South Park moment.

My thing is extreme flexibility. One collection might have come to a standstill, but the others could have some open areas. Many of the MLB insert sets I'm collecting are too expensive at the moment (COMC, Sportlots, and eBay are generally my only options), but I can find some new Jose Altuve cards or poke around for a cheap base set. And once the stock on COMC gets replenished, I could find some good bargains. 

Having many collections means having lots of lists, and hopefully someday I'll whittle most of them down to being really simple, short want lists, but I do like having options!