2015 in Review: My Goals

It's the end of the year, and that means it's time to reflect on the good and the bad. I will probably be simultaneously posting my personal reflection on the year on my Japan blog. So here is baseball.

The card collecting goals for 2015, with my accomplishments:

1. Get six flagship sets that I need. I went above and beyond this goal. I've nearly finished the Upper Deck set run, I got a couple Topps flagship sets marked off the list, and I found a few well-priced auctions in the spring that made this goal easier than I expected.
2. Locate the eight cards I need to finish the card portion of player collections for six players. I added several players to my player collection, but I managed to finish all of the regular ones except for Buster Posey's Topps RC. Or maybe I got that too but didn't mark it off. I have to check my purchase orders...
3. Find at least five of the ten figurines I need for my player collections. I need 16 figures now thanks to additions to the list; I count only one figure purchase this year.
4. Get down to 400 needed cards for my Awards collection. Done. I haven't updated the 2015 winners yet, but I currently sit at 379. And that's with three new collections on the want list. This goal was partially met by creating custom cards. I haven't printed any out, but I made cards for players with no cards or unattainable cards. That's 187 custom cards made over the course of a few days.
5. Keep my MLB Type Collection over 25%. I started at 25.5% at the beginning of the year. There are still a few sets to add to my database, but those are super-new issues. I'm at 25.51% now though! I'm surprised I was able to maintain the collection, especially given the low number of 2015 cards I have and the addition of some other formerly-forgotten sets to the list.
6. Reduce my wanted sets list to 175. The year started with 229 sets on the list. I'm at 174 now. I barely made that cut. I pushed hard around Black Friday to knock down or knock off several sets using COMC and Sportlots.
7. Reach 60% of Japanese cards by the end of the year. From 54%, I've increased to over 63%. I need to rework the 2014 and 2015 lists to include several missing autograph, memorabilia, and parallel sets, though. I need to do a lot of research to make that happen, so I'm going to try to be more proactive about it with 2016 sets.
8. Reach 50% of sets in the Japanese type collection other than BBM and Calbee. 52.5%, so done. There were several releases this year that helped, along with some modern card singles that I've found at card shows and shops. I really want to work on the vintage side, but I didn't go to any flea markets this year.
9. Create and hopefully complete a collection for players who went from the NPB to the MLB. I created the collection, and I have most of the MLB cards for that collection. I just haven't taken the time to search for NPB cards, so that side sits at about 25% complete.

Not bad, only one missed collecting goal with another partially completed. I put forth a lot of effort with organization. My want/inventory lists have almost all been reworked and last weekend I reorganized all my loose cards here in Japan.

And while I didn't blog about it much and it wasn't in my collecting goals, I added Buck Farmer and Charlie Hough supercollections to my list. Closely following Buck's auctions on eBay has put me at 84.81% of his known cards (some 1/1s and /5s missing due to price or unavailability), and as for Hough, I'm at 64.57%. The missing cards there are mostly old team issues or recent autographs.

As a whole, I'm happy with my collection's progress this year.

And my blogging goals for 2015:

1. Finally finish those Calbee Through the Years posts.
2. I want to publish my Japanese set database.
3. Continue posting new release details on all of the 2015 baseball sets.
4. Fully update my Japanese card shop posts and publish a map and list.
5. Make weekly "Idol of the Week" posts.

I didn't meet a single blogging goal this year. Some stuff I worked on a bit, but as a whole I'm disappointed in my blogging performance this year. Hopefully I'll have more motivation in 2016.