One 2018 Goal Done! Figures In Hand!

Last year, I hit my goals hard early in the year. And throughout the year. And at the end of the year.

This year, I'm trying to not be lazy, and be as successful as 2017 in reaching my goals. But last year, several of my goals could be knocked out pretty quickly; this year, it's not so easy. That's fine - I designed a lot of it that way.

My New Year's vacation wasn't very pleasant thanks to a cold and more importantly an infection, but all the home-time means that I could work on my to-do list.

While the to-do list isn't completely finished, I've verified my Japanese MLBer and NPB Foreigner lists. And I've even been keeping it updated with the most-recent signings (tentatively, of course - there's no guarantee even Shohei Ohtani will ever play an MLB game until they actually step on the field). 

I also spent an afternoon updating my MLB and MiLB type collection lists as accurately as possible from Trading Card Database's listings.

That's all good, of course, but most of my goals focus on milestones in my collections. And one area that is seriously lacking is  figurines for my player collections. I have 32 player collections, and I started the year with 14 figures - less than half. Okay, Geoff Geary has no figurine and probably never will. But it's still less than half.

So one of my goals for this year was to obtain three figures. And if you read the title of this post, you'll know I've met that goal.

 Yeah. I stole these images from eBay. But these are the auctions I got, so whatever. I got both of these figures on New Year's Day, kicking off the year with a bang. The Altuve is an Import Dragon figure, while King Felix is a McFarlane.

 I've picked up a few MLB figures around Japan. A few fit into my type collection (yes, SLUs and McFarlanes are in my type collection), while others are just fun novelties. But I found an Albert Pujols bobblehead at an anime shop in Osaka, and a local secondhand shop is where I found my Bobby Cox bobblehead. I've also been keeping my eyes on Yahoo! Japan Auctions lately, looking for cheap figures. And timing was right that I could pick up this Tom Glavine SLU at a decent price to finish off my goal. The auction was won back on the fourth, but I received it earlier this week.

While we're talking about figures, this SLU pair was found at a secondhand shop that focuses on anime merchandise. I didn't really need a Jeter/Ichiro figure, and this package is big, but it's a cool figure and will eventually look nice sitting displayed on a shelf... if I ever have a shelf for it to be displayed on. And I have to figure out how to get all this stuff I'm collecting in Japan... home. (The Altuve and Hernandez figures were sent to my mom's house in the US.)