2011 Mountains to Climb - A Review

One thing I simultaneously love and hate about the month of December is the abundance of retrospectives from the prior 11 months.  I do love looking back and taking stock of how things went, but sometimes it does get a bit much.  I have proven that myself in the past week with my entry in the Blog Bat Around regarding the best of 2011 in cards.  This December offers me a chance to actually score myself on my hobby.  When I started this blog way back in January of this year, I set a list of goals or Mountains to Climb this year.  Now is the time to look back and see how I did or score my hobby.

1. Get one card of every Rockie in a Rockie uniform.
This is one of those unreachable goals, because of the abundance of players that never had a Rockies card made.   Of the 412 players that had played in a Rockies game, I now have a Rockies card of 229 of them.  Since I made my goal 28 new players joined the club and I already have 14 of them, so I currently have 243 out of 440 Rockies.  Currently, the maximum I can get is 302, so with that number in mind I have 80% of the Rockies currently available.

Score: 8/10


2. Finish off twelve of my partial sets this year.
This is probably going to be my weakest score because I didn't really work that hard on sets this year with a couple of exceptions.  Since the goal was for partial sets, I won't count any sets starting with 2011 obviously.  I finished 1990 Topps, 1993 Topps, 1988 Donruss.  That's about it.  So I finished three, although I did get a lot closer with a few others.

Score: 3/10


3. Complete 50 trades with fellow bloggers / readers.
This is my favorite part of blogging.  I honestly stopped counting around the time of my break in August, but I had already passed 50 at that point.  If I were to estimate I would guess the number is close to 100 if not over.  You guys are great.

Score: 10/10


4. Organize a Rookie Cup card collection from my vast doubles.
Done and done.  I am so glad I completed this one because this was my primary use for the Diamond Giveaway site.  I was not collecting any older sets and my team started in 1993 so I needed to find something to collect with all the codes I received this year.  The Rookie Cups worked very well.  In fact it worked so well that I could conceivably finish this collection in 2012.

Score: 10/10


5. Have 200 posts on this blog.
I was rolling toward doubling this goal in midsummer while I was hosting group breaks, but then came my fall disappearance and it looked like I was going to fall short.  Then, earlier this month I posted about a minor trade the Rockies made and at the time I didn't even realize it was #200.  I am thrilled I made it and maybe next year even more.


Score: 10/10



6. Get enough supplies for organization.
This goal is a little difficult to quantify, but I think I will try.  I purchased a case (12) of albums and a case (1000) of pages in summer.  Then in September/October, I actually had a lot of time to kill so I got myself organized.  Most of my Rockies are bindered up and all are organized as I explained here.  I still need to organize my trade stuff ao not a perfect score, but I think this was a passing grade.

Score: 8/10


7. Start and finish the 2011 Topps Heritage set.
This is the goal that I am proudest of.  There are a lot of great bloggers out there that still have wantlists for this set, which really drives home the point to me of how difficult a Heritage set is to complete.  I worked very hard on this set and actually completed in way back in late May.  I couldn't have done it without you guys, well I could've but it would have been a helluva lot more expensive.  Thanx loads.

Score: 10/10


8. Get my Jamal Mashburn collection over 500.
When I first got back into collecting in 2006, baseball was not on the top of my list.  Honestly, it wasn't even on the list.  My reason for getting back into cards was to collect NBA cards of former Kentucky basketball players.  I have a pretty big collection of every former Wildcat star from the Joe B. Hall / Eddie Sutton / Rick Pitino era at UK ranging from Sam Bowie and Rex Chapman through Tayshaun Prince and Rajon Rondo.  My biggest single player collection is by far Jamal Mashburn.  My collection now sits at 502, goal achieved.

Score: 10/10


9. Find and work on a set I like from 1996-2005.
This goal was one of the harder ones.  Like I said earlier I stepped back a bit from set collecting and focused on my Rockies.  I did find one set that I thought would be an interesting long-term collecting project in this box break from May.  Yes, I think the 2005 Topps Rookie Cup master set would be a very difficult project to undertake, but if I wanted easy I would buy a 1999 factory set and be done with it.  I want a challenge.  Aside from that one box, I didn't work any more on this set, so I will score myself accordingly.

Score: 6/10 (since I got 60%+ of the base set complete)


10. Continue having fun with this great hobby.
As great as it is to complete goals, if collecting cards wasn't a fun thing to do I don't think any of us would be doing this.  Even when I stepped away from the blog I continued with my collection and reading everyone else's blogs.  After having tried my hand at several "adult" hobbies (not dirty, just things adults are supposed to interested in), I was dying a slow death from boredom.  I decided to come back to my "kid's" hobby and I am thrilled and I don't care whether anyone thinks I am too old for it or what have you.  This is MY hobby (well OUR hobby) and WE LOVE IT!

Score: 10/10



Final Thoughts
I actually did much better with this project that I ever thought I would.  Finishing Heritage turned out to be much easier than I thought in January since there was no High Numbers this year, but it was still hard.   The only one I really didn't complete proved to not be that important to me this year.  It would still be nice to finish off 87 Donruss and a few others, but as long as I have my Rockies collection going strong I am a happy camper.

Final Score:  85/100
Happiness galore.