2013 Mountains to Climb - A Review

Well I have been about a week behind for the majority of 2013, so a year end goal review taking place on January 5, 2014 should be no surprise.  This is my third time reviewing my yearly goals or Mountains to Climb here at the Quarry.  In 2011 I had phenomenal success completing goals.  In 2012 I had a few setbacks, but I did fairly well in completing a couple of goals and making progress on several others.  2013 was a rough year for me and my family, and to be honest I am glad it is now in the rear view mirror.  However, I do want to take a look back and see how I did with the goals I set for myself last January.

ROCKIES GOALS

1. Get to a total of 10,000 unique Rockies cards.
I said that this goal was going to be fairly difficult and it proved to be.  I ended the year with a grand total of 8,254 unique Colorado Rockies cards.  Obviously that is a bit short of 10,000, but I still added over 2,100 cards to my collection.  This goal was far from a failure, but I did come up short.

Score - 6/10


2. Complete every Pacific base Rockies team set.
This one actually proved to be one of the two goals that I worked on the most in 2013.  I started the year with only 4 out of 40 Pacific team sets complete.  I finished the year with 35 out of 40 complete and I am only 9 cards away from an entire Pacific base run.  I am very proud of this goal, even though it is not completely finished yet.

I had no idea how difficult it would be to track down some of these cards.  I found 0 cards from 1993 Pacific for the first 10 months of the year before I found an almost complete team set around Thanksgiving.  1993 Pacific Series 2 will one day be as hard or harder to track down than 60's and 70's high numbers, so hoard accordingly.  

Score - 9/10


3.  Collect 100 unique cards of 20 different Rockies.  
This goal is the other one that I spent the most time on.  I started the year with 100 Rockies cards for 10 different players.  I came up a bit short of 20, but I now have 17 members of the Rockies Century Club.  I finished the year with #18 Jason Jennings at 93, #19 David Nied at 87 and #20 Walt Weiss at 82.  Again even though I did not complete this goal, I am extremely proud of myself here.

Score - 8/10


4.  Complete 50% of the 1993 Rockies team sets.  -  COMPLETE
Surprisingly this was the easiest goal on this entire list.  I figured this would be fairly difficult, but it turned out to be the only goal I fully completed.  I started the year with 26 out of 76 team sets from 1993.  My goal was to have 38 team sets completed.  I finished the year with 43 out of 76 team sets for a whopping 57.3% complete.  Happiness galore.
 
Score - 10/10

 
5. Successfully complete a full rainbow with one of my 1/1's.
This goal was repeated from 2012 and 2013 proved to be no better for trying to track down the few cards I need for this goal.  I did add one relatively easy to find Brian Fuentes to bring me down to two that I need for a full rainbow, so I scored myself accordingly.  So now I need either 1 Christian Friedrich, 2 Brian Fuentes, or 2 Ubaldo Jimenez cards to complete a full rainbow.

Score - 1/10

 
6. Complete checklists of Rockies managers as players and get to a total of 250 unique cards.
I don't have the checklists published yet, but I do have them.  I am only collecting cards of the six Rockies managers as players that were made DURING their playing careers.  I am not counting manager cards or retired player cards as part of this collection...yet.  I am also not counting Walt Weiss's Rockies cards because they are already in the Rockies collection.  After factoring all of that out, there are 682 cards total of the six men that have managed the Rockies.    I ended 2013 with 143 of them.  I could have done better, but I got a late start on this one. 
 
Score - 6/10

OTHER COLLECTION GOALS

7. Complete the Rookie Cup collection from 1980-2013 fully AND finish 7 rookie cups sets from 1970-1979. 
I was a little bit clairvoyant with this goal.  I predicted that the final card that I would get in the 1980-2013 group of Rookie Cups would be the 1982 Cal Ripken.  It is currently the only Cup card I am missing from those years.  I consider that to be a relatively big success.  I wasn't as successful with the 70's.  I completed 1973 and 1974 Cup sets which was somewhat of a surprise.  I had assumed 1973 would be one of the last four team sets completed, but I found a surprisingly cheap Carlton Fisk and finished it off.  I am also within 3 cards of completion for 6 other Cup sets.  So even though I only got 2 from the 70's complete, I am still happy with my performance here.


Score - 7/10



8. Get to 50% complete on the 1974 Topps Set.
I didn't work on this goal that much.  I started the year with 119/678 (including variations) and finished the year with only an additional 29 cards for the set.  I also did not add the Winfield rookie or the Parker and Griffey rookies.  I finished the year with a total of 148/678 which is 21.8% complete.


Score - 4/10


9. Finish 12 of the following 15 sets: 1984 Topps, 1986 Fleer, 1987 Donruss, 1988 Fleer, 1989 Donruss, 1991 Donruss, 1992 Donruss, 1992 Score, 1994 Topps, 2005 Topps Rookie Cup, 2006 Topps, 2008 Topps Heritage, 2008 Topps Update, 2009 Topps, 2009 Topps Update.
I did not complete this goal, but I think I did really well in knocking out a few of these sets.  I completed eight of them in 2013. Overall, I am very happy with FINALLY finishing some of these sets off.

1984 Topps
1988 Fleer (still missing 3 errors and a 4th corrected error, but I have 1 copy of all cards)
1989 Donruss
1992 Donruss 
2005 Topps Rookie Cup
2008 Topps Update 
2009 Topps
2009 Topps Update

Score - 7/10


10. Start a "One of" collection for five teams and get to 50% complete on each of them.
This one I didn't get started on.  I actually didn't even select the five teams or even explain what this collection is going to entail.  I am going to just chalk this one up as a mulligan and try again in 2014.

Score - 0/10


Final thoughts
Well I did better than 2012 which really surprised me.  I didn't do nearly as well as 2011, but those goals were a little to obtain as well.  The goals I set for 2013 were a challenge as they were supposed to be.  I was not expecting to finish them and I am not disappointed that I only completed one.  I use goals to provide me with a guideline for what I want to do in the upcoming year.  I don't get upset if I can't finish them, but I get bothered if I drift away from the guideline.  This exercise has helped me maintain a focus with my collection because there is a lot out there to distract a humble card collector.  I'll have my new 2014 Mountains to Climb up next Sunday, so hopefully you can read along then.


Final Score - 58/100 
Better than last year, happiness is increased slightly.

Thanx for reading.