Friday, April 24, 2020

Struggle of an Omnivore - and cards from Rod

I've been working hard on my wantlists.  But it is a slow process.  You see...

I am not a team collector.
I'm not really a player collector, with the exception of Mark McGwire.
I'm not really a set collector, with the main exception being Diamond Kings.

And those three ways of collecting, those focused collecting strategies, might make creating wantlists easier.  I say might, because I really don't know the trials that those collectors go through when making their wantlists.  Might be a lot harder, really.  What do I know.

But I do know that making my wantlist is hard.  Making it useful to people who want to trade with me is hard.


Current progress...

I was able to get a LOT of my Diamond Kings needs put down here.  But since the Diamond Kings needs are basically set collecting, I figure that is why I was able to get that part done.

I used tcdb.com to track the McGwires I currently have.  And that is great and useful!!  But it was a slog to get them all entered.  And I don't know that I'll work up the energy to add in the rest of my collection any time soon.

Then there is my main wantlists page.  It definitely has cards I want on it.  But most of them are big ticket items, or rare at least.  Not the most useful for trading.



And here is where Rod from Padrographs comes in.  I'm sure you all know about his free card giveaways.  Heck, they inspired my Diamond Nine giveaway series.  Here are a couple of cards that I claimed from him recently.

Thanks Rod!!

Now if you look at my wantlists page, you won't see a single reference to Ozzie Smith or Cal Ripken outside of their RC's.  You definitely won't see any reference to the insert or parallel sets that these 2 cards come from.  But these two cards would definitely be cards I want.

I guess I'm a Baseball Card omnivore.  I want a little of everything.  I'm really a fan of the game and it's history.  There are some players I don't like, but a lot more that I do like.  And even more players that I remember a story about, or remember seeing them do something great, or admire their accomplishments.  And so when I see a card of one of those MANY players, I might just want it. That is the fan aspect of my collecting.
I like em all!

Then there is the racoon aspect of my collecting.  You know, when a racoon see's something shiny or something that catches it's eye, it just has to go grab it?  Yeah, cool looking cards are definitely on my radar too.  And I am really jonesing for some great photography!  I've seen pics of the recent Stadium Clum photography (the last couple of years especially), and I would love to get a ton of that, just for the pics!
Gotta have that DoubleFractorDieCut!

And then there's the rookie card thing.  Growing up, the best card of a player was always his rookie card. And being an omnivore, I probably wouldn't turn down a rookie card that I don't already have. Especially from the old days when each player only had one or two rookie cards.
Rookies!  Everywhere!

So I hope this helps anyone who would want to trade with me.  At least a little.

Questions, I'd love to hear anyone's opinion on:
1. What could I do to my current wantlists page to make it more useful?
2. What are some examples of wantlists on other blogs that you like?
3. Are you a card omnivore?  What do you do to trade effectively? How do you avoid getting stacks of dupes and junk wax piled high?


3 comments:

  1. I love rookie cards and need a Topps Gwynn lol. But I hoard rookies from every sport and try to get one of each player.

    As for want lists, I use Google Docs and track my player collections there. Set needs I separate by sport, year on my blog.

    AS for trading, I like to make sure I know the person first and get opinions from other people I have traded with in the past to see if they are trustworthy. One thing I have found out is that the blogging community is great to trade with. NObody cares about values. People collect for fun. And bloggers know how to ship PWE. And I haven't had a bad trade on here yet.

    However, the biggest bulk of my trading is on Twitter by far. There's not a lot of bloggers who collect football and that's my main sport and what I seek out. So it makes it hard for me to trade on here a lot unless bloggers pick up stuff for me from shows, etc. I also do a lot of non sport stuff to and once again, not a lot on here. Most blogosphere is baseball and I don't dabble in that much anymore unless it catches my eye or is a specific need like a rookie card.

    I hope some of my babble helps.

    Keep up the good work on here!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks SCC! Helpful. I'm always going to be trying to see if I can make trading easier. I don't remember ever having a trade with a blogger that went badly, but it's been a long time for me!

      Twitter seems like a good place for trading, but I haven't pulled the trigger there yet. I'm old you see? And I want to keep computer/phone from taking over my life and Twitter seems like I would end up spending a lot of time.

      I have some football I'd like to eventually turn into stuff I want, but that project too is one that will have to wait until I get more organized I think.

      If I ever come across an extra Topps Gwynn RC, I'll send it your way!

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  2. I'm definitely a card omnivore... but I don't really do the trading thing anymore. Keeping my inventory updated became too much work. I have a TCDB account, but haven't added any cards. Maybe I'll do that one day... but it won't be anytime soon.

    ReplyDelete