The Baseball Card Blog

Purge update. There's no turning back. Those of you who want to trade with me or want some of my cards, email me and we'll figure something out. Also, two nights ago I started listing cards on eBay. You can follow my auctions here.

Last night I posted three lots of 1959 Topps Venezuelan, nine cards total. Almost immediately, they all sold at the "buy it now" price. If you're interested in Venezuelan cards, I have about 20 from 1960 and 16 from 1966, in various conditions, with Hall of Famers, stars of the day, rookies, Yankees, Dodgers, and commons.

Also this weekend, I'll be posting a whole bunch of lots from the 1970s, as well as going through and putting together a 1986 Topps set, then giving away all the doubles. If you're in the Brookline/Boston area and have a hankering for 1986 Topps baseball cards, drop me a line before I drop them on Craigslist.

The Keeper List update. As part of The Epiphany, I'm putting together a list of Keepers. What makes a card a Keeper? It's a card I have a favorable gut reaction to, if that makes any sense. For me the holy quintet of baseball cards is 1953 Topps Ed Mathews, 1954 Topps O'Brien Brothers, 1958 Topps Stan Musial All-Star, 1959 Topps Roy Campanella "Symbol of Courage" and 1972 Topps Roberto Clemente. These are cards I'd consider framing, cards that transcend their subjects, cards that I consider artwork. Of course there are others: 1978 Topps Eddie Murray, 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco, 1987 Topps Bo Jackson to name a few.

This is a work in progress, but you can follow that progress by viewing the Keeper List here. If you'd like to trade with me, these are the cards I'm interested in obtaining.

This weekend I'm going to start posting more about The Purge in earnest. But I'm serious, if you want to trade with me or you just plain want some of my cards, email me.

I had an epiphany last night in conversation with my fiancee. And truthfully, I've had this thought before, just no reason to do it. I'm going to focus my collection down to 5,000 cards – 10,000 at most.

You may be thinking "Wow Ben, don't limit yourself" in a sarcastic way, but I have over 200,000 cards. That's not a collection. That's a landfill. And what of the other 190,000 to 195,000? Hello, eBay.

So what spurred this? The constant battle for space against the clutter, that's what. Since childhood I've been a neatfreak trapped in a trash collector's body. Like all people, my interest in things waxes and wanes, but unlike most people, I never make a clean break. I have hundreds of CDs. I have two very heavy boxes full of 16mm films from the 1940s. I have a postcard folder collection that rivals my sports card collection. My fiancee and I have a huge library of books. I collect Chris Ware books and prints. The list just goes on from there.

This is something I need to do. And this morning I got the ball rolling. A few days ago a friend of mine (who is currently housing most of my card collection) visited and dropped off a box brimming with my basketball card collection, all 5,000 or so cards of it, not counting the vintage stuff I've bought on the side through the years. Just a week ago I would've been excited to get it back and lovingly sort through the stacks.

This morning I got up early. I sorted through the entire box, pulling out the Celtics and the 1989-90 Hoops (by far my favorite basketball set of my youth). After that, I put up a notice on the Boston Craigslist: FREE Big Box of Basketball Cards. By 3pm it was on its way home with a new owner.

During the handing-off of the box, I was a little nervous, like making sure my kid was okay to ride the bus to sleep-away camp. But after it was done, I was surprised at how clean I felt.

I've tried focusing my collection before: only cards of the Red Sox, and only cards made before 1972. Well, then how did I end up with thousands of commons from 1973, 1974, and 1975? How did I end up with nearly 1,000 cards from 2008 Topps Heritage? Why, oh why did I just buy not one but two boxes of 1991 Topps?

I think I can do 5,000 cards total. I know I can do 10,000. I drafted a "keep" sheet this morning:

Sets
• 1986 Topps set (792)
• 1986 Topps Traded set (132)
• 1987 Topps set (792)
• 1987 Topps Traded set (132)

Still try to complete:
• 1962 Post Cereal (200)
• 1956 Topps (Life Goal territory here) (340)

• Cap out Red Sox collection at 1,000 unique cards

So far that's a total of 3,188 cards. That leaves me with 1,812 individual cards at the least; 6,812 at the most.

Lately I've been thinking about the purpose of continuing The Baseball Card Blog. I know that I've brought this up many times in the past, and that I've never come to a clear, concise conclusion about what to do.

I think I've figured the whole thing out. The way I see it, it follows a trilogy arc.

Act One: Binge (2006-2007)
I revel in the idea of rediscovering cards from childhood. I rank all the sets from the 1980s and early 1990s. I highlight the wonderfully inane with The Fantastic Card of the Day.

Act Two: Revelation (2008)
I wonder aloud at the posturing of the industry players; I even enter the game and consult for Topps on a few of their projects. I embrace the mighty modern-day airbrush and create a virtual cardboard homage to "Casey at the Bat." I flesh out previous blog entries and edit a standalone book ("The Baseball Card Book", never published).

Act Three: Purge (2010)
After a year of inactivity, I come full circle and explore ways of dodging the metaphorical iceberg that is 200,000 sports cards and nowhere to store them. I blog about The Keeper List and why certain cards make it and most don't. At the end of the Purge, I end the blog as a focused collector, an individual who's found meaning in the cards (and who's recognized that not all cards have meaning).


My friend and I were talking over lunch when I brought up the idea that tossing out most of our collections would be a good thing. He threw me a pack of 2010 Topps and said I sounded like I needed to be talked down from the ledge. But I don't think it's unnatural, just the logical third step for any collector (or their well-meaning, spring-cleaning mother): cleanse the palate, and focus on what matters.

Breathe easy, Oil Can, you're a Keeper.

I take collation pretty seriously, mostly because I enjoy knowing what I'm going to get once I know the top card (or sticker, as the case may be). For this box, if Tom Seaver was first out of the pack, your four others would be in this order: Jerry Remy, Dusty Baker, Mike Schmidt, and Vida Blue. Similarly, if you pulled Paul Molitor first, there was nearly a 100% chance that the third sticker would be Manny Trillo, the fourth sticker would be Bob Horner, and the second and fifth stickers would be random.

Even the seemingly random-seeded stickers weren't seeded all that randomly. For instance, Andre Dawson was locked in the 1 hole, John Castino and Fred Lynn both 2's, John Mayberry a 3, Pete Rose Highlight a 4, and Cecil Cooper, Cliff Johnson, Dave Collins, and at least 18 others at 5.

There were "Rogue" stickers as well, or those that didn't appear in a consistent slot (Keith Hernandez, Rollie Fingers League Leaders). And there, hidden amongst the doubles, triples, rogues and locked rows were actual single print stickers – 25 of them to be exact, including all five of the stickers from Pack 1. Amazing.

Someone asked me today what my goal of this project was. I answered that I wanted to be able to hypothetically assemble an uncut sheet of stickers without knowing exactly where each sticker would have fit. And while that would be a neat exercise to actually do, the more I thought about individual box collation, pack cycles, and pack pockets, the more I realized that to make generalizations based a very small sample is at best unwise and at worst just plain stupid.

I remember a few years ago when I started A Pack A Day, I ripped a box of 1989-90 Hoops Series One. I found that not only was the David Robinson draft-day rookie short print not actually short-printed, but I found that if you got it in a pack, you also got Larry Bird (I ended up getting about 4 of each from that one box). But while my experience tells me that the Robinson wasn't actually a short print, why is it always listed as a short print? Using my one-box example to make a generalization doesn't really work.

There are reasons why card companies serial-number cards nowadays. For one thing, it creates a sense of a limited supply. For another thing, it completely destroys the idea of a general collation. Just because you get autographed relic card A doesn't mean you'll also get commons B, C, and D (well, unless the auto relics are considered Rogues, then that opens up whole new possibilities...). Of course, this is not true of regular card products. I'd bet that Topps 2010 has just as poor collation as Topps 1986.

In any event, if you can view a Google doc, you can take a look at my documented collation from my box of 1982 Topps Stickers.

Colored-coded Collation