Goals

In 2024, my collecting goal was to get all the various Topps and O-Pee-Chee sticker variations featuring Darryl Strawberry. This was as much to have them all as to increase the total card count: at least I'm honest! I fell one sticker short! It's the 1989 O-Pee-Chee sticker with Darryl Strawberry (#98) on one side and his friend Eric Davis (#47) on the other. If anyone ever finds one: please let me know. But I still consider the goal met, even being one short. 

There were other directions my collection took: I used the cards I didn't want via TCDB to complete trades and got my Ryne Sandberg collection over 200, and started acquiring some playing career cards of George Brett and Nolan Ryan. I've also got playing career runs for some currently and recently retired players like Andrew McCutchen, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and Joey Votto. For McCutchen I'm doing more than just Topps flagship, including Archives, Heritage, Stadium Club and some inserts. I completed the entire Topps run of Rico Carty, a player whose 1966 card was one of the first vintage cards I acquired in the 1980s.

It also got me a Clemente and Aaron card in the process with those 1965 Leaders!

For 2025, I want to acquire more Strawberry and Kruk cards, and, as well, wind down trading on TCDB. This latter goal is temporarily achieved already but I believe I'll try to trade away some random cards from my "Random Cards" binder at some point. I slacked on Kruk in 2024, getting only a handful (8) of new cards. This year, already, I've gotten 7 and the 8th is on the way.

But one of the two major goals I have this year are to get a 1/1 and to get a McCutchen autographed card. I knocked off the 1/1 a few days ago, deciding not to mess around about it. It's a John Kruk, too. His 1991 Stadium Club card, autographed by Kruk around 2015 when Topps did an Archives buyback stamp thing. The casing for it is pretty scratched up and the card isn't pristine itself, which I'm fine with as I know it's protected now.

Do you have any one of ones? Thanks for stopping by.