2019: The best, the worst, the ... drama

When I was in college, my first year away from home, the movie "St. Elmo's Fire" was showing in theaters.

I loved this movie. Once it hit HBO and other cable channels the following year, I found myself watching it a lot.

It drew my interest because I was in college and the actors in the movie were portraying students who had just graduated from college. Their hopes and fears -- romance, employment, their place in this world, what does it all even mean? -- were mine, too. I was alone, in a big place, trying to find my way.

Of course, this was a Hollywood movie so the people were beautiful and the scenarios were melodramatic and everything that took place came with a soundtrack. David Foster's "Love Theme" from the movie played in my head practically on a loop in 1986.

I loved the passion and the drama and those Brat Packers. They played my generation so well. Or so I thought.

My world was rather plain in comparison. But as a writer, I kind of longed for that kind of drama: grand stories and big romances, stuff like what I read in Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield".

I think 2019 was as close as I'm ever going to get to David Copperfield or St. Elmo's Fire.

I look back on the past year and I still can't believe everything that has happened: the chaotic and sad departure of my mother; the quick and stunning loss of my father; the turbulent, never-know-what-will-happen-next at my job; the dream-come-true regular writing gig for a national magazine; the goofing around with former major leaguers that I followed as a kid.

And there were baseball cards, too. Some of the biggest and best and most dramatic baseball cards found their way into my collection in 2019.

My year-in-reviews don't hinge as much anymore on what cards showed up on store shelves in the past year, it's more about my collecting journey. But you'll see a bunch of both in what follows. Get ready for a lot of 2019 cardboard drama:

BEST SET I COMPLETED

Each year of my previous year-end posts, I was surprised about how few sets I had completed in the past year. It was quite embarrassing for a traditional set-collector.

Well, this year, I focused like never before. I had my best set-collecting year since 2016, and then I left 2016 in the dust. These are the sets I completed in the past year in order of the celebration I had from smallest to largest:

2019 Topps Archives, 1975-themed portion.

Reader Kyle recently sent me the last card I needed from the 100 cards in 1975 colors. Aaron Judge finishes off the quest.

1979 Topps Baseball Comics

1991 Pro Set SuperStars Musicards, Series 1 and the U.K. set

Still need two cards from the Series 2 set. I'll nab those in 2020.

1994 Ted Williams Card Company

1993 Ted Williams Card Company

1991 Score

2001 Upper Deck Decade 1970s

1981 Fleer

2008 Topps Stadium Club

1976 Kellogg's 3D

1973 Topps


WOOOOOO-WEEEE! That was a whole lot of fun! This alone makes the 2019 collecting season a success and probably one of the most successful since I returned to the hobby.

Which means I will likely continue along this same path ...


BEST SET I'LL COMPLETE IN 2020:

I would like it to be 1970 Topps or 1977 or 1978 Kellogg's, but I'm just getting started on those so the chances aren't great that I'll get them done in the next 365 days. I suppose it's possible.

There's a good chance I'll finish the 1977 Topps football set in the next year, but as far as guarantees go, the 1982 Fleer set is probably the best bet. Look for a 1982 Fleer spectacular in 2020. I'm sure you can't wait.


WORST SET OF 2019

There were probably a lot worse sets than Topps Total in 2019. It's just that I don't pay attention to all that weirdness anymore. But I knew about the Topps Total reboot and totally expected them to appear in $1.99 packs down at the local chain drugstore. Nope. They were Online Only. For a buck a card. That, in my mom's lingo, was pretty nervy of Topps.


BEST SET OF 2019

No set came even close to being perfect in 2019. You could put Stadium Club in this position every year, but even fascinating photos get repetitive when it's fascinating photos year after year.

Archives moved to the top just because I liked all three designs chosen this year (that's almost never the case) and they were executed well enough that I bought way more blasters of the stuff than I ever thought I would. (Still don't like the coins tho).


BEST INSERT SET OF 2019

I didn't pay a lot of attention to it being the 150th anniversary of professional baseball and then -- WHAP! -- Topps landed a terrific-looking insert set on everyone with wonderful photos. It is easily the best photographed insert set ever made.


BEST EXAMPLE OF TOPPS TAKING A GOOD IDEA AND RUINING IT

The 150th Anniversary insert set grew and grew and grew before our very eyes. Each additional set that Topps released contained more 150th Anniversary cards. Individual players had multiple cards in the set, making things a tad repetitive. It migrated into sets like Chrome and there was an Online Only version, too. Then there were parallels, which is not unusual at all anymore but STILL AS ANNOYING AS EVER.

In short, it became impossible to collect, for a set that at the start of 2019, I thought "cool! Maybe I'll collect that."


WORST TOPPS GOOF 1

In Topps Heritage, three Dodgers cards, Rich Hill, Ross Stripling and Enrique Hernandez, showed the players competing for the Angels in their stats during years when they were playing for the Dodgers.

This is bizarre. The automatic assumption is a similar error occurred for Dodgers cards in the 1970 Topps set. Nope. I checked them all. Only in 2019 would Topps be goofy enough to produce something like the National League Angels.


BEST HOBBY ADDITION THAT WASN'T A CARD

That would be my card room, of course.

It has become my favorite room in the house, a place that when I enter it, I automatically feel at peace. It was so needed in 2019.


BEST INDICATION OF HOW COLLECTING 2019 CARDS WAS GOING

I've been pushing current cards down on my priority list for almost five years now, or longer. But collecting stickers from my childhood is a terrific indication of just how low current cards have dropped on my list.


BEST EXAMPLE OF CARDBOARD GENEROSITY I

I received a bunch of 1980s boxed sets from a reader and they turned out to be terribly needed during days when I had zero time to post because I was driving so many hours back and forth -- at sometimes minutes notice -- to and from my folks' house.


BEST CARDS OF 2019 THAT SHOWED PLAYERS FROM THE WRONG TEAM

If that Rendon card featured a Dodger instead, you would have seen about five posts about it already.


BEST NON-DODGER PULL

I pulled very few hits this year in comparison with the last few years. That's the best I could do.


BEST DODGER PULL

Out of a box purchased by my daughter and pulled on my birthday.


WORST 2019 CARD IN MY COLLECTION

This black-parallel card of loser Felipe Vazquez will probably forever sit in my collection, untradeable, unwanted, because of his destestable ways. About the only useful thing it's good for is starting a fire, which isn't a half bad idea.


WORST TOPPS GOOF 2

Topps selected a photo for Clayton Kershaw's flagship card that shows his zipper down. Then they fixed it for some cards (Chrome) but not for other other cards (Holiday) but then for variations of some cards (Holiday again). Topps will never explain the reasons for such bizarre behavior, but if it issued a press release that said it had hired the people who worked on 1989 Fleer's Billy Ripken F-face card, I'd finally have something that makes sense.


BEST CARD NEWS OF 2019

In January, I became a published baseball card writer in Beckett Vintage Collector.

Then in a series of similar good news announcement in which I've pinched myself so many times that I'm walking with a limp, I established myself as regular in the magazine card article world!

I now have a subscription to a magazine for the first time since Sports Illustrated came to my house in like 2003.


BEST INDICATION I'M GETTING TOO OLD TO WATCH BASEBALL

Tyler White was eventually acquired by the Dodgers so, fortunately, I had something to help distinguish between the two.


BEST EXAMPLE OF CARDBOARD GENEROSITY 2

Then another box came from Dave later in the year.


BEST SHOWING BY AN EXTINCT TEAM

Expos cards were everywhere in 2019 and in every set. Archives, in particular, contained the chance of pulling a card of a team that hasn't existed for 15 years almost as equally as any current team.


BEST CARDS OF 2019 THAT FEATURED DODGERS

The "When Puigs Fly" card is my favorite card of the year. I have enough to fill half of a second page and I don't expect to stop until I can make a decent presentation on my card room wall.


WORST TOPPS GOOF 3

This photo in 2019 Stadium Club ...

... is the same as this photo in 2015 Stadium Club.

As collectors, we let a lot of things fly: The same photo but a different crop (yeah, I know the 2019 Murphy photo is cropped slightly differently, shut up). The same photo but shown in a different set. But this is mind-blowing and probably demonstrates the turnover at Topps as well as anything.


BEST EXAMPLE OF CARDBOARD GENEROSITY 3

Well, they weren't cards. but reader Alan unloaded on me 50 years worth of Dodger team-issued photos from the days of Jackie Robinson (and before) all the way to the 1980s. Some -- like Steve Garvey, Tommy Davis, Steve Yeager and others -- were even autographed! It's the definition of a treasure trove and I'm still trying to figure out how to best present them.


OTHER TERRIFIC CARDS PEOPLE GAVE ME IN 2019

You are all awesome as always.


BEST BASEBALL CARD SURPRISE OF 2019

There were a lot of them, but this Bob Feller falling out of an envelope with no return address stands out.


WORST PHOTO TO GO WITH A STADIUM BALLPARK SUBSET

Most of the stadium shots in 2019 Topps are pleasant overhead shots of ball fields. The Royals version is interesting -- I'll give it that -- but not quite what I had in mind when I said, "I want to collect all those." It is the busiest card of the year.


BEST RESEARCH PROJECT OF 2019

I love my research and I did a lot more of it on my blog in 2019. But tracking down all the variations in the 1991 Pro Set MusiCards set, as well as solving the strange Series 2 set, that ALSO INCLUDES SERIES 1 CARDS, is the most satisfying outcome of the year for me.


BEST CARDS I GAVE MYSELF IN 2019

You know how you love the big finish at fireworks shows? SAME.


BEST COLLECTOR MEET-UP IN 2019

I got to meet Greg, writer of two previous collecting blogs, and his wife at a restaurant that I know rather well. Mostly I go there when I'm interviewing prospective job candidates. It was much nicer to settle into a booth and talk collecting, baseball and other casual topics.


BEST NON-BASEBALL CARD SURPRISE IN 2019

Rod of Padrographs arranged for Ron Cey, my all-time favorite player, to write a birthday wish inside a card that Rod had created and then SEND IT TO ME. I was full-on baffled for hours when I received it in the mail. Then, when it all made sense, I was overcome. It now sits on a top shelf in my card room, just above my Ron Cey-signed Fleetwood Mac lamp.

I have the coolest card room.


WORST TOPPS GOOF 4

It's amazing how many of these I came across when I'm not even close to being on top of current cards as I was seven or eight years ago.

In 2019 Allen & Ginter, Topps issued 350 cards like usual. But the card numbering skips from 300 to 351 and then continues to 400. THERE ARE NO CARDS NUMBERED 301-350.

The instinct is to think this is some weird A&G contest thing. Nobody uncovered any contest. It appears simply to be the strangest card goof I have ever witnessed. How do you screw up numbering your cards?????


BEST NOTORIOUS CARD OF 2019

A reader sent me this 1991 Impel card of former Full House beauty Lori Loughlin, who became part of the big college admissions scam along with several other Hollywood people. I just read a report that Loughlin is apparently preparing for her prison stay by "toughening up" to ward off "bullies" in prison.

In card news, this particular item was $25 on COMC just a day ago, but has been slashed to $6.87.


BEST EXAMPLE OF USING CARDS IN MY JOB

Little did I know how much I would be dealing with dementia in 2019. After more than a year of finding ways to communicate with my mom, I landed a story on former Tigers catcher John Wockenfuss, who was a year into his own dementia battle.

I discovered that baseball cards -- both his own and ones of his teammates -- were the ideal conversation starter. Since I didn't have years of connecting with Wockenfuss like I did with my mom, the cards came in handy and made the story so much more than it could have been. And I felt like we really connected, too.


BEST CARD OF 2019 THAT SHOWS ONLY AN INANIMATE OBJECT

I could look at this scorecard of Roger Clemens' 20 strikeout game for much too long. I'm not crazy that some of the type is printed over the scorecard but not sure how you get around that. I still need to know whose scorebook this is.


BEST SURPRISE PULLED BY ME IN 2019

I drastically updated my blog look without any kind of head's up, mostly because I was too annoyed with how it appeared on my phone. I'm much happier now. It doesn't mean I'm done tinkering, but I probably won't do anything for a year or more.


BEST RESOLUTION OF AN INJUSTICE

It's about freakin' time (although I guess I should have showed the flagship card).


BEST PROGRESS ON A RIDICULOUS QUEST IN 2019

I'm now up to 349.


WORST CARDBOARD REALIZATION

I still like the design for 2019 Topps flagship and I still like the player image breaking through the design. But not even two months into buying the cards something about the backgrounds bothered me.

The images don't seem as clear as they have in the past, particularly when you compare it to 2018 Topps, which started to look better and better the more I stared at 2019 Topps.

2019 Topps has these lines traveling through the background of the images, and I'm not referring to the checkerboard effect on the sides where the parallels go. Something in the processing seems off. I'm no expert on this, but it really bothered me as the year wore on. And it did affect how much flagship I bought. The quality doesn't seem to be there.


BEST INDICATION THAT NO ONE IS GOING TO FIGURE OUT READERSHIP NUMBERS

At the start of 2019, I wrote a post about how readership was better than ever and in fact climbing, in response to all the Blogging Is Dead naysayers.

Then about halfway into the year, around July or so, reader stats went down, way down, and I wrote a post in the middle of November saying that apparently I didn't know what I was talking about back in January because readership has gone in the crapper.

OK, except I didn't know what I was talking about in November either.

That's because in November I had my greatest readership numbers -- EVER.

Look at the chart above. The dark lines traveling horizontally are monthly readership numbers by 20,000. You can see that readership dipped below 20,000 around June/July for one of the few times (I wasn't posting as often though due to my family situation).

Now note the huge spike later in the year, going over the 60,000 mark. That is the number for this past November -- the same month I was writing that readership is down. It is such a large spike that it dwarfs the second-largest spike in this image, which happens to be November 2016, when Russian bots were supposed to be throwing off everyone's web site numbers.

Is it another round of bots in November 2019? Probably. I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. One thing that 2019 showed me is always expect the unexpected. Sometimes it will be terrible, sometimes it will be wonderful and sometimes it will be just plain weird.

And that brings me to the 2017 Person of the Year.

It's this guy. Gary Vaynerchuk. Or as everyone calls him, Gary Vee.

I had no idea who he was at the start of 2019. Then, suddenly, everyone was talking about him. And then I started seeing this Gary Vee guy talking about cards. Then Topps made an Allen & Ginter card of him. Then they made a Gary Vee-themed insert set.

Then, GARY VEE WAS MAKING HIS OWN CARD SET. WITH DRAWINGS OF WINE BOTTLES ON IT.

WHAT IS GOING ON???????

Weirdly, this same year I started getting into a youtube show called "Hot Ones" in which celebrities are invited on to answer questions while eating progressively hotter chicken wings. I came late to the show so there were lots of "back-issue" shows that I had to catch up on -- one of them was with Gary Vee!

"Well," I thought. "At least people knew about him before Topps started plastering him everywhere."

I still don't know why Topps was so obsessed with him this year or why certain card collectors got so infuriated/enthralled with him that they had to tweet about Gary Vee constantly.

But he's obviously the most mentioned person in the card world this year (this is where someone comments that they had never heard of Gary Vaynerchuk until they read this blog post and my response to that always alternates between "thank you" and "you've got to get out more.").

It's just a weird enough development, in a drama-filled year, that it's appropriate for 2019.

You know that scene in St. Elmo's Fire where Demi Moore's character tries to freeze to death by locking herself in her empty apartment while sitting in front of giant, open windows with huge curtains fluttering about?

2019 was that kind of weird. That kind of nonsense and seriousness. That kind of drama.

I'm hoping for a calmer 2020. But maybe still with the fantastic cards.

(List of Persons of the Year:

2019: Gary Vaynerchuk
2018: Kylie Minogue
2017: Aaron Judge
2016: Justin Smoak
2015: Sandy Koufax
2014: Bill Wetmore
2013: maybe Josh Donaldon
2012: Adron Chambers)