I just wrapped up my first notable card purchase of 2020.
It was an online order -- from three of every collector's favorite card-buying sites -- and with the exception of three inserts from 2019 and a stray card from 1989, every single card I ordered was made prior to 1980.
That feels good. That feels tremendously good.
I'm starting off 2020 in the right frame of mind.
It's also a good way to put a cork in the 2019 collecting season. There are various ways you can say you're done with the cards from the previous year, call it degrees of doneness, if you will (I order steaks "medium" or "medium well," I don't need anything crawling off my plate).
1. You can be done with collecting sets from 2019. I'm certainly done with that. I didn't try to collect many sets from that year anyway. The 2019 Topps Holiday set and a third of the 2019 Topps Archives set are finished and that's everything I plan to do.
2. You can be done with buying packs from 2019. I'm mostly done with this, but I can never rule out finding myself in a big box store and grabbing a stray pack of Allen & Ginter if the mood hits.
3. You can be done with completing team sets from 2019.
OK, this is the one that gets me every year.
I'm usually well into the following year, sometimes the year after that and the year after that before I complete the Dodgers team sets from one particular collecting season.
This is one of the many reasons why I've cut back on collecting Dodger cards a little bit, at least the modern ones, because there's no way I can keep up with the assembly lines at Topps and Panini.
But I'm nearly done with the base Dodger cards from 2019, thanks to a recent envelope from reader Dana.
This is the key card from that envelope. This is the last card I needed to finish off the team set base from 2019 Stadium Club.
This is ALL I need from a team set from Stadium Club -- especially Stadium Club. The inserts and parallels can dangle on the want list for years, decades for all I care.
But Dana did throw in a couple of those, too, fortunately:
The other set that came out of the envelope was a set that I always forget. I'm even forgetful about the base cards I need from this set.
Yep, Gypsy Queen.
But these happen to be the last two non-SP portion of the base set Dodgers that I needed (the fact that multiple Topps sets now feature SP'd cards at the end of the base set is reason enough that my online order featured just three 2019 cards).
I'm pretty satisfied with my 2019 team set "doneness" at this point. Most of the major sets are finished with only a handful left to go. This is what I have left:
Topps Chrome
90-Buehler
Topps Chrome Update
34-Beaty, 79-Bellinger AS
Finest
23-Kershaw
Fire
59-Bellinger
Gallery
(I'll ignore this one, there's a bunch, and half the team set is SP'd).
Panini ...
Eh, it's Panini, who really cares?
And that's it. Every other team need from 2019 is an SP card, an insert, a variation, or one of those online only (Total) or regional (Utz) cards.
That's great. Because I can focus on what really matters: vintage set needs and the like.
So in terms of "doneness" for 2019, I can officially say to myself "well-done."
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