2024, the stats

 

For the past five or six months, my job has bled into my midweek free time. I've been trying to keep it away from my blogging for as long as I've been able. 

But since the powers-that-be continue to ignore reason, I don't see this time-crunch changing for the next year, and, as much as I don't like it, Night Owl Cards may cut back to publishing 3 or 4 times a week for the foreseeable future.

For instance, it's midweek right now and I have all of 40 minutes here to myself. I thought I'd steal Diamond Jesters' year-in-review idea for some content. Unlike my traditional end-of-the-year cavalcade of words, it's a nice, concise, stat-driven look at the past year.

Let's take a peek:

Blog overview: I am in my 17th year of running this blog (and have run various other set blogs for about 15 years). For Night Owl Cards, this is my 5,664th post. There was talk a few days ago about saving your posts physically in the event the internet goes away. This was a thought of mine a long time ago -- like three years into writing NOC. It's probably way too late to do something like that now, unless I want to search out select posts.

Team-set goals: I am still attempting to collect every Dodgers team set, or at least the reasonable projects (ignoring almost all online stuff and picking-and-choosing inserts, SPs, etc.). I have pretty much every major Dodgers team set complete from 1956-present. Exceptions include the insane 1962/63 Topps multi-player rookie floating heads and some old-school food issues like Post and Bazooka. I'm sure I'll chase down the food issue stuff when I can get to them.

Completed sets: I mentioned in the previous 2024 wrap-up that I did well finishing sets last year. By my count, I finished 14 sets in 2024 (1982 Donruss above was one of them), which is a record for me.

 

Milestones: In the last year I surpassed 100,000 total cards in my collection and 30,000 total Dodgers cards. Good thing I got that card room, huh?

 

OTHER BLOG STATS

 

 

Number of posts: 227. That is the fewest posts in 12 months since the first full year of Night Owl Cards, which was 2009. I see myself setting a new "low" in 2025. But life is funny, so that's not a guarantee.

 

Month with the most posts: Posting was very consistent month to month, but July contained the most posts with 21. That's because I have the most time off in July. (Once upon a time I posted about 50 times a month and I don't know who that person was).

 

Top five most-viewed posts: Excluding pre-2024 posts that grow and grow due to things like bots, these are the biggest from 2024:

 

1. "Uh, oh, Topps is doing neon" (Jan. 11) - 914 views (This was my first look at the 2024 flagship design).

 

2. "Touching a nerve" (Jan. 2) - 889 views (The second post of last year. This could be bot-controlled, it's just a post about 1986 Topps Traded)

 

3. "The most colorful hobby box I've ever opened, part 1" (April 12) - 809 views (I opened my box of 2024 Heritage)

 

4. "Too much of a good thing" (Feb. 23) - 786 views (My first look at 2024 Topps flagship)

 

5. "Obviously '80s, obviously airbrushed" (Jan. 27) - 704 views (A look at airbrushing in 1980s Traded sets)

 

The write-ups on new product always get the most views, that's been true for the life of this blog (no matter how many want vintage-all-the-time here). Also, many of the most-viewed happened early in the year. That's also a common pattern.

Most commented-on posts: 

1. April 14: 28 comments, first half of 2024 Heritage box-opening

2. April 10: 26 comments, announcing 2024 Heritage box had arrived, and first pack opening
3. Nov. 25: 25 comments, the conclusion (final 20 cards) of the 1975 Topps worst-to-best countdown
4. April 18: 24 comments, weird one: My 5,500th post, was kind of a throw-away post
5. April 12: 22 comments, second half of 2024 Heritage box-opening

April was a big month for comments ... and for Heritage.

 

STATE OF THE BLOG, STATS, GRAPHICS

 

 I cannot complain about views in 2024, they were better than ever. July and August were my most popular months and I've long given up on finding reasons for that.

 

The blog has never been healthier according to the graphics. This could be totally the product of AI-generated bots (especially when you see the blog suddenly spring to life in mid-2023), but it makes me feel good so I'll ignore all the danger signs for now.

Followers: 460. ... Ever since I joined Twitter (and now Blue Sky), I pretty much stopped paying attention to blog followers. I had to search it out just now.

Total page views (as of this writing): 5,615,171 ... Again, something that used to be a bigger deal. Still a lot though.

MY COLLECTION STATS:

These are almost all generated by Trading Card Database so they're not the exact exact totals.

Total number of cards: 111,667

Cards from 2024 sets: 2,467 (That is 17th among all years, or the most since 2015. It's related to me completing both flagship and Heritage. I was more active with modern sets this past year than any year since 2015).

Dodgers cards: It's just over 30,065 cards. I haven't gotten time to do the latest update.

Autographed cards: TCDB says I have 283. I have more because it doesn't account for cards that are TTM or IP.

Graded cards: TCDB says I have "zero," which is AS IT SHOULD BE. But actually I have around 7 for various reasons -- the leading one is "too scared to bust it out."

Relic cards: TCDB says 310. OK.

And there you go. Just in time to go to work for another Wednesday hell day.

Thanks for reading, even more so when the posts may not be quite as frequent.