Where to From Here?

I feel I am at a collecting cross roads.  I am waiting for the cards I need to finish my T206 set to arrive from various states of the union, which was brought me back into collecting about two and a half years ago.  In my youth, I always loved tobacco cards and the players of the deadball era, so it was a natural fit.  I started with an Orval Overall which had seen better years, like 1913 and 1982, missing some borders and likely overpriced for the card, but it evoked a joy in me and got me started down the path.  The card I am closing my set with is fantastic and will be here by the weekend and looks nothing like the Orval Overall seen below.



I thought the project would take me somewhere between five and ten years if everything went right.  Well, things went a lot better than right and now I need a new focus.  I thought about T205s like the McGraw seen below, but I find it hard to be captured by them.  The other major tobacco offering of the era is the T207 set with an odd list of players and off-putting brown backgrounds.  I suspect, aside from hunting down every last Orval Overall issue I can get my hands on (a new one is on the way for the none of you who care about Overalls), I will wander through a lot of different sets.  I might finish my 1973 Topps set, which will almost certainly take me longer than my T206 set.  Motivation is critical and while I love putting cards in albums, I don't necessarily love the 1973 Topps set the way I love the T206s.



I also want to finish my 1910 Hassan Animals set.  The first set I finished when returning to the hobby was a set of 1910 T59 Flags of the World.  It took about two months and you would be surprised how many people were spoiling to move these cards.  I found almost every difficult back and aside from one card, I had no trouble getting everything together.

I also think I will fill in some more cards of deadball era players on modern cards.  I bought two Christy Mathewsons to close out the year, including the one below and entered a group break solely to add to my Ty Cobb collection (almost unsuccessfully).



Beyond that, we will see Diamond Stars.  The set is small enough to complete in a year, has cards with great color and images and is the only set from the 1930s which interests me, especially as it doesn't have incredibly cost prohibitive Ruths, Gehrigs or DiMaggios to chase.  For example, below is a Hall of Famer I picked up as part of a lot of three about a month ago. I'll show the other two when I need something to fill up some column inches or internet white space.



So, in conclusion, you might see less T206s and more Diamond Stars, but most likely you will see a great deal of purchases which just kind of happened.  

Group Breaks: Including One from the Daily Dimwit

Group breaks are great if you are a fan of a specific team.  You know, the life-long affiliation with one team that makes you care about the utility infielder from 1967 and reliever from 1985 as much as your home town superstar.  I lack that commitment to any baseball team.  In fact, the only team I possess any kind of life-long loyalty to is the Pittsburgh Penguins, not that I've ever lived in Pittsburgh, I just like flightless birds.

When it comes to baseball, I am nominally a Braves fan, due to the Superstation and getting cable around the same time the Houston Astros ditched orange from their uniforms and relegating Mike Scott to a secondary role.  I also have a strong affinity for the New York Giants of the Christy Mathewson/John McGraw era.  My fandom for this team and era in general led me to collecting tobacco cards.  In fact, here is a T205 McGraw I bought on a whim a few months ago. The portrait portion of the card managed to survive for many years unscathed, something the name portion of the card cannot claim.



Nonetheless, my lack of a team for life makes it harder to participate in group breaks, as it isn't like, "Oh, there is a group break, let me go claim the Royals."  I always need to break out checklists and research.  Half the time, once I've finished my research, any team that I wanted is usually claimed.  However, I joined my second group break over at the Daily Dimwit, selecting the Giants after much internal debate.  The boxes included in the break were 2012 Topps Triple Threads, 2001 Playoff Memorabilia and 2002 Fleer Legends of the Game.

Let's see what I managed to pull in the break starting with 2001 Playoff Memorabilia



And we're done.  I had low expectations for this box and they were met.  The Bonds was the only supershiny card in my package. 

And on to the 2002 Fleer Legends of the Game.  It was these cards which led me to choose the Giants, who are well represented in the set.  Out of 100 cards in the base set, there are nine Giants, all of which ended up in my pile, including a second of the Wilhelm below.  I included the highlights, since to be quite honest, no one needs to see a picture of Bill Terry, unless it is some kind of technicolor, art deco masterpiece. 



Finally, we are on to Triple Threads.  As we all know, the element of the gamble exists in every group break, as there are some winners and some losers in every deal.  On the good news side of the ledger, I beat the odds and ended up with a card from the box.  Even better, the card was numbered and contained Willie Mays.  The downside is that it is a base card numbered to 625. 



It's a pretty great card in its own right, but not the hit everyone hopes for, since aspires gives the wrong impression that there was work involved.  So, there is the results of the group break with the Daily Dimwit. Thanks again for running this break!