2020 was a year of ups and downs.
When I wrote the 2020 version of this post last January, COVID was not on the radar. I didn’t know we would be struggling our way through the effects of social injustice like we did during the summer. Wildfires, flooding, and an active hurricane season added natural disasters to the issues we had to deal with as a nation. We topped it off with an election that for some reason still seems to be unsettled two months later. We get a year that many would like to forget. There were a lot of things that went wrong in 2020. But there were also a lot of things that went right. I want to make sure we don’t forget that.
Many communities came together like never before, an appreciation of family was highlighted, and for many, the benefits of finding a work/life balance was brought to the forefront.
From a card perspective, it may have been the best year we’ve ever seen in the hobby. Personally, while my card related goals changed significantly throughout the year, it ended up being the most profitable year I’ve experienced.
2020 Reflection
I started the year with 4 Goals:
Complete the 1969 Topps baseball set. Check
Complete seven 2020 sets. Didn’t happen
Have card sales cover the cost of card purchases. Check
Grow the WaxPackHero community. Check.
It felt good to complete the 1969 Topps set. The Nolan Ryan was my final card, and provided a nice cap to the set which took some effort to build. I love these vintage sets, and owning a 50 year old piece of history is pretty cool.
Goal two was probably the biggest shift. I didn’t get all seven sets. With the price of wax selling for 2-5x MSRP, a shortage of availability at the retail level, and the time I needed to spend sorting my newly acquired million card inventory, a critical examination of my complete set goals was needed. I decided to strip down my PC set goal to the Topps Flagship and Topps Update sets. I did happen to come into a Bowman set and a Base Draft set, but I abandoned the two Heritage releases altogether.
I had a goal of creating 150 pieces of content on the blog and podcast. This one also shifted a bit. I created about 50 blog posts which was about right on target. When I started the year I was doing two podcast episodes a week, so my goal accounted for 100 podcasts. However, in October I shifted to one episode a week which landed me short of the original target. However, I did produce over 120 pieces of content on TikTok alone, including one video which reached over 1,000,000 views!
My Twitter community grew from about 1,200 to just under 3,000 which blew past my initial goal of 2,400. I wanted to grow the blog traffic from about 3,500 page views a month to 6,000. We ended December at about 11,000 views a month! I started a TikTok account in March and grew from 0 to 4,250 followers on that platform in 9 months.
Finally, I had a goal of growing the podcast audience to 1,000 listeners. This one is a bit of a mixed result. There were several individual episodes which have eclipsed that 1K download mark, but the running average is in the 800-900 range as calculated by anchor. In addition, there are more streams on YouTube which add a bit more to the total, but I still have some work ahead of me to continue building the podcast audience.
Goals for 2021
Vintage PC: Complete the 1968 Topps Baseball set
The groundwork for this goal was laid in 2019 and 2020. The starter set I used as a foundation came from a gift of my uncle’s old collection and that launched my effort with a few hundred cards. I started adding to it using a portion of the Sportlots credit I was generating from my monthly sales.
As I start 2021 I only need 10 cards, however those ten include the Nolan Ryan rookie, the Johnny Bench rookie, the Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Killabrew, Brock, and a couple high numbers. It will still take some cash to get this one done!
Modern PC: Acquire Four 2021 Base Sets
I still love the idea of having a Flagship Topps set for every season. I include Topps Update in that mix because I’d love to have a base rookie of every player going forward. So, I’ll still be either building or buying a full run of flagship. I’m also going to go after Bowman as well, but in a slightly modified way. I’m happy with only focusing on the base paper veterans, prospects, and draft sets. If I get a good deal on the chromes, I won’t turn them down, but my goal will simply be to snag sets of the base sets.
Financial: Make a Profit and Increase Inventory
This will be another slight shift for 2021. In the past, my goal was always to have a self sustaining hobby, where my sales generated all the funds I used to purchase items for my collection. Well, in July of 2020 I bought out one of the local card shops in my town and took over operations! The buyout included about a million cards of inventory. So now, not only do I want to be self sustaining, but I want to be profitable and continue to grow the inventory I have available for sale both online and in the shop. If I have more cash and cards on December 31st than I started the year with, I’ll be happy. In addition, the website and podcast started generating consistent affiliate and sponsorship income in 2020, and I hope to continuing growing that revenue stream in 2021.
WaxPackHero: Create 400 pieces of content
I want to post at least 100 pieces of blog and podcast content to the website in 2020 and another 300 between TikTok/Instagram Reels. Just like last year, this is the goal that I think may be the toughest to complete. So many of life’s distractions have the potential to derail my efforts, but I will without a doubt be doing what I can to achieve it. It may be a challenge, but between blog posts, podcasts, and the quick videos on TikTok and Insta, I should be able to get it done. Talking cards and connecting with the community continue to be so much fun for me. That gives me the motivation to continue sharing what I’m learning along the way!
WaxPackHero: Grow followers and Traffic
Last year proved to me that if I am able to create quality content, the natural result is growth in the WaxPackHero community! That’s why I want to keep the pedal down on this goal for 2021. I’d like to see Twitter grow from about 3,000 to 6,000 followers, I want to surpass 10k TikTok followers, and I want blog traffic to grow from about 11,000 views a month to 20,000. I’d love to see the podcast to grow from the 800-900 range to 1,500 listeners. Is that possible? I have no idea. I’m not even sure what the “total podcast audience” size is for card focused shows. But I’m going to give it a go to find out! I also want to stay active on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook.
Wrapping it Up
I love goals, and I think these goals for 2021 will set it up to be another fantastic year. While not everything is perfect in the world of sports cards, the positives far outweigh the negatives. It’s a great time to be in the hobby, and I’m so appreciative of all the interaction I’ve had with all of you! Thank you all for the comments, feedback, and conversation. Thank you for fueling my passion for the hobby and making collecting and writing so much fun!
Let me know what goals you have for 2021 in the comments below or you can feel free to reach out on Twitter. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Podcast if you haven’t already to help give me a jump on that goal too!
You can support the show by using the following affiliate links if you are in the market for some cards or supplies!