Back in January I decided I would come up with some 2019 collecting goals, and I shared them here for the world to see.  I have always had personal and career goals, but I’d never done the same when it came to the my hobby.  I was curious to see if I would I stick to them and crush, or would I lose interest and crash and burn?

Well, six months have passed, a lot has happened in the hobby in that time, and I wanted to post an update on where I’m at!

Vintage PC Goal: Finish Building my 1972,  1974, and 1975 Topps Baseball Sets by the end of the year.

Goal 1 is off to a great start!  I have finished the 1972 and 1975 set, and I’m actually within a handful of cards for polishing off the 1970 set which was originally my stretch goal.  I’ve used SportLots and COMC store credit to fund most of these set needs, and since that store credit came from card sales, I’ve effectively built these for free!  

Yes, yes, I get that I could have withdrawn those funds and had actual money in my hand.  So “technically” they aren’t free, but at the end of the day, I used profits from other cards to add to my PC with no cash outlay.  That’s free in my book!

The 1974 Set is on my shopping list for the upcoming National Convention, so hopefully the final set for this goal will be complete very soon!  Since that set doesn’t really have any short prints or huge cards, it is very reasonably priced.  I also don’t have a significant “starter set” either, so I think it makes more sense to just pick it up in one transaction.

Modern PC Goal: Acquire Base Sets for all three 2019 Topps Flagship releases, two Heritage releases, Bowman, and Bowman Draft.

Over the last several years, I’ve preordered and opened several cases of a variety of Topps products, kept a set for myself, and sold the rest.  That started to shift this year, and so far Heritage is the only product I’ve opened a full case of.  I sold back most of the Series 1, Series 2, and Bowman boxes to my LCS which allowed me to lock in some profit on those products.

However, that hasn’t stopped me from making progress on my goal.  I opened a few boxes of Series 1 and Series 2 which allowed me to build those sets, and the case of Heritage just left a “Handful” of SPs on my list of set needs.  Bowman is where it got fun.  I sold my full sealed case to my LCS, but then I picked up about a monster box worth of base, chrome, and inserts from a collector who busted a ton.  That monster box cost me less than one jumbo box of sealed product.  A complete set went in the PC, and the several thousand cards that remained are now for sale on Sportlots.

I have preordered two to three boxes each of Heritage High and Bowman Draft which should get me close to those sets, but I’m planning to just buy a complete set of Topps Update on the secondary market.  At this time, I don’t plan to buy any sealed Update.  

Collecting Financial Goal:  Let my collection pay for itself.

As I’ve written a few different times, there is an entrepreneurial spirit that runs deep in me, and I’ve been able to leverage that into a self-sustaining hobby.  2019 picked right up where 2018 ended, and through selling sealed boxes from preorders and flipping collections, I’m on pace to easily cover my hobby expenses.

I’ve had such great results with the collections, I may forgo any wax preorders in 2020 and just buy sets on the secondary market and focus most of my hobby purchases on collections!

WaxPackHero Goal: Double my Twitter Followers, YouTube subscribers, and WaxPackHero.com page views by the end of the year.

At the start of the year, the website had about 1,000 page views a month and I wanted to grow it to 2,000 by year end.  As of June, the site has grown to over 2,300 views per month.

  I wanted to grow from 202 Twitter followers to 404.  This is another platform that has really grown for me and am currently sitting with over 650!  I’m blown away by the engagement with readers, and it’s been a ton of fun to interact with everyone.  I’ve “met” several collectors this year that I wouldn’t have been able to if it wasn’t for Twitter.  I’d love your help in getting to 1,000!  

Instagram wasn’t even on my radar in January, but since then I’ve started an account and built about 100 followers there.  I’m still not exactly sure on the best way to connect the blog to that platform, and I would love any ideas you all have on how to help Instagram users discover the content I have here!

Finally, I wanted to grow from 280 YouTube subscribers to 560.  YouTube is the platform that is stalling out a bit.  I’ve grown from 280 to 324, but the growth rate has really slowed this year.  Since I haven’t been busting as much wax, the number of new videos I’ve published has gone down.  It only makes sense that the exposure to new viewers would follow.

Overall, 2019 is off to a great start.  I’m having a ton of fun, and the hobby relationships I’m building are a big part of that.  I hope you’re finding success in achieving your hobby goals as well, and I would love to hear about it in the comments below!  I’d appreciate it if you took a second to subscribe to the blog, the YouTube Channel, and gave me a follow on Twitter!