2019 Year in Review

2019 was, except for a painful end, a great year...easily the best year since my health problems manifested in the mid 1990s. It was a year of firsts...I knocked out 2 of my 3 bucket list items...I shot more photos than I've ever shot in a year, a day, a week and a month...I saw places I never imagined I would ever go...and I made triumphant returns to four places I used to go but health had prevented a return to for many years. And I accomplished all of this with my health problems still a constant struggle. (I wonder what I could do without them? I'll never know...but always wonder)

In case you aren't aware, my brother has come up with a series of adventures for us to go on, a large portion of that is to get me some exercise...let me be honest, without prompting like that I spend most of my time with my cards or at the computer.

My limitations caused me to miss out on some of the things we wanted to do...hopefully I can do them in 2020.

Since this is the year of firsts, I'm going to do them all in a numbered list...and I'm hoping I remember them all!

1. First trip to Manhattan
2. First time petting a jellyfish & manta ray
3. First time eating at a founding location for any restaurant chain (Nathan's)
4. First time seeing an NBA court in person
5. First time holding an NHL game used stick
6. First time getting a ride in an antique car (1913 Ford Model T)
7. First time getting a ride in an El Camino
8. First time going to Illinois
9. First time seeing a space capsule
10. First time seeing an aircraft carrier
11. First time seeing the Freedom Tower
12. First time seeing into a "food" manufacturing plant
13. First time getting a letter printed in FineScale Modeler, meaning I've been published in all 3 major modeling magazines
14. First time attending a Marquee specific car show
15. First time seeing a current Cup series track
16. First time sitting in a: 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air, a Ford Mustang, a Chevrolet Corvette, a Camaro (sort of, couldn't get all the way in), a Lincoln, a Smart Car, and more
17. First time seeing a vehicle making it's public debut
18. First time meeting a Daytona 500 winner
19. First time seeing racehorses in action
20. First time seeing Blue Angels
21. First car show outside the state of New York
22. First time visiting more than one park in one day
23. First time being in a building built OVER a stream
24. First time seeing Lake Michigan (my 2nd Great Lake)
25. First time in a train caboose (now a museum)
26. First time on a Motorcycle

Wow, that's a lot! And I photodocumented every single one of those occasions! In fact, I took more photos this year than I have before in my life...my previous record was 13,050 that I set in 2018, my new record is 41278! I blew past the old record in early spring. I have really stepped up my photo taking, and that is in fact something I set out to do. I set my record for most photos in a day (1791) a week (over 8500) and a month (over 8500) all on the Ohio trip. Almost all of those things received posts, the only one I don't think I mentioned was the FineScale letter.

I saw more of the USA in 2019 than any other year. During this year, I visited: New York (home), Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. Illinois was new to me, and I hadn't been to Vermont since 1997 and had no photos taken there. I've only been to three states in my life that I didn't visit in 2019...and we would have gone back to Rhode Island if it wasn't for health issues. 

I won two awards in the modeling hobby, three defacto. Of course, the two actual awards I won were kind of by default as three or less models showed up in my class, so everyone who entered won. As Homer Simpson said, De Fault- the two greatest words in the English Language! I was also photographed at the NNL Nationals, which, since the NNLs are not judged shows, being photographed by Scale Auto Magazine is considered like an award. That's the most I've ever won in a year. I also attended more model shows this year than any other year I can think of- NNL East, NNL Nationals, RTS Expo, NorEastCon, MosquitoCon, RepLIcon, Diversified Scalerz, and my own club show, HVHMG. My model club, the TNMCC, also held a show in the Poughkeepsie Galleria-sponsored by a local radio station for the first time. So 9 shows, pretty good when the last few years I've only been doing the NNL East and HVHMG. I also attended more model club meetings than ever before- I missed only 6 of a possible 23. For several years I attended about 4 on average. Building wise, I didn't finish as many as last year, but I still managed to complete 14- which is far better than I had been averaging, which was less than one a year from 2014-2017, which saw me complete one each year except for 2017 when I completed none!

my 2019 completions.

I attended more car shows, and shot more car pictures, than ever before. Cars are my true passion, and my health problems do not allow me to drive, so I express my passion in photography. I saw my oldest car at a show ever, a 1901 Oldsmobile, and I saw an Amphicar in the water for the first time. I got to ride in three classic vehicles, a big highlight of the year...and the first was part of my "bucket list", which was a ride in an antique car (pre WWI). The other bucket list item was a ride on Route 66 which was accomplished in Illinois totally by accident! I also got to sit in a stationary 1955 Chevrolet, which was my dad's favorite car...and selling his payed for the family house, so it's a pretty important car to my family history. I was able to see a Kaiser Darrin in October, which was on my list of Top 10 Cars I most want to see. In total, I took 12,002 car show and car museum photos, which is more than I've taken in almost every year of my life, topping that total for everything only in 2018 and 2019.

Card wise, it was a down year (I didn't even scan a single card in August! I think that was a 1st as well.)...but I still accomplished quite a bit. A large part of that is because my brother bought me a new scanner, which is probably the highest quality scanner I've ever had. I did a ton on the Cardboard History Gallery, including getting every set by set posted, and I also made quite a bit of progress on each person's album. I've finished non-sports, other sports, racing (in order of doing them), now working on Hockey, however, I'm going to take a break come January 1st, and work on transitioning the sports by season over to the new Fotki, off my original one. That will take a while, but not as long as the other stuff I've done, because that's how I store my scans traditionally, so it's basically create the album, start the upload, and wait for Fotki to do it's work. (and while Fotki is doing the actual work, I'll be editing more scans, of course)

I didn't have any real card goals in 2019, I wanted to get to 100 trades on the Trading Card Database, and I accomplished that in January. The trades trailed off during the year because I have a hard time getting to my trade stash, but I did keep track of how many I did this year, with a list on the Database. I had never done that before, but I was able to successfully trade for almost 900 cards! You can look through the list of trades I made here: 2019 Trades on the Trading Card Database

One thing that really annoys me that I did...or didn't do...this year, is that I let my chart of new hockey players added to my collection in 2019 get away from me. I was so burned out on the hobby that I just couldn't find the motivation to keep up with it, although I think I did keep up with the NBA and NASCAR lists- those are more firmly in my head, although I know I made a mistake there too, when I found a card of someone I thought I already had was actually my first. I HOPE I kept up on the New Sets added to my Collection in 2019 chart correct.

I only completed 6 sets on the year, which is a pretty low total.

1. 1993 Maxx on March 19th
2. 1923 Mitchell's Famous Crosses on April 6th
3. 1976 Craven Black Cat Vintage Cars on April 6th (bought both complete that day)
4. 1994 Skybox USA Basketball on April 9th
5. 2013 Panini Beach Boys on June 5th
6. 1993-94 Stadium Club NBA on July 10th

That's all I completed this year...for a set collector, that's a pretty poor showing. Hopefully I work on that a little more in 2020. 

I attended two card shows this year, one in February and one in March, which is a major thing for me! I hadn't attended a card show since 2004 or 2005 so it was somewhat surreal, but a lot of fun! I met two members of the Trading Card Database at the first show, which brings my total of members met to three. 

I spent most of 2019 really burned out on cards. My "Card of the Day" project in 2018, where I got one new card every day of the year to celebrate my 30th anniversary in the hobby...burned me out. It turned cards from a fun diversion to an annoyance, and I didn't really regain my passion until November, when I had a major health problem with two teeth going bad and needing a root canal in each, and feeling the worst pain I'd ever felt- which is pretty bad because I live in pain 24/7/365. This was so bad I couldn't deal with it...had to have it taken care of on an emergency basis. Since that was addressed in mid-November, it's like a switch was flipped. I've been back at the cards as if there was no tomorrow, scanning about 2500 cards since then...instead of just doing cards because I have nothing else I can do, I'm doing cards again because I want to...and I think the high number of posts I made in late November and December reflect that.

Looking forward to 2020, I have no specific goals. I would like to attend at least one card show. I would like to get the Cardboard History Gallery up to date with all personal albums created, but that depends on how hard I work at it....it's going to happen, the question is when, but it's not really a goal...more of a project. After I wrote this, actually late on the 30th, I decided I DO have a card goal for 2020. I want to scan the cards I got for Christmas 2019 before Christmas 2020. I have a terrible track record of scanning the cards I got for Christmas....as I still have at least half of what I got in 2018 left to do! And I still have a stack of cards I got in either 2016 or 2017 as well, I can't remember which year. I got 824 cards for Christmas 2018, and I want to get them all scanned...with the possible exception of the Topps Stickers which I may save for spacing in the plastic cases I put each card in between scanning and typing into Excel.

One thing I'm looking forward to is that I will hit 5000 unique serially numbered cards in 2020, early in 2020 at that. The two things I was looking forward to were having the NHL move up the ranks, which ended up happening at Christmas, and hitting 5000 SN cards may happen as soon as the first week of the year. I have a COMC order on the way- the $100 my brother gave me for Christmas- and a LOT of that is SN. I'm not sure how many, but it might get me there...if not, it'll get me close. I'm currently at 4923 on the Serially Numbered album on the Gallery, but I have a couple that I can't scan because I don't know where they are. Luckily, I can figure out how many there are because they are all from one set, 2002-03 UD Glass. I don't think the COMC order will put me over 5000, but I expect it will get me to within 20.  (it won't...I'll be about 25 away) Considering my usual tactic on COMC is to sort by SN, cheapest first, and pick off as many as I can before I run out of money, it's pretty much a given that it will occur in 2020.

I don't know what adventures my brother has in store for 2020...or what I will do card wise...lots of scans, that's a given...but I do know I already got 32 new cards on the year. I opened the tin of 2019-20 Upper Deck Series 1 I got and saved, and I got 32 new cards as I said, and 4 new people. This card will go down on record as the first card added to my collection in this decade:

 I was happy to wake up in time to see the Winter Classic, and guess what...Turris scored the first goal of the decade as well! Second card out happened to be one of the Stars...

 Who I believe ALSO scored. What are the odds of that? Considering the fact that Turris was in the middle of the first pack, and the only card in the pack that was new to me, I'm guessing pretty high. However, the third card of the year is the one I was really hoping to pull...

There were two base veterans I lacked that I really wanted to pull, none more than this one. The other was Ryan Reaves of the Golden Knights, who I pulled but did not scan yet. I ended up only three base veterans short of completing them so if you are on the Trading Card Database- which is moving to a new web address today- and have cards from this set on your tradelist, don't be surprised to see a trade proposal from me soon. Hockey is fully at #1 in terms of interest from me and I am sure you can expect a lot more hockey content in 2020 and moving forward.

Happy New Year everyone!