2024 was a weird year for me in the hobby. I was still involved in something card related most every day, but it was different somehow. It's a bit hard to explain, more of a feeling. Overall I would say it was a very good year in the hobby, even if I didn't have much motivation to actually write a lot of posts.
I accomplished some really big things during 2024 as well:
- I completed my Excel chart that let me know exactly what is in my collection in full, information I've never had in my more than 30 years in the hobby
- I documented how many cards I have for each NASCAR team, something else I never knew
- I attended the National Sport Collector's Convention, which was a bucket list item
- I hit 100,000 unique NBA cards
In total I added 5261 cards to my collection during 2024. Since I began typing in the exact order of every card I get back in 2014, it's the 3rd smallest year of new additions. I completed only 1 set during the year, 1997 Ultra Update NASCAR, which I bought a hobby box of at the National. I didn't think I had completed any sets having forgotten that one, but luckily I list in the excel file when I complete the set. Set completion isn't as important to me as it once was, my "Names Project", getting at least one card of every person to get one for my three sports, has surpassed it in importance.
Getting to the National has been a Bucket List item for me for a very long time. I first learned about the National in either 1998 or 1999 in Beckett, and I've wanted to go ever since. This year, it finally happened! The first day was miserable, Thursday, but I went back on Saturday and it was 100% different. That Saturday was one of the greatest days I've had in the hobby ever. Top 3 without question.
Just a couple weeks later I attended FanaticsFestNYC, which wasn't as good as the National but will be more likely to see me return regularly, since it's close enough that it doesn't require a hotel or long distance travel. I know I won't be able to do the National when it's in Chicago because that is a two day ride from here both directions and my brother can't take that much time off of work to add that into the schedule.
I have a local card show that's less than a half hour away from home but I have not been there since June 2022. My main goal for 2025 is to get to at least one of them! I already missed the first one of the year, it only runs a couple of hours in the morning on the first Saturday of the month and I slept through it this month.
My main goal for the year was to scan some cards every month, and I succeeded in that endeavor. I will hopefully keep that going into the future but I'm not going to stress about it- if it doesn't happen, it's ok. It's possible, in the spring and fall especially, that I will spend more time on my scale modeling hobby and not get any scanning done. I cannot predict it, it will depend on what I feel like doing then, and the weather. Since I paint outside, I'm not completely in control of that, but there's always something to do with both hobbies so I can bounce around between them. Last year was particularly hot and humid in the summer so I actually increased my scanning when it was too humid to paint.
Using this a segway for my modeling update, which I did promise would be in my year end recap, I didn't think it was a particularly good year for me...it felt like a very down year. But I was wrong...when I pulled together a photo of each of my completions on the year it ended up being 114 which is either my 2nd or 3rd most in a single year!
In November I sorted my parts from all my in progress builds for the first time ever. I was able to reunite parts that had gotten dispersed more than a decade ago, and I was able to rescue some builds that I thought I could never finish because the parts were missing. I'm very much looking forward to getting back to them in the 2025 building season, but as I alluded to above, it's too cold to do that right now.
Getting back to cards, I changed the way I scan in two ways during the year. Previously, I would go through boxes to find something I felt like scanning. I have stopped doing that, because I had just grabbed a couple boxes to work on and decided to just scan whatever happens to be in the box. It turns out I enjoyed doing that a significant amount, more than when I was choosing what to scan. I may choose again at some point, but for now I'm really enjoying it this way and plan to continue doing it going forward for the foreseeable future. You may have noticed that more baseball and football people have been appearing in the "New People Scanned" posts...that's why. I was mostly setting them aside and looking for hockey or early 90s NBA to do, lol.
Secondly, and what will be the more important way eventually, is that I've set aside any card with foil. Any foil. I saw the Heystack machine at the FanaticsFest and it was a huge difference maker. I need to get one when it becomes available, so I'm saving all foil cards until then. And not just full mirror foil, even cards with a person's name in foil too. At the show they said they hope it will be ready in first quarter 2025. It's going to be a game changer. Until they are ready, I'm working on the cards that don't have any foil at all. It's a bit of a weird feeling to get cards and not start scanning them right away, but the wait will be worth it.
In real life stuff, not card or model related, 2024 was a down year. We didn't do the amount of adventures we normally do, even if the ones we did do were pretty spectacular. The year was broken in three segments based around my mom. The first part of the year until September was pretty bad as her leg problems got worse and worse. Finally in September she went to the hospital and then rehab for over a month, and then there's the time when she's been home again and it feels like we're actually living life again, instead of just enduring every day. Late October through December was the only time in the year I actually felt something other than complete dread.
The biggest highlight of the year for me is that my brother got his 1989 Cadillac early in the year, and in April I finally got to enter a car show as a participant, not just a spectator. This has been my #1 dream for as long as I can possibly remember and I didn't think it would ever come true!
When we went to the Adirondack Nationals my brother and I took a long drive up to Mesina NY to go to the highest point physically possible to go to in the state of New York, Barnhart Island.
One of the other highlights of the year was going to Lime Rock Part for the IROC Reunion, which also included some actual racing. It was the first pavement race I've ever seen. NASCAR is bringing the Truck series to Lime Rock in 2025 and I plan to go, which will be my first actual NASCAR race attended despite being a fan since 1992.
For traditional museum adventures, we didn't do many.
First was Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut:
Very close to that is the Barker Character Museum, which is one of the best museums I've ever been to!
These two places, which are roughly 25 minutes apart, are worth making a special trip to Connecticut just to visit.
You could spend a full day at both although I did both on the same trip. The Barker Museum is what I want to do with my collections.
My brother took me to a model show in Chicopee Massachusetts which is literally the next town away from Springfield, so we went to the Basketball Hall of Fame for the second time.
Not quite a museum and requiring no travel for us, but a traveling circus set up at the Poughkeepsie Galleria, the Du Portugal Circus, which we went to. It is the first time I've been to a circus since circa 1988/89. It was actually really, really fun!
While we were in Cleveland for the National, we made time to visit the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. I love Aquariums quite a bit.
My brother took me to a museum I didn't know existed, the Matchbox Road Museum in southern New Jersey, which was really awesome. I ended up setting my new record for most photos taken in a single day, surpassing even the NASCAR Hall of Fame!
The final trip of the year was multipart, but was very cool. There were 4 major man-made things I wanted to see in the USA. I saw two of them previously (Mt. Rushmore and St. Louis Arch) and this year my brother took me to the Statue of Liberty. Kind of funny that it's the closest one to home but was the third to see.
However, that was not my favorite part of the trip. The boat ride was! I had never been on an actual boat ride before. I've been on two different floating museums, but an actual boat ride, nope, never. I do not know where my brother is taking me on our adventures, the surprise is a part of the fun, and he has purchased the tickets without knowing if I would be able to do the boat ride. I decided that I would, and I'm so glad I did. I want to go back just to ride the ferry back and forth. Statue is nice but the ride was my favorite part.
Knowing now that I like boat rides, I plan to take a trip on the Minne Ha-Ha on Lake George this year, hopefully.
I don't really do New Year's Resolutions, but I do have one main goal for the year and that is to get to at least on Fishkill card show. I have 11 more chances in theory, however not really as some of them conflict with model shows and other things so I don't know how many chances I'll actually get.
I'd like to write more posts on here but I'm still struggling to find motivation. My wrist is also still bothering me so typing is painful but I'm getting through. That's been bothering me for more than a year now so hopefully it will get better this year. I have no goals about adding cards to my collection by design. Whatever happens, whatever I can lay my hands on, I will be happy to have. If I don't get much, or if I get a bunch, I don't mind either way, I'm happy to get what I get.
