This report marks the beginning of what is intended to be an annual tradition in which I recap the year’s progress and changes in my collecting interests. The aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current composition of the collection, how it has evolved over the past 12 months, and to set the stage for future goals. Looking back, it is hard to believe how much progress was made in the past year.
Although I have interests across several areas, I am primarily a set collector. The 1993 Finest Refractors have been the focal point of my efforts since a return to the hobby, augmented by attempts to build the even crazier 1952 Topps and 1949 Leaf sets. These are, of course, rather ambitious projects that have humbled many collectors. Beyond the presence of significant numbers of short prints, both of the latter sets have a budget-busting name in the checklist that I one day hope to be able to tackle. When availability of cards dries up for these set building pursuits I shift my focus to cards of my two favorite players, both of which can be readily found in obliging discount bins, or the occasional off-grade item to be sacrificed as a wallet card.
My collection grew by a net 45 cards in 2024, or approximately one piece of cardboard every 8-9 days. This is a net result, with inflows of new cards offset through elimination of duplicates and culling ancillary portions of the collection. 175 Items are still classified as not being core components and will see further reductions in 2025. While still roughly split between pre- and post-1980 cards, the collection shifted slightly towards the vintage end of the spectrum. Hobby spending was down compared to prior years, a trend that will continue in the new year.
The Top Three Cards of 2024
The figures reported earlier indicate a busy year for the collection. Out of a net pickup of 45 cards in 2024, a trio stand out as being particularly notable. These are cards that have sat near the pinnacle of my want list for years and took more work than I would like to admit to acquire.
Third Place: 1949 Leaf Larry Doby
By almost any sane ordering of importance, this Larry Doby card should be at the top of my 2024 additions. The piece hails from the 1949 Leaf set, an issue that has more or less become the defining cardboard representation of the beginning of the sport’s racial integration and the return of baseball cards to the postwar era. Like most good card sets this one comes with an additional backstory: Litigation forced the manufacturer to prematurely suspend production, leaving half the names in the checklist absurdly hard to find. The resulting scarcity and skip numbering prevented ’49 Leaf collectors from constructing accurate checklists for nearly two decades. Simply put, finding this card is a tall order. Despite a massive shift in favor of grading everything in sight, barely 200 examples have been seen by the major grading services. Setting aside my copy’s rough condition, this may very well be the most significant card in my entire collection.
Second Place: 1990 Donruss Aqueous Test Jose Canseco
Amazingly, something that should not exist took precedence over Doby in my 2024 ranking. One could even go as far as to call it unnatural, a fitting description considering the subject appearing on this 1990 Donruss card.
1990 Donruss ranks as among one of the most overproduced products in history, pouring off the printing press in roughly the same quantities as promotional discs from America Online. While seemingly no match for the ’49 Leaf issue and the decades needed to ascertain its checklist, the literal red-headed stepchild of the Junk Wax Era gave collectors a surprise a couple decades after its own release. An extremely limited test version had been packed out for internal use and slowly made its way into the hobby in the early 2000s. As with ’49 Leaf, it took significant research to nail down exactly which cards constituted a set. Initially these names were believed to have a print run that could be measured in the single digits. Even with the hindsight of additional research and the passage of time there still appear to be only about 25 of each “Aqueous Test” card printed. And you thought those Mirror Golds numbered out of 30 were tough.
For dedicated player collectors these cards are among the toughest to find. My personal favorite, Jose Canseco, has a small but tenacious group of supercollectors. The Canseco test card has appeared in smaller quantities than other names in the checklist (I counted 5 known examples), sparking a scramble among these guys whenever one becomes available. This card has been on my wantlist for years but was something I thought I would never see, let alone have a chance to purchase. One day, while waiting for my daughter’s school bus, I came across someone selling the contents of an opened pack of these test cards. I initiated a hasty, typo-filled chat and had it secured before the listing could attract further attention. I think it unlikely I can top this card with any other Canseco item.
Card of the Year: 1993 Finest Refractor Ivan Rodriguez
The most celebrated addition to the collection in 2024 is this ’93 Finest Refractor of Ivan Rodriguez. For much of the past 20 years this has been one of the tougher cards in the checklist to obtain due to one collector’s steady interest in the card. From the vantage of an ambitious set builder, the question of how to eventually tackle this card weighed over my planning for years.
The act of just admiring the card and talking about it with another collector eventually led this copy to join my set. More than a year earlier the collector inquired on a popular message board about this particular example. He was having difficulty comping the card after discovering it as part of a bulk purchase. Seeing only four digit prices on what would normally be a much lower priced card and not being familiar with the intricacies of this set, he asked for the board’s help in finding correct pricing information.
I messaged him privately, providing a history of the card’s growing scarcity and discussing the related premium that had developed over the past two decades. I told him that I was a set collector and made an offer, simultaneously advising him to grade the card and capture a much higher price from other collectors if it came back at the high end of the grading spectrum. My offer was declined and we parted ways, myself happy that the other guy seemed on a path to maximizing his cardboard windfall.
Fast forward to 2024 when the owner reached out to see if I was still interested in acquiring the card. His eye had caught a fantastic grail card and he was looking to liquidate his better items in hope of landing this long term goal of his. The refractor had been graded by SGC since our initial conversation and we were able to complete a transaction that proved advantageous for both of us. He ended up getting an incredible card out of the bargain, a tale I will continue when further profiling the Rodriguez Refractor in 2025.
Progress Towards Specific Areas of Interest
How did these three cards and the others that came in during 2025 help my collecting goals?
1993 Finest Refractors
After knocking out the always difficult Ivan Rodriguez card from my want list, I turned towards the one card needed to complete the set. Six months later I tracked down a Don Mattingly refractor to bring the completion percentage to 100%. It’s done! Three decades after first reading about these fantastic cards I can finally announce this:
I SUCCESSFULLY HAND COLLECTED A COMPLETE SET OF 1993 FINEST REFRACTORS.
This project was able to be completed through the combination of timing, luck, and a less than ideal level of obsessiveness. I had the opportunity to speak with several interesting collectors of the set and believe that trend will only continue as I document the set building process in the year ahead.
In addition to the refractor set, I have previously completed related sets of the base 3-card promotional samples and the 15-card 2001 Finest Origins Refractors. The number one Origins set on the PSA registry recently disappeared. Seeing as how there were only two of us chasing the issue, that leaves me by default as having the #1 registry set. I’m a 1/1. Hooray?
1952 Topps
I moved 46 cards closer to completing the 1952 Topps set, including the addition of 11 high numbers. Overall set completion improved from 62% to 73%. An additional 10 cards also experienced condition upgrades, exerting a negligible impact on the overall set condition but greatly improving the visual appeal of what I have. This year’s additions and upgrades generate an average grade of 2.82/10, implying overall pick-ups were in the range of Good-Very Good.
The focus coming into 2024 for this project had been to acquire more commons and at least one “big” card. I didn’t have a specific threshold in mind for what qualifies as big, but felt I would come across something that would satisfy the term by year end. In the end I found three candidates that fit this description within the high numbered series.
The biggest name is Bill Dickey, a catcher who was essentially Yogi Berra but accompanied by less conversation. He appears as a Yankee coach in the ’52 Topps set and the card has traditionally been one of the more desirable in the hobby history of the set. My particular copy was secured in Poor condition from a thread on Net54.
Prior to picking up the Dickey card I uncovered an unexpected Dick Groat rookie in one of my searches. It is a card that tends to either be advertised at prices well above market or not at all, so I jumped at the offering when one appeared priced in line with common cards from the high series.
Another shot-in-the-dark search led me to come across a well known hobby figure just as he was listing new inventory under his pseudonym on COMC. This was literally a moment where I pulled up my saved searches, saw no new items, and hit refresh again just as new cards appeared. Over the course of the next hour he advertised at least 30 low grade high number commons, one of which featured the somewhat infamous card of Pittsburgh outfielder Tony Bartirome. Bartirome is statistically the worst position player in the set, but an individual’s attempt to purchase all available copies several years ago made the card all but impossible to find at a reasonable price. This particular copy was priced just like any other low grade high number common and seemed to reflect a bit of an extra discount given that the grading service had missed two small instances of writing on the card when assigning a grade. Perfect.
1949 Leaf
This is an area of the collection that I have not previously written much about. I started adding cards a few years ago and the pace of acquisition had been fairly slow until this year. I added 14 examples of the set in 2024, bringing the completion status up from 18% to 33% over the course of the last 12 months. The pace at which cards were checked off my list averaged one per month, though in reality the additions came in three distinct waves.
The first group of cards included what now easily constitute my top two Leaf cards. The Larry Doby is a classic, the kind of card I am happy to have in any condition. Added to the set the same day was the mainstream rookie card of Johnny Pesky. An impressive contact hitter, Pesky is also one of the short-printed cards that make the set so challenging to assemble.
A decidedly easier to find rookie of side-arm pitcher Ewell Blackwell was another favorite. At one time Blackwell was one of the most feared arms in the National League. It continues to amaze me that his cards can routinely be picked up in vintage common bins. The card joined the collection as part of a half dozen lower-tier names over the summer and is now my best looking example from the ’49 Leaf set.
I rounded out the year’s progress with the pickup of some commons from a long-established dealer in Tennessee. What made these particularly noteworthy is where they had come from. Years ago the dealer had purchased a massive collection from the estate of a collector who had amassed cards and unopened material since the 1940s. News of the sale found its way into several hobby publications that dubbed it a “find.” There had been a large auction of the high end items some time ago and the dealer was still occupied with the task of clearing out what had been passed over by the auction house. I selected four 1949 Leaf cards, beyond happy that these had resided all those years in the hands of a collector who pulled them direct from packs 75 years ago.
Player Collections
I can be called a player collector, though these individual pursuits are decidedly secondary to building sets. When not obsessively finding every last number on a checklist I tend to look for cards of two specific players.
Jose Canseco was the first player I remember pulling from a pack of cards (1991 Donruss Series 1) and has remained a favorite despite all his attempts to forfeit this status. I added 18 Canseco cards in 2024, bringing the total quantity to 90. The Aqueous Test card that made my Top 3 List is far and away the player-specific highlight of the year, though a worthy runner up is the acquisition of a 1999 Finest Gold Refractor with die cut borders. The card is numbered out of 100, and ranking it above other similarly scarce cards is the fact that the die cuts appear to have zero wear. This card looks flawless in hand.
Charlie Bishop, another former Athletics player, forms the second half of my player collection. Bishop was a distant relative of mine and appeared on an extremely small number of baseball cards in his brief big league career. The primary addition to this part of the collection was a condition upgrade for my 1952 Parkhurst Frostade card. This minor league issue was produced by the famous maker of hockey cards. Like their hockey counterparts, cards were randomized for distribution through a tumble in a cement mixer. Few cards survived the process in anything approaching mint condition, so I was ecstatic to come across one consistent with an Ex-Mt designation. Aside from that, I added 12 copies of his 1953 Topps rookie card and sold a duplicate high grade 1955 Topps to a set registry participant.
Wallet Cards
This year I have been slowly but consistently destroying three Bo Jackson cards by carrying them in my wallet. In February these will join the 9 previously creased subjects of the wallet card project. Two cards are ready to take the place of the Jackson cardboard in 2025. There are 7 additional cards in hand for use in 2026 and beyond, a number that increased by 1 in 2024 with the purchase of a Shohei Ohtani card. Ohtani will not be part of next year’s theme, but he seemingly did everything he could to jump in front of the other possibilities.
Other Priorities
No headway was made towards completing the 1991 Donruss Elite set. I remain stationary at 5 cards with an average grade of NM-MT. There are currently no plans to actively chase down another card at this time given current pricing and availability of the set. I’ll pick something up if it fits but am not actively seeking new additions at present.
I closed the books on two other insert set building projects this year. After weighing what would be needed to obtain the remaining autographs from the 2018 Topps Archives Sandlot set, I elected to sell the ones I had assembled and redeploy the proceeds into larger projects. The 15-card 1994 Leaf Gold Stars set, which was completed in 2021, was likewise broken up. The Leaf cards had been assembled inside half an hour of searching and lost their comparative luster after I went through the process of actually hand-collating a much tougher set. I hadn’t earned this set, so it had to go.
Upgrading CardBoredom
All of this is in the process of being chronicled on CardBoredom. Building the site is as much a hobby as the act of collecting cards is. It continues to be a work in progress as I balance the need to get information published against a desire to improve usability and aesthetics. Last year I replaced the uninspiring text-based checklist pages with a more visually pleasing design. This year I have focused on building out various set collecting dashboards. Prior to the latest round of upgrades my ’52 Topps dashboard consisted largely of a few donut charts and a picture of someone else’s Duke Snider card. This has now been replaced by a much larger infographic detailing not only the progress towards completing the set, but details on condition and a one-stop section in which readers can check on the most recent additions.
The ’93 Refractor dashboard also got a new look in 2024. While the illustrations are largely the same, text-based tables associated with certain data elements were cleaned up and made more relevant. These redesigned visualizations will be augmented with additional datapoints in a January report to create an even more comprehensive view of the collecting landscape for this fascinating set.
Perhaps one of the widest reaching changes is the introduction of a new player profile. I reworked my player ranking system and ditched the old, clunky graphics in favor of something far more intuitive. The “big three” stats for each player are now front and center along with a table giving viewers an idea of how a player’s performance to date would have appeared to fans opening packs of cards just as they hit store shelves.
Before the new visuals could be rolled out there needed to be an overhaul of the databases underpinning all this work. Handwritten notebooks gave way to separate Excel workbooks, which then in turn were formalized into much cleaner data tables. The goal was to have a single source where I could update my collection and automatically generate statistical summaries of the underlying cards and players. I think this is 95% complete on the back end and I now consider the new system to be “in production” versus a year of off and on development and testing. Look for this progress to continue in 2025. I am also open to hearing any suggestions you may have about how to further expand the ways in which I can review and explore my cards.
2024 GOALS
Last year I posted 8 goals for the coming trip around the sun and successfully knocked out 5 of them. I’m an optimist, so this performance is being interpreted as a .625 batting average.
Goal 1: No eBay purchases for at least six months
GOAL NOT MET. Several multi-month periods elapsed without eBay activity, but they were punctuated too often by cards catching my eye. The final quarter of the year saw one eBay purchase enter my collection, so my current streak is somewhere around six weeks rather than six months.
Goal 2: Land at least one of the two remaining cards needed to complete my 1993 Finest set building project.
GOAL EXCEEDED. Both names were checked off the list, the most surprising of which arrived after a shot in the dark on a message board proved successful. The set is now complete.
Goal 3: Pick up a big name card from either the 1952 Topps or 1949 Leaf sets
GOAL EXCEEDED. Early in the year I nabbed a poor condition Larry Doby rookie card from the Leaf issue. A similarly rough 1952 Topps Bill Dickey was also obtained in recent weeks.
Goal 4: Add at least three “rare” Jose Canseco cards
GOAL EXCEEDED. As someone who’s collecting expectations were formed at the beginning of the 1990s, I define a card as being rare if it carries a print run of less than 10,000, the same as the Donruss Elite inserts that first appeared in this period. I’ve had to guess at some of these production figures but know for certain that at least five of the new additions have print runs of less than a tenth of this figure.
Goal 5: Allow research and writing to catch up with the current contents of the collection
GOAL NOT MET. Some progress was made in closing the gap, though those extra eBay purchases and a little more direct activity with fellow collectors kept the collection growing on a net basis in 2024. I don’t think I will top this year’s 70+ posts in terms of writing volume. We’ll see how 2025 goes.
Goal 6: Finalize and begin sharing a database created from years of figuring out production figures
GOAL NOT MET. The format initially envisioned for this project required a substantial time commitment that simply cannot be met under present family and professional obligations. My collection and hobby writing, after all, is something I put together in moments of spare time. In all honesty I need to scale back the ambitions of the production figure side project. There is just too much opportunity cost associated with what it would take to properly present this information in the format I initially had in mind. Going forward I plan to provide glimpses of these conclusions in an expanded look at cards of the 1990s, though I still need to work out the optimal way to do this. Perhaps this will be incorporated into an upcoming revamp of the way I present my player collection.
Goal 7: Finish planned mailings of cards to entertaining hobby writers
GOAL MET. I enjoy reading about others’ collections. Not only is the give and take of hobby writing fun, it incentivizes seeking out cards that fit collections other than my own. I’ve been setting aside specific duplicates and picking up cards for other collectors for several years. In 2024 I finally caught up with my “outgoing” pile and finished placing the cards in the mail. Towards the end of the year I found a place to produce custom mailers and had some fun designing one for future packages.
Goal 8: Hunt Pokemon cards with my kids at a card show
GOAL MET. We hit up the first local show of the year in February, with my daughter finding enough cards to fill out a binder page. More importantly, we found a good place for donuts afterward.
Looking Into 2025
So what does the coming year look like? After pushing hard to wrap up the ’93 Refractors I am taking a bit of a break. I will still be adding cards but not at the crazy pace of the past few years. Even my ever present wallet cards will feel a bit more relaxed. Departing from the pace of previous years, February will see the next batch of wallet cards feature only two pieces of cardboard rather than three.
For 2025 my collecting goals are as follows:
- Spend less than $120 on building my collection in the first six months of 2025. A pace of $20/month will rebuild my collecting budget and keep the growth of the collection in check while I make further strides in profiling the cards I already have.
- Find new cards to give away, mailing out packages to at least six collectors who consistently write about their collection over the course of the year. I have definitely seen some interesting groups of cards through this process. Hopefully I can fill a few holes in want lists while browsing the aisles of card shows.
- Add three more cards to either my Charlie Bishop or Jose Canseco player collections. Any Canseco items should be limited to a print run of 10,000 or less.
- Bring the percentage of cards meeting at least one of my stated collecting goals up from the current 79% to at least 90%. The most likely path to accomplish this will be a significant thinning of the contents of my sell/give away box.
- Overhaul the “Other Cards” section of CardBoredom, separating out my Bishop and Canseco sub-collections into usable form.
- Post at least 60 card profiles to CardBoredom. This should wrap up the ’93 Finest series and provide a good look at some of the more recent additions from ’52 Topps.
I’ll be back again to follow up on these goals next December. I hope following along with the current iteration proved enjoyable. I certainly had fun writing it and reliving the collecting highs and non-existent lows of 2024. Next year I should eclipse 500 posts here at CardBoredom and plan to be well into the next 500 by year end.
One thing is for certain: It won’t be boring.
