A Look Back a Look Forward (Happy New Year)

Happy New Year fellow cardboard collectors.  Hope everyone got to have a little fun last night.  New Years Eve actually doubles as my wedding anniversary (easy to remember!), but I didn't do anything exciting.  The weather didn't cooperate all weekend so other than sneaking out for a nice meal it was spent at home.  Sometimes low key can be fun......if you have a stockpile of beer and whiskey!

Overall it has been a fun year of cardboard shenanigans.  Blog activity wise I kept pace for the most part with my 2016 numbers.  I fell a handful short of matching total post numbers from last year.  I think I would had eclipsed it had I not ran into a major computer failure in December.  Either way I have found a groove of 5-6 posts a week.  That will keep me in the 275-300 range.  I'm happy with that.

The lifeblood of my blog has always been trading.  While overall numbers are down from years past I don't think that really tells the whole story.  I've established some new trade partners this year and even got into beer trading! Also, many of my established trades have morphed into more quality over quantity.  That has helped save some money with shipping. 

I'm looking forward to 2018.  Do I have any specific collecting goals....not really.  I tried that one time, but it didn't take me long to figure out that I'm more of a fly by the seat of my pants collector.  I guess that is the beauty of being a team collector.  You can change gears with relative ease.  Just looking at this year I seemed to focus more on the late 90's and early 2000's.  I also added more WVU cards this year than last.  While maybe not directly correlated this is probably due to me not spending as much on 2017 Pirate releases. 

Hopefully as the year moves on I'll think of a few fun things to do on the blog to keep things fresh.  I'll continue to do small contests to motivate myself to send cards out.  Secret Santa will continue as well.  I had a couple ideas last year that I couldn't quite get to the finish line.  Time permitting I hope to take a second look at these.  They are bigger in scale, but I think everyone would enjoy them.

To close things out I just want to thank everyone for all the fun interaction this year.  Ultimately that is key to keeping things fresh.  I've been fortunate to not have one of those "should I continue doing this" moments.  The blog has embedded itself into my daily routine.  The interaction is what makes that routine enjoyable.  Life always has a way to throw curveballs, but as long as it is not a 125mph Bob Walk fastball I should be able to keep things moving in 2018. 

Cheers!