2019 hobby (or non) goals!

Topnotchsy said:

My goals:

1) Continue to develop the Integration/Jackie Robinson/Roy Campanella Collection - I have been working on what may be the most important pickup(s) of my career over the last few months and hope to be able to share those soon. It may mean a slow-down in the collecting to some degree but it would be the crown-jewel of my collection and something that I think has real historical importance

Was a crazy year. In a few months from the end of 2018 into 2019, I had a chance to acquire 2 Roy Campanella Minor League contracts. For those who may not be familiar, Campanella was the 4th African American player to sign a contract with a white team. Many people don't realize that he, Newcombe and Jackie all signed in the 1945-46 off-season. While Jackie was the first to sign a minor league contract with the Dodgers would break the MLB color barrier, all played in the Minors in 1946 (John Wright was the other).

Campanella initially signed with the Dodger's Minor League team in Danville, Illinois, but there was push back on the idea of the league integrating, so a few weeks later he re-signed to played in Nashua. In 2 separate transactions, I was able to acquire each of these contracts. They are the centerpiece of my collection

Later in the year I came across an auction for a ***** League baseball signed by Jackie and others. The signature is very faded and the ball is not in amazing shape, but I've only ever seen (including looking through old auction archives) a handful of Jackie signed ***** League items, and was lucky enough to pick it up.


2) Continue to search for cool lineup cards and try to add at least 1-2 new HOF managers. I still haven't found a Yogi Berra signed one at a remotely reasonable price, so he's near the top of the list of ones that should be attainable. Also hoping to find a few from interesting/significant games.

I believe the only new HOF manager I was able to find in the previous year was Eddie Mathews, but the lineup card collection as a whole grew significantly.

I was able to acquire a couple of major collections, the most significant was the Tommy Lasorda's personal collection from the last decade or so of his managerial career. It included Pedro's MLB debut and 1st win, Mike Piazza's 1st HR, Dennis Martinez' perfect game and hundreds of others.

Later in the year I was able to acquire a treasure trove of vintage lineup cards, ranging from 1954-1956. The lot included lineup cards from the rookie season of Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente and Ernie Banks, along with lineup cards from the 54 Giants and 55 Dodgers. To me, post WWII was the greatest era in baseball history, and so finding lineup cards with Musial, Mays, Jackie Robinson etc was amazing

It's a little crazy what I was able to come across and this post is already getting very long, but throughout the year I was lucky enough to have the chance to acquire MLB debut lineup cards of Pedro Martinez, Frank Thomas, Ivan Rodriguez, Curt Schilling and Ronald Acuna Jr. That's far and away more debuts than I'd acquired in all my years of collecting combined.

One other lineup card that I think warrants mentioning. A few months back someone showed me a blank lineup card from the Orioles game that never was from 9/11/2001.

Like for so many people, 9/11/2001 was a date that had a massive impact on my life. In some ways I can literally view my life through the lens of Before 9/11 and After 9/11.

It took some time, but I was able to acquire that lineup card. I had many more expensive purchases over the year, but none more significant.



3) Keep an eye out for interesting WWII-related baseball items. I picked up a program signed by Stan Musial this year, but it's been a slow area of collecting for the most part.

I didn't find a ton in this area, but have focused mostly on programs, and picked up a couple of new ones and some duplicates that were cheap

4) Keep an eye out for interesting *****-League related items

No major acquisitions in this department

5) Consider starting to omre formally collect signed contracts, which I think are a really interesting type of collectable, and I've picked up a few over the years

Nothing new here

6) In general, be more selective and ask myself "do I think I will be happy/exicted that I own this in a year from now?" so that I don't pick up items that I lose interest in pretty quickly

One area that I've definitely gravitated to, which kind of touches on the other areas I collect are barnstorming items (mostly programs). For decades, MLB players would barnstorm in the offseason. In many cases they played against ***** League teams etc. making the games the only chance that many early great ***** League players had to play against MLB players. One of the most famous examples was the tour that Bob Feller and Satchell Paige did in 1946 (note the spelling of Satchell. He dropped the 2nd L around 1949). They played over 20 games after the 1946 season. One really cool note is that towards the very end of the tour, the teams fell apart and changed a bit, and Jackie Robinson ended up playing a few games. One of the programs I was able to acquire has Jackie in the lineup

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