2020: A Year In Review

The image above should look familiar as it dominated the news and social media for much of 2020. COVID-19 has affected everyone on the face of the planet and turned some of our lives upside down. I'm used to grabbing my hat, keys and wallet before I headed out the door, now I have to remember to grab a face mask as well.

Shortly after the virus hit things started to shut down. I remember driving home from a couple of days of meetings out of town back in March and hearing of the first NBA player to come down with the virus, effecting halting games. Then there was rumors starting up that the Men's NCAA basketball tournament being cancelled outright. Crazy. Spring training was still weeks away so I was hoping the baseball season would get underway without too many issues. WEll, we know what would follow...the season would be horribly delayed.

Local governments started shutting things down, people were being asked to stay at home. Many school systems sent kinds home to learn towards the end of the school year. I think most of us though this would only be for the interim and in 60 days or so things would get back to normal. Nope.

As a result of the lockdowns and quarantines, people found themselves at home with more time on their hands than normal. Some people got out and enjoyed the outdoors, camping, hiking and the like. My family tried the tent camping thing again after we found mice had ruined the canvas on our pop up camper. Others started home improvement projects while others were looking for a hobby or in some cases re-discovering a hobby. That's where cards come into the equation.

With sports shutting down people were looking to get their sports fix in anyway possible. ESPN helped with the likes of the Michael Jordan documentary among others, but a lot of people rediscovered the trading card hobby. For many, many years you could find sealed boxes of cards, especially from the "junk wax" error...but things were about to change. Nostalgia is very real and was (and still is) running strong. This lead to the prices of older boxes of cards on the secondary market to rise. Then retail started to dry up. Prices across the board, sealed boxes and singles, started to skyrocket. Boxes of NBA Hoops and Skybox basketball cards that I grew up collecting were now effectively out of my range and it seemed as if everything else was to follow.

Collecting cards in 2020 was changing. I think a lot of people who were already collecting took the time to get their house in order. I've seen a lot of blog posts/tweets/Facebook threads of people getting their collections organized. That may have included cataloging their collection with the likes of Google Sheets, MS Excel or using a service like the Trading Card Database. I was one that did the latter, loading up my TCDB profile with my collection/want lists for various sets I was/am working on. To date I've completed 212 trades with 6 transactions currently in the works. This has helped me tremendously enjoy this great hobby that much more. I love helping others fill holes in their sets or collections and of course I enjoy being able to fill my own holes. I may have bitten off more than I can chew when it comes to new sets I took on trying to build in 2020...I'm going to have to scale that back in the new year!

If you've not yet signed up on TCDB I highly encourage you to do so. Not only is it a great resource (checklists, etc) the trading aspect of the site is fantastic. Some people think you have to pour hours and hours into the site uploading their collections and what not, but that couldn't be more wrong. I haven't uploaded my team collections of Braves, Panthers or Hornets and I'm not sure I ever will...but it's easy to add wanted cards of players to my want list. I also super collect Rey Ordonez and the site has been instrumental to make sure I have accounted for every one of his cards and have them on my want list. It may take a little time to upload your cards you're willing to trade, but once the trade offers start coming in it's almost addicting to keep listing cards so the trades keep coming.

2020 also saw a return of my Affordable Group Breaks. Longtime readers/followers may remember these from years past. Because these breaks do generate a lot of work for me I eventually grew tired and retired from my hosting services. However as I found myself with just a little bit more time on my hands, I decided to fire up the breaks again. This time around however I tried a new format and even launched my own Facebook group. 

I've had a great year hosting these breaks and in the process have met a lot of new collectors, whether that be through this blog, the FB group or on Twitter. The pandemic has made it challenging at times trying to find product to break. It's hard trying to cater to everyone's collecting preferences, but looking back I feel as if I did a pretty good job. Who knew so many people would be willing to join a break that featured just a few retail blasters?! I'm still up the challenge and have already lined up several boxes once my breaks return to action in 2021.

When to comes to the seasons of my favorite teams in 2020, well it should be obvious as to which team had the best season. My Carolina Panthers had a crazy off season to say the least. New head coach and coaching staff, long time QB Cam Newton was released and veteran QB Teddy Bridgewater would take control of the team. Little did we know that our star RB Christian McCaffrey would miss most of the season with various injuries. Not a fun season to say the least. The Hornets season was canceled early due to the virus and they would not receive an invite to play inside the Bubble in Orlando. The new season has just started and 4 games in they find themselves with a .500 record, taking out the Nets and Mavs in the last few days. LeMelo Ball seems to be legit and he's mixing well with the other young studs the Hornets have. I'm still not a huge fan of the current NBA product, but I do look forward to being an active member of Buzz City this season.

As a Braves fan the shortened 2020 MLB season was fun, yet tough. It looked like the Braves were poised for greatness in 2019 before their offense disappeared in the playoffs. The expectations were high going into the season even before the pandemic delayed the start of the season. Once play began the team looked sharp, even though they lost several players due to them sitting out the season because of the virus (Felix Hernandez) or lost early in the season due to injury (Cole Hamels, Mike Soroka). That didn't seem to derail the team too much as they would go on to win their division and finally advance past the NLDS. However the Dodgers would yet again weasel their way past the Braves during the NLCS. In light of the crappy way the season ended, Freddie Freeman would go on to put together one of his best seasons every and would eventually be named NL MVP...an award much deserved.

With the Brave's on field success it led to a whole slew of new Topps Now cards. In years past I tried to grab as many as I could, but would always forget to check the Topps' site daily for new cards. Even though I was missing cards from all the previous years, I created a binder during the delay of the season. This time around I was much more proactive in staying on top of new releases, using various outlets to pick up the new cards for a fraction of the asking price. I was finally able to complete the team set, even picking up some of the special cards that highlighted awards such as Freeman's MVP.

  

I wasn't able to build nearly as many sets this year that I would have like due to not being able to find product at retail, however I was able to get my hands on a few non-sports sets that saw a comeback. Garbage Pail Kids Chrome recreates the original 1986 Series 3 set while WWE got the Chrome treatment for the first time since 2015! Right on the heels of Chrome came the WWE Finest set. While I still give the edge to Chrome, the Finest set is still a beautiful set with a good autograph checklist. These three sets have helped end 2020 on a fun note for me. 

There have been a lot of ups and downs this year and I for one am looking forward to turning the page to a new year. I'm not sure how much better 2021 will be as this global pandemic doesn't look like it's going anywhere anytime soon. Because of this I'm glad to have a hobby such as this to help keep my mind off of the craziness that surrounds us all. I hope and pray that the new year will bring positive change and by the time I'm writing my next year in review type post that we'll be looking at COVID in the rear mirror.