So You Want To Collect One Million (Insert Your Favorite Team) Cards...
So...you want to collect one million cards of your favorite team? Well, look no further than this post because I will give you the tips and tricks to keep you going to reach your ultimate goal.
There are five key facets to this undertaking that are very important. If you don't meet or fail to meet the following criteria, your project will likely be in jeopardy fairly quickly.
SPACE
One million baseball cards is A LOT. I feel that the number is thrown around too much without consideration. Kind of like "A LOT." Often I explain it using five-row boxes. It takes 200 (5,000 count) boxes to equal one million cards, but it's probably more than that because you can't really fit 5,000 cards into those boxes anymore.
Better yet, I like to use the retail blasters explanation. Say you run to Target or Wal-Mart and pick up a few blaster boxes. Typically, blaster boxes contain 100 or less cards. Let's use a nice round number of 100 cards per blaster. That's 10,000 blaster boxes before you hit one million cards.
You're going to need space for those 10,000 blasters or 200 monster boxes. That won't all fit in your closet. It will take a room. Before you take the one million card project dive, ask your wife if you can have a card room.
INVENTORY FOR TRADES
Unless you have a bank account that's much larger than most, you'll need to have plenty of card inventory to make trades. Remember in our previous example explaining how much a million is? If you have 1,000 cards of each baseball team, that's only 30,000 cards...and that's 970,000 cards short of a million. The reason I began the One Million Cubs Project was because I already had one million trading cards that I didn't need or want in my collection.
It's expensive to buy cards to reach one million. Sure, I buy a lot of Cubs cards, but I save my money for cards I need, or autographs and rookie cards. Make sure to have plenty of cards on hand to make trades because your wonderful collecting community is a huge help to reach your goal.
PATIENCE
This one almost did me in. I'm a very impatient person...ask my wife. I have also suffered from collector's ADD all my life. Some of my large collections through the years included: Joe Montana cards, quarterback cards, basketball rookies, professional wrestling magazines, wrestling cards, complete sets, Bowman complete sets, autographed baseballs of pitchers that Javier Baez hit home runs off in the minor leagues...yeah, that last one is actually true and I think I still have the minor league plate appearance spreadsheet I created for his minor league career.
The sad thing is that I didn't stick to any of these collections for much longer than a few months. Over the years, I have team collected the Cubs, but certainly not to this extent. This has definitely been the most devoted to any collection in my life.
It's like a synergy that keeps me going. I love writing about Cubs baseball cards and the hobby in general. I love trading with other collectors through social media. And of course I love opening my mailbox to Cubs baseball cards every day.
To that point, I do understand the scope of one million. It's not going to be something that takes a year or two. This will take at least five years, and I am certainly okay with that.
FOCUS
That's another thing. You need focus. No collector's ADD in the quest for a million cards. You'll have to make collector's sacrifices if you want to collect a million cards. Give up your other personal collections (PC), unless they override each other (I collect Javier Baez, Dylan Cease, and Cole Roederer - they overlap as Cubs/former Cubs prospects). It will take a sharpened focus to be successful in your quest.
DRIVE
My pace to collecting one million Cubs cards in five years will take the same energy for all five years that it has for the past year. It's gonna take up most of my spare time. You need drive! It almost needs to be a part-time job.
Together, if you exhibit these five steps in your quest to collect one million cards of your favorite team you should be successful.