Honorable Mention:
Completed the 2024 Topps base set
This seems like an odd one to start off with, but to truly appreciate it as an accomplishment, you have to look at where I was as a collector, and where I am now. In high school, I bought boxes of cards and loved to just sit on my bedroom floor, rip packs and have 90%-95% of a set completed when I was done. Once I graduated and started college, the hobby took a back seat to many other things. I stepped away from collecting for over 20 years. When I came back, the hobby was in a different place. No local card shops or shows to fuel my obsession (Fortunately, even that has come back since then). Instead of buying boxes, I had to get my fix from buying packs at Wal-Mart. Even if I could afford a box nowadays, parallels and inserts galore don't help us poor set collectors. The 2024 set was the first set that I completed by hand in over 30 years, and it was all done through single packs and trades with amazing people.
3rd Place:
Completed sets from three other countries outside of the U.S.
Again, I must go back to my high school days. At one card show, I bought an entire box of 1988 Leaf. Although I never formally took French in school, I did manage to pick up some thanks to Donruss's Canadian counterpart (and Seasame Street - growing up close to the U.S. - Canada border, I got to occasionally catch the Canadian version of the show. I can still count to 10 in French thanks to that limited exposure.)
Somehow, somewhere back then, I also picked up a big stack of the 1988 Topps UK Minis set. I didn't even know they watched baseball over there, let alone collected cards. In both cases, I had most of the cards, but not all of them. Flash forward again to my hobby revival, and those two sets became targets for completion. Again, thanks primarily through online trading, the sets got complete.
The last set I actually
won from another blogger back in 2020. The 1992 St. Vincent HOF Heroes Postage Stamps set was a small set of oversized postage from the Carribean islands of St. Vincent and Grenadines.
I don't see many collectors mention how many different countries they have cards from, let alone completed sets. Having sets from 4 different countries (U.S. included) seems impressive to me at least!
2nd Place:
This blog right here
I didn't mention this, but
Wednesday's Repack Haiku was officially the 1,500th post on
Diamond Jesters. Next year, this blog will celebrate it's 10 year anniversary. The fact I've continued to create so much content for such a long stretch of time astounds me. This blog, the friends I've made through it, the things I've learned through others - it's as much a part of the hobby experience for me as the cards themselves. I can't imagine one without the other. The blog gives my collecting added purpose.
1st Place:
Meeting Mickey Mantle
I've shown off my Mantle autograph many times before. It's easily the prized card in my collection. But beyond the card were the circumstances behind it. There are plenty of Mantle autographs out there, as he was known to sign a lot especially in his later years. But how many people today can say they actually got their signature in person? I'm very lucky that I got to meet one of the legends of the game.
Alright fellow bloggers! What are your top 3 achievements in the hobby?
