2022 Year In Review

Every year, I have taken a look at how the past year has impacted my collection, and I thought I should continue again this year and see what changed in 2022! 

2022 Highlights

• The blog reached half of a decade, which I celebrated with a little giveaway.
  
• This was my biggest year for trading, hands down! According to my records, I completed 99 trades this year! 51 were done through the TCDB, which is 30 more than I did last year on the site and a new high there as well. (I know you're wondering: How many of those 99 trades were for the Time Travel Trading Project? A whopping 83!)
  
• Speaking of Time Travel Trading, it continues to grow at an enormous rate. I celebrated the 200th Time Travel Trade this year, and the number of cards in the stack has grown from 408 cards to 624. My trade partners have fed this beast with their generosity, and I am thankful! 
• I acquired what is now the oldest baseball card in my collection: a 1933 Goudey!

• I added two more cards to my Golden Sox Project which puts me at 11 of the 35 cards, or just under 1/3 of the way. I'll keep plugging away at this, but unless prices come way down on the Rafael Devers ASR card, I may not get this complete anytime soon.
  
• I completed 7 sets in 2022 (1988 Fleer Award Winners, 1988 Donruss Boston Red Sox Team Collection, 1988 Topps Kmart Memorable Moments, 1991 Fleer - Pro-Visions Factory, 1992 Fleer - Roger Clemens Career Highlights, 2017 Topps - MLB Awards, 2022 Topps Boston Red Sox) All of them were small sets - either inserts or box sets.
• Did I say 7 complete sets? Thanks to some Christmastime generosity from a fellow blogger, I got one additional set completed, and a major one at that - the 1988 Topps UK minis sets! (Appropriate post forthcoming!)
  

2022 Diamond Jesters Blog Stats

Number of posts: 152 (6 more than last year, but still far short of the 170+ I had been consistently reaching prior.)
Month with the most posts: 19 posts in July, thanks to a large Hall of Fame class size.
Top 5 viewed posts:  The spam bots can be funny sometimes - over 200 views difference between the top two spots!

1. Cards From Cardboard Hemorrhage (373 views)
2. Time Travel Trading Update #61 (172 views)
3. Kissed By The Cardboard Gods (171 views)
   
4. Time Travel Trading Update #64 (162 views)   
5. Time Travel Trading Update #65 (150 views)
   

Most commented posts: Take Five - 35 comments (Nothing brings out the commenters quite like free cards, huh? Even if I take away my response comments, it still leads the pack with 19 comments!)
Followers: 66 (After not earning any new followers in 2021, I get a nice bump of 6 new followers! Thanks!)

My Collection

(Stats courtesy of the Trading Card Database)

 

Total number of cards: 43,763 (Almost 2,000 new cards acquired this year, over double than last year!)

Cards from 2022 sets: 356 (A big dip from last year! I still have trouble finding product on the retail shelves, and when I do the increased costs have made sure I'm more selective with how I'm spending my money.)

Red Sox cards: 5,583 (Am I a team collector? No other team has crossed 2,000 cards.)

Autographed cards: 34 (4 new this year: Bill Lee, Sparky Lyle, Joe Morgan, and Charlie Baker) 

 

Graded cards: 1 (No new cards this year)

Relic cards: 23 (2 new this year: J.D. Martinez and Trevor Story)

 

Compared to last year, 2022 was a great year! Here's hoping for an even better 2023!