State of the Blog - Phungo 2009 and 2010+

2010 Phungo #48 Dickie Noles

Team Phungo has passed the 18 month mark in blogging. 2009 featured over 200 posts and we averaged roughly 1200 page views a month. Both are achievements that I am happy with and hope to maintain moving forward. In short it is a big thumbs up on this end. Just like Dickie Noles is telling us on the above Phungo card. You can tell this is a pose that Noles has struck many of times giving he thumbs up and displaying his 1980 World Championship ring. This picture was taken ast a Dickie Noles autograph signing for more info click here.

I do want to take a moment to look at some of the things that have happened at Team Phungo Headquarters this past year and figure out where we are headed for 2010.

Spot the Sig!

STS is likely the most succeful feature to come out of the Phungo brain trust. And I am very excited to see it succeeding so well over at Padrographs.

1959 Topps Set

I am very happy with how the 1959 set is coming. Ideally I would like to cut my needs list to finish this set in half each year until it becomes a manageable quantity of 20 or so cards. I was able to do this in both 2008 and 2009. I started building the set Thanksgiving of 2007 and by the end of 08 I was half completed. The December 09 Philly Show put me over the 75% mark with the Short Printed Bob Gibson Rookie Card.

2008 Topps Heritage

This winter I have also started a side project related to the 1959 Topps Set and that is the 2008 Topps Heritage Set. I plan on collecting the first 425 cards of the set. There are a slew of short prints beyond 425, but those are not important to me now. I have settled on cards 1-425, which does include some SPs but I have all but one of those and that is satisfactory at this time.

As of press time the heritage set is 70% complete.

Phungo Cards
After making the 2009 set of Phungo Cards, I wasn't sure I would still be involved in the blogging community a year later. I am really happy that I reaain blogging and was very happy to have put together the 2010 set of cards. The results were not quite up to what I had wanted, and because of time constraints, I compromised on several aspects of the set. I am pretty sure there will be a 2011 set of cards, although it may be an abbreviated set. One of my goals for 2011 is to produce cards for the teams that have yet to be represented on a Phungo Card.

Hall of Fame Thursday
This is a weekly feature that I ran for a couple months and found out what I already knew. I am not good with schedules - I may bring this back in a different form. Something like Hall of Fame Profiles so I am not married to the day of the week.

For the Collector

This feature is typically tied into another post. If I have the time I will look up recent ebay auctions for the card or player featured and see what they are going for. Not sure how much interest this information, until my Elvis Andrus post this past weekend.

Phungo 5

I am on the fence regarding P5 this year. It was a great experience and a lot of fun to do. Unfortunately the project takes a surprising amount of effort and I sort of fear that I would be able to add anything new to the questions a second time around. Something tells me Phungo 5 will be back, but I am not sure it will be nearly as robust this time around.

Year of the Trade

I wouild like 2010 to be the Year of the Trade. I find it unbelievable how many trades some people make. First off I just don't have that many cards I am interested in trading away. Secondly for all the Money I spend on cards, I doubt I have nearly as many cards as other collectors. Regardless, I am going to try and make 2010 the Phungo year of the trade. My goal in 2009 was to conduct a trade a month. I think I was pretty close. This year I would like to shoot for two trades a month.

This brings me to the 2009 $$$ breakdown

My biggest collecting goal was to spend less money then Chris Harris - which I accomplished - but you still can't beat an on-location box break. Seriously I just don't think I could spend $4500 on cards with out doing Brewster Millions Style.

Well in truth some days I did act like Brewster - I sort of bugeted myself $100/month but went way over. Some things were expected like Heritage Boxes and Vintage Card ebay luxuries. Other were not as thought out like bulk buying supplies that I looked at as lump sum investments.

By my calculations I ending up spending a bit over $2000 in 2009. It roughly broke down by venue as follows

$1100 Ebay
$550 Card Shows
$200 Retail
$120 Supplies and other Non Card expenses
$40 Group Breaks
$15 Trades/Postage
$0 Card Shops

Biggest surprise there is the ZERO for Card Shops. I didn't make it to a card shop once in 2009. All in all eBay is probably my most cost effective way to buy for my needs but it sure ate up the funds. It is addictive and I have already made a few (BIG) purchases in 2010.

In the next week or so I will try and do a break down by card type (New/Vintage/Autos) to see where the heck all this money is going.

Collecting Goals 2010

Beyond building the 1959 Topps and 2008 Heritage sets mentioned above, I will be adding to the Phillies Collection with a focus on collecting autos from members of the 2008 World Championship team. I will also be focusing on Vintage HOF cards this year.

Building a 2nd Vintage set will eventually become a goal - that set will likely be the 1971 edition of Topps.

Conclusions

I am happy with where Phungo presently and hope the Phils continue their winning ways. I figure I average about 30 page views a day, but that would be 10-20% lower if the Phils were not going through a favorable run.

Shortly I will be adding a poll for readers to pick out their favorite Phungo features and I will try to use that to base content for 2010.

Thanks to both my readers and all the rest of the bloggers out there that have keep this hobby/obsession fun and interesting.