What I have vs. what I need (37%!)

The total number of different Orioles players autographs I have on cards is 311. A pretty cool number since I've always been a fan of the band 311, "Woah-oh, Amber is the color of your energy", sorry I had to do it.

Back to the subject at hand; that means there are 531 O's players that I do not have autographs of. So this leaves my total at 37% of the project goal. It also make me think that 842 different players (including the guys I speculate will be on the 09 roster) does not seem like a lot for the 54 year history of the team. I compiled my list of players using baseball-reference.com's year-by-year list of guys that appeared in at least 1 game for the team. I will cross-check this with the Orioles media guide to see if I overlooked anybody, which is definitely a possibility.

As Rod pointed out to me earlier, I'm not interested in the autographs of the guys who have O's cards but never appeared in a game, or those who have been on the official roster but didn't make it on the field. Even though that's a lot further than I could ever have dreamed of making it to the bigs; I just can't count those guys in my project goal.

Breaking down the 531 players I still need autographs of, by my count 73 have passed away, with Tom Gastall, who died in 1956 being an early candidate for my white whale.

So now I am going to try to formulate a game plan at tackling the project. I think my first move will be to start obtaining O's cards, if available, for the original O's of 1954 and send them TTM requests; then working my way towards more recent years, occasionally buying cards on ebay or beckett if I can get a deal on a nice autograph. Thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas?