Monday, July 26, 2010

194 To Go

While updating my autograph lists today, I noticed that I only need 194 autographs to complete my project. I'm not sure how everyone else keeps track of their collections, but I have a master list and then from that, a have list and a need list. It's probably too many lists really, but I enjoy updating them and watching one grow as the other shrinks.

To the best of my knowledge, there has been 883 players who have played in a regular season game for the Orioles from 1954 until today. I had 311 of their autographs when I started blogging in March 2009, and now I'm up to 742 different Orioles signatures. I've added 431 autographs in 16 months to my collection by getting autographs at/through

Orioles Games

Private Signings

Ebay


Orioles Alumni Signings

TTM Successes

And Trades

The 194 remaining autographs I need includes the 52 upgrades I am looking for, meaning that I have autographs from those players but not on their Orioles cards. There have been plenty of guys who have suited up for the O's that never had cards produced, so for them, I'm fine having an autographed card in another teams uniform, but I prefer Orioles autographs whenever possible. So I really only need 142 autographs to have an autograph from everyone who has ever played for the Orioles. Exactly half (71) of them have passed away, so their autographs are either expensive or hard to find. I do a good job with limiting my spending on the collection, so those will trickle in at best.

I know that there will be a few autographs that will always elude me, whether due to price or scarcity, but I hope to one day have as close to a completed collection as possible. Thanks to everyone who has traded with me, read the blog, or contributed in any way. I've had a lot of fun so far.

I've shown or written about approximately 543 of the 742 autographs that I have, so there are literally hundreds of more posts to go, and I hope that you enjoy them all.

7 comments:

Matthew Glidden said...

Good luck! Still love the blog concept and you've done great just getting this close.

Perhaps this is an old question, but are you considering custom "Oriole" cards for the players who never had one and are still alive?

SAinPA said...

Great job with the blog. It's a "daily read" for me. I've learned a lot of intereting trivia about the O's players.
Hope I can help you find some of the unpossible 71.

Orioles Magic said...

Thanks guys!

Matthew, yes I do consider custom cards as Orioles cards, but I only currently have a few in my collection.

Sals-That would be great, I know that some of them will be tough!

zman40 said...

I can't believed that you more than doubled your collection in just over a year. That's great! Keep it up!

Orioles Magic said...

Thanks Zman. At this point, things seem to only be trickling in, but I enjoy adding ever single card that I can.

Kirk Jacobson said...

Ryan,
I used to have all the excel lists like you do but updating each got to be too much for me. I still have hard copies of the Crown Set and All-Time roster master lists to cross off. I pulled the master list, have list and needs list together to make one all encompassing list. It has every player listed and each category I use for my cards. It's really convenient and I get to see everything at once.

Orioles Magic said...

Kirk- I know what you're saying. I have occasionally updated only one list, or completely removed someone accidentally. The main reason I split them out was to use for the site.