What I love about collecting

Greg of the immortal "Night Owl Cards" recently wrote a post about some cards I sent him and how they pertained to the idea of him being difficult collector to buy for (though I assure you, Greg: you're most definitely among the easiest collectors to buy for!).

It sounds paradoxical, but I sometimes worry about being hard to trade with for the sheer fact that my collection is so easy-going. I chase after a lot of different things, which I fear gives people the impression of not knowing where to start and/or worrying I'll already have everything they send me. And let me say that this is most definitely not the case.

Take this brilliant Starlin Castro mini I recently received from Greg: I own over a hundred cards of the ex-Cub, yet this one was a new add to the binders.

I have no insecurities over the largeness of my collection (other than the question of how I'm going to move it all once I get my own place).

One of the biggest reasons I love collecting the way I do is that I own enough cards to be proud of what I've accumulated thus far, but yet I know that there's still piles and piles of stuff I need floating around out there. My collection will never be complete. There will always be cards to chase. This may seem daunting to some, but for me it's what's kept me in this hobby all these years.

Hundreds and hundreds of new cards I need are being produced every year -- like these two from Greg -- and really all I can hope to do is secure a small percentage of them and be okay with that.

Collecting is not an art form: there are an infinite number of ways to collect baseball cards and none of them are the wrong way (with the possible exception of pure profit-seeking, which to me isn't really collecting in the first place).

Me, I don't really have a definitive theme to my collection, which I've come to think has become a theme in and of itself.

And there's always new things to collect!

While I've never specifically tried to hoard cards with Wrigley Field photos -- probably the most photographed ballpark in baseball history -- Greg has me thinking of doing so with these two (young Tito!).

Better yet, I'm always learning in this hobby, even about things I thought I'd long since covered.

For a long time I was under the impression that I had all I needed from early Fleer, but lately I've come to realize that there's a whole lot of great cards from the era I've somehow never seen before.

And if you love oddballs as much as I do, well you can really forget about ever discovering all this hobby has to offer, because there will always be some tiny regional food- or chain-issued set you'll never see.

I own a few of these excellent '70s discs (this one comes courtesy of some company called Isaly's), but this dupe Penguin from Greg's collection was most definitely new to me, as are about 99 percent of the oddballs ever printed. That's exciting to me. That makes the possibilities infinite.

As a collector, sometimes it helps to take a step back and realize just how beautiful and thrilling being a collector can be.