I recall a Tony Robbins quote where he said something to the effect of:
People overestimate what they can achieve in a year. But they underestimate what they can do in five years.
Obviously, opinions are going to differ on Tony Robbins, but the quote stuck with me because it describes my T206 collecting journey perfectly. I started collecting T206s in 2010. I joined net54 and spent hours poring over old threads in an attempt to learn as much as possible about the set. A side effect of joining net54 was that I was also constantly looking at scans of other people’s collections.
I was working with a budget of around $200 a month, and my collection was tiny. Looking at all the amazing, valuable items that other people owned was a bit daunting. How was I supposed to a build a collection anywhere near as impressive as these guys when I was only able to buy a couple lower grade Hall of Famers each month?
I tried to avoid any negative thoughts and just enjoy the hunt, and cards I did have. But I couldn’t help feeling discouraged from time to time. Honestly, I didn’t expect those feelings to ever go away completely. After all, there will always be someone out there with a bigger and better collection than yours.
Around three years ago, I was looking through my collection and it occurred to me that I hadn’t felt discouraged in that same way in quite awhile. I thought about why that might be. Could it have been because I had made an effort to just enjoy the hobby and not get caught up in comparing my collection to anyone else’s? Or maybe it was the fact that I had consciously made it a priority to spend more time enjoying my collection than searching for cards to add to it? Both of those things played a part, to be sure, but I think the most impactful elements were time and effort. There’s a bit of a “compounding interest” effect with building a collection. The cards you add to the collection in a given month may not seem like they are moving the needle much, but over time they can add up to something really significant.
When you are just getting started with your T206 collection, it’s hard to imagine your collection in the future, as a finished product, and therefore easy to get discouraged. It’s difficult for humans to imagine what their effort multiplied over days, weeks, months, and years will look like. And even harder to imagine what the fruits of that labor will look like. If you consistently spend time looking for good deals and tough-to-find cards, you will get some hits here and there. Over time, those cards begin to stack up.
Collecting is as much (if not more) about “the hunt” as it is about owning the items we collect. As long as you are having fun collecting T206s, the rest will take care of itself. And if you’re still collecting the set five years from now, you’re going to be surprised at how many great cards you’ve found between then and now.
