2013 year-in-review and a look ahead to 2014: my turn!

Happy 2014, everybody!  As everyone else is doing today, I'm going to take a look back at my year of collecting in 2013 and lay out some expectations for this year (as I watch the day's slate of bowl games, which should end after today, period--screw this "next Monday" title game noise!).

First, let's see how I did in 2013:

Resolutions:

1.  Post quality content, dammit!  Meh, not so much.  I came up with a few somewhat original things, but most of my posts were of the "show-off cards" variety.  I'll try to mix it up a bit more this year!

2.  Set a budget this time.  I give myself an "A" for this one.  After a net spending of about $2400 in 2012, that was my 2013 goal, and I stuck to that with zero problems!  This worked out so well I'll be sticking to it again in 2014.  More on that and other spending data in a bit.

3.  350 posts between the two blogs.  Yeah, not so much.  I had a decent pace going for maybe half the year, but there were plenty of periods where I was just unmotivated.  I think the stress of having to produce this much got to me, so as others have said, to keep things fun enough to keep going, I'm not imposing such a quota this year.  By the way, my final two-blog post tally:  112 (TMV) + 146 (TMM) = 258.

4.  Keep on keeping on with the set wantlists.  And how!  I'm not gonna do the work to figure out just how many sets I completed, but the results speak for themselves when you gander at my baseball and football lists (and lack of hockey).  As I focus on new projects, I'm proud of how much effort I put into putting a TON of sets to bed!

5.  Don't forget your non-Michigan PCs.  I'd say I did fine here.  In my resolutions post I singled out some Tigers and stars (Ripken/Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux) I collect, and while I can't say I added a ton of big stuff for any of them, I did score some cool pickups, and many of those I traded with were generous enough to include them as well in packages.  Despite other pursuits, I didn't leave these guys out!

6.  MOAR TRADING.  I specifically hoped to end up with at least 100 trade posts between the two blogs, and I count 34 on TMV with another 25 by way of TMM.  That's barely more than half (with plenty of overlap), and it's not for lack of trying on YOUR part, but pretty much my laziness.  I have less trade bait to work with (mostly procuring things through COMC now) and just don't have the energy some of you guys do when it comes to trading.  That said, without shooting for a specific number this time, I'm really going to try to maintain a focus on trading this year.

7.  Michigan sports PCs goals.  I'll go into more depth in a TMM post, but briefly here's what I wanted to achieve in 2013 (with actual totals as of today in parentheses, as I have a TON left to post):

• Baseball:  200 (243)
• Football:  750 (759)
• Unique football PC subjects:  100 (124)
• Hockey:  75 (112)
• Overall:  1100 (1139)

As you can see, I easily met all of those goals, and that doesn't take into account all my 2013 purchases I still haven't posted!

So overall, I'd call it another successful year of collecting.

Accomplishments:

I didn't do this last year, but it seems like a good idea to highlight some of the cool things I was able to do over the course of the year for my collection and sports fandom.  Those feats include:

Alison Brie, because obviously

• Reaching the 500-post mark on this here blog.  Took me long enough...

• Completing several PCs.  Matt Miller's is the only one that's officially done right now, but I did purchase and/or receive cards that will finish off a couple others.  This will go a long way towards motivating me to keep at it this year

• Completing some nameplates, namely these three:  Mike Hart (2008 SP Threads Lettermen), plus Zach Putnam 2008 Razor Letterman unnumbered and /20.  These are tons of fun to piece together and I'll be on the trail of a few others this year, just watch!

• Attending four MLB games; one in Milwaukee back in May, and three in Detroit, including a pre-All-Star Game Verlander win, Max Scherzer's 20th, and my first ever playoff game--Detroit's only home ALCS victory over Boston (all three were wins!).

Buying/selling:

As I mentioned, I tried to stick to a $2400 net spending budget, so an average of $200/month, while trying not to exceed $300 in a given month.  Here's how that worked out:

I exceeded $300 just once, in January ($311.40) mainly due to a huge COMC haul.  A dip down to $61.44 in February (the only month in which I spent less than $139) evened things out for a bit, and other than some extremes in March (another huge COMC pickup) and November (mostly COMC and eBay), I was pretty good about my spending.  Things picked up in December because I had some money to burn, then made a couple late sales to furnish a few other pickups.  My gross spending was actually about $2450, but I made up for that with a little more than $50 in sales, putting me right around (and slightly under) the $2400 mark for net spending.  In the end I was happy with how well this worked out as I never felt limited, but actually thought I was much more responsible than I could have been!

Here's a quick breakdown on where I spent my money while I'm at it:

Big surprise--the majority of that pie goes to COMC and eBay.  Counting groups of SportLots and COMC items as one purchase each, I made 110 buys in 2013, and 79 of those came from eBay, while eight were monthly COMC packages.  I attended fewer shows, so my spending there dipped, and I also made a massive cut on how much I spent at retail (a major positive development, for sure) compared to 2012, with Blowout also taking a bit of a hit.  A lot of that money went towards SportLots and new source JustCommons, both of which will surely get more of it this year!

So, what does 2014 have in store?

No resolutions this year--I'm in this thing to have fun, not make rules!  Here's some of what I'm planning, though:

• Stick to the $2400 yearly/$200 monthly budget.  If it ain't broke...
• Keep up the player-collecting.  Though most of them are Michigan-related, I'm going to get stuff up about them here to in an effort to bolster acquisitions.
• Do some original posting.  I once again have a few ideas, not to mention some holdovers from last year.  I'm especially thinking of opinion pieces on card design.
• Get some trades done.  I'm not gonna set a number this time, but let's get to work on those!  For now, your best bet to deal with me is to let me know what you have, then expect me to ask you to pick some stuff out from COMC!
• I dunno what else, we'll figure it out when we get there.

Thanks as always to everyone who helped make 2013 a great year, and here's to another!

Bonus content:  favorite entry search terms:

As many of you know, I like taking a peek at my stats from time to time.  Here are some of my favorite search terms that have led people to this here blog:

"ups girl"

"yo dawg template"

"respek knuckles"

"nickelback sucks"

Happy New Year, everybody!

2012-->2013, part 2: money money money mooooney...MOOOONEY!

Yesterday I covered my 2012 and 2013 resolutions, then promised that I would return today to talk about the financial aspects of my collecting habit, both last year and going forward.

After June I posted a mid-year look at my spending and selling, and I'm proud to report that I stayed disciplined enough that I continued to record every purchase (and sale), no matter how tempting it might have seemed not to do so.  That would have been a massive waste of time, though, and there really was no point in not keeping an accurate running total so I could keep my spending reasonable.  Also, I've maintained that I try to be reasonably transparent with my spending on my blogs, and I feel that I've lived up to that.

So today, you get to see my net spending for an average (?) year in my collecting life, including how often I bought stuff, where I was most likely to purchase cards, how I did trying to sell, and maybe some other useful info.

Before I begin, a few notes:

• Anything I purchased with "house money" such as gift cards, eBay bucks, and even bottle returns (a gray area, yes, but it's my blog and I'll do what I want) didn't count towards my spending total, though if those only covered a part of a purchase, I prorated the price accordingly.
• Purchase totals for online sources include delivery costs.  Basically, I was good about reporting the full price paid every time I bought something.
• Purchase totals for retail include Michigan sales tax.
• Selling totals (I believe) don't take into account what I had to pay to ship those items; I felt like it would be more interesting to capture the total price of each sale, especially since shipping costs are pretty much implied when you sell over the Internet.
• I didn't track spending on packaging for and shipping of trade packages and giveaway items.  I think of trading as a zero-sum game (where everyone wins!) and while those costs are a necessary evil, I don't believe they merit meticulous tracking.
• I also didn't include the cost of any supplies I purchased for myself, such as boxes, sleeves and top-loaders.  While those purchases are related to what I spend on this hobby, I also don't feel they merit consideration when looking at yearly spending.

Ok, on with the show!  First up are some buying numbers and charts:

Let's get down to some stats, shall we?:

• Total spending:  $3,173.76
• Average monthly spending:  $264.48
• Most spent in one month:  March ($533.72)
• Least spent in one month:  December ($0!  I can't remember the last time I went this long without buying anything!)
• Largest individual purchase:  $300 for the "IPP" lot of Michigan Wolverines on March 30
• Source purchased from the most:  COMC, $1,463.55
• Source purchased from the least:  Group breaks, $24
• Average spending per source:  $396.72

COMC clearly ruled the roost here, accounting for nearly half my 2012 spending, and for good reason:  I love buying me some singles, and so far there hasn't been any other place that's been such a reasonable source for collecting my favorites.  Look for that to continue this year.

eBay was the next most useful, and I really did pick up some exciting stuff for my PCs this year, mainly in terms of the Michigan collections, but not entirely.  Similarly, my spending at card shows included zero dollars spent on boxes, with all of it going towards my baseball and Michigan PCs, trade bait, and autographed memorabilia.

While I don't have numbers for my 2011 spending, I can tell you for sure that I spent a LOT less on Blowout this year as those boards have kind of devolved in my opinion over the last few months.  No loss, though--there's always other places to spend my money!

That $300 in-person purchase, while costly, was most certainly a boon to my Michigan PC, especially because of the fact that I picked up both a good number of high-end stuff and a bunch of new players for the football collection.

The $200+ I spent on retail was my biggest regret of the year, but looking at that number gives me plenty of motivation to avoid the same mistake this year.  Meanwhile, I certainly don't regret joining Dimwit's group break, but as I explained yesterday, I don't see myself participating in any breaks this year.  I may, however, spend a bit more on a site like SportLots as I seek to complete a few more baseball and football sets.

Overall, I spent a good chunk of change, but I added so much useful stuff (and relatively little junk) to my PC that I can say without a doubt that it was worth it.

Next up, a look at how I did with some sales:

NOTE:  the eBay total above is $55.

And some stats:

• Total sales:  $769.75
• Average sales per month:  $64.15
• Most sold in one month:  July ($222.75)
• Least sold in one month:  as you can see, there's a bunch of zeros up there...
• Largest individual sale:  $200 for multiple lots on the Blowout forums.  Technically, I sold more in one day on COMC, but that included many individual sales along with one large port sale.  So for the purpose of this post, the Blowout lot wins it
• Smallest individual sale:  $0.50 for a 2001 Topps Chrome Adrian Gonzalez on COMC
• Source sold to the most:  COMC, $430.75
• Source sold to the least:  eBay, $55
• Average selling per source:  $256.58

I hadn't really planned to dabble too much in selling this year, but in the process of trying to get rid of unwanted stuff earlier in the year, I put up a bunch of lots over the course of a few days on Blowout and did fairly well.  Later, I finally jumped into COMC head-first and had a blast dumping some unwanted trade bait for some store credit, all of which I promptly spent (and plenty more!).  Finally, during my 2012 Topps Football frenzy I managed to sell a Drew Brees manupatch and Chris Houston 1/1 for a bit more cash.  The fact that I totaled more than $750 absolutely amazed me, and while I can't possibly hope to replicate those results this year (thanks to a dearth of cards to sell, really), that gave me a bit more spending room for the year, which you can tell I think I put to good use.

And lastly, but most importantly, a look at my net spending:

• Total spending - total sales = $3,173.76 - $769.75 = $2,404.01
• Net spending per month:  $200.33

See?  My $2,400 yearly budget I decided upon yesterday wasn't entirely pulled out of my ass!  Besides being an easily calculable $200 times 12 months, that's almost exactly what my net spending was last year, and I see no reason to change that considering the results I had.  The only difference between then and now, as I said, is that I probably won't get involved with selling much, if at all, this year, so look for the total spending number to decrease accordingly.  That's not a problem as far as I'm concerned:  I'm happy to work on getting better at scoring nice deals, plus that'll get me that much more motivated to attain my goal of 100 trades, which might have a bigger stake in terms of being a source of incoming cards for 2013.

Well, I hope this admittedly numerical analysis-heavy look at my 2012 spending was as interesting and informative for you as it was for me.  I'm thrilled to be able to find ways to improve so easily this year, and I'm already aware of how little effort it really takes to track my card spending, so you can be sure I'll be repeating that this year!  Here's to a more frugal but fruitful 2013!

2012-->2013, part 1: resolutions

Happy 2013, everybody!

I've been planning to write this post for a few days and now I finally have time to do so, so I'm no longer feeling left out as most of you have already done so!

First, I'd like to take a look back at the year of collecting that was 2012.  Let's see how I did with my resolutions:

1.  MOAR TRADING:  Between the two blogs I had 48 trade package posts.  Even taking some overlap into account, I'm quite happy with that.  Better yet, I know I can improve upon that this year!  Success

2.  Post more trade bait:  I definitely achieved this, at least for a little while.  I don't think it resulted in me making all that many trades, but the page was there when I needed it.  Ultimately I dumped most of my useful stuff to COMC, which ended up paying off big-time.  Success

3.  Comment more on blogs I read:  I know there's always room for improvement, but nary a day went by where I didn't comment on at least one post.  I realize how important it is to get that feeling people are reading your work, plus these can often lead to trades, so this is something that remains high on my list for this year as well.  Success

4.  Respond to comments I receive:  I can honestly say that I responded to nearly every comment I received, both in the Comments section and via email when possible (I still definitely prefer when people leave comments while signed in to an account linked to their email so the latter is possible).  I appreciate every single one I get, even if it's just someone making a funny remark about what I posted.  Success

5.  Manage two blogs:  This got a little tricky at times because twice the work can often lead to burnout, and there were definitely some weeks where I slacked on posting on one or both of the blogs.  Still, I managed to get up 120 posts on this one and more than 150 over on TMM, which meant I increased my total posting from 2011 by around 50.  More importantly, I think, I managed to separate out my Michigan-centric stuff from the rest of my collecting so the two blogs would be more enjoyable to their target audiences.  That's something I'm going to continue as long as it makes sense.  Success

6.  Post quality content:  Sure, anybody can throw up some trade package features and show off their other purchases and PC items, but that's only part of what a collecting blog should entail.  What I should try to focus on more is why I collect what I do, my likes and dislikes, and other such original content.  One feature I do like to do from time to time, though, which seems to be somewhat successful, is showing off and discussing my completed sets.  I don't do so often because they get scan-intensive, and that can take a lot of time and effort.  Still, it's something I'll try to do more of this year, along with hopefully some other interesting, original stuff.  That and I'll have to see if I can come up with some sort of feature unique to this blog so I can stand apart like some of you do.  Failure

7.  Group breaks:  For one thing, I had hoped to run at least one more group break myself, but in my opinion there literally hasn't been anything worthwhile that would have made sense for such a project.  The products from my three previous breaks--2010 EEE and 2008 Razor Letterman--have shot up in price and out of the realm of what would make sense value-wise.
I had also intended on participating in more group breaks run by others last year, but after joining one run by the Dimwit, I just realized that there wasn't much value or fun in it for me, because I'm not nearly the team collector most of you are, and I rarely end up with anything good out of them anyway.  I'm just very picky about what I want out of such a venture and understand now that for the most part, group breaks aren't for me, so this is one resolution that definitely won't be on this year's list.  Failure

8.  Spend less on useless crap:  This here is one goal that will now be a permanent part of my collecting strategy.  My two biggest sources of waste in the past were hobby and retail boxes and packs.  Well for starters, I'm pretty sure I didn't pick up any hobby boxes this year at the few shows I attended, and definitely not online.  Retail was a slightly different story, but I still made major strides.  I did pick up a bunch of 2010 Press Pass PE blisters (on sale!) for about $80, and I soon regretted that decision considering how I did.  Later in the year I went a bit overboard with 2012 Topps Football retail racks and blasters, totaling around $150, which is definitely more than I needed to spend there.  That's more than $200 I could have used elsewhere, but that's still a huge improvement over my past junk spending habits.  Success

9.  Complete some more sets:  My baseball and football set wantlists have shrunk so much I barely even recognize them anymore.  I combined purchases from COMC, SportLots, Blowout and eBay to knock out a large chunk of my wants in 2012.  But better yet, I got an amazing amount of help from many bloggers and readers last year, and I can't stress enough how much of a difference this made.  That'll be a bit more difficult this year due to the fact I won't need as many cards, plus I've drastically cut down on my set-collecting, but it's wonderful to know I have such a great source for getting help with one of the most enjoyable and pure pursuits of the hobby.  Thanks again, everyone!  Success

10.  Get more organized and get rid of unwanted stuff:  I've gone on quite a bit already so I'll make this brief.  First, I got a lot more stuff scanned, and in some cases with player PCs, checklisted.  I also made major headway in getting things into storage in a way that makes sense.  Finally, besides the usual purging I've done with unwanted stuff in trades, I recovered a ton of space thanks to the success of my fall cleaning lots, a project I plan to continue as space becomes necessary.  Who doesn't like free stuff?  Success

11.  400/100/50 and beyond:  In short, I wanted to surpass 400 unique Michigan sports hits (I was just under at that point), 100 baseball hits, and to reach the 50-hit mark for at least one player.  Those of you who follow TMM probably already know, but I recently went over 800 total Michigan sports PC hits, including 600 in football.  Baseball stands at 152, so that definitely happened.  And Jake Long (57, with more left to post) and Rich Hill (61, ditto) gave me double the fun of the 50+ club, with more pending my COMC haul posts!  Success

Nine out of 11 seems like a pretty successful year to me, and this gives me a great start on exactly what I should be doing in 2013, namely:

1.  Post quality content, dammit!:  Like I discussed above, I have major room for improvement here.  I'll work on that starting this week and see what I can come up with to make this blog more interesting, so it's not just purchase/trade/PC show and tell.  If you have any requests, please throw them in the comments as I'd love to have them!

2.  Set a budget this time:  Thus far, I've never given myself an exact budget, but I hadn't kept track of my spending until last year.  The proved extremely useful, and I'll get to that later.  For now, I'll just say that my plan is not to exceed an average of $200/month, or $2400 for the year, and no single month should go higher than $300.  I don't anticipate bringing in nearly the same amount of money thanks to selling as I did last year, so being a bit more restrained should be a goal of mine.

3.  350 posts between the two blogs:  It's about time I tried to increase my output, though I want it to still meet my standards from #1 in terms of quality.  This doesn't exactly have to be an even split, but I want to see both quantity and quality this year!

4.  Keep on keeping on with the set wantlists:  I have nine baseball sets (three others are complete sets) on my baseball list and 11 on the football list.  My goal this year will be to complete more than half of those.

5.  Don't forget your non-Michigan PCs!:  While I might not go as far as I did with my Michigan baseball player collections last year, I'd like to scan albums for several other players I like to collect, starting with Tigers Justin Verlander, Curtis Granderson (again, Tigers only), and Kirk Gibson, and then maybe moving on to Ripken, Griffey, Gwynn and Maddux, and even other Tigers as well, depending on how things go.  Because I'm not supercollecting them, I don't plan on creating Google Drive spreadsheets listing everything I have, but scanned albums will make it easier to get an idea of what I have while also showing them off.

6.  MOAR TRADING:  I'm going to set an arbitrary goal of 100 trades between the two blogs because that's something I'll seek to do more as I try to spend less.  That would be more than double what I did last year, but I think I'm up to it.  Any improvement over last year's activity would be a plus.

7.  Michigan sports PCs goals:  I'd like to surpass the following totals:

• Baseball:  200
• Football:  750
• Unique football PC subjects:  100
• Hockey:  75
• Overall:  1100

Since I had a good amount of success improving things last year, this year I'm gonna attempt fewer goals, but put more effort into doing so.

Tune in tomorrow when I look back on my spending and consider changes I want to make to my buying habits in 2013!

Mid-year resolution and buy/sell review: it's my money and I need it NOW!

Now here's a post I've been looking forward to writing (not that I'm dying for summer to speed by, of course).  Ever since I posted my resolutions for the new year and decided to be meticulous about keeping track of my spending and selling (thanks to Google Docs!), I've been anxious to take a look at how I did in each of those areas.  Here, then, is a quick look at how the first half of 2012 went for me:

Resolutions:

1.  MOAR TRADING:  yes and no.  Between both blogs I believe I count 13 unique trades, which isn't too bad, though I certainly could have completed more.  I do have some more deals on the back burner, though, and I also sent out more stuff than I received, so overall, I count this as a success thus far.
2.  Post more trade bait:  I definitely achieved this, at least for a few months.  The fact is, in the last few weeks I've dumped a lot of stuff that didn't appear to be garnering any interest via Blowout and COMC, which was a coup for me in the long run because that cleared up some space and earned me some extra spending money.  Since I made this resolution I've again been focusing less on stocking up on trade bait and more on picking up a few things online or via shows for impending deals, which makes more sense from a storage and financial standpoint.
3.  Comment more on blogs I read:  this is one that still needs improvement because even without keeping statistics I'm sure that the ratio of comments I leave to posts I read is too low.  This is why I'm reviewing these, though, and now hopefully I'll remember to improve upon this.
4.  Respond to comments I receive:  no improvement necessary here:  I respond to almost every comment I can, and the only ones I really neglect are the ones I complained about where the user doesn't leave their email address for me to do so personally.  I value all of your comments, especially the hilarious ones, and hope you each still feel compelled to leave one once in a while.
5.  Manage two blogs:  again, yes and no.  I've gone through a couple periods the first half of the year where my attention was pulled elsewhere, such as work, vacations, visiting family/friends, etc.  You could argue that when my attention is divided, having two blogs makes both suffer since my effort has to be split.  In general I think I've done reasonably well, though, but I do recognize that I need to be more consistent in terms of posting to both, and especially in terms of finding more content for this one.
6.  Post quality content:  this one needs improvement because I feel I haven't had the time to come up with unique features like many of you seem to come up with at will.  Most of my posts this year have covered purchases/trades, and while those are definitely important to me, I'd like to get back to other topics that don't necessarily involve my PCs.  I'll work on this as well.
7.  Group breaks:  definitely needs improvement.  I've only participated in one group break thus far:  Daily Dimwit's January effort.  It was fun and the cost was reasonable despite my lack of a big hit, but I've since put all of my money into other sources.  I'd also intended on possibly running another break or two of my own, but my desire to get away from disappointing box results may have contributed towards my steering clear of such a project.  There's still six months left this year, though, so we'll see!
8.  Spend less on useless crap:  I definitely feel a lot better about my spending this year.  Early on, I made one purchase that in retrospect caused me some regret--a bunch of retail blisters of 2010 Press Pass PE football.  I had already resolved to buy less retail crap, but these were calling to me all the same.  While they were fun to open, I can't say I pulled anything especially useful out of them except for a couple C.J. Spiller autos, which I was fortunately able to sell.  Still, I was stuck with a bunch of practically worthless hits for what I spent.  That aside, I've done extremely well, replacing boxes and packs with an explosion of PC cards that's allowed each collection to grow rapidly.  Success!
9.  Complete some more sets:  for whatever reason, I've focused more on PC stuff thus far, but now that some of my sources are temporarily drying up, I'm committed to putting the finishing touches on a bunch more of my sets like I did last year.  Call this an "incomplete" for now.
10.  Get more organized and get rid of unwanted stuff:  I'm making a very good effort towards this goal.  Through more trades I've definitely gotten rid of a lot of stuff that was useless to my collection while keeping me involved in trading with other bloggers.  I've also put a good amount of time into sorting and organizing things so my collection takes up less space.  I'm proud of the effort I made here but it's still a continuing process and will take more time as the year continues.
11.  400/100/50 and beyond:  as a reminder, this referred to my Michigan PCs: 400 football hits, 100 baseball hits and 50 cards of any player.  I had said at the time that I needed only 12 more football hits to reach 400;  I'm now nearing 550 with plenty more that I haven't even scanned yet!  It took a bit longer to make it to 100 in the baseball PC, but my current count of 105 certifies that I made it.  And while Rich Hill's 48 cards don't quite break the tape, I made it to 50 different Jake Longs.  Only halfway through the year and that's check, check and check!

Buying and selling (with charts!):

Buying:
Although I'm not necessarily proud of how much or little I spent on this hobby in the last six months, I decided this year that I wanted to be more transparent about my spending habits, both so I could get a better idea of where my money was going and keep things reasonable, and because I thought it might benefit some of you who also hadn't necessarily put their buying habits into context.  Here's an overview of my spending for the first six months of 2012:

Total spending:  $1572.68
Spending/month:  $262.11
Number of purchases:  51, the first on 1/1 and the last on 6/30
Average purchase:  $30.84
Purchased from:  BlowoutCards forums, COMC, eBay, group breaks, other (the "IPP" lot), retail, shows
Biggest purchase:  $300 for the "IPP" lot
Smallest purchase:  $1 for a Jason Avant Bowman Uncirculated card on COMC
Month in which I spent the most:  March, in which I spent a total of $533.72, including that huge lot, plus a bunch of stuff from the usual suspects
Month in which I spent the least:  April, in which cooler heads prevailed and I spent a miniscule $20.49 to make up for the excesses of March
Source from which I purchased the most:  definitely COMC, where I've spent $608.77, or more than $100 per month
Source from which I purchased the least:  the $24 I spent on group breaks (just Sam's)

And some charts:

I'd like to get my overall spending down a bit over the rest of the year, but still, with fewer extraneous and wasteful purchases, I'm definitely getting more for my dollar this year.  I expect more money to go towards SportLots as I work to complete sets, plus the usual at COMC, especially thanks to my selling there.  Additionally, I'll likely spend less at shows as I find those less useful, and the in-person purchase was really a one-time thing, so that should make things more reasonable going forward.  Really, I could have done a lot worse, don't you think?

Selling:Ever since I've collected I've dabbled in selling stuff that seemed valuable enough or at least didn't interest me enough to keep, but I never really took it seriously.  That changed a bit this year as I got away from eBay's horribly broken model and focused on two other sources:  BlowoutCards' forum and COMC.  The latter especially fueled my efforts in dumping useless cards for useful PayPal and led to a bunch of great PC purchases.  I did have a bit of luck over on Blowout as well, but that was mostly due to a lucky, large sale to one user; still, it counts, and as with COMC, it did a lot to help my collecting.

Total sales:  $478.00
Sales/month:  $79.67
Number of sales:  41
Average sale:  $11.66
Sold on:  BlowoutCards forum, COMC
Biggest sale:  $200 on Blowout for a huge lot of baseball and football autos, relics and patches
Smallest sales:  Multiple $1 cards on COMC
Month in which I sold the most:  March, in which that large sale on Blowout made up most of my total (and fueled the spending towards my large in-person purchase!)
Month in which I sold the least:  February was the only month in which I didn't make any sales

And some charts, which pretty much illustrate what I already said:

Thanks to those sales, my net spending for the first six months of 2012 was a more reasonable $1094.68, or more like about $180/month.  I don't think I can continue to sell that much since most of my sale-able items are now on COMC and likely heading for a port sale, but you never know.

In short, (as IF) January-June of 2012 was pretty good to me in terms of my favorite hobby.  I picked up a TON of PC cards, spent less on crap and stayed pretty involved in blogging (mine and others) while also picking up a little extra Paypal to apply towards cards.  I have some stuff to work on, like keeping my blogs fresh and interesting and making sure I don't neglect trading and set-building, but things are definitely looking up.  I hope you all found this interesting and informative.  In fact, I'd love to see how I compare to each of you in anything I've covered above, be it your resolutions, an estimate of your spending, or whatever else you found relevant!