Published March 18, 2026 | By Jay A, Collectors MD Community Member

Each December at work meant closing the books. Every dollar reconciled. Every budget line defended. At home, it was the opposite. Unopened credit card statements sat untouched. Shipping boxes piled up and disappeared into the closet. I had no real idea what I’d spent on cards. The avoidance wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate. The denial was professional grade.

At the office, I demanded accountability from myself and everyone around me. Performance metrics. ROI justification. Budget variance analysis. The same discipline I had spent over 25 years building, I refused to apply at home. No tracking. No reconciliation. Just sealed boxes and ignored receipts.

There’s a moment where avoidance stops feeling like protection and starts revealing itself as something else entirely. Not ignorance, but resistance. Not confusion, but choice. The longer we delay facing the numbers – and ultimately the music – the more power we give them over us.

After my son interrupted me during another late-night Fanatics Live break, something shifted. I couldn’t keep pushing it off. That Sunday morning, I sat down and pulled everything up. Bank statements. Credit cards. PayPal. Every transaction.

A couple hours later, I was looking at a number I could no longer avoid.

It wasn’t just that the total was high. It was that I had convinced myself it wasn’t. I had been doing a version of math I would never accept in my professional life. Ignoring smaller purchases. Justifying larger ones. Treating $500 breaks like they didn’t count because I “got something” in return.

In over two decades of business development and marketing, I had never made a meaningful investment decision without the numbers in front of me. Yet here I was, making repeated personal financial decisions at home with real impact, without even the most basic level of accountability. The gap wasn’t about collecting. It was about where I chose to apply discipline, and where I chose not to.

I didn’t stop collecting. But I started tracking. Every purchase had a place, every dollar had a record, and for the first time, I couldn’t hide from what I was actually doing.

Every month, I download my bank statements. I merge everything into a single spreadsheet. I flag every card-related purchase. I reconcile it all. The same scrutiny I would give a $50,000 decision at work, I now give to a $50 card. Not as punishment, but as protection.

Because the math doesn’t lie. We just get really good at avoiding what it’s trying to show us. It only becomes real when we’re willing to see it. The only variable is how long we delay confronting it.

#CollectorsMD
The numbers don’t create the problem, they reveal it – and once you see it clearly, you can finally decide what comes next.

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Published February 06, 2026 | By Martina F, Collectors MD Community Member

I have had several favorite teams throughout my lifetime. The New England Patriots (before they won any Super Bowls), the Edmonton Oilers, the Los Angeles Kings, the Toronto Maple Leafs (we’re on a break), and even the old school New York Yankees players that I never got to witness on a field, like DiMaggio and Gherig. But there has been one team that has been in my heart quite literally since the day I was born: the Toronto Blue Jays. I was born just two years after the franchise was founded, and through ups and downs, they’ve been the team that has not only brought me the most joy, but the greatest sense of being “home”.

My earliest memories of the Blue Jays are of happiness, likely because after less than 10 years in the league, in 1985, we won our first American League East title. Players like George Bell, Cecil Fielder, Dave Stieb, Ernie Whitt, Tony Fernandez, and Jesse Barfield were our heroes in powder blue. The 80’s were good to the Blue Jays, but the 90’s were the turning point. Back-to-back World Series championships cemented the team forever into Toronto folklore. I still remember exactly where I was in 1992 when Mike Timlin threw the ball to Joe Carter at first base for the final out of the World Series. Me, my parents, and a full Toronto SkyDome watched with anticipation on the Jumbotron as our beloved Blue Jays made history. Then, one year later, Joe Carter’s walk-off home run to end the World Series sailed over the left field wall at the SkyDome as I leaped up and down on my couch at home. Champions again. What a fabulous time to be alive!

The Blue Jays 2025 World Series run will be one to remember for the ages. If you had told any fan at spring training that we would take the mighty (and expensive) Los Angeles Dodgers to the brink of elimination in game 7 of the World Series, they would have told you that you were crazy. But it happened. And it was both heartbreaking and awesome at the same time.

Naturally as a baseball card collector, I began collecting Blue Jays cards almost from the time I opened my first pack. These days, that gets harder and harder with more parallels, autographs, and super expensive products. So how do you collect your favorite team on a reasonable budget? Check out the tips below!

Collect A Specific Era

The older your team is, the more you may have to specialize. It’s difficult and very expensive to be a Yankees or Red Sox completist collector, but if you focus on one era, decade, or even one year in particular, you can focus your collecting dollars and really create a nice gallery for yourself as a collector. For example, collecting the Blue Jays cards from the Pat Gillick/Paul Beeston era is not a bad choice in my case.

Pick A World Series

If your team has ever won or participated in the World Series, you may choose to collect things from that particular year’s team. The added bonus here is that World Series collectibles can often come in the form of things that are NOT cards, so you can really expand the collection without losing a focus/theme. While I mentioned I collect various Blue Jay cards in various capacities, one “hyper focus” I have is the 1992 World Series-winning team. This allows me to say “no” to cards I find less special without guilt, because I know I’m building toward an awesome monument to the history-making Blue Jays team of 1992. It’s a win-win.

Pick A Brand

This is an old but useful tip: pick a card manufacturer and stick only to cards from that brand. My current project is to finish the Topps team sets of Blue Jays cards from 1977 to present day. Once I’ve done that I will add Donruss, Fleer, etc. You can also pick a parallel or variation within a brand, like Topps Gold, for example, if you want to do something brand-specific with modern era cards. Example: every Topps Gold Blue Jays card since the first issue of Topps Gold cards in 1992.

Collect The Rookies Of Your Favorite Team

Another great idea may be to collect the rookie cards of anyone who began their career in your favorite team’s jersey. In my case it means I get Fred McGriff, Cecil Fielder, Carlos Delgado, Dave Stieb, Jimmy Key, Vernon Wells, Roy Halladay, Vladimir Guererro Jr., and the up and coming JoJo Parker. If you’re not buying and chasing anything else, you can put all of your money towards some really nice graded rookies of anyone who started their Major League journey in your team’s uniform. This can be really, really expensive if you have a storied, long-standing team, but even with that you can then narrow it down to an era or lower-grade cards that fit your budget.

Focus On Locally Issued Card Sets

Local restaurants, car dealerships, soda pop companies, fast food chains, and even police/firefighter branches often partner with local Major League teams to create team sets. The Toronto firefighters used to issue a Blue Jays set every year, and they were available for free if you walked into your local fire hall and kindly asked for it. It was a great way to get children engaged in both the hobby as well as community fire safety. It’s also a great set for collectors to pick up at a relatively low cost.

In the end, the love of your favorite team is often indescribable to others. Through both wins and losses, there is an affinity that comes with belonging to a fandom – a sense of community or even a “third place” of sorts if one is attending games regularly. Regardless, collecting your favorite team doesn’t have to set you back a huge amount of money.

What are some ways that you collect your favorite team? Reach out and let me know!

#CollectorsMD
Collecting your favorite team isn’t about owning everything, it’s about choosing what actually means something to you.

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