Top 5 Goals at 2016 National Sports Collectors Convention

The 2016 National Sport Collectors Convention runs this week from Wednesday to Sunday and I'm looking forward to all its pomp and cardboard circumstance. I'm not necessarily looking forward to traveling to Atlantic City for the National, but you have to go where the cards are.

TRIVIA: Speaking of Atlantic City, no native has played a game in the bigs since Joe Cicero hit .158 in 1945. AC is overdue.

Spending four days at the National makes me card-hungry and I have a handful of goals in mind this time around.

1. Cut my 1954 Red Heart list in half

I'm 2/3 through this cherry vintage set and already have the big names, Mantle and Musial. It's a reasonable goal to find 5 from the remaining list of Fox, Pierce, Fondy, Gilliam, Kell, Lollar, Baumholtz, Erskine, Kiner, and Shoendienst.

2. Finish upgrading my 1958 Topps set

One of my past P-FR upgrades, this "Lipstick Larry" Berra

I need just 8 upgrades to finish taking this set from P-FR to G-VG. There are big names in the list: #19 (Giants team), 88 (Snider), 150 (Mantle), 168, 288 (Killebrew), 315, 320 Ford, 475. That's a challenging list on the surface, but 1958s aren't too tough in G-VG.

3. Fill out my Goudey non-sports sets

For all their success with 1933-34 baseball cards, Goudey spent just as much effort on an array of 1930s non-sports sets like Boy Scouts and Indian Gum. This week, I hope to find a variety of low-cost options, although you can imagine that high-quality work (like the scouting set) makes for higher-demand sets.

4. Encore, s'il vous plait

While my American-made 1962 Post baseball set's done, there's a lot of remaining wantlist for the bilingual Post Canadian set. Sometimes they take forever to ferret out and sometimes you meet a dealer from Toronto in the first row and he has a boxful. Hoping for the latter.

5. Unexpected type set discoveries

There's no way to predict exactly what #5s will appear, especially if they're from foreign sets or are uncatalogued. One big reason I go to Nationals is to expose myself to as much cardboard as possible in hopes of netting a white whale. A scan above shows all the types I found last year, three of which weren't even on the list before I spotted them. This year, who knows!

Anyone else making the trip to AC this week? If so, comment below or tweet me @Number5TypeCard and will be happy to meet up.