[Bob Lemke]

I received my copies of the 2011 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards the other day and have a chance to give it the once-over to see how my first year as an outside contributor went.

Frankly, it could have been better. Working at arm's length negatively impacted my ability to co-ordinate with the in-house staff to make sure the changes I came up with were properly incorporated. It also prevented me from being able to proof read the vintage sections, which would have insured that some of the problems that are evident would have been corrected before the book went to press.

Those were mostly minor problems with spelling and punctuation errors in the set introductions, prices that added or dropped a couple of decimal points . . . 1895 Mayo Ward (Retired) in EX should be 4,000., not 4; 1916 M101-5 Complete Set should be 130,000, not 13,000, etc.

The majority of the several dozen additions to the vintage set listings and even more additions to existing checklists went off as planned, although for some reason none of the new sets include their card photos. And, probably because I failed to communicate it properly, the dozen or so additions intended for the vintage minor league section appear in the major league pages.

On the positive side, most of the thousands of vintage card price changes were made as planned, although inexplicably NONE of the major T-card sets (T201, 202, 205, 206, 207, 227) were changed. That's not good.

Because of deadlines, it's a shame that some of my later additions, corrections, etc., produced after late March could be incorporated. These included some really major work done on several 19th Century sets by Patrick Preece. All that will be reflected in the 2012 edition.

As mentioned earlier, the book went from 1,368 pages in the 2010 edition to 1,848 in the 2011. Unfortunately, most of those added pages are the 2001-date cards that were excised from the print version of 2010 and put on an accompanying CD. To keep the page count from jumping even further, the modern minor league section was omitted for 2011.

Those format changes were the result of book-buyer feedback to publisher Tom Bartsch, who, in my experience, is extremely receptive to constructive commentary and criticism from the hobby.

All in all, it's good to see my name back on the cover of the big book and I hope to be on board for the 2012 book.