An update on some long-running card projects

As I've mentioned a few times, I'm very OCD about keeping records on my collection...and also that my collection records were lost to a floppy disk crash circa 2005. I've been working on recreating them, but it's been a slow progress, which, of course, is because of the way I'm doing them. I'm making them better than the records I lost because instead of just a total number of how many I have for each person, I'm taking the time to type out exactly what cards I have for each person. It's one of my favorite things to do in the hobby, and I greatly look forward to finishing each round and typing them.

I only type in what I've scanned. It's something I'm doing as I move through my collection, and I don't expect to finish until 2021 or later- considering I'm the world's worst estimator of time, probably much later. (Not that I want the project to ever end, mind you)

Doing this is one of the few things that brings me true happiness.

But there has always been one small problem...I had to move my computer to sort the cards. I don't have a lot of space to work with, and to move my computer - and scanner- I would have to put it all on my bed so I could use the table. Now, I did some working in my room and have installed a second table- a fold up card table, slightly smaller than the one I use to type on. I have been working on models there but now, this wave, I've cleaned the model stuff off and sorted the cards there. Instead of having to get it all done in one day, I was able to start sorting them after lunch and I will leave them there in the letter stacks until I type them in, then move them back into boxes clearly labeled with an S to let me know they have been scanned, so I don't waste time rescanning them. You'd think I'd remember what I've done or not, but no. My memory is not that good, which is why I needed to document the collection in the first place!

Here is the full compliment of cases filled- one column less than usual as I sequestered one for my new NHL collection.

 Here, I've layed down a layer of the pack feeling prevention cards over the top of my model workspace- I don't want any paint or tape to get on the cards.

And now, they cards in the cases in photo #1 have been sorted by letter. All 25 letters in the NBA are represented, which is unusual. Q is a rarity. X has never had an NBA player ever. There's also a stack for team cards, checklists, "Other", which is totally invisible due to the J stack, error cards, (Visible bottom left) and, cut off from the left side of the picture, a stack for multi-player cards and one for cards of specific games and League Leaders. I really wish I hadn't separated my 1996-97 Collector's Choice Mini-Cards back when they were new, but I did. It does make it easier to type them into the proper player listing, though.

Now, I will sort each letter by player (on top of my scanner lid) and type them into my chart. It will take me the better part of this week to do so, but since I don't plan to post this until I finish the #26 model shown above, the typing will be long over by time this sees the light of day, if ever. I will probably be on the way to filling the cases again when/if I ever post this. (Written 5/29/17)

Updated for August: here is the way the cases look now. I took this photo around 8 AM yesterday, 8/22.

 As you can see, the far right column for the NHL has gotten much more filled, and I've filled a lot more of the NBA stacks than I thought I would have at this point. The three in front are the cases I'm currently working on filling up- NBA on top, NHL in the middle and NASCAR on the bottom. (I rotate the NBA and NHL cases so the more full one is on the bottom, or, really, middle.) I'm getting close to a wave of typing the NHL, and NASCAR might be ready by the end of the year as well. Since most of my NASCAR collection is done already it's new additions that go in the cases, so I usually only type a wave of NASCAR once a year. This will be my first wave of typing the NHL since I became an active fan/collector, so I'm looking forward to that...would not be too surprised if that is begun before the end of August.

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I've "fixed" the followers button on my blog. It stopped working for me over a year ago, I don't remember exactly when. I'm not sure if it has been visible to people who aren't me but when it broke I had 17 followers, now I have 30, so thank you to those that have followed me. And if you haven't, well, there's no time like the present!

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I've made a couple of changes to the "Pages" up at the very top, under my logo. I had been trying...and failing...to maintain a list of the people in my NBA and NHL collections, and I never even got around to typing up my NASCAR list, something that had been on my "to-do" list for a while now. Instead, I've ditched those two pages that I had been working on, and instead put in a new page called "Complete List of people in my card collection". This is a new to me feature which is where I uploaded my Excel file where I keep track of everything, and put in a link to that you can now click and see my file as I see it, at least as long as I remember to update it. I went ahead and alphabetized each subcategory, and the page it opens up to is the grand tally, which lists everyone in my collection. That is currently 11,748 different people. I have to thank Tony Burbs of Wrigley Roster Jenga for telling me how to put an Excel file onto the blog...which he did back in June of last year and I just got to it today. Now you can see more than the two sports I've been putting my effort into...this is everything. The 5 main sports each have a a sheet but the secondary sports, like the various events that make up the Olympics, are combined onto one sheet, but I do list which sport they partake in. I somehow managed to come up with over 1500 different MLB players, which is something I'm guessing a lot of my readers wouldn't have known. Just for the curious: Olympic gymnast Max Aaron is alphabetically first, while Russian NHLer Andrei Zyuzin is last. Going to be hard to "top" somebody with a Zy combo for a name.

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I finally tabulated all the new NHL players I got from the four people on July 27th and 29th and my COMC order.. . 475 new people. (plus three that I had but had missed entering into my chart!) That has pretty much killed my hopes to document them all like I had been doing. If I never got another card it would take me until roughly March of next year if I just worked on that alone, and I have other stuff I want to post. And let's face it...I will be getting more cards, pushing it back even further. I have one post that had 9 people written in, I will finish it off when I get somebody new and put this project on the deep back burner until I have more of a complete collection, where literally every other card is not somebody new...kind of like where I am with my NBA collection now.

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Remember when I was thrilled when I got the package from Wes that got my missing NBA people under 400? Well, it's actually better than that. When I was updating the post of people missing, I found some names who were actually not missing...almost all of them came to me from the COMC order I got last summer...I either forgot to remove them, or, what I suspect because some WERE removed, is that instead of hitting "Update" I hit "revert to draft". Either way, now I'm down to under 350 people missing! 349 right now, although it might go back up because I have yet to check all the 2016-17 releases to check for late additions or players only in some autograph/relic sets. This is a project I never even really imagined until about 2015 when I was able to compile a list of people missing. This has been a very rewarding project for me, as I feel it moves me more from just a fan of the game to a historian of it. It's also led me to some very obscure sets and people who I had no idea got cards...you'll see some of them soon.

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Although it's not imminent, there is going to come a time...in a couple of years...where I am not going to have a stash of cards to scan and type, what I spend most of my life doing. I'm past the halfway point in scanning and for some reason seem to be picking up speed. I'm thinking it's because of a newish scanner and just my skills at correcting scans improving from experience. I've been thinking long and hard about what I'm going to do when I run out of cards to scan...and I've come up with two more typing projects, that will keep me busy for years to come...and will allow me to create two new Excel files. (in case you haven't guessed, I'm just a little obsessed with Excel). I'm going to make a chart for each team and each season. I currently have no reliable way to track this. The last time I had any idea how many cards I had for each season was sometime in the late 1990s, when I could hold my entire collection in my hands at the same time. Teams, I've never had. While the Trading Card Database does give you this info, I keep my records differently and can't use those numbers. The Database will tag a multi-subject card to each team that appears on the card, where I would reckon it as a multi-subject, League Leader, or Game Action, all of which I maintain files for. Years are a little more usable, but there are some inaccuracies, like listing the early SPx sets as one year, or 1996-97 Topps Stars as only 1996. It throws the numbers off. Also, I need something to type, and this will be fun...and give me a new thing to write blog posts about, because you know I'm going to, when I get there. I'm going to give it a trial run when I do my next wave of NHL typing, as mentioned above. I have not scanned that many NHL cards-probably around 800-so it shouldn't be too bad to do what I've already done, and maintain it from there. I've already scanned more than 50,000 NBA cards and more than 30,000 NASCAR cards. 

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My series of Uniform History- one of the hardest to create, each post taking around 7 hours to do- will return hopefully around Christmas time. It'll really depend on Panini. With Nike now taking over the jersey production, most teams are getting modified or outright totally new jersey designs. Even though most of them that I've seen are drab and boring, it's still a lot of new jersey designs. Even the Spurs have changed their jersey design...for the first time since 1989! The 2017-18 season also sees the debut of ads on the jersey. The ads are pretty small, up in the shoulder area, and I'm pretty sure they would fit onto a card, or at least most of them. Hopefully Panini will take advantage of that. Knowing that new jersey designs were imminent, I decided to hold off on doing any of these posts for a while. I will jump back into them once the new 2017-18 jerseys begin appearing on cards. Although this series has not gotten a lot of comments on the blog, they are enjoyable to write and I still plan to do all the NBA teams and the ABA teams I am able to.

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I have one or maybe a couple more posts to get up after this one, then you will be seeing a lot of projects I've been working on with my latest COMC order. The posts I've written for this project are going to take me until at least mid-September to get posted, but they are all written and ready to go, with perhaps a few minor corrections and Labeling to be done. I'm going to space them out so as not to overload anyone...including myself, lol.

Thanks for reading about the things I'm working on, and I promise that next post will be back to card images.