Saturday, March 2, 2024

New People scanned in February 2024

 I only did a handful of scans in January, and not a single one of them was anyone I had never scanned before. February would be different. I scanned 332 cards and of them, 42 were new cards...kind of. Sometimes I will hold back a scan instead of using it as the official first scan of that person- usually for one of two reasons. #1 is if the person's name is spelled wrong or shows the wrong person. (For instance, I've had a card scanned of Klim Kostin for almost three years now but won't use it as his sample card because they spelled his name "Klostin". The other main reason I will hold off is if the card is a minor league card and I know they will be getting a top level card. For instance I won't use a college basketball card when I know the player will be getting NBA cards in a few months to a year. 

Tomas Jurco falls into the latter category. I scanned a card of him from the 2013-14 AHL set months and months ago- I posted it to the Set album in August 2020! - but I didn't use it because I knew he had made it to the NHL. I specifically remember him playing for the Golden Knights. When I realized I hadn't seen him in an NHL game in quite some time I looked him up...it turns out his time in Vegas was his last NHL appearances and that was back in the 2020-21 season! When I did my project where I finally figured out exactly how many cards I had of each person, I discovered that was in fact his only card in my collection. So since this was the first upload I've done since I discovered that earlier in the month, I included him in this month's upload even though, like I said, the scan was actually made back in August 2020. 


Since most of January was spent working on my Excel projects, I am just now starting to scan the cards I got for Christmas, which is where most of the NBA players came from. The others will be seen in a future post, which I was going to make reference to right here but then remembered I hadn't written it yet. Oops! Most of the hockey players scanned this month came from the Topps Now set. Benoit-Olivier Groulx is the only player from the two SP Game Used boxes I bought to be a new person scanned. I actually got another card of him on Christmas but it still awaits a scan. 

Thanks for reading. 

Thursday, February 29, 2024

SPlurging on myself

 I never buy high end stuff. I want quantity of cards. But that doesn't mean I don't want to get the other sets, I just...don't. Usually. Earlier this month I was at my local card shop and decided to splurge on a box of 2022-23 SP Game Used. I always liked SPGU in the NBA, and I had never opened any in the NHL. I thought about it after the fact and I realized I last opened a pack of this brand in 2005, so it was nice to change that. 

First card out was the Red parallel of Marco Rossi. The SPGU set is weird because the base cards are lower numbered, the parallels are more common. Base cards are numbered to the player's jersey number, while the Red parallel is the player's age plus 200. Kind of strange but ok. I didn't actually get a base card from this box. 


Next was the Throwback insert of Pyotr Kochetkov. This uses the design of (I think!) 2000-01 SP Game Used, but I'm not 100% sure because I don't have any cards of the original design. This guy is a good goalie and has some great soundbites too. 


There are multiple layers of Red parallels, and this is the best one available- autographed jersey. Well at least I think it's the best one. This is a confusing set, haha. 

One of the more spectacular cards I've pulled in hockey, this dual patch is the last card in the production- 35 of 35. Although these are both Penguins players and patches, this is actually an All-Star card, since these are from the All-Star Game skills competition. At least to me it is. This is the Gold parallel of the All-Star Skills Dual insert. 

As if that wasn't good enough, I pulled a single All-Star Skills Fabrics insert as well! 



New Grooves is a different insert, and this is the Red Jersey Parallel of it. I have no idea what the basic version looks like, but reading the insert odds told me that's what this is. 


Finally, we end on a Purity insert of Marc-Andre Fleury, one of the most likable guys in the sport, and my Mom's all time favorite player. That's seven cards, even though the box advertises 6. In the fine print on the back it says some boxes will contain seven cards and I got one of them! Very cool. 

So, since I enjoyed the 2022-23 set so much, I did a little looking and found a box/pack of 2021-22 SPGU on sale, and decided to get one of them too. 
First up with the Throwback insert of Tanner Jeannot, using I believe the 2005-06 design. 

A Tanner Jeannot hot pack! Next card up was actually the only base card from either of the two boxes, SN to his #84 and also using holofoil stock. 

This Blue Autograph parallel was next, and I do believe this is my first Vegas Golden Knights autograph! To VERY briefly recap: I got into hockey because I wanted to see the Golden Knights logo, and got hooked on the sport. So naturally they are my top West team and I will always root for them- unless they are playing the Rangers. 

I really love these Banner Season inserts, and this is the first one I've ever pulled myself! Pasta is a great player too, and one of my favorite non-Rangers. He literally was late coming out for this very game because he wanted to hear the end of Aqua's "Barbie Girl" on the radio in the locker room. How can you not like that?



This is the Red Jersey parallel, medium tier between regular Red and Red Autograph/Jersey as shown in previous box. 
Finally, a Purity Gold parallel of insert of Benoit-Olivier Groulx.  Only 6 cards in this box.

Both are more than I'm usually willing to spend for 6 or 7 cards, but I really like these, and don't really regret the very rare splurge on myself. 


Monday, February 26, 2024

Black History Month Hockey Spotlight: Quinton Byfield

 Only one new addition to this Spotlight series this year, and that's Quinton Byfield, young star on the Los Angeles Kings. The second overall draft pick a couple of years ago, he suffered some injuries at the start of his career but has recovered now and become a key part of the Kings squad. I'm not a huge fan of the Kings so I have not spent a lot of time watching him play but he seems very good. 

I have 11 cards of him, of which 8 have been scanned, and I am going to post them all. 


This card is actually my newest addition, from 2021-22 Ice, and this card is much nicer in hand than it is in scans. It's die cut and sparkly. These inserts were one per blaster. 

2021-22 Parkhurst #329

2021-22 Topps Now #256. I believe this was my first card of him. 

2021-22 Upper Deck #488. I have not pulled too many of the big name Young Guns, but I was lucky enough to pull his from a pack myself. 

2021-22 Upper Deck Star Rookie Box Set. UD has brought back the Star Rookie sets over the past several years and I really enjoy them. For many of the players it's my first or second card of them. 


2022-23 MVP and...

2022-23 MVP Blue parallel from the factory set. Both cards #198.

2022-23 Topps #232

Hopefully by next year I'll both get some more and get some of them scanned. 







Saturday, February 24, 2024

Black History Month Hockey Updates

 I have not been writing or scanning much lately, but I have not been inactive in the hobby. I spent most of January working on my Excel stuff, and I got that finished- finally- and for the first time ever I now know exactly what I have in my collection...for everything and everyone. How cool is that? It was a lot of work and left me more than a little burned out, but I just have to maintain it now going forward, which I will make sure I do. 

Feeling like writing, the first priority had to be my annual series where I spotlight Black NHL players in my collection. In previous years I've written about PK Subban, Jarome Iginla, Anthony Duclair, Ryan Reaves and K'Andre Miller. Here is a look at how my collections of them expanded in the past year. One thing to note...I had numbers for each of them that were provisional. I considered the numbers correct to the best of my knowledge at the time, but now I am 100% sure that the numbers are correct. Provided I didn't make any mistakes. 

I only added two cards of P.K. Subban to bring my totals to 47 cards. I actually had the number correctly listed for him last year. Of the 47 cards in my collection, 39 have been scanned, and only one of the two I added have been scanned to date:

His base card from 2022-23 O-Pee-Chee, #297. 

Next is Jarome Iginla, who like P.K. only saw me add 2 new cards during the year, bringing his total to 44, of which only 26 are scanned. And just like P.K., I've only scanned one of the two. 

From 2023 National Hockey Card Day. 

Anthony Duclair only had one new card added since last year, bringing my total to 19. I did not get it scanned yet. it's his base card from 2021-22 Upper Deck. 

Ryan Reaves also got two cards added, bringing my total of him up to 11. I only got one of them scanned, but it's a great one:


His Super Script level 2 Parallel from 2022-23 MVP, SN 17/25. I do not yet have any cards of him with the Wild or the Maple Leafs. 

Finally, we have K'Andre Miller, who I had 4 cards of last year, and now have 5. I only added one, and it's not scanned yet, from Topps Now. 


When I began this series three years ago I didn't foresee the slowdown in new card additions that was in my future, but this is certainly not the kind of update that is very encouraging. Maybe next year will be better. 




Tuesday, January 16, 2024

I like big numbers

 I cannot lie, I like big numbers. And after 36 years in the hobby with no breaks, the numbers really add up. They can get very large when you are as obsessed with this hobby as I am, have been, and probably always will be. 

At 4:41 in the morning on Tuesday, January 16th, 2024, I learned for the very first time exactly how big the numbers are. 

I've mentioned in the past that I was typing everything into Excel, and, believing that I had typed everything in, I set about proofing my work by going through the paper listings for my card collection, which I have kept since 1998 and I consider the "Be all End all" of my collection - if it's not in my paper listings, it's not part of my collection, essentially. I started keeping the dates I got all the cards in 1999, and I determined I wanted that to be documented on Excel, which means I can back it up remotely, in case something ever happens to my paper listings. I hope nothing does, but I'm a known klutz and tend to drop things. If I drop a bottle of water, it's all over for the listing, basically. 

So with all that said, I finished proofing the listings yesterday. (Yesterday for me, today for normal people)

I was way, way off. I had a number I thought was right for all the different subjects. As it turns out, every single one of them was wrong. All of them were actually UNDER what I actually had- some by a wide margin. I had undercounted my NBA collection by nearly 3000 cards. I knew my count was probably off a little bit...but it was off way more than I thought. The Excel chart where I entered in all the missing cards came up to 6998 that I had missed typing in across all topics. Yikes! 

So, without further ado, here is the totals of what I actually have in my collection....


With that said...there's a very good chance these numbers aren't right exactly. Even after I thought I had finished proofing everything, I found literally dozens of mistakes, mostly from me typing things in wrong which means they didn't show up properly when I sorted the Excel file, and I would bet there are more mistakes yet to be found. I may never find these mistakes, but I'm ok with that. I did the best I could. It took me literally 11 years to complete the typing project, I'm not going to redo it. If I find mistakes, I'll fix them, but I am treating it as it's correct. It's the best I can do with the abilities I have. 

One other thing this opens up for me...I had been holding off on going through my stash of cards that I have built up. Some still from the disastrous Card of the Day project still wait to actually be looked at and become part of my collection. Now that I know both what I actually have, and what the real numbers should be...I can start going through them and adding them to my collection officially. 

My plan is to update this chart at the end of each month when I do my monthly upload of what I've scanned during the month. The numbers based on what I know I have stashed can vastly change. I know off the top of my head I've got sumo, baseball, football, and of course my three main sports of NBA, NHL and NASCAR. I actually don't have a lot of non-sports stuff stashed, I tended to go through them quickly, but I do have some. 

Now that I've finished proofing and typing I am not really sure what I will do next. This was the last big project that I needed to do in my card collection, and as I stated, I've been working on it for 11 years. The only things left are to finish scanning and then sorting back into sets, but I will not finish that this decade, and I'm beginning to think I may not ever finish that, as I've consistently brought in cards faster than I can scan them, and going through all that stash I mentioned will be just like throwing a mountain on top of someone who just dug themselves out of a sinkhole. Of course I'm not complaining. This is what I live for. I just don't know how I want to proceed next. I feel a little rudderless. 

Interestingly enough, the Database shows me as having 231,000 cards and I have no idea where that number comes from, because I know that I don't have that many- and I no longer track my collection on there. I can only guess it comes from the duplicates, aka tradelist, and the barely sorted duplicate boxes, aka future trade list, that I had entered. Oh, it may include the wantlist too, which is bizarre because by definition I haven't collected the cards I want to add to my collection. But the numbers don't add up, at least in my head, so I just don't know. Of course doing that kind of numbers in my head is very questionable, and why I let Excel do all the adding for me. 

One other thing I want to point out- in all my 36 years of collecting cards, I have purchased exactly 3 football cards (two of them cars from an insert set so not even technically football!), and one pack of baseball cards. The rest of them all came as gifts or in lots. All Sumo, kickboxing, rugby, soccer, boxing, wrestling and golf all came to me from other people. The people in the hobby are really something else. If the rest of the world was like card people it would be a better place. 

Saturday, January 13, 2024

EA Sports is hassling me for no reason

 So, today I get on my computer and see that I have a DMCA violation hit on a post from 2018. 

That makes no sense because everything I post I created myself...I only post scans I make, I don't lift things from the internet.

After jumping through  google's hoops- they don't make it easy to figure out, which I am quite sure is on purpose, I discovered that it came from EA Sports, the video game company, and they got me for a post I did where I showed what cards I got from an NHL Repack I received as a gift from my brother. 

Most importantly from all this....

THERE WAS NOTHING ABOUT EA SPORTS IN THE POST AT ALL.  IN FACT THERE WAS NOTHING RELATED TO ANY VIDEO GAME COMPANIES OR GAMING WHATSOEVER.

Even if I had shown one of their video games, taking and sharing a photo of what you have in your collection is not in any way, shape or form a violation of copyright. 

In the email and on the bar they put across the screen on the Blogger homepage, they say you can file a counterclaim. That is a lie, plain and simple. The form it takes you to is to file a claim that someone is using your copyright. 

There is no way to dispute a false spoof claim as this is. 

I have been enjoying EA video games for almost 30 years. They will never get another cent out of me after this. If you want to be stupid you can do it without any more of my money. 

Thursday, January 4, 2024

New people scanned in December 2023

 2023 was not a huge month for me for scanning. Since I spent the vast majority of the month sick, I wouldn't touch any cards so I basically had only the first 3 days and the week between Christmas and New Years to get any scanning done. In that time I managed to scan 536 cards


However, roughly 1/5th of all cards scanned happened to be new people, 120 total. I purchased a WNBA box on Black Friday which gave me a lot of new people, the Flight box I got for Christmas, and which I already scanned in full, gave a lot more. The 1994 Baseball Finest I posted about doing while I was sick also gave me several new people.

Now, here's something fun that I can do for the first time ever: I can figure out how many new people I scanned in a year. 


That's actually more than I would have guessed. I didn't do any scanning at all in May, July and August. May was the trip to Utah and I was too exhausted. June through August I was mostly working on plastic models, my other main hobby, and didn't devote much or any time to cards at all. 

My one and only thing that comes anything close to a resolution for 2023 is to do at least a little scanning in each month of 2024. That may or may not translate into new people getting scanned, but as long as I make one scan of 9 cards I'll be happy.