February Month in Review- A month that surprised me!

For a short month, that I normally can't stand, some interesting things happened for me in the hobby.

Of course it started out badly with the flood that cost me more than 250 cards. I was lucky to have about a dozen replacements in my duplicate stash, and I've since been able to trade for two other replacements, but I also got a few more from Random Acts of Kindness, which I will talk about shortly.

I spent most of the month working on documenting all the cards I received on January 31st. I will post Part 2 of my Epic mailday later this week- it's taken me this long to properly document them all, literally- I finished around 1 AM on March 1st! I don't want to spoil that post, but it's safe to say that all my old new addition records fell, excepting cards in one year, (and I suspect that may fall in 2015 as well.)

Of course, that process was slowed by the new cards I got in February. It turned out I got 773 new cards in the month...and all but around 100 of them came to me as either gifts (RAOK) or trades! Since January 31st I have received more cards as a Random Act of Kindness than I added to my collection in ALL OF 2014! With 2 months down, thanks to my friends in the hobby, 2015 already ranks 4th all time in most cards added in a year, with a caveat that I didn't start keeping the record of when I added cards to my collection until 2000, 12 years after I began collecting. I believe 1996 and 1997 especially would rank in the top 3 but I have no way of knowing- and that drives me nuts. But all I can do is make sure I stay up on it for the future.

My total for new cards in 2014 was 4,937...I surpassed that on February 23rd, and as of right now, I'm at 5,117 new cards in 2015. I surpassed it from a RAOK from a Trading Card Database member that saw me add 245 new cards.

3 RAOKs saw me add more than 100 new cards, with the largest being the one from 2/23.

Some of the new cards added were cards I did not plan to add. I love buying mixed boxes that my semi-local shop makes up, which I pull from when I need a "new card fix". I had one that had roughly 1/3rd left, but it got some water damage during the leak. Luckily, none of the cards inside were damaged, as 75 of the remaining cards in the box were new to my collection. I also added some football cards from another RAOK I received in 2014. I have saved some of them for adding when I need a card fix and that box also got wet. Only a couple of cards got damaged in the flood, and to be honest I actually damaged 1 when I was trying to take care of the flood worse than the water did.

One of the cards in the mixed box that avoided water damage was this Elton Brand card, from 2008-09 Topps T-51 Murad, which is my 12th Elton card of the year, which, as you may recall from my 2015 Goals post, getting more than 11 Elton Brand cards was one of my goals for the year. I reached that goal on 2/11, and I must also say thank you to my friend Ricky, who sent me a lot of 25 Elton cards he bought for me on Ebay, of which several were new, and is what allowed me to hit my goal in the 6th week of the year. You can see them all in my 2015 Elton Brand Project tab up at the top of all my posts.

I am working towards another goal as well. I have no clue exactly how many cards are in my collection. I know how many NBA, NASCAR, college basketball, multi-sport, Indy and drag racing cards are in my collection...but that's all. I have a number for non-sports but I think it may be wrong. It may or may not include the Olympic cards. I can't remember if I counted them as part of the binder, as I keep my paper listing with my non-sports cards, or if I just counted the non-sports, so it's been something I've wanted to check for a while. I made the official count in 2010, but by time I got the 2014 Winter Olympics cards Topps did I had no idea how I counted the previous set.

I'm not there yet, but I DID finally get a count for my NHL collection, MLB and NFL. I went into 2015 with 28 NHL hockey cards, and I'll detail them more in the Epic Mailday Part 2, but I had never had a count of my NFL or MLB cards. I finally tabulated them on February 28th, and while I didn't finish until March 1st, I am including the info here because I did most of the work in February.

I came up with an Excel chart so I don't have to do the math, it does it for me. This is an offshoot of my player collection Excel chart, which I began formulating the style back in 1997, on our old Word Processor, and has evolved since then. I actually just came up with a modification the day before yesterday, which makes things much easier. I wish I had thought of it sooner!

My count for the NFL-

And my count for MLB baseball-

I see that I have exactly 300 more football cards than baseball. I actually like baseball a lot more than football, and I have some from the 2014 RAOK I mention above that would likely push them past football...I expect to add them officially to my collection by the end of 2015, but I am waiting for a specific time which I will detail later in the year, when it actually happens.

Both lists go further down than my screencap shows.

One thing I want to point out- I have received all but 6 of the cards on both of these charts as gifts or accidents. (random baseball or football cards mixed into the mix boxes of basketball I've been buying since 1996). I purchased two of the Michael Jordan baseball cards, and I purchased one of the football cards, actually the oldest, as it is a card of the father of an NBA player. (Calvin Hill, father of Grant Hill).  I also traded for three of the Allen & Ginter historical inserts too.

I will accept any card at any time- I run a "Home for wayward cards", if you will.

Soon I will create similar charts for my non-sports and hockey cards- later today, soon, for non-sports- I actually have the original file I created for the NBA back in 2003 when I got my first laptop, but I may start from scratch as I've come up with a better system, but I won't really worry about them or NASCAR because I have a count- which I am sure is not totally accurate - for now, at least. When I finish scanning everything, and sort them back by set, then I will worry about them. I don't see that happening this decade though.

I also completed three sets in February, my first three of 2015. 1994 Press Pass VIP (NASCAR), 1991 Star Picks (NCAA basketball) and 2015 Press Pass (NASCAR). All of which I have talked about in previous posts, I just wanted to mention them in my monthly review for the future when I click on my Monthly Review tab.

Thanks for reading!