Total Blaster 5

Today's blaster turned out better, with not a single duplicate in the bunch, and as an added bonus I hit a milestone.

Brian Scott, one of the few non-Cup cards in the set. Scott made a bit of history earlier this month when he announced his retirement at the conclusion of this season, making the only driver I can think of who chose to retire after his rookie season. He has two kids and the lengthy Cup schedule took him away from them for too much time.
Matt Kenseth red parallel. I really have no respect for Matt Kenseth, not anymore, but this card is, if my calculations are correct, the 29,000th different NASCAR card in my collection. More on that below
The Tony Stewart Acceleration insert brings me to having more than half of the ten card set, I hope I finish it off.
Cale Yarborough Hall of Fame plaque, pretty clearly taken from his time with Junior Johnson's team.

My relic this time is Trevor Bayne, one of the rare non-Cup relics in the set. Hey, that's two non-Cup cards in one pack! First time it's happened in this project.

Now, with the count of my NASCAR collection, I have it officially at 29003 right now. But I'm sure it's wrong, because I know I've counted some cards that I thought were new but turned out to be duplicates, but it's been offset by finding non-duplicates in my duplicate stash from time to time. (notably the cards that had variations that I blogged about once before) Then there's the proverbial gorilla in the room, the cards that came with diecast cars. I have a large number of them- remember for many years diecast collecting superseded card collecting for me- but I've counted them all these years as a separate collection. (actually, I've never counted them at all). But I'm giving serious thought to officially integrating them into my counted, officially listed on paper NASCAR collection. I can't really think of any reason not to, other than the fact that it's just how I've always done it, since I began collecting NASCAR way back at Christmas 1992.

If I do decide to integrate them, it would bring my NASCAR collection over 30,000, which would deny me the celebration of the milestone...but on the other hand, I've been keeping track of the order I get every card since 2014 so I should have little trouble figuring out whichever card actually was the 30,000th. My OCD makes this a big deal for me. And if I do hit 30,000 without counting them...it will always have a little mental asterisk there by the number.

Honestly, this is something I've been debating since sometime in 2015, when I finished scanning them, and I've been held up by the fact that I've misplaced a large number of the cards from 1998 and 1999. I had them and was scanning them a few years ago, and now they went missing and I have no idea how that happened or where to even look, considering I've looked every place I thought they could possibly be...do I count them? I know for sure some that are missing, but I can't locate them physically...and I'm sure there are others that went missing that I've forgotten about.

As I mentioned above, I never counted them...and they are the only aspect of my collection that I don't have a count on. Something I've really wanted to come up with was an actual count of what I consider my collection. In fact, I've left an empty column for that number in my Excel chart where I type every card in order of getting since I created it in 2014.

The older I get, the more I want to have everything documented in nice even rows, uniformly, fully. I don't mind having OCD- in fact I think without it I could not function through a single day- but I wish I had the mental and physical capacity to make things ordered and even just the way I want them. With the mental part, I start so many things, or plan so many things, and then never follow through with them, and the physical part is getting harder and harder. At least I have a neverending project of sorting and resorting cards to work on.