Thursday, January 19, 2017

10,000

I knew I was close, but it turns out I was closer than I thought. Back in late 2015 I wanted to know how many people I had in my collection. I had the stats for the NBA and NASCAR, but not everything else- the other sports and non-sports. So, I spent more than a week going through all my cards that were non-NBA or NASCAR and making a listing in Excel. I was above 8000 but I don't remember the exact number. I crossed 9000 early in 2016 and with the cards from the other three sports that I was given in 2016, pretty much every one was a new person.

I thought I began 2017 at 9920something. But I forgot the 1995 Traks Valvoline set, which covered the history of auto racing- giving cards to many early drivers, and covering a lot of early Indy car drivers, missing from my collection otherwise. This set needs to be discussed further, and I will, but with that 101 card set, I knew most would be new people for me- about 1/6th of the set is the only card ever made for the people it shows.

It did the trick! My total number of people in my collection is now at 10,012. Unbelievable!

Here's person #10,000:



Since I've made it my goal to get as many different people into my collection as possible, the number has gone up and up, and now...10 thousand different people appear in my collection.

64 different sports are covered in my collection, plus non-sports, with the NBA leading the way with most people, which should not be much of a surprise as the NBA collection takes up more than half of my collection totals. Most of those 64 sports come from the Olympic and SI for Kids sets, which I decided to label the person by sport instead of simply "Olympics" for example.

I only counted real people, IE, no characters. Each person also had to get a card by themselves, no shared cards, team cards, league leaders, etc.

I'm amazed and thrilled by this...this is a big deal. I am not going to stop though. My goal is still to get as many different people represented in my collection as possible, and now I have hockey to chase as well. I am not sure it's totally accurate- I just found somebody missing from the list who I have three cards of, so human error- especially considering which human we're talking about here- is very much possible. (Niklas Sundstrom was the person I missed)

To me, this is such a big deal that I could pull a Michael Jordan autograph tomorrow, and this would still be more of a thrill to me.

Someday I hope to know exactly how many cards I have of each person, but that's years and years in the future...

I think I'll celebrate by opening a pack of hockey cards that I got this past Saturday or two, the same day I hit the milestone.

23 comments:

  1. And...I opened two packs of 2014-15 MVP hockey, got 4 new people, and pulled a serially numbered parallel! It is the first SN Hockey card I've pulled, although not the first in my collection. It was also my first card of the player, Mike Fisher. While Robert @ $30 a Week habit may be known as the Serial Number insanity guy, I'm also a huge fan of SN cards...and this is the first SN hockey card I've pulled! What a thrilling end to my day!

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    1. Not sure how much you know about Mike Fisher. I'm curious if his wife has any cards to collect... Trading Card Database says yes. Now you might have to track down a Carrie Underwood card to complete the couple.

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    2. Mike Fisher is the only hockey player my wife knows for that exact reason.

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    3. Yeah that was the first thing I thought of when I pulled the card, lol.

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    4. The serial numbered parallels in MVP hockey aren't that easy to pull, so congrats on the nice hit!

      I was very lucky last year and was able to pull 3 Golds from MVP. I'm sure that won't happen again...

      And 10K + players in your collection, wow! I thought I kept track of a lot of things.

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    5. Thanks! I'm way OCD so I keep track of a lot of things...although most of them would mean nothing to anyone but me, lol.

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  2. Congrats! Hopefully the Japanese box of basketball will push that number even higher!

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    1. Thanks! It surely will. Yuta Tabuse is in my collection and some of the foreigners might me but everyone else will be new.

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    2. I have your b.league card box in if you are still interested in it.

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    3. I sure am, if I can locate your email address I will shoot you a message on it. Or you can find me at elcaminobilly@yahoo

      Thanks again!

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    4. I was not able to locate your email address, I may have just missed it, I can be kind of clueless some times. (lol)

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  3. What a card day for you!!! Congrats on the milestone!!

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  4. That's a huge milestone for sure. Congrats!

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  5. That is a serious collection, I am not sure I even have 10,000 cards in my collection total.

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    1. Thanks! They add up after 29 years in the hobby with no real breaks.

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  6. Congrats. Amazing research as usual

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    1. Thanks! I just wish I could trust myself to have gotten it right. After all, when I first made the NBA list, I missed a few dozen people including some big names like Larry bird. Still don't know how I managed to do that!

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  7. Congrats. That's a big milestone

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