Main goal of 2017 Complete!

I love it when something works out better than you expected, and for the second year in a row, my main goal of the year worked out taking about half the time I estimated it would!

As you may remember from my goals post from January 2nd, I posted that my main goal of 2017 was to properly document my NASCAR die cast cards. I discovered the sport with diecast in 1992 and I continued to collect them regularly until 2013, and to be honest I still would if I could afford to. I had always stored the cards that came with them separately. never counting them as part of my official NASCAR collection. Why? I have no idea. It's just been the way I always did it...Sometime during the past year I realized that there was no reason to keep them separate, so I set my main goal for the year to be to list them on paper, and officially add them to my count.

I achieved that goal in record time, beginning to list them on January 2nd, and finishing them on January 3rd! Then, I sorted them and all the traditional NASCAR cards I had scanned since August and typed them into my Excel collection chart, the only place where I keep track of my collection by person, instead of by set. While I have some other important things to post- two packages from Angus and one from Kerry, plus my December trade recap- I have been working on this non-stop and finally finished yesterday, giving me time to get back to writing posts.

Here are some pictures of the cards in sort mode.

 The first two images are just the diecast cards. The Ernie Irvan card on the bottom right of photo #2 was the very first NASCAR card in my collection. (between the Air force and Greg Trammell cards)

 Now I've added the traditional cards and included the 1/144th scale cards at the very end, I did not put them with the other diecast cards because they tend to make the stacks wobbly.

 I clearly underestimated how many cards would be in the letter G here, while B turned out to be the largest letter of this wave.

This may be my favorite photo of this wave of sorting. This is actually taken from below the table looking up. The added maneuverability of my smart phone allowed me to take this photo.

I decided, instead of typing out some written list about the diecast cards, to scan the note paper where I wrote down how many I had from each set, which I then typed into Excel and let it do the math for me.

The abbreviations used are: RC = Racing Champions WC = Winner's Circle JL = Johnny Lightning HW= Hot Wheels SLU= Starting Lineup. I hate abbreviations but I needed the space. The paper I used was a label from one of the tall-boy sized holders I got in 2015. I saved the paper labels to use as note paper.

I made a couple of mistakes as you can see by the areas where stuff is crossed out and changed. I credit that to two things: I woke up on January 2nd in more pain that I had been in a long time, which clouded my thinking, (I am in pain 24/7 but for some reason it has been worse this week..cannot figure out why...it's been brutal to be honest and also contributed to my lack of new post writing) and secondly it's been a while since I dealt with these cards and my diecast collection, and the memory is starting to fade, which really makes me unhappy. This has always been "my thing" and to find that I'm losing it has been discomforting.

But that's part of why I started the blog, because I know that my memory is not very good, and by writing stuff down even if/when I do forget it, it's here for me to look at and jog my memory.

Although there are still some diecast cards missing- most of the 1998 Racing Champions for some reason, that I am sure on, but others too- these are the ones that I can find, and one that I've misplaced but have the scan I made so I counted it anyway. I thought it would be more, to be honest. (My NASCAR diecast collection is over 5000 cars...like I said, it was "my thing") But then I realized that a lot of the cars I got second hand without the cards and there are more than a few that did not have cards issued, including pretty much every release from 2006 to current. I also did not count the cards that are still sealed in packages, either hanging on my wall or in storage. I know there are more there that I don't have loose, for instance the 1989 Racing Champions cards, but since I can't get at them I didn't count them. I'm not inclined to open the cars just to get to the cards, especially as I already have the cars loose that I picked up second hand.

Those numbers do NOT include the sprint cars, drag cars street cars and Indy car cards...those will be counted separately, so I have not gotten the grand total yet, but that will be coming soon. I would have done that now but I have to get to some of the cards, and I am not feeling good enough to move the stuff blocking them off, even though it's mostly just other cards. Soon, I hope.

As I suspected, it put my collection over the 30,000 mark, I currently sit at 30,886. I still have to determine when and which card is the actual 30,000th, that's a big deal to me. I also discovered that the Kasey Kahne tire relic I pulled out of the 20th and final Total Memorabilia blaster on January 1st was my 100th tire relic card. Tire relics are the most common in NASCAR, as the teams use 6 or more sets of 4 tires each race. So the rubber is plentiful. If you know where to look you can even get whole raced used tires- not just little chunks put onto cards- for $20 or so. I've had the opportunity but declined because I have absolutely nowhere I could store it. The tires are single use, not reused in more than one race, unlike most of the other equipment which can be used multiple times.

I am also closing in on my 300th NASCAR relic card, currently at 297. That means tire pieces account for more than 1/3rd of all of them. And I didn't even count the cards that are multi-relic but include tire in that total. Fun fact, the first relic cards ever made in any sport were tire relics, back in 1996. I have 17 different kinds of relics in my NASCAR collection, and you can expect a post detailing each kind of relic soon- probably next month as I get the annual "NASCAR fever" brought on by the Daytona 500. Or maybe I will do it when I hit my 300th, whenever comes first.