It begins...

All good things come to an end, and my streak of posting every day ended on this past Sunday. (now two Sundays ago as it took me a while to write this, almost three!) It was starting to feel more like "work" than "fun" so I am not going to worry about doing that sort of thing again. In fact, without the 30 Day Challenge, it is something I likely wouldn't have done in the first place.

While one thing was coming to an end, something new was beginning. On Saturday, I finally began my paper listing for my new NHL card collection. I have kept my paper listings since 1998, and it's something that I build my entire collection around. It's how I know what I have, it's how I define what's in my collection- if it has a paper listing, it counts.

Since I began collecting the NHL in January, I've not had a paper listing. Whenever I got something new, I had to go to the Trading Card Database and see if it was listed as part of my collection. I don't trust myself enough to remember. Nothing's worse than thinking a card is a new addition and finding out later it's a duplicate. Especially if you payed for it! The Database works well, but it's a slow process, and not particularly easy to do when I am sitting on my floor sorting cards- I actually prefer the floor, although as I get older I am having a hard time doing it- it causes pain that it didn't before and I sometimes need help to get up. But I digress.

A paper listing was needed. I had run out of paper so I had to put it off, even though I bought a binder to store the listing in January or February, but on the way home from my model club meeting on the first Wednesday of the month, I stopped and ran into the local Walgreen's to check and see if they had any cards. (no, they rarely do, but sometimes) and what do I happen to see but newly restocked paper. I bought 6 packages, and it probably won't be enough.

Finally, I began on Saturday. I started with 2016-17 Ice, and also did 16-17 Fleer Showcase and a couple other sets I had cards on hand from. Then I decided that I would work on the listings in chronological order, starting with the oldest set in my collection, 1957-58 Topps. I got up to 1988-89 on Saturday.

I then took a break to go to one of only two car shows I can do a year. and Monday was spent on other things...which included a trip to Wal-Mart that yielded two Parkhurst blasters and an NBA repack, and later that night COMC binge shopping with the money I had saved up since November. Eventually I got back to it and worked my way all the way up through 1995-96 Collector's Choice. By then, it was no longer fun. It was now fully into "chore" mode, as it was just past the point of being enjoyable. Not to mention that my hand and wrist was hurting badly from so much writing.

So I decided to change things up. I decided to work on listings for the sets only as I got new cards from each set...eventually, it will work out where every set is listed. I started by working on the sets that JediJeff sent me back on the 5th- the day before I started the listing, and what I needed to kickstart myself to get it going. It still took me several days to do these, I made that choice on this pat Monday and didn't finish until Thursday. Then, it took me maybe 10 minutes to sort the listings into chronological order, something I was not looking forward to but went quicker than expected. I was able to get them all typed into my collection charts on Excel and the Database as well- between the package from Jeff, a trade I made on the Database, a blaster of Parkhurst and another trade, that came out to 399 new cards. The largest listing I had previously made was 659 cards, but now I've done two 800 card listings. Thankfully, I have only a handful of each sets, or else my writing hand would have fallen off.

Here are some pictures.

Most of my NHL listings look like this...very sparse. I am still new to collecting them, though, and eventually I hope to fill in more of them. If not, I just wasted part of three weeks, lol. This is the listing for 1993-94 Power Play. I tried something new with the NHL listing, an idea that did not occur to me with my previous listings, which is double paging. It works, and I even have enough space that I can still do this if the set only has one parallel.

Here's the listing for 2016-17 Fleer Showcase, the first NHL hobby box I ever opened. Hopefully soon I can find the time to write up a Box Break Review of it and the other handful of boxes that I need to do them for. I had to single page this in the hopes that someday I will get one of the White Glow parallels, which are all SN to 25 I think. I was not lucky enough to get one from my box. I also have enough space to write the SN info and date added to my collection.

Here's a look into my NBA listing. This is 2013-14 Hoops, and as you can see, it's quite colorful. I have collected as many different colors of pens as I possibly can so each day I get cards I can use a different color. At one point I had almost 60 different colors but not all of them work anymore. I think it looks better when it has more color to it than when I do a box and they are all one color. As the 2013-14 Hoops set has multiple parallels you can see how I kind of line them up. When I first started the listing in 1998 I just listed whatever I had first, and it is all jumbled. I learned, over time, to leave room for the parallels so they are easy to read. I've even rewritten a couple of sets because they were so bad. The 2013-14 Hoops set had Red, Gold, Blue, Red Back and Black parallels, with the black being 1/1s, and I don't have any, but I did leave space for them in case I ever do get one. Each insert is listed in one color regardless of what the date is.

While I had the binders out and set up, I finally made a paper listing for 2008-09 Topps T-51 Murad. For some reason I just never got around to making a listing for that set and it's been on my To Do list for several years now. I finally did it...pretty sad it took me so long considering it's only a 230 card set. I may have even listed it as one of my goals for 2017 back on January 1st. I don't remember.

One thing with making the paper listing- it really cements the sets in my memory. Since I'm still new to the NHL I don't know the sets like I know the NBA or NASCAR sets- many of which I collected when new. Here, I'm getting 40 years of NHL history at once and it's kind of overwhelming- and I have memory problems to boot, which doesn't help. Before, when I was just going off the Database listing, I was constantly checking and rechecking to make sure I was listing something correctly, Now, since I've written it, it seems more solid in my memory. Hand writing the player's names helps me learn proper spelling for them as well, and when I realized I was writing a name I hadn't written before, it sort of set off a mental flag to check that person on my Complete List of People in my Collection Excel chart. I've found, after 19 years of tracking my collection this way, that some names are just fun to write. My favorite name to write is Rajon Rondo of the NBA...it just rolls off the pen. My favorite NHL player to write so far is Mats Zuccarello, surprisingly. Anybody with a lower case K and to a lesser extent Q is much less fun to write, but especially K. I cannot make a lower case k to save my life. Considering that this is basically just to tell me if I have a card or not, I don't always put a lot of effort into making it correct. As long as something is there, and I can make out the general intent of who it is listed, then it's good enough for me. In fact, if you look closely at the photo of the Fleer Showcase listing, you will see several mistakes. Unfortunately for me, the leading candidate for favorite NHL player has both a lower case K and Q in his name! (Henrik Lundqvist)

Thanks for reading, I've had enough writing, both literally and figuratively!