Saturday, July 8, 2017

I should be documenting this!

I've talked before, several times, how my main goal, really, has been to get everyone who ever got an NBA or NASCAR card into my collection. Although I wasn't able to figure out who had cards and who was missing until I went person-by-person through the listings on the Trading Card Database a few years ago, in reality I was setting the stages for this project for many years beforehand...if I was at a place or even looking through online listings, and I had a choice of two cards, I would ALWAYS pick the one that was of a person not yet in my collection.

By time I started Cardboard History, most of this collecting was done already. I didn't start Cardboard History until my 27th year in the hobby.

Now I've taken up NHL hockey. And the sport has already embedded itself into my very being. But, I've been saying that I didn't know if I would attempt to do this project for the NHL. I'm coming in later to the sport, and I don't have as much money to spend on the hobby as I once did due to medical reasons. The NHL has 100 years of history and has been getting cards since the 1920s, 30 years before the NBA was founded and 32 before NASCAR. Unlike my first two sports the NHL has pretty good cardboard representation of it's early years. The teams also have a larger roster, too.

It seems daunting. Frankly, it seems impossible. But, I'm doing it. I'm going to go for it, no more hemming and hawing if I want to take on this task. I do. It is so much fun in my first two sports that I have to do it for the NHL too.

I have a good head start. As of 7/6/17, I have 1739 different people already, although that number does include some non-NHLers like the Women's Olympic Team members. It's also probably not entirely accurate as I found a couple people not on the list but I already had multiple cards of. Whatever, it's close enough to start with.

I have yet to figure out how many people are missing, how many got cards. It's going to be a lot of people.

Since January 1st I've been documenting the first card I got of each NHL person on a list on the Trading Card Database. But, it's currently only available to me. I keep it closed so I can add to it, and adding to it I have done- it shows 470 new NHL players added to my collection, including those that appear in this post. But I've got a blog about cards, and what better thing to do then post about a major, major undertaking? Something that, for the first two sports I did it with, was done mostly before I had a blog or even internet connection!

So, without further ado, here are the first players added since I officially declared I am going for this project on 7/6/17.
Alex Petrovic became the first person added since I decided to go for it.


I had purchased two blasters of 2016-17 Parkhurst back in April, opening one when it was new. I cracked the seal on the second one on 7/7/17 and opened two packs, which yielded these 5 new people for my collection.

You can expect to see more of this project posted to the blog over the coming years. I will be working on this project for the rest of my life, unless I win the lottery and can go on a buying spree, hah!

9 comments:

  1. Sweet, really looking forward to following this one Billy! I'll be sending you a batch soon and hopefully some of the players will qualify!

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    1. Thanks Shane! I'll probably post in the future in groups of ten to 12 people, however many I can fit into the 200 characters tag limit. Much appreciated!

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  2. Best of luck to you in your endeavor. I believe the first hockey cards produced were in 1910. The C56 Imperial Tobacco which included hockey as well as lacrosse players.

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    1. Thank you. Those wouldn't count for me as they are multi-sport sets.

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  3. You expressed interest in a Brett Burns (and probably others), but I couldn't find a way to contact you. Drop me a note at douglQscorti@gmQil.com (spamblock: q to a).

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    1. Will do shortly, thanks. I thought I had my email on one of my info pages here but I will add it too.

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  4. Will be an interesting project to view. I look forward to it

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  5. Ahhhh another person tackling this task. I for one have been trying to put a listing together for hockey but finding it a harder task. So I just been going through my collection and have made one box for this task to include one sample of a card for every player who has a card. Mine includes Other leagues but might just work on the NHL. If you have a list Billy I would love to see it. I can also send you a gift package as usual. Heck maybe I can get you a card that was in you top 10 most wanted NASCAR like last time.

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    1. Yeah it's tough. What I'm going to have to do, eventually, is go into every single listing on the Database and determine if they fit my collection and if I have a card of them. That's what I did for the NBA, and though it's not foolproof it has worked pretty well. I did make a couple errors doing it. I just typed up yesterday a list of everyone I have. It might be easier to do that for a while. I just got probably 50 new people today making it outdated already, hopefully I will be able to update it tomorrow.

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