5 Years Ago Today

Is when I truly joined the Trading Card Database! Although my registration date is in 2011, I didn't really do anything with the site other than use it for checklist purposes, as I went through scanning my collection for my own website.

I don't remember what changed, but October 5th, 2012 is when I started entering my collection and my scans. Since that time, there is not a day that has gone by that I have not been on there...not counting when I was in the hospital in 2013, coming to within literally 5 minutes of dying. The Database is now my home page, and the first thing I check every day- even before I check my Facebook page.

The Database has played a major role in my life, as well. When I started entering my collection, I was not collecting the the NBA. That seems so hard to believe, but I had left the sport in 2006- something I now consider one of, if not THE, biggest mistake(s) of my life. When I was going through my paper listings entering my collection, it brought back a lot of great memories, and soon I was back collecting full time. That would not have happened if I did not join there, most likely, although I had started watching the sport again before then.

More recently, I got into NHL because of a forum thread there. When the Golden Knights announced their logo last year, there was a thread about it. I wanted to see the logo, so I put NHL Network on my tv, and I got hooked! By the end of the show (Actually, about three of four airings of the show) I was an NHL fan, and now it's a part of every day of my life...and of course, I am now collecting NHL cards as well. To celebrate the anniversary, I'm going to open some hockey cards I purchased last month.

Cardboard History is also a direct result of my membership there. I hadn't read any card blogs, in fact I didn't know the concept even existed, before I started reading the ones that show up on the right side of the page there. I began reading them in either late 2013 or early 2014, and I finally decided, in November 2014, to start my own. It's been pretty darn rewarding. to say the least, and I've got people I consider friends now that I met via the blog.

My current main project would not have been possible if I had not joined there...for my entire time in the hobby, I've been a set collector. It's just how I think, anything else seems foreign and wrong, lol. But nowadays it's pretty much impossible to build sets like I prefer, so I'm focusing on getting at least one card of every person who got a card for the NBA, NASCAR, and now, NHL. I figured out who was missing from my collection by literally clicking on every single name that I was not sure was in my collection or not. I couldn't just go through the list of names because of the college and other non-NBA people that have cards, I had to actually look at each listing and see if they were NBA people or not. Then, when I finished the NBA, I did racing in the same way. Eventually, when I have more of a collection built up, I'll do the same for the NHL.

In my five years I've posted 70,802 front scans, 71,282 back scans, 3080 checklists, 699 box images, 595 pack images and 68 ads. I've earned 233,188 points in that time! I've contributed something to every single category, several of which saw me buy cards with the specific intent to be able to post them there, which, it turned out, all I could do was the packs themselves- the cards were already done! (Yeah, I didn't research it at all, LOL!)

When I joined, the completed Non-Sport galleries were a single page, around 20 sets if I remember correctly. Now, it's thousands. Basketball was only on two pages, if that much, and I can't recall how many pages racing took up in the Gallery, but I think it was one. All that's not something I can take credit for - though I have certainly contributed- but it shows how much the site has grown in the last 5 years.

I've also been on the receiving end of a significant amount of kindness...for the past couple years, I've gotten more cards as gifts from friends in the hobby or in trades than I've purchased for myself. Where else do you find people with that kind of kindness? the world needs more people like card people. I've also pulled off some big trades- this coming Saturday I'll be shipping out my second trade where more than 1000 cards change hands in both directions, both of which with members there. I've been trading online since the year 2000 so that's a pretty big deal.

It is, for sure, the greatest card site on the internet. Better than my own- both of my own- by such a wide margin it's incalculable. I plan to be there for as long as I live, although sometime next year, I'm going to run out of cards that need scans! It doesn't matter, it won't stop me from finding something on there to do.

Modified a post I made on the forum there to get this post. Mostly I had to change "here" to "there" but some wording was changed as well