The completion of a long running project

I've talked about this some in the past, and I'm going to again today, because I'm pretty happy to have completed this...it's only been hanging over my head for 5 years.

I began scanning my collection in 2009, at the time doing the fronts only. I had been posting them solely to my website, but then I began posting on the Trading Card Database. As I entered my collection, I would upload a front scan when I had it available, especially for sets that had not a single scan posted yet, which at that time were a lot more than there are now. But since I had fronts only, I could only post fronts...that didn't last long. Soon I was scanning card backs. But, I had already scanned thousands of cards front only by that point- my entire NASCAR and Non-Sports collections, and some NBA. Since then, I've been working on scanning the backs to the cards I did the fronts only of all those years ago, sometimes very hard, most of the time as "filler" when I need one or two cards for a page.

Finally, on February 28th, I finished scanning the backs of all the NBA cards that I did fronts only of, which sure is a great feeling. I had done most of them already- I finished the standard size NBA cards well over a year ago. But I still had almost a complete collection of 1993-94 Jam Session, which was already completely done on the Database. I made the decision to set them aside and work on scanning all the cards that needed scans for the Database, which I finished in December. I finally got around to them this past week, (err, a couple of a weeks ago now, I wrote this originally on the 28th) and got them all out and scanned. And by out I mean that literally- they were the next to last cards I had in pages. Unfortunately, many of them now have page damage- curving, UV coating issues, and a couple from the middle of the binder somehow managed to take damage from the 3 rings themselves. I took all my standard size cards out of pages in 2000, so these have been in there quite a while.

This was the last one I needed to scan.

I don't know when I scanned the front of the card, but I uploaded it to my website on February 14th, 2010, something I would not be doing anymore as I do all my monthly uploads on the 1st of the month, something I started doing in 2012 or 2013- I don't remember for sure. I know one year I saved up every scan from the entire year and then uploaded them, but that took a few days and I decided I would do it every month instead. I've kept doing that ever since.

I also took the time to scan the back of the last non-Sports card I posted to the Database front only back in 2012. I thought I had gotten them all years ago but it turns out I missed one...and it's a 1/1 at that!
You can see it HERE.
Now all I have left to do on the Database are the backs of are a page of Sports Illustrated for Kids cards, which I have lost since then, so I don't know when or if I will be able to do them. Someone, I didn't look who, uploaded some of the backs already but there are six cards that I did the fronts of still missing the backs.

While I completed the NBA portion of the project. I am not TRULY done- I still have several thousand NASCAR cards needing back scans, (More than a full 5000 count box) and probably about 1/3rd of the non-sports cards. Normally, I only type cards into my Excel files after they have been scanned both front and back, but I typed in the NASCAR cards BEFORE I came up with that idea/rule. I didn't have Excel charts for the non-sports cards until very recently, in fact as I write this on 2/28 I have not even finished creating them yet. But I will, eventually. Whether that is before or after I scan the backs is yet to be determined, but will almost surely be before, because I am not working on them all that hard. While it would be nice to have everything I've done the fronts of truly done, I have not for two reasons:

1 is that back then I wasn't about perfection as I am now. Some of those early scans are truly terrible. I have been debating if I should just start over fresh or try and save the original scans. I've already had to rescan some of them because parts were cut off or just otherwise unusable.
2 is that, when I am doing a tray full of cards, sometimes a card rotates and not all of it is scanned, the edge is cut off by the scanner, or it's rendered unusable in some other way, like having a hair scanned between the card and the tray. When that happens, when I do the back scan I take that card off the tray and pull out a card that only needs one side scanned. I like having that stash to do that with, it allows me to keep things even and not "waste" any scan area.

Even so, when I do truly finish them, it will be quite a celebration. And of course, for me celebrating a card project means opening a pack or two out of my card stash, hah!