The long name game

Editorial note: I was going through my drafts and found this post from all the way back in 2016. It was meant to be a contest but obviously it's not anymore since I blew past the contest goal in 2017. I hadn't even started collecting hockey yet when I wrote this! The normal color text was written in 2016, the white text in 2024. 

As you have probably caught by now, I'm working on a project where I get one card of every person to get a card in both the NBA and NASCAR. It's a project that technically began in 1996 and 1992, respectively, but I didn't really start working on it, or make a list, until I began contributing to the Trading Card Database, which allowed me to easily figure out who was missing, and also who got cards in the NBA sets or NASCAR sets.

But that's not all.

I also have a running list of every person in my collection...not just in my two favorite sports but everything. Every athlete, every person to get a card.

It's a pretty massive project, and I've talked about it before.

I'm closing in on 10,000 names. As of right now, I have exactly 8,969 people in my collection, ranging from Max Aaron to Vladimir Zworykin. Max Aaron is still alphabetically first. Andrei Zyuzin is now last.

Even if I got 1 card of every person missing from my NBA and NASCAR collections it would not take me to the 10,000 mark. At least, not yet. New people get cards all the time, especially in the NBA which averages about 60 new people getting a card each season. Even though 1031 people doesn't sound like a lot, in reality it will probably take me several years to reach the 10,000 mark. It actually took me about 4 months. 

But I also take cards from every sport, and most non-sport. With the non-sport listings, no characters are counted- only people who have been alive on this plane of existence at some point in history.

I could go out and start buying loads of baseball, football and hockey in an attempt to get there by the end of the year, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to let it play out and see what happens. As it turns out, I did start buying loads of hockey, although not for name expansion reasons.

Where I'm seeing the most growth is multi-sport sets. Every month a new issue of SI for Kids arrives and in the 9 cards included, usually at least 7 of them are new people for my collection. I got one today, on Saturday, that indeed had 7 new people. I also got a package from a friend with SI for Kids cards going back to 1990. While it was heavy on the NBA content it still added 15 new people to my collection. I wish I had never stopped collecting them, but as I've mentioned in the past, I didn't even know it was still being published. (I have a subscription again). The Olympic project I talked about during the Olympics added quite a few new people, as each Olympic set usually does.

Let's play a little game in this otherwise pointless post. Take a guess WHEN I will hit 10,000, and what SPORT it will be. (non-Sport is also in the running and is a viable choice)

Month and year would be the best way to guess.

Whoever comes closest will win a prize, but I have no idea what it will be yet. You may not see it for several years, so keep that in mind!

Here is a screencap of my stats page.

Again, no contest portion as I am well past 10 thousand now. I'm actually approaching 20 thousand...hockey ended up being the topic of person #10,000.