A change (in collecting habits) did me good

I don't like college cards. I never have. I likely never will. (not as long as the NCAA is around) I view college cards as the dregs of my collection, and nearly every one I have- more than 2000 - have come from repacks. I view them as filler, that every one of them I get is one less real card I didn't get.

For many years, I simply tossed them into a box. Or boxes, as I didn't care enough to organize them or even keep track of the boxes. (That's how one got left on the basement floor accidentally, and severely damaged in a flood). I didn't sort and organize them fully until 2014, 18 years after I began accumulating them, and then I only did it because it was a necessary evil if I wanted to find out exactly how many cards I had in my collection. Truth be told I probably didn't find them all. But I went with what I found as an official number. Even then, when I was making paper listings of them, I didn't really look at them, beyond the number and to see who the card depicted.

Flash forward to the last few months. In all of this time, I was putting off the college cards. I was saving them for later, because I had a ton of real cards to do. That was my intention all along- only worry about scanning them when I had nothing better to do. But, now that I've been working on my no-longer secret project, it's forced me to change my plans. Instead of doing them last, I'm now working on doing them first.

Each letter folder shows two images of the files inside it as a preview. I noticed that it's ALMOST always the two most recent scans. There's a couple instances of it choosing some random scan, but I would say something like 98.5% of the time, it's the two most recent. I realized that if I put off the college cards to the end, they would be what showed up as the images for every player with college cards. That wouldn't do!

I had to dig them out of my stash, one of the things I accomplished when I was trying to get my computer repaired before giving up and buying a new one.

Now that I have the new computer, I'm working on getting them all scanned. It's going to take a while- I have, as I said, more than 2000. And I've only scanned 699 of them according to my scan file. It's not going to be pleasant to do this, but I will power through and get it done (and then probably never look at them again)

I sorted them to make it easier to scan- some sets scan better with other cards of the same set. I mostly went through and picked out the mirror foil scans, the ones that are the hardest and least fun to do. (I finished them already, thankfully there were not that many). Next up I came to the 1992 Wild Card set- one of the largest stacks, and also one I wanted to not put off because they feature black borders (more work to edit the scans) and a lot of them are water damaged. (even though I dislike college cards immensely, the water damage still bothers me). So I theorized that I'll do the harder stuff first, and work towards the easier scans to make. Also, I will learn the ins and outs of editing on my new computer on college cards, not real cards, so if it's not 100%, I'm not going to really care.

But here's where it helps. Since I didn't really care about them, and didn't look at them all that closely, I never realized that about half the cards in the set are NOT college cards- they're international cards!

Of the four main stick and ball sports, basketball is the least well represented on cards. The sets are the smallest in size. The history is the least well documented. Minor leagues are just barely on cards, and most of them are not- even the NBA's wholly-owned minor league has appeared on exactly one card set in it's 17 year history. European leagues generally get nothing, occasionally a rare promo, but nothing overall.

This set, sort of, did that. NONE of the European teams are named. All the stats on the back, despite some of the players having graduated more than a decade before, are all college. But the cards are definitely European leagues.

Take a look:

 CAI Zaragoza is a Spanish team

 Saint-Quentin Basket-Ball is a French team and it's not even a top of the line team. This team played in the second level of professional basketball in France!

 Racing Paris is a top French team. It's most famous alumni is Tony Parker.

Levallois Sporting Club is a major sports effort in France- the club has teams in 83 different sports, according to Wikipedia! (Their basketball team merged with Racing Paris about a decade ago)

 Taugres is a Spanish team

 Breeze Milano appears to be an Italian team. (It does not have a Wikipedia entry) This is NBA veteran Danny Vranes, not Wranes, as published on the card. He is one of the players missing from my NBA collection, and remains so, as this is not an NBA card.

 Estudiantas Caja Postal is a Spanish club. Ricky Winslow is the father of Miami Heat center Justise Winslow, which I was unaware of until researching this card to figure out the team!

I don't even know which team this is! Perry McDonald does not have a Wikipedia page.

These are all excellent cards. Professional teams in Europe are so rare to see on cards. My knowledge of them is fairly limited, so I've been using Wikipedia to look them all up. What I've been doing is typing the player into Wikipedia, and then seeing what team he played for in 1991-92. So far they all match to that season, but I still have more needing research than done. When a player or team does not have an entry, that makes it quite a challenge for me.  As the last card here shows, I am not always being successful. But it's given me a much bigger appreciation of the 1992 Wild Card set than I ever have before, and I've been accumulating these since 1996! 

Unfortunately, that flood I mentioned? It hit this set the hardest. I've got a stack of 18 of them that are too damaged to scan. Some others are damaged but I decided to scan them anyway. Two of them actually stuck to each other so badly that I have them both in a sleeve and when I scan them, I will be scanning the front of one card and the back of a duplicate! Whatever gets the job done....but from now on, if/when I ever start being able to buy repacks again, I won't be totally disappointed as soon as I see this set. If it's a European player, then I will be happy! 

I'm looking forward to being able to create a European teams folder on my new scan website as well. That will be something I will be doing on or shortly after December 1st, when I do my monthly uploading. I expect to finish scanning all of the ones I have, that aren't too damaged, within 24 hours. I may have to make an "Unknown" album and ask for help on some of them!