Failing math, appearing on TV, and a really old card of an even older relative

Yesterday (now the day before since I fell asleep before publishing this) turned out to be an amazing day! Everything went right with scanning, so it was going well to begin with, and I found a bunch of great stuff on COMC. But the best was yet to come...

Right before I went to bed, my Mom surprised me with a blaster of 2020 Donruss NASCAR and two blasters of 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee Platinum, a new NHL set that I had none of yet. I did the NASCAR box first and in the very first pack I opened was an autograph, of up-and-coming star William Byron.

Then, in the very first pack of OPC Platinum...second card out of the box...my favorite player, Henrik Lundqvist! While it's always great to get a new card of my favorite, it was even better- it's my 100th of him! He becomes the first NHL player to break the triple digit mark, and it was getting close there- I really wanted him to be the first to the 100 mark, but Wayne Gretzky was catching up at an alarming rate...he's up to 93 cards in my collection now so he will join the 100 card club shortly. Although he is the first for hockey, more than 250 people have cleared the 100 card barrier in my collection, and two have cleared the 1000 card barrier, so he has a long way to go to move into my Top 10...and since only one company has the license for most of his career, he probably can't. But I don't care, this is a big deal to me.

Edit: As I wrote the post I realized he hasn't hit 100 hockey cards yet. Two, or possibly three of the cards are multi-sport, which don't count for the actual total. Darn it. The quest for 100 goes on. When I was counting up the collection I must have accidentally counted one  of the multi-sports cards by mistake. That's a downer for sure, but at least I now I've scanned my entire collection of him now.


Right after I opened the cards, I went to bed. And that's when the most amazing part of the day happened...and I missed it! Luckily, one of my friends was paying attention, and was able to get a photo of it to show me.

On the Dale Jr. Download, Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s TV show, that appears on NBC Sports network, one of my models (and my photo of it!) was used in a discussion of paint schemes of the past. Oh wow! That has to be the highlight of my modeling career right there.

Luckily, my friend Ryan Boyd was watching and had his camera handy and was able to get this photo. I built this model of Kenny Irwin's 2000 car back in 2007. Through a mutual acquaintance I got word to Dale Jr. that he could use any of my photos whenever he wanted, and now, 13 years later, he did! (apparently my website was discussed on his radio show in 2007) But the fact that he used my model to represent the car, what an amazing honor. It's not like this is some obscure car either, this was (planned to be) a full season car and ran half the season. Unfortunately, Kenny Irwin was killed in this car at Louden, New Hampshire that July, so they stopped running this paint scheme. Hours and hours later, I'm still on a huge "high" from this, and I will likely be, for several days. All the many hours of frustration, hard work, and setbacks, well, it all payed off.  You can see the uncropped version, which I uploaded on April 27th, 2007, here on my website.

Also while I was sleeping, the mail came with my 2nd oldest trading card, which I just stumbled across. I had done a search for Edsel post cards (I had found out in an Edsel group on Facebook that the company itself issued cards) and found one that wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but was something I had to have once I saw it. Looking over the seller's other items, I found a section of tobacco cards, and saw this one, which I really didn't have to think twice about adding to my collection, once I made sure the perforated borders were correct and not some later modification...they were supposed to be there, so I bought it. First card I've bought on Ebay in over a year, actually!

 There's a little tiny bit of paper loss on the front, which I am generally not a fan of, but it only affects the border, and being 132 years old, the minor damage doesn't bother me. Even the back is cool.

Being from 1888, it's my second oldest card! Not only that, I now have a run of 1887-1890 present in my collection...something I never thought possible.

Oh, and by the way, Edward the Black Prince is my 20th Great-Uncle. He lived from 1330 to 1376. Like I said...a really old card of an even older relative!

Since I mentioned it, I might as well show the Edsel postcard as well.

I didn't notice that the sentence just trails off there, I hope it wasn't trimmed. It doesn't look or feel trimmed, but I'm just not sure. There was a sticker or something that had been placed on it, and was later ripped off, which caused some paper loss. It was never actually mailed. Despite the fact that the Edsel shown is a 1958 model, this card is almost surely from late 1957. The 1958 Edsels were introduced in September 1957. I added one of the promo cars that this advertises to my collection back in February at the Town of Newburgh Model Car Club meeting, which turned out to be the next-to-last meeting for the foreseeable future, although we didn't know that at the time. 

Although I'll never be able to own a real Edsel, I can at least collect the memorabilia. 

Here is the William Byron autograph I mentioned at the beginning as well.

Even though I messed up on the count, it's still a pretty amazing day! (And today is turning out to be just as interesting- it snowed, and collected! On May 9th! Although I'm writing this at 2:38 AM and the snow has stopped, unfortunately)