Surprising myself with what matters to me...and what doesn't

I actually have surprised myself with what matters to me, and what doesn't. When I started the Cardboard History Gallery, I expected that the part that shows how recently something had been updated would matter to me on everything...but it turns out, it doesn't. In actuality, it only matters to me on the sections by set.

For some reason, seeing how long ago I last updated a set's album is one of the most interesting aspects for me. Yet, for each person? I thought it would matter to me, but...it doesn't. Instead, the part for each person that matters to me is seeing where the newly scanned cards slot into that player's history. I suspect this may be because it's taking me so long to create each person's albums...it is going to take me about 2 years to create, whereas I was able to complete the "By Set" section in one month, so it's more of a barometer than an album that I may have created just a day or so before the monthly upload. I will be curious to see if that changes once the albums for each person get older...although I doubt it because the NASCAR albums are now well established and it doesn't matter to me there.

 Here's Larry Nance before the May 2020 Update. I actually pulled him up and uploaded him early specifically for this post- I'm only up to letter K for basketball otherwise.

And here he is after the upload. All the cards with the orange number were scanned and uploaded in the month of May, 2020. The two 1991-92 Skybox cards- base and mini- really illustrate it at this small scale, moving from 6th and 7th to 14th and 15th with the addition of the older cards. Seeing where the new cards slot in, like I said...THAT'S what I find the most interesting. The larger player pages are generally more interesting to me than those with under 10 cards scanned, although I do get a certain sense of joy if I am updating an album that only had one card scanned previously. Why that matters, and adding a third card to an album that has two doesn't "move the needle" the same way, I couldn't tell you. I don't understand the way my head works any more than you do. I went from 29 to 41 cards scanned of Larry Nance during the month of May, and I've already scanned one of his base cards from 1993-94 Hoops in June...so his album will be updated again on or shortly after July 1st. The orange "New" markers last for 6 days.

The fact that I have the website configured to put everything in place is really nice, too. I don't have to really do anything, other than of course create the scans, albums, and upload the pictures. I set the default setting to Title. Fotki, when you first sign up, the default is upload date. But you can change it for each album or the whole website. I went for the whole website, and it saves me from having to do so much more work. Every upload goes into place chronologically or alphabetically automatically...with one caveat. For names with apostrophes in them, it puts them first. I don't know why. So for example it puts O'Neal ahead of Oakley. That's a little disappointing, but overall, if that's the worst thing I'm dealing with in a day, that's OK. The other weird thing is that it doesn't really recognize how numbers work. If you label a card #2, it will put it AFTER card #111. That's why I use the 0 in the numbers. If you want them in number order, you have to put it as #002. If I forget how many cards are in a set and use the wrong code (02 when it should be 002, or 002 when it should be 02) it throws it off, but it's easy enough to fix using the bulk editor. I usually open up an album and just check when I'm labeling scans for sets I'm not sure on just to be sure and try to eliminate the problem, and I have to open each album to update them, but sometimes I still mess up. Nothing that can't be fixed later, but it can get frustrating if it requires  a lot of fixing.

For teams, I discovered two things that matter for me- the total number of images in each album (which tells me how many cards I have of each team- at least scanned) and also, surprisingly, seeing what it takes to get onto the first page of the album. For the NBA, it's pretty much settled out that other than the teams and names that came about later, a card basically has to be from 1992-93 or older to get onto the first page. In hockey it's much more wide open, since I'm still new to the sport really...some of the teams don't even have a second page yet, whereas some of the NBA teams are approaching 30 pages (of 108 scans per page).  I'm working on scanning a big batch of older cards as I type this, ranging in age from 1973-74 through 1994-95, for the NBA, so when I do this month's upload (May 2020) it may push the date required for making page one back even further. Time will tell...and once I take the screencaps to post in this post, you'll be able to tell as well.

After the uploads of what I scanned in May, all teams now need to be from 1991-92 or older, with the exception of the late 80s expansion teams which simply don't have enough cards to change that. Many are now to the point where they need to be from 1990-91 or older, and some teams, especially the long running teams, now need newly scanned cards to be from the 1980s to make it onto page one. That is generally only the case with teams that got cards all the way back to 1957-58 Topps but once I finish scanning the 70s and 80s cards more teams will probably be there as well.

As it turns out, something else I thought would matter to me on all the albums, also, doesn't. With Fotki, one of the options is to have the sample image for the album change with each refresh or each time you navigate to a page. I thought that would be really interesting, but in practicality, it just added more time and more scrolling, and I stopped caring by the second month of doing the uploads for each person. I still like seeing it on the teams, and I like seeing it on the years and subjects for non-sports, but for the people...one of things I looked most forward to creating...really didn't matter to me.

One thing I did NOT anticipate, but turned out to be interesting...on Fotki, the What's New page shows each album in reverse order of updating it...so if I go to the last page, I can see which albums have gone the longest without an update. Since I began with the NBA teams, which are generally the largest albums, that's quite interesting to me. Some of the teams I have more cards waiting to be scanned, but some of them are pretty rare, and I don't have any other cards of them, although they exist. For some, like the Chicago Zephyrs...that's all there is. They have only one card ever made, I have it, end of story...eventually that team will make it's way to the end of the list, and likely will be there forever, unless Panini starts actually covering NBA history...so like I say, forever.

This was the last page when I started the monthly upload.

notice how it's now 1590 pages, which when full show 10 albums each!

It's interesting how it's taken on a life of it's own...and how certain things matter to me on some aspects, and on some not at all, even though the process for creating each and every part is pretty much the same.

I doubt anyone else will really care, but I thought it was interesting enough to get a post out of it.