Card projects udpate

 While I've been focusing much more on the History part of Cardboard History of late, I'm still very much in the card hobby, and I've got an update on some projects and showing the start of a new one in this post...first and foremost, I will talk about the cards from other people. 

While I was busy working on models during most of last year, I didn't actually open the cards I got in the mail most of the time...the majority were trades on the Database, although there were some PIFs in there as well, and some of them as you can see didn't even come from the USA. There's one from Israel (the first time I've ever traded to that country), France and Lithuania. And this isn't even all of them! I missed a couple that I found after the photo, and I have misplaced some totally...as in I don't remember where I put them. As you may recall from previous posts I keep very detailed records, but my records are kept on the same table as I do my modeling...if I want to work on my card listings I have to take down the models, and vise-versa. So I just set them aside. Now that it's been too cold to work on models, I had the table cleaned off so I opened all of these on January 29th. In these envelopes, boxes and loose, there are 649 new cards to my collection! That's more than I got in several months last year combined. Since then I've been processing them into my collection...it took two days to list them on paper alone, then, Excel and the Database, and I didn't finish until February 4th.  

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You may recall that last year I was working on typing all the cards in my collection into Excel. I found that typing was much less painful than scanning and editing was, and I ended up typing them much faster than I expected to, in that I expected it to take me well into 2022, and instead I got it done in around a month and a half, if I remember correctly. Well, while I was going through them, I also pulled out the damaged cards and set them aside...

As you can see, some of my cards are in rather poor shape. 

So, I got the idea to go through my duplicates and list them in a separate collection on the Trading Card Database, and check them against the damaged cards to see if I could find upgrades. I realize that jumping into this in the middle of the scanning project is probably a foolish decision, but I really just feel the need to do it. But, in doing it, I've already found 45 replacements for the hockey cards, 23 for NASCAR, and one variation I didn't even know existed, but had in my duplicate box! So obviously the results are showing already, and I haven't even started the NBA yet. 

And there is a heck of a lot of basketball to check! (this isn't even all of it, just the Avon boxes!) 7 of them, still all full, await me. The NHL box, which is only about half full, had more than 3000 cards in it. I think my estimation of 80,000 NBA duplicates was probably too high, but only time will tell I suppose. Eventually...years down the road...these duplicates will either be added to my tradelist on the Database, sent in to COMC or given away for free on here. But I am not going to be ready to do that until the scanning project is done...right now, I'm mostly hunting upgrades and variations I wasn't aware of. For my listings, it goes by card number. If I have that number, and it's the same person, that means I have it and all further copies are duplicates. But, if there are variations, either errors and corrections or just differences, I generally didn't know about them other than a select few until I joined the Database. So I have no idea what I really have when it comes to them...I've already found a few that I discovered including one that was literally the top card in one of these boxes. But like I said, it's going to be years before I process them fully. No problem there, I'm getting there slowly but surely. Also, I have to be honest...some of these boxes have been untouched since 2003-04 season and all of them were last touched in 2005 or 2006 (other than quick glances inside them). I am hoping I might have pulled a duplicate LeBron Topps Chrome rookie card and don't remember, and that it's waiting in one of these boxes. 

It took me over a week to process the half-as-full NHL box so this is not really a quick process. But like I said...slowly but surely. 

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In January, I went through and proofed my tradelist on the Trading Card Database. I had several requests for cards that I no longer had and I wanted to make sure there were none anymore. (It's an automated system, but you have to do the steps in the right order, or it doesn't work. It has been changed now so that you can only do them in the right order, but some were traded before that change was made). As it turned out, there were far more that should have been on the list but weren't, the ones that shouldn't have been but were was maybe 20 cards; the cards that should have been there but weren't was well into the 4 digits, after correcting them my tradelist is now back up to 12,344 cards available for trade...it was below 8000 when I started. I've already completed 8 trades on there in 2022 with 72 new cards added to my collection, and there are 6 more trades in progress as I type this. 

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After I finished typing all my cards into Excel last year, I knew a couple of boxes had gotten misplaced, or more likely, I accidentally skipped when getting them out to type in, and I also only had the dates that the cards entered my collection on paper...were my card listing to get damaged, I would lose that info forever. I don't want that to happen of course, so I began checking my paper listing against my Excel listing, and making sure EVERYTHING was listed. I have, what I feel like, is an accurate number of what I have for the first time ever...and it's interesting in how far off my numbers were. In some subjects I had less than I thought, and in some I had more than I thought; I believe I've talked about this before but I cannot remember. Either way, I finished proofing NASCAR and NHL before I went back to models, and now, finally, I have accurate statistics on the teams for the first time ever in my NHL collection. 

As it turns out, I have a lot more non-NHL teams than I realized...263 to be exact! Every NHL teal ever is represented in my collection (the subject of a post I never finished back in last winter) but also 147 Major Junior and professional teams like the AHL, 12 National teams, 12 professional European teams, 9 WHA teams and 22 college and unclassified teams. 

While the alphabetical listing is all well and good, the leaderboard is the most fun to look at!

 This is what I love...seeing the rankings. I lost what I had for the NBA with a file crash circa 2004, which I've discussed many times...it was so devastating it played a role in why I walked away from the sport for several years. (I have learned my lesson and have all my Excel files backed up in multiple places now). These stats here are at the conclusion of 2021. 

and here it is after January's new additions. The Bruins are getting close to hitting the 1000 marker! I've added one more in February already. My goal is to update this after every month, but I have a very low follow through rate, and I'm not sure I'll have the mental wherewithall to keep up with it. But I will try! 

Once I finish proofing the NBA, I can create that chart for the NBA for the first time ever....I never had a team chart...all my original stats were person based. This is something I've been working towards for a long time, even though it's been months since I worked on proofing the NBA now...managing my time and my many projects has never been a strong suit of mine and I'm still not any better no matter how hard I try. My arm is healing finally after many setbacks and I can scan again as well, meaning more different directions I'm pulling myself in...hopefully eventually I will get where I want to be.