A dream actually came true!

 Most of the time we have dreams about things that don't happen, or can't happen. This isn't one of those things! I've been in the scale modeling hobby since 1999, but I've never had a permanent place to work. I started sitting on my floor, but I've also worked at my dining room table, sitting in my bed, and lately a fold up card table, which was the best I had but still not good...the table I was using I had to share with my other hobbies, so when I wanted to do card stuff, including listing my new additions in my paper listings, sorting, or taking photos of anything, I had to take the model stuff down. I could only work at certain times of the year due to temperatures and my health problems ..I need it to be cool in the summer because the heat gives me breathing problems, for example. 

Taking the air conditioner in and out required taking the table down completely. What's worse is that every time I took the model stuff down, things went missing. For example somehow when I took it down last year to get the ac out two hoods went missing.

All of these problems are a thing of the past! On July 13th, I got a permanent workspace set up in my basement, and it's better than anything I could have figured! It's more than a dream come true, because honestly I didn't dream it could be this good. It's perfect in every way! Now I won't have to worry about taking it down when I want to work on cards, or anything else mentioned above. I can work all year long because the basement is always a good temperature, it's been 95° here this week but the fan has only been on high once...when I was working in my room I wouldn't have been able to work on any models this week at all because I wouldn't have been able to turn off the ac and open the window. Not only that, but my room is more comfortable because I can keep the ac on when I am working, instead of having my room shoot up to 90 degrees every day and have to try and compensate for that when I got too hot and gave up on models for that day.

Nothing has fallen off the side of the table since I switched! That would happen on average 8 times a day on the card table. I'm not exaggerating, that was so frustrating. Hasn't happened even once at the permanent workspace! 

Since I made the switch I've already completed 7 models. I wouldn't have been able to finish these until September if I was stuck to working in my room. 

Now, my card hobby is not getting much attention. I'm sure I'll feel like doing cards again at some point soon but for now I'm fully in modeling mode. I have edited exactly one card scan since I got the table set up! I hurt my back worse than it normally is earlier this week but I was too sore to do more than one card editing, unfortunately. 

This is the table when I was getting it set up. It's an L shaped table, and here it hasn't been assembled yet, the side piece is just resting on it.the right side, the longer side, is where I do the actual building. The shorter left sud is where I put stuff to dry or just to wait while other parts are drying. 

This piece of wood is key to my modeling. I've had it since 2000, my 7th grade shop teacher gave it to me...it was a reject from the scrap room but is so very important to me. You can also see the light I chose to get.

Now it looks like a work space! The 39 car was the first model I finished in the basement, although I only had to do the 5 splitter braces and the splitter. I actually finished it the very first night I got it set up.

I ordered a rack to hold the models I have here in the house. I have a lot of models...I don't even know how many. I have a storage unit to hold them, but I have a bunch at hand to work on here too. Most of the time I've been working on kits I started in my room, have only actually started a couple downstairs. Eventually I'll finish the ones I started upstairs...in theory. (I start way more than I finish, usually due to me messing up the paint although I've gotten much better. For a while I would only get one usable paint job out of every dozen kits. I was so frustrated I seriously considered selling my kit stash and leaving the hobby forever. My mom and brother talked me out of it and I'm so glad they did). Now I only mess up about 1 in 4, or less. 

My brother treated me to a new chair as well. The one I had been using caused me significant amounts of pain so he got me a new one. He also did the vast majority of the work to get me set up here, including laing on the floor to bolt the table together! I'd still be laying there stuck like a turtle on it's back if I had to do that. I owe him a huge thank you for doing all the work, that I am physically incapable of doing. 

With all that said, I haven't been writing anything, in fact, I have only turned my computer on twice in the past week and a half that I've been set up! I didn't even turn it on for this post, I wrote it entirely on my phone. 

And, as soon as I hit post, I'm going back to work, back to my passion of documenting the history of NASCAR in scale, and building lots of other cool stuff too...I fully expect to finish another non-NASCAR model today in fact! 

Did you ever wonder exactly how many sets were in your collection?

 I know I did...so I found out. I created a section on the Cardboard History Gallery called the Set Archive, where I created an album for each topic and uploaded a scan of 1 card from ever major set. 

Granted, I know it's not a complete list of every set in my collection and can't be until I finish scanning everything, but I will update it going forward. MOST of the sections are complete with all sets scanned, but I know Baseball and Football have a lot not yet scanned, and hockey still has some as well needing scans. I even know of two NASCAR sets not scanned yet, although I could swear I did scan one of them recently...

I screencapped it at it's completion on the night of July 9th, and I will post them here. It will be interesting to see how it changes, both as the sets keep coming out and as I get more of my collection scanned. 

You should probably click on each image if you want to see how many different sets make up each topic. Not much of a spoiler alert, but NBA is #1.

Thanks for reading.

Postcards from the Epic Adventure!

 While standard trading cards were in short supply on our Epic Adventure in May, post cards were not. Oh no, postcards were plentiful! And I took advantage of that fact, adding 89 new postcards to my collection! 

Some of the postcards were even free. Can't beat that price! And I'm planning to show them all in this post!

 

The first big postcard addition was at the Iowa 80, the World's Largest Truckstop and their truck museum, which offers cards of about 1/4th of their trucks, and the backs even have info about each truck on the back. 

I don't know how I managed it but the cards posted in reverse order, with the oldest truck on the bottom.

I debated getting this one because I hate those stinking dolls but I wanted to get each of the cards they offered.

The next big post card addition was actually two places, but I don't remember which cards came from which place, so I'm posting them all here. They are from the Ranch Store, where we fed the Prairie Dogs, and the Mount Rushmore Gift Shop. 

They had some 3D cards, which I really liked. I ordered some more from the company after we got home, might get a post up about them at some point. 

I got this one at Mount Rushmore, not knowing we would actually go there the next day.

Keystone is the little town we stayed in, and it's awesome!

This one cracked me up.

This one came from Wall Drug

Didn't actually see any Buffalo in South Dakota, but got the card anyway.

This one is a bunch of stickers and is very flimsy. It took some damage on the ride home, I can't imagine it would fare well actually getting mailed.

One of the biggest sources of post cards was the Crazy Horse Monument. They had a ton of different designs, and I got them all.

These two are very similar. I accidentally got two, and when I got home I thought they were duplicates. But if you look at the font, they are actually different, and the back is totally different. 

That's Korczak Zylkowski who started the carving.

Considering they started in 1948 and the face is as far as they've gotten, I doubt I will live long enough to see this finished. 

The rest of the cards came from places we went to:

Another lenticular, these are so cool.

A postcard about the history of the stamp, it's apparently part of the series. I wouldn't mind finding the rest of them, as I'm also a stamp collector, although I don't work on the hobby very often...my fan tends to blow them away so I can only work on them in the AC season. 

But after I got done with scanning all the cards, I remembered buying some that weren't here. Where did they go? As it turns out, I had put them in the storage pocket on the back of the seat in the car, and not only that, when I found them, I found a couple of cards that I got on our trip to Ohio back in 2019 that I had completely forgotten about!

These are the three from the 2019 trip that have been in the car for parts of 4 years now!

Whoops! The funny thing is, I remembered getting them, and I just didn't know where they were. Especially the lighthouse one, I wondered where I had put it.

If you would like to read the backs of any of these cards, you can see them and the others I've scanned here: Post Cards on the Cardboard History Gallery

Thanks for reading!