Done!

 It took me 4 and a half years, but FINALLY, at 5:23 PM last night, I completed building the Cardboard History Gallery! It has been an incredible amount of work, but it's also probably the greatest thing I've ever created too...each person has their own album, each team, each season, each set, each subject for Non-Sports. 

I have an alphabetical directory of each person scanned in my collection, sorted by letter (all subjects together) or by topic (all basketball players, all football, etc)

I have a set guide, showing an example of every major set in my collection that's been scanned so far. 

I have a peripheral section for each topic, showing packs, boxes, sell sheets, publications, etc. 

I have an Error gallery showing error cards sorted by error type.

I have a section for "hits"- Autographs, Relics and Serially Numbered cards.

Although I launched it on October 18th, 2018 (my birthday present to myself) the groundwork for this really began all the way back in 2009, it just took me time to put it all together. 

If I ever realize my dream of opening a Museum and Hall of Fame for the hobby (my ultimate goal) this will act as the catalog of the museum collection. 

Here are the stats as provided by Fotki, the platform I use for the Cardboard History Galley. 

Now, there is still a massive amount of work ahead of me. While I got everything posted that I have scanned, the scanning project is still far from over. I will, of course, continue to update each set's album as I label them, and all person, team and season/topic albums will be updated on the 1st of each month or however long it takes me to do them all, sometimes it takes more than a week to upload everything I scan in a month. 

The last album I had to upload to complete the project was Eric Zeier, the only football player I have scanned with a last name that starts with Z. 

Here's a screenshot of the homepage

and a screenshot of the hockey section, although the Basketball, Baseball and Football sections are layed out the same way. Auto Racing and Multi-Sport/Other Sports have slightly different layouts because they require it.

Here's a screenshot of the Non-Sports section. 

Here's a cropped down screenshot of what the "By person" section looks like

Above is an image showing what the "By Set" section looks like. This is the only place I post the back scans. Finally, below, a screenshot from in an album, here a team:

As you can see, I also researched and wrote histories for every team in all 5 major sports. Easy for the three sports I collect regularly, a bit harder for Baseball and Football, but I did it. Fotki tracks how many times each scan has been looked at directly, which is cumulative from the moment I upload them, although when I am logged in and looking at them it doesn't count, just other people. 

After seeing all this, you can hopefully see how much work I've put into creating this and why I call it my "magnum opus".  The great thing is that although the framework is now finally built, it will never truly end...I will be collecting and scanning forever so there will ALWAYS be updates. 

Maybe some day I will actually break even and have my entire collection scanned...but that's not going to be soon, however long it takes me, they will all end up here. 

The great thing about Fotki is that I was able to set it up so that all albums automatically sort into order based on image title. So whenever I get something new to me or just older scanned, it automatically slots into place into each album. I have to admit, when I started this, I didn't foresee how much fun it would turn out to be to see where a newly scanned card slotted into a person's album, or especially a team album, which is unquestionably my favorite part of this entire project. Seeing if a new scan cracks Page #1 (120 scans) for each team has become especially fun for me, I've even written an entire post about that. 

I have been documenting the creation of the Cardboard History Gallery here on the original Cardboard History. Although posts about it get little interaction or comments, it has turned out to be one of the most fun things in the entire hobby for me, and I have to be honest, in some cases, the documentation of the cards has been more enjoyable than actually having the cards in some cases. 

No time to rest, back to scanning...