5 Years of the Cardboard History Gallery

 Today marks the 5 Year Anniversary of the launching of the Cardboard History Gallery, my "magnum opus" where my card collection is documented in full. Where each person, each team, each set, each year, each subject for non-sports, all get an album. But it's more than just that. There's the Alphabetical Directory which has one image for each person scanned in my collection, there's the Set Archive which has one image from each major set, there's the Peripheral folder in each of the major sections which has an album for box, pack, set, publications and more. There's the Encyclopedia where the people in the Alphabetical Directory are also copy and pasted into subject folders. 

My ultimate goal is to open a museum and Hall of Fame for trading cards. When (if) that ever actually happens, the Cardboard History Gallery will serve as the main interactive experience for visitors. A full documentation of the museum collection. (That's also why I will take literally any card, for the eventual museum)

Although I launched the Cardboard History Gallery 5 years ago today, the process behind it was much more intense. I didn't finish creating every album until March 27th of this year. It took me two years of sorting scans on my hard drive before I was ready to launch in the first place. And of course, the scanning process has been going on since 2009, and the collecting of cards since 1988, so there are a couple of different start dates I could go with here...lol. 

Here are some statistics from 5 years of the Cardboard History Gallery:

Of course photos really means scans for the most part. There are some cards and packaging that are too big to fit on the scanner tray, and the Card Show albums are all photos, but the rest is all scans.

Using the math skills of Excel I copied down how many people and how many sets have been scanned, and let it do the math for me.

I have the sets broken out very much, but I also copied and pasted to get a total of how many sets make up the overall Non-Sports category, Other sports, and my favorite, Auto Racing.

Of course this is just what has been scanned...all numbers have the potential to go up, most of the numbers absolutely will go up. The people numbers will likely go up much more than the set numbers, but since I have no intention of stopping to collect, both numbers are not complete. And I still have thousands of cards awaiting scans, years worth of scanning. Thankfully, I really enjoy it and consider the whole process my favorite part of the hobby.

How do I remember the date I launched it so well? Well, for one, it tells me on the Statistics page. For 2, it tells me how long ago each album was created and some of them were at 4 years 11 months ago. But most of all...I launched it as a birthday present to myself. Yes, today is my birthday and I have to say...this is the best present I've ever given myself.