Problem solving

 During the past week, I thought up a post title for weaseling out of my "scan whatever comes out of the random box" take on my scanning project, because I came into a huge stack of 1990-91 Score American, from when my mom gave me the factory set as a gift back in 2020. I was going to title it "Making rules, breaking rules"...but while I was thinking of how I wanted to word the post, I went ahead and finished the huge stack of cards. OK, so huge may be a bit of an overstatement, but it was more than 200 cards. 

That happens to be a fairly easy set to pull scans out of, with it being a very bright set....so I got them all done in just over a day. (I had one page left to do the next morning)

The problem solved itself! 

Here's a random card so you know what set I'm talking about.

The other problem to solve- the NASCAR cards. They aren't in the boxes I'm grabbing to scan randomly. They are all in their own cases, mostly sorted by set already, from back when I had to keep them separated so I didn't type them into my overall collection chart. That's a moot point now that I finished typing everything in, but that doesn't help me get them scanned in the random boxes way I'm doing them now. 

So, I decided that I would work on NASCAR cards while watching races. I decided I would start with the 24 Hours of Daytona, which is an IMSA race, technically a NASCAR division but totally separate. The 24 Hours of Daytona happens to be my favorite race of the year, but this year my chronic health problems acted up so I wasn't able to work as much as I would have liked to during the race. During the entire 24 hour span of the race, I only was able to scan and edit 6 pages of cards. That's not too many, so I decided to finish the stack I had taken out expecting to work on during the race before going back to the mixed boxes. 

Even though they are mostly sorted by set, I'm still taking the random approach in that I'm not picking which set to work on. I'm just taking whatever is on top, and the first cards I happened to scan out of the first box was a full page of 1996 Classic, which is not a set I have a whole lot of.

Due to pure luck of the draw, Robert Yates happened to be the first card I placed on the scanner and then cropped. 

While I wait for the Heystack machine, I'm setting every card with foil aside and a LOT of NASCAR cards have foil. Easily 3/4ths of them out of this box got set aside for the future. That's OK, because I'm really enjoying working on the foilless cards for right now. The fact that the majority of the foilless cards happens to be from the 1990s and older surely doesn't hurt. 

Feels good to solve two problems in a span of 2 days. Although to be honest calling both of these problems is a stretch, it at least gives me something to write about.

A product from one card company appearing on another brand's card

 That's not something that happens often and I just discovered one while scanning. 

In this card, from 1995 Finish Line, Mark Martin is wearing a 1994 Action Packed Badge of Honor of Ernie Irvan. 

I suspect this photo was taken in late 1994. Mark and Ernie were good friends (and possibly still are, I don't know) and Ernie was severely injured in an accident at Michigan International Speedway in August 1994, receiving just a 10% chance to survive. 

The Action Packed Badge of Honor was a series of six pins that were available separately and also in some boxes of 1994 Action Packed Series 3. 

I have only one pin from the set, which happens to be Rusty Wallace.

Mine isn't in the best shape...although I got it new, I was at max 10 years old at the time and didn't take very good care of it. I'm lucky that I even found it in my storage unit after all these years. I'm 99% sure I got it in a box of Series 3, although I can't rule out buying it single packed either. Rusty was one of my top 2 favorite drivers in 1994- with Ernie. 

Ernie not only survived, he began racing again in late 1995 and even won the race at Michigan in 1996, his final career win. He would suffer a second head injury at Michigan again in 1999 and retired mid-season. I'm "friends" with him on Facebook.

I received the Mark Martin card on February 20th, 2020, but just scanned it on January 22nd, 2025. You have to pay attention to every detail when scanning and that's how I noticed the pin on Mark's jacket. 

An extremely short essay on football and music

 I am not really a football fan. I have actually seen a football game in person, at my high school when I was a student there, and I didn't enjoy it much. Truth be told, I mostly went to ogle the cheerleaders. Most of the game was spent shooing away mosquitos rather than watching anything. But anyway. 

I scanned this card today. 

Based on the card back it seems he was a great player, because A) he's in the Hall of Fame and B) he has a trading card set designed as his own, which is something only elite players get. This set was made by the Ted Williams Card Company, too.

However, I don't think of football when I see or hear of him. I think of the line in Mark Willis' classic "19 Somethin'" 

in which he sings "I was Roger Staubach in my back yard, shoebox full of baseball cards". 

This song gets fairly regular airplay on the Sirius channel I listen to, and my local radio station before that, meaning I now permanently associate this football player with this song, and vice-versa. 

That's it, that's the essay, making the effort to post more so when I was cropping it I thought to myself "I can make a post about this" and here we are. 

She Are the Champions....of the Wooooorld

 I was born in 1984. I've been a basketball fan since 1996. I've never seen my home team win a championship...until now! 

The New York Liberty brought home the 2024 WNBA Championship, bringing the city and state of New York the first major basketball title since the Nets won the final ABA Championship in 1976. 

The hard-fought finals against the Minnesota Lynx was honestly the most invested I've been in a basketball series since the Nets made the NBA finals in 2003. Game 5 was played on my birthday, and the refereeing was awful- the Lynx best players were in the proverbial stripes. 

Back home for game 6 was a nail biter, but my team won! New York is the champion! 

I had to get some of the Panini Instant cards documenting this. 

This is from Game 4, and the first time I thought to check Instant. 

I never knew if I would ever see a championship parade in my home state. But they did it, they are the champions now and forever. 

I have confidence they can do it again...even if not back to back, but the window is there with this core for several more runs at the title. However, nothing will ever feel like the first time seeing the celebrations! 

The final two Instant cards, from the parade, arrived on December 31st, allowing me to finally write this post. 

Testing my mettle

 I recently touched on how I changed the way I scan recently, just grabbing whatever box needed to be scanned and working through it instead of picking and choosing what I felt like doing at that time. 

I ran into the first big test of this style of scanning. 1995 Hi-Tech Brickyard 400 is a 90 card set and all 90 of them were in this box that I picked to work on next. Unfortunately these cards are very dark, and they are very "clingy" in that way that every bit of dust sticks to them and doesn't come off easily- and shows in the scan., especially on the back.

The urge to put these back in the box and work on whatever is in the next box is so strong, but I am pushing through. I've been setting these aside and putting them off since Christmas 2021 as it is so if I do it again, who knows how long it will be before I actually do them? And besides, the longer I let them sit, the more dust they can collect, so doing them now - while not particularly fun- saves them from being even more of a pain in the butt in the future. 

I'm griping but it will only take me about 3 days to do the entire 90 card set. 90 cards usually takes me about an hour and a half so it's a big difference in time, but on the other hand, I don't really have anything better I can do either. Except the next box of cards...or models. Or writing a blog post like this one to put off editing more scans...

This is what a scan looks like before I fix it.

And here's the same image, corrected.

Eat these cards!

 You are invited to a fancy meal. 

There will be chicken Alfredo. 

as well as a serving of Ham.

If you'd prefer, you could have Ribbs.

If you want classic American cuisine, you could have  a Berger

and fries

If your palette leans towards the Mexican and Indian cuisine, there will be tackos and curry. 

You could also order the fancy Japanese steak

or just eat bread.

There will also be sandwiches and stew.

Can't forget the Chili!

Try it with rice!

And many kinds of fish.

 

John Salmons

Do not worry if you are a vegetarian - there will be a salad option too. 

And a wide variety of fruit.

All kinds of berries....

a whole hill of berries in fact!

There will be condiments available too, don't worry!

Save room for dessert!

You will have your choice of beverages also.

For fans of alcoholic beverages, there will be beer, wine and sherry

while non-alcoholic refreshments will include coffey and seltzer.

Eat hardy, and don't leave a crumb!

And in case you are wondering, yes, I am nuts.