FINALLY no longer hanging over my head

 I have mentioned it a few times over the years- when my brother gave me my current scanner I went and scanned a bunch of mirror foil and Finest style cards. I do not like editing those scans, they are not fun at all...the term I've used in the past is "soul crushing". I had set them aside to work on when I was sick and didn't want to touch any cards to make new scans, and...guess what, I'm sick again. This is the third time in 2023 I've managed to catch a cold...I'm so ready for 2024. Worse still is that I'll miss my model club Christmas party for the first time ever, since I joined the club in 2009. 

But, with all this time being spent sick, I finally got the scans finished! They have been waiting since 2019, I believe. 

After the last sickness, I had only 10 pages left- 2 of 1994 Finest baseball and 4 each of 1994-95 and 1997-98 Finest basketball. 

over the course of yesterday and today I finished off all 10 pages. I'm so glad they are done and behind me now, no longer hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. 

Not to say I'm done with the foils and Finests, I have several hundred that require scans still, and I am still adding more to the collection, as in last post. But when you do one or two pages at a time it's a lot more tolerable than seeing over 100 pages looming ahead of you. I didn't pay attention to how many pages it was, or if I did I forgot, but I think it was actually closer to 500 scans, which would be about 250 pages. I know this round covered images 561 to 627, and I know they started in at least the 200s- maybe lower numbered. I wish I had paid more attention to that. 

The next scan I make will be #13997 so that tells you an idea of how long ago these were scanned. Like I said, I think it was 2019. It might have been late 2018. The one thing I would change about this Epson V600 if I could would be that it saves the date the scan was made, it does not. I know the scans were made BEFORE I went to the NY International Auto show in 2019. 

This was the last card cropped and edited. 1997-98 Finest #242. 

Here's an example of the other two sets I mentioned.

Unfortunately some of the 1994-95 Finests have greened. 

I know now that I will not do such a huge batch of scanning like that again. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turns out it wasn't. Lesson learned. 

Sorry if the writing is a little disjointed in this post. After all I am sick. 

Green, but no envy

I don't know the cause, and I'm sure there's no fix to it, but it's really disappointing to look through old Finests and early Topps Chromes and see them turning green. Just a small sampling.

This Anthony Mason card is starting to turn. I'm glad I got it scanned now, because I don't know how much time it has left before turning green.

While working on these scans, I also discovered I have a card from this set with a bug squashed between the card and the protective peel. Eew! I don't normally have a problem with flying bugs, but this creeped me out for some reason. I posted a scan on the Trading Card Database if you want to see it. I don't intend to post it here.

Was this REALLY the best photo available?

No, no it wasn't...

I had saved this football card for a post along these lines for a while...somebody sent it to me but I don't remember who. Angus maybe.

Once again, the back photo would have been a much better choice.

I know I have more of these in the collection, but so I can get a post up in this sparse time I will go with just these two

June 2017 Trade Recap

I pulled off a few trades in June, and hit a couple of milestones in the process.

First was a small three cards for three cards trade with Trading Card Database member SaveDaKid. This is our second trade in a short time. In this trade I got two cards from 1997-98 Topps and one from 1992-93 Stadium Club. I only scanned one so I would have a card to post, both sets are done on the Database so normally I set them aside for future scanning.

Next was a BIG trade with Jay O'Neill, also of the Database. I got a bunch of 1994-95 Finest cards, almost 50 of them, covering both series but mostly series 1, which I had less of to begin with.

I scanned 18 of them but here are 4...and the first Milestone of the month. The Grant Long card shown is my 87,000 different NBA card...I think. My records are probably off because I just went and scanned a card recently, went to upload it to the Database...only to find it was already there, and that I had posted it! That's not right...

But the trade included other NBA as well...here's an example from each set included.

 1992-93 Fleer is a favorite set of mine. This is only my second card from this insert set.

 1994-95 Emotion is a pretty rare set to get in trade. The E-Series from Fleer/Skybox ran until 2006-07 as a standalone set and still appears as an insert in an NHL set.

 More 1994-95 Flair. I've taken in more of these in trade in 2017 than I had in the last decade combined!

1994-95 Ultra is close to my least favorite issue of my favorite brand...I am slowly knocking out my needs from the set via trade and I still wish to complete it some day.

I made another big trade with Shawn Norris, and got more Marvel and DC cards.

The Punisher War Journal card is my 1000th Marvel Comics card in my collection...which is a bit of a surprise as I have never been a Marvel reader. I am not sure if the number is correct, because it may be a combination of comic and Movie cards or it may be just comic cards. I need to recount some day.

This card, from the 1992 Impel DC Comics set, was my 14000th non-sport card overall, with a huge asterisk as I know I have more that are missing, including, I could swear, a complete set of this set, which would make this one a duplicate and not new. But since I can't find it, I can't count it as part of my collection.

I completed a trade with Rhinomeadows that brought me only 4 cards, but they were good ones.
The centerpiece is the SP variation from 1989-90 Hoops, which completes the set!

It took me a very long time to complete this set, but finally I can say it's done. There are a couple of variations I don't have yet but I don't consider variations necessary to have the complete set...unless they are something major like a totally different card front, like this one has.
The other three cards:

Both 1994-95 Fleer and 1996-97 Upper Deck made it into my Top 20 favorite sets of all time, and on the Vin Baker card it shows my all-time favorite jersey in NBA history. So a good trade for me! The fact that two of the cards were team cards doesn't hurt, either.

I thought there would be a couple more but they didn't arrive until July. Overall a very successful month for me!