New People Scanned in September 2023

 After not doing much scanning at all during the summer, I certainly made up for it in September! With injuries to both feet I couldn't do much else, certainly not modeling which requires 4 trips up and down the stairs each time I work on models, not even counting the trips outside to paint which adds even more trips. One foot is now healed but the other is still very problematic- so I scanned. Oh did I scan! I ended up scanning exactly 1234 cards in the month of September, and 252 of them were people getting scans for the first time! 

There's a good reason why there are so many. My best friend, the one who sent me that huge box I posted about back in 2015 where I saw my hockey collection grow from 28 to 2800 cards in a single day-is a big fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He wanted to see them take over the lead in all my football categories, so he sent me basically all of his duplicates, bringing my Buccaneers supply from "normal" to "ample"...according to the Database I now have 493 Buccaneers cards, and the next closest team has 122. So yeah...ample. 

So, since these were easy to access, about half of everything I scanned this month was football, which is definitely unusual for me. When you see the screenshots, you'll see other football too...it wasn't just the Buccaneers he sent me, and he also sent me some baseball and hockey as well, both of which led to new people getting scanned. 

But wait, there's more! Since the last time I did any scanning, I was able to find some NBA blasters at my local Wal-Mart, which is the first time in a long while. I found one for 2021-22 Illusions and 2022-23 Hoops and Donruss. So not only are there rookies in there, there's also players who debuted in the 2/3 years where cards were scarce at retail and I have only a scant few. For instance, Anthony Edwards- the #1 pick in the draft now 3 years ago, is appearing for the first time this month. Interestingly enough, the first pick of the draft from last season and the first pick from this season also appear for the first time this month, thanks to Topps Now producing an NBA set for the first time. Unfortunately I didn't pull any Cade Cunningham cards in those three blasters, or else I could have had 4 straight #1 draft picks appear for the first time in the same month-something that has not happened since I began collecting the NBA in 1996. Oh well. 

Even so, with them, Football still has the largest influx of new people, with 145 of the 252 being football players. 

It took me 8 days to get them all sorted and uploaded, which ensures that I won't accomplish nearly as much scanning in October. That's ok...don't want to get burned out. 

As always, click the image to see them larger and actually make them large enough to read the names. Thanks for reading. 

February Month in Review- A month that surprised me!

For a short month, that I normally can't stand, some interesting things happened for me in the hobby.

Of course it started out badly with the flood that cost me more than 250 cards. I was lucky to have about a dozen replacements in my duplicate stash, and I've since been able to trade for two other replacements, but I also got a few more from Random Acts of Kindness, which I will talk about shortly.

I spent most of the month working on documenting all the cards I received on January 31st. I will post Part 2 of my Epic mailday later this week- it's taken me this long to properly document them all, literally- I finished around 1 AM on March 1st! I don't want to spoil that post, but it's safe to say that all my old new addition records fell, excepting cards in one year, (and I suspect that may fall in 2015 as well.)

Of course, that process was slowed by the new cards I got in February. It turned out I got 773 new cards in the month...and all but around 100 of them came to me as either gifts (RAOK) or trades! Since January 31st I have received more cards as a Random Act of Kindness than I added to my collection in ALL OF 2014! With 2 months down, thanks to my friends in the hobby, 2015 already ranks 4th all time in most cards added in a year, with a caveat that I didn't start keeping the record of when I added cards to my collection until 2000, 12 years after I began collecting. I believe 1996 and 1997 especially would rank in the top 3 but I have no way of knowing- and that drives me nuts. But all I can do is make sure I stay up on it for the future.

My total for new cards in 2014 was 4,937...I surpassed that on February 23rd, and as of right now, I'm at 5,117 new cards in 2015. I surpassed it from a RAOK from a Trading Card Database member that saw me add 245 new cards.

3 RAOKs saw me add more than 100 new cards, with the largest being the one from 2/23.

Some of the new cards added were cards I did not plan to add. I love buying mixed boxes that my semi-local shop makes up, which I pull from when I need a "new card fix". I had one that had roughly 1/3rd left, but it got some water damage during the leak. Luckily, none of the cards inside were damaged, as 75 of the remaining cards in the box were new to my collection. I also added some football cards from another RAOK I received in 2014. I have saved some of them for adding when I need a card fix and that box also got wet. Only a couple of cards got damaged in the flood, and to be honest I actually damaged 1 when I was trying to take care of the flood worse than the water did.

One of the cards in the mixed box that avoided water damage was this Elton Brand card, from 2008-09 Topps T-51 Murad, which is my 12th Elton card of the year, which, as you may recall from my 2015 Goals post, getting more than 11 Elton Brand cards was one of my goals for the year. I reached that goal on 2/11, and I must also say thank you to my friend Ricky, who sent me a lot of 25 Elton cards he bought for me on Ebay, of which several were new, and is what allowed me to hit my goal in the 6th week of the year. You can see them all in my 2015 Elton Brand Project tab up at the top of all my posts.

I am working towards another goal as well. I have no clue exactly how many cards are in my collection. I know how many NBA, NASCAR, college basketball, multi-sport, Indy and drag racing cards are in my collection...but that's all. I have a number for non-sports but I think it may be wrong. It may or may not include the Olympic cards. I can't remember if I counted them as part of the binder, as I keep my paper listing with my non-sports cards, or if I just counted the non-sports, so it's been something I've wanted to check for a while. I made the official count in 2010, but by time I got the 2014 Winter Olympics cards Topps did I had no idea how I counted the previous set.

I'm not there yet, but I DID finally get a count for my NHL collection, MLB and NFL. I went into 2015 with 28 NHL hockey cards, and I'll detail them more in the Epic Mailday Part 2, but I had never had a count of my NFL or MLB cards. I finally tabulated them on February 28th, and while I didn't finish until March 1st, I am including the info here because I did most of the work in February.

I came up with an Excel chart so I don't have to do the math, it does it for me. This is an offshoot of my player collection Excel chart, which I began formulating the style back in 1997, on our old Word Processor, and has evolved since then. I actually just came up with a modification the day before yesterday, which makes things much easier. I wish I had thought of it sooner!

My count for the NFL-

And my count for MLB baseball-

I see that I have exactly 300 more football cards than baseball. I actually like baseball a lot more than football, and I have some from the 2014 RAOK I mention above that would likely push them past football...I expect to add them officially to my collection by the end of 2015, but I am waiting for a specific time which I will detail later in the year, when it actually happens.

Both lists go further down than my screencap shows.

One thing I want to point out- I have received all but 6 of the cards on both of these charts as gifts or accidents. (random baseball or football cards mixed into the mix boxes of basketball I've been buying since 1996). I purchased two of the Michael Jordan baseball cards, and I purchased one of the football cards, actually the oldest, as it is a card of the father of an NBA player. (Calvin Hill, father of Grant Hill).  I also traded for three of the Allen & Ginter historical inserts too.

I will accept any card at any time- I run a "Home for wayward cards", if you will.

Soon I will create similar charts for my non-sports and hockey cards- later today, soon, for non-sports- I actually have the original file I created for the NBA back in 2003 when I got my first laptop, but I may start from scratch as I've come up with a better system, but I won't really worry about them or NASCAR because I have a count- which I am sure is not totally accurate - for now, at least. When I finish scanning everything, and sort them back by set, then I will worry about them. I don't see that happening this decade though.

I also completed three sets in February, my first three of 2015. 1994 Press Pass VIP (NASCAR), 1991 Star Picks (NCAA basketball) and 2015 Press Pass (NASCAR). All of which I have talked about in previous posts, I just wanted to mention them in my monthly review for the future when I click on my Monthly Review tab.

Thanks for reading!

Month in Review - January 2015

I thought I would debut a new feature today, a look back at the previous month in my hobby. And of course, take a look at some cards that I have not posted yet.

January was an overall unpleasant month in real life, but the cards were great, of course. Not even counting the huge epic mailday I posted about yesterday, I had already gotten 699 new cards in the month- and more than half of them came from trades, which is always a good thing.

I have been constantly tinkering with Cardboard History itself, adding many new features in January, including a Blogroll, my Top 10 Wants, links to my tradelist and semi-complete wantlists, I figured out the Tagging feature, and I added several pages to the top, where you can follow along as I add new cards of my favorite player in the NBA, and view a listing, with links to the gallery, of all my completed sets. I have some more things I want to add, just need to make the time.

I returned to Ebay, for the first time since 2009. Back then they went to where you MUST pay with Paypal, which I do not have. Sometime recently they allowed you to pay without Paypal, so I made 4 purchases. One NBA card, two NASCAR cards and one Non-Sports card. The NBA card I chose is visible on my Elton Brand chart, #3 on the list.

I hit NBA card #77,000 on January 1st. I knew I was getting close, so I pulled from my stash of mixed boxes until I hit the exact mark, and stopped there, for that day. I'm actually doing better with adding to them than I thought I would, it's not like the peak years where I was adding 1000 new cards a week, but I think I appreciate the cards more now. I even take the time to read the backs, something I didn't do when I was getting that many new ones- I didn't have the time to do that back then, I could barely keep up with keeping my Excel chart up to date...which I ended up losing to a floppy disk corrupting. That happened sometime in 2005, and it still stings...but, I am working on (slowly) recreating it, and even better than it was before.

I added 8 new people to my collection in January, 6 NBA and 2 NASCAR. (I only keep track of these two sports- but I got hundreds, if not thousands, of new people in baseball, football and especially hockey yesterday) 3 of the NBA players are rookies who I got in Prizm, which came out in January. My brother treated me to a shopping bag full of Rack Packs, some of which I have not yet opened. Of the 6, 3 of them are One Hit Wonders! Besides Scott Meents, who got a post in One Hit Wonders, and Rex Hughes, who was detailed in "My Largest Trade Ever", the other is Mark Hendrickson, who played briefly with the 76ers in 1996-97. He only got one NBA card, although he does have college cards in my collection, those don't count towards the NBA collection. For NASCAR, I picked up a card of former Miss Sprint Cup/current broadcaster Monica Palumbo off Ebay, and then I found a website that was selling the 1991 Track Pack Yesterday's Heroes set for a great price, and added Jim Roper, who won the first ever NASCAR race- but only ever got one card.

I only added two sets, not counting the massive amount I got yesterday. That would be 2014-15 Prizm, and this one- now my oldest card in my collection, from 1909. This was the non-sport card I picked up off Ebay. Kind of amazing, but I was able to get this 106 year old card for under $6. And it's a squirrel, so you really can't go wrong!

It appears this card predates the concept of numbering cards.

I opened one box in January 2015. Press Pass Cup Chase. I don't usually like to spend that kind of money on myself, but being the last Press Pass set ever- and the last NASCAR set for the forseeable future- I had to. I loved it, and it got it's own post last month.

I also nabbed this relic parallel on Ebay. I was quite surprised but pleased to pay less than the serially numbered print run for this one. I should have taken a better photo without the glare, but I mainly wanted the show off the green foil and the 07/10 SN.

 

Here's the Jim Roper card I mentioned earlier and a really great looking insert from 2012-13 Crusade...also named Crusade. (I hate when card companies do that). Tim Hardaway Sr.'s not my favorite player, but I have always loved the refractor technology. This came out of the mixed boxes I love so much.

 

I found out this card existed during the month of January, and added it to my collection as well. It was exclusive to Club Maxx in 1991. They also did a handful of them in 1992, of which I have the Elliott from that year as well.
From the front it almost looks like a normal card...

But it's not, though!

I found a dealer that sells cards by the pound, so my mom treated me to 10 pounds of cards. It's been a little disappointing, though, as they are mostly all duplicates- and all but 2 cards have been from the 1989-90 through 1994-95 era, of which I have most of them already- and nearly every single card has been damaged. More than 90%. I've gotten more than 20 copies of the 1992-93 Hoops Chris Ford card, however. When I finish all the inner boxes, I will line them all up and take a photo. I have gotten a few new cards, but of the two inner boxes, of 6, I've gotten less than 30 new cards. I don't plan to buy any more from them. (If I could find newer cards, like 2005-06 and later, like this, I would do it, as I don't have many from that era, comparatively)
I did get this great error, though. I love error cards...you can somewhat see the kind of damage most of the cards have from the photo though. Scuffs, bad corners, dents throughout.

And then....there's this. I never have any luck with redemptions. I usually send them and get nothing back. (Fleer still owes me some) Not this time!

Only my second triple autograph in my collection. First NASCAR. Those are on-card, too, not stickers. That doesn't matter too much to me, but I know a lot of other collectors care.

And before anyone asks....it's not for sale! It's my third Newman autograph, but first for Tony and Danica.

As always, thanks for reading! I'll post the grand total of cards added in January when I finish going through all the new ones I got yesterday...but that's not going to be for a few days more!