Pack stack slack attack

I finally got myself motivated and worked on scanning a bunch of the unopened packs I had ahead of me...some of them have been waiting since 2017 now. I had built up the stash (almost all of which came from Angus and SumoMenkoMan!) for my 2018 Card of the Day project, but that got me burned out on the hobby, which lasted for most of 2019, and is just showing signs of abating now...finally. Almost a year I was just "going through the motions" but I'm feeling excitement and wonder again, the essential feelings for the hobby to be fun.

While I was working on some other stuff, I determined I couldn't put off the hockey packs that Ryan had sent me sometime earlier this year...I don't even remember exactly when. I wrote about them in September but they were in my possession long before then, and they weren't the first box of packs he'd sent me this year.

I'm sure these need to be scanned...or did when I put them in the box. The majority of them are from Ryan, but a couple I got myself made it into the box- note the Panini stickers, and I see a Bigfoot pack in there as well. You can tell how burned out the Card of the Day project made me because I have not opened that 1996 Olympicards pack yet! They are actually still in the box Ryan sent them to me in, believe it or not!

This box, which mostly came to me from Angus and also has stuff I got locally, I THINK is already scanned, but I'm not 100% sure. It has been sitting so long I can't remember, so you know what that means....I have to go through each and every one and check out the pack section on Cardboard History Gallery to see if they are there or not. (It turned out that most were NOT scanned yet!)

And those are just the ones I can get easy access to. There's more. And that's not even counting the two boxes I've already scanned, one of which is shown in the linked post from September.

Some of the sets are technically not in my collection yet, because, while I have packs of them and have for a while now, I have not gotten any of the individual cards into my collection...to me it counts when I look at the card, not when the pack comes to me.

This one, for example, is not yet in my collection as of writing this...perhaps, by time I actually post it, it will be. I have a queue of posts waiting for publication- another sign that the burnout is passing- and I don't know when I will get this one posted. I wrote this paragraph at 5:55 AM on 11/25/2019. Of course, I could simply open the pack and make it part of my collection, but, I want to finish scanning them all before I start opening any.

Some of them will surely make it into 2020 before they get opened...which, I guess from a certain point of view, means it took me 2 decades to open them...


The sad thing is, the scanning process is quick. For example, all 20 packs shown in the September post took only about 45 minutes to dust, scan, edit and label. I should be able to get them all done within one day. Why the heck did I wait so long???
And update: I got them all scanned, edited, and labeled by noon that day. And I took time out to try and clean some of the packs and have a meal. I ended up with 228 scans made.

Now that I've gotten all the stuff in the queue posted, stay tuned because something very exciting (to me) is coming next...and it's not another update on the Cardboard History Gallery, which I can tell by the lack of views and comments that nobody really cares about, LOL.

How I determine which team folder to put a scan in

Something I have not addressed, but bears mentioning: How I decide which team folder on Cardboard History Gallery a scan goes in on a player that's traded or changed teams. It's actually pretty simple. If the card shows the logo or the new team's color scheme, or any combination of them, then it goes to the new team.

These two cards, both of which I scanned in November, went to the new team's folder. The Recchi card shows him in Flyers uniform but the words show Penguins. That would not be enough to get it in the Penguins folder...however, the card's color scheme DOES reflect the Penguins' brown, instead of the Flyers' orange, and as such, into the Penguins folder it went. The Turner card has both the traded to wording, the new team's logo AND the Hawks colors on the bottom portion of the card front, although considering the Blazers also have red there that's less of a tell on this card, and probably wasn't the best choice to show...but it's a serial numbered card I pulled from a single pack purchase and I wanted to show this one.

On the other hand, this card below:

...is technically a Quebec Nordiques card, yet the card still features the Rangers logo and color scheme, so it will go into the Rangers folder. I will, however, list is as a Nordiques card in my Excel listing, when/if I ever type it into that. (As you may recall, I made it obsolete with the Cardboard History Gallery, but, I'm going to need something to occupy my time when I finish scanning everything, so I expect to type everything in eventually anyway)

The one exception I make to this is Expansion teams. Players taken in Expansion drafts ALWAYS go to their new team, no matter what color scheme or logo is shown on the card. 

The Grizzlies and Raptors both entered the NBA in the 1995-96 season, and some of the early season cards couldn't show current teams because they did not exist yet. This card, as all the 1st series of Collector's Choice in 1995-96, have sometimes very subtle "Drafted by" stamps on the front, while maintaining the original team's color in the team name, in this case, dark purple for the Jazz. 

Teams that move and if they change names are placed in the season where they belong, IF it's a current season card with the new name listed. Certain sets are late issues and blur the lines a bit. For example, I turn to the 1995-96 Collector's Choice set again, but this time in hockey:

The Nordiques moved to Colorado for the 1995-96 season, but the early season card issues are still listed as the Nordiques, and that's where this card is placed. 

Although I do not have an example to show, it can go the other way as well. The Nets moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn for the 2012-13 season, but Panini started putting the Brooklyn logo on the cards in the late 2011-12 season. That is of course incorrect and if I ever get those cards, they will be in the New Jersey album, despite showing the Brooklyn logo. 

Whenever I get to sorting out the NASCAR teams, it will be much easier. Whatever is shown on the card is what team they will go to, except in very rare circumstances that I cannot think of occurring in my collection off the top of my head. The reason being is that with the NASCAR sets, they don't issue enough cards to have transitional issues. The early season releases reflect the previous season, and in fact near the end of Press Pass's run, the flagship set of the season was being issued around Thanksgiving of the year before. The later sets of the season show the drivers with their new teams, making things much easier. I do plan to do the NASCAR teams- or at least the Cup teams- someday. I do not know when I will get around to it, however, as I want to get a lot more scanning done before I tackle that. Unlike the NBA and NHL, which have a finite number of teams, never exceeding 31 at any time, NASCAR is a totally different format and, if I do all three main series, can have over 100 teams in any given season. 

Making a big change in 2020.

I've decided I'm going to make a big change in 2020. Since I began scanning my card collection in 2009, I've put them on my main Fotki account, (Link here) originally in one album per sport, then, when I filled that, breaking it out by season, or topic, depending. I've been maintaining that since April 2009, but in October 2018 I launched the Cardboard History Gallery, where I have everything sorted nicely by set, team, and person, the latter of which I'm still working on uploading. But by season or topic, I have to switch over to my original Fotki.

I have made the decision to transfer the season/topic albums over to Cardboard History Gallery, giving it 4 aspects for each subject instead of 3. That comes from the fact that I have to keep toggling back and forth for one, but the more important reason is that I've significantly stepped up my picture taking. In 2019 I'm going to take around 40,000 photos. (I don't know the exact number because I'm writing this on December 2nd.). I have a dedicated card website, so why am I storing it in two places? My storage on both Fotkis is not unlimited- anymore, it used to be- but if I keep taking a large number of photos- which is my intent- eventually I will run out of room. That's years away, but it is something I'm cognizant of...so much so that I have not even uploaded all the photos I've taken.

Now, there are some drawbacks to this. One, I will be starting fresh with upload date and views. (Fotki keeps track of them for me). If you remember, in April, I posted on my exact 10 year anniversary of beginning to scan, which I determined by looking to see the upload date on the first card I scanned- luckily, I remembered which card it was. The second drawback is that by uploading every card a 4th or 5th time (see below), it will push me to have to pay for more storage space on the Cardboard History Gallery sooner. (My original Fotki costs me $96 a year, the Gallery costs me $48 currently)

There are some plusses, though. While it will make life easier for me to upload them all in one place, the biggest thing is probably the quality of the scans themselves. When I was first starting, I didn't have PhotoScape to correct the scans, and "good enough" was acceptable to me. It's not, anymore. So the scans being posted to the new albums would be higher quality...some of the scans I accepted originally were downright awful. Some of them were not even complete, in fact, I've been debating just rescanning the majority of the NASCAR and Non-Sports cards from scratch because they are so bad. (As it sits, I've been saving what I can, and rescanning what I can't). I've already sorted out the scans that need fixing, so I don't even have to take the time to root them out here.

I will also be expanding what and how I document them. As of right now, I've got each of the Non-Sports cards sorted by topic only. I plan to mirror that, and upload them by topic again on the Gallery- but I'm also going to create a section where I document the non-sports cards by year, something I have no other easy way to track. I'm really looking forward to this. I also plan to break out the baseball and football into albums by year; on the current format they are all in one big album.

I don't plan to delete the scans off my original Fotki...I plan to just stop uploading newly scanned cards, which I do on the first of every month. That will not change, only the location they get uploaded to. My plan, as of right now, is to begin uploading the 4th Phase of the Cardboard History Gallery on January 1st, 2020. I will probably take me quite a bit of time to get it caught up to where I want it to be; but on the other hand, the original Fotki took me 10 and a half years to create. This should take me a month or two. The hardest part is still the scanning....this will be helped in speed because I don't really have to do any sorting beforehand. The scans are sorted in my collection files in essentially the same way they will be presented in the seasonal file on the Cardboard History Gallery. I basically have to just create the album, kick off the upload, and let Fotki do all the actual work. I'm really looking forward to doing this so I hope I can wait until the 1st to start.

lousy day for cards

Today has been a really frustrating day for cards.

1. I lost an ebay auction for the simple reason that I forgot to bid on it. (8 of the 10 cards would have been people missing from my collection).

2. I dropped my smart phone on the oversized rookie card I pulled from a blaster of 19-20 Upper Deck yesterday, leaving a big scratch on the front. (luckily, I was able to scan and post it before that happened)

3. I wanted to do a surprise PIF and forgot to mention it was supposed to be a surprise, so the recipient ended up finding out about it.

4. COMC either swiped a card or lost it, but I had been looking forward to getting my first autographed lady hockey player card when my order arrived next week. Instead, no, they say sorry but I don't get my card. How convienient that the other copies of the card on there are more than I had paid for mine...it can't be replaced because it's serially numbered and had a unique patch.  I hope it's inpetitude instead of shady business. I suspect they sold it on Ebay for more than I paid for it. 

I'm getting really close to being done with COMC. Them not delivering what I paid for might just be the last straw. 

Oh, and did I mention, I also had a root canal this morning, where the novacaine wore off during the drilling, and am hurting in 9 different places? In addition to the usual pain that I live in 24/7? (I mean different in both number of places and places that don't usually bother me...much) Ugh. It's getting harder and harder for me to pretend I'm happy, and now today the one thing that brings me pure happiness is not. 

I'm not touching any other cards today. 

Thanks for letting me vent. 

EDIT: UPDATE: COMC is making it right. I was really in a bad frame of mind with them and I let them know on Twitter...but they replaced the card for me. I am surprised but very pleased with the outcome.

Wave 1 is away

Wave 1 of my Contest Prizes is going in the mail as I type this post (with a tip of the cap to my mom, who's waiting on line for me since I'm in too much pain to do so)

You may notice that there are 15 packages going out, yet there were only 12 winners, (two declined to get any cards) and yet I call this wave 1...well, there's a good reason for that. There's a couple of PIFs, and a couple of trades from the Database in here as well... and there's more to come. I'm waiting on the addresses for 3 people, waiting to hear back from one more, and waiting on my COMC box to arrive so I can send out my Secret Santa, which I may have to overnight depending on how long it takes COMC to get my box to me. Scheduled to arrive here December 17th, which is cutting it close, but they usually get it sooner than they predict. Fingers crossed, I may never use them for Secret Santa again if it blows up in my face, LOL.

I've received far more PIFs than I have received, so much so that I'm embarrassed by my lack of reciprocating. While I can likely never repay the kindness I've been shown, at least I can occasionally send out a little something to some of the people in the hobby who have been kind to me.

Some of these are going pretty close to me, and some are going pretty far...across the country and even out of the country.

I hope the people on the receiving end of these packages is happy with what I've chosen. In truth, I've had some of these cards waiting to send out for over a year, just needed to get myself in motion. Finally did!

Edit: It cost $86 dollars to mail all them...next contest is only having one winner, LOL!

31 years in the hobby, and I just bought toploaders today, for the first time ever.

I never though I would ever do it...but I did. I bought toploaders. Specifically to mail out the prizes from my recently completed contest. I have 13 winners of the contest (since Matt declined to enter) plus two trades and two PIFs, plus I'm waiting on some of what I purchased for my Secret Santa recipient to arrive as well... and I was pretty much out of the oversized toploaders. So, I had to buy some.

I'm still trying to come up with good prizes for some of you. A couple of you I need contact info for. I may end up asking you to pick some cards off my tradelist on the Database.

I am out of bubble mailers totally, so I need to make a Wal-Mart run to get some more. (and check for the Wal-Mart exclusive NBA Prizm box, too). Hoping to get them out soon, but I have another root canal tomorrow so I may not be up to making a Wal-Mart run just yet. They will be in the mail next week for sure.

This has actually been fun (but costly!) to pick out cards for people. I wish I had more money to pick out more cards for you guys, but the root canal is going to cost me $950 out of pocket...so I'm pretty much out of hobby money for the rest of this decade.

I think this may be my favorite back design ever

Everybody talks about card fronts, myself included. And my favorite card front design is well documented as the 1996-97 Ultra set.

Card backs...not so much. You can find an occasional post about card backs, but they are few and far between. Before I joined the Trading Card Database, I didn't even scan the backs!

But I really think this design is my favorite...not just in hockey, in everything.

The 1979-80 Topps/OPC back. How cool and creative is this? I mean, sure, they could have made the font smaller and fit in more stats, but that's just nitpicking at this point.

And it fits the sport it's used for perfectly, the skate shape is just so creative. And they had room for a cartoon, to boot!

It's a set I know I will never ever complete due to being Wayne Gretzky's rookie card season, but I enjoy them every time I get one. This one came from the stash of Rangers I posted about in November. As I was working on editing the scans I realized I never really mentioned how much I liked the backs of these, so I had to write this post.
Here's the front.

I think I actually like the back more than I like the front design, although it's certainly a classic...and one of only two 70s NHL sets that don't have a white border, joining 1972-73 which had a tan border.