Very early on September 19th I finished typing all the hockey and checking it into my Excel project. While NASCAR ended up being under-listed by more than 350 cards, my hockey totals were off in the wrong direction- I have 416 LESS NHL than my records showed....and although I did reclassify some cards to "other sports", and I had some multi-sport cards mislabeled as hockey cards, that comes out to less than 100 cards, certainly not enough to make up the difference in totals.
Most likely, I either couldn't read my own handwriting, or I transposed two numbers, for example typing 250 instead of 205. (I chose that number because I found a card where I did that exact thing with the card number)
Hockey went MUCH quicker than NASCAR did, and not just because I have less of them...I had already begun tracking the exact order I got each card before I began collecting hockey, so most of them I was able to copy and paste from one file to another. It still took a bit of effort, but instead of taking a day per year, I blew through 1991-92 through 2020-21 in three days time. Unfortunately hockey is the only aspect of my collection that will play a major role in...most of the NBA and Non-sports cards were added to my collection long before I started keeping track of the exact order I got the cards in 2014.
I took a two-week break to work on models, or else hockey would have been done sooner...or maybe not, because I only hit on the copy and paste idea on the 16th, so I would have been spending more time the other way.
In that two week time I completed some 18 1/64 builds and 2 1/24 builds. And I would have completed 7 more 1/64 builds, but I misplaced the parts for them. I actually tried something new, where I saved a bunch of them and did final assembly on a whole batch at once. It led to me clearcoating 25 cars in a single day. That, however, was an experiment I won't do again as it was too difficult to keep track of everything, thus the 7 almost completed. And this is with using ziplock bags to keep track of things, it didn't help as much as I thought it would.
However, that's focusing more on the negative...I did complete 20 builds in that time! It brought my 1/64 builds up to 55 on the year, which is far-and-away my all-time record in a year, and not only is the quantity up, so is the quality. I'm turning out the best work of my life, now that I've figured out all the things I was doing wrong.
Here's the second batch of 25 builds for the year:
They are, from left to right:
2005 Erin Crocker, a rare ARCA car. I've had the decals since the car actually raced and I kept putting it off to save the body for Cup builds. Finally, I said enough, time to build it.
2000 Todd Bodine. A one-race only car, but sponsored by I Love NY, so I had to do it!
1992 Ken Schrader. This is a simple conversion, I only had to apply the Kodiak decals
1992 Rick Mast, similar but I had to remove some of the fake stuff they put on the car
1994 Ken Schrader, same as above
2000 Scott Wimmer. Funny story on this car. He was scheduled to run it in the ARCA race in the 2000 season finale, but the qualifying got rained out. So, since the cars back then were interchangeable, they ran it through Cup inspection, it passed, and he qualified for and raced in the Cup race.
2013 Scott Riggs. One of the full time teams that was not made, and my goal is to make all of them. The orange should be neon, but the decal printer can't handle that. My first build from 2013.
1962 Bill Wimble, I made a huge mistake on this car. I reversed which build was a 1961 Pontiac and which was a 1962. I caught the 1962-on-61 build before I decaled it, but I didn't catch it on this one. My first build from 1962 season, even if on the wrong body.
2015 Michael Annett. Another full time Cup team and my first build from 2015.
2017 Cole Whitt, another full time Cup team and my first build from 2017. Noticing a theme? This was the team's most common scheme so the one I chose to replicate.
2020 Gray Gaulding, another full time Cup team and my first build from 2020. Even though I have a somewhat strained relationship with Panini I still absolutely HAD to build their Cup car, choosing this paint scheme among the many they ran.
1966 Lee Roy Yarbrough. This is a build I actually started before I left the hobby in 2013, and resurrected when I got back into building. I last touched it probably in 2011.
1994 AJ Foyt. Foyt made his final Cup start in this car, in the 1994 Brickyard 400. He would DNQ for the next couple of years but his legendary driving career, at least the NASCAR portion, came to an end right here.
1999 Kenny Irwin Flames. This car ran one race, at Phoenix in 1999. I got the decals so of course I built it, and this is a complex 4-color paint scheme with a fade. I didn't have the skills to finish this when I first started it, and I probably last touched the build in 2010. I had the skills now of course.
1989 Kyle Petty. One of the three paint schemes Petty ran in 89, the first year of Sabco Racing, but my favorite...and the only one that was not made in 1/64. I don't paint neon very often but I love the way this one came out. Both this one and the Irwin car were made with decals produced by the guy that ran off with my money in 2007, so they were completely irreplaceable, luckily I didn't have any disasters with them.
1989 Jim Sauter. Not a full time team but still a car to build
1986 Clark Dwyer. This car never actually raced, it DNQd it's only attempt, the 1986 Daytona 500. I couldn't even find a photo of it, but I know it was a Buddy Arrington backup car so I matched his as best I could. This is the only #76 car available to build in scale and was absolutely needed for my NASCAR by the Numbers Project, one of a handful of rare numbers that have only one car possible to build currently.
1951 Frank Mundy, my first NASCAR Studebaker! Won't be my last...
1999 Boris Said. You may think this looks familiar, I built the #58 version last year.
There's also a #23 version that looks exactly the same, also driven by Boris Said, but it's from the next year and on a different body. I don't have those decals yet. They do exist.
The same scheme was also run as the #84 on a Pontiac body in the Busch series would could be made by combining the 58 and 14 sets, but that would be a lot of money to spend for a Busch car because I'd have to buy more sets of both the 58 and 14- I used up what I had.
2013 Scott Speed- yet another full time team I had to build. This is also the first #95 build I've ever done.
2009 Terry Labonte, pretty rare when I have to build a Hall of Famer but Terry was at the end of his career here and his unsponsored cars never got made. Terry drove this car 5 times in 2009 with a best finish of 33rd at the Brickyard 400.
1995 John Andretti Early season. John started the year with an all-white car before switching to a purple car mid-season. This team used something like 7 different paint schemes that year, not counting the special "It's a Girl" version to celebrate the birth of John's daughter, one of the early special paint schemes. No, they just couldn't pick how they wanted the car to look. There are three different hood variations, two different purple car versions and 2 hood variations for one of the purple cars. The late season purple car was made in scale but the white early season car wasn't, so of course I did.
2015 Brett Moffitt. A full-season team although they didn't have a full-season sponsor, this was the most common. Moffitt won Cup Rookie of the Year in this car.
2007 Kertus Davis. A rare Busch series build. In fact, looking at the upload dates of the photos on my Fotki, the last time I built a Busch car or an ARCA car were BOTH in 2007! Interestingly enough, I had the decals for both of these cars in hand when those last ones were built...I've been making an effort to work on the stuff that's been sitting and waiting for a long time.
1988 Various. This team used 7 different drivers during the 1988 season: Joe Ruttman for 9 races, Brad Teague for 8, Jim Sauter for 4, Lee Faulk and Butch Miller for 2 and Donnie Allison and Johnny Rutherford for 1 each. It was the final career Cup start for both Allison and Rutherford. Rutherford is the only driver to win a Cup race in a car #13, which he did in his first career start, the 6th and most recent driver to do so, and he did it in February 1963. It was his only career win in Cup. The decals didn't provide a driver name, and I wouldn't have included one anyway- with that many different drivers I wouldn't pick one. Two of Faulk's three career Cup starts came in this car, his only other start was in a #32 from the same team that looked exactly alike other than the number.
I already have 5 builds complete for the next batch of 25...and I fully expect to hit 75 builds completed this year. Everything is going right the first time, and it's leading to lots of completed builds. I have actually been building so well that I'm running low on donors to build on!
I'm approaching a major milestone in my building, as well....I'm rapidly closing in on 300 cars built. I'm at 293 completed right now, and I have about 10 ready for decals. There's zero question I will hit that milestone this year...probably even this month.
Speaking of milestones, I did hit a major one this past week as well...I got my 6000th different 1/64 NASCAR diecast (and yes, that counts my 293 that I've built). It's taken me 29 years to hit that milestone, but it's a pretty big deal! This was car #6000. (I hit 5000 in 2007)
It's Daniel Hemric's car from the 2019 Daytona 500. It's the first car of his in my collection.
Here are the two plastic models I finished...or close enough. I managed to lose the driver names for the #43, also John Andretti.
I actually did most of the work on these last year but then didn't touch them again until last month. Both are 1-race only cars, from the 1999 Brickyard 400. They celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Petty family in NASCAR, and they are the same color, they didn't photograph well. Neither driver had a great race. John Andretti finished 37th in the 43 car, while Kyle Petty in the 44 crashed out and finished 41st in a 43 car field. Neither build is perfect but I'm glad they are both done. You can see a MAJOR flaw on the 43 car's hood, the gold stripe is supposed to go under the STP logo on the hood.
