Mysterious old ladies

 A couple of years ago, I bought a lot of vintage Actress cards when I was in Toledo. I finally picked the box they were in to scan this week, but this set is a tough one. There's no known year, it was a set issued across the 1880s and 1890s, and comes in multiple versions. Some of the cards are in less than perfect shape and I can't quite tell who appears on the cards. 

I have three different back versions, and the argument could be made that there's 4 versions because the backs are found both upright and upside down compared to the card front, with card of Frankie Raymond appearing with both directions. 

Here's a good example of the variations

I have a card of Arline Stanley with all three back designs that I have, although I suspect that there may be other back types I do not have present in my collection, since that's how they did it back in the day. 

I have been told the horizontal Sweet Caporal with Kinney Brothers back is rarer than the others. It seems likely true because in the lot I bought there were less of them, although that's a VERY small sample size and jumping to big conclusions. 

I've also been told that there are more than 2000 cards in the set, which would make it one if not the largest sets ever! There are also male actors in the set but none of them appear in the lot I found and purchased. I do not know what the full checklist is though. 

And that's a problem, because two of my cards are in poor enough shape that I can't read the names...and I'm hoping someone with more knowledge than me or a better researcher than I am can figure out who they were.

Well I had posted this one and could make out Mabel. Her last name looked like Santley when I blew it up on the blogger feature and I did a quick internet search- and that's exactly what her name is! In fact I found a closeup portrait of her from the same set in the Jefferson Burdick collection on the Met website and her face is definitely the same. One mystery down!

The next one is going to be much harder.

This card has been damaged sometime in the 120 years it existed before I got it. 

I've got Miss **way**g. I think. Did I mention that some of the cards don't include first names? These must have been household names in the 1880s-1890s, Now most have been forgotten, very few even have Wikipedia pages. For instance, I can't find anything on Arline Stanley, shown above, other than other cards that were issued for her. She actually has quite a few, including others using the same photograph. It seems likely that there is history for her out there somewhere, but I don't know how to find it. It seems many of these actresses, popular on stage before film even existed, left their biggest mark on history via their trading card issues.

New People May 2025

 May was a big month for cards. I don't know why exactly, but traditionally it's always one of the big three months when it comes to card stuff, along with September (when I traditionally go to Lake George) and December (Christmas). This May was no different. I got cards again, I got back to scanning, and the burn out I gave myself by scanning more than 2000 cards in January went away. I ended up scanning 1103 cards during May, which was a lot of work to upload because there were a LOT of new people scanned. I came across a box that had some baseball and football, but also had all of the 1992 US Olypicards I had and a big stack of half naked ladies. Almost all of the latter two needed to have albums created, and it was doubly challenging because a good portion of the ladies had no names printed on the front of the cards. 

To make this I had to take 4 screenshots and combine them! 

Of the 258 new people scanned, exactly 100 were the above mentioned ladies, among 102 non-sport people scanned in total. This months uploads brings me to 935 non-sport people scanned. That's actually down two over what it would have been because I was reading the backs of the cards as I scanned them and I realized two of the women in the sets were actually athletes and should have been in the Other Sports category, which I corrected. That was Gail Kim, a wrestler, and Mia St. John, a boxer. They now reside in Other Sports. 

Other categorical additions:

32 new football players

44 other sports

11 hockey

69 baseball

Interestingly enough I scanned more NBA cards than another other topic during May, but every single one of them were of people that had already been scanned. Auto racing only got a few cards scanned but they were all previously done as well.

Randomly oddball factoid: I do believe this is the first month ever where two people named Ivan got scanned for the first time. Ivan Robinson, a boxer, and Ivan Zweig, a baseballer. 

With May 1st being "Glad I'm Not Dead Day", which celebrates the anniversary of when I got my second chance at life after coming literally 5 minutes away from dying back in 2013, my family always gives me cards and I got quite a few in May because of same. Because I got some NBA cards, which have been very hard to come by here lately, I got quite a few new NBA players.

yes, I see the typo and have fixed Jonathan Mogbo's name after the post went live

but hockey was not left out either of course. Nick Perbix and Brett Leason were both from this year's OPC so both of them got scanned. All the rest wait for the Heystack machine. Another fun factoid: Devin Cooley is the only NHL player known to have a pet rabbit. 

Yet another fun fact: Despite now being over 18,000 different people, these are the first people in my collection named Filipowski, Leason, Mogbo, Perbix, Salaun or Scheierman. 

Sometimes you just miss stuff

 My enjoyment of scanning has returned this month, after burning myself out in January scanning 2100+ cards. 

I normally pay very close attention to the cards, having an entire box set aside for cards that are damaged, to scan an eventual replacement. 

I not only visually inspect each card, I also clean it with my fingers to wipe off any dust or other things. 

yet I somehow managed to miss the giant scratch that goes from his arm to his chest. When I was cropping and editing the scan it was very obvious, and then I checked the card...not only is it easily visible but you can also feel it on the card front. 

I don't know how I missed that, and I have to say I'm a bit annoyed it wasn't noted by the other person when I got it in trade on the Database 2 years or so ago. A couple of the other cards I got in the same trade also had damage and went right into the "replace" box. It was a large trade and about 10 cards went into the replace box, out of about 75. 

I don't know how I missed it now, but I do know how I missed it when I got it. I didn't take it out of the penny sleeve it was sent in until today. They provide some protection to the cards but it can also hide some massive flaws. 

I'm annoyed at myself that I didn't notice it before I scanned it. That will make it harder for me to keep track of which ones need a replacement. 
Not that it's very common to be able to find mid-2000s NASCAR cards anymore now that repacks are gone. 

Really big show

 Really big. 

Filling Bullet Holes

 You ever get a good idea for a post title and then build a post around it? Well, that's what happened here. I was cropping some Washington Bullets cards and the title came to me. 

I only got to see 1 and a half seasons of Washington Bullets basketball before they rebranded to the Wizards, saying that Bullets was a negative connotation. For many years it was the only stick-and-ball sport name change I had ever seen, until the New Orleans Hornets became the Pelicans and the Charlotte Bobcats became the Hornets version 2. The Hornets version 1 became the Pelicans in 2013 for the 2013-14 season so it really wasn't all THAT long but it seemed longer in my head, until I did the math when making this post. 

While the Sonics became the Thunder in 2008, I was not watching basketball at that time. I now realize that it was more of a me problem, but I had walked away from the sport in 2006 and didn't return in 2012. Something I now regret immensely. 

Here are the Bullets cards that I scanned today that led to this post.

1992-93 Fleer #231. It was the back of this card specifically that I was working on when I got the post title idea. Since I have everything typed into Excel, I can actually make the post reflect the title. I have 16 Bullets base cards from 1992-93 Fleer, one of my all time favorite sets, and this is the 16th to be scanned, filling the last hole! In addition, I have two promos (From the Drake's Cakes set) and one insert of the Bullets, and they are both scanned already as well.  There are two inserts and 4 promos I do not yet have in my collection, maybe some day. 

1993-94 Upper Deck #285. For some reason a LOT of my 1993-94 Upper Deck cards are in poorer condition, with a lot of surface scratches. That is the risk you run when you build your collection via repacks, I suppose. But it has led a lot of cards to be put into the "replace before scanning" box. Let's see how this set breaks out. There are 17 base cards for the Bullets in this set, which is interesting. The 1992-93 Fleer set is 444 cards, while 1993-94 Upper Deck is 510- one of the largest sets ever made. Two of the cards are subset cards, which means the players got two cards in the set, only 13 players got cards. Calbert Cheaney got 3 cards in the base set and there is a team card. Despite being a larger set than 1992-93 Fleer, it didn't do as good a job covering the team. Pervis is the 13th base card I've scanned of the Bullets from this set, along with one insert. I have 4 inserts for the team from this set, I think. It's a little harder to figure out since Excel sorting is a little challenging to do when there are offshoot sets (Upper Deck Special Edition and Upper Deck 3-D ProView, plus the Italian and Spanish versions of the set in this case)  which it sorts alphabetically. Larry Stewart, Kevin Duckworth and Don MacLean are the three players still awaiting scans. I know that the Stewart card was damaged in the flood of 2015, almost all my cards of him were. It might be too far gone to pull a scan out of. 

The third, and actually final card for today, is this Juwan Howard card from 1996-97 Ultra. My all-time favorite NBA set. Despite being my favorite set of all time, it's fairly small at 300 cards and I have not actually completed it yet. I know I could easily go out and buy what I am missing- but that doesn't bring as much satisfaction of getting them naturally. I only have 9 Bullets cards from the base set, as well as two parallels and two inserts. This is only my 6th Bullets card scanned from the base set, and is the second of two subset cards. Interestingly, Juwan's regular player card is one that has not been scanned yet. I have scanned both insets (both Chris Webber) and both of the Gold Medallions I have from the Bullets. Besides Juwan's regular card, Rod Strickland and Ben Wallace still await scans. I do have Ben's Gold Medallion scanned. I figured I would check before I hit post, and I discovered that the 9 cards I have is actually all of them in the base set. There are 4 inserts I don't have, and 16 parallels. I have none of the Platinum Medallions for the Bullets and only the two Golds of Tracy Murray and Ben Wallace. 

So this random thought that led to a post ended up teaching me things- that I now have all the 1992-93 Bullets scanned, that I have all the Bullets from 1996-97 Ultra, and although I didn't mention it in the post previously, I found and corrected an error in my excel listing. (I had somehow credited a Charlotte Hornets card from 1992-93 Fleer to the Bullets)

Speaking of filling holes- my records show that I have 1151 Washington Bullets cards. With these three I have now scanned 869 of them. Still a long way to go scanning, although I'm working at it often. Not that I necessarily want to finish any time soon, because I really enjoy it and have no idea what I'm going to do for fun when I finish. 

Definitely a first, 37 years into collecting...

 A couple weeks back I pondered if getting a checklist as my first card out of my first pack was the first time it had ever happened. There's no real way to know. 

However, something happened this week that I am absolutely sure has never happened before. 

I began collecting sports cards in 1988, so I've been doing this a long time. I've pulled cards of thousands upon thousands of people, not just in my three main sports, but also multi-sport and I've opened a few packs of other random sports here and there. 

Until May 1st, 2025, when my family gave me a few blasters to celebrate Glad I'm Not Dead Day, the anniversary of when I got my second chance at life, and I pulled the above card, which is of Arber Xhekaj. I had never pulled a sports card of a person whose last name started with X! While this is my 4th card of him, it's the first I pulled from a pack myself, and I really think that's cool. I've mentioned him on Cardboard History before, I'm definitely collecting him. He's the first and so far only person in all three of the sports I collect to have a name starting with X, although his younger brother Florian is also in Montreal's system and may make it some day. He may have cards in the AHL set, I haven't checked yet. Not the same as making it to the top level though, and if I just went and bought it it wouldn't be as special. 

X is the rarest letter for people in my collection. While some letters are approaching 1400 different people, X has only three people, joining him are Malcolm X and Xue Chen, a Chinese volleyball player who got a card in Goodwin Champions a few years back, which I bought on COMC just because her name started with X.

I did mention sports cards because I did pull the card of Malcolm X, so now I have done this feat in both Sports and Non-Sports cards, bringing it to all 26 letters in both aspects of the hobby. 

New People April 2025

 After a VERY small March, April saw an influx in new cards, which of course led to increasing the new people scanned.

21 new people were scanned during the month of April, all of them from the NHL- and all but one from this year's O-Pee-Chee, which I bought a hobby box of during the National Trading Card Day. Jesper Wallstedt came from the NHCD set itself. 

I added 40 new people to my collection during April, and I hit another milestone- 18,000 people in my collection, with the asterisk that there are people listed that I can't quite track down, which may be typos of other people. 

Several of the people appear on both images.