I hit a milestone in September and didn't realize it until now

 I hit a pretty big milestone last month, although I didn't realize it until just now.

You might not be able to guess what it is, so here's a "hint"...

When I updated the Encyclopedias on my Cardboard History Gallery, I discovered that I had reached the 4000 people scanned threshold for basketball! That's a pretty big deal, really. I was only 24 people away when I trailed off scanning in the spring, and I completely forgot how close I was. I ended up scanning 49 new people last month, so the milestone was hit at some point in the month. 

I don't know exactly who the 4000th person get scanned was, but I DO know the 4000th to be uploaded. That was Kai Jones. 

In the time between when I started writing this post and when I finished it, he essentially got fired by the Hornets, placed on waivers because the team didn't want him around anymore. I started writing it right after I finished the last post I published. 

It's taken me 27 years to get to 4000 people. I wonder how long it will take me to get to 5000? 

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. 

THIS was the best photo they had?

 I find that hard to believe! 

Let's check the back and see if that's any better...

Hrm, slightly better. 

This may well be my favorite football card now. I don't collect football, but my best friend sends me his duplicates because he knows I'll take them. This one came in his latest box and I've been laughing about it since I saw it. 

Even more fun, this is the only card from this set in my collection, so it will be the official representative of 1992 Pro Set Power in my Set Archive, which contains one scan from each major set for each subject. 

A major milestone as a consolation

 This past weekend was my favorite day of the year, the Adirondack Nationals....and I wasn't there. I had a setback with my foot injury that I mentioned in the previous post, and knew I couldn't do the walking, even though it's my favorite day of the year, as noted. 

That hurt, both figuratively and literally, and I decided I needed a pick me up...so I went through the boxes of cards that I had been getting but stashing away for the winter, when it was too cold to work on models. I didn't even want to stress my foot out so I didn't even go down and work on the stuff indoors. 

One of the boxes that I had set aside was a purchase of NASCAR cards. It was advertised as about 800 cards, but I'm not sure it was that many...unfortunately there were a lot of duplicates, up to 4 or 5 copies of some of the cards. I ended up with 279 new cards, which is more than I expected when I was first going through them. 

This card, an insert from 2017 Donruss, was the milestone, however...it is NASCAR card #40,000. I began collecting NASCAR cards on Christmas Day 1992, and have been celebrating my 30th anniversary of watching the sport for the last year and a half, lol. So it's fitting that I hit a major milestone in an anniversary year. 

Interesting that it's David Pearson as well. Card #1 was Richard Petty, the only two drivers to reach 100 career wins. 

I have started scanning again but a photo will do for now...I have not scanned the card yet but I expect to by the end of the night. 

Since I keep track of my Milestone cards, I know that it takes me on average 7 years to reach the major milestones in NASCAR, so there will still be a while before I hit 50 thousand. By that point, I fully expect NHL to overtake NASCAR in the collection size. The largest NASCAR set of the year is only 200 cards, and the NHL has 4 or more sets a year with that number, several sets with more than double that number. There are simply more cards that exist so it's pretty much inevitable.

Of course, all this is presuming I counted correctly, which is probably not true...but I treat it light it is. 

Thanks for reading.

This card post brought to you by...baby birds?

 As you know from previous posts, I'm mostly in a modeling mood right now. In fact, I completed 60 builds in the month of August, making it one of my very best months ever. However, I had to take a break from that for a few days. A family of cardinals built a nest right next to the door I go in and out for painting, and I didn't want to scare them into falling out, or have the parents peck my eyes out as a perceived threat. (I also dropped a full large can of paint on my toe and smashed it all up, but I'm able to hobble around). 

I decided I would let the birds do their thing and I would work on getting back up to date on my card listing. I hadn't written or typed anything since the first week of June, so that's several months worth. I didn't do a lot of card stuff in that time-I even got some blasters I didn't open specifically so I wouldn't get even further behind. I did get some stuff...but first, the bird's the word.

I did actually get them fly away on film, but it's a timelapse at 32x normal speed so hard to see. If I had known they were going to fly off so quickly I would have shot at a slower rate. They sat in the branches for more than 2 hours so I figured it would be a while. I was wrong.

Now, the cards:

I did a blaster of Upper Deck Series 3, aka Extended series, which I am still so glad they produce. My favorite card is the Dazzlers card- green has long been my favorite color, and it's blaster exclusive. Bonus, I pulled Arber Xhekaj, my second NHL card and third overall of him, making him the Letter Leader for X in my entire collection. The Brandt Clarke card is pretty cool too...it's plastic and semi-translucent. 

Then I did a hobby box of 2023 Donruss. This is my favorite set of the year, because it's the only real NASCAR set. 

What's that relic on the Suarez card? 

It's Race Used Air! No, really, Panini forgot to actually put a relic into the card. I wish I could say that surprises me, but it's Panini. I have a new entry for my Error Gallery at least.

I took in two trades on the Trading Card Database. I have had my trading turned off for a while as I just didn't want to deal with all that for a bit, but I'll be turning it back on soon. 

I got three PIFs, and I'm so deep into modeling that I have no idea when the Craftsman cards arrived. I actually opened the team bag on the 27th of August so I am counting them as new for that day. They are actually a big deal- this mailer completes not only the base set but BOTH insert sets! I believe that I now have every possible card for the 1995-96 Craftsman release, aka a Master Set. 

My mom gave me a blaster of 2023-24 MVP, the first NHL set of the regular season! Interestingly enough, a Canadiens player was my first card of the season two years in a row. 

Finally, I bought a lot of NASCAR Hero Cards, which was mostly Bubba, William Byron and Daniel Suarez, but there were a couple of other random drivers in there too. 
I have almost nothing from the Gen6 era, and while I haven't checked yet, this purchase may very well have included my first Hero Card from 2015 through 2018, or at least a couple of those years. It's a gaping hole in my collection, and one of my favorite eras of cars too. Cards in the lot ranged from 1995 through 2022. 

I have no idea when I will get these all scanned, but photos will have to do for now. 

One last thing- I had a mishap with one of the photos, the camera flash reacted with the holofoil on some of the cards. It looks cool so here it is.

Hey, I actually cropped some scans!

 Modeling is taking up almost all of my time right now. I suspect this may be the new normal for me...models taking the focus in spring, summer and fall and cards taking over in winter. with periodic appearances in the other seasons. Right now modeling is going very well so I'm going to ride that wave while I can. 

I generally don't return to the work bench after dinner. I was doing that, but it was hurting my hands to do that much modeling. So, I in theory would work on cards after dinner, but it usually hasn't worked out. Instead of doing cards, I've been doing modeling stuff on the computer' scanning decals, researching reference photos, etc, or just messing around on facebook, twitter, etc. 

Some time last month I scanned some cards...finally, in early morning hours of July 23rd, I cropped some of them! And of course instead of cropping more I came here and wrote this post, haha. I finally got caught up with the decal scanning...it's not hard, I've just been exhausted from the trip and scatterbrained. It took maybe 40 minutes to do, but over a period of 2 months. 

Anyway, enjoy some hockey scans. 

Silver paralell

1 year of my modeling setup

 July 13th marked 1 year of having my permanent modeling setup...setup. I have been spending most of my time on that hobby of late and not doing any card stuff whatsoever. 

I knew having a permanent modeling space would make my building better, but I had no idea how much better it would make it! To celebrate the anniversary, I used PhotoScape to put together this image of all the models I finished at the new permanent workspace, and it turned out to be exactly 100 builds!

I'm having so much fun with modeling right now it may be literally months before I get back to cards. That's OK...it's too cold to work on models from circa November to April so it appears my hobbies may be seasonal. 

Thanks for reading, back to building...