Night Owl Cards

  Hey, guys! I've joined Trading Card Database!   I know, you never thought you'd see the day. I was the same way.   I wasn't eager to add another card thing in my life, especially not one that involved more filing of my collection as well as interacting with even more people on the interwebs.   The fact that certain collectors were pushing it like Amway members didn't help. Nor did the memory of other online card database systems disappearing forever.   But I decided to join anyway. Ever since my desktop computer died a couple of months ago, and my ancient spreadsheet that inventoried my collection along with it, I haven't had a good way to keep tabs on my entire collection.   I do keep track of certain key totals on the blog. I know the total number of cards I have and I know which players are represented the most in my collection. I'm good with knowing the amount of cards I have for maybe the top 200 or so guys.   But if you were to ask me "how many...

A couple of weeks ago, I completed a task that has been going on for longer than I've run this blog. I've always wanted to know how many cards I own, but since I delayed counting them by like 30 years, it took a few more years -- and years and years -- to catch up, and then to add all of the incoming cards. And add the fact that I was doing all this on an obsolete Microsoft spreadsheet and it's been a painstaking process that requires large breaks to preserve my sanity. But I stuck with it and finally completed the "A to Z" portion of my collection with the final tally for Ivan Zweig (one card). Totaling everything up, the program spat out: 81,385. Now, I know that's not right. How far it's off, I have no idea. But I catch mistakes in my cataloging all the time and just think of all the mistakes I don't catch. It's also not the complete total. Because I haven't totaled any of the league leader cards, or postseason cards, or SuperStar...

I entered one of Sports Card Info's many card contests a couple of weeks ago. Andrew's been holding these giveaways for probably as long as I've been blogging, but I rarely enter. Plus, it's one of those deals where if you comment on the post every day, you have a better chance of winning, and I never remember to comment more than once. My forgetfulness didn't matter this time though and I won the above Alex Verdugo "player-worn memorabilia" card! My enthusiasm aside, I think we're all past relic cards these days. The peak era for relics probably ended almost 10 years ago, and ever since we've been accumulating them absent-mindedly, knowing that they're probably not legitimate, a victim of our habits and nostalgia and ... I don't know, a difficult-to-shake fondness for laundry bits, I guess. I never go out of my way to obtain a relic card. Even when they were "the shit," as the kids-who-are-now-adults say, they were ne...