Monday 2 March 2009

Progress Report

So, am I getting organized or just getting sidetracked by all the new 2009 Topps baseball cards? Well, both, it turns out.

What do I have organized?

1978 Topps - still in the box, but due up next.
1979 Topps - in an album and missing only 10 cards
1980 Topps - still in the box and only 50% complete
1981 Topps - complete and in an album
1982 Topps - in an album and missing only a few cards!
1983 Topps - complete and in an album
1984 Topps - complete and in an album
1985 Topps - complete and in an album
1986 Topps - still in the box and only about half complete.
1987 Topps - complete and in an album
1988 Topps - complete and in an album
1989 Topps - complete but still in the box
1990 Topps - complete and in an album
1991 Topps - complete and in an album
1992 Topps - complete and in an album
1993 Topps - about 80% complete and still in a box
1994 Topps - complete and in an album
1995-2004 Topps - don't have any of these cards (except maybe a stray or 2)
2005 Topps - complete and in an album
2006 Topps - complete and in an album
2007 Topps - complete and in an album
2008 Topps - complete and in an album
2009 Topps - complete and in an album (series 1 only)

After all of this work, I still have quite a few loose cards, but they have been consolidated into 2 large 5000 count boxes instead of scattered shoeboxes and most are organized. I seem to have picked up about 2000 miscellaneous Score and Donruss cards and I haven't even looked at them yet. The rest are sorted by year and number in a fairly orderly fashion and as you can see, only two sets are complete or almost complete and still waiting on an album (which I still have to buy...)

I have also started going through all of the loose cards and creating a list of all the doubles in hope that some day I can post the list here to help find some of them a new home...

For those of you who have unorganized baseball card collections, my advice is to get organized now before you reach a point of no return. Once you have 20,000 loose baseball cards you are looking at weeks, not days, of sorting. I actually enjoyed most of the sorting except it is tough on your back if you do it on the floor like I did and if I had known how long it was going to take I probably would have hesitated and never gotten started.

Once I finish this I am going to buy a set from 1995-2004 every couple of months and keep going. Once 1995-2004 is complete I'll start going back to pre-1978 and start filling in the missing cards.

Getting a complete set into a binder gives me a whole new appreciation for some of these cards.

1 comment:

  1. I don't have any sets or cards from 1993-2003 (plus/minus a year) and have no plans to fill in that gap.

    I lost interest in baseball during this period. Not entirely, as I could still tell you who won the Series, top players, etc. But I ceased to be a real fan.

    The main reason was this was the era of serious competitive imbalance. 1991 was the last year a small market team (Twins) won the Series for a long time. The Yankees 4 Series in 5 years stretch was particularly appalling.

    The other reason was the inflated numbers from the steroid era. I won't claim that I knew the depth of what was going on but the numbers were clearly out of whack. It took away enjoyment of the game for me.

    ReplyDelete