Just an Update

The Doc upped my meds a few days ago, so it's been a rough few days. Hoping to get back to the OAMC updates and logging cards in a couple of days when the meds regulate. Last time it took about a week. 

Joe 

OAMC #14 - A Quick Realization

Have you ever been sorting cards and have an "aha!" moment?

I had one today. 

Based on my collecting goals, the sport that I am closest to finishing in Basketball. I am just under 27% complete of the nearly 40,000 cards on the list. I also have boxes of unsorted Basketball cards around the card room. 

What this tells me is that it's time to focus my attention there. If I can pinpoint the Basketball stuff and get it sorted and put away, then that will knock out a nice chuck of work that needs to be done and could likely bring the Basketball collection to 50% or better. 

This will take some time to find all of the Basketball mixed in with everything else. This also means some decisions need to be made. Sets like Metal Universe are outside of my normal timeframe but I like them too much to not go for the set. This also includes Ovation--something about a card that feels like a Basketball just appeals to me.

Outside of the few set exceptions will be my 11 PC players. At the moment, I will not be actively seeking out their later years card. This is just so I can focus on what I need for my sets. 

The ultimate goal of this is to possibly knock out 2-3 sets towards the 2023 goal. I am close to a few Fleer and Hoops sets, so this is feasible.

More to follow on this as I figure it out.

Joe

OAMC #13 - A PC Worth Collecting

Do you know the story of Pat Tillman?

If you don't, click this link https://pattillmanfoundation.org/the-foundation/pats-story/ 

This is from the Pat Tillman foundation's website directly. To say he was inspiration was an understatement.

I've always had a ton of respect for his decision to leave Football and become a Ranger. What I didn't know is that in 2003 we were likely mere miles from each other or even closer and may have even crossed paths. The Army is a small world even when a commo unit sends some troops through Baghdad and sees some Rangers... It never clicks then. 

As I have been logging Football, it dawned on me that I only own 2 Pat Tillman cards that I know of. This makes me sad. So, I set out on a new quest. 

According to TCDB, Tillman has 337 cards as of today. If you take out every card SN less than /10, then the list goes down to 230. That is manageable even for me. 230 cards. 

So, now I have a quest to collect as many of Tillman's 230 cards as I can to honor his service and as a reminder to me of his sacrifice. I was already in the service when 9/11 happened, he was playing Football. He chose to change that for honor. 

Definitely worthy of this Veteran to take the time to collect him.

RIP Pat Tillman - Never Forgotten

11/6/76-4/22/04

Joe

OAMC #12 - Football and PC Cards

Decisions can be hard when it comes to cards. An easy decision for me--I don't collect modern Basketball or Football sets. Basically, if it's not a Topps set and it happened after 1995 in one of those sports, I don't worry about it... Mostly. 

There are exceptions. I love Ovation, Metal and UD Masterpiece and a few other sets, so they live in Basketball in Football just the same. The years are irrelevant. So, with the exceptions out of the way, there isn't much left for the other two sports in my life right?

Wrong...

There are 11 exceptions to Basketball and 16 exceptions to Football that fall into what is now my solidified NSPC category. (Non-Set Player Collection) The list is as follows:

Basketball:

1. Charles Barkley
2. Stephen Curry
3. Patrick Ewing
4. Walt Frazier
5. Allen Iverson
6. Karl Malone
7. Shaquille O'Neal
8. Pat Riley
9. David Robinson
10. Detlef Schrempf
11. John Starks

Football:

1. Tiki Barber
2. Saquon Barkley
3. Jerome Bettis
4. Blake Bortles
5. Terry Bradshaw
6. Brett Favre
7. Jeff Hostetler
8. Brandon Jacobs
9. Daniel Jones
10. Jim Kelly
11. Eli Manning
12. Peyton Manning
13. Phil Simms
14. Michael Strahan
15. Lawrence Taylor
16. Thurmon Thomas
17. Pat Tillman*

(*Pat Tillman is also included as a PC player in Football for very different reasons. Tillman and I were both in Iraq in 2003, although he was definitely more involved in what was happening than my unit was at the time. The simple fact is that I served in country with a professional Football player who dropped his career to serve his country and paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan. Collecting his cards just feels right.)

Speaking of Football, I've been logging Football like crazy. 1989 Pro Set and 1990 Score in Particular. I got 1990 Pro Set's Master Set down to 168 cards as well.

Maybe it's the Giants being in the playoffs and facing the Eagles tonight. Maybe it's the easy access to 6 boxes of football cards or maybe it's the idea of getting those knocked out so I can move on to Baseball again, but I have been wanting to really focus on Football and get it organized. 

We will see how that goes.

Go GIANTS!

Joe

OAMC #11 - The Weekend, The Giants and 1990 Pro Set Football

First, I just want to get this out of my system...  GO GIANTS!

Okay. I'm good now. 

It's been a while since I enjoyed football. This weekend I truly enjoyed football again. It was nice. I sorted cards while I did this. It prompted me to log many 2015 Topps Football cards and find a whole lot of 1990 Pro Set Football.

1990 Pro Set Football is one of those sets...  Error and variant laden. Full of issues. Random numbering with the Final Update. I love it. 854 cards of chaos. 801 in the base alone if you count the defense/offense #800. 

After the last few days, I have roughly 89.5% of the base set. This includes all but one card from series II with the High Numbers, 58% of Final Update and 78% of Series I. I have 34/53 Errors and Variations including the coveted "belt" error.

Then come the inserts. I have the entire Super Bowl MVP Set and Super Bowl Collectibles with the card #22 Error. I have both Playbooks and even 159/160 of the XXV Silver Anniversary set. 

The hard part are the SP's, No Number Cards and Promos. I own 4 of the 19 including the SuperPro, The Super Bowl Collectible variant and Joe Robbie cards. (This list includes the Cover card and checklist for Final Update as they are listed on TCDB--of which I have the checklist.) The big gun is in this group and that is the Hawaii Promo Barry Sanders. (Roughly a $60 card, but a pain to find.)

If you include the XXV Silver Anniversary set, there are 1,091 cards in total of which I can currently account for 921. That's only 170 cards to go...  Not bad considering I've been trying to build this set on and off for 33 years...

Nice to know I made some progress on such a massive endeavor.

Spent some quality time with my wife, ate Chinese food and went grocery shopping. We also got two fat packs of Chronicles and a blaster of Heritage High Numbers. 4 Julios. 4. 

My wife chose well.

Off to take out trash and prep the house before my wife gets home. Hope your weekend was good.

Joe

OAMC #10 - Saturday and Another Headache - w/ Sunshine

Today the weather shifted on me again. The sun is out so the air pressure changed. This means--another headache. Yay! It's been three days of this crap now. 

On the up side, while going through some cards I discovered cards from a set I didn't know existed. 2021 Topps All-Star Rookie Cup. I only have 6 cards from the set and 1 is a variant, but hey that's better than none. 

This made me realize that my spreadsheet is slightly out of touch with the reality of what's out there. I may have to do some editing.

I also added some new cards of a few top 30 players on my list. Namely, Miggy (256), Pujols (276) and Randy Johnson--who I was just saying yesterday was part of a three way race to hit 300 and now has the lead with 297. 

I did finish an insert set today as I found the McCovey from 21 Panini Mosaic's All-Time Greats Set. SO, that was nice. Also added a few random mid-2010's Topps cards and 2020 Topps inserts as well as some 2010 Upper Deck. 

Another highlight was my first batch of 2019 Topps High Tek. 16 base and 2 Blue parallels. Not bad. I already had an Orange and an Auto, but getting the base cards was always the goal. I always like turning 0's to anything other than 0's.

Just found a pile of 21 Panini Contenders that I may take care of next. Did some chores in the house and the headache isn't going anywhere, so might as well log cards.

Pink Floyd today...

Joe

OAMC #9 - The First Ripping of the New Year!

My wife went to the store on her way home last night. I was suffering from an insufferable headache. The weather in Washington likes to shift back in forth, taking the air pressure with it. If you suffer from chronic severe migraines this can be an issue. As my wife was at the store, she got a few things we needed as well as some surprises...

2022 Panini Mosaic and Chronicles blasters. 2 of each and a fat pack of Mosaic as well. Pulled two autos and some decent cards but really it was just nice to open cards from a wrapper. Did get a sweet Franco RC and an O'Neal Cruz Parallel RC, so that was awesome. Really this was about the fact that we had nothing from either set. Now we do. This morning, I got them logged and put away as well as more mid-2000's Bowman. So, more progress.

The big thing from this was the new Ripken and Ryan cards. Ryan is 626 unique cards while Ripken is now at 509. Randy Johnson now has some competition as he moves towards 300 cards as I added additional Mike Trout and Ryne Sandbergs this morning as well. Will be interesting to see if they overtake him. Tony Gwynn still sits a few cards away from 400.

Slow progression has led me to almost 242,000 cards logged. (241,730 as of this post.) 

This is good. Many, many more to go.

The other big upside is that my wife ordered stamps today. More PWE cards will be heading out soon. Cards heading out makes me happy when it makes others happy and makes her happy when the collection loses a few pounds...  ;)

Anyway, back to getting some cards logged and maybe some laundry done. My head still feels like hell and the weather isn't playing along. At least I have David Bowie as today's soundtrack.

Joe