All of us have different ways to organize our respective collections.
You may sort by player, by team, by year, by set, by number, by picture quality, by uniform number, or any combination of those. You may put your cards in shoeboxes, card boxes, binders, toploaders, safes, or who knows what.
But chances are if you have a blog, you also have a digital collection. You’re scanning cards to post for the world to see.
Now, maybe a lot of you don’t save your scanned pictures or organize them at all, but I do.
Oh, do I ever. When I get a trade or a package or open a box, I sort them out by player and then year and scan them to my appropriate player collection folders with a title showing where they came from.
I sort my folders by date and keep a physical list, so I know which trade package is next on the list.
When I post a trade, I separate my package scan into individual cards and label them with the same name that’s on my want list spreadsheets (which is a whole other ordeal). If I post all the cards from a certain “master scan” it gets put into a “completed scan” folder. The individual cards are put into a separate “Posted” folder.
It may not seem like it’s necessary, but it can be tough to keep track of what I’ve posted and what I haven’t. If I only post 5 cards out of the 9 in a master scan, I’ll need a quick and easy way to find which 4 still need to make it on the blog.
Anyway, if that weren’t enough, I also have separate folders on our photobucket account. This way I can reconcile my computer folders with my scan folders and make sure I have everything exactly right. Plus, I can monitor my individual collections for milestones.
Thanks to my system I know that I have the following number of cards posted on the blog for my players:
Starlin Castro – 16
Ryan Dempster – 82
Carlos Marmol – 46
Kerry Wood – 103
Frank Thomas – 185
Tony Gwynn – 108
If you know my collections, you’ll notice one name missing. That’s where I had some trouble in my double-checking madness. I had 9 more cards in my photobucket than what I had in my “Posted” folder.
I felt like an accountant missing 9 cents in his ledgers. Must. Resolve.
Multiple Cy Youngs? Yes. MVP? No.
Well, I finally figured it out. These were cards I originally received from my very first trade with Night Owl. I split these up into individual card scans and posted them to photobucket without moving them to the posted folder because they never made their way into a post. Post.
old, old scans
As a result, these were sitting in limbo for over a year. I don’t think that’ll happen again.
What a terrible trade the Cubs made
Also, my organizing tells me how many 2006 Topps cards I have without having to wade through my spreadsheets. If you count Chrome and Opening Day, this Update card makes 5.
Really like the 2006 UD set
I can’t tell you very easily how many Dodgers cards I have in my Maddux collection. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.
But not a no-hitter
Based on my scan counts above, I can tell I’m just a few cards away from being totally caught up. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there with Maddux. This file was originally created in June of 2010. I have 130 more “master scans” to finalize for Greg alone. The blog may get Maddux heavy at some point.
Yup, he won another one.
My folders also tell me that I have posted the regular, chrome and refractor version of this Gold Glove card, but I haven’t shown the non-award winner version yet.
Not a bad last non-SP picture
After these last three, I’ll have shown 4 out of the 5 2009 cards I own. Since Greg Retired after the 2008 season, his cards start to taper off, and I’m told I only need 39 more cards from the ’09 releases.
Not as great of a last Heritage card
It’s amazing that Mad Dog wasn’t selected for the Heritage Chrome treatment. I’m thankful, but still amazed he didn’t make the cut.
What's the pitch? You can kind of see it
Upper Deck is the biggest obstacle in my 2009 collecting thanks to their 20th Anniversary insert and the oh so popular Spectrum set/parallels.
But, I’ll be able to accurately track my progress now that my folders and my digital organization is fully in sync.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, I’ve now posted 237 different Greg Maddux cards on this blog. Only 744 to go (and counting). Stay tuned!
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