Trade with Baseball Cards Come to Life!

I got over 300 assorted cards from Bo at Baseball Cards Come to Life! as sort of a blind trade - on my end, the most important thing was getting a mini-collection 'boost' at the end of 2017 when I thought I'd accounted for all the cards I was going to get.

Besides all the mini-collection adds, including ones knocked off my wantlist and others I tacked on for 2017, I may have counted out 140 miscellaneous cards - regardless of the substance, I think it's fun to go through a jumble of cards like these once in a while, even though I probably needed to pace myself, so I didn't get burnt out being preoccupied by all the randomness.

I like trying to make sense out of the cards as I sorted them out - selected other cards were added as mini-collection ‘haves,’ where I might have had the card or a card for a player pictured, but felt I might as well list them as part of a particular mini-collection.

Other cards went into my various ‘loose card’ interests including:

School ties - I have a multi-sport collection of alumni players from a selected number of California colleges.

Cards of MLB/MiLB coaches - usually former players who maybe currently working or have worked for a MLB organization in 'recent' years.

Cards for team boxes - I have a collection on the side featuring assorted cards from all the 30 MLB teams.

A-Z archive filler - the least I will do is see if I could file these cards away 'as is.'

My favorite cards out of the box include the following:

1991 Topps Stadium Club Alex Cole #392 - pictures Otis Nixon; this made me do a double take when I saw the nameplate because I thought it was Nixon's card...Nixon has a more pronounced, weathered face [to put it kindly] while Cole always wore those goggles.

1992 Fleer Rookie Sensations Phil Plantier #19 of 20 - the butt shot captures his unique stance perfectly; Plantier was indeed a rookie sensation with the Boston Red Sox in 1991, hitting .331 with 11 home runs in 175 at-bats, but just wasn't destined to be a star.

Images courtesy of COMC.com

1992 O-Pee-Chee Premier Mike Bordick #5 - pictures Scott Brosius

1992 Donruss Triple Play Greg Vaughn #122 - I love how Vaughn’s cap is flying off as he checks if he has made the catch at the wall; a couple of teens along the railing above him check to see if they possibly have a beat on the ball as well.

1996 Pinnacle Denny’s Kevin Seitzer #26 of 28 - I bought this set years ago so I have this card somewhere, but to have it in-hand at the moment is nice; I don’t know if the holographic animation of the player shown was ever such a big deal, but I like shining the image up to the light and playing around with the card.

1996 Upper Deck Charlie Hayes #436 - I like how he is playing with a camera with a big lens.

1998 Fleer Tradition Ben McDonald #40 - this image sticks out as Fleer immortalized the longtime American League pitcher's only big league at-bat during the first year of Interleague play in 1997.

FWIW - the Milwaukee Brewers moved from the American League Central to the National League Central the year after.

2016 Donruss The Famous San Diego Chicken #151 - is this the most recognizable baseball mascot of all-time?

2017 collecting topics achievements

I've tallied up all my mini-collection adds for this year - from 2016, it looks like I've picked up 202 less cards, though with a month to go, the numbers are subject to change

Setting up assorted files on Google

For the card related projects I’m working on, I’ve gotten a little crazy trying to create and/or update Google Sheets and/or Google Docs files - I think it gets the ball rolling as far as getting organized and seeing what I have / need.

• Angels autograph wantlist [Google Docs] - trying to list out players I still need...will create a Google Sheets file to account for the autographs I already have.  
• 2016 collecting topics worksheet [Google Docs] - place where I list out the cards I can pull from my collection and also ‘new’ cards I can seek out.
• To do list [Google Sheets] - I’ve probably sought to create various incarnations of a ‘to do’ list, but I want to look at something like a concise ‘set of plays’ to run through.
• Regional collections [Google Sheets] - consists of my team A-Z singles and my PC cards.
• A-Z singles [Google Sheets] - I want this file to use as a spot to list out applicable cards.
• Angels Opening Day starters [Google Sheets] - I’ve gathered some assorted cards and intend to list them out.

Google Docs spreadsheet

I've been tinkering with the Google Docs spreadsheet as an alternative to Excel - I wanted to work on listing various collecting topics cards [I've picked up in 2010] in my collecting topics file /database.

However the mouse on my desktop computer has gotten wonky and it is easier working from my laptop - even though it doesn't have any of the Microsoft Office programs like Word and Excel.

I imported a copy of my Excel collecting topics file to Google and there is about a 1MB limit when doing so - the size of my file is less than 1MB but I assume I'm probably going to export my file back to Excel once I reach the 1MB mark.

Besides worrying about the file size limit, I was having a problem sorting the rows in descending or ascending order - because the field names on the header row would be sorted along with the data I'd put into the spreadsheet.

What helped me figure things out was figuring out how to freeze the header row - as noted on this Web site.

Now the header row with the various field names stay on top - with the actual data being sorted.

Hopefully with the help of Google Docs, I'll get a little more motivated to update and list more cards in the database - I really feel like I'd gotten away from the database work I'd been doing my collecting topics cards during the past several years.