Fleshing out some card projects with my loose card finds

I've got piles of cards from purchases I've sat on after giving them a quick look and/or trying to list them out somewhere so at least there is a record I can look at - one of the things I'm trying to do at the moment is sort my decade stars / binder material cards.

I have a cheat sheet [a quick reference guide] leaderboard collection to tally up the most cards I have for players through a single decade - rather than just trying to sort out loose cards 'as is,' by decade and by player, it's a game to see which guys I've ended up overcollecting or undercollecting.

It's hard to keep track of exact cards from my random purchases - but I've been weeding out my decade stars / binder material from the 1980s / 1990s debut guys like from this pile of card show finds [25 dollar cards I was charged $15 for].

For the 1980s debut players whose cards I've shown, it looks like I have the following totals tallied up before further updates - Tony Gwynn - 44 cards, Barry Bonds - 38 cards, Wade Boggs - 21 cards and Sammy Sosa - eight cards.

When think about it, the totals for each player end up changing as I constantly find more scattered cards - at the moment, the leader for my 1980s leaderboards ends up being Will Clark at 68 cards and counting, while Ken Griffey Jr. clocks in at second place with 59 cards and counting.

These are pick ups for 1990s debut guys and before any further updates, it looks like I have the following totals tallied up - Vladimir Guerrero Sr. - 69 cards [current leader for the '90s], Derek Jeter - 45 cards, Manny Ramirez - 29 cards, Ivan Rodriguez - 16 cards and Trevor Hoffman - 11 cards.

At the moment Carlos Beltran is the only player whose card is pictured as one of my finds, but isn't currently on my leaderboards collection - a case where I don't have enough cards piled up to make a page.

At some point, the plan at some point is to take action and put the cards into plastic pages - even when there are more cards out there in the wild.

As it goes, my trigger number for a players' cards to be added for my leaderboards is about seven cards - where I can make a page of nine using the loose cards I've gathered and probably a few more miscellaneous cards stored double sided in a plastic sheet.

I don't know if it is going to take a few more days, a week or even a couple before I move off sorting cards for the 1980s/1990s - I have a leaderboard collection for the 2000s debuts guys and it's going to be more of the same, where there is a race to figure the most or the least cards I might have for certain players.

My last tally was listed as April 2022 and before any further updates, it looks like I have the following totals tallied up - Ichiro [Suzuki] - 23 cards, Albert Pujols - 22 cards and Joe Mauer - 13 cards.

I picked up rookie cards of Kazuhiro Sasaki and Mark Buehrle - Sasaki isn't a decade stars guy for me, so the card might in my nations collection or random team box collection.

Buehrle might be a decade stars guy in my book - but I don't think I've gone out of my way to make his cards keepers.

I'll tease the project here and there, but something I want to do through this year is compile an all-time Top 100 cheap-zz keepers collection - inspired by other collectors who have showcased similar projects, my current collection consists of certain quirky, funny, ironic or personal cards, but I might be on the hunt for unique cards worthy of consideration.

An off-shoot idea would be to have a regional / Angels collection of an all-time Top 100 cheap-zz keepers collection - where I might be looking out of random cards that flesh out this collection; maybe the Pujols refractor doesn't quite make the cut, but I might be able to use a 1993 Topps Gold Jim Edmonds rookie year card.

Through 2023, maybe there has been a nudge towards picking up random cards of more miscellaneous, notable subjects as I come across their cards - despite wanting it where it's mostly baseball cards I'm curating for a collection, maybe the plan is to fill out my Top 100 collection with a select number of non-baseball guys, just to mix things up and add some odd depth to a compilation of cards.

Finished my 2017 Topps team run

My Topps year-to-year run [1978-present] of cards for each MLB team has been a dormant project - but since there is still novelty in the 'newish' flagship cards for the year, I wanted to get 2017 out of the way.

Though my run doesn't exactly go back to the 'vintage years' of the 50s, 60s and early 70s - I want to build a run of Topps cards from the past 35-40 years.

A particular player may only be represented three times for each of the teams he has played for - someone who has played for at least a couple of teams can possibly appear six times, though my goal is to have a variety of players represented and not just a particular player.

There might be some strategy in observing the 3X rule - where I might hold off on simply adding a no-brainer star player's card, maybe to save the spot for next year [or if I've used the same player's card seemingly multiple times in recent years].

There might be some odd player choices but the idea is not doing too much work to create a run of cards featuring just strictly star players - at times I just want to use the cards I already have in my collection [especially, but not limited to the junk wax era years 1986-92] as opposed to being too picky when all I need is a random card to fill a hole.

However, there will be ‘tweaks’ to include prominent players, players with the highest WAR for a particular team in a given year, the most photogenic cards, etc - it’s just no fun when I have no cards to chase after.

Topps [1978-present] card run

I finally went through the cards I had for all 30 MLB teams and listed them in a Google Sheets file - this projects seems to be a little tedious because I have to try and make a wantlist for cards I may not be interested in chasing after at the moment, though I do want a showcase of Topps cards for each of the current MLB teams.

The goal is to find a player's card for each team, for each of the years - anything highlighted in red means I need the particular card, anything listed in black is the card I already for the team/year and any blank spaces are spots I still have to figure out with regards to selecting a card.

For whatever reason, I chose 1978 as the starting year for this project since I figure that is already at least 37 years worth of cardboard to pore over - even if I'm not going all the way back through the old-school/vintage Topps years.

While 1978 is the starting point, the plan is find cards for the present year going forward - for as long as I have this itch for this particular project.

One rule for this project is not having a player represented more than three times - as much as I'd like certain players from particular teams represented as much as possible, I want a variety of different players.

Another rule [I may actually about to break starting from 2015] is only using cards from flagship Topps sets - I actually found some 'stragglers' that were part of update sets that I removed.

However, I'm missing a 2015 Houston Astros card and while I can fill it with a random Astros card - I think a 2015 Topps Update Carlos Correa would fit in perfectly.

Collecting projects - and the beat goes on

I've had flings with starting an Angels frankenset, tinkering with my award winners collection and trying to tweak my personal collections list - while I'm not a kid anymore and maybe the hobby of trading cards has been 'over' a long time ago, I'm still thinking up various ways to mess around with my cards.

Other card projects I have on my mind include:

1.) Topps year-to-year card run [1978-present] for each 30 MLB teams - this has been a dormant project for me, though I’d like to go through the cards I have and create a wantlist so I have some cards to chase after like a 1978 Topps Johnny Bench and a 2016 Topps Buster Posey [when next year's cards come out] for their respective team runs.

2.) Collecting topics / mini-collections - I want to be able to list the various mini-collections cards I've picked up this year like this 2014 Topps Chrome Yosmil Pinto [awesome action] as 'yearly achievements' and occasionally account for cards I've picked up from previous years but haven't really bothered to list.

A problem I have is my mini-collections spreadsheet seems to have gotten too bloated to upload to Google Sheets - while I want my mini-collection information in one database, I'm thinking about listing 'prominent' mini-collections in separate 'stand alone' files.

3.) Building up my A-Z singles collection as sort of a refined showcase of sorts - I'd like to list cards that fit my 'A-Z singles' criteria [not quite PC cards, probably more like random pulls and finds that may have some appeal depending on what the player does] and also physically have the cards together in one place as opposed to being scattered around.

Maybe having a collection of 'A-Z singles' is kind of like fantasy sports - where I try to keep up with players' performances to see which guys are hot and not.

4.) Angels Opening Day sets - maybe inspired by at least a card blogger or two, maybe I want to put together a collection of cards featuring Angels opening day lineups.

Maybe my Angels cards are just kind of 'loose' all around - so much like with my frankenset project, maybe a goal is really to use up much of my base and ‘lesser’ insert cards for something relevant.