Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Through 2026 - my mini collections

I've been bringing home card show piles over the past decade, after the world was opening up and card shows were up in full swing - I may have discovered a seller whose bulk boxes I might feed on about once a month to the tune 200-300 cards for a nickel each.

In my own little world I wanted to look high and low for mini-collection cards - where I wanted them to be the focus of my day-to-day collecting.

As it happened however, maybe my filing system in a Google Sheets file got corrupted [columns and headers, as well as the cards I had dutifully entered the past 15 years were in wrong places] or bloated - where even as I was took in more cards, there wasn't the familiar files to list and tally up my new finds as part of an archive.

Maybe I got so ingrained to typing into the same files over and over - that it was going to take time to start over with all the old data.

Maybe even the backup file [on a program called Calc] I may have started listing cards into was lost - due to a memory card crash.

For the past four or five years, actual cards in-hand may or may not have been added towards piles that have just sat around loose in what I may call my morgue - where it was a sad state where I had all these cards that were supposed to be part of certain themes, but I wasn't ever doing anything to enjoy them further.

I really needed to do something about my mini-collection cards where I wanted to have some peace of mind again - maybe the work to get things together hasn't been perfect, but maybe I have finally tried to correct things through the early part of the year, where I want to tend to my cards as much as much possible, especially when the weather is a little more forgiving.

Maybe related to my Google Sheets file wonking out on me is having what I called my 'awesome action' collection as a mini-collection themes - I had to get cards in order and classify how I wanted them sorted.

Awesome action – Actual on field action - simplified outline

Batting / Baserunning / Celebrations / Good job / Confrontations / Curtain Calls / Fielding

Batting
Baserunning
Celebrations
Good job
Confrontations
Curtain calls
Fielding 1B
Fielding 2B
Fielding 3B
Fielding SS

Making the throws – Mirrors my fielding cards; 2B and SS have double play subsets

Awesome action – Actual on field action – Pitching

Dirt fetish

Fun cards

Game face cards

Personality shots

I have what I call my archived collections that I may leave as is - this was when most, if not all cards were listed out.

I have what I have I call my main feeder collections - these are the themed collections from the past four or five years that may not have been formally listed, but I might be looking to change things up, where I might rather have 100 or so cards at a time as part of a personal themed curated set, rather then cards as part of a monolithic archive in a 3,200 count box or some other storage arrangement.

If I have the cards part of a personal themed curated set - maybe I can get back to listing a number of cards in a file where I have something to look at as far as a collection goes and also to check if I already have cards in-hand as opposed to buying more that end up dupes.

As the case maybe I want to work closer with thumbing through and playing with my cards - part of what I do is trying to herd cards from purchases online and maybe in-person, through finds and pulls.

This means smaller piles respawn into what I call satellite piles, where they have to be sorted in bigger update piles - when things get impacted within my temporary satellite / update files, I feel like I am freeing things up by updating my main feeder piles.

I have tried to keep my main feeder piles as the last [nearly semi-permanent] outpost to add cards into - without pulling cards outright, I might need to occasionally move things around and explore new storage options.

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