What I've Been Up To

One of the things that I find most interesting about card collecting is that there's never any shortage of projects, large or small, or any other tasks for me to perform to enhance my collection and how it's organized.

Over the last number of years, I've moved my player collections from binders to boxes, cataloged them online on Google Sheets, developed tiers to organize them, and begun collecting a plethora of new players.

Not to mention, the projects I listed above involve only my player collections. I've also constantly worked to organize my card room and complete other tasks, from organizing singles numerically by set and re-doing my entire Red Sox and Cubs PCs.

My most recent undertaking is one that I'm not exactly keen on doing, but it's necessary for my collection going forward. Currently, I'm in the process of removing all duplicate cards from my player collections.

Up until the beginning of 2019, I would add cards to my player collections even though I already had 1 (or more) of the card cataloged beforehand. Why I did this, I cannot say, but upon realizing the error of my ways, I stopped the process.

I knew, however, that I'd eventually have to go back and remove all the duplicate cards from my player collections to make things right. However necessary it may be, this change will affect almost every player that I collect, but last weekend, I bit the bullet and began the necessary changes.

Basically, the process consists of my going to each player collection online inventory and deleting all duplicate cards. After adjusting the total on both the spreadsheet and the tiers list, I remove the previously mentioned cards and place them in a box labeled "player collection dupes."

At this point, I'm finished with players whose last names begin with A-G, so I'm just over 1/3 of the way through the project. Again, it's not necessarily something I want to do, but I can watch box breaks on YouTube or listen to music all throughout, so I suppose it's not all that bad.

Some players, understandably, are affected by the removal of duplicate cards more than others. Usually, the gold tier PCs with over 100 cards lose around 10-20 cards whereas smaller player collections are impacted less substantially.

The 2 Hall of Famers shown above, Johnny Bench and George Brett, are upon the most affected by this project of mine. The former's PC lost just over 30 cards while Brett's total went from 143 to 121.

Interestingly enough, one of my top 3 largest player collections, Ken Griffey Jr, didn't lose all that many cards considering the total, going from 280 to 264.

Certainly, card collecting, for me, is not fixated on totals and placements on a tiers list, but the numbers give me a better idea of where each of the ~260 players that I collect stand. For that reason, I began keeping track of the totals over a year ago.

The only players not impacted by this substantial change are the new additions to my player collection list, guys like Ronald Acuña Jr and Javier Baez.

When I began collecting cards of these guys a few months back, I made sure not to include any duplicates so that, going forward, I wasn't repeating any of the mistakes I've made in the past.

As I mentioned earlier, I haven't reached the 40% mark of this project, yet I already have almost 1 row of a 2-row box filled with player collection dupes, including a vintage Hank Aaron staring right at me.

Given how many more player collections I have to get through and the fact that I have another small stack of dupes from the past few months, it may be best to get a 4-row box so that all the cards can fit at once. Plus, it should give me some excess space for the future.

The 1970 Topps Hank Aaron card is just one of several vintage duplicates that I've placed in the box, uncertain of where else to put them. Speaking of uncertainty, I have no clue what I plan on doing with all these cards when all is said and done.

There's not anything insanely valuable, so I don't think selling is my best option. They could be used in trades, sent to bloggers, or donated, but I've yet to develop any concrete plans. If anyone has a suggestion, I'm more than welcome to hear it.

Certainly, this isn't a project that I wanted to undertake, but I deemed it necessary to complete going forward with my collection. Because I prioritize my PCs above virtually everything else, ridding them of all duplicate cards is essential.

Now, figuring out what to do with all these excess cards is another story, but I have another ~60% of my player collections to get through before I have to worry about that too much.