My project for this week

To take my big box of relic cards, choose the best one from each player and put that card in a PC relic card binder. I've got it completed finally, Here's a filled page from the book:

The selection process was fairly subjective, but more or less followed these rules:

Patch beats crazy color jersey,
Crazy color jersey beats jersey with stripe,
Jersey with stripe beats plain jersey,
Plain jersey beats bat,
Bat beats a piece of a stadium.
If it's something bizarre like a piece of a base or a shoe, it will go in until a nicer card comes along.
A jersey card that looks really good beats a patch card that looks like crap.
Manufactured Patches need not apply.

I separated out the cards of players who were primarily active before the '90s because I'm going to focus on that collection more than the contemporary players.

Braves are an entirely different animal and will get their own binders eventually. I'm happy with the way it turned out and it will be a whole lot easier for me to find a relic card of a player for a post now. Another side benefit is that I now have a big pile of superfluous relic cards since really, one of each player is enough for anyone. Now that I'm back in flesh I'll be able to catch up on my trading next month (just in time for the Christmas post office crazies, hooray) so maybe we'll see a Cards for Clunkers post soon.

Chipper & Zistle

I got these shiny Chippers from Mario at Wax Heaven recently. Ain't they purdy?



That last one is a jumbo sized box topper. These three cards got the honor of being the first ones I loaded into my collection at Zistle. They send me a Beta invide a while back but I just got around to setting up an account this weekend. I've only messed with it for an hour or so, but it seems like a decent place to catalog your collection. It's easy to enter new cards in the system and it's one click to add an existing card in their database to your collection. I'm having some issues sorting and actually finding the cards easily, but I really haven't played with it enough to get the hang of it yet. It's still in beta, so there are links to give them feeedback everywhere. I've only put in about 15 cards so far, but I initial impression is favorable.

I've been looking for a way to catalog my Chipper Jones collection for a while (I've been putting it into a spreadsheet up until now, blecch) and I'm going to give this a shot. I'm getting jealous of everyone bragging about their Cansecos and Mattinglys and Lincecums and I want to be able to throw out a nice big number for my Chippers too. Give me a week or so to really get my mitts into it and I'll give a full report.

Now I just have to join Carboard Connection and find a new e-mail account for trading and I'll really be in business...

Housekeeping

AKA: Gettin' My Act Together 2009 - Part 3: Organization

For the next week or two posts are going to be sporadic. I have a ton of organizing to do and work and home stuff are eating up most of my free time. Don't worry, I'm not going dark for a month, but don't expect 3 -6 posts a day for a while. There's just a lot of lifting and moving and hauling and assembling to do that can't be done in front of a PC. This is really the best time to do it since there ain't nothing going on in the baseball card world right now. Yeah I know, we're all mad because Masterpieces is gone and X is still here but what's really going on? Not a damn thing until '09 Upper Deck and Topps come out. Then you got new cards and Spring Training and the World Baseball Classic and Opening Day and a dozen products coming out and it's better to do all this stuff now rather than then.

The two main things I have to get done card-wise this week is to get everything physically moved to where it's supposed to be, and to get some damn packages in the mail . I've got packages to Chris Harris, Eric Slette, Jack Plumstead and two other guys together and in bubble mailers and I just need to get them to the post office already. There's about 5 other piles going to various other people and then there's the trade offers piling up. And the trade page that needs updating. Then there's all the Christmas giveaway stuff. A quick note on this - when I said 'Christmas giveaway' I meant 'Christmas 2009'. Yeah, that's the ticket. At any rate, I can promise you that they will all be out by then. I hope. So you won't be too mad if I take a little less time blogging and a little more time packaging for a couple weeks, mmmmkay?

I'm not just getting trade stuff organized (although that is first priority until it's done) I've got a few other projects I really want to have done this year. Here's the biggies in order of importance.

CHIPPER JONES

I don't think it's a secret that Chipper Jones is my favorite player. I dare say that Chipper is so entrenched as my favorite player that if he were to purposely throw games for money, kick Bobby Cox in the junk, sign an affidavit for MLB that Glavine and Justice were on 'roids during the '95 season prompting Bud to revoke our title and give it to the Indians, sign with the Mets for less money and declare that the Eagles were the best band ever, I'd still be a fan. Sheeeeit, I'd be wearing a damn Mets cap and trying to learn the chords to Tequila Sunrise. So obviously, I've got a lot of Chipper cards. Ever see one of those 3200 monster boxes with three rows? I've got one of those completely filled with Chippers in toploaders and they still won't all fit. So, what I'm gonna do it catalog all of them, and post 'em here with as many images as I feel like scanning. That way, they're all in order, I know what I've got and you know what I've got. And Captain Canuck has Grand Mal seizures of joy. I've got over 2/3rd of them sorted, once I finish that I'll start posting. Then I'll finally be able to compare my Chippers with Mario's Cansecos and all the other epic player collections out there. Like everything else I'm doing this year I have a second goal to shoot for after this one is finished. Once Chipper is done I'm starting on Brian McCann.

MARK LEMKE

Ok, I'm going to go through with it. I am going to collect every single Mark Lemke card ever made other than 1/1s. I looked over a player checklist and it looks like there are about 250 Lemmer cards or so. I can do that. The main difficulty I'll have is finding the ones I have. I'll be honest, I'm not sure where the heck most of them are. As I find them though, I will scan them and post them and gently caress them and carefully place them in a binder and hug them and squeeze them and love them. Something like 95% of his cards are from the '90s though, so I'll have to do some serious excavating of my old junk to find a lot of them. Like with the Chipper, I'll be posting a list of what I have. After I get Lemmer sorted, I'll start on Bobby.

BRAVES

The stars are all somewhat together, and the team sets are all right, but the rest is a colossal mess. I gotta get them orderly and figure out what doubles I have so I can get rid of 'em. Once I get them in order I can start cataloguing like Steve does with his Sox and David does with his Indians. I have no plans for when this is done, for this will never be truly done. At least not in my lifetime.

DOUBLES

I want to get them in some semblance of order so I can find stuff off people's wantlists. Main goals are to get the Topps/UD/Donruss/Fleer base sets in order for the older stuff and the bigger set building stuff together for the recent years, like A&G, Heritage, etc. This will not be all that hard, it will just be extremely tedious when I start sorting them numerically for easier access. It's gotta be done though and a little work now will mean a lot less work down the line.

HERITAGE

Getta get the want lists completely accurate and online. Gotta get all the sets into binders. Gotta get all my piles of doubles together for trading. Gotta do it all again for the Bowman Heritage.

So that's what I've got planned for the next few months. Think I'll do it or will I get bored by Valentines Day and let it all slide?

Oh, one other thing... There's a poll in the top right corner that some of you may have noticed. That's going to be the box break to keep us all entertained while we're waiting for Heritage. Yes, Heritage, I'm not buying a box of Topps this year or possibly ever again. Certainly not the day it comes out anymore. Sorry, Topps burned me one too many times last year. Anyway, there are four choices. the one I'd prefer to do is on top, but you all seem to like the "from this century" option so far. I actually have all the options on hand so once a decision is made, I'll start posting wither next week or the week after. Choose wisely though, this is the stuff that will get you though the long days before the '09 stuff comes out.

Ok, one more thing. You may have noticed there has been no card of the week for the past two weeks. That's on hiatus 'till February. I'm not giving up on it, I'm just giving it a rest for a while until I get everything else together. One question though - would you like me to keep the super long lists over there or condense them into one "Card of the Week" link? I'm leanign toward keeping them, but that sidebar is getting junky and could use some straightening up. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some crap to haul...