Hobby Hideaway

My little corner of the world

FLAKEY.  It’s that time of year - when the snow falls at will, and the sun makes limited appearances. With my lengthy disappearance from all things bloggy and twitty, it may seem that I too, am flakey. I won’t go into detail right now, except to say that part of this time away was personal. My life is simple, uncomplicated.  It’s unusual for me to have a case of the blues. Coming back, I’ve found a few fellow bloggers who've struggled with losses far greater than any I’ve experienced in sometime. Parents and children passing, jobs lost. These major life events are more than any situation I’ve dealt with these past few months.  While this doesn't invalidate anything I’ve been working through, it certainly puts some perspective on life.

Billy, Ernie and a vintage 60s cake topper.

I've shied away from Twitter. Initially I found it to be a great way for keeping in touch with the hobby during the busier summer days of 2018. No matter how clean I kept my feed - arguments, politics and half-naked women seemed to find their way in.  I gave up trying to hide it all.  This world is in turmoil: on fire, at war, far left, far right, no room for the gray. It's either/or, right/wrong.  My heart just can't take it all in. Twitter hasn't seen me since June. 

Babe, Mickey and the Long Ball!

During this outage of sorts, the hobby was still close at hand. I holed-up in the hobby room. Music, lava lamps, toys, cards - all serve to take me back to a childhood that's been missing most of my life. It's never to late to have one! The time available was spent quietly entering my collection into THE database which was quite therapeutic. All PCs were entered, leaving me quite surprised to find Mike Piazza is the number one player in my collection! I expected Altuve or Mr. Ty Cobb to hold this position! At this moment, I rank as the number one Altuve collector on TCDB. That's fun! Naturally as soon as all PCs were entered, another crop found its way into the house and waits to be entered and filed.

Jose and Buster

Trading Card Database may not be for everyone but I suggest checking it out if you're looking for a way to catalog. There are countless methods to track our collections. Using this system has given me 'control' over mine.  I still need to add team sets, mini-collections and small insert sets. And oh, do I have them! I also spend a little each month to support TCDB. This also keeps the half-naked women off my screen. Ad free! {What is it with these bimbos and their insatiable need for attention???} My up-to-date wantlists can be found there too.  A user profile is not required to view it and the list is searchable via player name, set or team. So no matter how you sort trade bait, finding a little something to send a pal is easy as cake - or pie or ice cream.  

https://www.tcdb.com/Collection.cfm/member/acrackedbat/collection/1?MODE=VIEW&Type=Baseball&Status=W

I'm still interested in trading with pals but it's PWE style for now. I've found it easier to send 18-24 pocketed cards inside a heavy-duty envelope. So far there have been no issues with damage - and mailing costs less than $1.40!  The downside for trading is the lack of new product in my house. The new stuff just isn't doing much for me. I completed a GQ set this year and picked up a few stray packs of Prizm, Gallery, Archives and Stadium Club.  My last card show was in March or April. Having less to spend keeps me focused on inexpensive vintage, Tigers, Cobb and Altuve.

Patrick Kane and Tony Esposito

If you've made it this far, then it's time for a small reward. Pick Pockets has been updated with 153 new cards to choose from. Read the PP introduction for instructions and pick your nine cards!  I hope to add additional pages in the near future with a few stray football cards.

Thank you for the warm welcome back. There's always something to learn from you , a new discovery - and always, always - one more card out there I never knew I needed. NEEDED. Until next time, I've got my eyes on you.

TCB On the TCDB

Let's breathe a little life into this blog while the time is available! I've stopped, started, and edited this post  several times. While I've had a new Lenovo laptop for nearly a month, until two days ago it hadn't worked properly. The first week, it wouldn't stay connected to wireless while running on battery power, even after modifying battery settings to maximum performance. I worked with a Lenovo tech who reinstalled the Realtek wireless driver. My problems were solved for about three days.

Windows did an update which corrupted the Chrome browser and created other issues within the machine. I decided to reset the machine to an earlier date. I only had two choices so used the later date with the working wireless. The machine crashed. It would not reboot into Windows, only the blue screen of death. I'd invested a lot of time and money in this laptop and wanted to cry.  I had only one option - reset it to factory mode. This worked but then just a few days later, the wireless problem started again.  Reinstalling the driver didn't work this time. I got online and found a more recent version of the driver and installed it myself a couple days ago. This laptop is finally working as it should.

And I will be too - beginning Monday!  I HAVE A NEW JOB! FOUR MILES FROM HOME! Within two hours of interviewing Tuesday, I had an offer.  I'll be working for a company that applies protective coating to metal components, mostly for autos. The office is small, no more than five persons at any given time. It's just what I'd hoped to find: 8-4:30 with an eight mile round trip commute. No busy roads or stoplights.  NO TRAFFIC!

So what have I been doing? I began this post on January 20th with these stats:

Although the login was created in 2018, I only set up my profile over the summer. I began inventory of my earliest binders in early January. Most contain cards from my hobby beginnings in the 90s with some 80s oddballs too. Adding these quickly boosted my numbers. I also took time to edit prices for many cards, lowering them somewhat. I began a wantlist after discovering some sets missing fewer than 10 cards, a few sets - only one.  How did I let this go for decades?

One thing leads to another. I went poking around, learning to navigate the site when I came across Features:

I just had to click on games. Mistake.  Within one singular minute, I was lost in Card Battles:

Faced with a nice Bowman challenge, choosing one over the other with nearly endless combinations, I lost a full hour of data entry right there. I finally extracted myself from this game but saw another link for Card-ology.  For freakin' Fleer's sake.

Recognize any of these top TCDB gamers?  My guess is they're also without full time work.
Since my last day on the job, I've boosted my numbers greatly:

Altuve and Old Ty are by far, my largest player collections. They share a 3000 count box which is nearly full. I'm saving them for last as a kind of 'reward' for my hard work, which is the reason these two vastly different men do not appear in the player list.

1994 ranks highest on this list because that year sucked my wallet dry. I came into the hobby in the fall of '93.  In '94, I thought I needed to buy every product that came out.

Though players were sorted into PCs, I had no idea which cards were owned or needed. I have been greatly impressed by the lack of dupes found while sorting cards by year and set. It is MY memory we're talking about here!  Here's one of the completely sorted and entered boxes:

While there are smaller spots for Brett, Eckersley and others, I do not intentionally add to these collections. If I come across an appealing card, it goes into the box.  At one time, Catalanotto held a larger place but I've kept only ten of the 100+ cards original to my collection. These smaller lots are denoted by 'all' on the yellow tag.  HOFers are noted as such by their name.  Cards are sorted by year, and set. All are soft sleeved, with loaders reserved for vintage, relics, autos, refractors or numbered cards.

The old laptop worked well on the database, for that I was grateful.  I couldn't upload photos with it or surf the internet at any great length. Blog reading was difficult because pictures wouldn't load, there or on most sites in general. It's still good for a mindless game of Zuma or Peggle.

Thanks for your support and encouragement these past two months. I won't lie. Being off all this time has been nice. Retirement will be sweet some day, ten years from now.  Just maybe, by then, I'll have Altuve and Cobb in TCDB!