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Friday, June 12, 2020

Quarantine Projects

Hello old friends!  Figured it was about time to do a post before my blog gets lost in the ether.  Hard to believe I retired the blog almost two years back. 


The retirement was not in vain as I continue to strive towards my goal of organization.  If you follow me on Twitter I've been posting periodic updates.  Quarantine has provided a unique opportunity to make a serious dent on a goal that at certain points seemed unattainable. 

Forever the elephant in the room was a crawl space full of cards that had been packed away after multiple moves.  With some prodding from my wife the project was tackled in early April.  It took a month of consolidating and moving but all the cards are finally in one place.  The task at hand now is tackling all those monster boxes and get the Pirates in binders and trade bait separated. 

Obviously the project had some fun moments.  As I was consolidating all these cards to the monster boxes my eyes locked onto a few unique finds. 





The only card that was kind of a surprise was the Kobe.  When I found a 500 count box of mid 90's, early 2000's basketball I took the time to go ahead and see what was in there.  When I was initially going through the box it seemed more likely that I would unearth an early Lebron James instead of Kobe, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a Topps rookie. 

Silver lining now is that I've started to send out packages again (4 last week!).  Many of the cards unearthed are from a time period in which many people weren't collecting (early 2000's) so it should make good trade bait. 

With the organization projects I haven't spent much time adding new cards to my collection.  I have a large amount ready to ship on COMC, but they seem to be running at a snails pace so I've let those sit.  I think I've only utilized eBay two or three times since the calendar switched to 2020. 


The biggest addition came via box break from the Card Papoy and Brian of HSCA.  I kind of thought we hit our high point when I pulled Kevin an Aaron Judge auto last year, but then he pulled me the above Ichiro.  Needless to say I was excited to get such a unique card.  I actually have it on a shelf next to my some of my higher end Pirate cards.  Box prices are so out of control now that Brian, Kevin and I put the brakes on our breaks.  Trying to workout a possible reverse box in the near future just to keep up our normal trade correspondence.


I have a fairly big collection of unopened boxes.  A lot of the junk wax era stuff was bought in the early 2000's at auctions and packed away in a Rubbermaid container in my crawl. The late 90's stuff was accumulated by rounding out purchases on Steel City over the years when buying boxes for our breaks.  Nice to have everything in one place now to have a better inventory.  Interesting to see the renewed interests in some of these sets.  I think many player collectors realize those insert sets from the 90's are much rarer than low numbered auto cards now.


Lots of loose packs too.  Many of these were courtesy of Wes as part of his 1056335645545 packages he sent my way over the years.  I often joke that I have a whole wing of my house devoted to items he sent my way.  As I continue to go through things that joke quickly turned to reality.  Wes has a heavy footprint in my collection. 

That is pretty much the full update collecting wise for me. My wife and I have cancelled any travel this year so we instead got a new porch on our house.  Helps make the stay-cation a little more relaxing and provided a little more quarantine square footage.  I try to fill downtime with Zoom happy hours with my out of town friends to stay in touch.  While not ideal it helps pass the time and have a social outlet.  Things are starting to open up again in my town, but with my daughters health history we have been avoiding most in person contact as much as possible. 

Hope everyone is doing well.  Big virtual cheers to all my old blogging pals.  Later







38 comments:

  1. Matt, so great to see an update from you! Glad to hear you and your family are doing well. Have fun with your organization. I used my Q-tine time to do the same. It's made a tremendous difference in my collection. I've narrowed my interests greatly. Take care and be well!!!

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    1. The actual sorting through boxes is kind of fun....The act of digging them out of a crawl space and maneuvering heavy containers, not so much. Hope you are doing well!

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  2. Welcome back from Davy Jones' Locker or your crawl space whichever. It is always fun to discover lost treasures in storage areas and the other little nicks and nooks things were hiding in. I've had a couple of recent trades on TCDB of cards that I didn't know I had or forgotten which box and which area of my "hoard" they were in and fortunately was able to find.

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    1. So far I've only found a few cards where I had actually forgot about them (pretty much all were basketball). Only had a short stretch where I bought everything under the sun. You could tell I about a lot of topps boxes back in the day.

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  3. Good job with the organization project! It was a pleasant surprise seeing this post from beyond the grave! ;)

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    1. I like to give proof of life every once in a while...

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  4. The Ichiro auto is very, very cool.
    Glad to hear you are doing well and you've been able to take advantage of the Q-tine time.
    FWIW, we also cancelled our summer trip and decided to spend the money on a home improvement project.
    Stay safe!

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    1. We've done a ton of stuff outside at our house. New porch, garden....next up is new outside furniture.

      That Ichiro was super lucky. We generally don't buy boxes that have great odds for veteran autos. We obviously broke the odds big time with that one. Hope all is well your way! I found some Cubs cards that have your name all over them!!!

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  5. Welcome back to the blog-o-sphere! Nice project, the quarantine was at least good for something. I love your stash of boxes and packs!

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    1. We adapted pretty well. The porch was just good timing as we had the estimate and contractor picked out before quarantine even started. It got done really fast which was a bonus. Hope you are doing well. Hopefully baseball happens this year. The Reds were going to be really entertaining this year.

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  6. "Sky Box" - man, that certainly takes me back to a different time in my life, lol...

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  7. Hey hey hey! Was surprised when this old blog popped up on the blog roll. Your card area looks great! Love the pack and box stash. Looking forward to your follow up post on your Trout and Dominguez PCs.

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  8. Glad to see you made it out of the crawl space to post!

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  9. Sweet Ichiro! I don't really understand Twitter... so I'm glad to see you're still around collecting cards.

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    1. Yeah, Twitter is a minefield....right now though its my main lifeline to my collecting buddies. Hope all is well your way!

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  10. Glad to see you're alive and well. Love those old Lakers cards...great post!

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    1. Hanging in there! Hopefully at some point I can at least post a couple times a year!

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  11. A post from Bob Walk the Plank? Miracles can happen!

    Glad you're doing well, sir, and enjoy that Ichiro auto! (Also I'd be climbing up the walls if I had that many boxes/packs left unopened!)

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    1. Ha...Yeah I'm around and still kicking. Since the Pirates don't have much new card wise it has made other projects much easier. Not to mention all the extra time at home.... Hope all is well your way my friend. I'm sure I'll have something to send you in the near future. Felt good to get some packages out the other day.

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  12. Good to hear from an old friend. I like the postings on twitter from you but miss your blog. It was a great surprise to see a new one.

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    1. Hopefully the blog can come a semi regular thing in the future. Hope all is well your way!

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  13. I know that this doesn't mean you're coming back full time, but even the occasional "one off" is better than nothing :)

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    1. It was nice to touch base with a lot of people. I miss the interaction with everyone. Twitter helps, but its not the same.

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  14. That is a sweet Ichiro!
    Do you plan on opening any of the boxes or packs?

    Also, I was wondering if you still trade. I’d be up for a trade if you would like to. My wantlist is on my page.

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    1. I always told myself I would have an pack opening party once I got my organizing finished. So probably sometime in 2045 :)

      As for trading...I sent out a few packages to some of my old trading partners last week with the hope of the process becoming a more regular thing. Now that I have everything in one place it should become easier over time. I'll take a look at your wantlist and let you know if my digging unearths anything. Hope all is well your way.

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  15. Cool stuff! I am also recently back to blogging. Looks like you still have a ton of folks who love ya!

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  16. Glad to see you back!! Sweet Kobe find!

    ReplyDelete
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  18. Good on ya! I know it's never easy to get started on these projects but the result feels so good. Great seeing some of what ya have. Lots of fun to be had. Good post.

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