Does anybody track their card inventory on a computer?

I use software which had been created specifically for keeping inventory of sports cards, and I get the impression that I’m in the distinct minority on this.  I’ve been doing this so long that my first software package was DOS-based and came on 5-1/4” floppies.  Why, yes, I am old.  Thank you for asking.

The appeal of the software package(s) was that I could get regular data updates so that rather than just knowing I needed card #451, I would know that I needed card #451 – Frank Catalanotto – Detroit Tigers – Rookie Card – Book Value = $1.00 (I’m making this particular example up, by the way).  If I wanted a listing of the New York Mets in 1995 Upper Deck, or every Topps card between 1990 and 2000 which had Cal Ripken on it, I could easily generate a report.

Since the companies which created my software are long gone, there are no more updates.  For the sets which  have come out since then, I’m tracking just the card #’s… not to mention that I can’t get the software to run in Windows 7, so sooner or later I’m going to be stuck if I don’t do something.  I could switch to another method for newer sets, but then I still have thousands and thousands of cards entered into the software, and there’s way too much time invested in that data to just throw it away and start over… but it would also be a lot of work to convert it in another format.  It’s a bit of a quandary.

Does anybody else track their cards in any sort of electronic format?  I feel like I’m alone in this; I know when I go to a show with my binder of printed-off wantlists, I get looks… either “Oooh, fancy-schmancy” looks or “Check out Mr. Anal Retentive” looks.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this!  How do you track your needs, and does it do what you want/need it to do?

Mets Monday: 2004 Fleer/New York Post sheet

Here’s the top third… well, probably more the top 45%… of a sheet of cards that appears to have been part of a New York Post promotion.  I didn’t live in metro NY in 2004, so I didn’t experience this promotion first hand, I just got this sheet at a show a few years ago. I don’t know any more about it than the  header says… If you brought this sheet to a Mets Clubhouse Store and bought a Fleer pack, you got a special card of rookie sensation Kaz Matsui!  Yee-haw!  I don’t know how one would have obtained this sheet in the first place, maybe it was inserted into the NY Post… but that’s sheer conjecture.

The sheet’s too big to scan as a whole, much like it’s too tall to fit in any sort of plastic sheet.  It is a nice looking sheet, though… it would look even better if I was able to get a decent scan.  The entire sheet has 9 cards on it, here’s the header plus cards 1 through 3.  The cards you don’t see are Ty Wigginton, Cliff Floyd, Mike Cameron, Karim Garcia (gak!), Mike Piazza and Tom Glavine. I’ll include the other cards in a future post.

Two of these cards are a bit painful for a Mets fan to look at, as they reflect the plan going into the 2004 season…  “We paid big bucks to get Kaz Matsui from Japan, so let’s have him play short and move this rookie – what’s his name again?  Reyes?  Yeah, move him over to play second.  He’s young, he’ll get over it.” Just in case I need to tell you how that worked out, Reyes is about to get a huge contract from somebody (I long ago resigned myself to the idea that it won’t be the Mets) and Matsui played much of 2010 in AAA and for 2011 went back to Japan to play for the Rakuten Golden Eagles.

To be  honest, I always felt a little bad for Matsui.  Being a 7-time Japanese all-star didn’t convey to MLB stardom, and the fans took out their frustrations on him.  Yeah, he wasn’t anywhere near as good as he was built up to be, but the man tried.  It wasn’t like he just sat back and collected a fat paycheck.

Pack Animal! 1989 Star Minor League, Series 2

Just as a contrast-and-compare to yesterday’s opening of 2011 Minor League Heritage, here’s the very definition of crap wax.  I’ve got a bunch of these packs, I think they might’ve come in some sort of repack or a grab bag.  I’m going through one of these packs and then these cards are most likely going in the recycling.

Let’s see what we’ve got…

Benny Colvard, Cedar Rapids Reds:  Not an auspicious start.  I can’t remember for sure, but I think that Cedar Rapids was A-ball.

Brett Merriman, Watertown (Indians?).  Him I’ve heard of, at least.  …I think.

Tino Martinez, Williamsport Bills.  Oooh, a future Major Leaguer pictured in his first pro season.  That’s not bad.  I doubt I’ll do much better in this pack.

Steve Callahan, Everett Giants:  Back to the anonymous guys.

Vincent Degifico, Winter Haven Red Sox:  I wonder if one day someone will find my blog by Googling “Vincent Degifico”.  Hey, stranger things have happened.

Mike Campas, Hamilton Redbirds:  I forgot that Hamilton had a minor league team once upon a time.  It’s a shame that cities like Nashville, Raleigh (Carolina) and Phoenix can have an NHL team, but Hamilton, Ontario – which is a pretty big city, population 500,000 according to Wikipedia – doesn’t have an affiliated baseball team.

Steve Allen, Gastonia Rangers:  “Minor League Baseball cards?  Steve Allen thought of that, too!!!” (A little joke for you MST3K fans)

Pedro Castellano:  Wytheville Cubs

Joey Belle, Canton-Akron Indians:  Ah, you can’t fool me!  You’re Albert Belle, massively-overpaid slugger of the 1990’s!  Even back then he looked like he was ready to kick someone’s ass.

Skipper Wright, Burlington Braves:  SKIPPER!!!!!!!!  (I’m comin’, little buddy!)

All things considered, these cards weren’t bad for what they were.  To be honest,  I had more fun opening these than the Minor League Heritage cards, but that’s sometimes the way it goes with sets like this;  you appreciate them more down the road when you know what happened (or didn’t happen) to the guys on the cards.

Pack Animal! 2011 Minor League Heritage

I don’t know about the rest of the country, but packs of Minor League Heritage are an elusive prey in my area.  Fortunately, I didn’t have much interest in it from the start.  I’ve bought minor league sets in the pasts, but even a Heritage price point is a bit steep for a set where many of the players won’t even get a cup of coffee.  I also might’ve been more interested if they started this in a year with another design (1962 is very “blah”) and if it weren’t just another piece of the Bryce Harper hype machine.  The kid’s only made it to AA and I’m already tired of him.

Getting back to the wax… I got this pack during a visit to my friendly neighborhood comic store (I’m a multi-media nerd), and paid $4.75 for the pack.  I don’t know what these normally sell for, but based on what this particular store usually charges for cards, I have no doubts that I overpaid for it.  Maybe I’ll get some mojo to make up for it… or at least a shortprint I can ship off to COMC.  Are there short prints in this set?  I don’t even know that much about it.

And away we go…

Adam Bailey, Lexington Legends

Ryan Jackson, Springfield Cardinals

Joe Kelly, Palm Beach Cardinals.  Good pack for a Cardinals fan.

Simon Castro, Tucson Padres.  You know, I think I might like the Tucson Padres uniforms better than the San Diego Padres uniforms.  That can’t be good.

Gary Sanchez, Charleston Riverdogs

Juan Oramas, Lake Elsinore Storm

Carlos Perez, Rome Braves.

Jimmy Nelson, Wisconsin Timber Rattlers

Brett Lawrie, Las Vegas 51’s.  Hey, I know that dude!  I saw him play with Toronto against the O’s.  I kinda like the Star Trek font on the 51’s uniform.

Wow.  No inserts, no parallels, no short prints, no Mets or Orioles prospects, not even a guy I’ve seen play in one of the 10-15 minor league games I go to each year.  I hope the comic store appreciates my $4.75, because I certainly didn’t get my money’s worth out of that puppy (other than giving me something to write about).

Pulled out of storage: 1994 Stadium Club

I wish I could’ve been there the first time Erik Pappas saw this card.  “WHAT THE–????  Are you freakin’ kidding me?!?!”  Yep, there’s no better way to be immortalized on cardboard than to be pictured sitting in the dugout eating cantaloupe out of a bowl.

Looking back on this set, it’s kind of an interesting design.  The primary design elements are scraps of typewritten paper and DYMO tape… and on the Golden Rainbow parallel, it’s shiny gold DYMO tape!  Yay!

I can’t think of much else to say about this set.  It’s your typical high-end-for-the-mid-90′s set, full bleed, foil-stamped, nicer photography than usual, but often fairly standard shots.  To be fair, these comments are based on the cards I’m looking at right now, I might not have a representative sample.

Nothing in these cards to make me want to keep them… no,  not even the awesome Pappas card.

Moved into the “outbox”:  95 base cards, 17 Golden Rainbow parallels.

Moved into the COMC-bound box:  1 Golden Rainbow John Smoltz

NOTE:  These cards are reflected in the posted-immediately-before-this Weigh-In #3.

Weigh In #3

This week:

Cards coming into the house:  31  ( 2 packs of 2011 Update, 1 “mystery pack” to be revealed in a later post – and that makes it sound far more interesting than it is)

Cards leaving the house:  73 (worthless 80′s & 90′s junk tossed into the recycling bin)

Cards entering the collection:  0

Cards leaving the collection:  236

Cards moving from inbound to outbound without entering the collection:  0

To date:

Net change in the collection: -149

Net change to the # of cards in the house:  -454

Finding different photos in Opening Day sets

Quick question for the blogosphere, so quick I’m not going to paste an image.  I hope an imageless post isn’t a horribly unspeakable act… Please, don’t beat me, I’m new here (sniff).

While poking around COMC, I found that the 2011 Opening Day Jose Reyes base card is different from the ‘regular’ Topps set photo.

I don’t collect Opening Day, but I buy packs here and there to get a fix.  The only base cards I keep are the ones where the photo is different from the regular Topps set, even if the difference is a photoshopped new uniform.  Right now, I’ve got a small stack of 2010 and 2011 Opening Day sitting around because I haven’t had time to check if they’re different from regular Topps, and I don’t have the available brain cells to remember what all of the current cards look like.

Does anyone know of a resource for information like this?  I’ve noticed that COMC will sometimes flag differences with an asterisk, like when a 1980 Burger King has a different photo than the corresponding 1980 Topps card… but they don’t seem to do this with Opening Day or Chrome.  At least that wasn’t the case with these Reyes cards.

Nudge to card dealers and COMC sellers:  I bought the Reyes, so it behooves you to help a fella out here.

While I’m talking about Opening Day, I’m going to pretend it’s my birthday, blow out the candles and make a BIG WISH that Topps would use a different design and/or different photos for Opening Day so that I could support a low-price-point product and feel like I’m getting value for my money.  I would say the same about Chrome, but I’m not a big “shiny” guy. (*GASP*!  Stone the heretic!)

When people talk about the most beautiful card of all time…

When people talk about the most beautiful card of all time, they’ll talk about cards like the 1952 Mantle or the 1956 Aaron, but nobody ever mentions the 1958 Frank Zupo.

I mean just look at this card!  It’s so… you know… and um… did you notice the… and what about the… well… innit?

Pulled out of storage: 2001 Bowman

I pulled a bunch of 2001 Bowman cards out of a storage box to figure out whether they deserve to stay in my collection.  Of those, the most interesting card was this C.C. Sabathia.

2001 was C.C.’s rookie season, but this isn’t his rookie card.  According to the text on the back, he was a AA all-star in 2000, and has “Sabathia” tattooed on his back.

Every  now and then I wonder how far you’d get if you tried to assemble a team of players who go by their initials… C.C. Sabathia, C.J. Wilson, A.J. Pierzynski, and so on.  I’ll have to keep an eye out for guys like that, it could be a future post.

I’d say that this is one of the best-looking Bowman sets (although it doesn’t have much competition in the category of “good-looking Bowman sets”).  It’s got a clean, attractive design which works well with the standard black Bowman borders… actually, at this point, black borders weren’t yet a Bowman standard, 2000 Bowman had grey & white borders.

Funny thing about the 2001 design… I hadn’t noticed before that the little diamond above the player’s name is filled in a color for the player’s team.  Here, we’ve got red for the Indians, but other cards have black, green, blue and so on.  Talk about your pointless accents.

Bowman will never be a set I collect, I haven’t tried to complete a Bowman set since 1991.  I’m not sure how many set collectors in general go for Bowman.  It strikes me as the domain of the prospector and people trying to fill out team sets.

Nothing particularly special with these 123 cards I pulled out; for every Sabathia or Branyan there are 15 David Keltons and Tony Torcatos.  They all get moved from my collection to the “out box”.  Hasta la vista, 2001 Bowman!

I always wonder about offers like this…

I’ve blocked out the user name to protect the idiots innocent…

Come on, does anyone really expect to get a cool-looking 1967 Alex Johnson card for one 1986 Joe Niekro?  Seriously, dude.

I mean,  I’ve declined far better offers for my 1986 Wade Boggs.  I’ve gotten a lot of offers for Mr. Johnson, and many of them have been laughably one-sided.

I’m keeping the card mainly because it’s just a cool looking card, not because I have any great connection with the Cardinals or Alex Johnson, and not because I’m trying to complete the 1967 set (although I do love the design).

What do you think, faithful, non-existent followers?  Why is this such a target for trade requests?