General Forum

...I'm going through my collection and I encounter a very nice card that I really had no idea I owned. I was putting away a few 1970 commons, trying to complete the set, and lo and behold there's a NM 1970 Hank Aaron. I know it's not a '52 Mantle, but it's a nice card to suddenly leap out at me. If you'd have asked me before if I owned that card, there's about a 73.2% chance I'd have gotten the answer wrong. 

And I can't decide whether it's very cool that I sometimes find such cards or quite annoying that I spent the money to buy it, enjoyed it for a few minutes, then put it away only to literally forget about it. That's a big part of the reason I'm trying to display more of my cards, a big part of the reason I've made a concerted effort to look through every card I own (I'm up to 2010!), and a little part of the reason I've been more interested in single vintage cards over sets, although I'm still clearly going for both. 

Anyone had a similar experience or reaction? 

v3

Oh yeah, I've done that recently with a Joe Montana SI for Kids card, think it was from '94 and he's with the Chiefs. Got one off eBay for a buck, put it in a top-loader, and got the JM box out to put it away. As I was going through it organizing it by year, saw I already had 5 of them.

Done that before with some Michael Jordans, and Babe Ruths too. But that's OK, I like having (or hoarding) extras of some of my favorite cards.

I did that before and it was Wayne Gretzky's rookie card. Did not know I had it until going through some boxes of cards that I had picked up from the parents house in 1991 when I was stationed closer to home. Decided to go through the boxes and found the card. Finally decided to get it graded in 2002, to get a 5.5 BVG Grade. Oh well still own it and thought it was cool.

I've done that rediscovered cards I didn't know I had. I am also currently going through some of my comics getting back into that collection and rediscovering some of the stuff I have in that collection.

I was really big into comic collecting from mid-80s to around 91-93. When they rebooted Wonder Woman in 87/88 I got multiples of the first issue. I thought I had only gotten 2 or 3 maybe 4 copies, nope I had gotten 10 copies of that one and for some reason I got 5 copies of issue #10 (I think that one has a special fold-out cover which would be a good reason).

Had that happen a few times with some parallels that were barely noticable. The serial numbering was on the back and I didn't realize it was a parallel-insert. Luckily it was a Patrick Roy card, and it was a couple hundred bucks! I feel the same way...I feel like I should know if I have anything desirable or valuable, but am pleasantly surprised when I find a now popular RC that had little value before I put it away. Hopefully, once I get all my collection cataloged, I can avoid that issue.

I realized by 1998 (10th year collecting cards) that my memory was not good enough to remember every card I had...So I wrote out paper listings for each and every NBA, NASCAR and Non-Sport set in my collection. Began in 1998, did not finish until 2010. It's also why, in 2009, I decided to scan every card I owned, although until I joined the Database I did fronts only.
You can see a scan of a page out of my paper listing on my blog here: http://cardboardhistory.blogspot.com/2016/04/ye-olde-blogge.html (Scroll down to the bottom, it's the last image)

At some point I may write out listing for the other sports- hockey, baseball, football, etc- but I have not for a couple of reasons- one, wear and tear on my hand and sitting to do my listings is also physically painful, two: lack of space- the NBA listing takes 4 binders, NASCAR will be on #2 by the end of the year, non-sports takes 1, NCAA/WNBA/Multi-Sport gets another, plus I have one for totals and official stuff like my lists of which sets I've completed, and I also have a binder for my coin/currency collection that I store with the card binders and really third is the costs involved. I'd need to buy the binders, the paper, I would surely need to restock some of the pen colors I use.

Billy, my hand hurts just thinking about that!

To me, that's the best thing about sites like this one. I have a complete catalogue of what I have that's listed somewhere online. I look through my albums/boxes to enjoy the cards, not to catalogue them. My best cards are on display in front of me in the area where I spend most of my home-time, but the other 40K+ are in binders and boxes. The boxes are mostly "Junk-years MLB" and what's left of my NHL traders and some of my NBA collection. All of my NASCAR and NFL cards are in binders for easy viewing (except the ones on-display or in solo cases).

Billy, I used to keep notes like that too. It got too complicated. I had to completely re-write it every time I bought another person's collection or bought retail re-packs.

I left space for the cards I don't have, and filled them in when I got them. It uses more paper but it leads to no problems like that.

I did it that way for the first set I wrote out, realized that wasn't going to work, and then redid it.

I did that when writing down all of the episodes of "The Simpson's" and marking which ones I had recorded as I obtained them. That seemed impossible to do with sports cards. I know you know what I mean. :D