Taken from a blog post I just made:
Finally! Tonight I finally finished a project I've been working on - and have been going through periods of putting it off and working hard on it, but usually more of the former than the latter, until this past month.
I've referenced working on a big project a couple of times, and now I will reveal what it is: I have my entire NASCAR card collection posted to the Trading Card Database. I started the project way back on October 5th, 2012. (The Database has this in the stats feature, I didn't remember). That's a long time to be working on something, but this is a pretty big project- I do have some 28,000 different NASCAR cards, after all.
When I first joined the Database I entered my entire collection, and uploaded some front scans that I had made for my own website. I scanned my entire NASCAR collection, but fronts only, from 2009-early 2012. But...I did a really lousy job on it. Pretty much every single card needed some form of correction. I've been working hard on it the past month, and I scanned the backs of, edited the fronts of, and finally posted, about 3000 cards...just in the last month. When I started this big push, I had uploaded 27,000 something racing items...now I'm at 33,629. That's all from cards I've collected over the last 25 years.
I have been saving the "original" files just to see how many I needed to correct and post. I'm sure this number is not accurate, because a. I don't remember if I did any before I started saving the originals and b. Some of the sets were so bad I just outright scanned them anew.
But I had to edit 6,945 scans...at least. I saved them in the original file when I really began to work on it...dated November 11th, 2014. (My scanner creates a file for each day it's used, and I just kept putting the fronts to be edited into it)
Since the second week or so of February, I've been working on this exclusively. At the start, it was going quickly as I developed a system that worked- I would do three "pages" of 9 scans, then get the previously done fronts and edit them, any that had to be rescanned were pushed to the next round of three scans. Originally I feared that the new changes NASCAR made would drive me away from the sport and I was trying to get them done before the Daytona 500. That clearly didn't happen as I am getting ready to watch qualifying for race #3 of the year in just a few moments. But by time the 500 came and went I was fairly close to completion and thought I could get them done in a week. Now, two weeks later, I finally finished. Near the end I was not enjoying it- I just wanted it to be done so I could move back to something more fun, but I pushed through because I was so close to finishing. There are still some cards that have gone missing that I need to locate and scan as well.
VERY slow trading due to health problems. Not transferrable so safe to trade with, just moving is painful and can't always access the cards.
Cardboard History My COMC
New Collection Website: Cardboard History Gallery (Still under construction)
Tips on how to make your scans look like the card does in hand (No more washed out, fuzzy scans!):
Congratulations on completing such a large endeavor! I'm so glad I found this site within a few months of starting to collect. I can't imagine having to enter a large back-log into the database.
