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Honors and benefits

 
It's award season. I think if you watched any football yesterday, you know that, with advertisements for the airing of the upcoming Grammys, for artists you don't know and songs you wish you never heard.
 
In keeping with the season, Trading Card Database announced their yearly "site awards" and Night Owl Cards came away with "Favorite Blog" for the third straight year. Woo-hoo! Throw in the Blog of the Year honor from Nachos Grande a few weeks ago and it's another sweep! It's a consensus, if you're not reading, you're receding!

Thanks for the votes. It's a little weird to be getting accolades after doing this for so long. It's not 2009 anymore, NOC isn't the new, hot, young thing. But I appreciate it, and I appreciate all that TCDB does for acknowledging collectors and collections.

I still use only a small part of what's available on the site. I don't use the forums, nor do I comment, nor have I started trading. As I've said many times, far and away the greatest attraction for me with the site is tracking my collection. Everything else is a side-benefit.
 
So, let's quickly review where my collection is on that site as of right now.
 

I'm still convinced that I don't have everything documented here yet, there's a pocket of my collection that I'm sure I've overlooked, but I don't know where to begin to look.
 
Anybody who reads this blog is not surprised by the distribution of totals here. I'm all about baseball, my favorite teams in other sports and some fun, nonsports stuff. Everything else can kick rocks. (Except tennis, which I wish was a mainstream sport in the collecting world).


This is an updated list of the players with the most cards in my collection, which I've shown in the past on the blog. Not a lot of change here and now that Cody Bellinger is not a Dodger anymore, his once-inevitable trip into the top five will not happen and others will surpass him. I'm thinking Mookie Betts will pop onto this top 15 at some point this year. (If you're interested in player No. 16, it's Gary Sheffield).
 


Here are the totals by team. Anything on this list that is not the Dodgers is a reflection on the checklist for individual card sets, not my collecting tendencies. I do not attempt to collect any team other than the Dodgers. I've never sought out a Yankees card, so I don't know how I have the second-most cards of that team. Just tells you where card companies' minds are I suppose.
 


My total for Dodgers cards was No. 1 on TCDB for a number of months, until gcrl decided to add his collection to the discussion. At the rate he accumulates stuff like Garveys and such, I'll never retake my title. I get too distracted by oddballs and other bits of pretty paper.
 


Underneath the totaling of your collection by individual sport are a couple of categories related to transacting.

I've begun uploading cards for the "sale/trade" portion -- there is so very far to go here. I've done nothing with the want list part other than adding some 1975 Topps buybacks that I saw listed there. Once I get involved in that is probably when I'll be fully immersed in trading here -- if that happens. Like I said, my favorite part of the TCDB name is the "Database" part, but maybe some day I'll have more free time for stuff like that.

For now, about the only other thing from TCDB I like to do is the mindless exercise where you can call up a random card from your collection.

Let's do that and see what first five cards pop up:


1. 2018 Heritage, World Series subset, Game 6.

Ah yes, a very happy time. Then came scandal.
 
 

2. 2018-19 O-Pee-Chee Chad Johnson
 
Chad Johnson was the Sabres' regular goalie in 2015-16. I don't recall that season at all. 



3. 1992 Leaf Tom Candiotti, black gold parallel

This was a recent addition to my collection and here it is!



4. 1966 Topps Bob Miller

Weee! Vintage! Bob Miller is 26 is this photo. Twenty-Six.



5. 2008 Upper Deck Timeline Randy Johnson

Ah yes, a reminder of that year when I tried to buy every card set featured in pack displays at any retail store I happened to visit during 2008.

Also the year I started this blog.

Staying with numbers, this is my 5,201st post since debuting here. I have no plans to stop.

Comments

Congrats on another fine year!
Chris said…
I dont think any other blog has a chance at winning any award as long as you're still doing this. Can't wait to see you and GCRL Jim take turns as the TCDB title holder.

Also, it's crazy that the Yankees have *that many* more cards than every other team. 10% more would be understandable. But the gap between the Yanks and the Red Sox is probably wider than the gap between the Red Sox and the Rays.
Jimetal7212 said…
Considering the Yanks, Sox and Cards are the top 3 teams in the DB they'll dominate any set collector's list. Your comment on the Miller card had me chuckle. Last year at this time I was in Japan for work. During my 2 weeks in quarantine, I watched the show Emergency, all episodes. I lost count how many times they treated someone who was 40ish as being on death's bed. Seeing that Miller looks 36 here, his time could have been soon.
Nick said…
Congrats, sir! A well-deserved honor. I really want to get a nice chunk of my collection on TCDB this year. Don't think any of my Dodger player collection totals will be anywhere near your top 15 though - closest would probably be Jackie Robinson but I'm almost positive you're still ahead of me by a wide margin there!
Billy Kingsley said…
I came in second. Surprised me because it was a down year. I tried to tag you on Twitter this morning but I could not get it to work, but as I said there "finishing second to Nite Owl is a major accomplishment!". I'm surprised to see you have a racing card. I'll have to look and see what it is, just because I'm curious.
gcrl said…
i am almost done entering my dodger collection on tcdb and then i would expect to be passed by you in short order. there's no shame in that.

once i am through, i'll have to check how my player rankings line up with yours - i am guessing they are similar outside of my number 1. i haven't used tcdb for anything other than entering my player collections and dodger collection so far. maybe once i get the mini-collections and sets in there i will look at the other features.
Matt said…
I didn’t even finish in the Top 3 on tcdb. Nor have I ever. Which is weird because according to my blog stats most of my visitors come from there. I thought cards over coffee would at least crack top 3. Very disappointing year for blog awards on my end.

As for the site, you have really done a ton of uploading compared to me. I have stuck with small collections which also makes me feel better as number one collector of most of those haha!

Keep up the great work blogging and we will keep on reading.

I am thinking I need another break from it and focus on my collection more than talking about it.
steelehere said…
What are the one MMA, Golf and Racing cards in your collection?
Fuji said…
Congratulations! Not surprised you were voted "favorite blog"... but very surprised you have over 2,600 Oakland A's cards in your collection.
Doc Samson said…
Congrats, Mr. Owl! Well deserved. No matter how blue I’m feeling, your posts always perk me up.
night owl said…
@steelehere ~

The golf is a Matt Kuchar card, I've interviewed him. The MMA is an "octagon girl". The auto racing, I had to look up. It's a Reggie Jackson card, which references his interest in auto racing.
bbcardz said…
Congratulations on winning TCDb's Favorite Blog award (and for the 3rd straight year year too)! Well deserved of course.
Old Cards said…
Congrats on your award! Thanks to you and TCDB for enhancing our hobby. It was Billy Kingsley who brought my attention to TCDB in one of his comments on your blog a good while ago. So, thanks to Billy as well!
Matt said…
Congrats on the award wins!
Congratulations on winning Favorite Blog. I think it was expected, but still great to see.

I, too, started on TCDB (GoldenEagles555 over there) as a way to organize my collection. I moved a few duplicates to my trade list, somebody reached out for a trade, and the rest is history. I am now hopelessly addicted to trading on TCDB. Worse problems to have, I guess.
Honors and benefits...already at the age of 9! Congrats, Greg!
Jafronius said…
Belated congrats on the Blog of the Year and post 5200!