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Greetings from my living room, which is now cluttered with cardboard.

This is my annual Dodgers dupes box organization. And I'm about two months late with it, too. My mission with this annual activity is to incorporate all the dupes I've accumulated in the past year into the main dupes box. But there are two other missions within that main mission:

1) To get rid of some cards.
2) To find cards I need.

Those are polar opposite mini-missions. The first is sad and the second is happy. And I'm pleased to say I'm succeeding with both.

I am hell bent on getting rid of cards I simply don't need. I have no problem keeping a few dupes of each card because you never know when you'll require one on demand or someone will need one. But where once I would have no problem with having 10-or-more of any card, I've since cut that down to five of each, and now it's down to three. Sometimes it's less than that (sometimes it's more for certain key cards). But cards just have to go. There ain't no room.

Here is a wider view of the process. The random pile in the background are cards that will no longer be a part of my collection. If you look closely at that pile, you'll see the usual suspects, 1991 Fleer, 199 Donruss, hell everything 1991.

But there's a lot more than that now -- I'm now up to 1995 and the "dupes that must disappear" are now about 500 cards strong and growing.

I'm not sure how I will get rid of those cards. My first preference is finding a Dodger fan just starting out. But I know that's a longshot. Otherwise, maybe Commons 4 Kids? I'm not above tossing cards these days either. You start staring at 20 Fernando Valenzuelas from 1989 and the "sanctity of cardboard" speech starts sounding a little hollow. But, obviously, that's the last resort.

So, anyway, if you're a Dodger fan just starting out, please, please speak up.

The other mini-mission is my favorite. Discovering cards you need that were right under your nose (but buried in landslide of dupes) is one of the great joys in this hobby. And I always find stuff I need every time.

It's still early in the process but I've uncovered a few stray cards.

This is one of those "my Spidey senses are tingling" cards. Stacking some of the dupes piles, I came across some '96 Upper Deck and the DeShields card did not look familiar to me at all. I love having that part of my brain that recognizes unfamiliar cards out of the blue. I wish I could make money off that skill.

I went to look at my team binders, opened the binder with mid-90s Dodgers and, sure enough, there was no 1996 Upper Deck Delino DeShields card in my binder. I can't wait to have the honor of adding it to the binder.

The other "missing cards" underline how important it is to handle your cards.

While shuffling through seemingly endless 1991 Topps Dodgers, I came across one that felt slicker than the others. I went back through those cards and found two more that felt the same way.

My first thought was that these cards might be Topps Tiffany items.

But au contraire mes amis.

If you read the fine print, you will notice that they are O-Pee-Chee!

I'm sure I received these from one my Canadian buddies, and probably recently, too. So sorry for dispensing them to giant dupes box.

Then there is the matter of this:

While organizing the '96 Team Stadium Club dupes, I noticed under the dining room light, one "TSC" illuminated in purple and one in blue (and the player's name vice versa). This, of course, means I need to look at all of my Dodgers from this set and determine what the heck I have and what the heck this is. Frankly, I'm too tired from sorting to figure it out right now.

So, anyway, the great annual dupes sort is how I'll be spending my free time tonight and into tomorrow.

In fact, I better leave now. There's no way this will get done before my wife gets home and I have to at least make it look presentable.

Maybe I can convince her to start a collection of Dodgers cards.