Not as out-of-control as I thought

 

Something that Johnny's Trading Spot wrote on one of his recent posts got me curious. He mentioned his ranking on Trading Card Database in terms of all cards entered -- or how many cards you have in your collection, according to TCDB.

 

I knew all about totaling your collection on the site, but I didn't know you could compare it with other TCDBers' total collections the way you can with total cards of players in your collection or total cards of teams in your collection.

 

I was immediately intrigued -- and had no idea how to find that information. I looked around for a little bit before my patience ran out after 5 minutes and I emailed Johnny. Turns out it's way at the bottom of TCDB's main page where the columns of links are listed. In the last column is a link called "Stats," which is where I found the info.

 

Here are the bad boys who lead the way:

 

Good grief, that's a lot of cards. 

 

I knew right away that I wouldn't be anywhere near the top. In my mind, I've always thought I had a lot of cards -- my card room tells me about it every day when I go in there and wonder where I'm going to put my latest arrivals. But I should have known that there were collectors who had way, way more.

 

So I started scrolling down the list in hopes that I would find my name. I didn't know how many places were ranked.

 

I did not find it. It goes to 250 places and the last spot is 150,000-something. But 95 percent of my collection is baseball cards anyway, so I checked the separate baseball ranking (as you see above, the top person has 1,311,202. Wow).

 

 

I did find me, near the bottom, at 241st place. Really perplexing that I am not any higher. But the only sport where I'm ranked fairly high is tennis, where I'm 18th. That figures because tennis is not a popular sport to collect at all.

 

I still think there are cards in my collection that I have not entered into TCDB. I come across five cards here and four cards there that I haven't filed every once in awhile and it makes me wonder what else isn't catalogued. Also, I have no idea if TCDB counts duplicates in your totals. There are lots and lots of Dodgers duplicates I haven't bothered to list, does TCDB care as far as rankings if I add the 17 1989 Topps Jeff Hamiltons I own? Even if, it might not be worth my time. 

 

After viewing where I stand, I'd say I have a lot of work to do. Quantity has always been a source of pride for me and I've always been a bit confused by collectors who just want 25 high-dollar cards to display on their shelf. But I'm starting to get away from the "quantity is king" concept after many, many years.

 

I've alluded to that in posts over the last few months and that's all it will be for now, vague mentions. But in the months ahead you'll probably see more concrete evidence of downsizing.

 

But before you panic over what I've become, here are the most recent card arrivals to the house, all purchased by me.

 

These two cards and the Darryl Strawberry at the top of the post are part of my most recent Sportlots order. I'm not 100 percent sure why I received these three separately as I ordered the box option and the rest of the cards haven't arrived yet. Did those sellers just bypass the box option? 

 

Anyway, the Karros finally completed the '99 Bowman Chrome team set for me and the Strawberry is a 1992 Leaf Black Gold preview card, which I had never heard of until somebody -- I'm assuming Peter -- showed it off fairly recently. I was so unaware of these that I didn't have the regular Leaf preview Strawberry either and that's now in a cart.

 

As for the 1986 Sportflics card, that reproduced in the usual crappy way. Dave Winfield is staring through Pedro Guerrero's body. I got this card for Guerrero, Dave!

 

 

That's a little better. The other player on the card is Tim Raines. 

 

 

 I've refocused on my 1975 Hostess chase recently. I think prices for Ryan and Yount scared me off a little but I'm back with renewed energy. Rennie Stennett is an SP!

 

 

And look what arrived today! These cards brought me over 100 for the 150-card set. Very cool. Note the Bill Madlock "Pitcher" error. I haven't decided whether I want to add the corrected version too (hint: probably).

 

So, obviously, I'm adding cards. Maybe not at the rate that will get me into the top 10 or even the top 100 of collections on TCDB, but I don't think that's a goal anymore though it would have been one -- had I known about it -- a few years ago.

 

I mean 2 millions cards? Where does that all go?