Thoughts: Keeping Track of Your PC

In this case when I say PC, I'm referring exclusively to player collections and/or specific set collections, not one's entire collection. That said, this is going to be a two part topic:

• Physically tracking your PC
• Digitally tracking your PC

When it comes to physically keeping track of and organizing my Jimmy Howard collection, I currently have every card in the collection stored in top loaders, including the base cards. I even have my prized 1/1 in just a simple top loader for the sake of consistency. I know some people like to put base and simple insert cards into binders, but I prefer the top loaders as it's more enjoyable to look through a stack of cards rather than flipping through page after page. I also believe my cards are safer in top loaders, what do you guys think? Also, how do you physically store your PC?

For some people, simply tucking their PC away in a box or desk drawer would be enough, but for those of us not living in the stone age (especially those of us with blogs, PC websites, etc.) it's not. This is where digitally tracking a PC comes in. Specifically in regards to my Howard collection, I've taken a three-prong approach to digitally keeping track of it:

• Front and back scans of every card
• Excel spreadsheet (for tracking acquisitions by date/source/cost/quantity)
• Card Boarded (Blog) and The Jimmy Howard Collection (PC Website)

I use my Excel spreadsheet to track not only the cards I have, but the cards on my Howard want list. Aside from using it as a checklist, I like to track where each new addition comes from, how much it cost, and if applicable how much I paid to have it shipped to me. This lets me know how much I've sunk into the project, which I can use to determine whether or not I'm sticking to a kind of self-imposed card spending budget. 

The scans, as well as blogs and PC websites, are something most all of us do as that's pretty much the core of sharing/interacting with other collectors online nowadays. What I want to know though, is what do you guys do as far as any kind of 'book keeping' when it comes to your PC's, whether it be player or set specific, or both all rolled into one.

Card Show This Weekend

I was really hoping to make it to the National in Chicago this past weekend, but my plan never materialized, so another local card show this weekend will have to suffice for now. 

The show I'm planning on attending is again at the Gibraltar Trade Center, although this time it's at a different location that the previous show (they've got two locations on the north and south sides of town). I've heard that this location isn't as good as the other one, but we'll see as I haven't been to this one in quite a few years now. 

Again I want to go into this thing with specific needs in mind, rather than taking money with me and simply picking up random boxes and what not. I think this time around I'm going to spend some more time looking through the large boxes of $0.25 cards to see if I can make another dent in either my MVP Stanley Cup Edition or Metal Universe set projects.

And of course I'll be on the lookout for Howard stuff, but I'm always hesitant at these shows because there's always the hometown premium placed on Wings players, so it could actually be cheaper to take the hit on shipping from eBay.

Other than that, I'm kind of finding myself wanting to bust some late 90's - early 00's wax after seeing some breaks on the various forums and blogs. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and find a box of Metal Universe or Stanley Cup Edition, we'll see...

My Picks # 65: Paul Kariya

This pick is yet another card that caught my eye when flipping through some of my base card binders recently. It's an Artist's Proof of Paul Kariya from 1997-98 Score. There's just something about this set I can't get away from (TTM's, Customs, etc.) maybe I should add a quaternary PC project to the sidebar. Now, that's a word you don't get to use everyday. 

This is another one of those instances where the scanner just cannot capture the true look of a card. Here it just looks like a funny shade of bluish-green, when in reality it's got so much more to it. For those of you that have one of these, you know what I'm talking about. 

Now, as far as the design. I touched on it in my last Cardboard Creations post, and all I really have to say is that simple is better. There's just something I like about the combination of simple text and nice geometric features. Sure, some of the photography isn't great, like this one, but I think it's a pretty cool set overall. 

Other than the obvious bluish-green tint, the only difference between this and the regular base card is the red foil "Artist's Proof" stamp in the lower left-hand corner. It's a nice touch as along with the full-color tint it helps differentiate the two cards from one another, too bad Panini didn't utilize something similar in their Pinnacle release this year.

My Picks # 64: Sergei Fedorov

Growing up a Red Wings fan in the mid-90's (I really miss those days) means I have tons of base and insert cards of Red Wings from that time period. This next pick is just one of them that caught my attention when sorting through my Wings collection. 

This 'Ultra Cool' Sergei Fedorov comes from 94-95 Fleer Ultra, hence the 'Ultra Cool' set name. If it were from any other set, the name would be a lot more cheesy if you ask me.

Now 'Ultra Cool' is not the greatest name for an insert set, but hey what else could you expect from that era, as pretty much every other idea had been used on overproduced cards at some point during the 90's. 

Beyond the name, this card has a pretty interesting design. The first thing I notice is the layered images. Too bad they're both road jerseys as I believe a home/road combo would've looked much better and provided better contrast. In this case it's even worse because the two pictures are almost identical, except for the way Sergei is facing. 

The border around the pictures is a bit gaudy but it works here. All of the text is done in gold foil except for the 'Ultra Cool' text which is done in a glowing blueish color. 

Thoughts: PWE's

Most people immediately think something bad when they hear PWE and cards in the same sentence, I know because usually I do the same thing. That said, with one of my recent ebay pickups, I found myself gladly accepting a PWE as the preferred method of shipping. 

Why did I not have a problem with it? The card in question cost me $1 on a BIN and the shipping cost me exactly $0. How can I complain about something that doesn't cost me a thing (keep in mind that the card did show up undamaged in a top loader wrapped in the ebay shipper)? 

Now, I'm not saying I would be ok with a PWE when I'm getting charged $3.50 or more for shipping. In that case I would be pretty upset, but this time I could care less as long as the card arrived in good shape. 

What are your thoughts? Are PWE's ok for a purchase like this?

Another Garage Sale Mystery Bag

Last time I showed off a simple 25-card grab bag that only cost $0.50. This time the bag was a bit bigger, contained more than just hockey cards, and cost a few dollars more. Here's what this one looked like:

As you can see, it's all baseball and hockey, which is fine with me. Any baseball cards I acquire like this simply go into the black hole I call my lower desk drawer, as I still have all the non-hockey cards from my first big garage sale pickup in there.

Anyway, onto what was in this one. This next picture will give you an idea of the proportions of both the baseball and hockey cards.

From the looks of it, there's more hockey than baseball, but that's deceiving as you'll see in a minute. Here's a look at the hockey cards that came out of the bag: 

There were probably 50 cards from 2003-04 SPx in the bag, so I'm guessing whoever had these must have busted a box at some point. That said, I love these cards. The design is pretty sharp and I like the hologram use this time around. As a plus, there was the Kovalev gold spectrum numbered /50 and the two lasting impressions inserts. 

In addition to the SPx, the bulk of the hockey was taken up by cards from 1995-96 Zenith (which are pretty thick, hence there being deceivingly more baseball). I really like this set too, as the players really pop from the background.

This is pretty much indicative of the miscellaneous junk that made up the rest of the hockey in the bag. Interestingly enough, there was an auto in there, albeit creased right through the middle. My favorite of the bunch is the Vipers card. It looks like a team issue set from the late 90's. If you've never heard of them, they were Detroit's IHL team from 1994-2001. It's kind of special for me because I remember going to a bunch of games at the Palace of Auburn Hills when I was a kid. 

That's pretty much it on the hockey side of things. When it comes to the baseball, I don't know much at all about the cards. These are some that just stuck out to me. 

Overall, it wasn't all that bad, except for the fact that because all of the cards were simply rubber banded and thrown into a bag, the corners were downright horrible on most of them. Oh well, that's ok as I'm not looking to sell these or anything.

What do you think, was it worth it for a few bucks? I do because when it comes to garage sales, you never know what you might stumble upon.

Mask Design Contest

Have you ever seen a goalie's mask and thought, "Hey, I could come up with something way cooler than that," I know I have. Well, now's your chance. Michael over at Collecting for Kicks is putting on a goalie mask design contest. The deadline is August 13th so head over there and get signed up before its too late and show off your artistic ability. 

I've seen some contests like this in the past, most notably for Curtis Sanford's Canucks mask a few years ago, but this is the first time I'll be participating. I just put the finishing touches on my design, now I'm really looking forward to see what others come up with.

Jimmy Howard: New PC Website

Lately I've focused on adding to my Jimmy Howard collection as I find player collecting a lot more satisfying than set collecting, primarily because of the variety a player collection provides. It's a lot more fun to be on the lookout for new cards as new releases come throughout the year. 

Part of that new focus has led me to creating a separate webpage dedicated to my Jimmy Howard collection, appropriately titled "The Jimmy Howard Collection." It's a place for me to keep and up to date inventory of the collection, as well as want and trade lists. Most importantly, I'm using it to display the collection, with front and back scans for each card.

Check it out by clicking on the screenshot above for the link. Let me know what you think, and if you have any comments or suggestions, as this was my first attempt at creating a basic collection website.

Edit: This site has since been deactivated in favor of a new and improved PC website.

Thoughts: Overhaulin'

If there's one thing I like about Blogger above all else, it's the freedom that we are given as bloggers to customize our blogs. That being said, you have probably noticed by now that I made some changes around here. I've wanted to completely overhaul the design here for a while, but it's been a long and drawn out process of trial and error. I've finally settled on something I like that gives the blog a cleaner and simpler look.

When I say long and drawn out, I mean it. I went as far as setting up a 'dummy' blog just to play around with the various templates until I found something that works. And that wasn't just recently, I've been slowly hacking away at this for months now in my spare time. The beauty of doing that was never having to worry about permanently messing up the live template, as it was from the old designer and I would have no way to recreate it.

In reality, since I started this thing back in 2009, the design's been a slow-moving work in progress. Most of that has to do with my inability to keep things the same for a long period of time. I've made a lot of slight changes over time (i.e. banner, background, etc.), but never a complete overhaul involving an entirely new template.

As far as getting everything to where it is now, let's just say I had to learn more than I've ever cared to about HTML code through trial and error, as you can see this isn't your cookie-cutter template from Blogger anymore. At times it definitely got to be pretty frustrating, but eventually everything worked out for the best.

Let's take a look at what I actually did to change things around here.

• New Header: It looks just like the old one but I changed up the cards in the background of it. Notice it's got a three-tier setup with my Howard cards on top, MVP Stanley Cup Edition cards in the middle, and Metal Universe cards on the bottom. I thought that would be a neat way to incorporate my PC projects. 
• Tabs: I've had the standalone pages on here all along, but always docked on the sidebar. I wanted them to be more visible so I moved the tabs bar just below the header, which was a real pain when it came to getting the format right.
• PC Project Trackers: Before I had the Super and Gold Script trackers and that worked, but now that I've got three main projects, I wanted an overall tracker for each project. The pictures are just a way to visualize my three projects (any hockey regulars on SCF should recognize the Howard banner). 
• Blog Lists: I though it was a good idea to group the blogs I read this way so I didn't end up having one blog list with 50 or so different blogs to keep track of. 

At this point there are still several things I want to add/update. Those would be adding some more highlights of my hockey collection (not just cards), a simple Inkscape tutorial, and an updated want and trade list page. Look for those things to be up and running soon.

Overall the look is still pretty much the same, just a little cleaner. I like it a lot more than what I've had in the past. What do you guys think?

Also, for those of you using Blogger, do you like to customize your blog? Or do you like the templates provided by blogger. Obviously, I like to change things up a bit.

Finally, I have one favor to ask of anyone using IE to view this page. Let me know if the tabs are messed up on the right-hand side, because I happened to be on IE the other day and noticed the Want/Trade List tab was kind of bunched up at the right end of the page. What I don't understand is why it works fine in Chrome, but not IE. Any info on the problem or solution would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Ok, now I'm really stuck on this one. I have no clue how to get the format to work correctly on IE. Upon closer review, it seems like the overall width of the blog is different between browsers. Is there anyone out there who knows how/why I have this this issue and how to fix it?

Edit (Pt 2): If you're reading this now, I ended up changing the tabs back into the list on the sidebar again. The only difference now is I created them with Inkscape using the same text as the header.

My Picks # 63: Hull / Gretzky / MacInnis

I've always said these picks can be anything from a super high-end card to a worthless piece of cardboard from the junk wax era. This one falls somewhere in between and is just another one of those cards that caught my eye when looking through my collection. 

It's a 3 Star Selection from 1996-97 UD Collector's Choice. 

I think if you're going to pick three players to feature as the three stars, you can't go wrong with these three. It's still kind of weird seeing Gretzky with the Blues, but that's where I'll always remember him best after giving the puck up to Steve Yzerman just before his Game 7 overtime goal back 1996. 

I distinctly remember loving these cards when I was just getting into collecting in the mid-90's. Back then the idea of autographs and jersey cards was non-existent, so all I had to get excited about were inserts/parallels/subset cards like this. 

I guess I just thought it was cool that a card featured three different players when most cards did not. I still have this and a few more in my collection somewhere. I think there was one made for each team, but I could be wrong.

BTW, what do you guys think of the new layout here? 

Cardboard Creations: 97-98 Score

Lately I've been wanting to do another custom card set, but never really got around to starting anything, until yesterday. Instead of working on my second page of 'Fractal Mask' cards, I thought I would change things up and do another recreation set. 

This time around the set I recreated is a bit newer compared to the others I've done in the past. As the title says, this time I used the 97-98 Score as the basis for my design. I got the idea after looking at my TTM successes and realizing quite a few came from this set. 

Brett over at My Hockey Card Obsession put together an excellent look at this set back in October of 2009 as part of his 'One Sheet, One Set' project. Head over there to check it out and get a good idea of what the original set design looks like. 

Looking at the design, it's made up of primarily simple geometric elements, so I thought it would be a quick project. Here's a look at the first one I came up with, which took maybe an hour including time to find and install a font that matched the vertical player name text. 

These came out much better than I thought they would. The hardest part was figuring out a way to consistently match the glowing font for the player's last name. Other than that, it was as simple as tracing the various geometric shapes, layering them properly, and assembling them into the finished product. 

Here are all nine of them together:

If you're wondering why I chose the player selection I did, it's because I wanted to get as many different team colors represented as I could within the nine card limit.

My favorite of the bunch is definitely the Howard, as it's got an excellent closeup of his best mask to date. Beyond that, I tried to get a variety of pictures (i.e. Thomas hoisting the Cup and Halak stepping onto the ice). I wanted something more than simple action shots. 

What do you guys think, did they turn out ok? 

My Picks # 62: Shanahan / Pronger

It's been kind of slow around here with a lack of pickups lately. Add to that the nice weather and starting up another roller hockey season last week, I just haven't had the time or motivation to post anything. So, I thought it was a good time for another one of my picks. 

This one comes from the Big Deal subset that was part of 2002-03 BAP Memorabilia. This set featured trades and free agent signings both from past and present (at the time). This one in particular features the trade between Hartford and St. Louis that saw Brendan Shanahan and Chris Pronger swapping sweaters in July of 1995. 

I love the idea for this set and the design even more. I like how each player takes up almost half of the the card and the team logos are nicely displayed right behind them as well as in opposite corners. 

Here are a few more examples from the set:

As you can see, there are a lot of trades there, but some significant free agent signings are included as well (i.e. Curtis Joseph, Bobby Holik, etc). I'll have to find the checklist for this set though, as I don't know exactly how many there are. 

So what do you guys think about this set?

Jimmy Howard: Ultimate Rookies Auto

Since I've been actively collecting Jimmy Howard, I've only come across one pickup that I would consider a real steal, and that was the Black Diamond 1/1 that only set me back $40. Well, I think I found myself another so-called steal thanks to the wonderful world of ebay.

Check it out:

It's an Ultimate Rookies auto from 2005-06 UD Ultimate Collection numbered 143/399. Why do I consider this to be another steal? I won the auction for $13 plus $2 for shipping. Maybe that doesn't seem like all that much, until I look at the BIN prices. I found three that were BIN for $79.99 and another at $50. I'd say $15 delivered was a pretty good deal.

Another plus with this one is that it's hard-signed like the last one I picked up, and unlike the GoalieGraph from ITG and the Certified Mirror Gold from Panini. I guess I just like knowing that Jimmy actually handled this card and not just a sheet of stickers.

Now, my next question is whether or not I should consider this to be an actual RC as far as organizing my PC. Right now I've got it broken up into Rookies, Base, Inserts / Parallels, and Autos / Memorabilia. I think this card is an official rookie card, but I would lean toward putting it with the Auto / Memorabilia stack I have going.

Any thoughts?

My Picks # 61: David Oliver

It's been a few weeks now since I've been able to post another one of my picks. This one is another one that just happened to catch my eye as I was sorting through another random stack of cards.

It's another plain old base card, this time former Edmonton Oiler David Oliver, although you can barely tell with the bronze foil, from 1995-96 Upper Deck.

I really love the photo on this one. It's not everyday you see a player crashing the net like this on the front of a card. It's cool how it captures the net in midair and how you can see one of the pegs sticking out of the ice.

This one is about as simple as you can get with a base card design. All it has is the player name on top, their team and position over a faded team-color bar on the lower left and the old UD logo, also in bronze foil, on the lower right. 

Among all the things UD seems to do wrong, photography is something they always excel at with their flagship set every year. This one is just another example of that fact. 

Jimmy Howard: Another MVP

The awesome prize pack I received from Casey over at Drop The Gloves! contained one pretty important card for my Jimmy Howard collection, an 05-06 MVP rookie card.

As much as I love this card as a player collector, this is another one of the MVP sets I didn't really care for. The design on the front is overly complicated with the fake wood grain texture, the fading toward the bottom, and the ugly MVP logo. I also wish they would've just left the facsimile auto completely off rather than using cursive text. 

This one get me one step closer to completing a rainbow in my Howard collection, now all I need is a nearly impossible to find MVP platinum parallel numbered to 25.