Frustrated...For 21 Reasons

A hobby shouldn't make you mad.

It should be what you enjoy.  What calms you after a tough day.  How you pass the time when you can't go anywhere, or don't want to.  It should mellow you out, let you relax.

Not last week.

I got a big order from SportLots.  Knocking off tons of pesky singles and inserts from my want lists.  Most of them were from the football page, with a few hockey and some baseball player collection ones too.  This should be a joyous occasion, right?

And then I had found a whole bunch of Priest Holmes cards that were still on my lists too.  Fifty-one of them.  Forty-nine and two jersey cards.  I've been at it for a while, so there's probably a couple in there that I already have.  Hopefully, not too many.  After all, I've started my list from scratch like twice.  It should be resonably accurate, right?

Apparently not.

I sorted them by year.  Then I checked them off my site.  So that part is done.  I checked off all the other set hits too.  Everything is ready to go to the room next door.  I get them over there and start putting them in my binder.  The first couple years only have a few cards, and so they fit in nicely.  Have to move a few things around to put them in order, no problem.  Oops, already have one in 2000.  Well, OK, two.  Not a big deal.

Midway through, I'm getting a few more every time.  It's getting annoying. I can see how this is going to go.

But as I go along, and the new arrivals for each year increase, there are more of the same cards already there.  A couple more the next year.  Only a few are new in the last sections.  By the time I get through, I've got twenty-one duplicates.

Twenty-one!

Out of fifty-one!

That's over 40%!

I'm never one to want to destroy cards.  Even stuff like 1990 Donruss doesn't deserve to be thrown in a fire.  But I was close.  I slapped the pile down on the desk in the computer room.  At this point, I'm spouting a profanity-laced declaration of my frustration - edited here:

Why in the %&$Ω¿ is it so *$#ΣΦ difficult to manage a ∞^#√ß collection of one Γ@~α! guy??

Set building is easy.  Same cards, different numbers.  Player collections - not so much.  Each card is different.  And even among the same product, the parallels can be confusing.  Is this one the base card and the blue and green ones are the parallels?  Or is the red one the base and the silver one a parallel?  Did I not know and just left them both on the list?

What the hell am I doing wrong?  Is my process flawed?

• I get cards in.
• I check them off in one room.  
• I physically transport them to the other room (only when I know they're checked off ~ allegedly).
• and I put them away. 

How could I have failed so miserably?  How does this happen?

I can understand two or three already being there, especially if they're fancy parallels or obsure refractor versions that aren't labeled.  But how do so many plain base cards or inserts get missed like that?

Does my list site revert to an earlier version behind the scenes?

Do I just check off the set hits and carry everything over?

Did I mistakenly go back to the spreadsheet I started from and forget to check the website?

Am I losing my freaking mind?



I don't have any answers.  I've been collecting for about 23 years.  You'd think I'd have it down by now.  As organized and meticulous as I am about everything else in my collection, how can I keep messing this up?

I am open to suggestion...

Oh and I've got a (much) big(ger) box of Priest Holmes dupes to trade.