Card Room Migration: Phase 4 - Operations Restored

Card Room is in full operation ~ which means I'm occupied with trades and putting things away rather than posting.

Here are some shots (taken at night, so ignore the bad lighting) of the space as it is currently.  I managed to make room on the shelves for binders and in the cabinets and racks for sets and other boxes.

Angela's collection in progress among my stacks to put away.  There's still a bit of clutter in the room because I'm still finding the balance between having a spot for everything, but keeping things in reach.

This is where the blog magic happens now.  Every once in a while, anyway.

And this is where the trading happens.  I draw from the middle shelves on either side for baseball or football.  The second screen in the middle makes it easier to see what to pull.  It's a little strange to have part of my collection side by side with my tradeable stuff, but function before fashion, I guess.

The Baseball shelf has some space.  Vintage sets keep pushing everything forward. 

The football (/hockey/misc) shelf has a whole empty level at the bottom.

Baseball cabinet is still pretty populated with sets in progress.  And my player collection binders aren't getting any thinner for sure.

Top of the football cabinet is still a work in progress.  There is space in the bottom of both for more big sets. (Forgot to open them for the photos).  I moved a lot of the junk wax, etc. that don't get touched often into the closet in the room.  I'm still making that more organized and experimenting with storage methods.  I won't show you that part.

That's all for now.  See you out on the database, or in the comments of several blogs.

I will be retiring from the school system soon - earlier than I thought - but that should give me more time to keep the posts coming more regularly.  Stay tuned! 

Turning The Page

Back in mid-January, I posted that I found a bargain for UltraPro 9 pocket pages from Noble Knight Games.  These 125 count boxes of "hologram pages" were $20 compared to the $26 that Amazon offers for 100 Platinum pages.

Let's see how the two compare:

They have a similar hologram label on the spine.

The new page is on the left, and a Platinum page is on the right.  They both feel pretty close to the same weight, and I can't tell a big difference in the construction.

The Platinum pages do say so below the holograms. 

The holograms are different, but I feel like either one is suitable for my stuff.

I'll let you know more once I start using them heavily, but I would get them again so far.

On a side note, if anyone has any spare UltraPro binders in these two colors, I'd be willing to swap you for some plain ones, or "view" binders with the clear covers that you can put cards and papers down inside. 

Looking for gray or the rusty burgundy color.  I have the different decades color coded for my set binders.  Would like to keep it consistent, though I won't be getting all the 50's sets any time soon.  (Only have two more 60's sets to go for all 10).

 

This Is Why We Mark 'Em Non-Machinable

Made a trade last week with TCDB user tntcardsstg (Trevor from Bump And Run Football blog) for 25 cards.  20 of them were for Angela - mostly Eli Manning, a Brett Favre and a John Riggins.

I get the daily USPS emails that show what mail is coming that day.  There was a picture of the mailpiece there, but it didn't appear in my mailbox.  But the postal gal (I could tell by the handwriting) said contact them to verify that it was mine.  It looked like this:

It probably was marked "non-machinable", but we all know they try to put it through anyway.  This one lost so much of the envelope that there was no destination or return address left at all.  I'm guessing it just arrived stacked between the other couple trades I got that day.

Here's the envelope, or what was left of it.

Luckily, the cards were fine.  I showed the gal at the post office the TCDB trade page when I went to pick them up.  It was the perfect way to verify where they were supposed to go.  I should have said that any stray packages of cards are probably mine, but who knows?

Thanks Trevor!  Looking forward to the next round!

I don't blame him for anything.   This just happens now and then.  Glad they made it OK.