Yesterday I received a bunch of autographs that I bought from a seller on eBay.
These are mostly Twins players from the 80's that I didn't yet have, as well as a few that are upgrades to existing cards in my collection. There is nothing rare or expensive in this lot, but it's a quick way to fill some holes in the sets I'm working on.
Besides the monetary investment for a purchase like this (which was about $3-$4 per card), there is an investment in the time it takes for me to catalog and document these cards for my collection. It's been a while since I discussed this, and it hasn't changed, but for each card I get, I:
- Scan the card on my flatbed scanner. I can scan up to 9 cards at once, but then have to "cut" each card from the scan so I have individual cards of each one.
- Update the directory page of my web site, to either add or update the player and add them to the "Recently Received" section.
- Update the individual's page on my web site to include the scans of each card and details such as how it was obtained (purchased or ttm), the cost (sometimes) and sometimes the source of the purchase.
- Upload the new pages and scans to my web site's servers.
- If the card was obtained ttm:
- Update my spreadsheet that I use to record every single ttm request with details such as when it was sent and received, what cards or other items were sent and received, any donation included, and any miscellaneous notes about the request or response.
- Update SCN to log the return with the details of the return and upload the scan of the item(s) returned.
- If the card belongs to a set that I am working towards completing, I update the "wantlist" section on SCN for that set to mark off that I now have that card in my collection.
- Update this blog to share the return with the world. Or at least the 15-25 people who read my blog each day. Thank you to everyone who reads my blog!
Most days it doesn't take very long to do all this. Maybe 10 minutes if I received 1-2 returns. But, if I have 15 new cards, it probably took me closer to 25-30 minutes. This was mostly scanning and updating the web site because these weren't ttm requests that had to be logged.
Today, I received an order of four Vevor hard-sided cases in which I intend to store my slabbed cards. I bought these from Temu, so I was suspicious of the quality. I read a bunch of the reviews but take those, especially the positive ones, with a grain of salt as they can easily be manipulated.
I wasn't too concerned about the cases being super sturdy though. I just intend to use these to store my slabs in my home. I don't plan to use them to travel with the cards or to ship the cards inside these cases. I currently put my slabs in the same two-row "shoebox" cardboard boxes in which I store all my autographed cards, which are each also inside an Ultra-Pro semi-rigid card holder.
The quality seems pretty nice. Better than I really need, as long as the hinges and other hardware hold up over time. I think I can store about 112 slabs in each case, which is 28 cards in each of the four rows. Each case includes a very generous number of foam divider pieces to help keep the slabs from moving around if the row isn't completely full.
They weren't super cheap at over $35 each, but I used a lot of credit card points to bring it down to nearly half of that. There are other, cheaper options on Temu (and eBay, Amazon, etc), but many of those had negative comments about the build quality and a general lack of sturdiness right out of the box. You also need to be absolutely positive that they hold graded cards. Many options on Temu had descriptions that included graded cards, but then commentors/reviewers said that graded cards would absolutely NOT fit in those cases.
I've been watching these cases for many months, and never really wanted to spend the money on them when I could use the money to buy more autographs instead. But my latest grading submission return pushed me over the edge with no good location to store them.
No comments:
Post a Comment