It took about two months, but my entire Cubs card collection, 6781 cards in all, is now scanned in!
This.....
now fits in
this....or...
this, a jump drive in beautiful Cub blue. It is pretty awesome to have my entire Cubs collection with me at all times in my pocket. It will make blogging much easier too.
Once I got going, things seemed to move pretty quickly. In fact, in the past two weeks I scanned over 2,000 cards. It was getting easier, but my left hand is paying the price.
I had the scanner hooked up to my laptop, and instead of a mouse, I was using the touch pad, with my left hand was doing all the work. That poor left hand had to crop each of the cards. I bought a mouse a few weeks ago, thinking I could use it to give my hand a break. But it wasn't as sensitive to work with as my hand, so I ditched it. I'm a little sore, but now I can take a break.
What I liked most about the project is that I got to look at each of the cards again. Many have been purchased in the past 18 months and I'm not nearly as familiar with them as I am with my older Topps cards. I saw some things on the newer cards that I never noticed before. You'll be reading about some of these in the near future.
I also learned that there were way too many cards produced in the 1990's. I've got 33 cards of Brooks Kieschnick, a typical Cubs over-hyped prospect that never panned out. In contrast, I've got 33 cards of Hall of Fame pitcher Fergie Jenkins. That is just wrong!
Scanning was a good way to pass some cold, boring winter evenings and though my hand feels the pain, I glad I did it.
But, now I've got this bug gnawing at the back of my head saying. "What about your Topps sets?" I'm doing my best to ignore it.....for now.... And my left hand is saying, "I don't think I can handle 28,828 more cards!!!
You hit the nail on the head. A virtual collection is actually looked at, browsed, admired, etc. First my collection was in boxes, I never looked at them. I said, "I need to put them in albums." After 50 hours of work and 60 or 70 binders later, and the passage of 3-4 years, I realized I still don't look at them. Once my collection was virtualized, I look at them everyday. I now want to dedicate one our our digital photo frames in the house to virtual cards!
ReplyDeletenice. i am envious. i am very close to having all of the o-pee-chee variations scanned front and back. i think then i will work on my topps dodgers and go from there.
ReplyDeleteI've lost and found my flash drive twice....make sure you have a backup! Congrats on completing a great project.
ReplyDeleteI would use Google Picasa Web Storage for backups, it's dirt cheap (I think five bucks a year for 20 GB), and you can see your cards even when you can't put your hands on your drive. I have over 30,000 card images up there.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestions! Right now I've got the files on the jump drive and two other computers...I guess you could say I don't completely trust the technology. But I like the idea of putting them on Picasa and having them accessible from any computer anywhere.
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