Reese Kaplan -- Third and Final Baseball Card Update...

Well, the effort on the baseball card collection has come to an end of phase one.  I know, I know...it's a personal thing and not necessarily of interest to the general Mets fans who read here, but the process itself is filled with jolts to your memory about players, games, seasons and achievements.  

As you can clearly see, this eight-seat dining room table is now pretty much full with the stacks separated fairly accurately by individual year and publisher.  When I was a kid there was Topps and that was pretty much it.  Then as retailers wanted to secure customers you found cards from Kanh's, Drake's, Hostess and other companies who created their own series of cards.  

Apparently others in the printing and publishing business realized that there was indeed a market beyond the so-called official cards by Topps.  Soon they were joined by Donruss, Fleer, Pinnacle, Bowman and others creating their interpretations of how best to present and commemorate players.  That approach then led to other things like team stickers, cardboard drink coasters and other non-card merchandise which somehow wound up in your collection.  

Among the many boxes and loose leaf notebooks filled with cards were not just all of the above, but a reasonable large stack of basketball, football, hockey, tennis, golf and other types of sports cards I never knew I had.  Obviously when I saw big names like Gayle Sayers and Charles Barkley I knew there was some value there, but when I stumbled upon a very fat binder filled with a collection of Looney Toons cartoon characters sharing space with baseball players, I realized I'd been out of touch for a very long time.  

What was interesting to me is sorting through the older cards and finding players featured on them who I grew up more knowing as coaches and managers after their playing careers ended.  I have a collection of Dave (not Davey) Johnson as a player and then Davey Johnson as a manager.  The same applies to Bobby Valentine and many others. 

Another thing was watching the name migration of players who came to be known by something other than their given names as they progressed in their careers.  For example, I have cards labeled John (not Blue Moon) Odom, Denver (not Denny) LeMaster, Dennis (not Oil Can) Boyd, and many others.

The other thing that was interesting were the many rookie cards featuring who the brains at Topps and others felt were the up and coming stars for each team.  Yes, when you see a name like John Smith as the featured rookie, you shake your head and wonder how they came to that conclusion.  Then there was the Mets card I found featuring a no-name rookie on the left and some guy named Tom Seaver on the right.  Occasionally the editors get it right.  

So now I'm onto the even more boring phase two of the project -- data entry.  I must record in a database or spreadsheet all of the basic data, including year, publisher, player name, condition, rookie status, condition, and any other notes of interest.  There are cards for league leaders, World Series highlights and many that don't fall into the simple photo of the player in uniform.  

My test data entry was under 100 cards to see how the process would work.  It was adequate, but I thought about some things I'd like to change.  Over the course of this weekend I'll do the reshaping of the database fields and ensure compatibility with online marketplaces so I can link what I have to their pricing guides to find out what mine are worth.  Of course, I should filter out the ones that are wrinkled, torn or otherwise not of collector's quality.  

After I find out what theoretically the value is for the entire collection I need to plan out what to do with them all.  They're not accompanying me on my overseas move later in the year, so I know that someone acquiring the whole lot of them won't be paying me flat out retail price.  It's a long and involved process, but frankly I found enough things to pique my interest during the tedium of unboxing and sorting.  I make a promise to you all -- no more baseball card talk unless it's something of general interest like a bidding war over a Honus Wagner original.  (And no, I don't have one of those!)