Thursday, December 3, 2009

Unpacking

My family and I recently moved back to Newfoundland. My guess is that almost anyone reading this would have experienced at least one move in their life. It is complete chaos. The boxes, the tape, the surprises that each box holds.

We have been in our new house for a few months but I am just getting around to unpacking my hobby room.

All of my cards were packed in some 12-15 D-Ring binders, 7 or 8 monster boxes and various "shoeboxes" packed full of higher priced singles. I store most of my singles (from the monster boxes) in a couple of old library card catalogue cabinets.

So over the last few days I have been unpacking my cards - shelving the albums, and getting my singles out of the monster boxes and into my card catalogue cabinet. To help find things in the cabinet I am keeping a relatively simple text file which records the contents of each drawer in the card cabinet. So if I need my 85-86 OPC hockey singles I can search for it in my text file and see it is in drawer D13. Pull out D13 and voila!

Of course refiling everything gives me a chance to organize a little more - sort those piles of 78-79 OPC that have been sitting there in a mess for years, take that misc stack of stuff I got in a trade a couple of years back and sort them into the 20 or so sets represented.

My little guy has taken an interest in cards - so I have set him up with a binder, a small stack of 9 pocket pages and a few stacks of cards. It will soon be time for another trip to McDonald's to get a few packs of the new stuff to help complete his set. Till next time.

4 comments:

  1. Ron,
    I know what you're going through. My wife and I recently moved to the U.S. to take up faculty positions at a midwest university. I was quite nervous about packing up my collection and leaving it in the hands of a moving company for the cross-border trip. But it worked well and now I too am unpacking my hobby room – it certainly is a great way to re-visit one's collection.

    P.S. So it's possible to get tenure AND collect hockey cards? You are an inspiration:)

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  2. Thanks for the comment - nice to know someone is reading the blog!! How did you find it?

    It is possible - although I must say that the hobby has not received much attention lately. As you said a move is nice way to revisit things. Maybe motivate some trading. Do you have wantlist posted somewhere?

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  3. Ron,
    I saw the link you posted on the Vintage Collector's Forum. I don't have a publicly-listed want list, but I'm trying to finish off a couple 1950's Parkies sets...so very close.

    This is NSF grant-writing season so much of my time is spent trying to dream up "transformative" research projects and convince reviewers that it's possible to do them. I still sneak in a bit of card time but not nearly as much as I would like – I suppose that's what keeps it interesting and fun!

    I envy your snow storm!

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  4. I am pretty new to the whole blog idea - have lots of interesting (at least to me!) things to talk about so I figured I would give it a shot and see if I could get a following.

    Good luck with the grant writing. I have 3 years before my next renewal! (hopefully it will be a renewal)

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