As of this writing, my eyes are tired and I’ve got stacks of cards sitting on my coffee table waiting to be looked at to discover what’s missing for my Want List – from Bob Abreu to Richie Zisk.

Yesterday I got through the A’s – the letter, not the Oakland team. Today it was the B’s and the C’s. I got through 1 player in my stack of D’s (Andre Dawson, I do have 1 of each from his 4 teams) and I’m tired.

I don’t have the Internet at home, so I’m burning up data on my cell phone looking at Wikipedia to find a player’s group of teams.

At first, this didn’t seem so hard. However, with the 2 recent collections that I’ve acquired (1977-1981, 2015-2017), it’s made me expand my Want List into the 1970s and 2010s. Yes, so many different Bartolo Colon cards! But I have my John Canderlaria set complete at eight!

In processing just the first 3 letters of the alphabet, it made me aware that I made a disappointed effort in putting together my Shoebox Collection. I’m looking over the Moises Alou cards on my table, and find out I don’t have a Marlins card of him in my stack – but I know I have one at home. Same with Vida Blue and the Giants, and several others in the Cs.

So when I get all of my baseball cards under the same roof this spring or summer, the Shoebox Collection is going to mix with the Traditional Collection. While this seems like a failed effort at establishing a Shoebox Collection, the primary purpose of putting it together anyway was to figure out what cards of certain players I’m missing. I guess the positive I can take out of this is that it’s put me back into the collecting scene once more, rather than a soft semi-retirement.

When putting this together, I knew I was going to have duplicates (two different cards of players on the same team). I got a small stack for them, and rather than put them back in the Traditional Collection, they’ll go into the Give-and-Trade Collection.

I’ve also decided that any common cards and 21st century “rookie cards” I have in my Album Collection that are less than $5 will be removed and put in the Give-and-Trade Collection. I’m still pick-and-keep $1-or-more cards from collections I receive, if I don’t already have that card. Any duplicates of $1-$5 cards will be put in the Give-and-Trade Collection. While that may seem that I am hoarding Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken or Barry Bonds, there are cards of them that will still go to the kids since I have enough duplicates to spare.

Eventually, I’ll come up with a way to reduce the Album Collection in a similar, convoluted manner like the Shoebox Collection, and that may help with getting some of the earlier cards on the Want List.

When I get all of my cards under one roof, I’m eventually going to have all of my cards (save those in the Album Collection) stored inside the giant metal filing box. Each team has a long tray: I’m stacking cards I’m keeping to the left, and stacking cards I’m giving or trading away on the right.

I found out that the Tee-ball league has 12 teams, but I can’t remember what those 12 teams are. With what I’ve got now, I can give each kids 10 cards of their team, and 5 random cards of the other teams whose names aren’t used by the tee-ballers for a total of 15 cards each. At about 15 kids per team, that’s about 2,700 cards total to give away.

Once I have separated the Give-and-Trade Collection cards by team, I will need to randomly shuffle those cards into no particular order. This is to make it possible for kids to receive cards representing 5 different decades, rather than a lump of, say, 1987 Topps. While that will make it a bit difficult for me to find cards of particular players when it comes to trading (or other special projects), I won’t have a problem going through the stacks because it will make me find something else to think about.

Also, as kids will get as diverse a variety as possible, it just makes the idea of trading them seem much better.