The challenge of trying to breathe life into an old junk wax-era collection is what’s on my mind. I am enjoying this process, as it keeps my mind off of other things – good and bad – in life.

I can have fun and not be so bitter about certain things.

I spent a few months away from my baseball cards due to increased work duties, but found the need to divulge back into them recently.

My brother Dan and I recently moved the remaining baseball cards I have from my parents’ house to mine. All of my 40,000-ish baseball cards are under the same roof. The big box took quite a bit to move – each tray had to be removed to ease the load.

Each drawer is in alpha order by team name. Diamondbacks, Rays, Marlins and Rockies are shared with other trays because they are the newer teams. Nationals are mixed with Expos. I also have a tray for oddball cards as well.

I rearranged the cards in each tray to have them all stacked along the left side of each tray. The right side of each tray will have cards I have recently acquired (they are currently in the white boxes and plastic tote in this picture). Why the left and right sides? The left side are my “keepers” and the right will be my “givers.”

I mentioned in blog entries’ past that I intend on donating cards – my “givers” – to a local T-ball program. I won’t have time to get them ready this year, but will next year. Each kid will get a certain number of cards (varying old & new) from their team name, plus a couple of additional cards of other teams – to try and entice trading.

Over the past couple of years, I have sorted out certain cards to put in a star card “traveling collection” – the part of the collection I intend on showing off to those who are interested. This collection consists of a shoebox and two 3-ring binders of cards.

So I have about 27,000 “stock keeper” cards that are sitting there collecting dust. These are cards I have collected during my hey-day. Eventually, I’m going to find a way to part with or sell some combo lots of these cards.

I used to collect trying to get a quantity of quality, but the quantity became too much. Now I’m trying to reduce the quantity and still maintain the quality. So I got that going, and will try to restart doing TTM autographs soon (I will write about that in GREAT detail soon).