Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Don't say I didn't warn you

I got a hair crosswise last night, and decided to start entering some of my player collections into the TCDB. I know, it's bonkers, right?

I don't imagine that I'll be doing any trading, but keeping track of these collections on paper just isn't doable, and my memory is not such that I can instantly recall every single card I have when I need to, so this seems like the only real option available for me at this time.

I'm thinking that maybe every couple of days or so I'll enter a handful of players, that way I don't have to take myself away from anything else during the process. I'm starting with football, if only because it should go the quickest, then I'll move to baseball, and finish with basketball, as that's going to be the most time consuming of the bunch. In less than an hour last night, I was able to add Reggie Roby, Ronnie Lott, Steve Atwater, and Dennis Smith. I'm thinking that I probably should've been able to do more in that amount of time, but oh well, at least I kind of know what to do now.

I don't plan on adding everything I own, some things I can remember, and some things I don't need a bunch of strangers knowing that I own. I'd like to add some older non-sports stuff too, but after a brief looking, I see a number of sets that I have cards from that aren't even on the site. I guess those will be for the paper lists then, as I don't see myself trying to add any set checklists to the site, that sounds much too complicated for someone like me.

I know that this isn't terribly interesting, and might not seem post worthy, but things have a habit of going downhill, especially those of the online variety, once I start using them, so I just wanted to give everyone fair warning. MySpace (I joined way back when just so I could listen to two exclusive tracks from an upcoming album, but still, it went to poop right after I joined), Wensy, COMC, and Blogger, are just a few examples of things that started to decline after I joined them. Speaking of COMC, I don't know if you've heard or not, but there's been some chatter in the last couple of days that they're going to go ahead and do the Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, sale. I don't think many people thought that they would, given their struggles this year, but supposedly it's going to be announced this weekend. They seem to be the only company that's still using the Rona as an excuse for poor service, and with things flaring up again, I don't know how they're going to pull this off. They're obviously not going to be providing any shipping discounts like in years past, and considering that pretty much everything left on the site has increased in price by at least 50% since everyone started cOlLeCtInG again, I don't how exciting a bunch of 10% sales are gonna be. And that's not even taking into account all of the people who'll be raising their prices, only then to put them on sale for more than they're currently listed at. But whatever, I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, TCDB, yeah, I hope everyone has hard copies of their lists, because I'm fully expecting Beckett to come along and buy the site (or some sort of other disastrous occurrence) now that I'm using it, so I just wanted to make sure that no could ever say that I didn't warn them. The only good thing is, whatever terrible happening that's going to befall the site, won't do so until after I'm completely done adding my collections -- and at the pace I'm gonna go, I probably won't finish until 2023, so you've got a few more years to get your stuff in order. 😊


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

33 comments:

  1. I'm never going to enter my whole collection on TCDB either, it would just take so long to add everything and then keep up with cards I'm getting. But it is nice to keep track of your collection. Hopefully TCDB won't decline now that you've joined it too. :)

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    1. Yeah, I can't even imagine how long it would take me to complete such a task, but since I'm not planning on doing so, I don't have to waste any time imagining it.

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  2. Thanks for the warning! I printed my TCDB collection to PDF recently and plan to do this after every large entry. If for any reason TCDB should go down in flames, I'll have a copy for reference.

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    1. How were you able to do that? There's just so many pages...

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    2. If this is something that's easily explainable, I might ask you to do so once I get a little further along.

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  3. There was another site like TCDB that went down in flames a few years ago - I can't even remember the name now. Got sued by Beckett I believe. One of several reasons I've been reluctant to dive in there.

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    1. Zistle.com. It was too beautiful for this world. Nothing gold can stay.

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    2. I agree Josh. I now belong to TCDB and love it, but Zistle was amazing. Very flexible.

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    3. I've heard of the Zistle, but never did see it.

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  4. Thanks for the warning. I wasn't planning on tracking my collection until I retire in a decade or so... but maybe I'll wait an extra year in your honor.

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    1. Given how large your collection seems to be, this sounds like it's going to be quite the task.

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  5. I started in on that once, but got so overwhelmed that I gave up.

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    1. I've done 7 or 8 players now, and am already kind of regretting starting this. It's going very slow, and is a bit overwhelming. I'm thinking now that I won't even do all of my player collections, I'll probably just go with the more active ones.

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  6. I love the database, it actually is what got me back into blogging. I had a chuckle reading this but in reality depending on how much time you spend on the site you can get hooked. I am kind of curious of what sets you have not on the database, non-sports is one of the sections I like exploring when I'm bored. As for the site itself, like a lot of things, it has gotten a little hostile in the last year, but things have seemingly calmed down as of late, but beyond that, I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon. I think you will enjoy it after a while, and if you need anything on the site, the forums are really helpful.

    Now, let me see if I can back up all my data just in case, lol!

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    1. I've worked very hard to reduce my time spent computering in the last two years, and have made great progress, so it'd be pretty difficult for any site to 'hook' me at this point. I've seen some of those hostilities you speak of in the forums, and is quite off putting, it feels very Twitter-ish. I can't think of any of the sets by name as I'm typing this, but they were all from the tobacco era, with a few being of the German variety.

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  7. Thanks for jinxing it, Jon! 😁

    I don't have a printout list of my collection. If TCDB goes down, I'm not reentering it into another site. There would be no more record keeping.

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    1. You're welcome!

      I suspect that a lot of people wouldn't be willing to enter their stuff into another site, especially if they've already had to do so more than once.

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  8. Good luck on your data entry. Will make it easy to nuclear assault your wants. Hope it doesn't go anywhere soon, that's what's giving a lot of us "Beckett immunity".
    Like GTT said, it would be a decade long full time job to enter much more than my complete sets, but I love the site as a reference, and will add scans several times a year.

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    1. It'd probably take you a couple of decades to get everything entered, either that or you'd have to hire a team to do it :)

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  9. I hope you're incorrect about this one. :)

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  10. Some of the nonsports stuff is listed a little strangely and some is indeed missing. It's the hardest section to research in my opinion. When I joined in 2012 there were maybe 15 completed galleries. Now there's thousands. It's also the area that allows the most growth, since there's less focus on it than sports cards.

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    1. Well, hopefully then some enterprising soul will get to work on the tobacco era section of the non-sport stuff, as that's where I noticed the biggest gap... and I've got a lot of cards that fall into that gap!

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  11. Well, all streaks (good and bad) have to end eventually, right? Maybe, hopefully, your streak ends at TCDB.

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    1. Or maybe just perhaps, TCDB's streak will end with me?

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  12. I still can't get into using their player checklist. I have my allan houston collection on there only because I can't get another copy of it to put on my excel worksheet with my other guys. I wish you luck on there and be very careful if using a phone of bumping into other cards you don't have of said players.

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    1. Oh, I'm using my laptop for entry, trying that on a phone seems like it would be even more difficult, at least for me it would.

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  13. I have been leery to invest too much time on the site for the fear of losing all that work. Good luck on your endeavor.

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    1. They'd probably love you over there, what with all of the obscure sets that you'd be able to the site.

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  14. Good luck! I don't use it to track everything. More as a way to list a few collections I want to keep track of, and swap unwanted cards for some I want. I will never upload everything. I have no desire to. But I have my Tino's on there as a backup list, and it's easy for me add a few cards here and there to my "for trade" list and then add some current cards to my wants list. I have made about 150 trades and I have no more than a few thousand cards listed. Some people stress over ADDING EVERYTHING but it doesn't have to be that complex if you don't want it to be.

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    1. Ideally I would like to do some trading on there, but it just seems like so much work. It's gonna take me forever to add the the player collections to the site, and I just don't know if I'll have enough want to add tradeables when I'm done.

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  15. I know several people who use TCDB. I have set up an account, but not gone any further. Maybe one day I will get around to posting some cards and interacting with people. I have heard it's good for trades and completing sets.

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    1. The people on there seem to be decent folks for the most part, so I don't have any objections to interacting with them, or contributing to the site, it's just difficult trying to find the time to do so.

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