Card Collecting Can Be a Lot of Work!

Now that baseball season is back, I've been spending a lot of my evenings putting on a baseball game and then sorting through my Barry Larkin cards that aren't yet in my Larkin Collection binders.  Currently, my binders are up-to-date through 2021 so for the past week or so I've been working diligently on getting all of my 2022 Barry Larkin cards in binder sheets.

You might not think that would be a hard process...but I don't make things easy for myself!  First, I like to have redundancy built into my collection so I keep tabs of everything I need (and own) on both Trading Card Database as well as my own personal Excel file.  I also scan the front and back of every single Barry Larkin card prior to me putting each card in my binder.  Finally, I also write a little paper slip for every* Larkin card that I'm still missing and leave that slip in its appropriate spot in the binder for a future day when perhaps I acquire said card.

*I decided a long time ago to only try to actively collect Barry Larkin cards with a stated print run of at least 25 copies.

I go through TCDB one page at a time alphabetically and update my Larkin Collection accordingly.  For some sets, I'm doing quite well for the year 2022.  For example, here's a page of cards of 2022 Donruss:

Not bad, only a single missing card and it's a parallel numbered out of only 50 copies.  Unfortunately, not every page looks like that page of Donruss cards.  Here are a few more samples from my 2022 binder:

Yeah, that second page of Donruss parallels is a lot more sparse, isn't it?  Of course, it doesn't help that the page would also hold a pair of autograph cards as well (which are always nearly out of my price range so I own very few Barry Larkin autographs overall).

While the previous page may look kind of sad, the honest truth is there are even more pages that look like this:

Yep, that's nine consecutive Barry Larkin cards for which I own exactly zero.  That's not the only page in the binder like that either...definitely a bummer but I have never purchased Panini National Treasures and even Panini Select is typically outside my personal price bracket!

It's also true that I tend to focus on a set or two and go hard after that particular set (and therefore ignore plenty of other options within the same year).  For example, in 2022 I went hard after both Donruss and Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary:

Look at all those shiny parallels!  

In the end, card collecting can only be as fun as you allow it to be.  For me, my exhaustive bookkeeping isn't actually all that fun...BUT once it's all said and done for a particular year, it's awesome because when/if I end up getting another 2022 Larkin card for my collection I should have a binder spot ready to go (complete with a little paper slip so that I know I'm putting the card in the correct place)!  

That's my system, now it's your turn to show (or describe for me) your system of collecting!  Maybe you have some other ideas that I could potentially incorporate into my messy system!

PS:  I'm currently on page 8 of the TCDB listings for Barry Larkin in 2022 and currently have a mere 52 out of the 203 cards that meet my collecting criteria (25.6%).  Unfortunately, there are still another five pages of listings to go through and I only have six more Barry Larkin cards sitting on my desk that will slot in somewhere in that set of pages!