Tidying up my mistakes!

I was perplexed recently because the number of cards left to post on the blog combined with the number of cards I had blogged didn't tally with the number of cards I had recorded on Trading Card Database. I was missing two.

I decided to try and find them, thinking I might have misfiled the scans. After a few different false starts I looked on an Excel spreadsheet I'd started compiling in an idle moment and soon discovered my mistake. I had two cards numbered 48 and two cards numbered 253.

In one sense it doesn't matter what arbitrary numbers I apply to cards on this blog. On the other hand it was very annoying!

I felt I had a couple of options to fix this. One was to go through and renumber every single card in every single blogpost since the 26th May. That would be well over 450 cards in about 190 blog posts. I really didn't want to do that. It would also mean every card I'd specially selected as my 100th, or 300th or 394th(!) card would be wrong.

The other option would be to remove one of the #48s and one of the #253s and renumber them. I decided to do that instead. So this post features two cards that have been on the blog before but with new, higher numbers. One of the cards is my favourite card made by Score, and the other is a fun 'oddball', so in a sense it works out.

I have left the references to the cards in the original posts, because otherwise some of the comments on those posts wouldn't make sense. If you are one of my regular commenters, then thank you for keeping me honest!

Card Number 514 (originally misnumbered as 253): Score, 1996; #378

I originally blogged this card in a Monday Mixer on 10 August. 

There have been enough baseball card insert series featuring stars, as in the astronomical objects, that someone could put together a decent-sized collection. They would look lovely all together as well. (On this blog, I've already blogged about star-themed cards by Allen & Ginter and Topps!)

The fielding photo on the front is made by the dirty smudge all over Tony's shirt. 

On the back we get a solemn portrait shot.

There's another entry into my collection of adjectives applied to Tony Gwynn on the cardback. Here he is "a class guy". It certainly reads as if the cardback writer was "star struck".

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I've just recognised the portrait photo! It's the same one used on Tony's Pinnacle card in 1997. Here's the Pinnacle card for reference:

'Card' Number 515 (originally misnumbered as 48): Fantastic Sam's Disc, 1988; #18

This was originally included in my very first post about "oddballs".

There are almost 1,000 franchises of Fantastic Sam's Hair Salons across America (or at least there were before the pandemic; hair salons have been hit bad).

These discs are similar to discs given away by several other businesses in the late 80s. They were printed by Michael Schechter Associates (MSA), who produced cards for a number of companies to use as freebies in the 80s and early 90s. They are about the same size as a poker chip (or a pog, if you remember pogs).

The discs open up like a tiny booklet, so you get a front...

...a middle (with a few pertinent player stats)...

...and a back.

The disc advertises a 'Superstar Sweepstake' where you could "Win a pro player for a day!" I'm intrigued by this. Which pro player had they roped in for this? What would you do with them? Could you send them to run errands for you? So many questions!

You have to scratch off the little foil panel to see if you won a prize. Whoever received this one wasn't particularly bothered about winning a prize. The foil is pristine.

So, there we go. My collection is tidied up. My numbering is now correct! Was it all worth it? Have your say in the comments!

(REVISED) Total: 515 cards