The Baseball Card Room, Take 1

I am going to write about my baseball card room in 2023. 

This is my last post of 2022, so I am going to be talking a lot about the baseball card room for the next 365 days. It's not going to be the subject of all my 2023 posts, just most of them.  

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by during the past year to read my blog.  

Now, about the card room.  

I have this really wonderful space. I write about my baseball cards for the past decade, but have never written much about the baseball card room. I recently was gifted a really nice leather sofa from my parents. My wife (and daughter too) repainted it and bought a new arm chair, coffee table, and side tables while I was at work on day. There is much more to the baseball card room than just a sofa, chair, and tables, but we have a whole year to talk about the subject.  

It's going to be really interesting.  

My baseball card room has become a bit of a disaster over the years. One of the few posts on my blog during the past decade about me reorganizing my collection from being sorted by teams to being sorted by sets. My collection was immaculate and I wanted to make it even better.  

This was the closet of the baseball card room back in the day.  

Within the boxes that were sorted by teams, the cards were sorted by year, by set, and then by card number. It seemed like transitioning my cards from teams to sets was going to be a really easy move. They were largely sorted and just needed some transitioning to get into sets. 

I only wished my closet looked that good at the moment.   

Some new boxes, new labels, and this was going to be quick, right?  

The card room was originally painted red. Kind of abrasive to look at the old pictures of the room.  

That paint was jarring, but things started out so well with sort my cards into sets.  

Not to spoil the ending, but the problems started with the advent of "The Doubles Table".  

The Doubles Table could be several of posts, but it was a large desk that I pushed into the baseball card room to hold all the single cards that were doubles or did not belong to a set. Picture shown below.  

While the large desk in this picture is no longer in the baseball card room, it is still there in spirit.  

The current rendition is the room's former coffee table that my wife replaced during her one day remodel.  

Again, not to ruin the plot, the current version of the doubles table is so much more organized than its predecessors. It's my sincere hope that this coffee table will disappear within the next year and will not be replaced with another space.  

This is the starting point for my blog posts for the next year.  

For this post, I am sharing a card from the coffee table. It is my favorite 2022 card.  

I spent a lot of time collecting Wander Franco cards this year. His 2021 Bowman's Best, released in 2022, is easily my favorite. I started a stack for Wander Franco rookies on my card table. I flip through the cards from time to time and this card still stands out. The Wander has a 1990s vibe with the colorful background and the giant Tampa Rays logo in the background. It's a great card.  

I made a quick scan too.  

With the purple on the front, it's too bad that the picture did not use a photo of Wander in one of the Rays throwback uniforms with the purple and green. It would have looked good.  

Here is the back of the card.  

Again, thank you for reading my blog during the past year. Enjoy the holiday season and come back in a week to hear more about the baseball card room.