My "I Got A Package In The Mail" Process

Here's mine.

When I get home from work, if I have any personal mail (not bills and such) I can usually find it on my bedside table. After kissing my wife and kids hello and asking "Any good mail today?" the first place I head is my bedside table. My wife knows I need just a brief downtime when I get home and mail often does the trick.

Today we'll follow a package I got from reader Ken who wanted to send me Patriots cards. He wanted nothing in return.  That's the package there on my bedside table and when I saw it I was stoked.

After a potty break and a nice conversation with my wife about the days events, I take the package to the computer and log it into my trade log.  I've gotten several packages gratis lately so this is where I keep track of who I might like to send something to in the future.  It also helps me remember who I may have forgotten to send something to.  Keeps me organized.

I walk the package over to the Command Center and the dissection begins.  This is my little corner of the world.

I carefully open the envelope so as to save it.  I reuse a lot of these envelopes and packages, saves a ton on spending. Out slide the contents.  I'll also look for a personal note inside.  It's always nice to get a thanks for the trade or a hope you like the cards.

Wow, three sandwich bags full of cards, lots of Patriots I see.  No note, but that's fine.
Time to tear in and see what I got.  I'll go through all the cards and set aside a handful of particularly neat ones to highlight on a post.

The Angels cards go off into one stack and I pull out my Master Angels Checklist and begin crossing off cards that I didn't already have.  I use a paper copy first because I often take this to my LCS when I go searching for commons.  This helps me to avoid purchasing duplicates.  Every penny counts nowadays.

The Angels that I didn't already have then go into this case for me to binderize later in my All-Time Angels Team Set binders.  The dupes go into my Angels box.  Those are the ones I'll use to send out for autographs.

The binders can be found in my closet.

Since I'm new to gathering Patriots, those will go in a box for now and someday I'll match those to a checklist and binderize them as well.

Next I take the few cards I had selected, scan them in, and create a post.  Here's the cards I picked out from reader Ken.  There were 120 cards in the package so this is just a very small fraction of what he sent me.

A vast assortment of mostly 70's and 80's wax.  Good stuff to get the Pats collection beefed up.  Turned out there were only a handful of Angels, but that's perfectly fine with me.

Included in the lot was this 1991 Pro Line Portraits signed Dick MacPherson card.  MacPherson was the Pats head coach from 1991-1992.  The Pats weren't that good for him, his record was 8-24.  I'm really happy to have this card in my collection.

Sweet little 1972 SUNOCO stamps Tom Beer.

Okay, that's just wrong.

Thanks for the abundance of cards Ken.  They are indeed in a good home.

Well, that's my process. Anyone do anything differently?