Lost ... and found

I think I have one major pet peeve in life - losing things.

Even meaningless things like a sock or a dime store pen. Something of value? OMG. A needed electronic item? The worst would be something of a cherished memory or nostalgic (and irreplaceable) item.

Something from my Strat-O-Matic hobby? Noooohhhhhh!

One year back in the mid to late 70s I put together some franchise teams combining just a few years and then lost both the A's and Astros which had players from 1971 and 1972 as I recall. Lost my beloved 1971 Vida Blue card. Very perturbed. Then one day in the mid eighties I went into a game / hobby store in Palo Alto and they had a used SOM game for sale, I think it had 6 or 7 1971 teams, including the A's and I bought it for like 10 bucks. Later when I joined the SOM review (or maybe even ebay) I was able to replace a few other missing teams including the 1972 A's and those Astros teams.

So it seems I am missing three games that I played in one of my 1970s leagues, but I have online capsules of the games, so I knew who won, what were the scores, and who the pitchers were. But no play by play sheet - hence no way to have full stats. A dilemma.

Last year I sold a lot of my collection and it is easy to see when I sold certain items and for how much as ebay invoices go back forever. But I am "missing" the one 1962 original team I had. I do not recall selling it, but there is a possibility I did. There is no ebay transaction in my invoices, perhaps I made a private deal? Or maybe I just lost it or misplaced  it in all the shuffling during de-sleeving, re-organizing, and re-selling. I also have a set of nice copies of original 1962, and again a vague memory of putting the "real" team with that set, and getting rid of the duplicate/copied team. Maybe I made a mistake and threw the wrong team out.

Anyway, bothers me to this day.

So the other day, I rekindled my 3 sets of leagues (oldtimers, 1960s, 1970s) - 17 leagues total,. I went through a few of the binders and updated some of the league sheets to change results from pencil to typed etc. Thought I had it all covered. Then I read on my forum, I had played 6 more games in my 1920-1930s league, and thought I did not have the boxscore/play sheets. I looked everywhere, tearing apart several rooms, looking in folders for other non SOM games etc. Looked and looked and looked. Said oh well - another problem with missing games and missing stats.  Then I retrieved my oldtimers binder and flipped to the back of the 1920s-1930s section and all 6 games were there?!? The 1931 A's and 1927 Yankees played a 3 game series, which they both entered tied for first place with 6-3 records. The A's took 2 of 3 but the Yankees took game 3 scoring 17 runs. The 5-4 1935 Cubs took 3 from the 2-7 1924 Senators, vaulting the Cubs to a first place tie at 8-4 with  the 1931 A's. The 1934 cards and 1922 Giants will play the last series of round 4 tied with 4-5 records.

Did I forget to look there - seems that would be the first place I would have looked?  Weird. But almost OK again, except for those 3 missing 1970s games.