5!

Things have been a little slow here over the past two weeks due to a heavy workload.  I have been working this year planning a field trip to get about 100 fifth graders from Raleigh to Washington D.C. for a few days.  The run up to the trip was hectic, but the trip itself was a lot of fun.  Blogging had to wait a few days......

At some point over the last two weeks this blog crossed the five year mark.   It doesn't seem that long ago that I first decided to sit down and take a few minutes to write a short post about a Brian Fuentes Triple Threads card that I had picked up from somewhere......

I was originally talked into trying out a blog by a trading partner of mine at the time, DodgerBobble, who no longer blogs, but does have a phenomenal Instagram page.  Almost 1,500 posts later I have arrived at this moment.  Over the years I have written not only about baseball cards, also spent time writing about road trips to baseball stadiums, pizza restaurants in St. Louis, basketball, barbecue places in North Carolina, board games, basketball cards, movies, musical references, snowstorms, and all sorts of over topics that I am not remembering at the moment.

There have been a few breaks, a writing job at another website, and there was a podcast in there too.

Where to from here?  First, I'd like to thank the people who stop by and reading my writing.  I have met some great people by doing this for five years.  Whether you are a fellow writer, card trader, baseball card collector, baseball fan, or just stop by to read what I write for some other reason I cannot thank you enough.

I don't write for page clicks, I don't have ads, or anything that I make money off of on this page, but I am just surprised somedays at the number of people that read this page.

Moving forward, here are three things that I am going to work on over the next year as told by Crash Davis.....


1.  "So relax! Let's have some fun out here! This game's fun, OK? "

I started a project with collecting Durham Bulls autographed cards this year and have made dozens of other posts beyond this year that could have fit into that category.  As time goes on I might expand the posts in that series to go beyond autographs.  The Bulls have been around since 1902 which means there are a ton of players in the team's history that do not have autographs.  Still trying to get a game plan for the older players....if you have any ideas the comment section is below.

My first card in the series featured Kyle Roller from the 2016 Bulls team

There are not a lot of blogs that have a heavy minor league slant and I know it's one thing that can make my blog a unique space.  I live within two hours of roughly a dozen minor league stadiums, thirty minutes away from the campuses of three different ACC schools, and ten minutes away from the USA Baseball complex.  I still love watching the Cardinals, can never go wrong getting cards of the team you grow up watching, but I feel like the Minor League and amateur baseball cards are the most enjoyable thing for me to write about at this time and that's what's most important about blogging: doing what you want to do and having fun doing it.


2.  "We're dealing with a lot of......"

I started working on posting some set projects during the past year.  I had some good momentum during the first half of the year, but slid a little bit the last few months.  I think the Molten Metal set has been a large part of the slide.  I have come a long way with completing that set, yet at the end of the process I am having a hard time tracking down just a few cards.....at reasonable cost.

I also have worked on a few other set projects, but not posted them on that tab of my blog.  For example, a few weeks ago I made a post about finishing off the 1990 Upper Deck set, but never did a follow up post for it.  So, while I have improved my writing about finishing off complete sets I still feel like there is room for improvement here.  Plus, I love that feeling of finding the last card or two that finishes off a project.  Set collectors all know this feeling, if you're not a set collector just know that it is a really really good feeling.  Sometimes your wife puts a curse on your Ebay or COMC account where you can't find the 50 cent card you need to close out a set, and nobody seems to know what to trade that dude who collects Preston Wilson cards, but only if it pictures him with the Rockies, who has three cards you need to finish your set.....

3.  Lollygaggers!

One of the last goals I publicly made in regards to my blog was to make more posts about cards that are already in my collection.  I have a few hundred-thousand cards.  They didn't just show up since I started blogging, so it's fun to go back and talk about some of the cards from my earlier collecting days, or the players I collected.  

I have done really well in this area over the past year making posts almost every Monday about a card from my collection that's at minimum about 20 years old.  I love looking through my old sets for cards and players to talk about in the posts.....

and it can be a fun way to talk about players with connections to the Durham Bulls, or other local minor league teams, or those with connections to the local colleges.  Not sure I would have dreamed that this Quinton McCracken card would have fit into my collection 20 years ago when I pulled it out of a pack of cards, but just a few weeks ago this card got a post based on the fact that the former Rockies outfielder not only played for the Durham Bulls, but also played football and baseball at Duke.  

or it's just fun to show off some of the Cardinals players who played for the team when I was growing up in St. Louis.......

even if those teams were terrible, the players were fun.  I have some really awesome junk wax era cards lined up for these posts for the foreseeable future.  

It's been a fun five years, thank you again for hanging around and making it through this post.  It feels like the equivalent of a TV clip show, but I am going to hit the publish button anyway....