blog updates

For those of you who read the blog via RSS feed, there is a new section up on the site, the Trade List. These are cards I have that I can and will send out in trades.

Both this and the want list are a work in progress and should be further updated throughout this week.

Card of the Day: 2007 Topps ’52 Rookies Troy Cate

Yes, I got an autograph card out of a $1.59 pack at Target. Not only that, I hadn’t intended to buy this pack in the first place but I forgot to take it out of the cart when I checked out. I bought it anyway.

The name sounded familiar. As it turns out, he was playing in the Brewers organization this year. I guess this is a card I keep, although I can’t recall if he was still with the Sounds when I actually saw them play in Iowa in July. (It may help me in my quest to find out exactly what bullpen pitchers I was photographing.)

I prefer Blue Monday

I had to work today. I didn’t do Buy Nothing Day, though, because I had to buy lunch. 6 people + turkey sized for 3 people = no leftovers.

Also due to the surprise relatives, I only managed to get 12 cards uploaded to my postcard wall. This is only about 1/12 of the easily available postcards I need to scan. Also, I didn’t have time to scan in anything for future Cards of the Day.

Right now, I’m watching some winter ball I recorded from earlier this evening. It was not raining in the Dominican Republic when the game started. I am shocked. (At least it’s not that 22-20 Venezuelan game I recorded earlier this week.)

a package! and scanned things!

I received a package from White Sox Cards the other day, part of a trade we’ve been working on since March or so. It looks like it’s going to be, um, a bit lopsided, as I received a small white box full of 2007 Upper Deck (too much to list) and a few other things, like 2007 Goudey and 2007 Bowman Heritage and 2008 Allen & Ginter. It’s exactly what I needed. I’m thankful for the PO not smashing the package, too. Here’s some examples of what I was sent. ^_^

I didn’t realize that 2006 was indeed Kouzmanoff’s rookie year. It seems like he’s been around forever.

I kind of miss the Rays’ green uniforms. I don’t miss the bad play, however.

I was watching this guy pitch in winter ball last week. He’s still soooo slow. ^^;;;

I suppose he counts as a 2008 Brewer, as much as I wish he didn’t.

He uses the Cranberries’ “Zombie” as his walk-up music. Completely lolarious when you hear it the first time. Also the last time, because after the series I attended he promptly got hurt and didn’t return until the end of the season.

happy early Thanksgiving

Just a week after saying I didn’t know anyone who played Magic anymore, some of the guys in tech support were playing Magic in the break room today. It was another reminder that, well, it’s not the deck that’s the loser, it’s the player. ;) Looked like not enough mana sources to me…but I was more interested in my lunch.

The scanner should be hooked up tomorrow. I don’t watch football (I know!) so I have nothing else to do. And I do have something to scan!

the “local” hobby store

A couple of weeks ago, another Twin Cities resident commented on my blog asking if I knew of any remaining sports card shops in the area other than Uncommon Sports Cards in Richfield, which is a store that I like–the only problem is that it’s in Richfield, and I live about 25 miles away. Thus, the only times I’ve been able to get there have been when our APA has collations in South Minneapolis, or if I’m going to sf conventions in the area. I haven’t had any other reasons to go there, so that’s not been very often.

I had mentioned that I had recently visited another sports card store in Roseville, but I couldn’t find them in the phone book. That’s because it was a new store. Three Stars Sportscards just happens to be 25 miles in the other direction from my home. However, I haul out to Roseville more often because I have had a weekly comics pull at Source Comics and Games for about ten years. (I used to work in Roseville, and my shopping habits stuck.) In fact, it was one of the Source employees who told me about “this new baseball card store over on Hamline” because I was buying card boxes and not buying Magic cards with them. ;)

Now I have another reason to go to Roseville. The Scrapbook Shop is moving from St. Paul to Lexington, which is near Roseville.

Sports cards and comics were all faddish in the 1990s. Only the good stores survived. Any new stores are springing up to fill a void. There was a local newsstand chain that sold sports cards that went out of business a few years back. The scrapbooking fad is fading, too. There used to be an actually local to me scrapbooking shop right here in Cottage Grove. It closed. Then the one in Woodbury closed. Then the one in Roseville reasonably near Source, where I used to go after picking up my pull, closed (that was mall development fail, not store management fail–they had been in operation since 1998 and I had also been going there for rubber stamps for 10 years.) Then, finally, the store in South St. Paul near work and another store in Hastings closed. Scrapbook Shop is the only independent store left, as far as I know, on the St. Paul side of the river.

I’d love to shop independent and local, but it’s hard. One can’t even use the counter-argument of “you’d have more options if you didn’t live in the suburbs” because almost all the independent hobby and “geek” shops in the Twin Cities are in the suburbs, save for a few comics places and the local sf bookstores–and the latter are not in St. Paul. About the only thing that is still in St. Paul was the yarn store I was going to when I was crocheting, and I shopped there because they had a lot of customers who won’t use animal products and thus carried non-wool yarns.

I think I have a package

At least, I had a parcel slip in my mailbox today, but the line was ridiculous and I didn’t have time to wait in it. I don’t really want to drive around that much in the brrrr, you know?

I really needed 94-cent stamps, too. ‘Tis the season to nearly hit the 12-card sending limit at Postcrossing.

The scanner isn’t hooked up yet. This morning, I was running Mission: Laundry.

I have a scanner!

Unfortunately I have no time to hook it up until probably next weekend. I also have an ear infection. Vertigo, mmmmm.

The only benefit: the local CVS has started to carry postcards, which is great because the local Wal-mart no longer does. (I’ve seen postcards at CVS, but that was in Boston, and my friends and me were too busy running around looking for instant icepacks to care. Woodbury, Minnesota is not exactly a touristy area.)

aaaargh Topps, part 2

I bought three hobby packs of Heritage High Numbers today because I didn’t feel like using a credit card for 70 cents of empty boxes.

One of the packs of cards only had seven cards in it. The wrapper looked untampered with, at least.

Also, Topps has changed the manufacturer of the insert gum and it tastes awful. If you already thought the gum tasted awful, now it’s even worse.

aarrrgh Topps

So here I wait all year to see if any card company will make a Seth McClung card that’s not an insert and now I find out it’s a freakin’ SHORT PRINT? Oh, Topps, you fail so, so hard.

(and here I thought I wouldn’t have anything to post about today.)