OK Bots, quit it!

(Editor's note: This post has had four digit readership for the last month or so. (7215 total so far.) That can't be real. I changed the title to see if they will quit.)

Even though illness prevented me from attending this year in Chicago, I didn't totally miss out on adding cardboard to my collection.

After I had sufficiently recovered, my girlfriend took me to the Morning Sun Marketplace in Thomasville, PA near York.  We walked through the outside flea market and through all three buildings in the course of the day.  One outside dealer had a couple binders with random assortments of mostly newer baseball, football and hoops stars and every card was $5.  

I found this Jordan Addison /8.  I have two others from this Leaf set as well, so I was happy to add this one.  

Inside, we passed through a booth that had lots of supplies and non-sports cards and figures.  I came back and got this set:

It's complete at 100 cards.  Still shrink wrapped.  Not sure if I'll unwrap it or not.

The highlight of the visit was to go through the inventory at Jason's Sports Cards.  I went through his '63 Topps, but they were generally all commons with a lot of repeats, so I didn't get any of those.  He had a lot of jerseys and autos from lesser baseball and football players at the far end of his display, all marked at $4 each.  He said everything was discounted to two bucks as I was halfway through that section.  I snagged up on some Washington hits that I would have normaly passed over, but for that price, why not?

I hit another Jordan Addison in the Vikings row, but all the others are DC.  No JD5's or anything, but some low serial numbers, even if they're rookie jerseys.  The Jason Campbells are all /25.  The rest are in the 2-300s or so.  They'll be added to the pile of DC hits that I've accumulated over the past year and change.  Unfortunately, I don't have the drawer space to put them with the rest of my Redskins+ gamers & autos.

The other source of pasteboard treasures is my man Marv from Michigan.  Didn't get to see him, but he's been supplying me with 1963 Topps in a couple shipments since May or so.  These are the highlights.  Marked prices were reduced at final sale.

Had to cut out a Gibson that was not quite up to par, but these are a few of the big guns in the later series that I can now cross off my list.

Knocked out some of the better combo cards too.  I've seen the Bomber's Best listed for $125 or more.  These aren't perfectly centered, but the more I look at '63s, the less I expect them to be.

So I didn't totally go cold turkey for a month or more missing out on the National.  I've got sources to keep me collecting for sure.

Next up, my 800th total post... 

Launch Status: Aborted

Unfortunately, my plans for the Michigan trip and the National had to be cancelled.  I've been experiencing cyclical fever, fatigue and other symptoms for almost two weeks now.  I just wasn't going to be able to make the drive back and forth, and wade through all the crowds.  So I called it off.

The upside is, it probably saves me several hundred bucks in the short term, and lets me possibly get ahead of all the stuff that's piled up since I went the last time that I haven't put away yet.

But I really would have liked to be able to shop at some of the dealers that I only see there...

Preparing For Launch

Hopefully, in 24 hours, I'll be reporting from Michigan again.  Stuart and I will be starting another shop & show tour along with the trek to the National.  Barring crash, sickness, trampling, or robbery, I'll be back later with multiple posts on our visits and show loot.

I'll be primarily focused on my older vintage projects - '63 Topps, '50 Bowman, '61 Golden Press, '62 Post, and maybe if I'm really lucky, the last three '57 Topps guys named Aaron, Mantle, and Brooks Robinson.

I'm sure I'll find more new Jayden Daniels and Jordan Addisons too.  And I know one of the first dealers I'll go to is the insert guy at the far end of the first section.  Will try not to blow most of my cash on previous years' Heritage short prints....

Anyway, stay tuned...maybe I'll see you there!

Speaking Of Assimilations....

Not sure if five weeks is the longest I've gone without posting, but it's probably close.  I feel like half the time I'm apologizing for my absence on here.  Well, I am sorry I haven't been around, but I'm not sorry about why.  Without going into too much detail, it's basically been a whirlwind romance.  It started late last year, took a while to get going, and then took off about April or so.  We've been dating steadily since May, and it just keeps getting better.  We match so well on so many levels, that it's been relatively easy.  It's amazing to both of us how it's gotten to this point.

But anyway, enough of the mushy stuff, you guys want to see cards!

I did manage to make the July Chantilly show on what used to be Sneak Preview Day (Friday) but is now basically a whole third (first) day.  The show now runs 1PM to 8PM, instead of starting at 5.  I got through the bulk of it all, but really just hit most of my favorite dealers.

This is an amalgamation of several purchases, all of which are for player collections.  The first things I found were the Safelon discs from '76.  I have a big list of '76 and '77 discs for my PC guys, but this flavor wasn't even on it.  Got all but three or so of the guys I seek.  

The Sutter is a '79 Hostess, which are somehow the most elusive year.  I still need about a half dozen of my guys.  Have just about all the rest except for a few SPs.   Bo Jackson was from yet another new unknown football set that just came out.  The Dusty & son is from the current Archives issue, and of course, I will snag anything Jordan Addison.

Knocked out the better part of my '62 Post HOF'ers with this batch from my man Steve B.  Still looking for a good starter lot of commons, but most of the big names are found.  I continued to strike some other vintage-ish wants with him too...

Almost finished the '69 Fleer World Series from the starter I got from the set hoard.  If I'd have started them with Steve, they might be even better.  These were nicer than any I have already.  

These aren't the ones with the team logo stickers, they're the blue backs.

Stepped over to my regular current insert guy and massacred my list of silver parallels to '24 A&G.  There were still two full snap boxes that I didn't go through, but my list was so huge, I was afraid of too many duplicates.  Still ended up with a half dozen of these that I actually didn't need.  Also got some '23 Heritage short prints and a few other misc. items.

Moved on to Stan's and filled out these '61 Golden Press'ers.  Down to Ott, Ruth, Foxx and  and Wagner.

Also got three of the four '65s from him.  The last purchase of the day was the "C. Canizzaro" flavor of the 1st Checklist from Uncle Dicks.  This completes my '65 Topps set!

Thanks for stopping by!  Can't guarantee any better frequency of posting, but I can say that I'm jumping right into the 1963 Topps set.  Stay tuned for that!

We Have Been Assimilated.

Many of my fellow bloggers probably got the same email that I had today.  It's from Anuj Agarwal at FeedSpot.com.  The subject reads: "<insert blog name here> featured in FeedSpot Top 100 Sports Card Blogs".  The message goes on to congratulate "The Collective Mind Team" (clever...) "as your blog <blog name here> has been selected by our panelist (only one?) as one of the Top 100 Sports Card Blogs on the web. "  And it gives a link to the list ~ bloggers.feedspot.com/sports_card_blogs

Mr. Agarwal goes on to suggest adding your website link (the blog IS our website) and other social media handles for better visibility (on their list) and "get discovered by brands for collaboration".  (It would be nice if it was card companies who would send test product, but I don't think that happens any more.  Other than that, I'm not interested in commerce on here.)

So with all due respect to the FeedSpot organization, I won't be using their services.  There is a lot of positive feedback on their site from business and corporate customers, and that's fine.  It appears a lot of their audience is Influencers from all different areas of life.  I have no aspirations of becoming an influencer.  I've considered a YouTube channel, but I probably wouldn't post to it even as much as I do here, which isn't nearly what I did at my peak pre-2020.  "Influencers" in this hobby is a bit of a derogatory term to me, as it refers to those who came into the hobby during COVID and don't know enough about actual collecting to be credible with most of us.

Best of luck to FeedSpot.  I just hope this doesn't lead to a lot more spam comments on our blogs.  

I couldn't find anything about how they made up the list, but there were several familiar names on it.  The rankings, however, were way off.  Another way I could tell that they're not familiar with the hobby is that the description of my site said you could "Explore Card collection sorted into sports categories like Baseball, Football, Hockey, Vintage and Miscellaneous."  I'm guessing that's an AI generated blurb, since it ignores the "Wants" on each of my list tabs, which is where those categories come from. 

Anyway, to the rankings.  I'll just highlight some of the stars that we know and where they fell.  There are also a lot of card sites of breakers, dealers, and auction houses. 

1. Upper Deck Blog - Standard manufacturer blog is #1?  Not a strong start.

2. Sports Collectors Daily - OK, it's a general news site.  Will let it go.

3. Beckett - Is this still 1992?  No disrespect, but in the blog circles I know, this is not a high pick.

4 & 5. Cardboard Connection - This is one of many that appear twice.  Not sure why.

6. Panini - See #1.

7. Dave & Adams - Seller blogs?  Good for what they are, but for blogs in general, too high for my taste. 

11. Sports Collectors Digest - Widely read magazine.  OK fine.

16. Nachos Grande - Finally we get to one of the actual high level bloggers.  I'd say Top 5.

21. White Sox Cards - Some familar names now.  Lets roll through them to get to the others that should be way higher....All of these should be consolidated at the top.

22. Cards On Cards

27. Topps Archives

33. Cards That Never Were

35. When Topps Had Baseballs

39. Dime Boxes - There's one.  Unfortunately, Nick has shut 'er down, but this one is Top 5 of All time.

40. Chronicles Of Fuji - And right behind Nick, Mark is about 37 points too far down!

41. Shlabotnik Report - Joe's blog is one of those that gets blocked at work for some reason.  Maybe just because it's on WordPress.

42. Johnny's Trading Spot 

49. Too Many Verlanders

54. Sports Cards From The Dollar Store - Crossing the halfway point on the list...

56. Cardboard History - Billy needs to be up around the Top 10.

57. Sports Card Collectors

58. Waiting 'Til Next Year - P-Town Tom was one of my favorite trading partners while he was active.  Blog is sporadic now, but is in the wrong end of 2/3 of the list.

59. Tim Wallach

62. Padrographs

65. Diamond Jesters

67. Captain Kirk 42

69. The Collective Mind - Yours Truly - I am content with this spot, but if I posted regularly, I might complain.

79. Night Owl - Here's the biggest faux pas of the whole thing.  The Blogger King at 79?  What are we doing, people?

85. Baseball Card Breakdown - Gavin should be right behind Greg (NO) at the top of this list.

86. Sports Cards Uncensored - Gellman has slowed this one to a crawl, but it was always good for in-depth analysis, no matter which side you were on.

90. Sports Card Investor - Well, they got that one right. 😃