Sunday, June 02, 2024

When The Cardboard Gods Smile Upon You

You ever had the experience of beating the odds while handling your cards?  

I don't mean pulling that 1/1 out of a pack - that's collation and doesn't have much to do with you.  Unless you just paid for one pack out of a box and then reached in and randomly selected the third one in the center stack and it had the case hit...

But I'm not even talking about that much of a win.  More like the subtle little things that happen that just seem lucky or almost supernatural.

What inspired me was the other day when I was pulling cards for the TCDB trades that had stacked up late in the week.  One collector wanted a single card from my 1994 Pacifics among a whole line of other cards.  They are in a three row box, separate from my other trade stock.  It was a number in the 300's, so it would likely be right in the middle.  I reached in and flipped the center row forward, and the first card was the exact card I was looking for.  There was only one, even though so many of my dupes have multiple copies of the same card - up to double digits.  I hit the one card in the entire box that was the one I needed.  What are the chances?

I can't think of what these kind of experiences are called.  My knee-jerk reaction is usually "Damn, I'm good!"  I won't say it happens a lot, but it happens often enough that I either think I've been doing this so long that I've developed psychic powers, or that I need to get out more.

Like when you open a book (or a binder of cards in pages) to the exact page you want without it being marked.  Do things like that happen to you too?

Let me know in the comments.


4 comments:

  1. This is a cool topic. Cool enough to be a blog bat around topic.
    I haven’t had luck that good, but I’ve had a few times when looking for a card that I flipped to the exact page in a binder, and I was looking for a single Phillies card to finish the 2021 Topps Update set and found it within 20 seconds of searching through the Phillies section of the .25 cent box at my LCS.

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  2. I'm sure I've looked for a card in one of my binders and I've opened it up to the page with the card... but nothing as lucky as pulling the one card you're looking for out of a row of cards. Very cool.

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  3. I used to be able to do this with my Topps traders. But now I have so many 2022-2024 cards that I always end up in 2023,lol

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