Top Reads of 2018

Sometimes the days are long and the years are short, right?

I’m glad to finish documenting my favorite blog reads (for myself but sharing since it may interest others). Have a Happy New Year 2019!

I’ll start with some more unusual topics. A card blogger wrote a fascinating post about Aphantasia. It’s not card related, but something discovered through this hobby that was an interesting read. Nick smells his books (at least that’s out in the open) – I get it and so do others. This was a weird card delivery experience – not judging, just interesting. T.J. and 13 bloggers passed a card box around the country in the Griffey Generosity Project (check out the map). I’m not a Griffey collector, so don’t send me the box :-)

Lost and Found. There are a few things I wish I could find that I remember from childhood. I don’t think I’ll find them at this point, but glad for Bob found his Elston Howard signed photo. That post was a follow-up to his previous Elston post. Combined they made for a fun read.

Safety first. Several posts dealt with bad sellers or traders. Raising awareness helps the good citizens of the collecting community. Paul covered some bad Sportlots sellers. Julie had some problems with some trades (lot of comments on that one). And Corky spotted a sketchy eBay sale. Stay safe out there.

Creativity. Gavin’s a creative guy and I like his vintage gif card posts like this 1971 Frank Robinson. The way it’s just laying among other cards feels like some morph between a scene from the 70’s and a future paper LCD card. And speaking of creative, Lost Collector had a good idea I had to document for my future self – turning a wrapper into wall art. And finally there’s Joe’s Pointless Pairings that includes Ernie (not Banks).

Travel. I’ll likely never go to the National, but this blog has great coverage and Mark had a good write-up here. But I will go to San Diego, so thanks to Tom, I’ll checkout the Tony Gwynn museum at AleSmith Brewery.

Blog bat arounds started by Night Owl. First was what do you collect with over 40 bloggers participating (I had to check if I wrote something, and then remembered, oh yeah, I barely wrote any posts so what was I thinking). Another good one is about how you started to collect cards. One of these years I’ll get my act together and participate.

Until then, I'll note that I collect 1975 cards and reprints (like this Gibson 2011 Lineage), Athletes with phones (like this Hockey card I'll write about soon), Star Wars green series reprints, animal mascots, funny cards (like over-sized bats/gloves/helmets), Wacky Beanball/Beastball reprints, and I'm planning a history of Topps starting with 1952 to present (preferably with 1975 players but commons of any year are also good).

Discussions. There were many great discussions in the collecting world, a few favorites are here: Sports Card collectors Do You Hide The Hobby? And Fuji’s junk card era double post, plus his post on how we’d all change the card universe.

I’ve only seen blogger cards in blog post like Tom’s (and previously a nice 2015-style card with Fuji – he’s out of them so if someone wants to trade that one – let’s chat). I think I’d collect these, having a set would be a fun oddball collection but I have none so far so maybe that’s not in the cards (uh oh, the bad puns are coming out).

Gratitude started at Opening Day with Mark’s anniversary post and continued at Thanksgiving with Tom’s thoughts about family and summed up perfectly by Fuji who hit the mark (I couldn’t agree more... running water should be in the list).

Rumination. Two posts were homeruns. Fuji summed up the sports blogging community touching on topics such as gratitude, harmony and diversity that I couldn’t imagine it being written any truer or better. Thank you. And Mark blew the dust off collecting, which resonated with me. The unique thing about card blogging is the intersection of a several things. You’ve got card collectors. Then card traders. Blog readers. And finally the writers. The last one usually mixes the others into a brew that along with other “real” things in life, makes writing a challenge. Kudos to those who’ve done it for years let alone a decade. So in 2018, Mark posted 56 times, which was more than enough to read. And that’s a lot more than I wrote, but who’s counting…

If you find any great posts next year, please share in the comments. I don’t read all the card blogs and I’m always interested in good reads.

PS: Like finding a lost box of cards, I found some 2016 and 207 posts mixed into my 2018 working list so those posts are updated both here and at 1975baseballcards.com.