I grew on a music fan, I never thought much about the equipment of a musician. My interest in music and musicians was only in the songs and the lyrics. When I imagined that I was a musician, I suggested writing lyrics and coming up with songs and that’s it.
Only when I started following online music and musicians online for the past five years or something that I was touched by how technically the job is. Thinking musicians, it seems, much more time discussing their equipment than their songs or music. I suppose that if I were to record the guitar as an instrument as a young person, I would have discovered it early. But instead I played the piano.
Take the electric guitar of your average musician. Getting music from that thing costs more than the guitar. There is a pick, capo, amplifier, microphone, tuner, securities pedals and many other things that a modest writer like I don’t know or could not describe. I only know that they are probably miles and kilometers of cables.
This made me happy that I did not become a musician, because technology is not my thing, nor climb over all those threads – even if I love the sound.
I started to think about the “equipment” for my work, and it’s actually pretty boring. Most is now in my phone. But once there were pens, a notebook from a reporter, a pocket tape recorder (the height of the technology at that time), a toothy keyboard, a score book, press and the right type of clothing for covering games outside.
But you don’t care, you care about the hobby. I also thought about that. What kind of “equipment” do collectors have?
I went through my own equipment.
Shoe box of course. From the first moment in the hobby when I realized: “I need something to put in” and my mother produced an empty shoe box, there were shoe boxes full of cards in my life. Due to various hobby explosions and talk about investments and loving and loving maps, the shoe boxes have remained. And cards are inside.
Binders, without a doubt. Probably three or four years after my hobby I discovered binders and never looked back. Binding agents are very excited for collecting cards. It is the best way to categorize and view them all at the same time. What does your Collection of Topps Baseball Card from 1977 look like? Well, I have a binder for you. Do you want to turn some pages?
Binding agents are quite useless without pages and I don’t even want to think about how many pages are in my collection. At the moment I have a decent stock. You look at it.
But it is clearly not much to look at that.
That is much better. With pages you can come up with the most pleasant displays known to the hobby. Nine pockets of joy, regardless of which set you collect.
But I am not much for displaying my collection. There is not much room for that and I don’t love things outside where someone (me or the cat) can overthrow it. But if that is your preference, there are fun stands – you can go as chic or cheap as you want. Again, not much to look at this.
That’s better. The few tripod that I own is for this project 2020 cards.
Top loaders are my preferred card protection. I have never received a grip on those semi-rigid cardholders (I don’t even like the name). Top loaders work great, are perfect for sending cards and I have a stock – thanks to all the trade that I have done over the years – that will never run out.
The same applies to team bags and centmen. These are unopened packages that may never be opened, because I float so many of each everywhere. I can walk through every room of the house and probably find a lost penny sleeve … and when we had our dog Dodger, he thought she did.
Shipping materials have also been essential over the years. Blue tape is a must. I also have several boxes with unopened Sharpies because I write an address on an envelope and then I am ready.
And there are the envelopes. Much more of where they came from. I don’t e -mail as often as I ever did, so these tend to stack a little.
More mailing – things – usually for protecting the cards that I send against the postal system.
I recently received this cup, which is from the Dodgers Spring Training Site. Drinking out is a bit impossible, but it is neat for storing things such as scissors, markings, pens, a mini -linial, all things that arise when you send cards.
There is also a magnifying glass to read the impossible print on the backs of cards printed after 1993. But I don’t use that much.
I use this. Technology can be pretty useful.
I still trust physical reference materials such as this one. It is so handy to pick up directly from the card table. Researching maps online was more efficient before Google decided that people would not matter. It is a bit more difficult now, so I am happy that I still have things like this.
Moreover, some of these reference works are just too nice.
Of course, most of this stuff is not as exciting or glamorous as the guitar or drum kit of a musician or the bat or glove from a ball player. It is more supplies than “equipment”. But you could claim that the glove of a baseball player is also a ‘stock’. The same with the performance of a guitarist.
It is just that collectors do not need their equipment to act. We are not artists on stage as a musician or an athlete. But at least some of us? Also offer content and entertainment.
Perhaps one day I write a message on a “equipment” of a card that writer collects.
#equipment #collector