One of the big reasons that I am still in this hobby – and still about blog – is that my life is actually pretty boring.
I do the same things every day. Even the things I don’t do day after day that I did before. It is a lot of everyday. Just like baseball, not much happens to an explosion of everything in one go. Only, unlike baseball, the opportunities that those “everything explosion” are good things are very unlikely.
Trade cards are the excitement in my life. They are the guarantee that every day of my life will produce a small spark. If all those other daily things can’t do it, cards will be there for me. Often that spark is a card that is new in my collection. Now, there is Something that will light up my eyes.
For example, this Freddie Freeman All-Star card that has recently arrived. I received it with some other items from Reader Grant, who is one of those people who is nice enough to respond here (try, it’s fun!). This is a map of Topps’ All-Star Gameset from Topps, published in collaboration with the ASG in Atlanta in July.
The only place where I have seen these cards are on Johnny’s Trading Spotblog. So this card is new to me! And I am certainly happy that I personally saw one. If you look at it online, it looks like chaos, all that writing about the entire card. It is not as confused as you see it personally – still not my speed, no chance to collect this.
But wow, something new in my life today! How is that job, is there something like that for me today? I doubt it, all your surprises, I don’t want.
Even if I have seen the set, or the parallel earlier, every card that I do not yet own is still new in my collection. Let’s see life trying to produce that kind of novelty consistently from week to week. “Hey, honey, I have a new coffee creamer to try it.” Oh boy.
Tickets can of course be a bit of cheating with the “novelty” aspect. I have this Topps 206 Shawn Green card (shown against Green’s Fleer real card from the same year for comparison). But it’s a polar bear that I didn’t have. New for me.
Sometimes cards – or, in this case, stickers – can create “new to me” sensation and combine it with that nostalgic feeling. Those are really the best types of carder experiences.
These are 1981 tops stickers. I bought this together with regular Topps cards in 1981. But I have not mentioned any of them (or even hold them) except the Dodgers. It is a hurry to see that some of them come back in my collection. For example, I remember that Ellis Valentine card clearly in my collection.
Again, much of life cannot produce that beautiful nostalgic novelty that cards can. I didn’t want me to repay my student loans, so that I could get a whole new book with payment stubs.
Tickets are for me every day and offer something new, whether it is new cards in the shopping shelves or cards when I did not collect or live back cards that I once had. And blogging about them is often the vehicle to gain those new experiences more often. Because if I only collected myself, as I discovered many years before I discovered card blogs, I would have a lot less new.
#NewtoMij #aspect #hobby