Busy card week

 Today I felt like I wouldn't have much time to do anything, but I was able to get alot done. I had hoped to get some labwork done, go to the post office, and perhaps finish putting my Dodgers into TCDB. I was able to do all of that, and I still had a little time left to post this. I also straightened up the area in my card room where all of my envelopes/sleeves/trade cards & materials are. 

I have had a few stacks of cards ready to go out in the mail to different collectors, and I was able to get everything out except for 2 people on different sites that I wasn't able to get an address for in time. It did feel good, however, to get a few packages sent out, as I have been wanting to send some trade packages out for a while, and just didn't have the time, or money, or enough cards to justify sending them. I still have a few people I want to send stuff to, but am just waiting for my stacks to grow a little bigger, which could happen tonights, as we should be going to Wal-Mart and I hope to find a blaster of '23 Archives. 

I finally got my bonus check from work. Currently, I have been full time for 7 years. I get 2 weeks of vacation that I can take, and 2 weeks worth of time that I can either use for vacation or cash out. I have cashed it out every year I have had it, but with my boss, sometimes I wonder if my mental and overall health would be better if i just used the vacation in 2-3 day increments every month or so. This year it didn't happen, and coming up on one of the busiest times of the year, I feel like we have done well so far. Please, if you need to shop for Thanksgiving, get it done early and don't be one of the people that comes in on the last 2 days and drives the volume of production up. Your retail employee friends will thank you. I work tomorrow, Saturday, am off Sunday, and then have the dreaded 3 day stretch before Thanksgiving. Not really looking forward to the holiday either if I am honest. We'll be headed to Lakeland, about 1 and a half hours south on Thursday, and I have to be back in to work at 3 AM on Friday morning. I'd be fine with visiting if we do a morning event, but no, people want their dinner, so I'm going to already  be dead from working the day before, and won't get much sleep on Thursday. Everyone says 'Oh, you can leave whenever you want and sleep in the car', but I can guarantee we'll probably end up staying till 7PM and everyone knows sleep in a car isn't the same quality as sleep in your bed. And they wonder why I have been saying 'bah humbug!' the last few years...

I do have some cards to brighten up the next week. Not really anything earth shattering, but I did order some cards and a set with some of the bonus money which should be getting here between the 20th and early December. 

I ordered the 2023 Topps Update set so I can put the 2023 Topps sets to rest. One of the newest guys I collect, DeLand, FL native Nick Fortes had a jersey card from '22 Triple Threads which I won for a few bucks on eBay. We were lucky enough to see him play in DC this year, and he signed a card and talked with us for a little bit. Hopefully he stays in the Majors for a while and Kyler and I can follow his career. I also picked up some Brody Koerner singles. His uncle is married to my wife's aunt, and I got to hang out with him at a Dave & Busters in Orlando. He pitched 2 games for the Yankees in 2021, and is now retired, married with a 2 month old, and looking to get into coaching. I am already the #1 collector of his on TCDB, as he just has minor league cards and a card in the 2015 Elite Extra Edition set, but I while I have all of his minor league issues and all of the regular EEE cards except for one last 1/1 parallel, I don't have many of the certified autographed cards. There were like 4 or 5 available online, so I went ahead and ordered them all, including one numbered to 10. There are some 1/1s and low numbered ones still to get, but this will get me pretty close to owning just about everything possible. Perhaps the missing ones will pop up, and maybe even some of the printing plates. I

I also got a few traded singles to complete some sets. I figured some of the traded cards from sets are a little hard to find, and being only 8 cards from finishing the '93 Traded set, I could justify spending 15 cents or so for a few cards, especially if they are all shipping from the same place. I'll probably wait to update everything into TCDB until it gets here, but I believe if I have my numbers right, I only need a few random 1996 Topps cards, and 2 easy to find 1990 Topps cards, and that will give  me the entire Topps base card run of the '90's, and that's pretty cool. Maybe I'll go for the '80's next. 

I'll probably post pics of the cards as they come in, and see how far I can get logging the Brewers into TCDB this next week. If you live in Watertown, NY, Mansfield, TX, or Portland, OR, be on the lookout for some mail, and if you feel like I owe you a package, please reach out to me, I may be sitting on a stack of cards that the next trip to a card shop should grow into a stack that is sizeable enough to send. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy