Last trip to the shop for a while

 I hate to go off on the ‘What if?-COVID’ trail, but have you been paying attention to the numbers lately?  This Delta Variant is causing numbers to go up, not just in unvaccinated people, but also in those who have got the vaccine. 

I tend to freak out about these kind of things, and kind of expect the worst. My wife worked at an assisted living facility, and I have a cousin and a friend in our band at church who both have upper level jobs at hospitals, so besides what I hear or see on TV/internet sites, I kind of have other ‘eyes and ears’ to the ground as far as beds available in hospitals and access to positivity rates and overall positive case numbers. 

What I’ve seen and heard leads me to believe that we could be heading back to some of the ways things were in the early summer of last year. When positivity rates get to above 10% in Florida, my wife’s has all of their employees and residents do a rapid test once a week (I wish my work was so vigilant). They have started ordering rapid tests in anticipation of it going over 10% any day now. No matter where anyone stands on the political spectrum, I think we can all agree that nobody wants us to go through any resemblance of 2020 ever again. 

For me, it just sucked not being able to get away with my wife every now and then. Restaurants were closed, ballparks were closed, most places we would go on dates were closed or just not the same. When I had a day off, it was a little more complicated, as I couldn’t really do yard work or straighten the house, or just chill out because our sons school was closed. One of the main things I am passionate about besides cards is playing the piano. I play in our worship band at church, and we didn’t play together as a band from April or May 2020 until sometime around Easter of 2021. It did, however, add something nice, around a few months after we originally shut down. We went to recording the service and putting it on YouTube. For the music, each person in the band would come in and record their part to a song, and Joe, our leader, would record the music on his laptop and mix it, and then would also put together a video of the band playing the song since he recorder video of us playing the instruments. It added a nice touch to the YouTube videos and gave us the confidence that if we ever wanted to record some stuff as a band (including originals) that we could. 

As far as baseball card things that happened in 2020, card shops were closed, card shows weren’t going on, and we all know about the flippers. It makes me sad that we could be going back to the crap that we already have been through with COVID.  I really hope the CDC makes a statement in the coming days and suggests for businesses to require everyone to mask up again and to potentially get ready for lockdowns again.  It might wake people up.  I don’t know what is going to happen, so I’m kind of making a list of things I want to do in the coming month or so just in case everything goes down the toilet again  

Some of the things on the list include going out to eat with my wife a few times.  I want to hit up a minor league game in Daytona (if I were honest, I’d be up for another Rays game, but I’ve already been to one, as well as a game in Wrigley this year, so I don’t want to be greedy).  I would love to go to another baseball card show, but I think that would take a miracle to get a Saturday off that I wouldn’t have to put a request in for.  It just seems like if I request a Saturday off it just throws everything off.  I usually have to give up Sunday and won’t be able to play with the band, and I usually end up working like 6 days in a row.  Sometimes it’s worth just not requesting them off, and if I somehow get one off that occurs when a show does, then I just make plans to go.  

One thing that I probably won’t have to take time off to do is visit the card shop near my house.  I haven’t been there in a few months, and I want to go back before things get crazy.  

I’ll probably just dig through their .50 cent boxes and see what I can find.  I’m hoping to find some newer-ish Rays and Tigers, hopefully from newer issues like Stadium Club and Series 2.  I’ve been through the boxes enough to know that some of the sets that frequent the boxes are 2019 Topps Chrome, 2020 Topps Chrome, 2020 Topps/Update, 2020 Bowman, 2019 Optic, 2020 Optic, 2019 Prism, 2020 Prism, and some parallels from the sets. Not many rookies, serial numbered cards, or superstars, but what would you expect in a .50 cent box?  I say all of this to say that this could be one of the last trips I make to the shop for a while if the pandemic gets worse.  I kind of want to send out some trade packages to old (and new) trading partners, should things get sticky.  So, if any of those sets sound like something you would be interested in, drop me a comment with a team, and I’ll see what I can do.  I already have some trade stacks started for a few certain people, as well as ideas for some other ones (just need to get off my butt and go through some lists and pull some cards out of binders).  

I have Wednesday off, but I’ll probably spend half of the day doing yard work.  After a quick shower, I’m going to try to get out to the shop.  I’ll make a mental note of teams in my head, and try to pull some nice cards from each team, and then probably spend a week or three getting them all organized and packaged up.  Then a trip to the post office, and everyone should get their cards a week or so after that.  

So that’s it, just pick a team and I will see what I can come up with (and theres a good chance I’ll have some stuff from your want list in my collection at home, too).  Stay safe in the coming weeks.  

-Jeremy