If it doesn't fit ...

Hey! How about that! I was told to "give it a rest" in the last post! Yay me! That's got to be worth some blogging points doesn't it? Do I get a certificate? I mean, how do you know if this blog thing is even on unless you're pissing someone off!

Heh.

Serves me right for going into a subject that I said I wasn't going to address again. But then I got into an ornery mood for a variety of unrelated reasons, and it just all came out. You've got to love projection. Or displacement. Or whatever the term is.

I could continue to project, and say this is my own damn blog and I write it for my own damn amusement and if you don't like it then read something else, and that I wasn't talking to you anyway. But that would be rude and counterproductive. So instead, I'll just write about the Topps Giveaway site some more.

You know one other thing that I like so gosh darn much about that ...

Just kidding.

Instead of going into something divisive (which happens to be just about everything I encounter lately -- and I'M the one who gets told to lighten up), I'll be inclusive and mention something every collector has encountered if they have been collecting cards from the last two years.

What to do with the manufactured patch card.

You know my general feelings about these cards. I don't like them. I think they're silly and not worth the price of a blaster. But instead of just repeating myself and risking back-to-back "give it a rests," I'll move on to what I want to address: how to store these things.

I've accumulated maybe around a dozen manupatcharoos, and when I think about it, I have no idea what to do with them.

To illustrate that, here is what I am doing almost unconsciously:

I am a creature of habit. During my early collecting days, I discovered binders and pages. I have stored my cards in this fashion since I was an early teenager. It's been an effective way to store cards for decades. That is until cards came along that were thicker than a slice of bread.

So, what do I do? I stuff them into a page meant to store a card 1/8th the thickness of one of those manupatches. It stretches out the page. and because I'm witless and cheap and I store two cards in one pocket, it often affects the card behind it.

Now there are a couple of ways to avoid this if I can just snap out of the cycle that I've been in for the last 30 years. I could put all the patch cards by themselves in one or two pages. They wouldn't be near all the regular cards and they really should be banished, because they aren't actually "cards." But they'd still be warping the pockets of the pages.

Or, I could buy some of those super thick top loaders that house patch cards. But I have this mental block that top loaders are only for cards I value, and I really don't value patch cards, too much, certainly not enough to go out of my way to buy special top loaders, or to store them where I store top loader cards.

Or I could give them to the dog to chew on, because he's got a thing about stitched items.

So ...

I'm not asking you to solve my problem. Obviously, I've got too many hang-ups for you to do that.

Instead, I'm asking, what do you with your patch cards? Where and how do you store them?

And don't say, "in the garbage can," because I might actually follow your advice.

Not that I don't appreciate every last manupatch card that anyone has sent me. Every last one. Every. Last. One. Every ... last ...

Yeah, I know. Give it a rest.

I swear it's going to be trade posts from here on out.