I'm currently in the process of trying to fill a vacancy at work.
Trying to find a sportswriter is a bit of an unusual task. Since there are a limited number of newspapers, you attract résumés from everywhere, and I mean everywhere: places like India and South Africa. But we're looking for a specific kind of person: someone who can write well, tolerate our remote location, and live on a salary that would outrage a teacher.
It's not easy. Yesterday I thought I had a good candidate lined up: his cover letter mentioned collecting baseball cards as a kid!! His writing seemed crisp, he didn't let off any weird vibes in his email communications and he knew the area.
But when I called him, he seemed bored out of his skull. I don't know if eight media companies are knocking down his door, but it was quite off-putting. And, I hate to get personal in situations like this, but it was especially off-putting knowing that he collects -- or at least collected -- baseball cards.
I find that I have a certain expectation of card collectors. I expect them to be decent, fun-loving people, maybe kind of shy but pleasant and someone you'd want to get to know. That's mostly been my experience communicating with collectors online for the last decade.
There are exceptions, sure. And if I entered the high-end/memorabilia market, I don't know if I could find as many pleasant people, but overall it's a great group of folks. I don't know if you could find any better people in any other pursuit.
These are people who will send you cards just because. People who send you cards even though you're way behind and who knows when you'll get cards out to them.
Matt from Sports Card Collectors recently sent me a PWE of recent Dodgers cards. Then, like a day or two later, another PWE arrived from him. "Gee whiz," I said to myself (remember, we collectors are pleasant lot). "I need to get my act together."
But instead of shipping, I'm writing about cards.
Here are some cards that I needed from the two-PWE arrival, Yu Darvish card up top included:
Matt is taking advantage of the fact that I barely know what's going on with modern card sets. After squinting at the minuscule type on the back and then comparing with what's already in my collection, I figured out that the two non-Heritage cards are from 2016 Bowman's Best.
But you can't stump me with 2018 Heritage -- I'll know what they are until Heritage is putting the 2016 flagship design on cards (mostly because I'll be dead).
I will be fulfilling my collecting good guy role in the next week or two and shipping something out to SCC and hopefully other people.
Once I get somebody hired for that job, things will ease up just a little and I can focus more on this hobby.
So people out there: don't be so weird. It'll save us all a bit of time.
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