I don't know if you remember "The Break Up of the Phone Company" in the mid-1980s, but it was a huge deal at the time.
Until that point, you made a call, wherever you were, and the Bell System took care of it. After the break-up, we became familiar with AT&T and Sprint and MCI. It was weird. I was in college when all this was happening and was happy I didn't have to make any decisions on my "long-distance provider."
This all seems like ancient history in the world of a computer in your pocket, but it was my first encounter with the fracturing of a key element of society (Well, actually maybe that was cable TV). Since then, there's been fracturing all over the place. No one gets all their information from one newspaper or one evening news program each day anymore. In the music world, the shared experience of everyone listening to the same new songs on the radio has been fractured beyond repair.
It seems like more work to find what you're looking for in a lot of areas now and I'll include collecting cardboard in that conversation, too.
When I started blogging, the source for new-to-me cardboard was trading through blogs, and a little bit of eBay. Then I discovered COMC and sportlots. Then Twitter became a source for finding cards as blogs lost their influence. Then TCDB rose to prominence.
I now add cards in a variety of ways. There are still blog swaps, just much fewer of them. But there is a lot more purchasing on various online sites, even more than what I just mentioned, and I grab cards off of Twitter as well, along with the usual in-person store purchases and card show appearances -- those have been going on since long before the internet.
The last couple of weeks have involved acquisitions from all of the above.
These 1983 Donruss heavyweights all arrived from Doc's Sports Card Sales on Twitter. I think he's closing up shop, or moving in a different non-sports card direction. That's too bad, because it was a good way for me to get some '80s needs without a lot of fuss and for solid prices.
I've got a long way to go on the '83 Donruss pursuit but it's nice to get some stars captured. Now if I could find a Boggs and Sandberg just as easily.
The TCDB transactions had dried up for me for months but then out of the blue I received three straight offers in June. This awesome lot of 2024 Heritage short-prints arrived from Tscastle for a smattering of Negro League-themed cards. That was a cool trade.
I also gained some set needs in another TCDB deal with Ymmat. I really need to concentrate on my 1988-90 Pacific Legends quests. The '88 and '89 ones are so close to being finished. Focus, night owl, focus!!
I also received some Steelers All-Pros from 1979 in the deal. This is great. The Steelers is one of the teams that I am majorly lacking in with this set. Understandable as this was the Golden Era for Pittsburgh.
Another TCDB deal netted some 2005 Topps Updates & Highlights needs. But they're all nestled in the '05 set binder already. Most of them are prospects that never made it -- thanks for creating those unnecessary cards, Topps -- which is another reason why I'm not pulling them out and showing them off.
The eBay pipeline has been flowing as well, mostly with 2024 Heritage, Hostess cards and '70s Fleer World Series cards.
As for acquisitions through the blogs, yeah, that's happened, too. Here's what appeared in a quick envelope from Zippy Zappy:
That's not my first Keibert Ruiz autograph, but it is my first licensed Keibert Ruiz autograph.
Ruiz hasn't been with the Dodgers in a long time, but I was a fan all over again after his dust-up with the Padres' Jurickson Profar several days ago. Profar likes to think of himself as a fun-loving ballplayer but he sure does get involved in his share of those things.
Kenny also sent this Hero Deck card of John Fogerty, a pretty wild, out-of-the-blue send. Like any music fan, I respect CCR, but they're a little before my time as far as getting really into their stuff.
I knew about the Hero Deck baseball sets -- still haven't done anything about getting the Dodgers -- but had no idea there was a music one. Looking at the checklist, it's filled with notables. I'm a bit of a contrarian when it comes to The Goats of rock music. So I'd be interested in Petty, Stipe, Santana, Hynde, Van Halen, Jagger, Plant, Bono, Hendrix, Lennon and McCartney, but I don't have much desire to collect the full set.
Cherry-picking my collection needs from a variety of sources can get a little complicated. Often I lose track of what I ordered, and, yes, I've acquired something I didn't need before (including a card I showed above). It was a little easier monitoring my collection before everything fractured.
But there wasn't nearly as much available.
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