A disconnected day

 

I had high hopes for yesterday. The day to myself as I was the only one with the day off in this household. Go get a haircut, perhaps research and write a little, do some card stuff.

The haircut happened alright. The internet was spotty when I left the house but upon my return I learned it was a full-on outage. Somebody somewhere cut a fiber optic cable. No research was gonna happen. Let’s do card stuff, surely they'll get it fixed quickly. 

So, I grabbed a 3200-count box of mixed baseball cards from the card storage room. We label the boxes as “NP”, Not Processed, and the date they enter the house. I thumbed through and pulled the pre-1994 cards out first. The stack of 1995 Bazooka was an easy pile to extract to get them out of the way. 

Yes, I do have a few - not many - “junk” sets still not completed. I don’t really care for the term junk. I prefer Over Production Era but OPE hasn’t really caught on.

Ok, I'm ready to check my collection and add missing cards to my sets...

Hmph. "Trying to connect". So no TCDB. Checked the outage update ETA timer on their socials. It’s not looking good. By now I was starting to get into a teenager-like frenzy. Where's my WIFI? 

The rest of the box is 1994-2010-ish. I started to spread some of these out but quickly ran out of room. On a good day this whole box is processed for keepers (not necessarily filed mind you) and the duplicates back in the box for a future Facebook Marketplace sale. With a new label of course.

We had created a rule to keep our hobby area clear after each sorting/crafting event. Well, I got the dirty looks before dinner. It’s all the internet’s fault I said. And who is going to put them back in the box once they are out, right? I'll get this cleaned up tomorrow I said. Crickets. 

Internet was restored about 8:15 PM. 

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The time wasn’t a complete loss once I gave up on the internet gods. I finished reading an excellent book that I picked up as pre-Christmas gift for myself.

 

If you are a music fan, mostly rock and pop, of the last 50 years or so you will find this book an enjoyable and eye-opening read. It’s not about the artists themselves but more about their longevity in the hearts and minds of the fans. But with that staying power and legacy there is a downside. The author writes of these impacts on the recording industry of today and tomorrow.

An interesting thing about this premise is the parallel that is recognizable of the card industry. Mostly in the baseball sector, but in the others a little bit too. I’m looking right at you, Topps Archive and Heritage et al.