50th post, Labor day weekend and a time to catch up, and move forward..

Hello all, hope that you're having a great holiday weekend so far.  The wife and I are away visiting family in upstate NY, so my cards and the ability to update want lists, etc are sitting there waiting for me back home.  I've been able to complete trades over the past two days with Greg over at Plaschke, thy sweater is argyle, and with reader Steve D. as well via email. 

Catching up means taking more time to look at a lot of blogs, especially their pasts and how they developed their blogging styles.  Seeing as I'm still the newbie(or one of them), I'm sure that I can create more of a style that suits me (of course styles are developed by taking stuff that you like writing about theme wise, and blending them with themes from other bloggers...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, if you do it right).

These couple of days also will give me a chance to think about my own top list of cards that I would really like to own.  Thinking about it will probably lead me to two lists...one for baseball (top 25), and one for hockey (top 20).  I'm sure that you have figured out why it's 25 for baseball, and 20 for hockey, but I'm gonna go one step further, and make those lists represent an actual roster.  Now hockey is pretty much set the way that teams dress their skaters for each game (12 F, 6D and 2G), but baseball is a little different, based on the time of season, upcoming schedule (busier times of the season sometimes necessitate an extra pitcher on the roster), but I'm going to go with a more standard roster lineup (12 P, 2C 1 1B, 1 2B, 1 SS, 1 3B, 4 OF, 1 Middle Infielder, 1 Corner infielder, and a DH).  The cards from both sports will be a smattering of RC's, Jersey/Patch cards, autos, etc.   This will also give me an opportunity to learn more about players in both sports, especially guys that I loved to hate but really changed the game (Rickey Henderson for one), and other players that were part of my favorite teams growing up (Darryl Sittler, my all time favorite Maple Leaf).  Look for these posts coming over the next few weeks. 

In addition, another feature that I plan to start doing is "Packs across America".  My wife and I love to travel, and we have family spread out across the US and Canada.  Naturally, the card fiend that I am, I will take the opportunity to buy packs at a LCS or a big box store.  Look for those posts, and see if I have any better luck with packs when I travel than what I have locally.  I also may enlist some of my trade partners to help me out with this as well...look for that in a future post/email coming your way.

Another feature that I plan to do monthly is "hobby box of the month".  An earlier post of mine lamented the fact that I went 8 years between the purchase of hobby boxes.  Well, that is no more.  I plan to buy a hobby box once a month towards the end of the month to break and post for my readers.  It may be a current product, such as the '11 Heritage BB box I busted not too long ago, or something older that I may be trying to put a set together of (as long as I can find a hobby box). 

My Thursday posts that I've done over the past two weeks, the "random thoughts" will also continue.  Sometimes it's nice to not have to come up with a specific idea for a post, just random ideas or junk that pops into my head.

If you have anything you would like to see me write about/post..send me an email or post a comment, and I'll be sure to discuss it with you to maybe develop it further and feature it.  I also have an idea that will feature another blogger based on current topics that are hot in the blogosphere.  Lots of ideas, lots of time to get them rolling. 

Thank you for reading....Robert