All Good Things Come to an End.

Nothing gold can stay. 

Don't worry, this blog isn't going anywhere. Don't get too excited either, as I'm probably not really back. Every now and then I return here to read my own writing. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but it's true. I love a lot of the things I've written. Coming back here reminds me of good times and it makes me feel good. Don't get me wrong, my life is full of good, and I'm happy. This blog was a primary outlet of creativity for me for many years. The reality is that I don't need this as a creative outlet anymore.  

I may post here in spurts, or I may not. I may disappear from blogger for multiple years again, or I may not. 

Part of my absence has been due to a decline in my collecting of sports cards.  The baseball players I collect have all retired.  As I get further removed from my college years, it's harder to keep track of VT football players.  Mainly, I just choose to put my time in other activities. My Daughter and I just finished playing Magic: The Gathering at the kitchen table. It was a great Friday night. Though they aren't the sports cards I so loved as a kid, I'm getting to show her about collecting cards and the joy of ripping a pack and the pride of filling a binder. 

I could write dozens of posts about all of the reasons I'm not on here writing dozens of posts. 

But I'm here at the moment, so here's some of that good old blogger content:

I just recently acquired a set of 2024 Topps Allen & Ginter.  I used to rip a case and build my own, but now I settle for the ebay purchase.  I still love paging/bindering all of the cards and looking through them.  I have all of the A&G base sets including SPs from 2006-2024, as well as all of the full-size inserts, in binders.  

As an aside, the complete set plus inserts arrived like this:

At first, I was mad. Then, I realized that every single card was put in a separate penny sleeve (all 445 cards!).  Just insane, but an effective way of protecting the cards if you're going to toss bricks of 50 into a box. De-sleeving for the binder took a while but was surprisingly relaxing. And now I have 445 penny sleeves. 

When looking at the checklist for this year, I saw that neither Justin Verlander nor Miguel Cabrera had a base card in the set.  Starting with the first A&G set in 2006, the two of them were the only players to have a card in every set through 2023. So, their perfect A&G run has come to an end. 

2023 A&G JV

Realizing this fact made me think about the rookies in the set. Do you think any of them will appear on 18 consecutive years of sets? Will there even be A&G in 18 years? There might not even be cards in 18 years. 

Time is funny. 18 years seems like forever from now, yet the first A&G set doesn't seem like forever ago. 

One thing I do know is that if blogger is around in 18 years, I'll do a follow up post. 

Or I won't.