Welcome Back .. I Guess?

Much like the baseball season does in the spring. I've come back again. I hate to say it's a permanent comeback but I think for now, I'll say it is.

Hi, hello and welcome to the Trading Card Adventure!

If you don't know me, my name is Adam and I wrote the blog Cardboard Clubhouse from 2015 up until 2019. I took a break towards the end of 2019 for various reasons ... writing burnout, work, family reasons, etc. Then the pandemic hit which meant I was working 60 hour weeks from home as an HR call center rep and was tied to a phone sun up to sun down (and sometimes past sundown). Now though, I'm in a much more reasonable job that's a lot less demanding and I'm not working crazy hours. I thought about just restarting with my old Cardboard Clubhouse blog but I really wanted to start fresh with a clean slate. I'll keep those archives online though.

The pandemic also scared off my appetite for baseball. The constant bickering behind the scenes of how the 2020 season would play out and then baseball with no crowds in a 60-game sprint of a season wasn't all that fun, at least to me. Then 2021 was a bit better, at least there were crowds for the games and I was starting to get back into baseball. 

I came back on my old blog, wrote a few posts, then got busy and lost interest again. Then the lockout killed the 2021-22 offseason and when it was finally resolved, I was just so annoyed and aggravated that I watched little to no baseball at all. Didn't help that the Reds went into heavy rebuilding mode, were downright awful and lost 100 games for the second time in club history either. I started to get interested again though during the playoffs when Cleveland was making a pretty decent run.

Anyway, this offseason I've rediscovered my love for baseball again. Not sure how or why. Maybe it just one of those things that just ebbs and flows as interests change. I know my team is going to be bad but I feel a sense of optimism despite that. And with my interest in baseball coming back, I bought some cards. 

The cost of cards, like everything else, went up too. A blaster box that once was $19.99 is now $24.99. That kind of turned me off of stuff but I figured the price won't go down so I might as well. The first blaster I bought was 2022 Archives. It was decent enough and fun to open. Then a few weeks later I saw a 2023 Topps was out. I bought that and, you know what, I really liked it. I liked it enough to buy another box (which I plan on writing about here soon). 

It also got me curious about my cards that I haven't touched or looked at in a really long time. I pulled out a binder, blew the dust off the top and flipped through it. I'm pretty sure I smiled looking through all those cards. I pulled out another one and did the same thing. Memories flooded back. Along with the memories, I also realized my cards were in complete disarray. 90s cards were mixed in with newer cards. The 80s were mixed in with the 60s. Red Sox and Yankees were all jumbled together. 

Complete chaos I tell you!

So, I've said all that to tell you this, that I'm back to writing about cards again. Yes, this will be primarily about baseball cards but there's other stuff too I'll write about ... sports cards like football, hockey and wrestling, some comics and action figures too. Basically anything I can find to write about but above all this will mostly be about cards. Writing is my passion and I hope that I can share some of it with you, the readers.

Starting this blog, I have two goals. First my main overall goal is to have fun while going through my collection. I won't be doing a bunch of box breaks or showing off high-end expensive stuff or anything like that. I'm a collector on a budget so this will be more of an appreciation of cards in my current collection, cards I might already be familiar with or cards I've yet to (re)discover. My second goal is to reconnect with those in the card community I've lost contact with, be it through commenting on others posts, talking cards in general or other means. 

This blog is and probably will be a constant work in progress and posts will probably be slow to start with but I’ll be around, writing and posting when I can and commenting on others blogs in between posts here. I hope you'll join me on this adventure while it lasts and let's have some fun together.