Something Strange This Way Comes

Hi there.

Yes. I've been gone for a couple of weeks, but I'm back now.

In the past couple of weeks, I have barely had time to be on Twitter. I have some cards to post, of course, and I have some other items to scan and post as well. 

More on that in a minute. 

But, something very strange has been going on here, and I'm not sure what -- if anything -- can be used to explain it. 

Why in the heck was my last post so popular in terms of views?

If you're familiar with the Blogger interface on your posts to see how many hits your posts get, you know that some strange things can happen there. Depending on how search engines catalog your pages, you might end up with dozens -- even hundreds -- of hits on a particular post. Prior to this year, my record number of hits for any one particular post came on the handwritten post contest idea that Gavin came up with last year. It was an incredible 1574 hits.

Then I decided to title a post, "Bowman's Coming, But I Need to Post Heritage." That was my most recent post before today. I had all kinds of stuff going on lately so I haven't been paying much attention to the blog or collecting generally, so I was a bit surprised when I looked at my post list today and saw this:

Six thousand hits? What in the actual hell is going on here?

I dug deeper. Most of my hits over the past several weeks have come from the US. No surprise there. But, proportionately speaking, my American hits are much lower than normal. 

Here's the Overall numbers:

But here's the numbers for the past week:

I've suddenly become huge in South Korea? Is it that Eric Thames is now a Brewer and suddenly everyone in South Korea is seeking out every morsel of Milwaukee Brewers writing on the Internet? 

I really don't have any good ideas why that is the case. It's just weird.

Maybe it has something to do with my Twitter activities. Maybe. I mean, Twitter is how I got a new addition to my Dan Plesac collection:

Back in March, Redskins fan Kenneth -- the man behind the Washington Redskins site Cardboard Hogs -- posted this Rediscover Topps card of Dan Plesac. I asked him if he would part with it, and he was glad to oblige. He even threw in another of the Dan Plesac MLB Network inserts from Topps Series 1 for me.

Y'all be sure to check out Kenneth's website and follow him on Twitter too. 

I mean you, my South Korean friends. Please follow Kenneth. 

Thanks to everyone for reading, and here's to my getting back to posting again!

Pressing F5 to Refresh The Blog

It's been just four months that I've been "Off Hiatus."  In many respects, I am still way behind in figuring things out.  I mean, I'm still complaining about all the parallels and inserts when the fact is that those things have been filling up packs and collections for over 20 years now.  

In other respect, though, I have a much clearer vision and idea of what I'm collecting and why than I ever have in my life.  In the 1980s, I was a pack rat.  I pretty much kept anything and everything.  In many respects, that is a good thing for my collecting these days because I still have most of that stuff and because much of that "stuff" is Brewer collectibles that I would want anyway.

In some respects, though, I have a lot of cards and sets that are surplus to requirements.  I'm happy to have two rookie cards of Wade Boggs from the 1983 Topps set, but the only good thing about that is that I have two rookie cards of Wade Boggs.  And yes, I'm glad I have complete sets of 1982 Topps, 1983 Topps, Donruss, and Fleer, 1984 Fleer and Topps, etc., but I'm not sure at this point that I care that I have those.  They sit in the same box, pretty much, in which I got them 30 years ago.  I don't look at them.

This type of thing has been gnawing at me lately.  It does not comport with my collecting philosophy in 2014 to have boxes of cards from 1984 or 1985 that are not a part of my Brewers or Milwaukee Braves collection.  Yet, I'm not in a position where I want to jettison those cards completely -- at least not yet, I don't think.  I struggle with that.

I feel like I need to contemplate in my collecting the questions that the great Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin was contemplating while he lived in Tahiti with the massive canvas that he painted in 1897-1898 called, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" As an aside, if you are an art lover and get the opportunity to see this in person in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, by all means do so.

As I think about Gauguin's questions in my head, things get clearer.  I came from a position from which many bloggers have started -- reacquainting myself with what cards I have, what cards have been available in the past, and what cards are available now. I'm close to getting a handle on what I have and what I need. 

All the trades and packages I have gotten from fellow bloggers and readers have helped fill in gaps in my collection.  Before, I could say without reservation that sending me Brewers from any set with a date between 1991 and 2010 would be sufficient to give me 100% cards that I need for my collection.  I can't say that any more.  The window is smaller and the number of sets I don't have is smaller, though the number of cards I think I need seems to grow regularly as I discover additional sets, Milwaukee Stadium Giveaways, etc., that I want.  So, tighter and more coherent organization is needed but it's getting there.

Yet, where I am now is a better place.

With all these things in mind, I've started working on revamping this blog to make it cleaner, easier to use for others and for me, and easier for me and others to find things.

So, here's what I've done so far.

I have nested the Robin Yount collection page as a linked page off my "Player Collections" tab, and I have added the update date to each tab there. I'll still be updating my Robin Yount list regularly as I add new items -- I mean, I still don't have literally hundreds to thousands of Yount items, and I'll never have a "complete" set certainly -- but I'm also working on creating complete lists for each of my player collections.  That level of organization has escaped me to this point as I sort through cards, but I'm getting closer with each passing day of having my sorting done.

Second, I've changed the "Brewers Want List" to being just a "Want List" that will encompass all the cards that I would like to get -- whether it is for the Archives sets, for my Gary Carter collection, for my Brewers "collect everything" collection, or a player collection.  To make them easier to follow and have somewhat less scrolling involved, I have broken the lists into groupings by year.  I'm sure there will still be plenty of scrolling, but it will be less than before. Also, you will see that a lot of the cards and items listed there will have (x2) after them as a reflection of needing two of a certain card for both his PC and the Brewers collection.

Finally, I'm working on listing out my "trade bait by team."  Those lists will not contain all the base set cards I have for each team, but I am trying to list out the more interesting oddballs, relics, autographs, and inserts for each team that I have that I am willing to trade away.  As of this moment, I have completed the Diamondbacks, the Braves, and the Orioles, so take a look if you are a fan of one of those teams to see if I have anything in which you are interested.

So, that's a lot of text again from me.  At least I'm not whining about the 2014 Archives set again.