May 20, 2020

Challenging the Blogosphere

Sometimes inspiration strikes at the most unexpected moment. I have spent a lot of time over the past several weeks juggling in-office work, working from home, home schooling my two oldest daughters, and trying to come up with ideas for interesting blog posts in the additional time I've been afforded to spend on the hobby. Last week, my oldest was assigned a 'daily LEGO challenge' as an option for art. She was sharing the list of building themes with me and suddenly the light bulb in my head came on! I started brainstorming a blog challenge theme list. I realize this isn't a new concept. In fact, what I'm going to share is quite derivative of the 30 Day Baseball Card Challenge that was introduced by Tony from Off Hiatus Baseball Cards back in 2017 so I made sure to get his permission before reimagining it. He gave his blessing so I moved forward with the idea of creating topics that I want to write(and read) about. Most of these aren't ground breaking by any means but I hope at least one of these topics might generate some interesting back and forth within the community. If not, I'll still enjoy putting my opinion out there for all to see. Without further delay, I am throwing down the gauntlet to everyone in our hobby community(blogosphere,Twitter-verse, etc).



Feel free to share(if you're so inclined) and make this your own. I'm just throwing some ideas out there. Post on a daily/weekly/monthly schedule, modify topics to fit your specific collecting preferences, or pick just one topic to write about. Have fun with it. Should you choose to participate in the challenge, please share links to your posts/tweets so the community can follow along. I'd love to add to my blogroll or follow some 'new-to-me' accounts.

Day 1 - Favorite card acquired during quarantine 
I understand that this may be a topic that some aren't able to participate in for various reasons. If that describes you, please don't let it keep you from tackling this list. Use day one as a wildcard or skip it altogether. For me, continuing to acquire cards in various ways has been an important source of escapism for me. I've completed several trades and purchases since North Carolina's stay at home order went into effect. My favorite of all the cards I've picked up so far is actually the first one that arrived during this period.



Historically speaking, I haven't made a habit of seeking autographs from actors. However, this one has been on the non-baseball version of my Cardboard Wishlist for quite some time. Trust me, it's definitely not because I am a Game of Thrones fan. I am a fan of the annual World's Strongest Man competition and 'Thor' here has been one of top contenders for the better part of a decade. He has been one of my favorite non-American competitors for just as long. During my time away from the blog, I started to piece together a strongman collection. I've made some good progress on that and will show off some more of it in the future. Since WSM card sets don't exist(that I know of), the only Björnsson cards I've been able to find come from the various GoT sets. I've seen 3-4 different autos from those sets on the market, most at prices I haven't been willing to pay. This design and photo selection was the one I really wanted to track down. Aside from the large series title splashed across the front, you wouldn't be able to tell it wasn't a sports card. The other designs picture him in armor or with gashes on his face. I jumped at the chance to pick this copy up as soon as I got the eBay search notification. Why? First, the price was right. Even better than the palatable price tag was the fact that it's a full name signature. Many of the autos I have seen are signed 'Thor Björnsson'. Prior to seeing this one, I had only seen one other example of his full signature on eBay(though a quick search as I write this comes up with more than a handful of to choose from). I'm happy to cross this card off of my wishlist and it gave me the perfect opportunity to introduce a new part of my collection to the blog!

There you have it, day one is in the books for me. The challenge has been issued.



Thanks for reading.

17 comments:

  1. I already have a series of posts set up and scheduled for Cardboard History, so I think I'll do this one on Twitter. I'll reply with a link once I get to posting it.

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  2. This sounds fun. I'll definitely get involved.

    Good Job! 👍

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  3. Good stuff. I am on board and have posted my Day 1 at https://thediamondking.blogspot.com/2020/05/cardpocalypse-challenge-day-1.html

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    1. Thanks for joining in so quickly. Read and replied to the post.

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  4. Sounds fun. I've got the rest of this months posts roughly planned out, but if you don't mind someone waiting until June 1st to start, I'd be game (although everybody will have probably moved on to something else by then). Also, looking at some of the themes, I may have to cheat a little bit in order to play along...

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    1. Start whenever you can and modify any way you see fit.

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  5. I can try 1, 3, and 4. Have to think about them first though. LOL

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  6. I'll do these in May of 2023 when I'm suffering from writer's block and I need ideas.

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  7. Awesome idea. I found about this challenge over on The Diamond King's blog. Had no idea you had a blog until I clicked the link, but I immediately added you to my reading list and look forward to reading your posts... and doing this challenge. I had just mentioned Tony's 30 Day Baseball Card Challenge in a post earlier this week and mentioned how it was awesome reading everyone's responses. I now look forward to reading everyone's 7 Day Trading Card Challenge as well as writing my own. I should have my first post up next week and do one each week after that. Thank you for getting this started!

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    1. Thanks Fuji. Looking forward to checking it out!

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  8. I did the first one.

    https://viewfrom3rdfloor.blogspot.com/2020/05/card-collecting-12-waiting-for-starr-to.html

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  9. Gonna be hard picking favorites, and I'm not sure there have been any trends so far this year except delays, but I'm grateful for any kind of inspiration at this point!

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    1. Oh yeah and I was just watching reruns of WSM with Hafthor there. Amazing...

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  10. Saw this on Bump-and-Run's blog and this looks like fun. Thanks!

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