There is a Contest on the Horizon!

Greetings Trollites! I am working 5 shifts in 2 days so this will be the ONLY post I am putting up. Tomorrow, March 11th Esther Gin N Juice will be celebrating our 4th Wedding Anniversary! That has me in a REALLY good mood and we will celebrate with a contest. As soon as this blog gets it's 100th follower there will be a contest. The contest will be open to 100 people. No questions, nothing complicated, just leave a comment when it is announced. The contest will have 5 prizes, so there will be five winners. This is one of the prizes. What do you guys think? This is by far the nicest current card I own and I figured that everyone likes Brooks, right? Thanks for reading! If there are more than 100 followers on here by the time I open the contest, it will be open to that many people. I will probably post it on Friday. The follower thing is important to me because I want to be included on as many blogrolls as possible. On occasion I write a good post and really like the idea that 100 different people might see it. Gotta get back to work... Go Rays! Troll out!

Let's Start Thinking About the 2009 Blogger Awards OR Is This Your First Year as a Blogger?

Greetings Trollites! Sorry for the lack of a post today, forgot to schedule one and didn’t get on the net until now. After class today I carried a stack of cards from the 50s. 60s, 70, and even a few from the 80’s and beyond over to Mom and Dad’s house to scan and save them on their PC. I didn’t actually write any posts, but I have enough card images to write card of the day posts for the next two months. By the way, aside from an occasional trade post, that is basically what I plan on doing between now and the start of spring training-writing one card posts about some of my favorite cards, mostly from the decade of the 1960s. I do also plan on profiling every single player on the Hall of Fame ballot this year-with the carryovers included it is an amazing class-there are at least 10 guys on the ballot that I feel belong there. I wanted to remind everyone that are about 700 more hits on this page until the contest is closed. I think it stands at only 24 votes so far and right now the first great rookie of the decade and the last one are in a neck and neck race for the finish. I speaking of course about the 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson being locked up with the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. PLEASE cast your vote for the most iconic, baseball rookie card of the 1980s! In voting you will automatically be entered into the contest. The prize will be the winning card.
Speaking of contests… As you may or may not know, I am a part of the panel that will be voting and selecting the winners in this years inaugural blogger awards. The awards are being hosted by Drew from Drew's Cards and Alfredo aka Wicked Ortega. I am pretty excited about the awards. We will be voting for blogger awards, but also products and inserts of the year as well as top moments in sports. There are actually quite a few awards to be handed out. One of the awards is the Blogger Rookie of the Year. The perquisite is that your blog was started on January 1, 2009 or later. The voting isn’t opened up for this just yet, but I am going to ask you all to start thinking about it. I hope to be able to “host” this particular award (that has yet to be decided) but I am interested in getting some talk going on it. I personally started my blog in May of 2009 (so I believe that I would qualify…) and most all of you were here when I got here. What I am asking for right now is some suggestions or at the very least some names of blogs that would qualify. Feel free to comment with your own blog, or suggest some others that you know were started in 2009. I think this is a pretty great award idea, but again I am ignorant as to when everyone started their blogs, so PLEASE comment here with the names of some blogs that were born in 2009. Thanks in advance dear blog-o-sphere! Oh, if you wanna get the wheels turning-some of the other blogger awards will include Blog of the Year (MVP!), Most Generous Trader, Biggest Box Breaker (another one I might need some suggestions for), Most Creative Blogger and Coolest Blog Design. Go Rays! With the acquisition of Kelly Shoppach we will be unstoppable! By the by… The cards scanned in this post don’t have any actual relevance to this topic-well not really… They are all former Rookies of the Year (and mainly bad-ass cards) and that is what I am looking for help with. So once more so we are clear... These aren't nominations, just mentions so I know who qualifies. You can list thirty blogs including your own as long as they were started in 2009. If you have any questions or input, please contact Drew through his blog. Thanks! Troll out.

Hello 50 GRAND!!!

Greetings Blog-O-Sphere!!! I just finished class and walked over to the computer lab (the secret spot where BlogSpot isn’t blocked by the school’s firewall) and I called up my little blog to see it standing at 50,001 hits!!! Thanks to any and all of you who have checked my little page out over the past 6 months. I never thought I would reach a milestone like this, I swear I still wonder if anyone reads this ever. Whether anyone reads it or not, people are clicking on it and all the amazing traders out there are trading with me, so it is serving its purpose. Anyway, my lack of a proper computer has made me nervous and I nearly quit, but I received so much support from other bloggers and all of my trading buddies that I decided not to give up, rather to go harder than ever and start by offering a contest to celebrate this personal milestone. I’ve had to work a little bit harder, be a little more focused and get comfortable outside of the house, but its been working so far. I am a little slow and six months later I am not much savvier with BlogSpot than I was when I began, but I am learning little tricks. I figured out how to schedule posts. On Saturday I spent close to 12 hours locked up in my Dad’s home office with a box of cards. I was able to hammer out 7 posts and schedule them to cover almost every day this week. Justin suggested to me (via email) that I check out Black Friday deals on computers. This was a pretty great idea and I did and found a 4 Gig laptop at Best Buy for under 400 bucks. I don’t really have anywhere near 400 bucks, but it gives me a goal and something to reach for. I think we dropped over a thousand on our last computer, so I was imagining having to pay that much again. I got a phone call today from work and I have been put on Wednesday night’s (which had been one of my night’s off) to work permanently. Wednesday is a really busy night and one of the longest nights (and best money) shifts, so I am pretty excited. I couldn’t save any money working 5 days a week, but I was getting by. I plan on stashing away everything that I make on Wednesdays as my computer fund. Anyway, I am babbling, but I am excited about the good work news, the blogging milestone and basically everything that is going on in the Blog-O-Sphere right now. I mentioned before that I won’t be buying any new product now or throughout 2010. Until I get a computer, scanner, new digital tape recorder and a better telephoto lens (which could take all year) I won’t ripping any wax at all. I do love trading with everyone, but I have to set my priorities and draw the line somewhere. One place that I didn’t draw the line was buying up prizes for my 50,000 hit contest. I have (at home) one copy each of the following: 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson, 1985 Topps Mark McGwire, 1982 Topps Cal Ripken, 1984 Topps Don Mattingly, 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. and 1986 Topps Traded Barry Bonds. Whichever card is voted the winner will be the grand prize. If I can get 100 of my friends in the blog-o-sphere to play along and enter the contest, I will give out other cards, too. It’s an easy contest to enter. Follow the blog, choose what you think is the most iconic rookie (baseball) card of the 1980’s and leave a comment on this post or the original one. I will run the voting until I stumble into hit #51,000 and after that I will randomize all of the entrants and chose a winner, or perhaps 4 winners. PLEASE, please, please help a Troll out and enter the contest, vote for your favorite rookie card and make this a great contest! On a different note I have some cool posts in the works. I have more “Card-A-Day” posts that are pretty fun, I have an in-depth look at the 1974 Topps Traded set, plus a player by player profile of everyone on the 2010 Hall of Fame ballot, plus a couple of trade posts. I am having car issues (again) and am riding my BMX bike to school and work for now, so I haven’t checked the post office in a few days. I hope by the time I get there it is overflowing with goodness. Anyway, congratulations to the Collective Troll, seems like someone is actually reading it! PLEASE vote for the contest-at present there are only 19 entrants so the odds are in your favor! Thanks to everyone for their support. The Blog-O-Sphere rocks! Troll out.

The Troll Lives!!!!

Greetings blog-o-sphere!!! Oh how I have missed this! Thanks to all of you who were concerned about little old me in my absence that really does mean a lot that folks noticed… I can’t say that I am back, because I am not. Right now I am at work and my shift is over, but I bribed a co-worker to wait fifteen minutes for me to type this. Several kind local people (who knew that folks in my town read this damn thing) have offered their homes and computers up to me so I can continue posting and I really appreciate that. Until I get a computer at home again I won’t be able to bore you all with my trademark uber lengthy posts and I probably won’t be able to write many long trade posts or anything that requires a lot of scanning. I have 3 people who have offered to let me use their computers so I can stay in the “game” but I don’t want to wear out my welcome too quickly. I can type trade posts at school, but will have to keep the scanning to a minimum. The posts that I plan on doing “on location” will be short “card of the day” type posts. Most of my collection is Rays cards, but I will try and mix things up with random and oddball type stuff. I will also try and update my other blog, too. This blog and my identity as the “Troll” has become a pretty big part of my life and I have to say that I feel pretty empty without it. I value the friendships and camaraderie that I have gained being a blogger. On a collecting note-I am broke, will probably continue to be broke and I don’t plan on ripping any wax anytime soon. I’d love to, but I have to prioritize and be realistic and I can’t afford to take 3 dollar gambles on packs right now, so I am going to say that I don’t plan on tearing up any 2010 product. I still have some cards left over for trading-as a matter of fact I have quite a few from 1971-1984 Topps, so bring on the want lists! I don’t think that I will be able to trade like I had been doing, but I enjoy it too much to place a moratorium on it either. There are some of you that I am pretty deeply indebted to-Joe, Wicked, Brian, Mike and Bud and I will even up with you guys as soon as I can. I am really going to make an effort to get my want lists in order and together one of these days so I can be a little more focused. I updated my 2008 Topps Heritage list earlier today and I am only 6 cards away from total completion-1-720. I would love to finish that one off! I was planning on chasing ’09 Updates, but I am only 60% of the way there and I won’t be ripping any more, so those are up for trade if you need any. My priorities will be finishing off my Topps (Devil) Rays team sets, 2007-2009 Heritage, 1979 Topps, 2008 Allen and Ginter, 2007 Topps and 1965 Topps as well as my Rays autograph quest. I had a bunch of other sets in progress that I am going to have to bail on which means I have some trade bait… I still do want to push to hit 200 in my Carl Crawford collection, I am up to 194 different cards and I am pretty proud of that collection. Anyway, I hope that I can post a card a day and an occasional trade post without a computer, we will see what happens. Any card that I post is available for trade and one-card trades are definitely cheaper on postage, so lets see how that works. In an effort to expedite getting a new scanner and computer I am considering placing ads on here, I am thinking about Google Adsense. Any suggestions or objections? Anyway, I am thrilled to be back, even on a limited basis, I have missed the blog-o-sphere so much! I am doing a lot better. I look forward to writing about baseball cards again soon. If I don’t post in the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to all! Oh, I had planned on doing a contest to celebrate 50,000 hits. I am getting close. It will be a simpler contest than normal, but will involve a vote. It will be open to current followers only and should have some pretty awesome prize options. Fingers crossed. Thanks for reading. Go Rays! Troll out.