Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Parts of Sorting Sucks!

For once I read a Night Owl post and resisted writing a book in his comments and instead made my own post. (but it took a couple days)  Usually when I leave a comment on a blog it is a way to long comment that nobody sees but the blog owner.  So maybe I'll make this a habit and post all my comments here.

So, yeah sorting is usually great. A fun thing where you get to look at and touch your cards and it is somehow even therapeutic as all the numbers start to line up and you fill blanks.  However part of the sort can suck.

I have a friend in MO that I used to get cards from all the time.  If you got Bipped (if anybody even remembers Bipping) by me all those cards came from my buddy Joey. I live in AZ now and that all the time has now become a couple times a year he sends me a text that says "PayPal me $25".  Soon I'll get a I'm always eager for that package but it comes with some suck too.  Kind of like a disclaimer, you will enjoy this package but there is some headache involved. 


Look at this package I got from Joey.  I know the lighting sucks cause I'm no photographer but what you see is five team bags.  Four of those team bags have some kind of Bowman card on top and all of them have some kind of Bowman inside.  Bowman is that headache.  I don't speak Bowman.  Bowman and I don't get along at all.  I'm not a rookie guy so I never bought the stuff to get to know it.  All I know is when I have to sort them by year, the only way to tell them apart is that little tiny TM date (that is probably correct but every now and then is off by a year because Topps shovels new cards at us before a calendar flip).  After you deal with the date then you have to decide if a card is a Bowman Chrome card or if it was a regular Bowman Chrome Insert card.  Now usually a letters and numbers mixed together mean insert but evidently Bowman is different.  There are Regular Bowman Prospect Inserts and then there is a whole other Bowmen Set called Bowman Prospects that uses letter number combos just like the insert set, not to mention they use the same pictures half the time.  They tried to tell us that RC Logo was going to make things simple, HAHA!!!   

Sorting is fun, except for Bowman.  Bowman makes sorting Suck!!

Monday, November 18, 2019

Now That Is Customer Service!!!!

I know my postman by first name.  In this day and age I don't think this is a common thing anymore.  It feels like something that old timers would talk about; "back in my day your postman knew you by name."  Well my postman's name is Tom and he comes by the office every day to drop of the mail and say hi.  We have a mailbox outside but he brings it inside every day instead of putting it in the outside box.  It started because of my ball card packages.  They were too big to fit in the tiny box the post office supplies so he would bring them in.  Pretty soon he started bringing in the mail every day even when I didn't get a package.  Every day he'd say hi we would offer him a drink of water.  Maybe he was just doing to get out of the Arizona heat to for a few seconds of air conditioning but even so it felt above and beyond. 

Well Tom had a health problem and had to take a few weeks off of work. No Tom meant a having a smorgasbord of postpeople dropping off my mail.  Wouldn't you know it while Tom was off I bought something off of eBay that never showed up.  The tracking showed it as delivered but I never got it.  When I saw the post person come the next day I showed them the tracking and she just shrugged and said to take it to the main post office in the area and they would look into it.  I was going to but I never actually got around to it.  Around a week went by and Tom was back from his leave.  He came in the office and greeted us all and exchanged pleasantries.  We all said how nice it was that he was back and well again.  In the process of telling him how much better he was than all of the guys/gals that they sent in his place I told him about my missing package.

The NEXT DAY he brought my missing package to me.  It seems we are not the only place he actually stops and drops the mail at.  He delivers all business mail in person so at each stop he asked if they anyone had received a package that wasn't theirs while he was out.  In less than 24 hours he found my package that was missing for a week.  All because he goes above and beyond delivering the mail.  Thanks Tom!!


Above is the contents of the missing package.  It is a Pirates Team Issue from when Bill Virdon was Jim Leyland's Bench Coach in 1986.  This is actually the only copy of this I have ever seen anywhere.  Not only have I never seen it listed on eBay before I have never even seen the image before.