It's December! The Christmas tree is up and the deck I keep telling myself I will finish building is not. I tore down the old one and there is now a drop straight down to the ground from my living room wall, so I clearly have to finish the project in the next couple weeks. In the interim, today I just finished automating a ton of tedious reporting tasks for work. Three hours of weekly work now takes less than 45 seconds to complete. That's a lot of free time that can be directed towards writing about baseball cards more productive tasks.
I profiled 7 cards on CardBoredom in November. The collection grew by 15 cards, mostly consisting of a handful of 1990s Jose Canseco items.
1993 Finest Set Building Project
Five of the cards profiled this month were from my in-progress Refractor set build. These include the subject of one of the biggest rookie chases in the late '80s, the forgotten guy who hit 62 home runs in 162 games, and the pitcher that returned to baseball for two seasons after his Hall of Fame eligibility lapsed. I also came across a hidden pun on a 1988 Topps card and related my favorite Rickey Henderson stat.
No new cards were added this month, though I almost nabbed one of the two remaining refractors that have eluded me. I made an offer to an eBay seller that was accepted almost immediately. The seller messaged me that the card was being prepared for shipment and provided a tracking number. Less than an hour later he canceled the transaction, saying the PSA slab that housed it had been badly damaged. Anyone who has ever been around a farm knows how much BS was about to follow. Within the next 48 hours the seller had relisted the obviously undamaged card at more than twice the agreed price, sent me an offer to buy it now, and advertised his Instagram channel. I'm not interested in backchanneling business away from eBay, and I certainly don't want to anything to do with someone who plays these sort of games.