This is a post I knew was coming, but dreaded writing. Let's take the band-aid off: I've decided to close up shop on "Dime Boxes" for the foreseeable future. While I'm proud to say we're nearing the 13th year of this blog's existence, it's felt like more of a limp to the finish line this time around. I haven't been as active on here as I'd like, but I didn't want to let the blog simply rot on the vine in silence. It's no secret that my recent blogging output has been whisper of what it once was. There's a few reasons for this. I've already mentioned that I'm in the midst of a job/career ch ..read more

In news that should surprise no one, I received another COMC order last week. This haul was a bit smaller than my usual massive  (but still north of 100 cards), which probably shows my impatience at wanting a few of these into my collection as soon as humanly possible. It's also worth noting that COMC appears to have fixed the shipping backlog that'd plagued them over the last few days - these came in the mail a mere 10 days after I put in the shipping request! (Remember when we were waiting 6-8 months in COVID times?) Instead of my usual COMC protocol of scanning stuff in batches and ..read more

If there's one thing I never want to become, it's The Joyless Collector. I see them all the time at card shows: the people who walk around grumbling, flipping through boxes in a huff, and just generally not appearing to have much fun. But isn't that why we're here? For fun? I'm not saying there aren't things about the hobby that frustrate me, but in the end there's a reason I'm still here: because the thrill of collecting simply beats out all the negatives. I don't trade on the blogs nearly as much as I once did - writing this means I'm all somehow caught up with my trade posts! - but I do ..read more

There's something incredibly dull about a collector whose ways are set in stone, and I've always had a vague fear of becoming that person. To me, baseball cards exist in a seemingly never-ending universe that's a blast to explore, the good with the bad. If you only live in a small corner of that universe, then you'll find yourself with nothing to do after you complete those three sets you love, or chase down all the cards you need of your favorite player. As much as I love chasing that eternal string of cardboard, I sometimes worry about my tastes never changing. But lately I've noticed a ..read more

When you think of the term "white whale," I bet a lot of collectors conjure up images of a T206 Honus Wagner or a '52 Topps Mickey Mantle. While a few such vintage Goliaths are indeed on my "white whale" list (anyone have a spare Roberto Clemente rookie?), some of my most-wanted cards seemingly aren't anything out of the ordinary. My most recent COMC order helped strike down one such behemoth with a...1990 Topps TV Bill Buckner? Certainly not white whale material, you'd think. Yet every major card company somehow ignored Buckner's largely forgotten second stint with the Red Sox in 1990, le ..read more

Sad news from Dime Box HQ: come November, I'll be out of a job again. My bosses at the bookstore have decided to retire from the book business, justifiably so since they've been selling books for almost as long as I've been alive. Selfishly, I'm bummed because this has been the best job I've ever had by a wide margin, and after three years at the place I never had to think twice about looking for anything else (which is more than I can say about my other jobs). And I figured I wouldn't have to for a while. But alas. Simply put, I have no idea what I wanna do next, but at least I have a few ..read more

For the first time since before the pandemic, Dad and I made it to a hotel card show this past Sunday - and I walked out with exactly one vintage card. I'm inverting my usual best-for-last card show structure by showing my '58 Hank Aaron right off the bat here (I'm grinning from ear to ear just looking at it). Even in rough shape, it wasn't a bad buy for $50, and it was far and away the best thing I bought all day. It also has the honors of being the oldest Hank I now own. Truth be told, it was actually one of the extreme few pieces of vintage I saw at all - I was so desperate for som ..read more

Whenever I'm hemming and hawing about buying something, I often ask myself a very simple question: does it make me smile? This is probably why I spend so much time and cash on baseball cards - because, of course, a lot of them make me smile. Maybe it's the pessimist in me, but it seems like a lot of the money spent on the hobby these days is done with a lack of joy - it's more about the pure transactional what can I get out of this? or what can I sell this for? credo. That would make me sweat, not smile. Then again, I suppose a lot of people out there might think I'm the weird on ..read more

There are many great mysteries of the universe, one of which is the question of why I still have a Twitter account.  I rarely use Twitter. I don't interact with people on Twitter. I don't want to see most of what comes up in my feed on Twitter (I refuse to call it "X"). Even the vast majority of the baseball card content I get is the usual sales/breaker stuff I don't care a lick about.  But every once in a while, a light at the end of the Twitter tunnel appears: like, in this case, a message from @raiderjoe that simply says something along the lines of "I've got a big box of card ..read more

I popped into the local Goodwill yesterday with the hopes of finding some binders, perhaps a book or two, or maybe that pair of jeans I always seem to need. I found none of that - but I did find baseball cards! Buying cards at Goodwill is a mythical event (you can count the number of times it's happened to me on one hand), but this time, waiting innocently on the pegs near the checkout aisle were a heap of tightly-packed bags of cardboard, a mere $2.99 a pop. I grabbed seven of the most promising ones and just about ran to the cash registers. The moment I got there, some kind of global com ..read more