Al Bundy, for no reason.
I started this blog because I collect sports cards (duh). I've collected off and on since I was a little kid, stopping at times for a few years and then getting back into it for one reason or another, and then stopping again.
I grew up in southern Ontario, in a small town kinda halfway between Toronto and Detroit. This was back before the internet and streaming and all that stuff, so we really could only watch whichever sports were on television. Most of the people I knew were fans of Toronto teams, but there were a lot of Detroit and some Buffalo fans, too.
I used to go to card shows and shops with my Dad. There were tons (shops, not Dads). During the junk wax era, even in rinky-dink little Canadian towns in the middle of nowhere, you would find a card shop. We collected hockey and baseball. All we really watched was hockey and Blue Jays baseball. It's not like we could see Premier League, or even most NFL or NBA.
I was a huge Jays fans because of their two World Series wins. Toronto kinda felt like the center of the sports universe for a while because the SkyDome opened, and we got WrestleMania VI and two World Series titles. I'm a wrestling fan. I'll also always remember where I was when Joe Carter hit the homer to win the 93 Series.
As a kid I had a huge collection of Jays junk wax. I also had a lot of junk wax hockey because hockey was the most accessible sport to collect in Canada. It still is, which is really frustrating because most people don't even bother with baseball up here.
I stopped collecting when I became a teenager, and then started again when I was in university at Western in London, Ontario. I would start up again off and on throughout the years. My degree is in history, so I'm always interested in the history of things and collecting old stuff. For that reason, I definitely prefer vintage cards, and I don't really care about value or anything.
These days I don't have a big collection. Maybe less than 25 PC cards, and a couple of sets. I want to do more vintage set building. I'm interested in vintage baseball, hockey, and basketball, as well as cards for Toronto-based teams and older wrestling cards. Joe Carter is my favourite ballplayer, and always will be. Often, however, I like cards because of their design and aesthetic rather than any loyalty to a team or player. I'm drawn to the old and beautiful.
Besides sports cards, I also have small collections of retro video games, old toys, comics, wrestling magazines, and lots of other junk. I also own a few hundred books. I'm one of these goofballs who stops and starts a lot of stuff without ever making progress on anything. It's something I want to improve as I grow older.
I've blogged before, maybe close to 20 years ago. I'm not sure why I started this back up. I am on social media, but there is really no interaction or community there. It feels like it is mostly chasing dopamine spikes from getting notifications rather than any actual social aspect.
I do have an Instagram for my cards @nowherenearmint. I thought initially I would post there and write about cards in the caption, but that just isn't how it works. I'm also on Bluesky @jeremywall.bsky.social.
I always love reading other people's card blogs. I like it when the blogs are messy and imperfect and feel like a personalized scrapbook of someone's journey through trading cards. I'm always looking for excuses to write about the nonsense I enjoy. And I legit want to collect with others. To me, the dopamine hits from social media feel muted. Turns out that nerdy middle-aged men aren't the main target for social media.
Nevertheless, my intention is to use this blog as a sort of rambling journal of my sports card collecting. Maybe I'll show off my games and comics, too, who knows.
I decided to use Blogger as a platform, even though it feels a couple of decades outdated because it seems like it is what most card bloggers still use. It's good to see there is still an active community of card bloggers. I had thought about Substack. I write a wrestling Substack for fun, but most of the sports card Substacks are more about speculating on modern card values. That community is not something I care to be a part of.
Because I collect mostly vintage stuff, it's hard not to go down a rabbit hole of nostalgia. I am trying to do less of that in life because I think too much nostalgia is an unhealthy drug to distract from current, real life problems. Starting a sports card blog definitely won't help with that since collecting is often nostalgia bait. Nevertheless, I'd like to find a healthy balance between living in reality and enjoying the past.
I hope you enjoy reading my blog, and I'm happy to have you as part of my collecting journey.
