Tuesday, February 11, 2014

A tale of two hours

I spent an hour last night writing a post and when I was finished, I do what I always do.

I read it.  Then I read it again.  I knew it after I read it the first time, but it took the second reading to convince me that it was crap.  So I trashed it.

I know what you're thinking.  "Hey PATP, a lot of your writing is crap, but you publish it anyway."  Yea well, that's true, but I usually don't worry about it too much.  I was just very disappointed with how it turned out.

I don't know how professional writers do it.  Deadlines, demanding editors, critics.  Yuck.  Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get paid to write about something I'm passionate about, but I don't think I'd be able to fool anyone long enough to cash a check.

Instead of reading the results of an hour of my research, you get to view the results of yet another hour spent with my friendly former LCS owner.  Actually, most of the hour I spent with him was helping him move some cards around and picking out about 25 Rangers cards.  As I was gathering my stuff to go home, he offered me short stack of 5 vintage cards.  I offered to buy them, but he said he was giving them to me because I'd brought his grandson a stack of quarterback cards.  I said thanks and didn't look at them until I got to the car.

This is what I saw.




A 1955 Bowman Chet Nichols.  I've picked up so many of these from him, I may just start working on the set.  I know he has some big names.  I've seen the Bob Feller, but I didn't ask him how much it would cost.




Chico Carrasquel.  That's a beautiful card if you ask me.  You did ask, right?




Jack Collum has a crease down the middle, but you won't hear me complaining.




Good ol' Whitey Lockman.  Have you ever seen a guy pose so seriously?



Here is a 1961 Fleer Home Run Baker, Ty Cobb, Zack Wheat checklist.  Yea, it's a little rough, but I don't care.  I got these for a handful of Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers cards.

I'll take that deal anyday.

6 comments:

  1. Cool vintage pickups. I too would love to get paid for writing about what I have a passion for, but like you most of the time my writing is crap. I also have to trash drafts and start over again. Sometimes I even make things harder on myself and try to salvage some of the crap by editing it. That only makes it crappier and often adds some confusing stuff to read. Some of it gets published on my blog in that semi-edited form.

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  2. All that for some Mannings and Rodgers? Wow!

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  3. Nicely done. I'll say, I definitely don't proofread or put much thought into 95% of my posts. They are just quick hitters to show some stuff off. I leave the deeper stuff to the better writers.

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  4. if I trashed all of my posts that I thought were crap, I wouldn't have a blog...

    so I usually over compensate by adding a lot of pictures.

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  5. OMG THIS POST IS CRAP!! (unfollow)

    Seriously, any one of those cards would be a good trade for Rodgers/Manning.

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  6. I'm always deleting posts (maybe twice a month). I don't even want to think about the hours I've spent writing blog posts only to delete it because my writing didn't make sense... or worse the information was outdated.

    P.S. Great vintage!

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