I have to be completely honest, this has not been the best Christmas season for the Budget Collector. My personal hobby purchases have dwindled down to less than a drip from a leaky faucet. That is to say, I'll purchase a pack here and there of well, Updates and Highlights mostly, and mostly because it's two bucks a pack. Since the 09 products haven't quite hit yet, and the budget is tighter than a dolphin's rear-end, there isn't much keeping me interested in the hobby at the moment.
That isn't to say there isn't interesting things going on. I've been watching more than a few box-breaks on the intraweb tunnels, some a bit more interesting than others. The Topps Sterling Baseball double box break where the guy pulled a Honus Wagner foldout, then pulled a Reggie Jackson auto-jersey was sweet. The Football break from Chris Cooley featuring Clinton Portis was so much fun it actually made me laugh out loud. However, the best video I've seen recently was the one featured on Wax Heaven yesterday. This quite literally, is the best box-break video I've ever seen. Beats out the one from the guy using a light saber to open a box of Razor. I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it, but it's just fantastic, stay to the end, it's worth it.
I'm going to kill two birds with one stone here and post my Christmas and New Year's Entry together. I'll be leaving for Utah tomorrow for the remainder of the calendar year. I'll be back in Los Angeles on the 31st, but we'll be driving to Las Vegas the next day for the weekend. While I don't have any specific plans for card posting over that time, I can't imagine that I'll come up with anything earth-shatteringly important, so the blog will probably be a bit more quiet than normal.
As to the future of this blog, I'd like to think that in 2009 I'll become more focused on the "Budget" aspect of the blog title, my whole raison d'etre. This blog will never be similar to many other blogs, in that my budget basically doesn't give much leeway for trading card purchasing, so I won't be busting boxes of product on Youtube, nor will I ever do a "pack a day" or "card of the day." I may feature a specific card from time to time, and I'll always continue to show off recently purchased/pulled cards, but I'm really going to try to focus on the deals, steals and specials of the industry.
Here's my obligatory Budget portion of the blog then:
Tomorrow is one of the busiest shopping days of the year, I don't need to point that out I'm sure. While I certainly don't recommend the returns line at any major store, and I realize that shopping on "Boxing" day isn't probably one of your must-dos, if you're looking for card bargains, you just might find some. Many stores will stock up on gift oriented items, Topps Complete Sets, Autoed Balls and other more mainstream hobby items might be clearanced the day after Christmas.
Especially in places that don't typically carry sports cards. So think about your holiday shopping recently. Did you happen to see, maybe a Topps Baseball Card set for $50 at your local Marshalls, Ross or somewhere else that wouldn't normally carry cards other than during Christmas? Well, you should think about checking out those places starting tomorrow, chances are they'll be blowing out their inventory with cuts of 50% or more. Obviously with my other passion in life, toys, this paradigm is much greater, as mass-merchants like TRU, Wal-mart and Target will make just as much money over this weekend as they did last weekend just from gift-card redemptions. I already noticed this morning that there's a Lego Star Wars set on sale at TRU for 30% off it's normal price. That's LEGO, I don't know how much you know about toys, but Lego sets almost NEVER go on sale or clearance, and if they do go on sale, it's usually not more than 10 or 20% off.
I really wish I had more concrete examples to post, but sadly, I haven't found anything truly awesome. If I do come up with something, I'll be sure to post.
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