Month in Review - November 2011

(First of all...signups for the "Big Pile Contest" close Sunday night, so post your comment on this page if you want to enter:  http://royalsandrandoms.blogspot.com/2011/11/big-pile-contest.html)

November is done!  Hope you enjoyed it.  I sure did, even though it FLEW past.  With the end of another month it is time for another Month in Review.  Here are my personal favorite posts from what I saw out in the blogs this past month (as always, if you don't see your amazing post here, I probably just didn't see it.  I'm always on the lookout for good reads, but have limited time.).

Top Blog Posts:

• The San Diego Podrace -- I love me some Sebulba!  Nicely done, PRP.

• Another Dayf Gift -- First Moustachas...now George Will!

• The All-Fish Team -- Can you construct a lineup made up of fish-named players?  Night Owl can (and did).
• The Spokesman Jersey Relic -- Do you really want to know where your relic came from?  GSNHOF will tell you.

The last one is not from a card blog, but it still totally fits.  Grantland (Bill Simmons / ESPN) posted their Halloween costume contest winner, and it was Billy Ripken.  Not just any Billy Ripken....but 1988 Fleer Billy Ripken!!! That's quite the costume.  I wonder how many people at his party understood it.  Maybe that guy should just wear that costume around The National....I bet he would get some card-groupies.  Are there card-groupies?  If so....he would get some.

Peace, love, and craziness.

Month in Review - October 2011

As I mentioned in last month's post, I am trying to put together a compilation of my favorite card blog posts from the last month.  Here's the post for October.  It's only a few days late.  :-)  My son's 2nd birthday was this week, so there was some hubbub around that which kept me from posting earlier.

Without further ado, October 2011!

Post of the Month
Napkin Doon's New Nemesis -- As Lisa Simpson says, "Everybody needs a nemesis.  Sherlock Holmes had his Dr. Moriarty, Mountain Dew has its Mellow Yellow, even Maggie has that baby with the one eyebrow."  It looks like Napkin has found his.

Runner-Up
Create Your Own Moustachas Card -- Dayf and Eric teamed up for this one.  :-)

Other Greatness
Reading Between the Sheets -- Night Owl examines the color combinations and printed page layouts of the 1975 Topps set. 

The Marshall Fogel Collection -- Link to a video on NBC of a collector who is way past "hobby" territory. 

Steve Yeager -- Cardboard Gods isn't so much a trading card blog, as it is an autobiography with a trading card framework.  He's got a young kid, so I can relate to some of what he's talking about as he discusses parenting here.  He's got a really unique voice which I really like.

Fun with Cards -- Original Baseball Card Rap illustrated with card

The Best Liquorfractor -- What a great pull!! :-)

The Hierarchy -- Another Night Owl post -- how he organizes his cards by brand.  This looks like his "Brand Power Rankings" to me. 

The Danny Woodhead Collection -- DW Supercollector

Month in Review - September 2011

First off, I now have 15 followers/subscribers, whooo!!!  Thanks for getting in on the ground floor. I will be running a contest for my followers before the year is over that will have 10+ winners and should have some fun elements (by which I mean mystery cards and stealing things from other people). 

There are so many great blogs out there, and it is hard to keep up with all the opinions, insight, and just plain fun that some of these blogs are providing.  Out of the 300+ active blogs on the Sports Card Blogroll, I follow around 40...any more than that and I fall behind, then delete my reader queue and just start over.  I wish I could get all the best articles from one source, but "best" is clearly subjective.

However, I can share my "best" with you guys.  I came up with the idea to do a "Month in Review" of my favorite posts from other blogs over the past month (I thought about this last week, so this is more like 1/3-month in review).  Here were the ones that I found significantly helpful, insightful, funny, or creative.

September 2011
1) Great Sports Name Hall of Fame -- Card Finding Tips: Online Stores
GSNHOF lists 13 different e-commerce sites for buying cards.  Had I already heard of several of these?  Yes.  Had I heard of them all?  Definitely not.

2) Indians Baseball Cards -- "Diminished Capacity" movie
IBC's post introduced us to this movie, which was new to me.  It's on my shortlist "to-see" for the near future.  I still haven't seen "The Blind Side" yet (really, Josh?  Yes, REALLY), so this will have to wait until after that.

3) Sewingmachineguy -- Jason Hanson is Great
This post has a ProLine NFL card.  I loved those things when they came out and still do.  They were weirder than usual, but still "normal" enough to get printed.

4) Napkin Doon -- "Doonboggle"
Anyone who is adding new a new word(play) to the collector's lexicon gets mad props from me.

There you have it.  That's what caught my eye in the last 10 days.  I'll be back with a bigger list at the end of October.  If anyone sees a post somewhere that you think is exceptional, please let me know.  I will try to keep my eyes open to get a broader range of excellent posting on here next month.