Sunday, November 6, 2016

Coralville, Iowa




This impressive assortment of 58 cards was sent by Tim of Coralville, Iowa.  Coralville is a suburb of Iowa City, and not a particularly large one with a population of about 18,000 per wiki.  The reason I know this, is because I looked it up.  While placing the marker on the map for Tim, I noticed another marker a mere half-mile away as the crow flies.  Usually I put the marker near a major intersection for the address, never directly on an address.  So I figured maybe Tim had sent cards before and I just marked it a little further off than usual.  That wasn't the case.  A Hawkeyes fan named Matt sent cards back in March of this year.  It's not the first time I've received cards from two people who live mere blocks apart, either.  An odd development that I never saw coming.

So when I come across two readers who send me Wallachs, that live in such close proximity, I always wonder a few things.  Do they know each other?  How common is this?  How many closet card collector's live in my own neighborhood?  My area (city of 60K, 250K within a 50 mile radius) has no card shops, and no regular shows.  It's a far cry from being a kid in the 1980's when card shops were about as common as dry cleaners.  All which is a long winded way of getting to my latest idea (unless it already exists) and I'm just out of the loop.  Would any you use a phone app that served as a sort of registry for card collector's?  It would have two primary fuctions; (1) A map of collector's in your area.  Sign up, give a general location, and brief description of you collect, and then other's in your area can contact you via the app or vise versa.  Trading by mail is great, but meeting at a local starbucks to exchange set needs wouldn't be a bad thing either.  And (2), a sort of Yelp for card shops.  When I travel, I often look at phone books for card shops in the area, but usually don't want to take the chance driving out to an unknown area for a shop that may not even be there anymore, or may be more of sporting goods store or comic book store, with one case of cards.  Map all the shops, and allow users to post pictures and reviews.  Would you download it?

In any event, thank you for the cards Tim, they're greatly appreciated.

Updated Totals:

1986 Fleer: 108
1988 Fleer MVP: 16
1988 Fleer All-Stars: 10
1988 KayBee: 25
1989 Donruss x7: 313
1989 Donruss Baseball's Best: 17
1989 Fleer x2: 246
1990 Fleer x2: 267
1990 Fleer League Leaders: 8
1990 Score: 178
1990 Topps: 368
1991 Donruss x3: 188
1991 Donruss MVP: 168
1991 Fleer x4: 149
1991 Leaf: 69
1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier x2: 59
1991 Score The Franchise: 137
1991 Topps x2: 187
1991 Upper Deck x3: 227
1991 Upper Deck Checklist: 173
1992 Fleer x2: 89
1992 O-Pee-Chee: 15
1992 Topps: 172
1992 Upper Deck x2: 244
1993 Bowman: 19
1993 Leaf x2: 71
1993 Score Select: 38
1993 Stadium Club: 44
1993 Studio x2: 37
1993 Topps x2: 135
1993 Upper Deck x6: 106

3 comments:

  1. I think an app for finding local card collectors is an awesome idea! Someone should run with that.

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  2. Happy to see Coralville on this site again! Tim in Coralville, I'm the Matt, from Coralville that sent cards in March. The Wallach collector has my e-mail address if you want to contact me, contact him for it. Small world!

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