Ten years ago today I started this blog. While deciding what to add to the side bar, I added the little box to the right hand column asking people to send me their Tim Wallach baseball cards. It was sort of a joke. About a year later someone actually did it. In January 2012 the "Emerald City Diamond Gems" blog sent me 7 Wallach cards in the mail. I remember staring at them on my desk in disbelief. I can't say I actually expected anyone to ever send any cards.
Since then I've been flooded with cards from generous readers from all over the Country. It's still a thrill every time a random envelope shows up, and as you may have guessed from the photo above, I've saved every envelope (or at least a part of the larger ones) that I've ever been sent. I also, thankfully, decided to keep a chart of where every envelope I was sent came from on a Google Map. It was on a whim, but it's become one of my favorite things about this blog.
When I hit all 50 States I I'll probably print this thing out and frame it in my card room. Get your act together Montana.
Prior to starting this blog, I had been playing around with a random card blog I created called "Classon Ave." There wasn't much of a theme to it, other than to post random cards and write about them, one or two at time. It sort of evolved into a thing where I would write about something random, usually about sports, and then post cards that were loosely related. However I found I was always resisting the urge to post Wallach cards, and for the most part not posting any, as I didn't think they would interest anyone besides myself. After about six months of this, I created this blog. The idea wasn't that anyone would want to read it. It was going to serve as more of an online data base of my cards. A way of keeping track of what I had. The first Wallach card I ever had as a kid was his 1983 Topps card, and that's what I went with for the first post. Here's the post that started it all back on February 11, 2011:
And finally, here's a look at just how closely 1983-1986 track with each other. I would wager that 1982 would fall more or less in line with this set if Wallach's rookie card had been in say 1980 Topps instead of 1982, but unfortunately there's no way of knowing.
Fleer Base Cards 1982 to 1991
1989 and 1990 Fleer are clearly the heavy production runs for company. 1982 is up there in total numbers but took a much different, less steady path reaching there. Again there is a cluster of steady numbers from 1983 to 1986. If there's anything to be learned here, it's that 1987 Fleer probably had much smaller print runs compared to other years of Fleer, relative to Topps and Donruss. Do what you will with that information.
One final chart for you look at, for now, I may do more of these down the road. I may even take the time to learn how to do fancier ones with better graphics and that easier to read. But for now, I leave you with this, the three companies from 1984 to 1986 overlaid with each other:
On a final note, thank you to everyone who has ever read this blog over the last ten years. I didn't start it as a way to get free cards, but it's turned into that. So in that spirit, I'm going to be doing a series of giveaways over the next ten days. The first one right here on this blog. Post a comment, or just leave your name, email or twitter handle as a comment, and I'll use a random number generator to pick someone. The rest will be on Twitter over the next ten days.
