An open letter to my readers

Dear readers,

Things have been a bit crazy here in Dime Boxedonia lately.

As I've mentioned before, I'll be starting at a brand new college tomorrow. I'm excited. And, I'll admit, a bit nervous.

Of course, one of the downsides to the school year is the time it takes away from my hobby. Although I'll forever be hopelessly in love with cardboard, school always comes first. No questions asked.

After a few great months of soaking up my summer vacation, I was prepared for my blogging to take a slight dip.

Then, just this past Friday, it happened.

I finally got a job.

Within a few days, I was hired, prepped, and given my training schedule for the coming weeks. It's still a blur.

I'm glad to finally be in the workforce. I'll finally be able to start helping out around here with things like school books, cell phone bills, etc. And, of course, I'll have a little extra baseball card cash in my wallet as well.

Still, by adding a work schedule on top of my college classes, I'll have almost no time to blog during the week. I should be okay on weekends, but, at least from Tuesday until Thursday, I wouldn't count on seeing many blog posts.

Which is a shame, because...

I decided to spend my last beautiful summer day at one of my favorite places in the world.

The local flea market.

With the looming time crunches of school and a new job, I devoted the day to digging for cardboard treasure. And, boy, did I hit the jackpot.

As usual, I went straight for my regular card guy. He had four gigantic dime boxes on display, as well as his usual array of quarter, fifty-cent, and dollar boxes. And not to mention a couple miscellaneous vintage bins.

I spent nearly an hour-and-a-half at his table, sifting for gems. (And getting a nice tan along the way.)

When the dust cleared, I'd nabbed over four hundred new dime cards, a haul which included the celebratory David Cone at the top of the post. I mixed in a few quarter and fifty-cent cards as well, which you can see in the toploaders in the above photo.

In terms of quantity, that probably would've been a new flea market record for me. I'm almost positive it set a new mark as far as quality goes, too.

As has become par for the course at my awesome flea market, the vendor cut me a mega-deal as well, charging me all of ten bucks for the lot. That's a little more than two cents a card.

Of course, I would've been infinitely satisfied if those ended up being my only finds of the day.

But they weren't.

I was finishing up my day of treasure hunting just as most of the vendors were closing up shop. As I was getting ready to leave, though, I spotted an guy with unmarked box of cards.

Upon inquiring about the price, he told me that they were ten for a buck. Or, a dime box, in collector lingo. Almost instantly, I found a few huge stacks of mid '90s cardboard, which aren't all that easy to find.

It also quickly became clear that these had been sitting around for a while. A lot of the cards were stuck together. It wasn't bad enough where I'd damage them buy pulling the cards apart, but it would've been quite time consuming to pull each one off the next.

After a bit of consideration, I decided to ask the vendor if he'd consider selling the whole box for 15 bucks. I did this for a few reasons.

1) I'd been perusing the flea market aisles for a good couple hours before this table came along. I wasn't quite up to spending another half-hour pulling all these cards apart at that point.

2) It's a long day for the vendors, too. The place opens up at 6 AM, and it was about two in the afternoon when I found his table. I didn't want to keep him standing there while all the other dealers closed for the day.

3) It sure would've been a ton of fun to dig through all those cards. Besides, I'd never bought an entire dime box before.

To my delight, the guy countered at $20, which was fine with me. I'm not a haggler, and five bucks isn't much to quibble over. That's how I took home that huge box of cardboard for a twenty-dollar bill.

And, yes, I've already dug through it. It was worth the $20.

Unfortunately, dear readers, until I can get a handle on juggling school and a job, posting might be a bit sporadic around here. I take pride in blogging almost every day, so this will certainly be a new experience for me.

Have no fear, though. I'll be around enough. During my free time, I'll try and schedule posts for days when I won't otherwise be able to blog. I'll just have to cut back a bit.

I guess it's just part of becoming an adult.

It had to happen sometime.

Sincerely,

Dime Box Nick.