The Universe Noticed

 So in my last post I put out into the universe that I was going to refinance my Trae Young autograph by selling off other things (mostly cards). The universe got that message.

Roughly nine days after that declaration was made, I made back what I spent.

This mainly came off of the strength of non-sports (Yu-Gi-Oh!) cards.

In the world of trading cards there are things called "staples" which are basically cards that can be played in an overwhelming majority of decks. Naturally these tend to be in demand all of the time so shops are happy to take them in. I already have enough staples for my favorite deck and had extras I can't even use so I figured it was time to cash in.

I did also sell some sports cards and all told the amount I got for those was smaller than what I got for the YGO extras. But I still got back enough (read: more than 0) and I was able to downsize. That's a win in my book.

Amounts shown are in Japanese Yen. Also retroactively applied a sale of cards I made in March to this.

This was also a great opportunity to really separate the "so when push comes to shove, what do you really want to keep?" stuff.

It's not like I wasn't already doing that but previously my thinking was just getting bulk out the door by any means necessary. Maybe even salting the mine a bit and putting in some stuff that's actually good to make the lot more enticing to whoever I dumped it onto.

But now I was dealing with the real remnants of stuff I deemed worth keeping after a move from New York to New Jersey, then another one from New Jersey to Japan.

Not that I'm ever going to start thinking of everything in terms of re-sale value but I've found that I can start to justify parting with some stuff I would've otherwise been on the fringes about just giving away just for the sake of getting them out of the door.

Anyway with the last of my not-loan to myself paid off, I promptly picked up a sports card.

Well kinda.

This is a trading card of a baseball player Akiyoshi Katsuno that's part of a card game called "Dream Order". NPB Card Guy has discussed it before and I even sent him the Chunichi Dragons deck last year.

I've never played it but I did see it in discount bins at shops for gaming cards I went to this past winter. I thought I might as well because this is my first Katsuno card in general and he's having a pretty good 2025 season all things considered (so far).

The funny thing is that I could've totally said this doesn't count as a sports card because it's a gaming card. But now I don't have to tap into my lawyer brain.

I am somewhat fascinated that Bushiroad bothered to bring this set back though for 2025. Not just because it looked like card shops were struggling to move them (though I think they purposefully overprinted in year 1 then plan to scale back and adjust in future sets as more sales data becomes available), but because to me Bushiroad is the company behind Weiss Schwartz and Cardfight Vanguard.

I've never played these games either so I can't speak to how they are as games but the thing is that they look closer to what you'd imagine trading cards in Japan look like.

These kinds of cards with cute anime girls, robots and stuff.

Now this very same entity is dabbling with cards of sweaty men for even sweatier men to play with. Though good on them and the player base if it's actually fun. No knock on folks just wanting to have a good time playing card games. I'm one of those now too after all.

I also know Bushiroad more for being the number one source of these sleeves with characters printed on them that are somehow shipped directly from the factories to the discount bins at card shops everywhere.

These work for more me though, I love these things because they even fit my YGO cards.

Also I'm not sure if Dave mentioned it on his blog but they do make sleeves for all 12 NPB teams. There's two different types. Sleeves that use the team logo and the sleeves featuring each team's respective mascot. No I did not buy the Dragons or Doala sleeves, I opted for the cute half-naked anime girls instead.

Unrelated Scan (but the kind of art you can find on the aforementioned sleeves)

Anyway sorry for that little tangent. The point is that I can once again buy sports cards. Which is good if not for how I kinda haven't been doing that anyway for the better part of the last few months (unless you count cards that come free with foodstuffs, which I have a blogpost in the works about).

Right now I'm wrestling with two philosophies. One is that I'd like to keep momentos of stuff I found neat and cool. The other is that I don't need to keep actual physical momentos, the memories and scans will suffice.

I'm not sure which is more right or wrong, I'm figuring it out as I frequently redraw where my lines are on what I want to keep and what can go. All I can do is make careful considerations, say goodbye to what I feel okay with parting with and see how I feel later.

I think it's just a matter of me acknowledging that I do still have a sliver of cards that I think are cool to have but in the back of my mind I know they're not going to be with me forever. Not the stuff with immense sentimental value to me like the Torrens cards I actually kept or the YGO cards I still have that have a use-case, but more along the lines of various certified autographs which will eventually end up elsewhere. It's just a matter of when the time comes that I'm comfortable with doing that, and money can apparently speed up that process a bit.

Anyway I think this long incoherent ramblefest has run its course for today.

A decade plus into the hobby and despite my constant changes in collecting philosophy and the very nature of what I collect at all, it's stayed with me and joined me through these changes. I do have to appreciate just how versatile and accommodating this hobby really is at its core.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.