Cleaning Up the Sports Card Blogroll on the Fourth of July

Its the Fourth of July!

Happy Birthday America!!!



While many of you are out celebrating our nation's birthday, my wife and daughter are at a dance competition. It's the big one, the "Nationals" where kids from all over the country get to compete after surviving a tough regional season (my daughter's was in February). So this is the culmination of hard work, practice, sacrifice, etc. Good luck sweetheart. We're rooting for you.

Anyway, what better day to celebrate for my son and me by just staying home and relaxing. Something that I haven't gotten to do in a while.

But before enjoying the rest of my afternoon, I thought that this would be about as good a time as any to clean up the Sports Card Blogroll. I can't believe that it's been seven years since I created it. So many blogs have been graced it. Maybe it's time for a makeover. We'll see what happens.

Now I know I've been really bad lately and have seemed to neglect this important duty. But something inspired me lately and I promise to be a bit more vigilant when it comes to the upkeep of my big blogroll. A few weeks a go, the Topps Company tweeted:

@toppscards: Do you read sports card blogs? If so, which ones?

Now, many twitter followers mentioned a lot of the usual suspects. Some tried for self promotion (ahem).

@bdj610: @toppscards Too many to list. Most can be found on the Sports Card Blogroll (bdj610scblogroll.blogspot.com). @nightowlcards has some that I don't

To which Topps responded:

@toppscards: @bdj610 Yep, we check that out. It's a great resource. Thanks for putting it together.

Oh wow. Topps actually has seen my blogroll? Topps actually checks it out?

No, I'm not that skinny. But you get the idea.

That's exciting news for me anyway. I thought, "if they like it that much, maybe I should clean it up more often."

So here I am.

Get ready. After the purge, I'll be adding four new blogs (I haven't forgotten you guys and gals). Let's go.

At the beginning of the clean up, the SCBR contained 321 blogs about the Hobby. Here are the ones that are being removed because they've been inactive for more than six months:

• The Sandlot
• 30-Year Old Cardboard (more on this later)
• A Rookie (baseball) Card Collector
• A Swing and A Hit
• The Wax Fantastic
• 25 Years of Baseball
• From An Unlikely Source!
• The Mojo Beard
• Contrary Guy
• Playing With My Cards
• JonWayne's Autographs
• Kevin's Cool Collection
• The Pack Gambler
• State of the Hobby...I'm Your Average Card Collector
• The Card Raven
• customcardsets
• Sports Cards and Memories
• The Trading Card Manifesto
• 1967 Football Cards
• 1986 Topps Blog
• My 2008 Topps Set Blog
• 1967 Topps Baseball
• 1968 Topps Baseball
• 1970 Topps Baseball
• 1969 Topps Baseball
• 1966 Topps Baseball
• 1972 Football Cards
• 1963 Topps Baseball
• '59 topps: one f/g card at a time
• 1971 Football Cards
• 1974 Topps - Pennant Fever
• Home of the Toddfather
• Retro Jays Cards
• Eutaw Street Cardboard
• Dallas Cowboys football cards
• Once a Cub
• Chipp 'n' Dale
• Goldschmidt Happens
• According To Dr. Price
• Dean's Baseball Card Blog
• Playing with digital baseball trading cards

That's 41 blogs being removed from the SCBR. Well almost.

Brian Applebaum was the writer of 30-Year Old Cardboard. The blog made it's debut on August, 2008 and Brian made it his mission to post about the Hobby he loved and share it with the Hobby Blogging Community. It was a labor of love for sure as he did his best to keep his readers entertained with well written posts and pictures of the cards he received from trades or what was already in his collection.

In one of his final posts, he wrote:

For more than six years, this blog has been a big part of my life. And in that time, I have interacted with hundreds of great people who share common interests with me and dozens of people interested in taking their love for the hobby and the sport of baseball to the blogging world.

One of the most common questions I get asked is, ‘How do you do so much’? My answer is always the same – ‘This is my passion. This is my hobby. For me, baseball card collecting and blogging are linked. And the moment that blogging about my hobby feels like a chore and less like a hobby is when I will stop’.

Well, that time has come. As my personal life has gotten more and more busy with two kids in elementary school while also being very active in sports, my available time has been diminished. The task of logging in a huge stack of cards, then scanning them all, and then creating drafts for all of them, is something I used to tackle with energy and vigor. Lately, that same task has become one that I no longer have time to attack with the same energy.

Two posts later, he bid adieu. He wrote an amazing 12,268 posts on his blog. And now he is enjoying life with his two sons and thanks to an incredible diet/workout regimen, has lost a lot of weight and will now focus his energies on running (a 5K was something he mentioned in his last post).

So with that, 30 Year Old Cardboard will not be removed for good, but will be added to the Sports Card Blogroll Hall of Fame. Congratulations Brian. Good luck with everything. Sorry I missed out on saying good bye and good luck to you on your blog. I hope this makes up for it.

With 41 blogs off the active books, the SCBR now stands at 280. I am going to add four more blogs to the big blogroll shortly and then start looking for more.

As always, if you or someone you know has a blog about the Hobby of Sports Card Collecting that is not listed here, please send me an email at bdj610@hotmail.com or contact me via twitter @bdj610. If you haven't written in a while and feel that you are ready to dive back into the blogging pool, please let me know. I'll be more than happy to add your site back to the active roster.

Although I do understand that as social media evolves, blogs may become less relevant. But they're still there. There are many writers out there still passionate about the Hobby and want to share with the world their collections, their opinions, and their voices. Yours one of them?

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama