No National for me. Going to be posting here instead.

I really thought this was the year. My 30th Anniversary in the hobby, the first time I got to celebrate an anniversary- I didn't stop to count what year it was in the hobby until #26, meaning I missed 25, darn it. (25 was 2013, the year I came literally 5 minutes short of dying)  It just can't happen. Although the getting there part is solved, thankfully, by us getting a car. Getting in the door, the motel, the fact that I wouldn't be able to buy anything, it just can't happen. Don't get me wrong, having a car and being able to go to the doctor when I need to- which is fairly often if you include the tooth doctor, aka dentist, is a great thing. But we also paid for medicine with quarters today, so, yeah, I don't have the money to go to the National.

I'm not going to lie- I'm depressed. About it. (before it too, but that's a whole other story. And frankly, even if I was able to go, I would still be anyway...)

So instead I'm going to be posting here every day the first 5 days of August. I have a couple of usual features and 1 new one making it's debut.

I also got the largest COMC order I've ever placed- just over 400 cards- that I'd been building for months and months, and was paid, in part, by the sale of some of the duplicates from that case I did. My family mostly gives me money for COMC now for all gift giving occasions, which paid for 95% of the rest of it.

Considering my thoughts on that case, maybe it's better- for Panini- I won't be there to tell them my thoughts. As it is, they don't publish my comments on their blog anymore, even when I compliment what they are doing. They probably see me as a whiner, but in reality, I LIKE what they are doing- they just don't do enough of it. I don't want to start ranting about them again, and as I know, they don't care.

I don't plan to post all the cards I got from COMC this time- I've done that the last few times, it's a lot of work for posts that are basically "hey look at my new stuff". I'll post them up when I need to, of course, and some will be seen in the coming week, naturally.

For now, I'll show one of them though.

 The order contained three printing plates, and this is my first yellow! With this one, I now have one of each color. The other two WILL get posted, but I am not sure it will be this week or not. This is 2017-18 Panini Contenders #37, and that is Klay Thompson, in case you can't tell. I truly love printing plates. and this order, I think, pushed me past 10 of them in my collection, 2 of which I actually pulled myself. I may have cleared that mark already, I've never stopped to count how many I have. (you can bet I will be doing that soon) Yellow is my current second favorite color, behind green, which is not used in plates. So, I'm pretty happy to get a yellow. The other two in the order were Magenta, which is basically pink.

My point is, stay tuned for some content that I think is going to be interesting- and even if nobody else does, I'm going to post them anyway. And if you can go to the National, if you get any NASCAR promos you don't want, please consider trading them to me. I know they will be in the Panini sets. I would also like to get my hands on any NBA or NHL promos they do, but I know there are more people who collect them you may rather trade them to. If you do get there, have fun, most of all. From what I have seen online there's some incredible, spectacular stuff to see, cards and memorabilia that you can't see anywhere else.

Maybe one day I will actually be able to see that stuff with my own eyes. Until/if then (I doubt it will ever happen), I'll be posting here.