Feeling Grateful (Happy Thanksgiving)!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  For me, any holiday where the main event is a delicious meal is great and Thanksgiving takes the cake (and pie) in terms of being a day dedicated to tasty food.  That being said, it's also a day to reflect and be thankful for all that you have.  

While card collecting is barely a blip on the long, long list of things that I personally have to be thankful for, I still thought it'd be nice to compose a list of my "Card Collecting Thankfuls."  Here's that list (in no particular order):

Card Collecting Thankfuls:

Blogging Friends:  Sure, I've never met most of the people that I correspond with on the blogs in person, but I do consider many of you to be meaningful friends.  I'm definitely not the world's most social guy so having an outlet like my blog to correspond with people is great - and I definitely appreciate all of you (whether you only read the blog or if you comment as well)!

Barry Larkin:  Yep, I'm thankful that favorite player was a lifelong Red...but more importantly, I'm thankful that he's been a stand-up guy (so far as we know) since his retirement as well.  When I see what guys like Wander Franco or Trevor Bauer have done, it makes me that much more thankful that a guy that I've invested a lot of time and energy into has maintained a quality collecting status and a quality person status!

Trading:  Without trading, my blog would have died years ago.  Instead, Nachos Grande has been going strong for FIFTEEN years!!  This blog has opened up a number of different opportunities for me over the years.  There's been brief sponsorships, a magazine appearance, and countless gifts and other items mailed to me over the years solely because of my blog.  

Discord:  While I don't have much use for Twitter, I do like the immediate the reactions that a social media platform can provide - but for me that social space is my own Discord.  My Discord is rapidly approaching 100 people and it's a super fun place to hang out, share cards, and talk about whatever people feel like.  If you are reading my blog, I'd love for you to join my Discord!  We have people that share their TTM highlights as well as box break highlights.  We've got channels dedicated to talking about baseball in general plus plenty of other non-baseball topics.  I also run my group breaks from there which gives me another avenue to interact with people.  Definitely fun and something I hope to continue to foster and grow the community moving into 2024.

All of you:  If you haven't caught my main thesis of the post yet, I'm mostly thankful for all of you that visit my blog and/or interact with me in some way (whether that be here, on Discord, or over on TCDB).  Without all of you, there would be none of this.  So, thank you - and Happy Thanksgiving!