Tim's Gauntlet: Day 7

Best hobby trend to emerge this year? Hmm, this is gonna be another toughie, as I've never been one to keep up with trends, and will usually go out of my way to avoid something that is "trending".

I can only think of two or three current hobby trends, and Trevor already covered the dark horse topic of bloggers coming back to the fold/new blogs being created, which in my opinion is the best overall hobby trend that could possibly occur this year.

But if I were to pick one based on what has been best for me personally, I'd probably go with the whole "people paying bonkers money for almost anything" trend, which has been a bit of a double-edged sword, but all in all I've benefited from it much more than I've been harmed by it.

If anyone saw, or remembers, any of the posts that I did earlier this year about sorting and weeding unwanted cards, then you already know that I've drastically reduced my collection, and was left with much to sell/giveaway. And this is where I've been able to benefit from this particular trend, as a decent portion of the stuff that I had set aside to sell, just so happens to be amongst some of the more desirable sets right now, and people have been willing to pay mucho dinero to satiate those desires.

Last year was a terrible year for me financially, and this year had been even worse. Now I'm not going to bullsh*t anyone by saying that my money woes had anything to do with the Rona, protests, riots, or even the president; no, this has all been because of my own failings. Not trying hard enough when I was younger has finally caught up with me, and I've been at a bit of a loss as to what I should try and do to rectify the situation, or at least lessen it some. But, thanks to everyone deciding that they must have everything now, no matter the cost, my financial situation has stabilized for the time being -- and I've been able to move a lot of unwanted cards, so it really has been a win-win.

Another positive thing to come from this windfall is that I can continue to do FSF posts, as I've got more than enough to cover all of the postage now, and can also continue to send out random packages whenever I feel like it, which is a win-win for most of you reading.

I suspect though that most of, if not all of, this money that I've been able to make, will likely end up going towards some doctor, or dentists, boat payment at some point, but until then, it'll be nice to have a safety net tucked safely away in the bank.

As for the double-edged nature of this trend, it has affected me negatively too, in that a lot of the things that I usually look for seem to be on everyone's "hot" list, which has pretty much priced me out of collecting for the most part, at least for the time being. Being priced out has meant much less searching, which in turn has caused my interest in cards to wane as of late. But as a whole, I don't really consider either of these two things to be necessarily bad, it just means that I'm able to save more money, and have more free time to read, write, and draw -- and I've been enjoying those things more anyway, so...

I can't think of anything else to say on the subject right now, so hopefully this post will be considered sufficient as far as the Day 7 challenge goes.

It's kind of sucky to think that this is the last of the 7-day blog challenge. I've had fun with these, and am grateful to Tim for coming up with the idea, they've allowed me to show some cards that I probably would've never shown, and have allowed me to talk about some things that I probably would've never brought up... I will miss this series!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.