First Annual Card Blogger Convention - June 2017

This is the fantasy itinerary for a card blogger convention to be held over a weekend in June, 2017.  I figure we get a convention room in a hotel complete with sponsors and name tags and festive t-shirts and such.  Here's what I envision:

Friday Night

Meet and Greet – Everybody meets up in the hotel conference room and introduces themselves. Everyone will wear name tags depicting their name and blog.  Faces are finally put with names and blog personalities.  Instant camaraderie ensues.

Saturday

Introductions – Attendees introduce themselves and give a quick run-down of their blog, what they collect, and what they hope to get out of the weekend.

Topps Talk and Q&A Session – The VP of marketing for Topps comes in and thanks us for our business.  He/She talks for a while about the company and their plans for the future.  Ends with a joke about Panini not having a license.  Dime Box Nick is granted a Summer internship following the Q&A.

Panini Talk and Q&A Session – The President of Panini America comes in and thanks us for our business.  He/She talks for a while about the company and their plans for the future.  Ends with a joke about Upper Deck not being allowed to use current player images.  The Prez takes a grilling for not having logos on their cards but leaves everyone satisfied as Panini brings better giveaways than Topps.

COMC Talk and Q&A Session - The President of COMC comes in and thanks us for our business.  He/She talks for a while about the company and their complete dominance of the sports card valuation industry.  Ends with a joke about Beckett.
 
Card Blogger Workshops

- Organization Workshop – Everybody share their best practices for organizing their collections. People could provide photos of their methods as well as the overall look of their collections, maybe even a flow chart or two.

- How to Ship Cards – Best practices for shipping PWE’s, cost-effective use of boxes vs. bubble mailers and when to go Priority Mail, proper tape usage.

- One-stamp Contest – To take place after the How to Ship Cards workshop.  A few weeks before the convention everyone mail a sealed PWE to one non-interested blogger using only one forever stamp.  We bust open the envelopes and see who could successfully ship the most standard-size cards in a single PWE with one stamp without the USPS returning it for additional postage.  Blogger with the most cards in their successfully-delivered PWE keeps all sent cards and whatever donated prizes we can muster.

Card Blogging Live! – A new take on the delivery of a blog post.  Bloggers give a live presentation in lieu of a written post and talk about whatever they would have otherwise talked about in the written post.  Visual cues on a large projection screen with musical accompaniment encouraged. Dramatic readings of existing blog posts welcome.

- Night Owl – Greg does a dramatic reading of a trade post where he received ’72 minis.  All are very excited to hear him give a hearty “miiiiiinnnnnnniiiiiiiiiiis!!!” live in person.

- gcrl – Jim explains his distrust of the SHIFT key and shows off some of his favorite double-play cards.

- The Junior Junkie – T.J. spouts off about how amazing Griffey is or whatever.  The Topps rep offers T.J. a position as an outside consultant, T.J. accepts and runs off to spend the money he hasn’t even made yet on Griffeys.

- Tim Wallach – Corey gives a prepared talk the transcript of which gets published in Sports Illustrated under the title “The Art and Science of the Single-Player Supercollector.”  The movie deal that eventually comes from this pays for the entire next year’s convention (and a crap load of Tim Wallach cards).

Blogger Box Social – Everybody gets loose and drinks martinis (or whatever they like), and we talk about balancing blogging with everyday life.  Trades discouraged at this event.

Blogger Bar Hopping – Boom.  Chris of Nachos Grande and Matt of Red Cardboard get into an argument about who’s the bigger Barry Larkin fan, decide to settle it by going shot-for-shot with Jaegermeister.

Sunday

Brunch – Chris and Matt do not make it to this.

Box Break – One massive box break!  We get a dozen boxes of cards and everyone picks teams like normal (there should be a big fight for the Dodgers).  Perhaps we can get Topps and Panini to donate a case or two to this.  Can you imagine?

Trade Extravaganza – Everyone trades their extra pulls from the break as well as anything else they brought with them.  A huge chunk of this event would probably be bloggers having the rare opportunity to give other bloggers trade stacks in person instead of having to mail them.  Everyone’s carry-on is way too heavy with cardboard for their flights home.


See you at CBC 2017!