Three T206 Baseball Card Sales

Okay, so a long-time wish of mine may actually come true this summer. I've wanted to open up my own baseball card store, or at least deal in them with a guy I do business with on eBay on a more frequent basis. So I took a test drive on 18 cards, and I've done the business math on 3 of them. Overall I made a profit of $149.62 on just 3 cards! Buying on eBay and yard sales in the summer; took just minutes for each; just had to go to the post office. $59.62 profit on the Keeler. $51.02 on the Evers. $39 on the Brown.

Just did all the math. I originally spent $523.87 on all 18 cards. They all sold for $652.90. So the profit was $129.03. Total time buying all these and going to the post office to sell them would be about 2, maybe 2 1/2 hours total. That's about $50-$60 per hour, sitting on my ass in my central air office, with no overhead. I learned: Deal mostly in HOFers; and buy in the summer and sell in the winter.

Willie "Hit 'em Where They Ain't" Keeler, batting. Hall of Famer. Paid $62.88. Sold 1.23.2018 for $122.50. Profit: $59.62.

Johnny Evers, with bat, another Hall of Famer. Paid $44.98. Sold for $96. Profit: $51.02.

And "Three Finger" Mordecai Brown, another HOFer. Paid $30.54 raw, add about $10 to get it graded, mailing, etc. So say $41.00. Sold for $80. Profit: $39.00.

So I sold these three, plus 15 more, via Probstein123 on eBay, for a total of $652.90. On these three cards alone I saw a profit of $149.62. Not too bad. Maybe I'll try to do this part-time over the summer, see how it works.

What Do You Do To Keep Hope Alive?

The question asked to me was: What do you do to keep hope alive while you wait?  The insinuation was: While I wait for the reply from a literary agent, or while I wait for the editor of a magazine I'd just sent my story to, or while I wait for my taking-forever novel to be done.

My response:

1. I look around at others who are only their jobs.  I remind myself that I don't want to look like that, for they often look miserable.

2. I write for myself.  To better understand my world.  To better understand me.

3. I don't feel bitter about the success of others because they don't write what I write and I don't write what they write.  Each artist and his work are a unique tandem, and so I remind myself that such comparisons are impossible.

4. I don't write because of my dreams.  I write towards my dreams.

5. I remind myself that, although agents are not infallible (re: J.K. Rowling), they are also not idiots.  They have to take on projects they believe they can sell, period.  They have mortgages, too.

6. I write different things.  Though my current novel is taking beyond forever, I have finished and sold some short stories.  Though only Alice Munro and two or three lucky others can make careers out of selling short stories, the fact remains that I have sold some, and this gives me confidence--which is invaluable, and can't be taught.

7. I think, "Why not me?"  Stephen King used to work in a laundry.  He lived in a trailer and typed Carrie on a laptop--a busted, old typewriter on his lap. J.K. Rowling was a single mom on welfare with three kids.

8. I remember that it's a business.  Dreams don't sell.  Good writing does.

9. I always have something to work on next.  After I send out a short story, or a query letter, etc., I get busy on the next page of my story and novel.  I don't leave myself time to worry about the stuff I just sent out.  I'm not J.D. Salinger or Harper Lee anyway: One novel probably won't make a career for me.  Best to be working.

10. I write.

What do you do to keep your hope alive?  What are you hoping for?

Contest Winner!

Photo: Cover of Spring 2012's Space and Time Magazine, with my first sold story, "Hide the Weird."

And the winner of the contest, of all the comments on the entry announcing the publication of my last story, is......

Jonathan N.!!!

Jonathan, you've won the issue of Space and Time Magazine.  I've emailed you via the one you gave me.

Thanks to everyone, from Rhode Island to Australia, who commented and participated.

And thanks for reading!

Please stay tuned for more contests and prizes to come.  Prizes will be different, too.

Speaking of that, on my blog Steve's Baseball Blog--Cards and Commentary, I mentioned in my last blog entry today that I will be having contests over there as well, giving away one free 1909-1911 T206 card. These cards are extras of my collection, and are not professionally graded by SGC, PSA or anyone else. But they're cool cards, worth at least ten bucks or more, even in bad condition.

Do you have any collections of anything?  If so, what's your specific favorite in that collection?

Reading Like A Writer: Story Structure

 
Photo: The Golden Gate Bridge, in an aerial view, from the bridge's Wikipedia page.  Click it; it's a great pic.

I've been trying to read books lately with a writer's eye, so that I could learn what makes successful (defined here as published; maybe also as respected and/or successful writer) writers write successful things.  I've had (extremely) modest success recently, and I've been trying to learn why some pieces have sold and why some haven't.  Here's what I've come up with recently:

--Stories sell better if they have a structure, and not just a "this happens, then this happens" kind of feel.  Readers can feel the flow of the structure; they're pulled along by it.  So the story, the characters, the setting--all of that is important, but the flow of the structure is like a double-pull with all of those things.  Stories that are just a series of events don't have that flow, and so the reader feels disjointed right away, even if the characters and the plot and that stuff are solid.  No structure, no flow, no pull.

--The structure we've all learned in high school--the Shakespearean Plot Triangle--is not the only structure to use.  Some stories just won't fit to that form, especially if there's no solid climax in the middle of the piece, or a clear finish for the resolution.  And not if the story doesn't break cleanly into five or so different parts.  There may not be a clear rise to the climax, or fall from it to the end, especially if the end isn't tragic or definitive.  For example, if the ending is more in the Chekhov vein, where you're dropped into the lives of the characters, and they're not done at the end--or even if there really isn't an established end, then the five-part plot triangle won't fit.  And you can't make a story fit a structure that it just isn't made to fit.  You can't force a structure upon a story.

--A three-part story structure that works for me lately--that I think might work for one of my novel manuscripts that I'd been sort of forcing a five-part structure on--is called the Suspension Bridge structure.  It differs greatly from the plot triangle because there's not much building up, nor falling away from, though the ending is usually pretty solid like it would be at the end of the plot triangle. 

Picture an actual suspension bridge.  It starts at the land's edge, and the bridge's cables swing up to the first apex.  This is the build-up of the character, his traits, and his flaws, and the climax, if you will, of the peak there is when he gets something that he wants, that might better his plight.  This thing must change the character in a major way--or it has to at least offer the possibility.  Usually this involves a change in the character himself; it sets up the character vs. self conflict, though there must be many other conflicts to come.  Then the bridge cables drop.  And it's a long, long drop, and somewhere there is a rock-bottom, in which the character is threatened with the possibility of going back to where he started, if not worse.  This is also where all of the conflicts are established for that thing that he wants and here's where the antagonists are established.  This is also where the big reveal of a big conflict happens, something the protagonist might not even know.  But then he does.  Then the next upswing starts; he overcomes those conflicts somehow and succeeds in some way by the apex of that next upswing.  There was such a huge crash before so then, when he succeeds for the next upswing, that apex of that upswing has to be a major victory, much more so than the previous one, and it sort of wraps up the whole story.  The space between these two apexes is the vast majority of the story.  The last descent is not necessarily a downswing--it just has to establish the normalcy again of this character's new life as the bridge's cables connect to the land again.  The dust has settled, and the character's life is a bit more clear, usually in a good way.  The ramifications of the victories and successes are shown, and the character again carries on with his life, and both you and the character feel it'll be better.

This structure is much more open for characterization, and is an especially good structure to use if one of the main conflicts is character vs. self.  The best example I've noticed recently of this suspension bridge structure is the movie The Verdict, which I mentioned in the recent blog about signs you're growing old: it's the movie I sought, made in 1982, and I sought it because I needed to see it again, because it suddenly hit me, purely from memory, that it was the epitome of the suspension bridge structure.

I'll explain how and why in a blog entry to come.

On the Premises--So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season

Just a quick note to say that On the Premises (OTP) has purchased my short story, "So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season" and will publish it in its next issue, #19, online at www.onthepremises.com.  I think it's available in .pdf as well.  And it's free to read (I think)!  It'll be available starting March 10th, or thereabouts, so look for it at that site every now and then.  And while, with breathless anticipation, you're waiting for my story (fourth in the issue, I think), why not click the links of other issues and read some good, free stuff?  I just did.  I read the third and fourth stories of Issue #18, an unusual ghost story and a good time-travel piece.  I wouldn't recommend it if I didn't like it myself.

I'll soon set up another blog entry with more concrete information about this publication and about my piece.  After reading that next entry, please feel free to comment about my story once it becomes available.

As always, thank you for reading this blog, and for reading my other pieces.  I appreciate your support.

P.S.--I actually received notification in February from the magazine that they would publish my story, but I wanted to go through the process of seeing edits, and proof sheets, and signing the contract, before I announced it here.  Since I sold the poem, "An Old Man," in January, that means I've been fortunate enough to sell two pieces within four or five weeks of each other.  I'm on a little bit of a roll.  (I just knocked on the wooden table my laptop rests upon, after hoping I also sell something in March.)  I really do believe that this recent wave of good luck is due in part to the support I get from my friends, colleagues, and people like you, my blog readers, who are nice enough to congratulate me, or to pick me up, when I need it.  So, again, thanks very much for doing that, and I mean that sincerely.