A couple of years ago, WNYC, a public radio station serving the New York Metropolitan area, solicited listeners' "uncommon economic indicators." The indicators typically included things like store openings/closings, rent control stories, etc., and the submissions took the form of very short stories, photographs, illustrations, etc. The idea was to tell the complex story of how the economy has shaped the city and the lives of individual New Yorkers in a completely different way. I think it would be cool to do something like this for card collecting. Users would submit their "uncommon card collecting indicators" that would collectively tell the story of how the hobby has changed for them, personally. In terms of the winners, Blowout could judge the entries and choose the best ones to encourage thoughtful participation or could simply do a random selection.
If you wanted to take this further, Blowout could compile the stories and create a web site that would organize the stories by geography (similar to
what WNYC did) or by time (i.e. the number of years the user has been collecting). If Blowout gets enough entries and is able to attractively present the information, I think it could be of interest to the broader card collecting community. The site traffic alone could be great promotion for Blowout, especially if you promote it using social media, and the reach would last beyond the time frame of the contest, itself.
