We’ve got day two of our Black Friday sale today on Pittsburgh Baseball Network, offering PBN Baseball Card Packs, discounted subscriptions, free shipping deals, and more. For more information on all of the sales, check out the respective sections below, or head over to the PBN Shop.
Today is Small Business Saturday, a day where we all take our focus away from the big box retailers, and shift to the businesses that really need our support. I can’t think of a more important year to support a small business than this year.
As I sit here, I stare around the spare bedroom of my house that was turned into an office. I sit at the desk with monitors and printers in front of me. A couch sits against the wall to my right, with a white board above it featuring all of the future plans for PBN. Above that is a Louisville Slugger bat with the Pirates Prospects logo. My cat sleeps on the chair beside the window.
That sounds normal for any office of any business size, outside of maybe the cat, though that should be some kind of regulation.
Here’s where things differ: Around the room you’ll also find various shipping areas. Baseball cards. Vinyl records. Video games. Anything that has value on an online market, allowing me to quickly sell some items if my business needs a temporary boost.
That’s something you learn when running a business for over a decade. You don’t have a guaranteed salary, and there are some variables which will lead to you ending up falling short of projections.
When a large corporation sees a loss in a given month, the stock price dips. The company doesn’t go out of business, and the owner of the company doesn’t have to worry about restarting his life. It’s just a blip.
For a small business, that blip is a heart beat. You have a bad month, and it could mean the end of your business. You have a bad year, and you have to grind it out to survive. You have a year where there’s a global pandemic, the start of a recession, and economic uncertainty all around, with no help from the government?
Let’s just say I got plenty of practice weathering through bad storms on this site. Whether it was the early start-up days to the post-2015 days when the Pirates started to decline, we’ve been able to grind it out and keep things together with your support. That’s made it possible to provide a site that no other team has.
Storms can still kill a business, and we’re in a Category 5 economic storm right now. If there was any year to show your support to a small business, this would be the one, as it could mean the life and death of that business.
We’re offering a lot of products this year that will help you finish your holiday shopping, while also helping to support this small business through a rough time, ensuring that we make it to the 2021 season. Your support has kept us going for years, and it’s never been more appreciated than now.
If you’d also like to support in a round about way, and you’re a music fan, you can check out the records I’ve got for sale.
Order your PBN Card Packs today (limit of 10 packs per customer) by heading over to the PBN Shop!
PBN Card Packs
Each pack of cards will include:
- 10 Cards Total
- 7 Prospect Cards
- 2 MLB Cards
- 1 Rare Card
- Bubblegum Not Included
Rare Cards Include:
- Jameson Taillon Rookie Cards
- Jameson Taillon Refractors and Inserts
- Ke’Bryan Hayes Rookie Cards
- Ke’Bryan Hayes Refractors and Inserts
- Mitch Keller Rookie Cards
- Mitch Keller Refractors and Inserts
- Travis Swaggerty Rookie Cards
- Travis Swaggerty Refractors and Inserts
- Cole Tucker Rookie Cards
- Cole Tucker Refractors and Inserts
- Aaron Shortridge Rookie Cards (Small quantity with refractors included, only available on PBN via card packs)
- Clay Holmes Rookie Cards (Card photo shot by Tim Williams of PBN, refractors included)
- Refractors and Inserts of Quinn Priester, Sammy Siani, Deon Stafford, and other players!
We’re also offering 30% off individual cards using the code CARDS at checkout.
Subscription Discounts
We’ve been operating on a sort of “honors system” with subscriptions the last few months. We’ll be putting the paywall back up next week as we launch into our top prospect countdowns, and report on all winter league action and offseason news.
We’re offering massive discounts on subscriptions this weekend, giving you access to the site for 50% off our regular prices. Your subscription will help support this site over the offseason during this difficult time, while also giving you access to our updates on the Pirates, 365 days a year.
Note: Subscriptions are purchased separately from other products.
Free Shipping
This weekend only we’re offering free shipping for all orders of $40 or more. The discount will automatically update in the cart once the total is reached.
Prospect Guide Updates
This week we finalized the top 50 prospects for the 10th Anniversary Edition of the Prospect Guide. The final edits and roster moves are being made to the book now, and it will be sent to print at the start of December.
This has been a strange year for the Prospect Guide, especially regarding getting information on players during a year when there was no minor league baseball. Rather than releasing what we knew on each player at the end of last year, we worked to get new information on everyone in the top 50, and on as many other players as possible. The result will be the most comprehensive source of information on the Pirates’ farm system, with our exclusive rankings, grades, and reports on every player in the organization.
I know a lot of you have waited patiently for the book to be released. Our goal is to make sure you end up getting the best product possible, with as much information as we can get included.
The digital version of the book will be made available when the book is finalized. We’ll have some previews from inside the book in the next week, detailing some of the new changes to this year’s edition.
The Prospect Guide has always been a massive lifeforce for this site, while also being a key resource that we use to reference prospect grades and tools. I thank everyone who has purchased the book, and can’t wait to get this year’s copy to you!
The 2020 Prospect Guide returns to print for our tenth we are releasing two variant covers, featuring Mitch Keller and Ke’Bryan Hayes. Visit our shop to order these extremely limited items!
- This Date in Pittsburgh Pirates History: November 27th, Dave Giusti
- Card of the Day: 1970 Topps Dave Giusti
