Stormageddon 2020

If there's one thing that I've learned in the last five years, it's that thunderstorms are very common in Tennessee.

And if I were to add a second item to the list of things I've learned over the last five years, it would be that severe thunderstorms are very common in Tennessee.

That being said, the storm that made it's way through the region this past Sunday morning was a completely different animal... and I've got the pictures to prove it!

I've always rather enjoyed thunderstorms, and could never understand how anyone could be afraid of them, of course there wasn't much to fear from the one's that we had when I was growing up back in Oregon. Sure, there was the occasional lightning strike, and every couple of years a small tornado would touch down in some lower populated area and take out someone's shed, but other than that, there wasn't really much to bother worrying about.

When a storm starts brewing here in Tennessee though, especially a strong storm, tornadoes are always a very real possibility, and when a tornado touches down here it tends to do a little bit more damage than just taking out someone's shed. Historically speaking, tornadoes occurring in my general are pretty uncommon, so while severe thunderstorms may produce wind gusts upwards of 60 mph, inches of rain, and plenty of ground shaking, the thought of tornadoes hadn't really ever entered my mind... at least not until last month!

Back on March 3rd, at a little before 2:30 in the AM, we had a pretty intense thunderstorm roll through. I believe it may have been mentioned nationally, but if not, this storm was part of the system that produced tornadoes in Cookeville (about forty minutes away from me) and Nashville, which led to the deaths of 25 people (19 in Cookeville). That storm was bad, to say the least, but we in the local surroundings didn't get the full brunt of it, so other than some downed tree limbs, there really wasn't much evidence of it's ever having been here -- unfortunately, the same can not be said about this past Sunday's storm.

I have always been a very light sleeper, and even though it might sound like woo woo to some, have always had a knack for waking up before the first signs of an approaching thunderstorm, I like to think of it as being able to detect a disturbance in the force (a rare Star Wars reference). Usually this just results in me waking up, wondering why I woke up, then I hear the first roll of thunder off in the distance and get annoyed, because I know I won't be able to fall back asleep until it passes. Such was the case this past Sunday morning, once again just a little bit before 2:30 in the AM, although it became evident pretty quickly that this wasn't going to be your average run-of the-mill thunderstorm!

I woke up a couple of minutes before the first roll of thunder, which, although still about as far away as my ears could detect, sounded a bit different, almost like a large footstep. My attention was officially grabbed a minute or two later though, when the next roll came, as it was much closer than it should've been, and as silly as it might sound, I broke out in a cold sweat when the next rumble came, which was now only a couple of miles away -- this storm was moving fast, and even a transplant like myself knows that that's never a good sign.

I don't really know how to describe it properly, other than to say that the approaching thunder was not dissimilar to the approach of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, although Godzilla would've been more apt for those footsteps, as every boom sounded like an explosion.

The wind actually arrived first, a wind like I've never experienced! I've never been in a hurricane, but I would have to imagine that the sounds were pretty similar, and as it would later be determined, it was indeed hurricane strength winds. The generator (the power grid is very fragile around here, so a generator is an investment worth making) came on almost immediately after the first blast of wind, another bad sign.

The thunder and lightning wasn't too far behind the wind, which was then followed by the torrential rain/hail. The whole house was creaking and popping, and the sound of the wind was almost deafening. At some point I realized that I was even holding breath, just trying to listen, for what I do not know. Being all the way out where I am, there are no tornado sirens, so you're only real option is to take shelter if you know/think that something is coming -- I am a dummy, so I of course just kept laying in bed, hoping that it would pass soon.

The actual storm probably only ended up lasting about ten minutes, but it felt like an eternity. After the storm had passed, I heard two loud explosions come from the direction that it went, and I still don't know what those were. I never did go back to sleep, but waited until about 5:30 to finally get up. The generator was still on when I did (it ended up being on for 12 hours), and the internet was out, but was back on by the time I got done eating breakfast.

I knew that things were gonna be bad outside, but still being dark, I had to wait until after breakfast to go out and see just how bad they were. Obviously I knew that no trees had come through the house, but I was a bit worried about the roof, which *knocks on this wood desk* thankfully ended up being okay, a lot of other people in the surrounding counties weren't as lucky.

Other than being splattered with mud (think chimpanzee trying to create a Jackson Pollock), the house was/is just fine, but the rest of the property took a bit of a beating.

The pond is one of the first things you notice when looking out the patio door, or at least it is when there's not a 40ft pine down in front of it.

I knew that this tree was going to come down someday, so this wasn't the end of the world, but I do wish that it hadn't obliterated the two young sycamore's in it's path. Although on the flip side of that, it could've fallen into the pond, which would've made the clean up a little more difficult.

The shed behind the house became a pillow for this pine.

Had this tree fallen square in the middle of the shed, it probably would've went right through, so it obviously could've been worse. As such, one of the roof beams was cracked, and a couple pieces of the metal roofing got crumpled, but both are fixable, and the tree has since been gotten off of the roof.

If these two trees, and the hundreds of branch bits strewn all over everywhere (not shown), had been the only casualties, then things might not have been so bad considering. Unfortunately this wasn't the case...

Welcome to tornado alley! This is looking down the driveway from the house. Had I taken this photo prior to Sunday morning, you would've seen many more standing trees, now it's a just a mess of about a dozen on the ground, including two from next door that I highly doubt will be taken care of by anyone other than me. All the leaning trees in the background are on the neighbor's property, they didn't used to be doing that.

As you can see, it's quite the mess. And the best part (sarcasm) was that a few just had to fall across the driveway as well.

Obviously clearing the driveway was priority numero uno, and was done by Sunday afternoon, as was witnessed by the many people who seemed to be driving around looking for damage to gawk at.

As I mentioned, the power ended up being out for twelve hours (thank god for the generator!), as there were apparently power lines down all over, most of which were of course taken out by fallen trees. And there was quite a bit of property damage reported in all of the surrounding counties.

I saw on a local news site that the National Weather Service was investigating the storm, I guess we needed them to tell us that a bunch of sh*t got f*cked up before it could be considered official. A few days later they determined that Sparta - which I'm technically apart of, but live about 900 feet above the actual town - had an Ef-0 tornado (which may or may not be responsible for the train that got blown over) , and Crossville - which I live almost closer too than Sparta - had sustained winds of 95 MPH. And we had news helicopter (probably from Knoxville) flying over on Sunday, and Monday afternoon, which told me that there must've been a bunch of juicy destruction around, because they're not going to send one of their vultures all the way out here for nothing.

This was not a fun storm, and the aftermath certainly hasn't been fun, but the house didn't sustain any damage, so things definitely could've been much worse. From what I've seen online, these storms caused quite a mess across most of middle and east TN, thankfully there wasn't any loss of life this time though.

I've spent everyday this week, except for Wednesday, cleaning up, and have barely scratched the surface in doing so. I'm not complaining, but I've also been pretty tired as of late, and the old brain doesn't seem to currently be firing on all of it's synapses, hence the lack of blog posts... and my having to sit on the sidelines for Matt's April Fool's festivities!

And I haven't even started packaging up everyone's claims from last week's Free Stuff Friday, but plan to start doing so sometime this weekend, so hopefully I'll be able to get most of it out by next week.

Oh, and I got a wood chip stuck in my eye while chainsawing yesterday (it went under my sunglasses), which as you can probably imagine, wasn't very fun. It took me almost ten minutes to get it out, and the residual soreness feels like I got punched in the eye -- take my word for it when I say that you never want to do this! So all in all it's been an awesome last couple of days... how's your week going?


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Free Stuff Friday #3

I don't know about everyone else, but I could sure use a pick-me-up right about now. I can't tell which is worse as of late, the actual virus that's going around, or all of the bulljive that's being spewed forth by the media/politicians (both sides)? Actually I do know which is worse, and it's too bad we can't strike up some sort of deal with the virus itself, you know like "You can take all of our politicians and national media member's, but then you've got to go away... and not come back!". I'm guessing that most of you would be on board with such an agreement as well, and those who aren't, probably will be soon.

Anyways, it's been a little longer than planned since my last Free Stuff Friday, but to make it up to you I've got an assortment of mostly vintage stuff again, mostly baseball, but there's a bit of football, basketball, hockey, non-sport, and even two non-trading card things.

I don't think I have as much to offer this week as I've had in previous installment's, so maybe try to use a little bit of discretion when claiming this time (I don't have any sort of arbitrary number in mind, just try not to go too crazy) after all it would be nice if more than two people were able to get things. That being said, if there's a bunch of stuff still here by say Sunday night, and you've already claimed a few things but still want more, then feel free to come back and claim whatever's left. And as per usual, I'm not looking for anything in return, all I ask is that please make sure that the stuff your claiming is for your collection, and not your box of trade fodder.

And with all that's been going on, if there's anyone out there who isn't too keen on receiving mail right now, just let me know, and I'll be more than happy to hold your claims until you are.

Oh, sorry, one more thing. Be sure to check out Brian's weekly offerings, he's really taken the ball and ran with it! Rod has been giving away some stuff lately as well, so it would probably be in your best interest to go see what's what. And then there's Julie, and her Pick Pockets, which isn't limited to just Friday's, but is putting everyone else to shame with her amazing generosity.

Ok, I think that's everything, so without further ado...

With just a creased corner, Jim is the best of this bunch condition wise, everybody else has a crease through them, and Roy also has some paper stuck to his back.

Please note that since this will probably be the only time I ever have any 1960 Leaf to give away, I'm gonna limit these to one per person (you can still claim other stuff with one of these as well though), at least until Sunday night, if there's any left by then, feel free to come back and get the rest. Update: These have all been claimed.

All of these have problems, Ray is the worst though, as he's got a crease going through him. Update: Ray has been claimed.

All kinds of problems with these two!

If memory serves, these are all crease-free. Update: The N.L. Leaders has been claimed.

I don't think there were any creases here either. Update: All three of these have been claimed.

Ron's got a major indent thing going on his first name, and Tom's creasing is even worse than it looks in the scan. Update: Both of these have been claimed.

 Vintage OPC! Both with problems. Update: Both of these have been claimed.

Billy is cracked, Franco is a bit brown (bread staining?), and Al's got a creased corner. Update: All three of these have been claimed.

Now I'm taking a page out of Brian's book, although I have much less hockey to offer than he does. The '73-74 has some staining (water?) at the bottom, but no problems with the Esso sticker. Update: The trophy has been claimed.

This '66 Black Bat has some obvious issues, and the back is as bad as the front. Update: This has been claimed.

Here's something you don't see every day, 1978 Sunbeam Taystee bread DC stickers. These are both browned and ripply, they must've been come from a particularly oily loaf. Update: These have been claimed.

 Two WWI era postcards...

Both are unused, but they both do have a crease running through the middle, and the Underwood & Underwood (top card) has a bit of staining on one side.

And now we get to a couple of newer things, namely some inserts...

... from the 2012 Cooperstown set. Update: These have been claimed.

That'll do it for this round, feel free to start registering those claims!


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I am a filthy liar

Last Friday's post saw me letting everyone know that, save for an upcoming Free Stuff Friday, I would be taking the rest of the month off from blogging, and now less than one week later, here I am... blogging again!

What I can I say? After just six days I'm already missing everyone. It's funny, I've gone weeks between posts before, which have always been unplanned, and had no problems -- but apparently I'm not very good at taking planned breaks, because I was itching to come back within just a couple of days of what I thought was a much needed respite.

I've got much to say after the last six days (see below), all of which could've waited until April, but given what were all currently dealing with, the want to interact with the closest thing to real friends that I have has been strong, stronger than usual, so hopefully me lying about not posting again until next month will be forgiven.

Besides wanting (needing?) to keep in touch with all of you, another thing has brought me back early, namely a PWE that I received this past Monday. I mentioned in the last post that I've been fortunate enough to have received a number of packages/PWE's already this year, so getting another one isn't exactly out of the ordinary (feels weird to type that), except it was, if only because I have no idea who sent it?

There was no return address, no note, and I don't recognize the hand that was used to write out my address on the envelope. There wasn't even a postmark, just a faint, but smeared cancel.

In 4½ years of blogging I've never received a mystery parcel, and while it was kind of fun, I would rather know who it is, if only so that I could properly thank them. Whoever sent it, obviously knows of my interests though, as I do like me some horror, and still think the world of holograms.

There were two cards in the PWE, both from Impel's semi-forgotten 1991 A Nightmare on Elm Street set. Early holograms don't always scan the best, these being no exception, so here's a slightly better look at this one...

Much better! If memory serves (which it's doing less and less of these days), there were only two holograms in this set, and I've never owned either before, so if I were to say that finally getting one was pretty neat, how the heck am I supposed to describe getting two?

I couldn't get a decent scan of old #H2 here to save my life, so hopefully this will suffice.

I am very grateful to whoever thought enough of me to send these, hyperbole aside, they may have been the very last thing that I expected to see fall out of this envelope, so thank you for the very pleasant surprise. But seriously though, please reveal your identity, if only so that everyone else can know how awesome you are!

Moving on...

I mentioned the planned Free Stuff Friday, which I thought about trying to do tomorrow, but I don't have anything scanned, and will be busy most of today, so I'll just go ahead and do it next week -- until then, this picture will serve as a small preview of what's coming! I realize too that some folks are getting a bit hinky about receiving mail, so if that's you, please don't hesitate to participate next week, as I'll be more than happy to hold your claims until you're comfortable receiving parcels again. As an aside, I normally get my posts out around 11am CST, but I'm thinking about pushing the Fee Stuff posts back to 5pm-ish, and am curious to know if that's any better, or worse, for the folks who like to participate?

I've made more headway with my great card sort this past week as well. Baseball is finished, football is at about 80% done, and basketball, well, I don't have a percentage for basketball, but for all intensive purposes it's basically done, I just need to finish grouping some of the like-minded stuff together. I might actually do a short recap, with plenty of photos, about all of this next week, it'll probably won't be too terribly exciting, but a few people might enjoy it.

All of this sorting has inspired the creation of even MORE player collections, all of which I'm hoping to catalog at some point, with that in mind, I turned my attentions to my loose pack stash a couple of days ago, as it would be nice to know if any of said packs contain cards for said player collections.

Save for six packs from September's card show that I forgot to add to the stack before photographing, this was my stash of loose packs, I say was because they've all been opened since this photo was taken, and all but a couple of stinker packs will eventually make their way onto the blog. It's funny too, because unlike a lot of people, I never intended to have a stash of any kind, I just bought a few packs, never got around to opening them, then rinse and repeat... and two years later I had a mini-stash!

Speaking of stashes...

Not quite as impressive as the boxes shown off by Fuji and Ryan a couple of weeks ago, but this (pay no attention to the TV Guide's) is my unintentional box stash, plus the two 1993-94 Topps rack packs that I bought right before everything went bonkers. These are all gonna have to be opened up sooner than later too, especially the football, because those will definitely have some player collection guy's in them. The 1990-91 Fleer basketball boxes seem to be going up in price for some reason, I bought my two for $7, which seemed a bit overpriced, from the guy at the "copy/print/card" shop in town maybe a year ago (everything else except for the 1997 Zenith came from there too BTW), and when I was just in there a few weeks ago, I saw that he now has them for $25 a box! Seeing his new price made me check eBay when I got home that day, and believe it or not they seem to now be selling in the $20-25 range -- I just don't understand why? There is nothing rare to be found in these boxes, there are literally millions of copies of each card in this set still floating around... I sure hope this surge in price isn't because everyone started (re)discovering just how awesome my beloved Shawn Kemp rookie is!

I was going to close this post with some thoughts on all of this virus business, but I suspect a lot of people are reading the blogs to try and get away from what's going on out there right now, so I will skip doing so for the time being. I will say though - and this is card related, so it might apply to a few people - that if you're like me at all, and rely heavily on the credit earned from doing COMC's Challenges to augment to your collecting budget, you might want to start getting used to the idea of them being closed for a while. Their recent emails indicated that processing of submissions has been slowed, and could very soon be halted, which would mean no more Challenges, so you might want to get to doing them while you still can, and if you have some credit built up in your account, it might be a good idea not to spend all in one place. They also asked that people not request any shipments for the time being, so depending on how long that's in effect, there's a good chance that we won't be seeing a Spring Cleaning sale this year.

On a much lighter note, I've been selling some more stuff on eBay as of late, and it was through one of these recent sales that I met, Dan, from 1978toppsfootball.com. Not only is Dan apparently a preeminent expert when it comes to the 1978 Topps football set, he's also really into buybacks, so much so in fact, that I think that he could be called the new king of buybacks, I mean dude's only six cards away from completing the '87 Topps baseball set... in buyback form! The site is still a work in progress, but if you're looking for something to do, you might want to head on over and check it out sometime (there are tons of pictures).

And finally, on a very positive note, Tim has decided to start smelling the cardboard again. This was a most excellent surprise, as even though his blog isn't that much older than mine, it was still amongst the earliest blogs that I read once I found out that there was such a thing as card blogs. So if you haven't already done so, go say hi, or welcome back, or something, as long absent bloggers returning to the fold is always cause for celebration!

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Taking a brief respite

Trying to write posts for the blog has been an absolute struggle as of late, hence only one published post through the first eleven days of this month. I thought it was because of all the card sorting I had been doing, you know, maybe I was just getting carded out? But now I think it's just a combination of a bunch things, and since I'm getting a little tired of starting posts, only to get stuck on something halfway through, then take a break from it by starting another one, only to have the same thing happen again, and so forth and so forth ... I'm just gonna go ahead and take a few weeks off from the blog.

I'll come back and do a Free Stuff Friday in a couple of weeks, but other than that, I don't anticipate doing anything else on here until April. Although I will be reading and commenting where I can on everyone else's posts, I'm about a week behind right now, but hopefully I can get caught up now that I don't have to worry about trying to write anything for a few weeks.

I've been fortunate enough to have received quite a few packages from fellow bloggers this year, so many in fact that I think I've reached my yearly average, and it's only March! I'm very grateful for all of the stuff that has been sent, but have yet to post about any of it, so that's gonna be my top priority come April... lots and lots of thank you posts!

Just so this post doesn't end up being imageless, and because I didn't know where else to show them, here are the most recent pickup's for my Reggie Roby collection, which came from last year's COMC horde -- I haven't gotten any Reggie's so far this year, so tecnically speaking, these are still recent to me.

I should probably point out that I used my new-ish phone (my old one crapped out) to take these pictures, which I'm still trying to figure out how to use btw, so the pictures are all a bit wonky (especially on the next card). Anyways, this is a 1990 Pro Set Reggie error, he's got Franco Harris printed on his back. Technically speaking I didn't need this card for the collection, but I wanted it, so I went ahead and overpaid (in earned credit) to get it.

I don't have the same affinity for Sports Illustrated for Kids, the magazine or the cards, that a lot of folks seem to, but I do like this card. I'm pretty sure that I even had a subscription to the magazine around the time that this card came out ('89), as I distinctly remember this particular design, but have no idea if I ever owned the actual card or not.

Reggie only has two refractor's to his name, this one from the '95 Finest set, and another more expensive from the previous year's Finest. This one doesn't have any greening, and the "Peel and Remove" isn't right over his face, so I was more than happy to pay a whole $0.75 for it.

Three new additions might not seem like a lot, but it's certainly better than no new additions! So on that note, I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks for another Free Stuff Friday, and spoiler alert, there's gonna be lot's of old stuff again, mostly off-condtion, but still old :)


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Making room for Moyer

It's been another slow week around here on the blog. Apparently I'm incapable of sorting lots of cards and working on blog posts at the same time, not literally at the same time mind you, just on the same days.

Not working on posts has been a bad thing, but by not doing so I've been able to get through about 75% of my cards, or at least the one's that were questionable as far if I wanted to keep or not. So far the sort has gone really well, the boxes of stuff to sell and giveaway continue to outpace the keepers, and since trying to thin the herd was the whole point of doing this, so I've been quite pleased with how it's been turning out.

It's been going a lot quicker than I thought it would too, which is also nice, given how much I hate sorting large volumes of cards. I am definitely getting tired of this big sort, and even though I'm fairly close to finishing, I think I'm gonna take the rest of this week off, and probably next week as well. This will hopefully give me a chance to get a few finished posts stored in the reserve, and go back to the sorting in a few weeks.

Aside from the finding so many cards that I no longer feel the need to keep, the other big thing to come from this endeavor is a bunch of new player collections. Most of those have been of the football variety, but there has been a few baseball players added as well, although only one of them has played semi-recently, that being Jamie Moyer.

I can't imagine that the starting of this collection will be of much interest to too many people, but I haven't been doing very many baseball posts as of late, so any excuse to do one...

The good thing about me starting new player collections is that I'm usually only starting with a couple of cards, so it's pretty easy to get all of them into one post, and Jamie Moyer is no exception!

The idea to start collecting Jamie came when I found his card in a stack of 1995 Score Gold Rush that I was going through, a card that I didn't even recall having -- which by the way, is part of the reason for this big sort, as I'm officially tired of finding things that I didn't remember having! Anyways, at one time I was pretending to work on that set, and had bought a cheap lot or two on eBay, which got inventoried, and then put in a box, where they've been sitting now for at least five years. Jamie ended up being the only card that I'm going to keep, so in my mind that was a very successful go through.

After mulling over the idea of starting a Jamie Moyer collection for a couple of minutes, and then deciding that yes, I did want to do so -- I went in search of other card of his.

Off the top of my head, I could only think of one other card of his that I had, that being a 1987 Topps rookie blank back that I got off of Listia a number of years ago. I can't remember exactly when I got it, but if I had to guess I'd say it was five or six years ago, definitely pre-blog, because I was using that site quite a bit back then... back before greed took hold of the site's creator(s).

I don't have a lot of contemporary baseball cards, so I knew that if I were going to find any more of Jamie's cards, I'd have to turn to my misc. team binders, which is basically where I just stash the random stuff that I like, but doesn't fit anywhere else. Those two binders ended up yielding another two cards, one of which is this bitchin' white Turkey Red.

It's hard to believe that it's been over twenty years since he joined the Mariners, 24 to be exact! I had only seen him pitch a couple of times before he came to Seattle, and honestly didn't think too much about him either way before doing so, but being a die-hard Mariners fan at the time, it didn't take long to warm up to him. His pitching style was unique to say the least, and he had/has a very likable personality, which always make it easier to root for someone. In fact, I liked him so much, that he ended up being one of the few players who's career I tried to actively follow after leaving the team. And I was very happy for him when he was able to get that ring with Philly, although I would've much rather seen him do so back in 2001 with the Mariners.

Though it was found in one of my random team binders, this card comes from yet another abandoned set build, and I believe that this could be considered a sunset card as well, or at least one of his many sunset cards that were released in 2012.

Four cards isn't much of a start, especially since the TCDB says that he has almost 1,200 to his name, but at least these four cards make up for a nice cross section of his career. I would imagine too that some of those almost 1,200 cards are stickers, postcards, etc., so the actual number might be a little closer to 1,100... which is still an awful lot of cards to chase!

Oh, and speaking of the TCDB, I had some time the other morning to play around, and rather than trying to work on a blog post, I instead spent some of that time taking the site for a test run, a test run that ultimately ended with me driving into a metaphoric brick wall. Talk about confusing! I tried to add some cards to a collection list, at least that's what I thought I was trying to do, but it sure didn't turn out so well. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but I think I'm gonna have to hit up the YouTube and see if anyone's made a "TCDB for dum dums" video, before trying again. But seriously though, I will try again, it just might be a few weeks before I feel like failing again.


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I'd buy that for a dollar!

Today is a card show day, and not just any old card show day, no, it's one of the twice a year super mega 200+ table Nashville card show (aka the baby National) days... and I'm not there!

I mentioned in the last post that I had been looking forward to this one for months, since September to be more specific, only to find out a couple of weeks ago that all of this waiting had been for naught.

I had originally planned on starting this post off with a bit of a rant, but after thinking about it, I realized that a). The last thing the internet needs is yet another person ranting about something, and b). The rant would be completely irrelevant to anyone not attending the show, which is probably everyone reading this, so why bother?

So instead of ranting, I'll just say that a few changes have been made to how the big shows are being run going forward, including the addition of an admission fee, and I'm not happy with these changes, so I decided not to attend -- which wasn't an easy decision by the way, as these big shows started almost right after I moved here, and I had attended every single one up until today's.

If the changes to the show weren't enough to keep me away, the weather probably would've been. We've had what I'm hoping is the last of the winter weather over the past few days; cold, snow, icy roads, etc. Things are supposed to be getting better tomorrow, but until then, I wasn't too keen on being out on the road at 4:30am, and possibly hitting some spots of black ice. I'm at about 1,900 above sea level, so things are much worse weather wise here than they are down in Nashville, but it does take a bit to start getting to those lower elevations. And not to toot my own horn, I'm a pretty solid driver, especially when doing so under less than ideal road conditions, but it's everybody else that I sometimes worry about.

I think that just about covers everything, so instead of going to the show today, I'm hoping to get outside for a bit this afternoon, and then tonight I'm going to sit down and open up the cheap box of 1991 Upper Deck football that I got the other day. Oh, and I've got this here post to finish up as well! I figured that since I won't be having a bunch of stuff from today's show to blog about, I might as well as get to the last of the cards from September's super mega show (my last super mega show?).

And since I know there's a lot of baseball only people out there, I'll warn you in advance that there is no baseball in today's post, but there was a reason for that, one which I will try to cover at the end of the post.

I actually started this post back in October, but quickly realized that it might be a while before I finished it, so I made a few notes in the draft so that I wouldn't forget some of the details -- and I'm very grateful to my past self for doing so, because I had indeed forgotten most of the details.

Everything you see here today came from the last table that I stopped at that day, and even though the dealer had decent sized spread, I still probably would've missed it had I not done one last walk through. I was pretty tired by the time I stopped here, and seeing how many monster boxes this guy had (at least 30), I did initially think about just walking by, but there was a sign that said everything was a buck - a dollar table if you will - and with as many boxes as there were, I couldn't help but at least look through one to see if there were any deals to be had. Everything was separated by sport, and I just started looking in the basketball box that was closest to me. The above 1993-94 Scoring Kings was the first card in the first row of that first box that I looked in, and after finding it, I knew I was going to be stuck going through as many of those boxes as I could.

As cool as it was to find that Nique, I couldn't figure out how it was still there, I mean the show had been open for over four hours by the time I hit this table? I would end up having this same thought many times over the course of the next hour or so.

One doesn't find a lot of Jordan inserts in the cheap boxes anymore, so this one was definitely a surprise. I thought for sure that once I got home I'd find a hidden crease through it, or some other similar issue, but it ended up being completely fine (all of these were photographed, hence the weird glare spots and wonky angles).

I think I got to these boxes just at the right time too, because a guy showed up just after I found the MJ, and asked the dealer if there were any Jordan's in the boxes? The dealer said that there were, and the guy then proceeded to go through all of the basketball and pulled out all of the MJ base cards, most of which I had already passed on.

Spectralight's are another thing that I'm not accustomed to finding at shows, in fact I don't think that I had ever found a single one at show before. I thought just finding one of the Reign Man was cool, but a few cards further I hit a run of them...

These don't photograph well, and they scan even worse, so for those who aren't familiar with this parallel (for you baseball fans, think Cyber Stats), so I tried, and failed, to give you a better angle.

Had they been cheaper, I probably would've gotten them all, but since they were $1 each, I just went with guys I collect... and Dee Brown, who I will always be very fond of! I ended up leaving behind a bunch of guys like Greg Anthony and Billy Owens, but I was, and still am, pretty happy with what I got.

Of everything in this post, this is probably the only card that I overpaid for, but I don't think by much. There were a few other Dr. J parallels from this set, but the pink was the only one that I really wanted at the time.

I almost got a Barkley Generations as well, but part of the bottom had been peeled up (probably from getting hooked on a toploader), so back into the box he went.

Most of my regular readers probably already know that I'm not big on rookie cards, but for a dollar I wasn't about to pass up one of Timmy D! It wasn't until I got home that I noticed it was a Minted in Springfield parallel, which of course was even better than the base rookie.

Despite what you've seen here, probably 95% or more of the basketball boxes were made up of low end 90's inserts (dime box material), newer low end parallels (dime box material), and 90's base cards (nickel box material). The base was all very sharp though, so I'm thinking that he was hoping that the graders might be all over those -- they didn't seem to be while I was there.

After looking through the basketball, I really wanted to call it a day, but I had to give the football boxes a chance as well, although I knew that I wouldn't be going through them all, as there had to be at least double the amount of the basketball.

The first card from the first box was this '68 Joe Namath. He's got some wrinkles, and some spray paint(?), but it's still a playing days Namath, my first playing days Namath. Despite it's problems, I still really like it, although I wish I knew the story behind the paint.

Looking at it again now after almost five months has passed, I'm not as fond of this one as I was at the time, but that happens sometimes, it's definitely not the end of the world.

Not being alive at the time, I still find it weird to see, or even think of, O.J. as a Niner.

I always say that I don't much care for rookies, and yet this is now the second one in this post. I've never owned a Bo football rookie before, and sure it's got a few surface scratches, but it's still a Bo rookie, and even in this condition it's got be worth a buck, right?

I had only gotten through a couple of the football boxes when a guy showed up with his, I wanna say 5 or 6 year old son. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but this kid was a little bundle of energy - as most young boys are - darting to and fro, and clearly wanting to be anywhere but there. Dad clearly wanted him to start collecting football cards though, so he reigned him and was trying to get the kid to pick out some cards that he liked. The kid obliged, sort of, he just walked over to the boxes and started pulling out random cards and saying things like "Ummmm... this one?", to which the dad would reply "The BENGALS?!?!". Then the kid would put the card back and try again, which was met with "The COWBOYS?!?!". It became apparent pretty quick that not only did dad want his son to be a football card collector, but he also wanted him to only collect whoever dad's team was, and was starting to get agitated over the fact that junior had clearly forgotten who dad's team was. After listening to a few minutes of this, I was ready to explode on dad. I could tell that this a$$hole was the same sort that most likely makes his kid watch all of "his" team's games, and probably tells him when to cheer and boo as well... and I f*cking loathe those kind of guys! I know that parents don't like to be told how to raise their kids, especially by those of us without kids, but it was around 90 degrees that day, and that kid shouldn't have been at that show -- he should've been out at on a shaded playground somewhere, and been allowed to just go crazy for a couple of hours... as all kids should be allowed to do on nice summer days.

Since I'm not one to make a scene, at least not at this point in my life, I decided to just forgo the rest of the football boxes, as well as the unseen baseball boxes, and pay for my stuff and leave -- which I did.

So even though I didn't get through all of these boxes, I still found a couple of neat things, and those coupled with the rest of the stuff that I came home with, made for a solid day's work. I have no idea when I'll be going to another show, but I don't have any shortage of blog material, so missing today's show really won't have much of an effect on me in the long run.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.