Another one bites the dust

It was just a couple of weeks ago that I was celebrating the completion of my 1973-74 Topps basketball set, well, it's time to celebrate another completed set, this time it's of the 1976-77 Topps basketball variety.

Heading into the COMC Black Friday sale, I was three cards away from completing the set, two of which I was able to get during the sale (an badly needed upgrade was gotten as well), and the final card was... well, you'll find out about that a little further down. For now, I just want to get to the cards:

In case you've forgotten, Rich is here to remind you just how cool the old ABA red, white, and blue balls (no jokes please) were... and still are.

Having had six (I'm not counting the '69-70 season) very successful seasons in the ABA, it's a bit of a mystery to me as to why Rich only ended up playing for one year in the NBA following the merger of the two leagues in 1976. Since that particular info hasn't been, and still isn't, available online, I'm thinking that the only way to find out about his "one and done" in the NBA... will simply be to write to him and ask.

This is a great in-game shot featuring Phil getting off his patented "zenhook" over the great Wes Unseld.

You might be surprised (sarcasm) to learn that, to date, Phil Jackson is still the only NBA player to have been born in Deer Lodge, MT. This card had been eluding me for quite some time  now, so it was very nice to finally be able to cross it off the checklist.

This was a badly needed upgrade, as my other one looks like someone had spilled coffee on it at some point in time. As you can see in the scan, this card came with a wax stain, said stain has since been removed.

Unfortunately, Gail no longer holds the Lakers consecutive free throws made record, that honor belongs to Kobe Bryant (boooo!), with 62.

After being left just one card away from completing the set, I decided that I wasn't going to wait any longer for a cheap copy to be added to the site, so I turned to eBay. After a few short weeks, I was able to plunk down a virtual five spot and officially wrap this one up!

Hondo is shown guarding Dave Bing, one season later they would be playing together after Dave joined the Celtics. That next year would also be the last for the two of them, as both of the future hall of famers would retire after the 1977-78 season.

The card does have a wax stain on the back, but that doesn't really bother me, as I'm just happy to have finally completed the set. I would still like to upgrade two cards (Sam Lacey and Charlie Scott) at some point, but for now, I'm content just basking in the glow of this most recent accomplishment.


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What to do?

While checking out the Twitter this morning, I noticed that someone who I happen to be following liked a tweet, therefore said tweet showed up in my timeline. No big deal, right? Annoying as it may be, it happens all the time. The liked tweet was from someone that I have not heard of before, in which they mentioned finding a couple of vintage cards that they had forgotten were in their possession. One of those cards just happened to set off my internal alarm bells, so much so, that I felt the need to write this impromptu post:

Anyone who remembers my series of Sportlots posts from a couple of months ago shouldn't be too surprised as to why this card jumped out at me, what with the tell-tale rounded corners, and lack of any other edge wear. I don't want to come right out and say that it's a fake (even though it is), but it is certainly highly suspicious, to say the least.

So far none of the commenters have said anything about it, and I'm not going to say who, but one of said commenters is someone that should have been able to spot it for what it is... unless of course, he did, but isn't comfortable saying so.

So, it leaves wondering, is it my place to tell someone whom I've never had any interaction with, that their card is a fake highly suspicious? Or do I just let it go? The latter of which, I don't think I can do, because I know if the roles were reversed, I would want someone to voice their concerns. And since were not following each other, I can't contact them via direct message, so if I did say something, it would have to be visible to everyone else, which could potentially cause them some embarrassment... which is something I really wouldn't prefer to do. Any advice, or thoughts, would be most welcome.


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The Deerfield

For that last couple of months now, my mom has been a fairly regular attendee of a weekly auction that is held at a antique/consignment store, and while she has won a few things for me, said things haven't, at least until today's item, been anything that I thought anyone would care about seeing here on the blog.

Your looking at a 1922 yearbook from the Deerfield-Shields high school (now Highland Park high school) in Highland Park, IL., which according to the interwebs, is located roughly 25 north miles north of downtown Chicago.

I don't know how much she paid for it, but I know it to be fairly cheap, as she knows I don't like the thought of people spending a lot of money on me.

I haven't had the time do any research yet, other than to read that the school opened in 1886, and has been in it's present location since 1900. With that being said, I thought a few people might be interested in seeing a few hastily taken pictures, so...

The spine is still really tight, so it was a little difficult trying to take pictures without damaging the 90+ year old book. There are plenty of signatures in the book, which is always fun, especially if one of them turns out to be from someone of some note.

I haven't had a lot of time to read it yet either, but from I can gather, football was, at the time, the school's primary sport.

The best of the best got a couple of pages devoted to them. I really like the layout of those couple of pages.

I believe that this page is referring to the sprint football player's, but I'm not 100% certain on that. I included this photo primarily because of the birthdates, as young Joe Proctor's exact year of birth seems to be missing, and the "05" portion of Wallace Mitchell's birthdate was printed after the name of his attended grammar school. Oh, and the nicknames are pretty great too.

It isn't mentioned why, but the last baseball team that the school had had prior to these kids, was in 1918.

According the page opposite of the one, the lightweight's are shown in the top picture, and the heavyweight's in the lower.

The young ladies had a quite a few options when it came to sports as well.

Of all the clubs, this one is my favorite.

All the club sections are divided by a title page, this is probably my favorite of those.

With this most recent addition, I now have around a dozen old yearbooks, this being the third oldest. At some point, I would love to do a series of yearbook posts, especially since two of the books I own, are among my most prized possessions. I would only want to include the books that I have completely researched in that series, and as of right now, that number is limited to just three, as such research is very time consuming. I guess if anyone would be interested in reading such a series, maybe you could let me know in the comments section, that way I'd if anyone would actually be viewing those posts or not.

Since the back of the yearbook advertisements are always fun, I thought I'd end the post by taking a look at a few:

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Tales from the Thrift Store vol.4

Since it had been over three months since my first visit there, and I have been dying (yes, literally) to see what kind of turnover they had in their videos section, I decided to alleviate my ever growing curiosity and head back to the Hilltoppers thrift store.

The trip ended up paying off, as there had been a healthy turnover in the videos section... which was awesome, but there were also a couple of non-VHS items to be had as well.

From my two visits now, I think I can say with some certainty that the store will usually have between 200-300 albums on hand, and while most of the stuff that people seem to be donating isn't my kind of music, I was at least able to still find one.

I don't remember this movie or it's soundtrack. I am familiar with, and like, two of these songs, so hopefully they'll be at least one or two more decent songs amongst the eight other tracks.

I found a small tote that was full of unopened McDonald's toys, most of which ended up being of the late 90's Beanie Babies variety (someone must have finally decided to give up on their "investment"), but I did end up digging out a couple of interest.

Lucy, and Sally/Snoopy, come from The Peanuts Movie, which I haven't seen... but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the toys! Plus, Lucy talks, so that's always a good thing. Dracula comes from Hotel Transylvania 2, which is another one I haven't seen (haven't seen #1 either), but it's Dracula, and he talks too, so how could I not buy it?

In the post that followed my first visit to this store, I spent some time talking about just how many videos there were to look through, but I didn't have any pictures to accompany my amazement... well, this time I do! The picture above is of the left side...

... and here is the right of the video's section. And remember too, these shelves are stacked two deep, so there's full rows behind everything that you're able too see in these pictures. Like I said in the previous recap of this place, there are easily over a thousand video's (plus a few DVD's) to search through. It literally takes me almost an hour just to go through everything, and oh what an hour it is. My search yielded fourteen videos this time, which isn't too bad. Ideally I'd like to find more, especially with such a large selection, but fourteen's still better than none.

I'm assuming that most of the people reading this aren't as into animal specials as I am, so I'm just grouping these four together, and not bothering with the backs. The "Predators" series was put out by Time Life, and The Trials of Life is one of David Attenborough's BBC productions.

I remember the animated series M.A.S.K., but I don't remember The Mask animated series. Even though I know I'm probably not going to like it, I still felt compelled to give it a try.

I saw this in the theatre back when I was a wee lad, and haven't seen it since. I think I was staying the night at a friend's house and his parent's took us along to see it. If I recall, it wasn't a very kid friendly movie, so I'm pretty sure neither my friend or I enjoyed it all that much. It will be interesting to see it again, this time through slightly older eyes.

Here's another one that I saw when I was around seven or eight (not in the theatre though), and then never saw it again.

It's always fun to find a Christmas or Halloween animated special that I didn't already have, especially since there aren't too many more of those left out there.

 One of the few Cary Grant movies that I haven't seen.

Does anyone else remember when this movie used to be on television like every single weekend for what seemed to be years? I haven't seen it since like '97 or '98, so I was overdue for another viewing.

 I bought this to be a back-up copy. It never hurts to have a sealed extra tucked away, just in case...

It seems like two-tape sets are becoming increasingly more scarce, I think a lot of times one of the tapes gets damaged or lost, so folks just end up throwing out the other one. Although, there were about a dozen two-tape sets in the videos section this time. Having seen all of these movies, the clips and trailers won't be of too much interest to me, but I'm hoping the interviews will be worth the price of admission.

Here is yet another one that I haven't seen since I was really young. In all my years of scouring through the video sections of countless stores, this was the first time that I had ever come across it on VHS.

And last but not least, I was able to find this potential gem. In case you can't read that, here's a better view:

I was kind of surprised to find this as most thrift stores don't put out recorded tapes. I already have a tape with the two-part Alf Thanksgiving special recorded on it, but wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to see what commercials may be on here. And even though it only says that Alf is on here, I was hoping there would be more, especially since most people back in 1988 tended to fill up blank tapes, as they were a little more expensive back then.

Overall, it was another pretty good outing, and I will certainly be going back to Hilltoppers sooner than later.


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