COMC Sundays: 2014 Topps Pro Debut Hat Patch

Originally I had a much longer post (with much more interesting cards) planned for today, but it ended up not getting written, as I wasn't really in the mood to do anything blog related for most of this past week... so you're going to get a lazy one card post instead:

I think I got this one during last year's Spring Sale, because I completely forgot to look for any of these hat patches during the Black Friday sale (or the pre-Black Friday sale).

I'm not gonna pretend to know anything about young Mr. Trahan, but a quick Google search tells me that he was taken with the 26th pick in the 2012 draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks. He has yet to make his big league debut, but he's only 24, so he's still got plenty of time.

Looking ahead to next week: I might be going to the card show on Saturday, so next Sunday might be another one card post... maybe a 1954 Topps World on Wheels?


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COMC Sundays: 2014 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures

This week's edition will be another relatively short one. And unfortunately, I didn't have any interesting animal encounters this week, so I don't have anything to pad this one out like I did last week.

Even though Butch Patrick has an impressive list of credits to his name, he is -- and always will be -- best remembered for his role as Eddie Munster on The Munsters, which by the way, was one of my favorite shows as a kid. Fun fact (even though everybody probably already knows it): Butch Patrick wasn't the first choice to play Eddie. Bill Mumy (Lost in Space) was in fact originally chosen, but his parents turned it down after they saw the makeup that their son would have to wear to play the part.

Richie Hebner was a member of the 1971 Pirates championship team. Even though it wasn't always reflected in his batting average, Richie was a pretty clutch player in the postseason, his timely hitting changed the outcome of a number of games when it mattered the most.

Laffit, while riding Swale, won the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes (his third straight Belmont victory) in 1984. I don't pretend to be a fan of, or know anything about, horse racing... but as I've said before, I'm still glad for variety's sake that Panini added jockey's to the list of signers. Also, why is it that the jockey's seem to have some of the nicest signatures in the set?

In 1978, while riding Alydar, Jorge Velasquez finished second to Affirmed, in all three of the Triple Crown races. In 1981, now on the back of Pleasant Colony, he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, but missed out on the Triple Crown when he finished third in the Belmont Stakes.

Looking ahead to next week: A handful of baseball cards from the 50's will be featured, as well as a discussion about some of the recent changes that I've been making to my collection (namely the vintage baseball part of my collection).


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BLOG BAT AROUND: red cards for Red Schoendienst

Last week, Collecting Cutch started a Blog Bat Around to honor the recent passing of Red Schoendienst. The idea is pretty simple, just find ten of your favorite "red" cards, and then show 'em off.

I have never participated in one of these before, mostly because they usually seem like they're going to require a lot more effort than I'm willing put forth. This one however seemed like it wasn't going to be just too easy/fun to pass up, so without further ado, here's ten of my favorite "red" cards... seven of which have never been shown here on the blog before:


2012 Panini Cooperstown Signatures Red Schoendienst

This one seemed like a fairly obvious choice.


1949 Bowman Willie Jones RC

This Bat Around gives me a good excuse to show my only card of Puddin' Head again.


1974-75 Topps Bill Walton RC

I'd be remiss if I didn't include the Big Redhead.


1960 Fleer Ted Williams

Teddy Ballgame thinks that this was a "splendid" idea for a Bat Around :)


1955 Bowman Bob St. Clair RC

Had to get at least one football card in to this post.


2008 Topps Chrome Ichiro Trading Card History Refractor

I don't have a ton of Ichiro cards, but this by far my favorite of what I do have.


1952 Topps Look N' See Amelia Earhart

Another redhead... who just also happens to be the most famous person in this post.


1999-00 Skybox E-X  E-Xceptional Tim Duncan

One of my favorite insert sets from the 90's, featuring one of my favorite players as well.


1951 Topps Ringside Max Baer

Bad scan aside, this is a pretty cool card. It's also my only card from the set.


2013 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures Stan Lee

Saving the best for last? I bought the expired redemption for this card in January of last year for around half the price that the actual card was selling for at that time, and three months later I had this card in hand. People can say what they want about Panini, but there's denying the fact that their the most honorable when it comes to redemptions... especially those of the expired variety. I really love this card, and consider to be one of my better purchases since returning to the hobby.

Thanks to Collecting Cutch for starting the Bat Around, as I had a lot of fun putting this one together. The best part was that it only took me about 15 minutes to find all the cards. I've only seen one other "red" post as of this writing, so hopefully a few more of you will be jumping on board, as I'd really like to see what everyone else can come up with.


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COMC Sundays: 2013 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures

Hey there, welcome to week 2 of my new ongoing series. If you liked last week's stuff, than there's a pretty good chance that you'll like this week's as well. And if you didn't like last week's stuff, well then, you could always skip through to the bottom, as I've tucked a bit of non-card content into today's post as well.

Al Kaline: Everyone knows of Mr. Tiger's accomplishments, so I don't think that any stats need to be added here. I actually bought a second copy of this card during the recent Spring Sale, the price was so low that I just couldn't not buy it. I've heard of instances where COMC has contacted people to ask them to return a card after they have bought something from someone who had accidently priced it too low, I was half-expecting for this to be one of those times, but no email ever came, so I guess the seller either didn't know of it's value... or they just don't think too highly of Mr. Kaline.

Ralph Terry: Owner of two World Series rings, MVP of the 1962 World Series, and a two-time all-star. [Side note: The image of Ralph Terry's face on this card is kind of creepy looking]

Gary Lee Cavagnaro's only claim to fame was The Bad News Bears. He's only got two other acting credits to his name, those being Drive-In (worth checking out btw) and Crisis at Central High.

Erin Blunt is pretty much just known for The Bad News Bears as well, although he did appear on a few television shows like The Waltons, Happy Days, Quincy M.E., and The White Shadow.

Looking ahead to next week: 2014 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures.

Since this post was kind of short, I'm gonna add some bonus content to pad it out a little:

Yesterday morning while brushing my teeth I just happened to be looking out the patio door at the right time to see a decent sized turtle about 50 feet from the house. So I quickly put on a pair of sandals, and with toothbrush still in mouth, headed out get a better look.

The bottle was for scale.

As I approached I was pretty sure that it was going to be a snapping turtle, if only because I had seen another one in almost the exact same spot a little over two years ago. When I got to within about 10 feet, I was able to confirm that it was indeed a snapper.

If I had to guess, I'd say that this turtle was around 12 inches long, and was in the 7-10 pound range. I don't know where it was coming from (possibly the frog pond), but it was headed in a direction that would've meant almost certain death. The next closest body of water from our property is about a mile away, and although the turtle was headed that way, it would have had to cross the acres of field next door -- which has been in the process of being mowed and baled -- plus, the real feel yesterday in the sun yesterday was in the 90's, so with all those factors in mind... something had to be done to help it.

The snapping turtle that I relocated a couple of years ago was only about 1/3 of the size of this one, so I knew that this one might be a little more difficult to catch. I am no expert when it comes to turtle wrangling, but I do know that snapper's can reach their neck almost across the back of their body, and they tend to be a lot more aggressive while on land... so since I'm kind of attached to my fingers, I wasn't about to be trying to pick it up.

Not surprisingly, the turtle wasn't too keen on cooperating. But after about 40 minutes, he (or she) was safely gotten in to a rolling tote, which was then picked up and taken to the creek in the front of our property. I would have liked to have taken it to the part of the creek that goes through the woods, but being the time of the year that it is, I don't fancy the thought of running into any poisonous snakes -- not to mention all the ticks -- so there weren't too many options.

I couldn't get any pictures of the turtle once we got over to the water because when I got too within about 20-30 feet from the waterway, the turtle could smell the water and started to get very antsy. As soon as the tote was laid down, the turtle made a mad dash for the water, and was gone before I could even think to get my cell phone out.

Just another typical morning in the middle of nowhere :)


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Tales from the Thrift Store vol.6

Last Saturday, all the Goodwill stores throughout middle Tennessee were having a 50% off everything sale, so even though I'm not a big fan of Goodwill (pulling out all of the good donation's to auction online is terribly annoying), I decided to go see what's what anyway.

It's been a long time since I've been to a Goodwill, all of the stores back home in the Portland/metro area were terrible, and until just recently I didn't even know that there was one anywhere near me (35 minutes away), so if I had to guess, I'd say that it's been six or seven years since I had last stepped foot in one of their stores.

I knew that there would probably be a lot of people showing up for this sale, but I still wasn't fully prepared for what I saw when I got there.

I arrived about an hour after the store had opened, and their large parking lot was almost completely full. Walking up to the store, people were exiting in masse... all with full cart loads! Upon entering the store, I was hit with a wall of sound (and not the good Phil Spector kind), which was the result of literally hundreds of people all talking at the same time, like white noise from hell!

I've never been to a retail store on Black Friday before, but this is what I would imagine going to a Walmart on that day is like (thankfully no one was trampled to death while I was there). A more apt analogy might be that it was like looking at a plague of locusts eating everything in sight, or in this case... filling their carts with everything in sight.

After the initial shock, I started trying to find the videos (you had to know that that was where I was going first), while doing so I started to notice just how big this particular store was (I've since learned that it is the primary thrift store for Cookeville). If it's been a long time since I've even been in a Goodwill, than it's been even longer since I've been in one that was this big (15+ years?).

As I was walking to the back of the store, I couldn't help but be impressed with how much stuff they had, although it wasn't staying on the shelves very long. When I finally got back to the area where all the media (DVD's, VHS, books, etc.) was, I started to curse myself for not getting there sooner, because this section was absolutely packed with people, the funny/good thing was though that nobody seemed to be looking at the videos... ahhhh, obsolete technology!

They had a pretty good selection too, maybe 200 or so to look through. Lots of books too. I wasn't able to look through the couple of hundred records that they had though, as a rather large fellow (like three or four timer wider than me) had pulled up a chair to look through them and was blocking both shelves. I didn't feel like waiting, so I just passed. I'm still pretty happy with the stack of videos that I found (only 25 cents each), and even though I didn't need anything to read right now, I ended up walking away with two books as well:

I hadn't seen this before >> watched it that night >> very funny!

I think I might of seen this one when I was really young, but I probably won't know for sure until I give it another viewing.

Hot Shots and Hot Shots: Part Deux were two of the my most often rented movies (Class Act would top that list) before the age of 12. I haven't seen this one since whenever the last time that I rented it was... probably around age 12.

I already have this on DVD, but it never hurts to have a back-up copy, right? Although, if I'm being completely honest here... I now have two back-up copies :)

I've never heard of it, and the odds are high that I won't like it, but for a quarter, I certainly don't mind taking a chance.

Michael J. Fox doing an impression of Jimmy Durante... nuff said!

Bird watching, get it? This tape is still sealed by the way.

And now for the biggie:

Boom! This tape alone made the trip worth going. Why is that? Simple, this has been my most wanted video for at least fifteen years now. The tape has been long out of print (obviously), and it has never been released on DVD in North America, and to think that it was found here, at Goodwill of all places, is just crazy. I think my heart might have skipped a couple of beats when I saw it down at bottom of the rack. After all this time, I half expected to slide the tape out of the box and find a different movie, but thankfully the video gods were with me, as the correct tape was indeed in the box.

And for the record, She is not what one would normally refer to as a good movie. I am however a big fan of it because a) Sandahl Bergman is one of my earliest crushes, so I can, and will, watch her in anything, and b) It's one of the quirkiest/weirdest movies that you'll ever come across, which has always appealed to me as well.

This DVD was still in it's original shrink wrap, and as you can see by the cover, after almost twenty years, the anti-theft tape has begun to merge with the paper, which resulted in some paper loss when I went to open it. Even though it was under $1, I found myself still being slightly annoyed by this.

I haven't read any of the books in this series, but this one looked good, so I bought it.

When I first saw the title on the spine, I thought this book was going to be related in some way to the 1977 John Huston film... it wasn't.

And yes, I know, it's a Scholastic book. But I figure that if it's socially acceptable for adults to read things like Harry Potter, the Twilight books, and the Hunger Games books -- which are written for kids/teens -- than I can't be judged for wanting to read this kids/teens book about a giant squid.

All in all, I think I did pretty well, and the best part was that I got all that for just $4.12!

While standing in line for 15-20 minutes, I had plenty of time to take in my surroundings, as I was doing so, I noticed a sign on one of the front windows that was boldly announcing that this sale wasn't just a one time thing, no... it'll now be 50% off of everything on the first Saturday of each month. I guess I now know where I'll be come the first Saturday of next month too!


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Sooey!

I bought a whopping three cards on eBay during the month of May, in today's post you'll be seeing two of those three:

My good fortune continues, at least as far as my being able to pick-up relatively cheap cards from the 2001 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Ground Hoggs set goes.

I'm always a fan of guys who spend their entire career with one team, and Amani Toomer did just that. His loyalty paid off as, after 11 years with the Giants, he was able to finally get a Super Bowl Ring in his second to last season. Also still holds a number of team records as well.

All my other six or seven cards from this set contain pieces of the outside part of the shoe, which is what I normally prefer, but I really liked the color of this piece, so I made an exception and bid on this inside piece... which I obviously ended up getting. With shipping, this one ended up going for $4.99.

Back to an outside piece! Did you know that Chad Pennington has the second highest career completion percentage (66.0%) of all-time? I certainly didn't.

At around $8.50, this was the most that I had paid for one of these so far. It was the first time that I had seen a Chad Pennington, and this particular chunk of shoe was pretty cool, so I figured why not treat myself... although for the record, $10 was my limit.


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