COMC Shuffle #16

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard.

1951 Bowman #173

Hank played five seasons in the bigs, all with the Browns. Making his debut in 1948, Hank started off like a house afire, belting a triple and a home run in his debut against the Yankees. He had an average of .400 through his first 19 games, but it was pretty much all downhill after that, by 1952, his last season, he only managed to hit an anemic .143, playing 15 games before his contract was sold to the minors. The minor league team that he was sold to? None other than the Portland Beavers, which is why I was interested in this card. Hank spent his last three seasons of professional baseball in Portland, where over the course of 349 games he would bat .259, racking up 288 hits, 138 RBIs, and 29 HRs.

2014 Panini Prizm Orange Prizms #12 (x2) 

These would've looked a lot better if Panini had made a yellow Prizm parallel, but the orange is still pretty sharp, sharp enough in fact that I wouldn't mind getting a page's worth of these at some point.

1968 Topps #415

One for the "Telstar 4" collection. This might be my favorite card from that collection so far, if only because of that batting glove! Those old school trucker gloves make it look like you're ready for a fight, meanwhile todays gloves look like you're just checking to see how thorough the maid was with her dusting.

1997-98 Topps Rock Stars #RS4

One of the top five basketball insert sets from the 90's? Definitely!

1970 Topps #375

Apparently the randomizer was really feeling the Johnny Callison this week! It's funny, before I started reading the blogs, I never paid any attention to hatless cards, they just weren't a thing for me. Now five years later, I , thanks to the blogs, don't really care too much for the hatless pics. They're just too generic, I mean if you take this card for example, I could be looking at anybody, from any walk of life, is this a card of a soccer player? An actor? Who knows?

1963 Topps #144

I don't remember when it was exactly, but sometime in the not too distant past, my dude, Oscar, showed this card in one of his card show recap videos, which made me realize that I didn't have one, and that I wanted one... so I bought one! I seem to have a bit of a Roger Maris collection going, I didn't even know that I did until just recently when I started going through, and pulling keepers, from all of my abandoned vintage set builds.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Red, White, and Blue Pulsar Prizms #205

There are few things more American than a seven-foot tall hippie!

2014-15 Panini Prizm Green Prizms #206

One of my favorite player/color combinations from the 2014 set. If someone at Panini ever sees this post, do everyone (i.e. me) a favor, and add Paul Silas to more of your products, thank you!

1966 Topps #110

Last years Spring sale started five days before one of the twice a year Nashville mega card shows, as such, I found myself up at o-dark-hundred on the morning of the show with a few extra minutes to spare, so why not go peruse COMC for the thousandth time that week? Most of the stuff was of course at the same prices that it had been all week, but while doing a random search for Ernie Banks, I found this card, and it was from a seller that had just upped their percentage off sometime within the previous couple of hours. Most of this sellers offerings were of the vintage variety, and I think I bought a few other things, but Mr. Cub is the only one that I can remember at the moment. The corners aren't mint, but I still thought that the price tag of just little over $3 was a good one. This card will also probably always hold a personal record for the earliest (around 4am) in the day that I've ever gotten a card.

2013 Panini Father's Day Progressions - Black #17

This is the Lillard that I mentioned in my Progressions post awhile back. For those that didn't see it, or don't want to go back and reread it, the short version is that I got the magenta at a show last year for a quarter, and then later that night bought this black on COMC for $0.99. So I completed half the rainbow in one day, and after a year and some change, I still only have half of the rainbow. There's a yellow on COMC right now, but it's priced higher than I want to pay, and the seller apparently doesn't realize that I'm seemingly the only person who collects these!

Last week's mix wasn't much of a mix what with all of the Prizm parallels, but the shuffler seems to have done a little better this week, more variety that hopefully will have appealed to a wider audience.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Going for the gold

For reasons that have already been discussed, and for others that haven't, purchases, especially those of the card variety, have become much less frequent.

I still have two PWE's that were generously sent my way to get to, but for the most part, at least as far as cards go, I've pretty much just been relying on my weekly COMC Shuffle posts for "new" card content.

Lack of new items has made the want to blog a little more difficult. The continuing downward trend for the blogs in general hasn't helped either, it's still hard for me to believe that Twitter is so darn popular, especially with bloggers/former bloggers. I've been on there for about two years now, and I'm still not sold on it, and I certainly couldn't imagine myself ever abandoning this blog in favor of that site.

With the lack of new stuff coming in, I might have to start looking to things that are already in my possession for blog material, and maybe finally start putting some serious effort into getting the storytelling series that I've wanted to do for years now going.

With all of that being said, I did recently make one small purchase, it came exactly one month to the day after the Ernie Banks auto, albeit quite a bit less exciting than said auto.

For a whopping dollar (+ $0.75 for shipping) I was able to add yet another 2018 Classics Eric Dickerson gold Optichrome (that's Panini slang for refractor) to the collection.

I've already spoken about my love for this set, and this card, ad nauseam, so I won't bore you by rehashing any of that. I will say though, that now even after the passing of a full year has passed since the sets release, I still get warm and squishy feelings when thinking about the Legends parallels.

With this latest addition, I am now 2/3 of the way towards my goal of getting a full page of this card, although given the opportunity, I probably wouldn't stop at just one page, but being numbered to /65, I should probably just be focusing on the one-page goal, and be happy with it's completion... provided of course that the goal is able to actually be completed.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

COMC Shuffle #15

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard!


1933 Goudey #38

Fred spent parts of eight seasons with the Pirates and Phillies. The year this card was issued would be his last in the bigs, playing in just 8 games with Philadelphia (hitting .308) before being sent to the minor leagues. He finished his career with a .281 BA, 407 hits, 131 RBIs, and 6 HRs.

2012 Panini Black Friday Kings Progressions - Cyan #1

Still looking for the black to complete this particular Progressions rainbow.


1999-00 Topps Stadium Club Onyx Extreme Die-Cut #OE7

Every time I think that there can't possibly be any more basketball inserts or parallels from the 90's that I'm not familiar with, another one that I'm not familiar with seems to pop up -- case in point, I knew of the Onyx Extremes, but until I saw this Jason Kidd, I had no idea that there was a parallel version as well.


2014-15 Panini Prizm Blue Wave Prizms #28

A couple of years ago the blue waves seemed to carry a bit of premium when it came to the 2014 Prizm parallels, but I must've missed the memo about them no longer being a hot commodity, because the prices on them have gone down considerably, and I have no idea why?


2014-15 Panini Prizm Purple Die-Cut Prizms #250

I'm not big fan of the 2014 Prizm die-cuts (orange or purple), but Austin was only $0.40, and I felt like I couldn't pass him up at that price -- in retrospect, I probably could've lived without this card.


2016 Panini Certified Mirror Blue #98

This was another card for my half-assed J-Stew rainbow. Even if I never complete it (which I won't), at least this is still a really good looking card, and the blues are numbered to /50, so that's something as well, right?


1973 Topps You'll Die Laughing #98

There are almost never any cheap copies from this set on COMC, and on the rare occasion that there is, it's usually beat to sh*t. I'd still like to finish my set someday, and it had been forever since I had added a card to it, so even with the one punky corner, I still went ahead and got this one on sale for $0.78, which may or may not have been a reasonable price (I'm a bit out of touch with the You'll Die Laughing prices).


2011 Topps Update Series Platinum Diamond Anniversary #US309.2

Apparently Jimmie's parents never told him not to look up during a diamond storm.


2013-14 Panini Prizm Red, White, & Blue Mosaic Prizms #231

Nothing says America like a nine-month long farewell tour, right Kareem?


1998 Pacific Paramount Pro Bowl Die-Cuts #18

As far as 90's inserts go, they don't come too much better than this! I mean I dare you to try and name another insert that features a traditional outrigger as part of the cards design, seriously, go ahead and try, I'll be here waiting!

I think that this was the first week so far that one of these posts didn't feature multiples of any particular card, feels kind of weird to do one of these with nothing but singles in it!


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Some random bits of nature

I'm taking a break from the cards/collectibles for today. If that's cool with you, then read on -- if not, you can check back in on Friday for a regularly scheduled card post.

One thing that I've learned in my now 4+ years in Tennessee, is that when the warmer weather arrives, so do the thunderstorms (with the occasional threat of a tornado as well). I enjoy thunderstorms quite a bit, so their presence is always a welcome sight, and sound. The last couple of days have been pretty exciting, as we've had the perfect conditions for random pop-up storms -- the kind that show up out of nowhere, dump a bunch of rain, produce sounds that make one think that the world is ending, and the move off just as quickly as they arrived. Yesterday (Monday) was particularly good, especially in the morning, one came in while I was out doing some stuff out in the shed, I walked out to see what's what after listening to the sky talk for a few minutes, noticed some interesting cloud formations, and decided to take a few pictures before the rain/hail started.

Do you see the face?

I realize that some folks might not care too much about pictures of clouds, but I thought that they were neat, so... yeah!

Going back in time a little bit, to last week to be exact, we had one morning that got down to 50 degrees (brr!), and it must've been a little colder higher up, enough to produce some ice crystals, because we ended up with a sun halo. I hadn't seen too many of these before, so I of course had to try and take some pictures. Being that it's the sun, you know, kind of bright, I couldn't really see what I was doing, so I just had to point the phone in the suns general direction, and hope that a few of the photos came out.

I couldn't pull the phone far enough way to get the entire halo, but considering that I couldn't see what I was doing, I think that some of them didn't turn out too bad. Also, I didn't realize until I was looking at the photos on the computer, that a bunch of planes had to show up and spread their chemtrails (insert smiling emoji here) through my shots! Actually, I think the photos look a little more interesting with those condensation trails going through them -- although we don't get lot of airplane traffic out here very often, so to have three going by at the same time was a bit odd.

Staying with events that happened last week, I was doing some chainsawing, trying my best to clean up a little dead zone. While taking my first water break, I noticed that I had some company (middle of the photo), company of the slithering variety to be more exact.

It's probably hard to get a sense of scale (pun intended) from the photos, but that's over five feet worth of black rat snake. For non-snake people, these are a very common species, and are non-venomous. They are also very beneficial to one's surroundings, as they help take care of pesky rodents that might otherwise try to get into people's homes. He or she obviously didn't mind me or the chainsaw, as they showed up while I was working - and I certainly didn't mind the company, as it's always nice to have someone to talk to :)

Summer also means skinks, lots and lots of skinks! I love these little buggers so damn much.

Living right next to water has plenty of perks, one them being if you got to pick up a rock, or in this case, a brick, during the warmer months, the odds are high that you're going to find one of these little cuties (black salamander) underneath.

And finally, I know that this looks like the opposite of nature, but a couple of weeks ago I parked next to this car at the Kroger, and couldn't help but notice all of the muddy footprints...

... I especially liked the tracks on the windshield :)

That's all I've got for today, but there's still a lot of summer left, so depending on how things go, I might just have a few more posts worth of stuff before fall.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Golden Cub

Like a lot of collector's, I have quite a few saved searches on eBay, some going back over ten years, while others date back to just a couple of weeks ago. Many saved searches have been deleted over the years, either because I eventually got whatever it was, or I just lost interest in the item, and of course, new searches are always being added -- I think there's a limit to how many you can have, but I've yet to reach it (probably because of all the deleting).

And I don't know how it is for everyone else, but is seems like more often than not, that when I get the daily emails for items that match my searches... they rarely seem to match? Often times it's just stuff that shares a word or two with my search, and that's it! If this ever happens to you, than you know how frustrating it can be, especially if it's on a search that doesn't yield results very often (if ever), you get all excited, and are immediately let down once you crack open that email -- this too is something that happens to me on a fairly regular basis!

So imagine my surprise, when a couple of weeks ago I received a result amongst my daily emails for an item that hadn't popped up on the site in literally years, and wonder of all wonders, the emailed listing actually matched my search!?!?

You are looking at one of the most, possibly even THE most, hard to find autographs from the 2014 Golden Age set. This card was a short-printed redemption, which obviously is already going to be rare, but than when you take into account the fact that this set came out in July of 2014, and Mr. Banks passed away in January of 2015, well, that doesn't leave an awful lot of time for these cards to be signed. From what I've read - and I don't know how accurate the message board posts on the subject are - it sounds like they're might be less than 50 of these floating around, which would explain (if true) why this is the first one to come up in over two years.

I knew that if one ever did show up again, that it wouldn't be cheap, and I was right! It was listed for $89.99 (+ $3 for shipping), which is an awful lot for me right now, thankfully though, the seller was also open to best offers. Since I was seeing this listing just a couple of hours after it went live, I knew I'd have to act quick (I honestly don't know how it was even still there?), so I put in an offer, which was countered within mere minutes -- and even though it was a good counter, I still pressed my luck by submitting a counter to the counter, which was accepted after a very long two-hour wait.

Those couple of hours felt like an eternity, but it was worth it, because in the end I got my much desired card for $67 (plus that pesky $3 for shipping), which was still a lot, but it was a little more doable than $89.99.

Technically speaking, I didn't have, and wasn't going to have the money for this, but that's why god invented credit cards. I did have a plan though, which was to list a bunch of stuff for sale real quick, and hopefully have the money by the time the credit card bill was due. For the record, this is a terrible way to do things, so if any kids are reading this, don't do like me, go be financially successful so you'll have money on hand to pay for such things! That being said, the plan did work, as I did sell five things (including one that I didn't really want to) over the next two weeks, so when the bill comes, I will be good for it. I am glad though that I didn't have my heart set on going to a card show this month, because this purchase would've negated such a want.

As great as it was to have such a long standing search like this yield a positive result, I'd be completely okay if no more of my expensive much wanted items showed up on eBay for the next couple of months, that way I'd have a chance to build up a bit more of a reserve.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

COMC Shuffle #14

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard.

2013-14 Panini Prizm Green Prizms #186 (x3)

I mentioned a few posts back that I've been reorganizing, and have completely changed the way that I sort and store cards. While doing this I've come across a few surprises, one of which is finding out how many cards I have of certain player's, LaMarcus being one of those, granted my "collection" of his consists mostly of Prizm parallels, but still, I didn't realize that I had so many of them/him.

2013-14 Panini Prizm Prizms #251

I generally don't care too much for the Prizm Prizm's, or as they're referred to now, Silver Prizm's -- and sometimes just plain old, Silver's. Up until a few years ago, they were the most common parallel, and yet someone, somewhere, decided that these were going to be the most expensive, and desired, Prizm parallel?!?! I just don't get it, but of course I love colors though, so that might have a little something to do with it. All that being said, I love the look of the black and white photos that were used in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 sets. In my opinion they make for the best looking base cards, B&W on a grey background just pops, and they also look really good on the Silver's, plus if you turn them just right, you'll get a bit of rainbow, which is seen much better on the non-color photo cards.

2013-14 Panini Prizm Red Prizms #205

There's my dude! One of these days I'm gonna have to do a whole post on LJ, go back and talk about when and why my fandom began, you know, that sort of thing.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Yellow and Red Mosaic Prizms #168

One of my all-time favorite Blazers! As a kid, I was all about Uncle Cliffy and Crash Kersey, I met Jerome twice, but never got a chance to meet Cliff... maybe someday.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Yellow and Red Mosaic Prizms #153

It sounds silly given how talented he was, but Hakeem is one of those guys who I've come to appreciate a lot more in recent years than I ever I did while he was playing.

2013 Panini Father's Day #38

After completing my Chris Kreider Progressions rainbow, I decided to take it even further and get the base card, and the Cracked Ice card. I'm only an autograph card - which may or may not even exist - away from completing a true rainbow. I haven't really gone out of my way to try and do this by the way, it's just been a small side project that would be cool to complete, but I'd also be fine with it if I didn't ever get the auto, completing the Progressions was the only thing that really mattered to me.


1971-72 Topps #144 (blank back)

I bought this card during last year's Black Friday sale, then apparently forgot about it within minutes, which caused a bit of a confusion when the shipment arrived a few weeks later. While going through the box to see if everything was there, I spotted a very familiar looking card, and couldn't figure out why I had bought it. I mean I was about 99.9% sure that I already had this checklist, but just in case, I went and found the set binder, started flipping through the pages, couldn't find it, so I flipped it over to see the card number, and guess what? THERE WAS NO CARD NUMBER!!!!! I felt like such a f*cking idiot (even more so than usual)! I wasted like fifteen minutes trying to find the binder, which of course could've been avoided had I just flipped the card over to begin with. And for the record, I do have the regular checklist, and after seeing that this was a blank back, the memory of it's purchase did come back to me.

2013-14 Panini Prizm Red Prizms #230

Remember how I was just saying how much I like the Prizm B&W photos on the grey and silver backgrounds, yeah well, I really like 'em on red too. I also don't hate them...

2014-15 Panini Prizm Gold Prizms #205

... on gold either! And Bill is numbered to /10 by the way, so that's kind of cool.

1972 Topps #511

And finally, one for the "Telstar 4" collection.

With all of the Prizm parallels that were gotten last year (which is something that I didn't realize until I started scanning/photographing everything), I have been half-expecting the randomizer (shuffle button) to fill up one of these ten-card posts with nothing but Prizm. With seven of the ten spots being occupied by Prizm, it almost did so this week, probably much to the chagrin of everybody but me!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.