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.


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Winning

It's been a been long time since I've done a fluffy "Here's some crap I won on eBay!" post, in fact after going back through the archives, I can tell you that it's been over eight months since such a post appeared on this blog... so I guess one could say that I'm overdue?

So I'm gonna do just that today, but before I get to those fluffy eBay wins, I've got to give some public thanks for a very unexpected win that came via a contest on Twitter.

Between people's unsolicited political opinions, and the apparently never-ending Astros saga, Twitter has been pretty unbearable as of late, even more so than usual. I've stated recently that I'm down to about five minutes or less spent on the site per day, well, in recent weeks you can probably knock that estimate down by another three minutes or so.

Now if you've ever spent any time on Twitter, you know that there are no shortage of contests, and if you haven't, well, there's a lot of contests! As far as cards go, these contests are usually for some autograph of whoever's the current flavor of the week, which I never enter, in fact I hardly ever participate in the giveaways, that being said -- I did recently come across one that was worth entering.

I don't know what I was more surprised by, the fact that @Very_Cool_Cards was willing to give away a 1968 Topps Game Hank Aaron, or that I ended up winning said playing days card of the true home run king? That was a rhetorical question by the way, as me winning would be the bigger surprise of the two. It's been a few weeks since the contest, I still can't believe that I came out on top, especially since were at least 150 people that entered (many of whom were probably much more deserving). I just finished cataloging my humble little Hank Aaron collection this past weekend, and after doing so, I can say with all honesty that this one is now amongst my favorites -- it was also my first "good" Topps Game card, so that was pretty cool too.

I hadn't had the good fortune to have any real contact with Damon, the man behind the Twitter handle, before this, but hopefully that'll change going forward. Thanks again for the contest, Damon. You made this particular blogger very happy!

**************************************************************************

One of the twice a year super mega card shows is happening in Nashville this weekend, and I had been looking forward to it for months, but I found out a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't be attending (more on this in Saturday's post), so I decided to use the money from a recently sold card, money that had been reserved for the show, and spend it elsewhere. This "elsewhere" ended up being eBay.

I don't spend very much time on the eBay anymore, between the ever increasing shipping costs, as well as the ever increasing amount of people who seem to have no idea how to properly package stuff, it's just not worth the effort most of the time. However, I do still check for certain things from time to time, one of those things being cheap vintage monster/horror magazines (don't worry, there are more cards below). Usually these searches don't yield much, as there are still a lot of collector's out there who are willing to pay big bucks for such magazines, thus not very many cheap one's showing up.

It was during one of these searches, that I found two different sellers who were auctioning off fairly decent sized collections (60's-00's), all of which were ending on the same weekend. The first seller had nothing but magazines, while the second seller had magazines, comics, and even cards.

Despite thinking that I probably wouldn't actually end up winning anything, I still went through all of both sellers items, and added a bunch of stuff to my watch list, then a funny thing happened... I won some stuff... from both sellers no less!

I can't remember who recently said that we should be sharing the names of the good sellers on eBay, but I agree, especially as the amount of bad one's continues to increase. So, with that in mind, here's the first group from mikestoysoc:

Up until now I had been completely unaware of Monster Fantasy, granted it only ran for four issues back in '75, but still...

I ended up going a little outside of my comfort zone to acquire the first, and...

...second issue! Number's 3 and 4 were available too, but having never read the magazine before, I didn't want to take the chance that they might not be any good -- after reading the first one, I can say that I should've taken that chance. But oh well, I can always try and get the other two later on.

This is probably a good time to mention that I'm not going too deep into these right now, because I'm toying with the idea of doing a series later in the year for Halloween, and these, along with some of the other magazines in my collection, would likely be revisited (and much more in-depth).

I can even begin to tell you how much I LOVE obscure one-off's, and this one fits the bill perfectly. I realize that the subject matter isn't for everyone, but it still makes me wonder why someone would go through all of the trouble to get a first issue printed ('77), and never do a second? As an aside, I don't how a kid was ever supposed to try and save their allowance back in the 60's and 70's, I'd never even be able to make it past a comics rack/magazine stand without spending all of my weekly allotment.

I'm ashamed to say that I avoided Scary Monsters for a really long time, primarily because I didn't think that a contemporary monster magazine, written by contemporary writers, could be any good, and boy was I wrong... which is precisely why one shouldn't judge a magazine without ever having read it! The articles are actually written (mostly) by folks who were fortunate enough to be around during peak monster madness, i.e. the 50's and 60's. If I hadn't found a cheap beat up copy at a bookstore a few years ago, I may have never given it a chance. Since then, I've picking up more cheap copies whenever I come across them, which is very often by the way. This seller only had a few issues, and few of them were drawing an unusual amount of attention, but I was still able to grab the 2011 & 2012 year end annuals.

If you click on this seller's link, you'll see that they don't have a great rating, but the had decent combined shipping rate, and more importantly, they pack my magazines really well, and to me that's all that really matters.

Alright, on to seller #2, aka bthoven14. They had a lot more variety available in their round of auctions, but they were also offering free shipping, which meant that it was also a lot harder to land things on the cheap.

See... more cards! They had multiple copies of this Kaline Nu-Scoops, in varying conditions, and I think I might've gotten the very last one (I kept getting outbid on the others). Not only is this just an awesome card, but it also happens to be my first Nu-Scoops. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm always forgetting that this set even exists, then I see one that Nick got at a show, and I'm like "Oh yeah, that's a set, isn't it?". Now that I finally have one, I even went and looked at the checklist, bad move, there's apparently quite a few cards that I didn't know I needed and/or wanted.

For all of you back addicts out there.

It wasn't until I started pulling apart all of my abandoned set builds, that I realized just how many cards of Boog I had, certainly enough to warrant yet another player collection. This seller had a bunch of 1970 Scratch-Off's, and many copies of each card, including Boog. I didn't get the nicest copy, but I did get the cheapest, and it is unscratched, so I'm content with the purchase.

Starlog was always very hit-and-miss for me, some issues were really good, while others were almost unreadable. There used to be a place in Portland called Periodicals Paradise, which in it's original guise, sold nothing but back issues of magazines. It went through many changes over the years, and moved locations many times, becoming a little less of what it was each time it did so. But in it's original form, and original location, it was just about the greatest store that has ever been. I bring this up, because way back when, 25+ years ago to be more specific, they used to always have back issues of Starlog for a buck each -- and I haven't seen one in the wild since they left their original location. This one obviously didn't come from the wild, but it was just a shade over a dollar, and looked interesting, so...

And finally, a non-annual issue of Scary Monsters. This seller packaged everything really well too, so you can take solace in that should you ever decide to throw any business their way.

I actually bought stuff from three different sellers over this particular weekend, but after dealing with two stand-up individuals, it should come as no surprise to hear that the third ended up being a flake. After a couple of weeks of nothing, I contacted them to find out what's what, and got the old "Sorry, my dog fell down an abandoned mine shaft, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". Then it was "Sorry, you know that abandoned mine shaft that I mentioned my dog falling down, well, now an asteroid has hit it, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". which was then followed by "Sorry, you're not gonna believe what happened now, you remember that mine shaft that my dog fell down, the one that was subsequently hit by an asteroid, well, now a mountain has fallen on it. Darndest thing I ever saw, it just tipped over, right onto that asteroid crater, the one where the mine shaft that my dog fell down was, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". I may have exaggerated this series of messages just a tad, but it's close enough for you get the gist. I did finally request, and get, a refund, as they clearly had no plans of ever sending anything. Thankfully the item in question wasn't anything rare, or otherwise hard to come by, but it's still kind of sucky when you think that you're going to get something, and then because of some incompetent human, you don't.

So there you have it, not nearly as much stuff as would've come from the card show, but I'm good with that. This group has a quality over quantity feel to it, and that's something that I most certainly wouldn't have been able to say about the haul that most likely would've been brought home from the show.


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A glutton for punishment

I've been a bad blogger this past week. The free time that I have at night, the time that's usually spent working on posts and/or reading and commenting on other people's posts, was instead spent on sorting cards and doing COMC's Challenges, neither of which I've spent much time doing in recent months.

I was kind of surprised by the sudden want to sort cards, as I think the last time I really did so was back in November. Now that I've moved on to player/person collecting (for the most part), I find myself having quite a bit of stuff that I no longer care about, and since I'm not of the "He who has the most stuff, wins!" mentality, it doesn't make much sense to keep all of this unwanted stuff around.

Basically I've just been sorting things into three piles (not literal piles), keep, give away, and sell. I've had a pretty productive week too, I'd say that I'm already about halfway through this process, and have also already started listing some of the "to sell" stuff. Another positive that has come from doing this, is that I've also found enough cards for at least six more Free Stuff Friday's, and I'm sure that the number of those cards will only continue to grow.

There has been one negative thing to come from all of this sorting though, I've found at least 20 more people that I'd like to start collections for, and about half of those are of the non-sport variety. This has also led to more time spent on COMC, as some of these collections are being started from scratch, and I've been trying to add a couple of cards to each of them. Since these cards require money, and I don't really want to add any to my account (especially now with the sales tax thing), so I've been do the Challenges instead, four or five bucks worth each day (this buys a lot of cards!).

So, like I said, bad blogger! I did try and work on a few posts here and there, but didn't get very far. Now that whole week has passed without posting, I'm feeling a bit guilty about not doing so. Since nothing's finished, I'm cranking out this quick filler post, and will hopefully have something a little more substantial to offer within the next few days.

I spent a little more time than usual on the road this past week, and as such found myself stopping in at a number of places, one of which was the Dollar Tree. As you can probably tell from the picture, I went ahead and did a thing that I said I was going to do again, i.e. buy any more packs of Hoops.

I've already made my feelings about this set known, and yet I still bought more, five packs no less! I really wish that one of these flipper's that I keep hearing about would materialize and buy out the rest of this location's stock, if only so I'd no longer be tempted by these damn things -- apparently the $1 price tag is just too low for me to resist.

If I wasn't impressed with my first three packs, you can probably already guess how I feel after five more, and if you can't, spoiler... I still don't care for them!

Since they're not any more exciting than last time, I'm just gonna blow through these packs. Does anyone else remember back when the various television commentators were trying to convince us that Chris Paul had a legitimate shot at breaking John Stockton's all-time assist record? I wonder how that worked out for him? The border is still blindingly white, but at least they used a pretty decent photo for Gordon Hayward's card.

I can't believe it, this pack actually yielded a keeper (Barkley)! Of course it also yielded a yellow parallel of one of my least players of all time.

I didn't know that these packs ever came with two rookies, not that it really matters though, as I don't think either of these are the rookies that everyone's been going apesh*t over.

Two rookies again... what the heck is going on here? Back in the 90's I had the touch when it came to picking packs, I think it's safe to say that I've lost said touch. And I know that I'm supposed to care about Jokic, but I don't.

Well, this pack has an ex-Blazer, so I guess that's something? It really isn't, but I'm trying to be positive here... can you tell?

So that's five more Hoops packs in the bag, and all of one keeper, which is slightly better than getting no keepers from my first three packs. Now if those damn vultures show up sometime before I go to the Dollar Tree again, that would be awesome.

On an unrelated, but also semi-related note, I found out this past week that the increasing pain that I've been experiencing in my right foot since about Christmas, is plantar fasciitis. I only mention this because for years I would hear of basketball players missing games due to this, and I'd always say things like "What a wuss!" or "Really, you can't play through that?", but I'm here to tell you that I was wrong, it is kind of painful, and I can see why players would miss games because of it. As for me, I've got it right in the arch, so if I stand wrong, or try to lean down with my weight on that foot, I get a shooting pain up in to my calf which causes my leg to try and buckle. Supposedly rest will take care of it, but if I haven't taken it easy all winter, I'm not about to start now that nicer weather is almost here, so I'll just have to "play" through it for the time being.

As mentioned, I'll try to get some better posts going for later in the week, but in the meantime I've got a bunch of other blogs to catch up on...


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Last minute replacement post

I had a non-card post planned for today, but thanks to some really nice weather yesterday, and then me being too tired last night from spending most of the afternoon doing outdoor work, I wasn't able to get it finished in time. I'd still like to contribute something to the old Blog O'Sphere today though, so after a quick perusal through my many scan folders, I've settled on the one with the least amount of scans in it. And as for the post that was originally scheduled for today, I should be able to finish it during the upcoming week, and will just save it for next Sunday.

I thought about doing some sort of "What do the four cards in today's post have in common?" theme, but I don't want to trick anyone into seriously trying to come up with an answer, only to find that the only thing they have in common is that all four of them came from last year's COMC stockpile, and that all four of them are cards that I actively/passively hoard -- but only had one of each in said stockpile. See, you would've been pissed if you were the one person who actually tried to find the connection, so you're welcome!

This Diamond (sparkle) Anniversary Ichiro is one of the newest member's in the hoarding club, and as such, I only have a few copies (should've started sooner). There's not much to say about this one, I just really like the card, and it's a nice image of Ichiro's (iconic?) pre-pitch batting routine.

Unlike the previous card, copies of this 2012 Topps Chrome refractor have made numerous appearances around these parts. If cheap enough, I'll grab any of this cards many parallels, but my primary focus is on these, and the Golden Sparkle's from the flagship set.

Here's one that until just recently I didn't even realize that I was hoarding. Is subconscious card hoarding a thing? Well, it must be, because I've apparently been doing it with this card for a few years now -- to the tune of around a dozen copies. Snapper wasn't born in Portland, but he grew up there, played HS basketball there, played college at Oregon, finished his professional career with the Trail Blazers, and was a member of the Blazers television broadcasting team for a number of years... so it feels only natural for me to gravitate towards him. He only has a couple of Topps issued cards, and this '75-76 is my favorite, even though he was playing for the Blazers when the card was released.

Last week you saw #114 (thanks again, Billy), well, this was #113! I don't normally look for this card on COMC, as they're usually more expensive than the $0.10-0.25 that I am accustomed to paying for them, but I happened to notice this $0.38 (the next cheapest was sixty-something cents) copy during the Black Friday sale, and just couldn't resist picking up another one, so I did.

Before I go, I just wanted to thank everyone who participated in the second Free Stuff Friday a couple of days ago. I didn't know how those posts were gonna go over, but they seem to be doing pretty well, which is nice, because I believe that even after just doing two so far, I can safely say that they are now my favorite posts to do! And to the people who did claim something during this last round, I will start working on getting everything packaged up in a few days, and should be able to get everything out within the next 8 or 9 days.

Oh, on a completely unrelated note; Matt (SCC) has a new blog, Diary Of A Collector, up and running, so I'd encourage everyone who hadn't heard yet to go check it out.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Free Stuff Friday #2

Before I jump into today's offerings, I just wanted to say how pleased I was to see that Brian decided to start up his own series of "Free Stuff" posts. It sounds like he'll be doing them a little more often than me, so be sure to keep an eye out for his giveaway posts, I certainly will be :)

I've sent out all but one of the claims from the inaugural Free Stuff Friday, and am currently working on that one, so since I'm basically caught up, I figured I might as well toss out another batch of free cards -- all baseball this time, and mostly of the food issue variety.

I know I covered it last month, but just in case anyone new wants to participate, everything in this post is free for the taking (no strings attached), the only thing I ask is that you claim cards for your collection, as I'm not looking to help build up anyone else's trade stash. Also, not mentioned last month, Canadian residents are more than welcome to participate, but your claims have to be able to fit inside a PWE, I can't afford to ship everyone else's stuff out if I'm having to pay the ridiculous prices that it costs to ship bubble mailers across the border -- I don't know what happened, but it didn't used to be so expensive to ship to Canada?

I think that covers just about everything, so let's get to the free stuff!

Save for the '81 Guidry, all of these Kellogg's have problems. Update: The Kellogg's have all been claimed.

 Misc. food stuffs. Update: Kaline, Spahn, Davis, and 1 Williams have been claimed.

 Denny's holograms. Update: All have been claimed.

 More Denny's holograms, plus a fun "how to view" card. Update: All have been claimed.

 I think that all of these came from repacks. Update:Yogi and Brooks have been claimed.

 Sausage cards? Update: Biggio, Brett, and Puckett have been claimed.

 Despite the name, these are not chewy. Update: Boggs has been claimed.

 I wonder what "Topps cereal" tasted like? Update: Dave, Jim, Pedro, and Reggie have been claimed.

1962 Post with all kinds of problems. Update: Eddie has been claimed.

Well loved buybacks. Update: The buybacks have been claimed.

Some vintage non-food stuffs. These all have corner/edge issues. Update: All have been claimed.

A few more big names, Callison and Kaline both have creases, and Robinson's got some non-crease problems. Update: Al and Brooks have been claimed.

So there you have it! If there's any interest, feel free to start claiming away.


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