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!
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!
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 :)
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.
