Something old...

                                         
As most of you reading this probably already know, I'm not married, nor have I ever been married, and at this point, unless something extraordinary happens, I will never be married. I'm not opposed to marriage mind you, it's just that... um... how do I put this? I'm about as desirable as a bridge troll, and what's more, I don't even have a bridge to my name!

There's not a lot of gals out there who are looking to settle down with a bridge troll, and I've accepted that, in fact I did so many years ago. I'm quite content to live vicariously through others.

Despite how this post is starting, it really isn't about marriage (or my trollness) per se, more like it's customs, or rather one particular custom; that being the old-ish British tradition of: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in her shoe.

I'm not sure if it's still being used or not, but I couldn't help thinking of it a couple of weeks ago when a couple of related mailings arrived on the same day. I noticed that I had two of the five covered right off the bat, and a quick perusal of my scan folders provided me with two more. And as far as the fifth goes, well, will get to that when we come to it.

In order to make this post work (or at least make it work the way I wanted to work), I had to stretch some of the meanings just a tad. For example, nobody's gonna look at the above 2019-20 Prizm Karl Malone and think "old", but it, as well as all of the other cards that have been shown, is from one of my "old"est scan folders. Matt, from the newly rechristened, Matt's Wonderful Blog Of Hobbies, sent these to me quite some time ago, and as neat as these five were, the real star of the envelope was...

... this 2012 Panini Progressions (magenta) of the great John Riggins! It's not everyday that someone sends me a card that's limited to just five copies, in fact this is the lowest 'numbered' card that anyone has ever sent me. I own a number of Progressions, and have seen even more, but this was the first one that I had seen where the coloring had such an effect on the player's appearance. Not that I care, I just thought that it was worth noting. This a rainbow that I'd love to collect, but other than the cyan that's currently sitting on COMC (which seems overpriced to me), it doesn't appear that the other two colors have ever come up for sale online anywhere.

I still have more to get to here today, so I won't go too in-depth, but did want to mention that aside from the mailing, Matt is also responsible for me returning to the blog after my hiatus this past summer. So from whenever I started back up, to whenever I say goodbye, if you like anything that I do, you have Matt to thank. And conversely, if you ever dislike anything that you see upon these pages, please direct all hate mail to Matt as well, after all he is to blame for my still being around to produce whatever it is that irked you so.

Thanks again for the cards, Matt! Hopefully the ensuing hate mail won't make you regret bringing me back too much :)

Moving on the next part of the rhyme. "New" is not the first word that's going to come to mind when viewing this '87 Bo Jackson, BUT, it did come from my most recent, or "new"est if you will, piece of mail from a fellow blogger. As some folks may remember, Bo, from Baseball Cards Come to Life!, won Julie's big contest a few months ago, and then a short time later started to disperse some of the unwanted goods/duplicates. 

I think that this Bo was one of the better cards being put on the trading block, and I thought initially that I already had one, but after a quick check, I found that I didn't. I didn't know what I was going to trade for it, but Bo sent it along for what I'm assuming was future considerations. Those future considerations turned took the form of an old [Bo]wman that I had laying around, which seems to have went over well, so that was nice.

Bo was accompanied by another card from the prize haul, a card which I believe was a first for me, as in I think that it may be the first 1993 Donruss card that I've ever owned. Some of you are probably shaking your head in disbelief right now, but I'm fairly certain that aside from a few singles here and there, that I stopped collecting baseball (and football) in 1992, and just did basketball and non-sport stuff for the next eight years before taking my decade-long break from cards. I know that I never opened any of this set, and it's design doesn't register any sort of familiarity with me, so like I said, I'm thinking that this might just be the first card from this set that's ever been in my possession.

Looks like Bo knows basketball too. I however do not still know if I needed this Logo card, as I haven't gotten into that particular box for a while, either way though, it's a nice card.

Thanks for sharing some of your winnings with me, Bo!

My mom found this penny in her change a few weeks ago, and even though she, and subsequently I once I saw it, didn't think that it would be anything of note, I still wanted to "borrow" it for this post. 

Piece of advice for any and all dipsh*ts out there who have too much time on their hands, if you want to create some intrigue by adding something to hard currency, learn how to make your own f*cking punches. It took me all of twenty seconds to find these punches of the oft used, and dare I say, terribly boring, Freemason square and compasses for sale on eBay. I guess it's too much to ask that someone actually do something original for a change (pun intended), this piss-poor attempt to manufacture a mystery wasn't even worth my twenty seconds of searching.

[Note: My scanner can't handle 2013-14 Prizm, and apparently I can't even take a decent photo anymore, so apologies for this glare-y monstrosity]

Other than the daily saved searches emails that I receive, I almost never bother with eBay anymore. I don't hate it like a lot of people seem to these days, I'm just tired of the stupid prices on everything, and don't feel like wasting my time looking for anything. That being said, I did get one of those saved searches emails back in December, possibly even November, that eventually led me to buying this "blue" Larry Johnson. This card wasn't the subject of the saved search, but was amongst the sellers other offerings, and while I didn't even get close to winning my saved search card, I did win this. I thought for sure that I already had one of these, but I didn't, I only had like half a dozen of the other parallels for him. I've been trying to focus more on playing days cards of guys that I'm collecting, so I did have a bit of buyer's remorse after this arrived, but I guess it's a nice enough card for me to bend the rules a little bit for.

The only thing left is the part of the rhyme that was dropped when it made it across the Atlantic, "and a sixpence in her shoe". Hmm, what to do? I did collect coins quite actively in my early teens, and still have most of that collection, but British coins were never of much interest to me, so no sixpence's (sixpencies?) in there. British stamps aren't really my thing either (well, save for one particular issue, but that's for a future post), so I can't even use one of those for the post. There's also the little matter of me not having access to "her" shoes. I've got plenty of his, but no hers (ah, the sad life of a bridgeless troll). I guess for the sake of completing the post, I'll just have to resort to using this photo that I found on the Google...

I could be wrong here, but I'm fairly certain (at least 90%) that the coin is supposed to be in the left shoe. Hopefully this photo was just for show, otherwise this gal sure was (provided I'm right) tempting fate.

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

On a completely unrelated note, China's great mistake (or so we're led to believe) got another one this past week, and this time it was one of my childhood favorites.

Rest easy, Barbara Shelley.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.