Post-Christmas post

Since I haven't seen anyone say otherwise, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that everybody had a pleasant enough Christmas? Mine was fine, a little different this year, but still okay.

I've mentioned it in year's past, but my mom and I have sort of developed a tradition in recent years to go on a hike Christmas day, which is also her birthday, but we didn't do so this year, at least not yet. She was a tad under the weather (not the Rona, or anything else serious) for a couple of days there, so we didn't go out, but are gonna try to go out sometime next week and make up for it. Temperature wise, it's been pretty good here for the last week or so, and was a relatively pleasant 64° on Christmas day, and while the hike was off, I did spend a couple of hours in the afternoon outside doing, well, outside stuff -- much to the awe of the many people that drove by and had to look at me as they did so. 

As far as presents go, there weren't any, at least none that I can show off here on the blog. Some months ago my mom and I agreed to not exchange gifts this year, and would instead go halfsies on a six-month premium subscription to Newspapers.com. We waited until their Black Friday offer, which I think was for $54, to sign up. And I know that for my part, the subscription has already gotten plenty of use. I really love that site! Despite this year's "ban" on traditional Christmas presents, I did still get her a couple of birthday presents, both of which went over well, yay me!

I think that this was the first year, or at least the first year in the last couple, that I didn't post anything on Christmas itself. I had intended to, but after thinking about it, I decided to give everyone a break. It was the right decision. 

Speaking of posts, today's was originally gonna be another homemade solution to storing tricky sized cards in binders (overly thick cards this time) but I've tweaked my original idea some, and needed something that the Dollar Tree apparently doesn't carry anymore to try and complete that prototype. So, it'll probably have to wait a few weeks until I can go to the much further away Hobby Lobby, which also means that the planned post will have to wait a little longer as well. I'm not the sort who's able to write multiple posts in advance, and rarely plan even one post in advance, so when the planned one falls through like this, I'm kind of shit up a creek. It's not ideal, but I do have two boxes of cards from COMC to tap into, at least the ones that haven't already been paged away before getting scanned (that's way too easy of a habit to fall into). This being my only option to fall back on this week, I think I'll just pull a few out and try to make a post out of them...

I think it was just a couple of posts ago that I was talking about wanting/not wanting to collect this old Helmar Seals and Coats of Arms set, and now here I am saying that I guess I'm gonna go for it. My Black Friday Mecklenburg will be the last single I get for a bit though. Collecting a 150-card set one piece at a time isn't very cost effective, so I'm gonna have to start keeping an eye out for a good lot on eBay. Having seen a few of those lots in the past, I know it'll be difficult to find one in my price/condition preference range, as most of the time the cards in these lots are pretty beat up.

Great card, terrible scan! After buying six 1966 Topps Superman cards at a show a few years ago, I've wanted to get three more just so I could have a page's worth. I'm trying to pick out the best 9 cards from the set to do this too, and #7 here is definitely one of the neater cards in the set. I know which two I want to complete the page with, it's just a matter of them showing up at a reasonable price. I can wait though.

This came out of my box from November that had two years worth of purchases in it. I think when I bought this I was still pretending like I'd ever have a chance to complete the '57 set, but have long since given up on that silly notion. Mack doesn't fit into any of my current collections, but I still love the image, so I'll find a place for him.

Rando Rheaume! I had never owned a single Goodwin Champions up until about a month ago, then I bought two during the Black Friday sales. Manon's base card has about 143 parallels in this set, but I only wanted this blue one, which by the way is the best one. That's a hill I'm willing to die on!

Crappy scan aside, this was one of my favorite cards gotten during this past Black Friday. Tippi doesn't have very many cards (most are parallels and ugly Leaf stickergraphs), but that's okay, I just needed one for a Alfred Hitchcock themed page that I've got going (technically I have two Hitch pages in progress though).

70's and 80's Topps stickers are always fun. I don't have any 80's for this post, but do have this...

... nifty trio of...

... 70's stickers to show off. Richard Kiel here is my favorite of the group. He's found a nice home on a Kolchak themed page.

It's always a good day when the great Christopher Lee is able to make an appearance on the blog. Despite it's awesome cast, I've never liked Gremlins 2. Try as I might, I just can't get down with it. As for the card, I already had a copy, but needed another one for a different project.

I've had a page dedicated to Harold Sakata (weightlifter/wrestler/actor) for a couple of years now, and always knew that this particular card (1966 Philadelphia James Bond) was going to be the center square. I think I bought this one well over a year ago now, I just had to wait until COMC got their act together to put him in his rightful place, thankfully, they finally have.

Last up for today is this kooky error(?). I found this a few months ago while searching through the recently added TCMA cards. I was looking for pro stuff, so when I hit a big block of minor league cards I just sped through them. Even in speed scroll, this card stood out from it's other minor league brethren. After looking around online, I can't find any copies of this card (there's a wrong entry on the TCDB), so I don't know if this was a funny printing error, or if every copy went out like this. 

It would've been cool if the back was screwy too, but alas, it's normal. If anyone has the skinny on this one, I'd love to know what's what.

Kind of a lazy post today, I know, but they can't all be winners. I guess too this'll be the last post on here for the year. I'm gonna spend a few days working on a post for the other blog (I've been experiencing all kinds of problems with that one), so if all goes well, I'll have a new post up on both blogs next week. Until then, be careful with those fireworks this weekend, it'd probably be a little more difficult to bang out blog posts with some missing digits. Oh, and take it easy on the booze too. If you thought it was hard typing with a few less fingers, just wait until you try to do so with a pair of non-corporeal hands.

Trying and failing

                             

I guess it was around two years ago that I decided to start paring down my card collection. I was running out of space, and was also just tired of looking at all of the extra chafe (dime boxes aren't always a good thing).

Despite having always been a binder person, I moved a lot of the stuff I was keeping over to boxes. It seemed like a good idea at the time, not only would space be saved, but it also made it easier to separate the keepers from the goers. I did keep about a dozen binders intact - player collections that weren't going anywhere - and had always planned on returning the majority of the keepers back to binders when I was finished.

Well, at some point I did finish, and then an unexpected thing happened... I didn't start returning what was left of the collection to binders!

I think I was burned out from having just done all of that sorting, or maybe it was something else, I don't know. Either way, the majority of my collection was now in boxes, and there it would sit, and sit, and sit some more; that is until last month when I finally found the motivation to start moving things back to where they belonged, in binders.

I mentioned a couple of times recently that I hadn't been doing much, if any, card sorting this year. Because of this, stacks have been building, lots and lots of stacks! I know that a big reason for this was that I really disliked just filing things away in boxes, only to not be seeing them again. This also sort of confirmed a theory that I've had for a long time about how often folks that store their cards in boxes actually ever look at said cards in boxes. No matter what anyone says, it's not convenient to pull out stacks of cards, sit down, and look through them that way. As I've gotten older I've also fallen into the mindset of why bother having something if you're never going to look at it/interact with it? If it's just to say that you have a particular thing, well, I for one will not be impressed by that thing that will take you hours to find if someone did actually want to see it. And if keeping all of these cards around in boxes that you never go through is meant to impress anyone with the sheer number of cards in your possession, just remember that he who has the most cards doesn't win. In fact, you're just setting someone up else to be the loser, that being the poor soul(s) who's gonna have to deal with your accumulation when you're gone. I don't know about anyone else, but that's not a burden I'd like to leave behind, nor would I like to be remembered as the person who left that kind of burden on someone else's shoulders.

I'm starting to get a bit preachy here, apologies, that's definitely not what this post is about. 

Anyways, the point is that I wasn't doing any sorting, and I'm pretty sure that it's because everything was in boxes. I've now spent at least an hour a night for the better part of a month returning the majority of my collection back to binders, and have noticed an immediate resurgence of interest in all things cards. Some of the cards are being grouped by player, for player collections of course, but I've also been creating themed pages, which I'm finding are much more interactive than pages housing player collections. Some new mini collections have been started as well, but it's the themed pages that I'm having the most fun with. The only small problem - and this where the point of today's post finally comes into play - is that some of these themed pages contain cards of different sizes, the smaller of which causing said problems.

It's no secret that the common sized tobacco cards, or the modern minis of the same size, look like hot shit in 9-pocket pages. Cards of that size rarely stay in place, and almost never remain completely upright. There's also an issue with empty space, and the poor aesthetics that are caused by it. I know that they make special penny sleeves now that center minis in the middle of the sleeve/toploader/page, but that still doesn't help with all of the empty space around the card. With all of this in mind, I decided to see if I could come up with a solution, or even a partial solution, which I may have done.

Ideas can often come at the oddest of times. After a few days of nothing, one decided to show up last week while I was making dinner, more specifically, while a pot of noodles (chickpea elbows) were simmering on the stove. I had a few minutes before they'd be done, so I figured I might as well see if the idea had legs or not.

Now before anyone says anything, remember, I had about five minutes or less to do this, and it was just a prototype, or a proof of concept if you will. The idea was basically just to try and make a cheaper version of those frames that are used for the A&G mini autos and relics. With no time to waste, I grabbed a Golden Age mini from my "to get rid of" box (just in case I f'ed up), cut a few strips (unmeasured) from my last little bit of Dollar Tree poster board, cut down a penny sleeve to secure the card in, and stapled all together. There's no doubt that even for a five-minute proof of concept project, that this is pretty darn hideous. But, it did at least tell me that I may be on the right track. Oh, and in case you're wondering, no, I didn't overcook the noodles :)

The next morning I decided to give it another go. This time I actually measured the opening, but with my last X-Acto blade being terribly dull, I had to use a box cutter to cut out the frame. It didn't go so well. Dollar Tree's poster board is prone to shredding, and that's exactly what happened here. Also, with math not being something that I've ever been good at (which I don't say with any sort of pride, unlike most modern idiots who do. It's constant source of embarrassment for me, and has hindered more than a few projects in the past.), one can clearly see that my measurements were off. Despite that, I closed it up anyway to see how it would look, this time using some double-sided tape.

And here's what I'm calling my "this shit is getting on my nerves" attempt. No measuring, and I switched over to my dull X-Acto... and it shows! It is funny though, I can draw a perfectly straight line freehand, but can't cut one (Cut one! 😆) to save my life. This was also the last of my white poster board.

If there's one thing worse than Dollar Tree's white poster board, it's their black poster board. The black isn't even the same material as the white, it's much thinner, kind of like slightly thicker construction paper. It has a white middle too, which you can't hide from the final product. I had a little bit of the black left over from a past project, and decided to give it one more go, this time using one of the cards that I actually want to put in page. Once again, I just eyeballed the measurements, but this time I broke out my old paper cutter (paid a lot less for mine though) to do the interior cut. It's very hard to see where the knife is stopping on this particular model, so I had to do the corners with the dull X-Acto again. Overall though, aside from the slanted cut on the top and bottom of the window, I don't think that this one turned out half bad. It would look semi-okay in a page as is. Certainly better than the card just floating all over the page by itself would. Had I measured it, this one probably would've been a keeper. Once again, the card is safely encased in a trimmed down penny sleeve, and I used a few tiny spots of Elmer's glue to close up the frame.

I realize that there's no way that I'm the first person to try and replicate the A&G frames, but I haven't seen anyone share their attempts, so I thought some folks might like to see mine -- terrible as they may be. 

If I had absolutely any computer skills, I'm sure that frames with the correct measurements could be printed onto poster stock, and this whole process would be considerably easier -- but I don't, so trying to make these by hand is the only possible option for me. Custom borders could probably be done with a computer too, but again, not an option for me. Hobby Lobby sells 12" x 12" paper squares made out of very thin paper. They come in all different kinds of designs, as I believe they're for scrapbooking, but I don't see why I couldn't get some of those and cut out an overlay to jazz up the borders some. I don't know though, I'll probably try and go there in a few weeks and see what's what. I need some more poster board too, I can't do anything else for the moment with out it.

I'm not overly happy with how these attempts have gone so far, but even if nothing ever comes from them, I did get a blog post out of them, that's gotta be worth something, right? I suppose too if there's any interest, I can do an update at some later date, and show off the next batch once I get the aforementioned needed supplies. Until then, I attempted to solve another tricky sized card in pages issue via crafts just yesterday, and actually liked how the prototype turned out. It's got real potential. I'm thinking I'll do a shorter post about that one next week. First though, I got to come up with something to post on Christmas...

Cards!

Looking back at the last ten posts or so that I've done, I see that not a lot of cards have made it onto the blog in recent months; maybe ten cards or less across those last ten posts. One might think that this was because I didn't have anything "new" coming in to talk about or show off, but it's actually been quite the opposite, where too much has been arriving and I don't even know where to start with it.

I mentioned just recently that I've been spending a lot of time as of late sorting cards, this after not doing so for most of the year. As nice, and relaxing, as it's been to spend some of my nights just listening to music while I put cards in pages, a number of stacks grew up during the year, and it's been slow going as I attempt to reduce their respective heights. And it seems like every time I start to see some progress, more cards show up!

It's amazing how many things have been found so far that I had completely forgotten about, especially those that were only bought in the last couple of months. I think I also pointed out sometime not too long ago that I find it funny how in the early days of the blog, I would post about every single new card that came in, and nowadays only, maybe, 5% of what shows up on my doorstep ever gets covered here. That probably isn't necessarily bad thing though as I would imagine that most of those older posts aren't very good (I certainly won't be going back to read them), lots of cards, yes, but probably very little substance. No soul if you will.

Some of my collecting interests are changing/shifting again, some of which will be discussed below, while others will be covered in future posts. With so few cards making into blog posts in recent months though, I figured that I'd try and make up for it a little today by going all smorgasbord on you, pulling out some of the cards that have recently been "rediscovered" from my stacks. A few cards from a few different orders to give you some idea of where my collecting head has been at this year. Spoiler alert, it's been all over the place!

I rarely remember what the impetus is behind most of the things I do, even in real time, so trying to go back to the summer and figure out why I decided that I needed some of Ray Caldwell's cards in my life is almost impossible. Whatever the reason though, I added a couple of his cards to one of my "larger" (maybe 15 cards worth) orders from Sportlots back in June(?) or July(?), one of which was the really nifty TCMA 1920 Indians card. A lot of people remember solely as the guy who got hit by lightning while out on the mound (you all already know that story, right?), got up after a spell, and then finished pitching the inning/game. It is a pretty great story, but like a lot of guys from his era, he was a character, one that could only exist during that time period, and as such, led a very interesting life. Surviving being struck by lightning was just the cherry on top of the interesting life sundae.

As far as this card itself goes, well, to me it's just about perfect. Action cards are always fun, but if you've got to get a card of someone who isn't in motion, they just don't come too much better than this.

The back is pretty great too. I'm sure some would complain about the lack of stats, but this set was covering the teams 1920 season, so you get everyone's stats for that particular season, nothing more, nothing less.

Again, I don't know why, but a number of my summer Sportlots orders had TCMA cards in them, another of which was this Dick Wakefield from TCMA's War Years set. I don't if I was thinking about doing so at the time, but I've been thinking about starting a Bonus Baby collection. If I do, I've got numero uno covered, as back in 1941,  Dick was the first prospect to be given a check, or bonus, to skip the minor leagues and sign with a team. The term "bonus baby" didn't even exist until a few years later, and as such, Dick, and his contemporary babies, don't even appear on the official list of "bonus babies". In fact, everyone before 1947 is usually absent from the lists that you'll find all over the internet.

I had a shipment of around 250 cards arrive from the Baseball Card Store back in November, right around the time that I finally felt like sorting again. Since these were the newest cards at the time, I started putting them away before even scanning any for the blog. A lot of the order was made up of early 90's Blazers (and former Blazers) and Marvel cards, neither of which are things that blog readers are clamoring to see, so you probably dodged a bullet this time. At some point though, I did think that maybe I should scan a couple of cards for a post, and grabbed a few of the stragglers for your viewing pleasure.

1997-98 Hoops is a much maligned set, but I've always liked it. I dislike sets with replaced backgrounds more and more as I get older, this set however will forever be immune to that hate, as it's got quite a bit of nostalgia for me. Here we have a pair of former Blazers (childhood favorites), which is actually a trio of former Blazers, as Otis Thorpe got a cameo on Cliff's card.

It's been almost 30 years since this set came out, and I still get a kick out of the singles that can be put together to form a scene. It wasn't the first card set to borrow the idea from old sticker albums, but did have the most combo cards at the time.

Shreck, aka Terror, is one of my favorite comic book characters of all time. Originally an Epic character, Marvel convinced his creator to bring him over to the Marvel universe, where the big plans that they had for him evaporated before they even got started, and the character quickly faded from most peoples memory. As a reader of comics, I do wish that Marvel would've never gotten their hands on the character, but as a card collector, I'm glad they did, otherwise no cards of him probably would've ever been produced. I have a couple of copies of "Terror's" "rookie" card, but couldn't pass up another cheap one. 

I thought I already had a copy of this one for the Carnage collection, turns out I didn't. 

I grabbed a number of the hologram variants from the '91-92 UD set, but pictures of tiny holograms on the backs of cards aren't that interesting to most people, so here's one of the fronts. I kind of like the different holograms myself, but will not try to convince anyone that they're more pleasing to the eye than an action shot featuring a rookie Dikembe Mutombo taking it right at Manute Bol.

I don't know if the person formerly known as Twitch was the first person to do it, I'm assuming not, but they were the first person that I saw do one player collections. I've since seen some folks on Twitter who do it, and as of late, Gavin has been doing it too. I always liked this concept, but could never commit to it... until now! I continue to want to pare down my collection, and I feel like this sort of thing will help do so. There's still gonna be a bunch of guys and gals who I want everything from, but there's also plenty of people who I'd be content to have just one page's worth of stuff from. As I've already started doing this, I'm finding that most of the one page heroes are of names that would have been recognizable to younger me, or rather folks who I regularly pulled from packs as a kid. Orel is just such one of those guys. I've never had a desire to collect him before, but at the same time it feels like he was in every single pack of baseball cards that I opened as a kid. I'm gonna try to get a good mix on these pages (base, inserts, parallels, etc.), but all will be hand chosen for one reason or another. This particular card was picked because I can't imagine that he was shown batting on too many cards, which is kind of neat, and the color matching border just put it over the top. I also grabbed a Fernando card from this set for his page, if only because he's shown as an Oriole.

This card checks off so many 90's boxes: Sticker, check! Neon colors, check! Crazy squiggles all over the place, check! Glow in the dark, double check! It just doesn't get too much more 90's than this! Tim is getting the one page treatment as well, and so far I've got some pretty dope cards for him. Depending on the five more cards that I get to fill it, his page might end up being the most interesting.

I had about 30 Hollywood Starline cards in this box, about half of which I was hoping would be upgrades, and thankfully they were. 

I'm still undecided as to whether or not I actually like the various Senior League cards. On one hand it's nice to get a few more "playing days" cards for player collections, but on the other, some of the cards are terribly depressing.

I had never seen Donruss' 2001 release before. From what I can gather, it looks like at least for part of the set that the borders are color matching, some of which are more attractive than others. I haven't gone through the checklist yet, but I did see a nifty red Junior that I'd like to get at some point. As for Cal, he's getting a page too. So far this is it for the page though. I do have a few inserts that I was going to add to it, but upon recent reviewing, I decided that I didn't care much for those and will now need to find a new home for them.

I took advantage of the Baseball Card Store's free shipping offer on Black Friday, but haven't heard anything about the order since. I should have about a hundred more cards coming, but don't know when that will be. Hopefully I'll get a few more things put away by then, and won't have to just show a couple of the leavings from it.

My two years worth of accumulation from COMC came in November, and aside from making sure that everything was there, haven't done much with it's contents since. For the sake of this post though, I did pull out a couple of cards, one of which was one of these; the other two came from TCDB trades earlier this year. I've talked about it on a couple of separate occasions already, and won't go into it again, but this is my favorite modern parallel of someone who I don't collect. These were #'s 5, 6, and 7. Ideally I'd love to get enough to fill a couple of pages, but for now I'll be content if I can just get two more to fill up a page.

Speaking of duplicates! This is '61 Billy Muffett #27. God, I love this card! Prices for decent looking copies have gone up a tad on the site, so I probably won't be getting too many more from there. Most of the other online prices aren't very cost effective either. One of these days I really need to start going to shows again.

Color shifts are so damn hard to find on COMC that I feel like I've struck gold every time I do actually encounter one. I just recently put this mini collection into a page finally. I was a bit disappointed to find that I only had six of them though, I thought I had more. But again, hard to find, so I guess six is better than none.

I had built up 72 cards in my COMC account since I requested my two years worth to be shipped back in May. I then bought a little over 30 cards during all of the Black Friday sales, which put me over 100, and qualified me for their free shipping promotion, which I did take advantage of. I just got notified on Friday that my cards had shipped, one week before their original estimate. I think it's safe to say that things have greatly improved over there in Auburn. Between the last shipment and this one, if I wanted to get lazy here on the blog, I'd probably have next years content already covered. I won't be doing that, but the thought is somewhat appealing.

This card appeared in a recent Diamond King post that I commented on, and to my great surprise, showed up just a few days later in my mailbox. All I said was that it was a pretty cool card and that I couldn't believe that Kevin had found at a sow there in Portland, and then like magic, here it was! Oh, and it is a pretty cool card - a '61 Dutch Gum for those that care - my first 'playing days' Kirk Douglas. Many thanks again to Kevin for the very unexpected gift.

The final duo for today are the most recent cards to grace my mailbox, a pair of wonderful customs from Greg's most recent giveaway over on Nine Pockets. This is my second batch of Greg's customs, and there every bit as neat as the last ones. I don't know who prints them, but I still can't get over how good these cards feel in hand, I mean they actually feel like real cards. Desperado is a film that I will forever associate with my teens. I saw it in the theatre with a friend and his family when I was either 12 or 13 (depending on what month it was released that year), and can distinctly remember buying it on VHS at a Target about two years later. That video got a lot of viewings, as it was always a popular option when friends were over. I can't say with absolute certainty, but I believe that if we didn't rent anything, this and The Lost Boys were the two videos that got watched the most when friends were staying the night. An odd combo for sure, but I certainly wasn't going to complain. Thanks to Greg for the giveaway! 

One good thing about spending a bunch of time handling cards again has been that now I feel like blogging about cards again. Feeling and doing are of course two different things entirely, and whether or not this want to do so will actually translate into more posts with cards in them, remains to be seen. I could do posts like this for the foreseeable future, but I suspect that they might get a little old, very quickly. Who knows, just typing out loud, as usual. I can at least say that the next post will be card related, although it also include some crafting as well... yes, crafting!

A good problem to have

I have read quite a few books this year. I read quite a few last year too. Not as many as this year though. Knowing that I would at least be keeping up with last years pace, I had planned on keeping track of how many books I read this year, and then doing some sort of year-end recap post. I was also going to make a list of what I had read and possibly make a worst to best list. 

Unfortunately, I've found out that I'm not very good at keeping track of those kinds of statistics, so there won't be any such post (this is where the sad faced emoji goes). I do know that I read five books in each month of January, February, and March. I also know that I read ten books during two different summer months. That's 35 right there, but after that I don't know. Based on how many other things that I didn't do this year, i.e. blog very often, sort cards, watch too many movies, reorganize my neglected stamp collection, etc.; I'll go ahead and assume that I did at least five books a month during the rest of the time that I wasn't keeping track as well.

As of this writing, Dec.7th, I've only just finished my first book of the month, so it looks like December might end up being a down month. Trading cards are most likely going to be responsible for this, as I've already spent six hours over the last seven days putting cards in binders. I have done almost no sorting this year, and because of that have stacks and stacks of cards piled around, some more precariously than others. It's been kind of therapeutic to do this again, but I'm doing it at night, which is when I read, and I'm already missing that time spent reading. I fear that not all of my stacks are going to get finished.

Reading is a good way to spend ones time, but unless you live close to a library, having enough reading material can sometimes be a problem. I was really having trouble doing so earlier this year, often times only having 2-3 books to choose from at any one given time. Thankfully though, I'm closing out the year strong with book purchases galore. I've been doing good on my own, but also got a recent assist from my mom as well.

There was a big semi-local book sale a few weeks back, one that I was going to attend. There was some stuff that needed to be done on that particular morning, which was gonna keep me from getting there when it opened, thus potentially missing out on some of the better items. And this is where mom comes in! She was there when it opened, and over the course of the next hour or two, sent a bunch of pictures via text asking if I was interested in various things, some of which I was...

I had this book many years ago. Ironically it was donated to a book sale. What comes around, goes around?

Anybody know the answer to this books title without looking it up?

There were about half a dozen different Cardinals books at this sale, but this was the only that I asked my mom to grab.

I have the "Boys of Summer", but have never read any of Roger Kahn's other works, so this'll probably be a good gauge as to whether or not I do ever want to try any more.

Old library book...

You don't need a synopsis to figure out what this one's all about.

Another old library book...

... albeit a much more interesting one!

This book covers every major leagues roster up until 1973. I haven't encountered a book like this before, and while it would've been much more impressive in the pre-internet age, I'm sure that I'll still be able to find some things of note. Might even be able to get a blog post out of it? Does anyone ever read non-fiction books out of order? I do all the time, and will be doing so again with this one when I jump ahead a hundred pages to start with the Federal League stats.

Sample page.

In addition to all of the books, there was also a lot of other forms of media represented at this sale, so I got pictures of those sections sent to me as well.

I started off the post with some stats, sort of, and while I don't have any numbers to back it up, I'm pretty sure I bought the least amount of videos and DVD's this year, than any other year in my adult life. My interest in such things hasn't diminished, it just seems like they're not as prevalent as they used to be anymore, especially videos. The Book Cellar stopped taking videos this year, and one of the local thrift stores stopped as well. I've heard people in other areas reporting the same thing, so I know it's not just a here thing. I will be an unhappy camper when the time comes where I can no longer find used videos to peruse.

I think I may have seen this episode when it originally aired, but won't know for sure until I watch it. This is a 3-tape set by the way, not something that you encounter very often.

I don't care about newer Titanic books or television specials, but won't turn down an older 90's piece.

It's funny how many things around here you can find with old McKay's stickers on them. They haven't sold videos for awhile, so I always leave those stickers on. The ones on books go though.

I haven't seen this since it's original airing. I remember not being crazy about it at the time, but 20+ years may have changed my opinion. Like I mentioned earlier, I haven't been watching as much stuff as I usually do, so even the things I'm looking forward to, usually end up taking me a couple of months to get to.

A 90's cable favorite.

I used to always find copies of this at the Value Village in Vancouver, WA, but had seen it enough times that I didn't buy any of those copies at the time. Fast forward a decade (maybe a little more), and I haven't watched again in all of that time, and am now taking a chance on a very beat up copy. 

Given how many items my mom found, and how late in the day it was getting, I didn't end up going to the sale myself. I saw what was available from a few other sections, which didn't contain anything else for me, and really, all I missed out on was possibly wandering through the history section (too many books to send detailed photos of), and I'm okay with that. There's no shortage of history books at just about any place that sells books. I will be going next year though.

I'm not lucky enough to live near one of those Dollar Tree's that has all of the great movies and television show seasons on DVD and Blu-Ray, but up until the corona got going, the nearest store did get some decent books on a fairly regular basis. It's been pretty spotty for the last two years though, and not just on books, the store itself seems to be struggling to get much of anything, well, anything but junk food. With junk food not being my thing, I haven't had much occasion to go as of late, and as such, have only been going in there about every 3-6 months. It had been on the upper end of that estimate before I got the urge to go last week. There were still a lot of empty shelves in there, but to my surprise to book section looked pretty well stocked, and wouldn't you know it, I found a book!

And here's what I just finished reading, my one book for December so far. I didn't realize that it wasn't written by a Brit, and starts off in Britain, so with me not being an anglophile it took a little effort to get into it. Ultimately I'm glad that I stuck with it though, it wasn't perfect, but was definitely worth a buck.

Seeing as how I was right there, I couldn't not go into the Serenity Thrift that's right next door... 

Hey, another book! At over 850 pages, this is one chunky MF'er. I'm really looking forward to this one, but probably won't start to tackle until January.

I was also in Crossville last week too, and even though I was just there 2 or 3 weeks ago, I made quick stop at the Book Cellar to see if anything new had come in. Turns out that quite a bit of new stuff had been brought in during those couple weeks.

I know from past posts that there aren't a lot of X-Files fans coming around here, so I didn't bother with of the backs. This was an exciting haul for me though, especially since I've never even seen two of these on the secondary market before.

I've been on a big film novelization kick in recent months. 70's and 80's examples are of particular interest to me. I haven't seen Cocoon for a couple of decades, so I doubt I'll even notice any of the differences that usually find in novelizations with this one.

I always seem to be ending my physical media posts with Scholastic book. You might be complaining about that, but I'm certainly not.

I may have started last year low on books to choose from, but have closed it out with a glutton of purchases to restock my options during the first few months of the coming new year. And I'm still gonna try to hit McKay's one more this later this month too. Don't worry though, this'll be the last post of it's kind for the year, I promise!