Getting too smart for it's own good

I noticed my phone doing a curious thing while texting with my mom this past weekend. For what I hope are obvious reasons, I will not be posting screen shots of the text conversation. I did however, go to Google to see if this curiosity would replicate itself, which it did, so I'll be posting those grabs instead.

I was getting ready to type "replying" during our conversation, and couldn't help but notice the first thing that popped up in the auto-suggest (auto-fill?) box after I typed the "r". Despite being in mid conversation, I took a second to follow the phone's lead, and tapped on the "Reggie", which brought up a delightful, if not totally unexpected, result...

Google may not know what's up, but my phone clearly does. And for record, no, I didn't leave Reggie Roby's name just randomly placed in the conversation.

It's also worth pointing out that while my phone may be syncing up with my being, Google seems to be going in the opposite direction. Need proof? Just look at those three suggested items on the first screen. "restaurants near me" Really? In all my years of internetting, I have not once sought out an eatery near me, or anywhere else for that matter. "russia ukraine"? Yeah, right! Why would I, or anyone else, be seeking out something that's currently on the home page of just about every single website. And "Regions Bank", I don't even know what that is -- aside from being a bank of some sort. Those are searches for boring people. You want interesting searches, look at the first three on that screen, those are all me! Granted, I only remember doing one of the three, but still, at least they've got soul. "restaurants near me"... GTFOH with that lame-ass suggestion!

I guess it's just you and me, phone. Nobody gets me like you do :)

Wow

The auctions on Sportlots have always been hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes there's a proliferation of interesting items listed, and other times, it's just a bunch of glorified dime box cards. There are rarely enough new items listed each day to warrant my looking through them that often, but I have a found a couple of really good deals on there over the years, so with that in mind, I do go and skim through the relevant (to me) listings every couple of days or so. It usually only takes a couple of minutes, so even if I don't come across anything of interest, I don't feel like I've wasted much time, if any, looking.

Yesterday was one of those days that I went to look. Upon landing on the site, I noticed a familiar listing right there on the front of the site where they feature the auctions that are ending soon. I say familiar, because it feels like I had been seeing it for months, which, when discussing a Sportlots auction, is entirely possible. As an aside, for those that don't know, Sportlots auctions are ostensibly 3-day listings, but every time a new high bid is entered, the listing resets to day 1. So if there are enough interested parties, an auction on there could, in theory, go on almost indefinitely. I've never liked that format myself, but others seem to be okay with it, so maybe it's just a me thing.

Anyway, back to this old listing...

Oh, sorry, another quick aside, I've just finally learned how to take screenshots with my laptop and phone, so if anything looks off here, I'm still trying to get the hang of it.

Ok, so this the listing the caught my eye yesterday morning. I knew that I had seen it before, but it felt like it was many months ago. As it turns out, it was a rather old listing.

I couldn't get the whole history on to one page, but you can see that this auction started over two months ago. It looked like it might finally be ending when I saw it yesterday, and since you can't look at completed auctions on this site, I decided grab some of these images in case it was gone this morning -- which it was.

I didn't think to grab a close-up until after I had closed down my laptop last night.

I realize that I'm completely out of touch with just about everything at this point, and I'm sure that there are people out there who still go gaga over relic cards, and I'm also sure that someone's gonna tell me that a Mike Trout relic/patch something-or-another just recently sold for a million dollars (or some other ridiculous sum), but I just find it hard to believe that anyone would pay this much for one of these newer relics of very questionable origins (I also find it hard to believe that at least two people spent the last couple of months bidding back and forth for this particular card)  And this has nothing to do with the player featured, I mean I collect Roger Maris, or at least I try to; but even if money weren't an issue, I couldn't see myself ever paying more than a couple of dollars for this glorified insert.

The card itself is butt fugly, and Panini's guarantee on the back is just downright silly. It says something to the affect of "Panini of America guarantees that this game-worn material is authentic". Ha! It sure doesn't sound like Roger ever even saw this material, does it? In fact, that sort of disclaimer makes me think more of Stu, from the mail room, wearing this "material" during a recent game of Monopoly. And slapping a 1-of-1 on the back doesn't make it any more authentic. Now that I think about it though, maybe these bidders were both collectors of all things "Stu"? In a funny sort of  way, that might actually make more sense :)

A Baseball Card Store Top 12

Like a number of other bloggers, I received a shipment from the Baseball Card Store back in early January. However, unlike all of those other bloggers, it's taken me until March to finally get around to posting about said shipment.

I wanna say that there were around 200 cards in the shipment, half of which were probably gotten on Black Friday when everything was a nickel and there was special free shipping promotion going on. The other half were just regular old dime cards that had been sitting in my account.

Since there is no way that I was gonna spend however many hours it would've took to scan all 200 cards, or even a significant portion of them, I took the lazy approach and pulled out a few that I thought were of note, scanned them, and am now doing one of my least favorite kind of posts; a top 10 list, or in this case, a top 12 list. Oh, and since my feelings on lists have already been established in previous posts, let's not dwell on that again, shall we? I get it, you all like lists, and I'm not overly fond of them. It's crazy, I know, but it's been covered, time to move on...

#12: 1993 Ted Williams Card Company #119

Full disclosure, I originally started this post over a month ago, got bored, left, and hadn't come back to it until today (Sunday). Generally, I don't like to leave drafts laying around too long, if only because I can always remember why I did something months after the fact. Case in point, I no longer have any idea why I pulled this card out. I had a few of the Ted Williams lady baseballers in this shipment, but don't know why Marge is here. It is a nice looking card though.

#11: 1992 Score #344

The concentration that can be seen in Mongo's eyes is what makes this card. It's like watching a lion stalk a zebra.

Speaking of eyes...

#10: 1993 Leaf #316

I found out, after scanning it, that I already had one of these in the Bo collection. I don't mind at all though, as this is one of those cards that makes a page pop; even more so when there's multiple copies of it on a page.

#9: 1996-97 Fleer Ultra #73

This shot is from LJ's "Welcome to the Knicks" presser. I may not like lists, but I absolutely love "What If's?". I don't think about it much these days, but I used to often wonder what if LJ and Alonzo Mourning could've co-existed? And what if he didn't have the back problems? And then of course, what if he hadn't left Charlotte? It would've been very interesting to see Charlotte continue to build around Zo and a healthy LJ. Depending on the pieces, they might've been a real contender during mid to late 90's.

#8: 2009 Rittenhouse The Complete Twilight Zone #19

This Twilight Zone set is great for those that collect certain celebrity's, or for those like myself who are working on themed collections/pages. The cards feature an episode on each side, so there's twice as many opportunities to get that certain someone that you're looking for. There's also a few people featured in this set who had never been on a card before, or since (despite all of the TZ sets in recent years). I picked up about half of this set (for a nickel apiece) for various collections. You'll be seeing more of these in the future, but for the moment I just chose to highlight the great Keenan Wynn, who was needed for my Kolchak collection.

#7: 1992 Fleer Ultra #54

I don't collect Jim Thome, but after coming across this card, I decided I had to have it nonetheless. I like that you can tell exactly what's happened just by looking at him. The non-rookie Rookie banner is kind of annoying, but it's small enough that I can look past it and still enjoy the card.

#6: 2016 MTG: Oath of the Gatewatch #017

I know nothing about MTG, and until just the last few years, never really cared about it. It's too late for me to learn about the game itself, but I have come to appreciate some of the artwork, and have quietly been picking up a few cards (cheap cards) here and there just for said artwork. In this case, a lion sporting a pair of ethereal antlers was just too cool for me not to get.

#5: 1992-93 Topps Archives #80

I had this complete set at one time, but that was a long, long, time ago. Despite it's being one of my personal favorites, I'm not looking to build it again. I do however still need a few cards for player collections, though not as many as I did before this shipment. Now if the BCS would just put up some of the gold stamp versions...

#4: 1991 Starline Hollywood Walk of Fame #'s 103,16, 176, and 54

Yeah, I know, I'm kind of cheating here. This set is really great for person/themed collections too. Unfortunately, I think with the dozen or so cards that I had in this order, I now have everybody that I need from it (insert sad faced emoji here). Ann B. Davis is for a Brady Bunch themed page. Chuck is for, well, I don't really know yet. Maybe I'll do a themed page for him, at least then I'd have an excuse to get a Jill Ireland card 😉. Scatman is for the Kolchak collection. And Jane is for the smokeshow small collection of hers that I've got going.

#3: 1990 Pacific Andy Griffith Show #279

This card has proven rather difficult to find cheap. I had been looking for one for the last few years, but never thought to check the BCS for it before that fateful Black Friday evening when I spent multiple hours scouring the site. I was starting to think that I was gonna have to buy the whole set just to get this one, as well as few others that I still need. In another timeline, Elinor Donahue and Andy Griffith clicked better, and she became a much more permanent fixture on the show. As it is though, they didn't, and she only appeared on part of the first season. As much as I enjoy The Andy Griffith Show, her appearance on the program isn't why I wanted this card, no, I needed her for yet another themed page, one that'll be revealed at a later date (if it ever gets completed, that is).

#2: 1993 Upper Deck #175

I am of the opinion that this is about as close to a perfect baseball card as you can get, at least as far as modern cards go... maybe even vintage too!

#1: 1991 Impel Terminator 2 #10

Robert Patrick RoOkIe CaRd! For those of you that actually take such things seriously, Robert Patrick has multiple "rookie" cards in this set, and the much inferior Topps T2 set from the same year. This is the best looking one. This was another set that I had never thought to look for on the site prior to Black Friday, I'm glad I did though, as I was able to get a few more "kEy" cards (Arnold, Linda Hamilton, and James Cameron) for other themed pages as well.

After going through this list again, I can't say that these cards are in the exact order that they should be, but I guess it's close enough. Although Mongo probably should've been higher than #11, just sayin'.

Not the funnest of mail days

I got a bit of a surprise on Thursday when I went out to the mailbox, and found one of my old TTM SASE's sitting in there.

Since I haven't sent out a request in like four years, I thought that this might be one of those instances that I've read about where someone receives a signed item back after having written it off years earlier. This would not be one of those instances.

Some of the folks that are unfortunate enough to have been coming around here for a while, might recall that I use to do a "TTM Triumph" series. The posts weren't great, but they did gave me something to talk about there for a bit, so they were good for me in that regard. I stopped doing the posts around the time that I stopped sending out requests. My venture into the world of TTM's didn't last too long, and not because I stopped enjoying the getting of autographs, no, the letters; that's what did me in. 

For better or worse, I'm a rambler. I do it in blog posts. I probably do it when talking. And I do it when writing letters too! Try as I have, it's a habit that I just can't seem to break. If I didn't have any blogs to keep up with, I could've probably kept sending out requests, but writing multiple page letters for each of my requests (if you think my posts are bad, just imagine being one of the poor souls who's received one of my letters) while also trying to keep this blog updated on a semi-regular basis, was just too much for me. 

While still actively sending out requests I kept track of what I sent to who, and when; but have long since recycled those records. And not being in possession of the greatest of memories, I can't remember every single person that didn't respond to my requests. The North Houston postmark didn't help narrow things down either. However...

... after pulling out this note first, I had a pretty good idea who this request had been to.

At some point in the distant past, I had gotten a bunch of tiny envelopes for free. I think that they might've originally been for wedding invitations, or possible baby shower invites. Either way, I found that they were the perfect size to use for a card when doing TTM's. They seemed to give them just a little bit more protection while on their journey. Opening the envelope, my suspicions as to this was from were concerned.

Another one of these was in the little envelope as well.

I remember reading of Bill's passing, but after looking again, had forgotten that it was just a little over a month ago.

As mentioned already, I don't recall exactly when I sent this, but it had to have been at least four years ago. I had been trying to get as many cards signed as I could from the 1989-90 Hoops set at the time (a project long since abandoned), and remember seeing that a lot of people were having success with Coach Fitch. I figured that he would be an automatic success, but obviously I was wrong.

I of course have no way of knowing why my attempt failed, but wouldn't be surprised if it was just a matter of a bunch of other people seeing the same thing that I saw, and then inundating him with requests. I would imagine that that happens on fairly regular basis. I also have no trouble imagining how overwhelming it can be for the requestee when this does happen.

So, yeah, not the greatest of mail days. It's actually kind of sucky. Though, probably not anywhere near as sucky as it is for the family who appear to be going through all of his old mail and returning cards to those that sent them. That certainly isn't something that I would want to task myself with. 

And for the record, I do appreciate their gesture, I just wish I could've told them not to bother with my card.