The horror of it all

Like most years since starting this blog, I had planned on doing on something special here for Halloween. But, as is so often the case these days, lack of time, and to a lesser degree, sucky health things, have conspired against me. So, instead of doing some elaborate and/or creative post, I find myself scrambling at the last minute for something to replace that with. The only thing that I can think of is to do what I did last year, which was to go through all of my scan folders (I have so much stuff waiting to be blogged about!) and pull out anything and everything that could possibly be interpreted as holiday appropriate.

I couldn't find as much as last year, but what I did find will have to do. My only solace is that at least a few of the cards in here are not the sort that one is likely to come across on the blogs very often.

1980 Topps Weird Wheels #'s 27, 36, & 49

This is a set that I've only recently become sort of enamoured with. I've known of its existence for a long time, but had never really paid much attention to it until I came across some of them on COMC. After looking at some of the singles, I found myself unable to pass this trio of monster/spooky themed vehicles (and their drivers). I don't think the set sells for very much, so that may be in my future as well.

1994 CARDZ Julie Bell #19

I'm too old for video games now, but there was a time way back when I could've been a called a "gamer"-- though, we didn't use that dumb term back then, thankfully. I, like a lot of kids, enjoyed horror themed games, this despite there not being very many such games at the time. One of the few exceptions during the early to mid 90's was the Splatterhouse series. I never owned any of them myself, if only because I never actually saw any of them for sale anywhere. I did, however, rent the heck out of volumes 2 and 3 on the Genesis. Looking back, they really weren't all that great, and old me now thinks that such games shouldn't have been being played by kids, but as they say, "It is what it is", or in this case, "It was what it was". I couldn't imagine wasting any of my remaining time on these sort of games now, and while I do wish that I would've spent some of those youthful years more wisely, it is still a period of my life that I'd like to not forget; and finding a card like the one shown that represents the series is a good way to help me remember. It'd also serve as a reminder for time misspent; lest I ever start to slip back into my old less productive ways.

1940 Bridgewater Film Stars 8th Series #18

Dorothy Lamour is best remembered for many things, horror not being one of them. That being said, she did appear in one of the Creepshow 2 stories. I liked the first film as a kid (not as an adult though), but the sequel never did much for me.

1993 Topps Jurassic Park #135

Despite some scary moments, I don't think anyone would classify Jurassic Park as a horror film. The picture's animatronic dinosaurs were created by Stan Winston (as on this card) though, and he himself was known for creating/designing many a scary thing throughout his career.

It's also scary to think how long it took me to get this card. It had been on my want list for years. One wouldn't think that a single card from a base set that came out in 1993 would be so hard to obtain, but this one proved to be quite elusive.

1935 Gallaher Portraits of Famous Stars #44

Beetlejuice may not be a horror picture, but there's no shortage of Halloween-esque doings in the film. It was a small part, but Sylvia Sidney's role as Juno is very memorable. That's partly due to it being a good character, but even more so because Sylvia had been appearing in pictures for a lot of years by that point, and knew what to do when she was in front of camera.

1974 Topps Monster Initial Stickers #NNO

Artwork-wise, I've always thought this set looked like it should've been a Japanese release. I've never looked into it, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the images were at the very least done by Japanese artists. All things Dracula and Godzilla were major staples of my childhood, which now makes this one of the more nostalgia-inducing cards in my collection.

1950 Dutch Gum Series A Black & White #9

Barbara Hale is best known for her role as Della Street in Perry Mason, and this card was gotten for my Perry Mason collection, but the card itself works well for this post, as she also appeared in The Giant Spider Invasion. It's been decades since I last saw that picture, but I did like it quite a bit as a kid.

1995-96 TV Week #3

Depending on the episode, The X-Files could very much be considered a horror show. Looking back, I personally think that many of the episodes would've held up better had they focused on horror more often. The scary standalone episodes are still very watchable, much more so than the jumbled story arc's that just kept getting more and more nonsensical with each passing season. Chris Carter was good at creating shows, but bad at knowing where to take them once he got them greenlit.

The photo on this card was originally used for a magazine cover, back when the show was the hottest thing around, and you couldn't go more than week without seeing our intrepid agents on the cover of some periodical. I remember those days quite vividly, though, at this point it feels like that was multiple lifetimes ago.

1969 Globe Imports #NNO

I grew up with the Universal Monsters. I wouldn't even want to guess how many times I've seen a couple of their flagship films. In some ways those were like security blanket for me as a kid. Depending on which day you asked me, I'd say that The Wolfman is my favourite, but I could just as easily say Dracula, too. Young me would have said Creature from the Black Lagoon was his favourite, and would've had evidence to back it up to, as he wore out our VHS copy.

1996 Fleer Metal Universe #84

Being surrounded by floating eyeballs would be pretty scary, right? Well, maybe a little less so were you to be wielding a baseball bat at the time.

This scan was kind of poopy, so I tried to go the photo route as well...

That's a tad better.

1934 Godfrey Phillips Stars of the Screen #49

Frederic March ranks pretty high with me in terms of favourite actors. No matter how much time passes, and how many different versions are made, Fred's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will always be the best, and his portrayal of the title character(s) will forever stand amongst the better performances in a horror picture.

Normally I try to remember to scan the backs of any older cards I'm gonna show on here, but it appears that as far as the cards in this post go, I only did so for this one...

1978 Wonder Bread Battlestar Galactica #12 

Roy Thinnes starred in one of my all-time favourite television movies, The Norliss Tapes. Like many of the 70's television movies, especially those of the horror variety, Norliss was made as a pilot. Its creator, Dan Curtis, was shopping it, along with Kolchak: The Night Stalker around at the same time.  Kolchak wound up getting the okay, while Norliss faded into memory. Both shows were similarly themed, so there wasn't any chance of both of them being picked up. Kolchak is my favourite show of all-time, but even so, I would've very much liked to have seen where a Norliss series might've gone. I've often thought that if I were a writer, and one who was inclined to do fan fiction, that Norliss would make for a wonderful series of books.

1937 Sinclair Film Stars #16

Colin Clive does not have very many cards, so it feels like cause for celebration whenever I get one of them. He, of course, is best known for his portrayals of Henry Frankenstein in Universal's Frankenstein and its sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. It's hard to believe that all 19 of his films were made in span of just seven years. Having not been one of the actual Universal Monsters, I suspect that, had he not died so young, he would've easily shed any possible typecasting in the future.

Hopefully some of you will be doing something fun tonight, i.e. something holiday related. Me? I'll probably just be doing my usual boring old man stuff, i.e. nothing holiday related.

My new job... sports card appraiser?

Sadly, no, but I was recently asked to evaluate a small collection of cards for an upcoming sale.

As a few of you know, I have three different blogs; one of which is a non-card blog. And as I've probably mentioned on there a few times now, my mom volunteers at multiple places that are somewhat of the retail-ish variety. The above shoebox full of cards was recently donated for a rummage sale (it's not really a rummage sale, but I can't think of a better way to describe it at the moment). Seeing as how no one there knew anything about sports cards, my mom, the volunteer (though she's risen to more than that at this particular place), volunteered my services, as a longtime collector, in trying to help them come up with a reasonable price for the entire box... which they gladly accepted.

There was one small catch though, the box was donated one day before the sale that it needed to be in was happening, which meant that I only had a couple of hours the night before to go through it and try to come up with some figures that they could look at, and then choose a price that they'd be happy with. Now, this probably wouldn't have been much of an issue had it been one of those disappointing boxes full of nothing but late 80's/early 90's beaters that you often hear about other collectors and shop owners being expected to appraise, but it wasn't. Its contents were a little bit better than that, though still not one of those boxes of untouched tobacco cards that pop up from time to time. That sort of box will have to wait for another day (fingers, and toes, crossed).

I started by sorting everything by sport, and year. And as you can see, pretty much everything was of the early to mid 70's variety. As mentioned, this was kind of thrust upon me at the very last moment, so I wasn't able to get very many pictures before the sun went down (the lighting in my house isn't conducive to photos). Had I had more time, I would've at least moved the best card from each pile to the top to make this one photo a little more impressive.

We're a few weeks removed from this sale, so I can't remember all of the numbers at this point, but I believe that there ended up be around 425-475 cards in the box. About half of them were in P-G condition, and the other half was EX- to EX+. It was kind of odd how that worked. Trying to come up with a price was a bit tricky, as I didn't want to price too low and have some asshole flipper come along and profit from them (as opposed to the cause which the sale was for), but also didn't want to price it too high and scare away any and all interested parties. There were a couple of notable cards, which are usually what are gonna move a lot like this, so I based the price mostly on what someone would've had to pay at a show or online to get them; then tacked on an additional lower sum for the remaining cards. And despite the lack of time, I wrote out a page that could be taped to the box which contained a breakdown of the card totals by year (and sport, of course), and also highlighted the notable cards (and their condition) that were in the box.

This is the first time that I've ever been asked to do something like this, and even though it would've been nice to have a bit more time, it was a fun experience; one that I wouldn't mind doing again. And I heard after the fact that the folks who run the sale were very pleased with my efforts (the spreadsheet went over especially well), and I've since been asked if I wanted to assess another lot of items. And thankfully, this time I'll have a couple of months to work on it. I, of course, said yes. This lot isn't sports or trading card related, so when I eventually get around to blogging about it, it'll be over on the non-card blog (sorry for the tease, but I'd like to generate more traffic towards that blog too).

But wait... there's more! Just doing this thing for these people would've been rewarding unto itself, but from the outset, it was made clear that I could pull out, and buy, any singles that I might want. I can imagine that some (or a lot of) current collectors would take advantage of such an offer by plucking out all of the key cards (which would all be conveniently priced lower than they should've been as well), thus rendering the lot as a whole considerably less desirable. That ain't my way though. I already had at least one copy of each of the better cards in there, and while I wouldn't have minded getting more of each of them, I would want them for cheaper than I priced them at. Heck, I would've bought the whole box if it had been one of those ones you hear about people finding at a garage sale for $5-10, but again, I was trying to make sure that these people got what they were worth, so it was a bit more than $5-10. All that being said, I did end up buying five cards, only one of which might've been considered a key card.

I haven't put much effort into doing so in recent years, but I'd still like to acquire all of the '71 action cards at some point. This got me one card closer.

There was more '73 Topps in this lot than anything else. It's also where the bulk of the best cards were hiding. Despite being Willie Mays, I don't think anyone could argue that this particular copy would be overly desirable to the casual collector. And aside form a few weirdo's, it most certainly wouldn't be of much interest to the seasoned collector (or those suffering from gradeitis). It wasn't until my brief foray into the Twitter a few years back that I came to develop a small appreciation for miscut cards. Slightly miscut still doesn't do anything for me, but cards of this nature, are, to some degree. I still won't go out of my way to find them, but this one felt like a must have. I found an uncut sheet online, which was able satisfy my curiosity as to whose partially shown underneath. It's Billy Parker. This particular card has been a longtime want, and while I'd still like to get a decent looking copy at some point, this one is pretty nifty in the meantime.

I can't remember how old I was, maybe 7 or 8, but somewhere around there my grandpa gave me a stack of cards (bound by a couple of rubber bands no less) that was made up of '73 Topps baseball and football cards. They were the first vintage cards that I can recall seeing, and were most definitely the first that I ever owned. Because of this early exposure, I have an affinity for both designs, but the football one has held a bit more sway. I've thought about trying to build the set a few times over the years, even more so recently as I've been jonesing to work on one of the 70's football sets, but after looking through the small stack that was in this lot, I realized that while I love the design, many of the photos don't do a lot for me. 

Joe Namath's card was another longtime want, if only because of his silly Joe cap. Of the five cards I took out, it's the only one that I considered a key card in the lot. That being said, it does have a few minor indents on the back, and a scratch on the front that doesn't show in the scan. I won't feel any need to ever upgrade it though. And I was surprised that I didn't already have the Alzado in my small collection of his. Prior to checking, I would've put money down on my already having at least one copy. I guess it was good thing then that there was no one around to bet with.

Bo sent me a copy of this card a few years back, but I couldn't resist adding another one to the collection. One can never have too many Rick Hunter's.

As mentioned, I did pay the going rate for all of these, and perhaps even a little more for the Mays, as I really wanted that one.

I didn't go to the actual sale. I used to really enjoy such events, but with such a large percentage of people engaged in the #FlipLife these days, I find myself rarely wanting to be amonsgt their ilk (at some point in the near future I'm going to be doing a hatepiece on their sort). I did, however, get one item from it...

This thing really pops when photographed on a red cooler.

My mom found this in a box of free stuff, and even though it was most likely made for Poker players, she still thought it would be appropriate for me, and my activities, as well. And she was right, of course. I believe that it was meant to be stuck on one's vehicle, but I'm not of the put's crap on the back of the car sort, so I'll have to find somewhere else to display it. It's pretty neat though, especially for a freebie.

My playing days are nearing an end

I wouldn't expect anyone reading this to remember that there was a time, probably more than a few years ago now, when I more than slightly enamoured with all things Panini Golden Age. I can't say that I was going for master sets from all three years worth of releases, as each set had over 300 1/1's, but I had been looking to complete the base sets, most of the mini sets, the insert sets, and the autograph and relic sets. 

I think I was starting to fall out of love with this idea right around the time the boom started, but can't say whether or not the boom was completely responsible for my giving up the attempt. I do know that one of the deciding factors was that a number of the autographs shot up in price, and while I was at about the halfway point on each of the autograph sets, I had no interest paying multiple times more for the one's that I still didn't have, nor was I interested in waiting the 5-10 years that I predicted (publicly) the boom would last before the prices would come back down to Earth. I ended up giving my base sets, and some of the more common inserts, to a couple of people who were very interested in receiving them, grouped my mini's together in a couple of lots and sold them, and after pulling out the one's that actually meant something to me, sold the rest of the autographs and relics via the eBay (getting a lot more for them than I should've).

Despite the purge, I did, in the hopes of someday completing them, hold onto the cards I had from the two insert sets that I liked the most; those being the 2012 Batter-Up, and 2013 Playing Cards. I'm down to needing just two cards from the Batter-Up set, but haven't been able to find either of them for a reasonable price. I have however been able to add a few new additions to the Playing Cards over the last year or so, and as you may be able to guess, am about to show them.

Panini used the upper portion of this image for a few sets back in 2013 and 2014, but I believe that this was the only card they produced that features the full photo. It's pretty basic bat-on-the-shoulder Evers photo (I don't think Johnny cared much for having his picture taken), but it's still a nice photo nonetheless.

Speaking of nice photos! I could've swore I had this card already, but after carefully going through my set a couple of times found that I didn't (it's always weird when you think you have a card, but don't). Now I do.

This is my second copy of this card, as I had moved my earlier one over to the Perry Mason collection.

Arky is one of those HOFers you don't hear talked about much these days, or at least I don't. I've always thought it was odd that, given his accolades, and people's long-time opinion that he was the second best shortstop ever to play (I'm sure that some of those opinions have changed in recent decades though), that it took a vote from the Veteran's Committee to finally get him enshrined.

And speaking of Arky Vaughan...

... this seems like a good time to show off a really nifty Wheaties panel that I got earlier this year:

Arky appeared on a number of Wheaties boxes during the 30's, this one being from 1937 (the so-called sixth series). Prior to this year, I hadn't really ever paid much attention to these old panels, but for whatever reason, have been doing so this year. After seeing how many neat one's are out there, I feel like I've really been missing out all of these years; and am now trying to make up for lost time. I've been able to get three so far this year, and would very much like to try and increase that number by a couple of more before the calendar changes over to 2025.

Of the Playing Card photos in this post, this one is my favorite. The angle of the photo over the diamond creates a really interesting effect. Sort of optical illusion-y, but sort of not.

I hate this oft-used photo of Hack Wilson. It's been used on a number of cards over the years, for reasons I can't begin to fathom. It's just so awkward looking. It's a good thing that this one might be the cheapest card in the whole set, because I found it hard to even pay what I did to get it.

I'm now down to needing just nine cards for this set. Ideally, I'll be able to get at least 4-5 more during COMC's fast approaching Black Friday sale (and hopefully at least one of those two needed Batter-Up's as well), and then be able to finish the set sometime next year.

And while I'm here talking about playing cards, I might as well squeeze in one more...

My days of wrestling fandom are long passed, but I do still get a card from time to time that reminds me of that old childhood interest (obsession?). I was big fan of heel wrestlers as a kid, and the Million Dollar Man was right up there amongst my favorites (I'm still of the opinion too that the Million Dollar belt was the coolest title belt ever). I noticed during COMC's last BF sale that someone had a bunch of cheap WWF playing cards, including all four colors for Ted DiBiase. I just wanted one though. Green seemed like the most appropriate color for the character, so here it is.

On a final, and completely unrelated, note, I quietly added a free stuff page to the blog back in June that I thought was gonna go over better than it has thus far. I really thought I was gonna spend the Summer making a bunch of mailboxes happy, but I've only been able to do so for three folks as of this writing (of course, those three people would be the three that I'd expect to find the page on their own). Three people since June is not a good ratio, and while I'd like to say that this is an example of how far the blog's have fallen, I think it's more of a case for how far I've fallen as a blogger. Years ago people would've been around here enough to have found the page organically, as I had intended, but I guess now it's gotten to the point where I've got to practically beg folks to take my unwanted stuff. I already had bunch of stuff to add to this page at the time of its creation and have since unloaded multiple binders and therefore now have even more to give away, so if you're inclined to want to get some free cards, this is me asking you to please take a look at the page.