A first

COMC shipments have been a staple of this blog from the beginning, but today will be the very first time that I've been able to cover an entire shipment in one single post.

Normally my shipments are made up of hundreds of cards, which is a byproduct of often waiting a year or two to request shipping. However, today's shipment, built up for all of four months, is just 26 cards strong. 

I don't know how many people saw it, but back during the Black Friday sale, one of the perks for buyers was that people who requested shipments of 100 cards or more received a $4.99 shipping credit (basically free shipping when choosing the economy option) for that shipment, and would receive another one that was good until March 31st of this year. Having over two years worth of cards on the site as of the BF sale, it was not difficult for me to take advantage of this offer. I got my 200-ish cards shipped for free, and now had this other free shipping credit to play with.

I don't remember picking up 26 cards since the BF sale, but I guess it's easier to forget such things when your using earned credit, as opposed to cash, to pay for things. Had the shipping not been free, I would not have requested it, but it was, so I did. I waited until the 31st to request it, and was given a ship date of April 27th, which they met spot on.

I still have scan folders chock full of cards from the big two years worth of stuff shipment, but am bumping this one ahead, if only because it's the latest and greatest. I haven't gotten very many cards of late, so it was kind of fun fondle some cardboard again. Still wasn't fun to scan it though.

The post was led off by a really nifty Kellogg's Merlin Olsen. One of those scan folders that I mentioned has 4 or 5 more cards from this set in it, including a couple of HOF's for player collections; as was Merlin. There's a small part of me that would like to collect this set, but thankfully there's the much larger part of me that doesn't want to spend money on people that I don't care about. And it's a lot easier to listen to that larger part when money is tight, as it has been, and probably will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Cards from this set are really only worth, at best, about a nickel apiece. I overpaid by 35¢ for each of these, but didn't have to go anywhere to get them, or pay for shipping, so it was worth it to me. Denver Pyle (on the left) was needed for the Perry Mason collection. I didn't want a card of him as Uncle Jesse, which doesn't leave a lot of options. Hal Smith is needed for two collections, Perry Mason, and a Brady Bunch guest stars themed page. I don't know which one I'll use this card for yet, but he has a few more cards in the set, so it'll be easy enough to get another one of him.

I haven't looked yet, but I think I now have all of the Carnage cards from this Golden Web insert set. 

With the ridiculous prices that people are putting on all things Marvel these days, I don't spend a great deal of time seeking them out anymore. These last three were all found just looking through people's sale listings, and were all below the current COMC/eBay going rate. Because of said high prices, most of my character collections have had to be put on hold. With that in mind, it was nice to be able to add a few cards to them with this shipment, especially the Sentinels gold chase card.

Hey, it's my first Kahn's! I decided a few months ago that I was gonna start chasing Griffey Sr.'s cards a little more actively. I don't think it would be too hard to put together an entire playing day run of Seniors, Junior not so much, that is unless you're fabulous wealthy. And even though it's a little outside my comfort zone, I've been thinking about doing a post comparing the careers of father and son, and arguing (if need be) that senior actually had the better career overall, which would apparently contradict just about everything else I've read online.

More player collection needs, although this is only my second card of Tom's, so I don't know if that can really be called a "collection" yet.

I think I mentioned it before, maybe not though, I don't know. Either way, while I'm still collecting J-Stew in general, he's got so many cards out there, that I decided a while back to just focus on his blue cards. They're a little less plentiful, and they got the pretty color matching action going on. So far, I've just been picking the low hanging fruit, like these two dirt cheap refractors, which were both less than fifty cents apiece.

I've been trying to replace some of my lesser conditioned Franz cards when I can. It's funny to see all the kooky online Franz prices, because when I was a kid, you couldn't give away Franz cards in Portland. Every single person pretty much had an entire run of them tucked away in a drawer somewhere, and most of those folks weren't even collectors in the traditional sense; that's just how plentiful the cards were at the time. Nowadays, there seems to be a slight bit more demand for them online, though Clyde is the only one that people are paying the higher prices for.

I already showed Paul here back in my post about starting to collect the Fran Tarkenton puzzle. Bruce has since joined the fun.

With the Steve Stonebreaker elbow piece (not shown here) that I already had, I've now completed Fran's right arm. And yeah, I know, it's terribly exciting.

How's this for a mix? Jackie Cooper goes into the Columbo collection (see the last post). I didn't want one of the many cards of Jackie as a child, but this one worked perfect. Richard Loo is another new entry for the Perry Mason collection. And I got the stupid idea last year to try and do a Sarah Connor Chronicles themed page, which is where Summer Glau destined. I say it was a stupid idea only because three of the people from the show that you would want to see on such a page (Richard T. Jones, Garret Dillahunt, and Dean Winters) don't appear anywhere in card form. Considering how long Dean Winters has now been doing those Progressive Allstate (thanks, Brett!) commercials, you'd think there'd at least be a promo of some kind out there, but no, there isn't. Oh, and how is that Shirley Manson only has one card in some Jack Daniels (or some other booze) playing card set? That doesn't even seem possible! First world problem, I know. At least Fuji will appreciate my struggle to make this page happen :)

I've been thinking about adding Stan Humphries to the list of player collections for a few years now, and had been setting aside his cards just in case I ever did start collecting him. The only thing that was keeping me from officially collecting him was that I already had so many other player collections going, and didn't really want to take on another. I solved my predicament a couple of months ago though when I dropped around a dozen basketball player collections (I'm about to drop a few more too). With those now out of the mix, I figured I could take on one more guy. And unless I find out something really interesting about somebody who's currently flying under my radar, this'll be the last new player collection that I start.

As for the card, I've had this one in my watchlist for almost two years, just waiting for it to drop to a more reasonable price, which it finally did after a succession of ever increasing sales. I think it was down to $1.49 when I got it. This is the first football PPI from this year that I've ever held, so I didn't realize that a lot of the bits were raised, sort of embossed like. Allegedly these are limited to /250 copies, which I have no way of confirming, but either way it's pretty neat card.

I grabbed these two from the same seller right before I had to put in the shipment request. Both were on sale, and I figured I might as well celebrate my newest collection with a couple of "good" cards. I know that everyone loves all things 90's now, but a Printers Proof parallel for a phone card was just silly, and I dare anyone to argue otherwise.

This was my first football Rave. Apparently they go for a lot less than their basketball counterparts. 

I'll probably shock a few people by saying that I've never been much of a fan of the Back to the Future franchise. I've seen the first one a couple of times, and each of the sequels once. I know that it's beloved franchise (or at least the first two films are), but they just don't do anything for me. I like time travel stuff, love the 80's, but just don't care for those pictures. As such, I've never spent any time looking through the card sets, so it was only by happenstance that I came across one of the cards from the first set that I thought would make a perfect center card for an 80's themed page. I still haven't gotten my center card, but have acquired a few others for the page, including this very spiffy Huey Lewis from that old AGI Rock Star Concert Cards set. Huey's got a few card in the set, but this is the one that I wanted for my 80's page. There has almost never been anything more 80's than this card, and I absolutely love it! I actually won this card from one of their auctions too. It's great going through your account to bid on things because you can add the card to your account after paying for it, and avoid those brutal eBay shipping charges. I think this was just over a buck, and was very much worth it.

Here's some more auction wins. These Monty Gum cards have been on quite the rollercoaster over the last few years. They went from worthless before the boom, to crazy prices went the boom first started, and now aside from a couple of the bigger names, have pretty much slipped completely back into worthless territory. I got the Sarge for a childhood themed binder that I've started (more on that some other time. I've got a page dedicated to OMG/Akeem, and Jesse will go into the Portland Wrestling collection.

Orson Welles doesn't have nearly as many cards out there as he should, and trying to find one that wasn't made by Panini has been quite the task. I guess all I had to do was wait a little bit, because this 1959 Maple Leaf playing card practically fell into my lap through yet another auction. This was $1.54 well spent, and would be my favorite card from this shipment if it weren't for this...

From what I've been able to gather, this 1962 Dutch Gum is Barbara Eden's first card, or as the profiteers would call it, her rookie card. To me it's just her first card, and now it's all mine! I love this card so damn much, and couldn't believe that was only priced somewhere around $3. In this condition, I would've easily paid upwards of ten for it. I like too that the Dutch Gum folks had to tell everyone that she was a fox, as if no one would've known otherwise. And yes, I'm joking, Fox is the studio that she was with at the time -- my scenario is better though.

I wish that this shipping credit would've been dated a little further out, as I did get three more cards during the recent spring sale, and would've loved to have been able to include them in with these. I'll probably get those at the end of the year, so it's not like I'll have to wait that long.

It felt kind of weird getting an entire shipment into one post. I think the last time I had such a small order shipped from them was back in 2010 or 2011 when I has just found the site; that feels like a lifetime ago.

On a completely different, and final, note, I sold a card on eBay last week to Mark Armour, you know the SABR guy/pretty well known writer (of actual books). I thought about sending him a message saying that he was the first celebrity that I've ever sold anything to, but figured that he probably gets that a lot, so I spared him the message. It was still kind of neat though.

Free cards, contest winnings, and a surprise

                                         
My mailbox has been jumping as of late [note to self: mounting the mailbox to a pogo stick probably wasn't the best of ideas]. Thanks to a couple of small purchases, numerous TCDB trades, and some generous mailers from my fellow bloggers, I have officially been inundated with cards. First world problem, yo!

I said at the beginning of the year that I'd be dropping down to two posts a week, and that has been working well for me, but I'm thinking that I might have to increase my output for the next month or two if I want to catch up on everything. Either that, or I don't show everything, and that's never been my way -- so you can probably expect to start seeing a few more "LOOK AT ALL MY NEW SH*T" posts in the very near future.

Since mail from bloggers is always the best, I'm gonna catch up on a few of those packages here today, starting first with an unexpected PWE from Matt, he of the recently anniversaried, Matt's Wonderful Blog of Hobbies, that I received a couple of weeks back.

I don't talk about my Tim Brown collection very often, mostly because there's not much of a collection to talk about, but I did so a little while ago, and Matt saw the post, and decided to add to some new Brown's to my miniscule collection. The biggest addition is 2016 Panini Absolute Spectrum Red up top. I did have to look it up to see what it was called, but that doesn't take away from it's coolness, I'm just not familiar with a lot of the newer sets. With the thousands of 1/1's that now come out each year, I don't think most collectors are overly impressed by something that's numbered to /100 anymore, but to me they're still kind of awe inspiring, especially too since it's not like I'm receiving them in the mail everyday.

I'm not very computery, but I think this is one of those arted up photos (digitized photos?), as opposed to an actual artists rendering.

Was fantasy football around back in 1997? I never heard about it if it was. And if it wasn't, I don't understand the point of the card. I do like the look of it though, I'm just curious as to why it is.

A few non Tim Brown's made it into the envelope as well. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something awfully similar about these cards 😉

Thanks for the surprise mailing, Matt. All were new to me, and all were greatly appreciated!

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Next up is a prize from, Brendan aka Elliptical Man, of The View from the Third Floor fame. 

A couple of bloggers ran Super Bowl contests, all of varying degrees of difficulty. Brendan was one of those bloggers, and since his contest was the easiest (I didn't even understand how to enter Kerry's, sorry Kerry), it ended up being the only one that I participated in. 

The contest was a simple guess "the total points scored" affair, and even though I don't remember what my guess was, I 'guess' I ended up being closest. I will say for the record too, that I knew the Bucs were gonna win before the playoffs even started, and not because of some grand conspiracy, no, I just knew that Tom Brady wasn't going to let his team lose this past post-season. I didn't have any clue on the score though, that was just pulled out of my backside.

The winner got their choice of prizes, and I chose the "Ghost Cards" lot, or in other words, the retired players lot. Given a choice, I'm always goona go with past greats!

In case you haven't noticed too, there was a lot of neat cards in here, featuring guys that actually accomplished things. I'll take these cards over current rookies any day of the week!

This last group is especially interesting. Bob St. Claire is a guy that I collect, and don't get "new" cards of very often, so I was kind of excited to see this one, even if it did use same photo that graced his 1990 Pro Set card. The Sayers is a rookie reprint (obviously). You can't ever go wrong with retired greats from 2018 Classics. And the Bledsoe is a Prizm Prizm Silver, very shiny in person!

Thank you very much for the contest, and the prize, Brendan! You might be the most difficult blogger for me to try and figure out what I could possibly send you, but I will crack the code at some point.

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And finally, there's not a lot of Free Stuff posts anymore, but Kerry, of the long-tenured Cards on Cards, is still plodding on with the occasional Friday giveaways, one of which popped up just a couple of Friday's go.

Stan Humphries is quickly moving up my player collection list, at least in terms of how much I enjoy collecting them. Numbers-wise, I still don't have very many of his cards, which is why this one was an easy claim. I hadn't seen one of the SC football Super Teams in person before, and am really impressed by it's overall attractiveness. The foil sections really pop. Barry Sanders was an easy claim too, why? Because it's Barry Sanders, duh!

Despite the many offerings, I only made one other claim, and it was a little bit bigger than your standard trading card...

Anyone know what's in here before I open it? I'll give you a sec to guess

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Give up? 

Look at that beauty! Apparently these were in a magazine, but I never saw one before.

I love this breakdown of the various subsets, all of which were included in the opposite pages sample.

I've seen a lot of people rag on 1991-92 Fleer over the years, but I've always liked it. Was is it the best looking Fleer set ever? No, of course not, but it wasn't the worst either. And it looks a helluva lot better than most of today's sets. That's a hill that I'm willing to die on btw. I appreciate Fleer for trying something different at the time, and like I said, I like the design, nothing else ever looked quite like it. I also dig the fact that there's so many different versions of this set, you've got the normal set, these nifty promotional samples, this was the first year of Fleer and Tony's Pizza brief partnership, so you've got them in that form, and there's the uber-great Wheaties cards (just picked up a few more of those too). 

I was quite content with those couple of claimed items, but if you know Kerry, then you know that he's almost always going to try and toss in a few more items, it's what he does!

Even with the possibility of extra cards being added, I would've never expected this one. Kerry has now provided both of the cards that I needed from this set (Ronnie Lott being the other), and as much as I dig the design, it's kind of nice to know that I don't have to get anymore of them if I don't want to.

I can't remember if I've told this story before or not, but back in 1993 we moved from Beaverton (west of Portland) to Gresham (east of Portland). I loved where we lived in Beaverton, it was my favorite place we ever lived when I was growing up, and even though we only lived there for 2 years, it was still very difficult to leave. It didn't help too that I absolutely hated the apartment complex that we moved to in Gresham, it was right on a busy road, and was surrounded by nothing but other apartments and businesses. The previous two years had been spent roaming around countless acres of forest/creek areas (most of which is now gone) in what was almost a Lord of the Flies existence. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but us kids were practically feral, and lived by our own code. I might go into that more in-depth at some later date, but the point is, it was very difficult to try and adjust to my new concrete jungle, and I was pretty miserable there. It didn't help too that I only ever made one real friend there (this after having dozens for the previous two years), Steven, who I just recently mentioned. I guess his older brother, Scott, was a friend too, but I always thought of him more as a protector/bodyguard (a lot of teens in this new world thought that they were gangsters, and would try to prove it any time they could. And you know nothing says "gangsta", like picking fights or trying to attack an 11-year old).

Anyway, amongst all of the establishments that were now around me, was a 7-Eleven right down the road (2-3 blocks away). 7-Eleven was never my kind of place, so I rarely went in there. But on one particular afternoon (probably on the weekend) back in '93 or early '94, I found myself in there with Steven, and who of all people should walk in? None other than Jerome Kersey himself! I remember that we were the only two customers in there at the time, and I was looking out the window/towards the door while Steven decided what he wanted, when a silver Mercedes (my memory says Mercedes, but I guess it could've been a Beamer too) pulled up out front. A tall black guy got out on the drivers side, while an attractive blonde (who was also tall) stepped out from the passenger side. Both were dressed extremely nice. Being a basketball fan, and more specifically, a Blazers fan, I instantly identified the tall guy as Jerome Kersey, and I'm assuming that the blonde was his wife. As he was walking in, I nudged Steven and said "Hey, Jerome Kersey just walked in". Steven not being a sports fan in the least, said "Who?", which probably generated a 'Really?' look from me, decades before "Really?" was a thing. But I digress, as Jerome came in, I heard one of the two guys at the counter say "Hey, it's Jerome Kersey!", and a few seconds later heard Jerome say "No autographs". The pair must've only needed one thing, because they were in and out within two minutes or less. I had gotten his autograph at a signing a year or so prior, so there was never any thought of me bothering him for one, plus it's not like I always carried around some Jerome Kersey ephemera just on the off chance that I would see him in the wild someday, so no regrets. It was kind of a surreal experience though. In retrospect, it was about the last place that I would've ever expected to encounter a Blazer. I have always kind of wondered how it was that they came to be in Gresham that day. I wish too that I would've seen what they stopped in for, as I think it would've made the story just a little bit more interesting. I remember too that Steven and I went back to his apartment afterwards, and he said "Hey, dad, we saw..." turns to me and asks "who did we see again?" Me: "Jerome Kersey". "Oh yeah, we saw Jerome Kersey". His dad wasn't overly impressed either, but at least he knew who Jerome was. Despite Steven and his dad's lack of interest in our encounter, I thought it was cool. It probably doesn't make for the most interesting read though.

As for the two Franz cards, the '94-95 that shows Jerome with Otis Thorpe on his hip is kind of interesting, if only because they'd be playing together by season's end, as Otis was traded to the Blazers with like 30-something games to go that season (that was part of the trade that sent Clyde Drexler to Houston). Both players would be gone before the next season though, with Otis being traded to Detroit during the offseason, and Jerome being selected by the Raptors in the expansion draft, thus ending 11 great seasons with the Blazers. A lot of fans were upset when Clyde left, but he had let it be known how unhappy he was in Portland, so I was basically of the 'good riddance' mindset when it came to him. Jerome on the other hand, gave no indications that he wanted to leave, and even though he was starting to slow down some by '95, he was still one of my two all-time favorite Blazers, and I was not happy about him being left unprotected in the draft. It's 25 years later, and I'm still not happy about it!

Anywho, thanks again for the free stuff, and extras, Kerry! I've got a small stack with your name on it, which I've been meaning to package up and send for months now. Hopefully this latest mailing will inspire me to get to doing that.

On an unrelated note, the weather here has gotten really awesome all of sudden, and I very much hope that it's doing the same thing where all of you live too!

No Mas!

Every card blogger is known for at least one thing, right? I mean I could throw out any random blogger's name, and most of the people reading this would immediately associate them with some particular player/team/collection, yes? For example, and this is just an example (wink wink, nod nod), if I mentioned, Kerry, aka madding, the longtime proprietor of Cards on Cards, what would you think of first; Cardinals? Trail Blazers? Oregon Ducks? For what it's worth, I think all of the above, but after last year, I'd also add sender of crazy generous bubble mailers to the list as well. 

I received two from Kerry last year, both completely unexpected. The first was shown many moons ago, and the second, well, that one has been languishing in a scan folder for quite a few months now, BUT only because I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of cards that were sent, which had to be well over a hundred.

I had claimed that nifty Lou Gehrig insert, and this SI for Kids sheet (which despite excellent packing, the PO tried to destroy, see the bottom right corner for evidence of that) from one of Kerry's free stuff posts, which ended up being accompanied by what could be called an instant basketball card collection. With so many cards included, I had a hard time trying to figure out which ones to include, and of course, how many to include? Too little would be an insult, and too many might make some folks regret clicking on the post, it really is a fine line. Out of respect for Kerry, and his kind gesture, I ended up settling somewhere near the halfway point, so if you've got a minute...

This package arrived a week or two before Cliff's untimely passing, and must've had close to 40 cards of his in it, about half of which I did need.

1991-92 Skybox sure has gotten popular all of sudden, has anyone else seen what those boxes have been selling for? They're now going for more then they were when they were new, never thought I'd see that!

I didn't much care for Upper Deck's Special Edition (bottom right) when it came out back in '93, but it's grown quite a bit on me over the years (one would've thought that daily showers would've prevented such a thing, but apparently they weren't enough).

It seems like a lifetime ago, but I can recall that during the 1991 playoffs, most of the kids in my 4th grade class were allowed, and encouraged, to support the Blazers by making signs and hanging them on the sides of our desks. There were a couple of oft repeated slogans, but the one that comes to mind first was "Buck [Buck Williams] and Duck [Kevin Duckworth] say yuck to Magic [Magic Johnson]", which was used during the western conference finals. As it turned out, the support from 30+ nine year-olds wasn't enough though, as the Blazers fell to the Lakers in six games that year (at least the Lakers went on to lose in the finals).

Ask any Blazers fan about what if's, and they'll probably be able to rattle a handful off before you can even finish your sentence. Taking Sam Bowie ahead of Michael Jordan in the 1984 draft is often mentioned first (and it doesn't help that it was rehashed in that garbage "documentary" last year), why I don't know, as far as what if's go, that one's pretty simple to answer; if Jordan had gone to the Blazers, he never would've got Scottie, and therefor never won a ring, see? Simple! For me though, the biggest Blazers what if, will always be what if Arvydas had been allowed by the Soviets to come over right after he was drafted in'86? [Hawks fans can wonder the same thing, as he was drafted by them a year earlier] Many a expert considered him to be the best player in the world at the time (which was warranted by the way), I have no doubts that had he come before his knees were shot, the Blazers would've been the dominant team of the late 80's/early 90's, winning multiple rings, and completely rewriting the history that is currently known.

Have you noticed a theme yet? I'm thinking that Kerry cleared out some of his dupes box for me. It's nice to know another Blazers fan in the blogging world.

It wasn't all Blazers though. Dan was top 5 player for me as a kid. No one's asking, but the other four were Cliff Robinson, Jerome Kersey, Larry Johnson, and Shawn Kemp. Larry Bird and John Stockton would be #'s 6 and 7, and the only reason that Larry isn't in the top 5, is because I didn't get to see him play enough at the time, and didn't see any of his prime years until much later on video, and then eventually, the internet.

Here's where I really had to limit what to show, and what not to, as a lot of player collections were touched on, just about all of them actually. I can't remember if I ever had the Mitchell Wiggins/Otis Thorpe error card before, so that made for quite the surprise.

The Fleer Metal sets really got popular there for a bit earlier this year, but have since come back to earth, save for the Jordan's of course.

It's impossible to tell from the scan, but Cedric is one of those Reebok Metal's, and Shaq is a Prizm Prizm Silver. 

After Brando Roy, Wesley Matthews is my favorite modern Blazer, but after being a Buck last year, and signing with the Lakers this season, I find it really difficult to want to collect him anymore.

I already two copies of Bill's '77-78 Topps (white back), but would never have turned down another. This one came with a fairly hellacious wax stain (you can see it in the scan), but even so, it was no match for the all-powerful pantyhose! And I did have the Jerome as well, but this one was in better shape than mine.

Many thanks (over a hundred I suppose) to Kerry for this overly generous mailing, it truly was another great one.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Wheelin' and dealin'

I can never remember the name of the site, but back when I first started reading the blogs, I often saw people mention a site that they used to track their collections. Then at some point, something happened to the site (unless I'm getting my wires crossed, I believe that Beckett had a hand in their demise), and people were sad. The sadness didn't seem to last though, as a new site (new for users, not new to existence) began to be mentioned shortly afterwards, this being the Trading Card Database.

References on the blogs to the TCDB were few and far between at first, but have grown steadily in recent years, so much so that it's now virtually impossible to go a single week without seeing mention of it. 

I didn't have much use for, or interest in, the TCDB when people first started extolling it's virtues, for I was still a set collector then, and had no trouble keeping track of my haves/needs via pen and paper. Things change however, and I switched from set collecting, to player collecting. All of a sudden pen and paper became useless as tools for making checklists, or maybe not useless, but were considerably more difficult to use, especially when a player hundreds of cards to track. I knew that I now needed something new for checklist making, and whether I liked it or not, there was really only one option, the TCDB.

My first couple of foray's onto the site didn't go well, but only because I couldn't figure out how to do anything (this is what happens when you're part luddite on your father's side). Towards of the end of last year I did finally start to figure things out though, and have been using it off and on for about two months now. The checklist part of the site seems to work well enough, but like many others, I find myself being drawn to the possibility of trading more than the checklists. Despite never being a huge fan of formal trading, I'm starting to get the hang of it, and have completed a few in recent weeks. 

I'm not sure yet if I'll be recapping every single future trade on here or not, but did want to show off this first batch, if only for the sake of posterity. 

Before I get to the trades, I wanted to first acknowledge a RAK from Randy, aka RefsInTheBack, who I have exchanged cards with via Twitter (you can find him on there by adding an @ to his handle) before, and am quite familiar with his collection. He offered up a couple of cards right after I started adding a want list to the site, and wasn't looking for anything in return. That's a hard deal to pass up!

I've probably owned a dozen+ copies of this 1991-92 Fleer Uncle Cliffy over the years, but with my propensity for giving cards away, I didn't hang on to any, and I found myself needing one for the first time in almost 30 years. 

This 1993-94 Franz  may look a bit gunky, but it's still in it's original wrapper, so that bread residue is thankfully on the outside. At one time I had almost the complete Franz Blazers run, but it, along with most of the rest of my collection, was donated to a charity auction in the early 2000's. Since I didn't think that I was ever coming back to card collecting, the donation seemed like a good thing at the time, and I guess it still was, but in retrospect I do kind of wish that I had held a few more things out, my Franz cards being one of them.

Thanks again to Randy for the RAK, it was a really nice gesture.

Next up is my first official trade on the site, this coming courtesy of budler, who I already knew from his participation in the Secret Santa two years ago. This was a 1-3 deal, which included a pair of Classic bruisers (my first cards ever from this set too btw), and...

... the destroyer of worlds himself, this time on a playing card! They may not be anything fancy these days, but I really dig these three cards, many thanks to Jim for making it happen.

A 3-13 trade with ravensray52 brought this next group. If you've been following along with the blog for any length of time, you had to know that there would be some Reggie's in this post somewhere.

It'll never not be weird to see Ronnie as a Jet.

I've probably owned more than a few copies of the Pro Set and Score cards here, but I wasn't collecting Dennis at the time, and big surprise, got a rid of them all.

Having never seen a 1996 Gilt Edge before, I never knew that their dimensions were slightly smaller than your average sized card. It would be curious to know the reasoning behind that move on Topps part?

Even with his shoulder problems, Steve was still dropping them until the very end. Love this sunset card, the refractor of which I currently have sitting in my COMC account.

This was a good trade too, as I was able to add cards of the my four main footballers. Thanks, John!

A 12-2 deal with AUTOGRAPHS2000 netted bunch of Cliff's, unfortunately four of them came unstowed at some point during their journey, which must've triggered some postal workers Spidey-sense, because that just had to be the corner of the envelope that got mushed. All four were base cards so it's not like it's the end of the world or nothing, but it still was a little disappointing.

This pair of Bruise Brothers completed the envelope. Now that I know what his entire checklist looks like, I think it'll be possible to complete Dennis Smith's entire run, this is due in large part to Panini not getting their hooks in him yet. Unfortunately the same can't be said about Steve Atwater, now that he's a HOFer, Panini is cranking out cards of him like there's no tomorrow. In fact if nothing changes by the end of this year, Panini is on track to have produced more cards of him in the last four years than he had during ten years of playing. Because of this, I'm really only focusing on cards from his playing days.

I can't remember the name behind the handle on this trade (and TCDB isn't showing the address details anymore), so I'll just have to say thank you to AUTOGRAPHS2000.

It's not talked about much on the blogs, but if you look around, you'll find some real horror stories involving trades on the TCDB. Having read a number of these cautionary tales, I've been extra cautious with who I'll trade with. 49ants is a user name that I seen many times on the blogs, so when he proposed a trade, I had absolutely no concern about making the exchange; what's good enough for my fellow bloggers, is certainly good enough for me!

I had been planning on adding a most wanted list for each of the sports to the blog, and even started to fill out those lists, but eventually thought better of it and scrapped the idea. I mention this only because Dennis Smith's rookie had been #2 on the football list, as it turns out a most wanted list wasn't even necessary to acquire this particular card.

As far as scanning cards goes, Topps' 1994-95 Embossed Golden Idols suffer the same fate as their 1965 Embossed set, no matter how nice the card is, the scans always come out looking like someone had been using the card to sand something. For the record though, despite it's poor showing, this card arrived minty fresh.

1996-97 Stadium Club Matrix is one of my all time favorite parallel sets, it's just too bad that the 3D-ish effect doesn't show up in the scans, and has proven quite difficult to photograph as well.

I couldn't resist! This was #100 and something. I really need to put a counter on the side of the blog, that way I wouldn't have to keep re-counting this collection every single time I add new card to it.

Thanks to 49ants for the great group of cards, I couldn't have asked for a better quartet.

So there you have it, my first three trades (with a RAK tossed in for good measure), dare I pull an Ed Koch, and ask how'm I doin'? That's rhetorical by the way, as I already know how I did with these :)

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.