Sometimes they do come back

One of the things that I noticed back when I was first started reading the card blogs was how often former bloggers/blogs were mentioned in passing. I guess it would be around 8 or so years ago now that I first stumbled upon (one of Fuji's posts came up in a Google search) the previously unknown to me world of card blogs, and at the time it seemed like there were hundreds of them, probably because there were. But even so, with names of fallen comrades being bandied about so frequently, it felt like I had just missed a time when there had been thousands (a slight exaggeration, but you get the point) of people writing public love letters to cards on a near daily basis.

I was amazed that so many former bloggers, many whom seemingly dropped off the face of the earth without nary a word, were still remembered so fondly by so many of those that were still around. Eight years later though, I get it, for I too now have quite the mental rolodex filled with defunct blogs, and their wayward operators. Without making a list (which I'm not gonna do), I have no idea off the top of my head how many people have stepped away from their blogs since I started this one, but it's definitely been more than a few. And yet, I'm pretty sure that I remember them all, or at least I could with a little bit of time to think. 

It's always a bit sad when somebody closes up shop, but there's always the hope that they'll come back at some point, like Tom, from The Angels, In Order, did earlier this year. People that leave don't always write a goodbye post, but Tom did, and after reading that post, if I would've been betting on whether or not he would've ever been coming back, I would've bet on no. Thankfully, I'm often wrong, and after about a year away, Tom came back! 

Since returning, Tom has done a couple of trade bait posts that seem to have generated a lot of interest, two of which I've even participated in; though not to the extent that some others have. But even so, I've netted a couple of neat things thanks to his posts.

I know at some point not too long ago that I mentioned having an ever increasing urge to collect Dave Winfield, but I've been fighting it, if only because I didn't want to take on anymore player collections. Yeah, about that, I think I might be fighting a losing battle.

This and the next card weren't part of the trade bait posts, but were instead cards that Tom saw on my cheap wants list, and offered to send them. This is the first card that I remember being desired by collectors, and even though I had quite a few copies at one time, those were all given away many years ago. It's nice to have one again.

Carney is another guy that I've been very tempted to collect. I haven't looked, but I can't imagine that he has too many cards out there, and wouldn't think that too many of those that are have been pushed into the stratosphere by the boom crowd price-wise. I only saw this particular card for the first time earlier this year in one of Night Owl's posts. I never collected this set, or even owned very many cards from it, so there's probably quite a few of them that I still haven't seen. And speaking of seeing things, you'll be seeing another copy of this card in the next post, as two showed up on the exact same day; and that wasn't a bad thing!

I had no idea there was 2016 Topps MLB Wacky Packages set, and from what I can gather, this particular card is from a minor league subset(?). Not that I care about any of that mind you, no, I just wanted it because the parody features one of the traditional monsters (vampire, Frankenstein's monster, mummy, etc.); which I've started seeking out in WP form.

I think I stopped collecting baseball cards in 1992, and stopped collecting Panini's baseball stickers after the 1993 set. And because this was the last baseball set that I worked on (never finished it), I have some strong nostalgia for it. I don't have any interest in going back and working on the set again, but if the opportunity arises, as it did here, I won't mind picking up a few choice singles. The foily sticker sure scanned weird though, I wonder if it was because of the black construction paper that I've been using behind the cards? 

Thanks again for the cards (and stickers), Tom. Hopefully you're back for good this time, as the blogs are a much better place with you around 😊.

On an unrelated note: Jeremy, from Topps Cards that Never Were, mentioned the other day that he's thinking about going all in on the TCDB, but has some questions before doing so. It doesn't appear that anyone has answered them as of this writing, so if anyone has a few minutes, maybe you could pop over and help him out. Despite having been a member of the site for a few years now, I still don't have a firm grasp on all of the the ins and outs (Dennis is my go to for TCDB questions), so I'm hardly the one to answer such questions -- but I know that there's a lot of folks who could, which is why I'm mentioning it here.

Baseball from the budget boxes

In case you haven't heard, there's a World Series going on, with that in mind, I thought it would be an appropriate time to show off some of the baseball cards that I got at the big show a couple of weeks back.

I did pretty good at this show as far as not spending too much on a single item goes (well, other than the Bob Woodward autograph), in fact everything in this post (and the coming basketball/football posts) came from either a dime box, 5/$1 box, or a 6/$1 box. It was definitely a good show for the budget collectors (they always are, but this one was better than usual), I know this because a) I found a boatload of cheap things, and b) I encountered quite a few other people who were doing quite well for themselves just by sticking to the budget boxes.

I was a big fan of Jose's as a kid, this '86 Topps Traded was still a $20+ card during my peak baseball card collecting years, I never owned a copy back then because of it's hefty price tag, now thanks to a 6/$1 box... I own three!

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this Bo is still up there when it comes to one of the more popular cards from the overproduction era.

Here's a couple of lower end, but still very fun, inserts.

The previous couple of shows had been pretty good Ichirowise, this one not so much, although it's entirely possible that I just wasn't looking at the right tables. I also broke my streak of finding/getting copies of his 2012 Topps Chrome refractors, but I still managed to find at least one shiny, and one not so shiny (unless you count gloss as shine), Ichiro.

Cheap Junior inserts are always a good thing, especially now that I'm sort of collecting him again.

I'm not entirely sure as to whether or not I want to collect the 2013 Cooperstown Lumberjacks anymore, but either way, I was gonna be passing these up at 15 cents apiece. I actually found ten of them, with the four shown being the best (see, I'm trying).

Double the sexy!

I showed great restraint by not buying every single one of the 2013 Emerald Green's that I came across, the same thing could be said about the Platinum Diamond Anniversary's above, because there was plenty of each to be had... another sign that my set collecting days are coming to an end.

There's always plenty of cheap shiny cards to be had at pretty much every show, everywhere! This is a small sampling of the bright stuff that I brought home with me.

I thought I'd do something a little different to finish off this post, something that's sort of Fuji-esque, and count down my top three favorite baseball cards from this show:

3. 1997 Topps Stadium Club Rey Ordonez Patent Leather: This is just a really cool insert, and it was the first time that I had seen one in person... it didn't disappoint!

2. 1995 Score Bo Jackson Gold Rush: What's not to like about this card, it's a Bo sunset card, and it's gold (it also had a bunch of dust on it that I didn't see until I added the image to the post).

1. 1987 Topps Jackie Gutierrez: Now I know some of you are probably going "Whaaaaaaa???????????", before any heads start exploding, let me just turn this bad boy over and show why it's #1...

... now do you get it? If you've been coming around here for awhile, than you already know of my affinity for blank backs -- if you're new to these parts, well, I have quite the affinity for blank backs! Finding a true blank back in the wild has become pretty uncommon for me, so this was very unexpected, and pretty much worth the trip alone (and yes, I know it's not really worth anything, but that's not the point).

For anybody who's waiting to see the basketball and football portion of things, I have no idea when I'll be getting to those, I don't plan on going to another show for a couple of months, so I'm not in much of a hurry to get those two posts done.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.