I know that name from somewhere

I've made a few purchases this month. Actually, scratch that, I've made more than a few purchases this month. Probably more than I should have. 

I don't keep track of such things, but I've probably acquired more cards this past month than the previous two years combined. Sportlots adding their new non-sport category to the site has been like siren song to me, I just can't seem to resist checking out all of the new stuff that keeps getting added every day. And the cheap prices haven't been helping either. I've been knocking off wants left and right, many of which had been highly sought after (by me) for years now. 

A lot of the things I've been getting have been available on COMC, unfortunately they're often being sold by people who think that just because they have the only one on the site, that any interested parties will be willing to pay 20-30 times more just because it's the only one available. I'm not that kind o buyer. I can easily pass up fifty-cent cards with $20 price tags on COMC, but apparently have no willpower when it comes to those same cards when they have a twenty-cent price tag on Sportlots. So, the bad news is that I've been spending more money than usual this month, but the good news is that I won't have too many more modern (post 1980) non-sport wants after everything that's been bought shows up. I'll probably be able to get back to my normal routine of one or two purchases a month come November.

Given that I've probably already bought over a hundred cards so far this month, I highly doubt that I'll ever get around to discussing the majority of those on here, but I did want to cover at least one small order, if only because I was so pleased with the cards themselves, the way in which they were packed, and the quickness in which they were received. The seller who managed to complete this trifecta is called Triplutz, although the outside of the envelope said WaxPackHero, which is a name that sounds terribly familiar, but I can't seem to place where I've seen/heard it before. For the time being, I'll just assume that it's one that I've seen on the TCDB; I don't have enough time to be racking my poor overtaxed brain over such things.

Despite my going on about non-sport cards for the last ten minutes, astute observers may have noticed a very non non-sport card leading off the post. Well, yeah, there are some sports cards being added to these orders too, plus blog psychology dictates that a post whose first image is baseball related will generate more clicks than one that starts with a non-sport card. Think I'm lying? Go through this post and tell me which card would've garnered more mainstream attention than that nifty Classic Bo (and other guys). 

I haven't seen any on the blogs, so I'm not sure if either card company still does it, but I really miss card backs that compared the stats of certain players like this. Is it just me, or do we never hear about Ruben Sierra anymore? That was quite a season he had back in '89. He led the A.L. in RBIs, slugging %, total bases, and led the majors in triples. He finished second to Robin Yount in the MVP voting that year too. And looking at the numbers, one could make the case that he should've won it. He put up very similar numbers two years later, finishing 8th in the MVP voting. Though, Ripken was the clear winner that year, and it doesn't even look like there was a close second. 

This is just a neat card all the way around.

With Topps getting the NBA license back, I can't help but wonder if they'll do another Archives set for basketball again. I suppose they could an NFL version now, too. Sounds like it's tailor-made for more cards featuring the '87 baseball design. Because that's what everyone is clamoring for, right? Right?

I probably had multiple copies of both versions of this card way back when, but those are long gone. At least I now have the gold one again.

Hey, it's my first ever Wacky Packages of any kind! And hey...

... here's my second! I've been trying to get some of the monster themed cards from the various WP sets for what seems like years now, and have had zero luck in doing so; until now. Granted, these are only from the 1991 set, but still, I finally got two off of my list. I like how "Vlad Bags" rolls off the tongue, but since my world still revolves around videos, blank tapes included, I think I appreciate the effort that went into designing "Mummorex" just a little bit more.

It's a bit hard to tell, but these are both 5-Stripers. The Wild Card Stripes are the devil of any collection that features a player from the early 90's. These may be the lowest on the stripe totem pole, but even so, I'm very glad to have them out of the way.

Some "influencer" out there must've done a thing about 80's title cards, because they sure have jumped in price over the last few years. Enough so that it couldn't have happened on it's own. It would've been nice to know that it was coming so I could've tried to finish my collection before the influenced were told to buy en masse. I still need about a dozen from the 70's through the 90's, this having been one of them. Thankfully, this guy had it listed for a pre-boom price.

I know that there are other people out there who collect every single player that I do. I'm not foolish enough think that any of them are that obscure. But, I do wonder sometimes if there's a collector out there for each and every celebrity and/or comic character that I collect. Sentinels are a perfect example of this question, I mean I'm sure plenty of people have Sentinels cards sitting in sets, but does anyone else have just a Sentinels collection? I do, though it is only a couple of pages worth of cards. This one was an upgrade for me. My old copy didn't fare so well in the box that it had been sitting in during my ten-plus year hiatus from collecting. A couple of moves probably didn't do it any favors either.

Sherri Martel... prrrrrrrr. I know I'm not alone when I say this, but Sherri Martel was one of my earliest crushes. I loved everything about her as a kid, or at least what little I knew about her way back when. It probably didn't hurt too that she was one of those rare women that just kept getting better looking with age. I also appreciated then, and even more so now, that she was always willing to mix it up with the guys. Looking back, she took some crazy bumps (and what other woman was jumping off the top of cages at that time!), unfortunately some of those crazy bumps are probably what led her to become addicted to pain pills and alcohol, which undoubtedly contributed to her untimely death. She doesn't have nearly as many cards out there as she should (a lot of them are modern parallels), but even so, it's always nice to be able to add a new one to my modest collection of hers.

Triplutz is one of those sellers that offers free shipping to a Sportlots box, which I will probably be taking advantage of in the very near future. The only reason I didn't do so this time was because not all Sportlots sellers are created equal, and I wanted to know how accurate this fellow is with his descriptions before placing a larger order with him (which is my standard operating procedure for that site). This guy obviously knows his stuff, so if you're ever inclined, you might want to take a look through his offerings. You won't be disappointed.

Birthday splurge

Try as I might, I can't seem to hold off the coming of my least favorite day of each year; that being my birthday.

Some would, and did, refer to this years occurrence as a milestone, and I guess they were sort of right. After all, it's not everyday that someone other than Jack Benny celebrates their 39th birthday for the second year in a row 😉. 

Depending on when this is posted, I am now 10-14 days removed from this yearly abomination, and don't seem to be any worse for wear (I'm not counting the recent smashing of my thumb with the back of a hatchet, as that was unrelated). Everyone says that life begins at 39 😉, so who knows, maybe they're right and I'm just getting started.

With this whole "milestone" thing in mind, I decided that I'd wanted to do something to mark the occasion. I've known for months that the Nashville cards show was going to be on the weekend of my birthday, and that it wasn't going to be your average bi-monthly show. No, this was gonna be a 450-table affair that was spread over three days. I thought briefly about going, but I would've wanted to be there on the first day, which was a Friday. However, thinking of having to deal with Nashville traffic on a Friday was enough by itself to keep me away. Not to mention, I'm still not ready for the boom crowd (Boomers?). I've heard about their kind of crazy, and I don't want any part of it. I've also changed what I collect so much over the last few years, that I just don't think I'd find enough things there to justify the expenses (gas) for such a trip.

Having made up my mind a few weeks in advance not to go, I decided that I would instead make a couple of small purchases online. Not only did this save me from all of the terrors that were inevitably waiting for me in Nashville, but it also freed up the Friday before my birthday, which I ended up spending in Knoxville instead (if you're so inclined, I already wrote about that here). I have no doubt that I made the right choice.

I had been eyeing two cards from a seller, Jim and Steve's Sports Cards, on the Beckett Marketplace for about a year now, and decided to finally get them. Of course, I had to see if I could add a few more things to the order, it's kind of silly to pay $4-5 in shipping just for two dollars in cards, right? Right.

I knew nothing of 1990 Topps Heads Up! until I was looking through these peoples selection of Bo items. I probably should've looked into it a bit more before adding this to the cart. I thought from the picture that it was gonna be a card-sized head, but nope, turns out they're like 4"x 5", or thereabouts. It's a giant head! The only thing that I can think to do with it is to put on the inside front cover of the Bo binder. 

Just in case I wasn't the only one who had never seen these, here's the back. The suction cup prevented it from laying flat on the scan tray, which caused the blur, but you can still see most of what's going on here.

I was, and still am, unfamiliar with these as well. From what I can gather from COMC, these come from a sheet that was inserted into a 1991 book about... kids who grew up to play professional basketball? I don't know, and honestly I don't really care, they were just something different that I could add to these two player collections.

I don't know what the origins of this set of University of Kentucky playing cards are either, it just looked fun, so I grabbed the Bowie, even though I'm not really trying to collect any of his post-playing days stuff.

I probably had multiple duplicates of this sticker back in 1990-91, but all of my old Panini stickers were in with the cards that I donated to a charity auction back in the early 2000's (because I didn't think that I'd ever take up card collecting again).

A part of me has been thinking that I'd like to take an extended break from cards if I ever complete the Reggie Roby collection. Counting what you'll be seeing in this post, I'm about 40 cards (and other assorted items) away from finishing his catalog. Unfortunately for me, no copies of his Wild Card 1000 Stripe have shown up recently, and even if one did, it would probably be in an eBay store with a stupid high BIN, so I might have to be sticking around for a while longer.

Having grown up with Franz Blazers cards, I'm no stranger to cards coming with bread, but even so, it's still a little weird to think of a football card coming with your bread. That wouldn't have gone over very well in Portland. I like this one quite a bit though, it's now one of my favorite Reggie's. Oh, and this was the card that led me to this seller in the first place. I figured that if they hadn't sold it in the last year or so, that that might mean that I was suppose to buy it.

If I had anyone to play it with, I would've bought that old Franchise board game years ago. I could be wrong, but I always thought that it looked like a cross between Monopoly and fantasy football (fantasy football before it became the lame version that everyone likes so much now). And sure, the players are all from 1989, but those are the guys that I know. I think it would still be fun. Since I probably won't ever be buying the actual game, I might as well start picking up the game cards that I need for player collections. I think I still need 4 or 5 more, but I got the most important one crossed off the list.

In case anyone cares about the backs.

The last item from these folks was a bit disappointing, as it's in much worse shape than the advertised NM (there's always gotta be one). McDonald's didn't do Dennis any favors with this tightly cropped photo. A wider shot would've been pretty cool, we would've been able to better gauge how this meeting between Dennis' and Bruce Hardy turned out.

With shipping, this order came out to just about $20. Were these worth $20? Probably not. Buyers remorse set in right after I placed this order, but that's pretty normal for me these days. I still feel it a few weeks later.

I can't remember what night I did the Beckett order, but the day after I did so, I made another small purchase on Sportlots, from a person calling themselves, vogs59xa. I feel like I might've bought from them before, but I'm not sure. Like the Beckett seller, I've had three cards from this person sitting in my cart for about a year. After seeing that the shipping price for three cards would be the same for up to 10, I started looking for a few more to pad out the order.

I'm not really sold on magnets as collectibles, even if their appearance, and distribution, were similar to that of trading cards. I also don't remember them in the least when they were new, so I have no connection to them or their concept, and therefor don't really like them all that much. That being said, they do add a little bit of spice to player collections, and at a quarter apiece, I didn't have to break the bank to add them to said collections.

For a magnet, this one actually looked pretty good (too bad you can't tell from the scan), but unfortunately the front of it is peeled down some up in the right hand corner. I'm not sure why this person would send something with this kind of damage when it was listed as NM. I certainly never would've done that. I guess they were hoping that I wouldn't notice (no honor among thieves?)

The first run of Gold Medallions never scan good. Oh, and this card was far from the stated NM as well.

I think that this sticker put me at about the halfway point with the Dennis Smith collection. I think I only need two more of his stickers now too.

Magnets? Dog Tags? Shit was crazy back in the 90's! I thought I was just ordering the regular version of this "card", but I got the Plus parallel instead. Normally I'd send them a message and let them know that they accidently sent a slightly rarer version, but I figure that this makes us even for the two damaged cards that they decided to send without saying anything.

This may look like just your average old 1990 Topps, but it's actually the Tiffany version. I'm pretty sure that this is the first Tiffany card that I've ever owned. I always kind of wondered how easy they would be to tell apart from the regular Topps version. If the 1990 set is anything to go by, it would be very easy to tell them apart. The glossy finish on here is very noticeable, and it could never be mistaken for one of the regular cards.

Both of these are kind of boring parallels, the Choice is a Silver (because of the big silver 'Redskins' across the bottom), and the UD is an Electric Gold (because of the gold 'Electric' up in the left hand corner), but they were both needed, and cheap. I do really like the image that they used for the Choice though; if I tried to do that I'd probably never walk again. Physically, I'm in pretty good shape, but I've never been very flexible.

With shipping, this group came to a little over $5. Was it worth $5? I guess it was. I probably couldn't have found all of them at a show for less than what I paid here.

So there's my $25 birthday splurge. I do feel like I could've gotten something else more enjoyable for that amount (or less), but what's done is done. At least I got a few more Reggie's out of the deal... and a giant Bo head!

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Before you go, I mentioned in the last post that I thought that I was forgetting another blog that I thought everyone (who doesn't already know about it) should go check out, and I was right; If You Build It, They Will Come was the odd-man out. This guy's collection is quite varied, and includes all sports, some non-sports, old stuff, new stuff, etc. Given the variety that he posts about, one would think that there would be the occasional something for just about everyone's tastes. So, if you have a few minutes, maybe you could use them to go say hi.