Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 16

It feels like I haven't done a thrift store post in a while, and after checking, I can now confirm that it's been a bit since my last one, almost two months to be exact.

I've been in one of those stretches again, where other than the grocery store, I haven't been going out too much, and by that I mean not going to public places. I think that I've only been to three non-grocery stores since a little before Christmas, and two of those were Goodwill.

I picked up a few things during each of those Goodwill trips, things that I'll just combine into one post, two separate post would be overkill.

The first stop was either on New Year's Eve (I'm a real party animal), or New Year's Eve eve, I can't remember which, but either way it was at the end of December.

And here's how I spent part of my evening on New Year's Eve (yep, party animal!). This one was new to me, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. My only real criticism would be that the film was a little too short, but that's only because I wanted to see more of Monty Woolley's character, as an actor he never disappoints! The tape was marketed as a Marilyn film, but this was two years before her first "big" film (Niagara), so she's still in bit part mode here -- but even with just around five minutes of screen-time, you can definitely see what was coming, especially in regards to her underutilized comedy chops.

Yeah, I know, I could probably watch this episode for free on the Vudu/Hulu/goo goo g'joob, but I'm a physical media guy through and through, and anyone reading should know this by now.

Finding a Cagney film that I haven't seen is always a good thing. I still haven't watched it yet, so I can't offer up any sort of insight at this time.

This was a very fortuitous find, as not more than a week prior, my mom had asked me to keep an eye out for this film, and then what happens, I find it! This also happens to be the first copy of the movie that I've ever come across, so it makes her asking about it, and my finding it so quick just that much more weird.

20 movies for $2... sold! I love finding public domain multi-packs, especially the one's where I don't already have too many the films in other sets. In this particular instance, I only had one of them. I've only watched four so far -- Alien Contamination (gory, not for the kiddos), Battle of the Worlds (loved it), They (hokey, but had a great premise), and This is not a Test (another good one) -- but it's already been the worth the price tag, and I still have fifteen to go.

The second visit wasn't planned, but I was driving by, and had some extra time, so I figured why not? Given how much I found, I'm glad that I decided to pop in.

There were a lot of great old shows on in syndication when I was a kid, unfortunately this wasn't one of them -- I like it now, but I would've loved it back then.

I had seen everything on this tape many, many, times... not a great purchase!

I'm not gonna lie, my heart skipped a beat when I saw this one. For those that don't know, J.P. Patches was a kids show out of Seattle, and to my knowledge, isn't widely known, at least not to most folks under the age of about 40. Given that I'm on the other side of the country now, I figure that this video must've come here via a fellow transplant. For any of you horror host fans out there, you may or may not recognize one of the show's director's, Joe Towey, as he was Seattle's horror host du jour (The Count) on Nightmare Theatre for six or seven years way back when. And I just so happen to own a pretty cool piece of Nightmare Theatre memorabilia that I hope to share on here at some point.

I've been finding an awful lot of sealed tapes as of late, not that I'm complaining mind you, I just sort of wonder where there all coming from. I can't imagine that there's too many places still around that would have a bunch of new/old stock sealed VHS tapes just laying about, and non-video collectors don't tend to have a lot of sealed videos sitting around either, so I don't know what's going on?

[Note: all of the backs contain the same generic show info, so I didn't bother photographing them] I think I'm permanently burned out on Dean's Celebrity Roasts, but I'll never get tired of clips from his variety show... although entire episodes would be much more ideal!

Like a lot of other things in this post, finding cheap DC animated films, that I don't already own, is always a treat. This one had been on the radar for a while, but I wasn't looking to pay $10 or more for it, $2 will do though. This one was pretty good, although the interconnecting stories are done in different styles of anime, and anime isn't my favorite kind of animation, but I can watch it in small doses. Animation style aside, getting to hear Kevin Conroy voice Batman is never a bad thing, and goes a long way in making up for anime-ness of the film.

I didn't go back and add it up, but I'm pretty that the total sum of everything in this post was less than $10 -- that's a lot of hours worth of entertainment, for not very much money! For fans of the physical media posts, I've got another one slated for Sunday, this after another Free Stuff Friday on, well, Friday (spoiler alert).


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Familiar names

Given how big the blogging community is (or was), it's not overly surprising to find that a few of us share the same name, after all, there are only so many names out there, or at least there were before everyone started pulling 'em out of their butt so that their kid's could be "unique" -- but I'm not talking about those, no, I'm talking about some of the more familiar names...

... like Matt! We've got more Matt's than a 24-hour Fitness...

... there's no shortage of Chris' either...

... how about Greg's? Yep, we got those too...

... got a couple of Jeff's in the fray...

... did I already mention the Chris'? Pretty sure I did, so how about Adam's? Got 'em!...

... There are Mark's and...

... Marc's...

... Nick's are represented...

... there's even more than one Trevor now...

... and there's at least a few Jim's...

... but to my knowledge, there's only one Billy! And thanks to the generosity of that one and only Billy, I, and a number of other people, were gifted some cards as part of his blog (Cardboard History) anniversary a couple of months back.

I was quite pleased with my selection, all guys that I collect, and a "Sick Hit" to boot. Well, technically it's not a "Sick Hit", in all actuality it was even better than most "Hitz"... at least to me! I'm pretty sure that no one has any idea what I'm going on about, so let me clarify by saying that the "Hit" was the 1990-91 Fleer Shawn Kemp, a card that I'm sort of hoarding, and am always grateful to receive more of. Not that anyone cares, but I just put this card away the other day, and took a moment to count the Kemp's.This was copy #114.


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We Were Hooked on Airplane Cards

I recently came across a magazine article that I thought might be of some interest to people who like vintage cards, especially those of the non-sport variety.

The article was written by Paul Fugleberg and appeared in the 1998 March/April issue of Reminisce. I don't know if it needs to be said or not, but I'm reproducing it here without permission -- not that I think anyone's gonna care, the blog isn't monetized, so I'm not profiting from someone else's work or anything, I'm just sharing a fun little piece with some folks who've probably never had the opportunity to read it (hopefully that covers the legal stuff).

As you can tell, it would be a little hard to read in it's original format, so I've done a little bit of virtual chopping to make it a little easier on the eyes.

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Pack Sampling: 1995 Collector's Edge

Wow! That was some game yesterday, huh?

Actually, full disclosure here, the game is probably still going on as of this writing (Sunday 6:13pm). As mentioned in Saturday's post, I'm not watching it, or listening to it. In fact I haven't watched a Super Bowl since whichever one was the Cardinals v. Steelers, and honestly can't imagine a scenario where I'd ever find myself watching another one. That being said, I hope that if you dear reader did watch it, that the outcome was desirable -- or if it wasn't, that you at least enjoyed some of those famous Super Bowl commercials that everyone's always going on about.

I may not have much interest in the NFL's current product, but I'm still very much interested in the product of decades past -- although that should already be fairly obvious given just how many football related posts I've been churning out as of late, and good news, I've got another one for today, this time in the form of one of my $1 packs that I got at last September's card show.

I've already said it many times before, but I had stopped collecting football cards before this, and all of the other great products from the mid to late 90's came out, so I missed out on all of it , and in recent years feel like I'm trying a little too hard to make up for lost time. Although in this instance, it would've been pretty hard not to buy this pack, which unfortunately was the only one of it's kind for sale that day.

Like all Collector's Edge products from '95 and on, there are many fun inserts and parallels to be had, as well as base cards that are individually serial numbered -- not sure if this was the first set to do that, but if not, it certainly was one of the earliest. Oh, and the whole plastic stock things was unique for the time as well. I don't know how much packs originally cost, but with only six cards in there, a dollar is about as much as I would pay for one.

Alright, enough talking, let's get to some poorly scanned cards, shall we?

Getting a sunset year of Ronnie Lott was a pretty good way to start the pack. I can't call it a sunset card, because he's got like 60 something card from 1995 alone, half of which are seemingly from this release. Ronnie had a solid year for the Jets in '94, in fact he started all 15 games he played, and if an injury that ultimately led to his retirement hadn't occurred during the following year's spring training, he probably would've done the same in 1995.

Willie Davis? I don't remember him, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of available info out there on him either. Spent eight seasons in the NFL, and finished with 306 receptions, for 4745 yards, and 34 TD's.

Despite the grainy scans saying otherwise, these cards have a very smooth, and clean finish, and I like it!

Uh-oh! Sound the SICK HIT alarm! Not quite the sickest of HITZ, but it is one of those 1:4 packs rookies, which is a good thing, I guess?

Fun fact: Tom's wife is the daughter of "Mr. Patriot" Gino Cappalletti.

Growing up in Oregon, I never had much cause to watch the University of Tennessee play. Since moving to the state though, I've gotten multiple Vols football tapes from thrift stores, and Reggie Cobb is always featured somewhere among each video's team highlights. Drugs cut his college career short, but he put up some incredible numbers during the time that he did play.

Despite there being only one keeper (Lott), that was a really fun pack! As per usual, if anyone wants the other five cards, don't be shy about saying so (and Matt already has the Kerry Collins, so it to is available).

****************Boring bonus content*****************

Looking at the serial numbered backs put a terrible idea into my head, one that I haven't been able to shake, and have already started to act on.

The idea? Trying to build the base set with the lowest possible serial numbers that can be found, preferably under 100. That's crazy stupid, right? Don't answer that, because it is, unfortunately I've already picked up three off of COMC though -- two of which are under 100, and the other was like 000,277 (it was really cheap). I have no idea how high the numbering goes, but I've just seen one that was around 125,000, which sort of makes trying to find them in the double digits just that much more appealing, at least to me.

I don't exactly know how I'm gonna go about looking for them yet, I mean these cards are everywhere, but COMC is the only place where you can see the backs. I can't imagine too many sellers on Sportlots responding to inquiries about which number is on the back of their cards. So the only other way to find them would be in person, and this isn't a set that I ever come across singles from...

As I said, it's a terrible idea, but now that the seed has been planted, I feel compelled to pursue it. But don't worry though, I'm not going to bore everyone to death by showing every single future acquisition, maybe just the bigger names?


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Tackling some player collections

I've talked a lot about breaking up set builds to start player collections in recent months, or at least it feels like I have been -- either way, it's a thing that I've been doing.

I don't know if I'm completely sold on player collecting yet, I just know that due to circumstances that arose early last year, circumstances that aren't likely to change anytime soon, I can no longer afford to work on all of the various vintage sets that I had been building, at least not with the hopes of completing any of them in a semi-decent amount of time. I suppose it would be possible to work on just one or two sets, but after spending some time trying to do so, I couldn't narrow down the list to just one or two. So while targeting specific players is still a fairly new concept for me, and is less than ideal, I figure that it'll allow me to still own, and see, a number of cards from the various vintage sets that I love so much, without having to go into debt trying to collect the entire thing. Another thing that I've realized is that if a bad month rolls around, and I only have say $10 to spend on cards, I'd much rather go get myself someone with name recognition and/or someone who's in the HOF, versus some no name who never did anything of note, but who's card still commands top dollar simply because it happens to be one of those mythical "high numbers".

More often than not, when I've mentioned pulling apart sets, it's almost always been baseball related, but I've been doing the same thing to my vintage football set builds as well, albeit very slowly. Much like on the baseball side, I've been surprised at how many cards of certain players that I've had, of course I've also been surprised by how few cards I have of certain players too.

I had a rare stretch of actually wanting to sort cards for about two weeks back in November, which worked out well what with COMC's Black Friday sale approaching and all. I used that time to work on some of the old football sets, to try and figure out who was being kept, and who wasn't. Despite the couple of weeks worth of effort, I only ended up getting through about half of my vintage football cards, but enough was done to still start making some lists, and to know somewhat who to focus on once the sale started.

Thanks to the Challenges being open quite a bit that month, I was able to build up a fairly decent amount of credit heading into the sale, and with some new found focus, as well as some surprisingly decent sales, I think I ended up getting more cards during the actual sale than I had in previous years. Looking back, most of my purchases during the sale ended up being of the vintage variety (baseball, football, and non-sport), all of which will be shown in due time, but in honor of tomorrow's "big game", I'll just be concentrating on the pigskinner's for today.

Being a native Portlander, George Shaw has been on my radar for a long time, but as a set collector, I didn't ever pursue his cards more than anyone else's -- but now that things have changed, I am! George had tremendous success during his amateur career, he led Grant high school to two state championships, before moving on to Oregon, where he would become an All-American in both football and baseball. Unfortunately this success didn't carry over to the pro's, some of that was his fault, and some of it was just bad timing. You see, George has the dubious distinction of being replaced by two rookie quarterbacks, both of whom go on to the Hall of Fame, during his career. He suffered a broken leg during his second season with the Colts, and was replaced by some kid called Johnny Unitas. Not surprisingly, George never got his starting gig back. Three years later he was traded to the Giants where he spent two unproductive seasons, before moving on to Minnesota. After a slow start, he would find himself being replace halfway through the season by another fresh-faced rookie, Fran Tarkenton. He'd go on to play one more season in the AFL with Denver before retiring.

If memory serves, Fred passed away a few days before the Black Friday sale started. His name hadn't been familiar to me, but after reading an obit online, and seeing that he invented the NERF football, well, I knew right then and there that he was gonna have to be added to my list of player collections. I picked up this '65 Philadelphia, his true rookie card, that day. Since his cards are considered to be commons, I didn't feel the need to go crazy with them during the sale, when most can probably be had for fifty cents or less at shows.

I don't pay a lot of attention to the yearly Hall of Fame classes for any sport, and am often surprised by who is, and isn't, already in the Hall of Fame -- as such, I was surprised to see a headline a few weeks ago announcing that Alex Karras was a member of this year's class, which is funny because I had been under the impression that he was already in the HOF, and had been for many years. As great as the front of this card is, the back might be even better:

Cartoons don't get too much better than that.

There aren't a lot of Ducks in the HOF, I can think of five off of the top of my head, so for the purposes of this post, and not wanting to go double check, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that there's five (feel free to Google it and correct me if I'm wrong). Now that I'm focusing on players, it feels only right that I start collecting a few, if not all, of those guys. I found this '66 Philadelphia during the sale, it's a bit off-center, but that's what made it affordable. More gradable copies sell on eBay for at least double the price of what I got mine for... thankfully I don't care about getting cards graded!

I'm not going to consider blank backs as an essential part of my player collections, but if one comes along cheap enough, I'll probably end up buying it anyway. Given it's condition, I don't think that this Bethea ever made it into circulation, making it a lot less interesting to me than a pack pulled blank, but for just a little over a buck I couldn't resist.

Unlike the Bethea, I strongly believe that this card may have come from a pack, as such I was willing to pay a little more for it. This also happens to be my first card featuring the Secretary of Defense.

Before the Black Friday sale I had never owned a card of Roman's before -- after the sale I found...

... myself owning...

... three!

When looking through all of the '77 Csonka's on the site, I noticed a great variety of different shades in sky color... I will not be collecting all of those variations!

Given it's obscenely low price, and despite the lack of any condition notes, I was thoroughly convince that there was going to be something wrong with this card, but to my great surprise, there wasn't (well, other than the crooked scan)! Although COMC did make up for it by having six other cards arrive damaged, but they weren't as important to me as this one was, so I guess it's a decent trade off.

This is my favorite of the bunch right here! Ernie Ladd cards can be had for a lot less than I would've thought, although it's probably just one of those deals where there just isn't a lot of people left who still care about his cards, which is then reflected in the prices. Whatever the reason, I was thrilled to pick up my second card of his, which also happened to be my first 1964 Topps -- I don't know how it is for anyone else, but this is one of those sets that I absolutely never see any of at shows.

Being a wrestling fan growing up, I always knew of him as "The Big Cat", but apparently that wasn't always the case. Although, after doing a quick search, I can no find reference to him as "The Giant Cat", so this might be one of those instances where someone at Topps didn't have all of their facts straight.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have no plans to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow, mostly because I'm not familiar with any of the guys playing, well that and the fact that I don't like how the sport is played these days. Now if the rules weren't so pillowy, and a few of the guys in today's post were still in their prime and playing in tomorrow's big game...


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