Tradin' & Thrifting

                             
Despite never caring much for formal trading, I seem to be doing an awful lot of it as of late. Well, at least a lot by my standards.

Since the beginning of the year, I've completed nine trades on the TCDB, and currently have two in progress. This averages out to just a little over one trade per week, which probably isn't a lot by some peoples standards, but it's exactly my kind of speed. I can move some unwanted cards out, and have some new blood coming in, all while not feeling overwhelmed, or needing to worry about accidently sending someone the wrong thing. Plus too, one trade a week doesn't take away from my blogging in any way (more probably would), so that's a good thing, I guess.

My scanner almost completely washed out the green from this Emerald parallel.

One of my favorite things about using the TCDB, is when I come across a familiar name. Usually it's a fellow blogger, but sometimes it's also just a person that I've had contact with before through the blog, which was the case a month or so ago when I came upon Bizzork, aka Brian, who had participated in a few of my past Free Stuff giveaways. And in his case I know him too from seeing his user name during the COMC Challenges. 

After finding him on the TCDB, I took a quick look to see if we had any compatibility trade-wise, which we did, so I sent of a quick proposal, which was accepted after brief bit of countering.

For someone who never cared much about SI for Kids (the magazine or the cards), I seem to be getting a lot of them all of a sudden (there's more coming in another trade). I never realized too that their size hasn't always been consistent, which is quite evident when looking at these 1993 and 1996 examples side-by-side.

I knew quite a bit of French at one time, and years later started to learn Japanese (that's a long boring story), and thanks to my stamp collecting, can read a little bit of Greek, but I never did pick up any Spanish. Which is kind of odd since my mom was fluent in it (I think that she's lost a little bit of it over the years though), and I would often her here using it to converse with native speakers. We also spent six years living in an area that was heavily populated by Mexicans (and before anyone loses their sh*t, that's how those folks identified themselves at the time). And if that wasn't enough I was friends too with guy from Colombia for about a year during that same time, and he would unintentionally slip into Spanish while speaking on a fairly regular basis -- and yet, with all of that Spanish being spoken around me, aside from a few choice words, I never learned any. Of course I can, and do, still enjoy Pro Set Spanish cards despite not being able to understand the non-English aspects of the set.

1990 Topps isn't terribly exciting, but this Howie is one of the disclaimer backs, so... yeah, I know, still not that interesting.

There were a few more cards involved with this trade, but the post office just had to do what they so often do these days, and try to destroy the contents of everything that makes it's way through their greasy clutches. This particular envelope took quite a beating and a few of the cards, including the best one (of course), weren't salvageable. I don't blame Brian though, it's just one of those things that now happens much more frequently than it used to. Looking at what survived , I'd still call it a pretty good trade though, and wouldn't hesitate to try and do another one with Bizzork.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Despite them being some of my favorite places to go to, I have not found myself visiting very many thrift stores so far this year. There's no real reason why either, I just haven't made much of an effort to go to any. I think I've hit all of two since Christmas. I had occasion to make it three this past week when my mom asked if I could stop and look for something at the Dollar Tree while I was out, the Dollar Tree that just so happens to be next to Serenity Thrift.

Serenity is very hit-or-miss for me, so even though I was gonna be right there, I didn't plan on going in. Then I got there, got in and out of the DT fairly quickly, looked over at Serenity, and figured why not. I'm glad I changed my mind too, as this turned out to be one of those "hit" times, and I was able to get a couple of pretty cool videos/DVD's...

I'm pretty burned out on war pictures, and have been for awhile now, but having never come across a copy of Force 10 in the wild before, I wasn't about to not get it just because I'm tired of the genre.

Apparently whoever Larry gave this to for Christmas back in '97 wasn't to enamored with it, as they never even took the tape out of the plastic. It's been 23+ years, but hopefully Larry will take some solace in knowing (if he reads this) that I would've enjoyed being given this tape, and will open it, and will watch it -- especially since I haven't seen it since I was a kid.

Robert Mitchum! Lee Majors! Saul Rubinek! Where do I sign up!!!! I've read about this film before, and supposedly it's not very good, but it's gonna be pretty difficult for me not to like a movie with those three guys in it.

Here's one that I actually know nothing about. I'm thinking that it's either gonna be really good, or really bad, and I'll probably have to be in a particular mood to wanna watch it. Also, I've ordered a few Archives Collection discs from the WB shop during Black Friday sales in the past, but never found one for sale anywhere before (my mom has found a number of them though), so it was kind of neat to finally do so.

I'm not sure why I didn't already own Moby Dick, as it's a film that I've always enjoyed, granted I only see it once every 7-8 years or so, but still. This is the only one from this group that I watched since getting them, and you know something... it's still good!

I like a lot of Tyrone Power's work, but this isn't one of his better performances (my opinion of course). The supporting cast is what drives this film. Well, that and the story, as that's pretty good too. I've only seen this film once before, many years ago on AMC (back when they were still commercial-free), and am looking forward to seeing it again.

It's looking like it's gonna be a busy week down here in the land of Sleeves, so I think if I can get the rest of the scans edited tonight, I'm just gonna be lazy and blog about my recent Sportlots purchases this week. Due to length, I'll have to break them into two posts. Neither will win any awards for writing, but they should have a few fun, and slightly different, items contained within, and will hopefully still be worth your clicks :)

What's a herko?

                                          
For all intensive purposes, hockey did not exist in my world growing up. 

My only pre-teen hockey experiences consisted of going to two Portland Winterhawks games when I was young, and having absolutely no clue as to what was going on. Then there was the Wheaties free hockey stick promotion (which I've already covered before) to celebrate the coming 1992 Winter Olympics. And even though I got two of those sticks, my brief interest in street hockey that ensued only occurred because I and most of my friends were just getting our first pairs of rollerblades around that time, and we wanted to be in them as much as possible, so toss in some free hockey sticks and pucks, and now you've got a bunch of non-hockey kids playing street hockey -- or at least what we thought street hockey was.

I may not have been a hockey kid growing up, but I was a sports fan, and did know a few hockey names. Well, a "few" may be a bit of a stretch. I knew two names, Wayne Gretzky (everybody knew that name), and Manon Rheaume. I wasn't one to watch Sportscenter, or any other national sport highlights shows, so I'm not exactly sure how I knew of Manon. My best guess though would be that I read about her in an issue of SI for Kids while sitting in a doctors office waiting room. 

It doesn't really matter though how I knew of her, the point is that I did know who she was, and I knew what she was doing/trying to do. Not being a player/person collector at the time, I doubt that I had any intention of collecting her cards, and yet I did have a copy of the 1992 Classic Draft Picks that led off this post, and what's more, it was the only card from that set that I ever owned. Like 99% of my original collection though, it went to a charity auction in the early 2000's, when I was certain that I would never go back to card collecting again (this is why you never say never, kids!).

Most of the show is a fog a now, but I can recall that even though I had no intention of ever collecting autographs, I was quite taken with two that I saw upon returning to my first Mall 205 card show  (Portland, OR) in over a decade, back in 2010. The first was a 2009-10 Bill Russell Panini Hall of Famed Signatures (which I did get one of a few years later), and the second was one of the many Manon Classic autographs (I don't recall which one though). Both were expensive (the Bill Russell being considerably more so), and since I wasn't looking to spend that much at the time, or looking to collect autographs (that started at my second show back a month later), I passed on both... but I was tempted though!

Fast forward a few years to whenever it was that I stumbled upon the card blogs, and I started seeing the occasional Manon Rheaume card pop up here and there, which I always kind of secretly admired, and vowed to try and get a few at some point. As per usual though, I would not remember that want until I saw another one of her cards being blogged about, and would then quickly forget about it again. 

The opportunity to finally acquire a few of her cards presented itself a few weeks ago when I noticed that my new favorite person to trade with on the TCDB, herkojerko (also known as, John), had a couple on his trade list. 

As great as these cards are, I still have no plans to do hockey, but going forward, will be doing Manon. Wait! That didn't come out right (or did it 😎). What I 'meant' to say is that I think I'll add her to my list of player collections, she can be my lone hockey representative.

This particular trade, which was our second (the first can be seen further down), did contain a few more cards, so if you've got a minute...

These three guys have shown up in pretty much every trade I've made so far. A lot of folks seem to have extras of Steve Atwater, Dennis Smith, and Ronnie Lott; most of which I seem to need. I don't know why, but receiving Action Packed cards in the year 2021 is just awesome!

I've spoken about some of the negatives that have come from this boom that we're now in, but one of the positives that I haven't covered yet, is that I've really started to appreciate base cards again. This isn't to say that I was anti-base card before last year, I just didn't go out of my way to seek them out, unless of course they were of the vintage variety. These days though, I'm acquiring more of them than I had in decades, and am enjoying doing so. I feel like this is me zigging while everyone else is zagging. The good news too is that I still need an awful lot of base cards, so if things get even crazier, I'll have something to occupy my time until the prices on the more expensive stuff start to come back down to Mars.

College cards aren't normally of much interest to me, and yet here we are! The Penny and Baby Jordan are from a McDonald's set. I don't even remember there ever being a McDonald's Classic set? 

This might ruffle a few feathers, but I've come to realize that I kind of hate Topps Finest, and I think that I always have. The packs were so expensive way back when, too expensive for me. And in my mind they weren't attractive enough to warrant such high prices. I don't think that I've ever opened a Finest pack from any sport. I despised the peels when they started doing them, and still do. I loathe the peel vs. don't peel debates (do whatever the f*ck you want, their your cards!). I hate that I can't take the ugly peels off of old cards for fear that the front of the card will come off with it. And if all that wasn't bad enough, a lot of cards from the early sets are prone to greening. I like the color green, it's probably my favorite color, but blotchy green skin is not a good look. It annoys me too that I need a lot of cards from these 'green' sets, cards that I'm not willing to pay very much, if anything, for. And don't even get me started on the green refractors!

As mentioned, that was actually my second trade with John, I decided to show them out of order if only because it would allow me to lead off the post with something a little different. I liked that trade, of course our first one was pretty good too...

It was about time that Reggie made an appearance! According to the TCDB, my Reggie Roby collection is now 39% complete. I think that it might actually be a tad higher, as they do have a cut signature listed, and I will never buy one of those, so that's one card less that'll be needed to complete his collection, thus raising my percentage a tad.

This is a fun scan, it's like a mini retrospective of Steve Atwater's Stadium Club cards.

I didn't realize how many playing card sets had been made until I started actively using the TCDB. This particular Ditka's Picks is a sunset card, so that's kind of neat.

And here's when I started to have some issues with static during this scan session. Anybody else ever have that problem? If so, do you have any tips on getting rid of it? If it is going to happen, it usually starts doing so when I'm almost done, but is still terribly annoying to deal with for those last couple of scans.

Besides packaging his cards really well, the thing that stands out to me the most about John's cards, is just the overall great condition of his stuff, especially the base cards. He obviously takes pride in not sending out crap, and I really appreciate that.

So in conclusion, I don't know what a "herko" is, but can say that John is certainly no "jerko". And if you ever get the chance to trade with him, I'd highly recommend it.

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!

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

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!

You said it!

I don't know if anyone's noticed or not, but soccer's popularity in the U.S. seems to be on the increase. It had already been trending upward pre-corona, but that growth has increased ten-fold over the last year or so. It's gotten to the point where people are even paying large sums for soccer cards now. Soccer cards!

No one asked, but for the record, just in case anyone ever did; I don't care how popular it gets, or how valuable the cards become, in my mind the "sport" will always be...

Rattled by McKay's

I got a lot of stuff to get to here today, so please forgive the lack of buildup. For those that need something though, okay, I got you -- my once a month yearning to go to McKay's (heaven for lovers of all things physical media) came upon me a couple of weeks back , so I made the trip to Knoxville in order to satisfy my desire. Cool? Cool.

I though I'd start with something different for a change. I struck out on toys, I mean they had a bunch, but nothing for me. I did however find this really nifty slammer in one of the two very full fast food premiums bins. I know for a fact that I never saw one of these way back when, and looking around online, it appears that One & Only Toy and Games Inc. only made a couple of pog related items, including at least three different slammers that were packaged like this -- though this is the only one that "rattled". I think that it's partially filled with BB's, or something very similar to, which makes for a fun effect, but would've made for a sh*tty slammer. Something that's shifting it's weight while being thrown down would have been less than ideal, and wouldn't have had the desired effect, i.e. flipped over very many caps. And it may have sucked as far as Pog playing goes, but it does look cool, and I enjoy seeing it hung up on my wall everyday.

I remember being in a Border's (anyone still remember that bookstore?) back in '02 (I had to look inside the book cover to get the year), and coming across this book while I was perusing the new releases. It seemed like such an odd book at the time, but did sound really interesting nonetheless. The new release price was much more than I'll ever spend on a book, so I had to settle for checking it out at the library not too long after. It was an excellent book, very well researched, and I had planned on buying a copy once they started going down, but than the usual happened, I ended up forgetting all about it almost immediately after I had to return it. And it stayed forgotten until sometime around this past Christmas when I came across a reference to it in another book. I started looking for a copy online, but couldn't find one under $7 (not including shipping), so I held off and hoped that I could find a cheaper one the next time I went to McKay's, and I did! $1.50 is heckuva lot better than $7. I've got about 50 pages left to finish my long overdue reread, and I'm happy to report that it's just as good now as it was almost twenty years ago, possibly even better. I don't recommend things very often, but I'd so with this book, or at least I would to any history lovers out there.

I recently spoke of my first experience reading Graham Masterton, which I concluded by saying that I'd have to read something else of his, as I couldn't quite gauge his abilities from that one book, so this was me getting another one of his books to try.

Is it weird for someone who wants absolutely nothing to do with large bodies of water, to get great joy from reading maritime stories? Asking for a friend ;-)

I'm fairly certain that there are no Forever Knight fans reading this, so I won't bore anyone by going on endlessly about it, but will mention that the show was a childhood favorite, and would still make my top 10 favorite shows list. The books started up after the show had ended, and are usually terribly difficult to find, especially for a budget-conscious reader. Finding one that I don't have for 95¢ was pretty cool, of course like a lot of things at this point, nobody remembers the show (or the original television movie), and nobody cares about the books, so there's really no reason for them to still be expensive.

I was more than pleased to find that they had marked down a bunch (100+) of compilations and added them to the bargain CD section (95¢ or less), took me quite awhile to look through them though:

I think I've already discussed these before, but back in the glorious pre-internet days, the Living in Oblivion series was tops among 80's compilations, and used to be rather pricey, key word(s) "used to be". Nowadays they can be had for the price of a song, literally... assuming that that song is a dollar. That's how much it costs to download a song, right? I don't know, I've never downloaded music before, but either way, this was less than a dollar, so if a song costs a dollar, this was less than a song.

Most of the compilations were of the 50's, 60's, and 70's varieties, which is why it took me so long to look through them. This was the only one that I ended up getting though. I have the Charlie Feathers tracks on vinyl, but don't think that I own any of the others, in any format.

It's funny, the 90's were my prime era for music, but as I've gotten  older, I've begun to dislike the music from that era more and more. I think it's mostly just because I've heard a lot of the radio staples too many times at this point, and don't really need to hear a lot of them anymore. Of course there are some exceptions, some of which are contained on this album.

I wasn't of "clubbing" age during the 90's, but I did spend a lot of time in arcades, and this album reminds me of arcades in the late 90's, more specifically, mall arcades in the late 90's. I really, really, miss those days!

Moving on to the bargain ($1.95 or less) DVD/Blu-Ray section...

This was pretty crazy, I was looking at this show last time I was there, and was semi-tempted to pay $6.95 for it, but ultimately end up passing on it. Fast forward a couple of months, and now I find it for $1.95, which was much more my kind of price. Sometimes patience/cheapness does pay off!

I've mentioned in past McKay's posts that they seem to be including a lot more television show seasons in with their bargain stuff than they used to. Normally though they're shows that I'd never watch, and will never watch, but this time there was a few things of interest (Ip Man being the biggest). I don't know if I had ever planned on watching the Hannibal series or not, I mean I certainly heard enough about it, but for $1.95 it's worth trying. I've never been big on the films, well, save for Manhunter, that one was good, so I will not be surprised if I don't end up liking the show.

This is the slightly edited version of Phenomena. I never knew that a retitled cut existed, and having still not watched it (this version that is), I don't know what has been edited out, but I'll pop it in and find out at some point. This was more of a curiosity get than anything.

I hadn't planned to upgrade my Secret of the Ooze video, but some of this stuff is getting so cheap on Blu-Ray, it seems like I'd be losing out by not doing so.

Like with the Turtles above, AOD was just too cheap not to upgrade. I've had both on video for over 25 years now, and both tapes still work as good as the day I got them, and now with me not needing to put any more wear and tear on them, they'll probably still be in great working order when I'm gone.

Quick fun fact regarding AOD: A former longtime friend of mine's uncle was an extra in the film. Unfortunately I can no longer remember which scene he appeared in, or even what he looked like.

That does it for the actual purchases, but I did pick-up a few freebies on my way in, so...

Current YA fiction doesn't usually do much for me, but this one had catchy cover, and sounds like it could potentially be something. I'm in no hurry to read it, but I know that when I do get around to it I'll probably know within like ten pages or so whether or not it'll be to my liking. It just has the kind of feel to it to me.

Aside from the corner wear, I'm kind of surprised that this would've been out in the free boxes, as it seems like the sort of thing that certain people might've paid at least a dollar for. Heck, I don't even have much interest in things pertaining to New York City, and I would've paid a buck for it.

I'll be starting this one after I finish "Salt", hopefully it'll be as good as it sounds.

Not bad haul this time if I do say so myself. What made it even better too was that my mom had given me list of books that she was looking for, and I was able to knock some of those out as well. Oh, and I took in a bunch of stuff for trade again, and the credit from that took care of everything.

It was relatively early when I got done, and still was by the time I got done eating lunch (I always take my own and eat it in the car when I come out), so I decided to make a few more stops on my way home, the first of which was the Book Cellar:

Young Jon used to LOVE these kind of books, and old Jon still buys and reads them to help hang onto what's left of young Jon. Also, it's a Scholastic book from 1965, so I kind of had to have it.

I had no clue that there was an Elementary book series. I was gonna wait until I read it before looking up how many books there were, as I didn't want to have it spoiled by seeing what kind of rating it's received by random internet dipsh*ts (I've gotten to the point where I absolutely loathe reviews and ratings, especially those of the internet variety).

Not shown is the half-a-dozen more books found from my mom's booklist. My two books were added to by these cassettes that I found in the free boxes on my way out. I knew quite a bit of French at one time, but most of it's gone now. I'm hoping that these tapes might help bring a little of it back. As for Dutch and Russian, well, I don't have a great deal of interest in trying to learn either, but if I can learn a few words, or more importantly, learn to recognize a few words when I hear them, than these will have paid for themselves (which isn't hard to do since they were free).

Besides having the time to do so, the other reason I wanted to stop before getting home was because my mom had mentioned needing another bookshelf, and I just had a feeling that if I went to the thrift store that's across the parking lot from the Book Cellar on this day, that I would find one. And you know something, I was right, because I did, and it was a good one too! I also managed to find another little something for myself...

There aren't too many Humphrey Bogart films that I don't own, but this was one of them. Awesome movie for those of you who dig the older stuff, it had been a while since I last saw it, but it still holds up really well, or course most of his stuff does, so it's not like I'm breaking new ground by saying that this one does too.

Much like last time, this turned out to be basically a perfect day for me. Nothing went wrong, and I was able to bring home plenty of cheap entertainment. It's probably a good thing I don't live too close to Knoxville, otherwise I'd be at McKay's multiple times a week, and all you'd see around here is recaps... so I guess it's good thing for you too that I don't live any closer to Knoxville!