Thursday, November 29, 2018

The binder that keeps on giving

A couple of months back, Kerry, of Cards on Cards, happen upon one of those semi-mythical card finds at Goodwill, which came in the form of a binder that was filled with nothing but 90's football inserts and parallels -- a binder by the way, that only set him back a cool five bucks!

Kerry has earned the reputation of being a very generous fellow, and he used this purchase to further that reputation by giving away the majority of the binder's contents.

Without going back and looking, I want to say that I was the first person claim anything via his giveaway post. I knew that there was going to be some interest in these cards, and since I always worry about coming across as greedy in instances such as these, I did my best to keep my claims to a minimum... but I still ended up with some really neat cards.

I wonder if anybody else would've claimed the available Pro Set if I hadn't? Even with six out of the seven being inserts, I'm guessing that there wasn't going to be a lot of interested parties.

1992 Score was the last football set that I can remember buying during my original card collecting run, so to say that I missed out on a lot would be a major understatement. Football cards seem to have been my main interest for much of this past year, and the way it's looking, they probably will be next year as well. It's been a lot of fun for me to find, and learn about, over twenty years worth of missed sets, 1993 Pacific Prism being one of them. I picked up a couple at a card show about six months ago, and haven't come across any more since (in person that is), so when I saw these two in the binder, well, I just had to have them.

It may have scanned terribly, but this '94 Score Gold Zone of Cris Carter was the main card that I had targeted (wide receiver pun!) when it came time to stake my claim. It doesn't get too much better than a 90's parallel that a) is shiny, b) features a hall of famer, and c) contains an action shot.

Thank you again for the cards, Kerry! Even though I've gotten a little lazy when it comes to sending cards out as of late, I will try to have something headed your way some time in the very near future


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Thursday, November 22, 2018

Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't have any turkey cards to celebrate the occasion, but I do have this... Turley card? So... here's hoping that everyone has a safe and happy Turley day :)


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Cardboard hoopsters

It's only taken me two months to do so, but I'm finally getting to the last of my purchases from the giant card show back in September.

In the couple of years of now that I've been going to the Nashville shows, I'm always still a little amazed at just how many 90's basketball inserts there are to be had in the bargain boxes, and that's just at the regular twice a month shows, the numbers increase tenfold at these twice a year baby Nationals.

So as per usual, I brought home a ton of cheap inserts, so some of you might consider this to be a little too long of post -- but for those of you who fall into the less is more camp, you'll be happy to know that I did do quite a bit of whittling, otherwise I probably would've had enough for at least three posts.

Big shows means that some of the big-time vintage dealers show up (the one's who set up at The National), and while their prices aren't always the best, I still tend to look through their offerings just in case. This time I was able to find a couple of reasonably priced set needs, so it did end up being well worth the look (the '74 Clyde Lee has been a pain in my side for a while now). With these most recent additions, I'm down to needing 14 from the '72-73 set, and just 4 from the '74-75 set (those 4 will probably get gotten during the upcoming COMC Black Friday sale).

Going into this show I didn't have any of these 1992-92 Fleer All-Stars, now I have 9 (Michael Adams got left out of the scan)!

A nice selection of early to almost mid 90's inserts. The Hornacek and Malone Beam Team's are of the Member's only variety.

I don't know what the deal is, but it seems like there have been a lot of Shaq inserts to be had at the last 5 or 6 shows that I've been to now. I wasn't really ever a fan of his, but I'm not about to walk away from his inserts, especially when they're priced at 20 cents or less (even if they don't scan very well).

At some point I started finding a bunch of these 1994-95 Fleer Ultra Rebound King's in a 6/$1 box, so of course I started adding them to my stack, it wasn't until after I got home that I realized that I had gotten the entire 10-card set (Keven Willis isn't shown). It's certainly not a high-end insert set, but it was still kind of neat to be able to get the whole set.

[Note to self: don't bother trying to scan any 1997-98 Hoops Chairman of the Board cards in the future, no matter what you do, they'll still just end up looking like hot s***]

One of my favorite basketball inserts of all time are these 1995-96 SP die-cut All-Stars. I think this is like the third Stoudamire that I have, but I did manage to get a gold Vin Baker that I didn't have.

Sometimes when you're looking through Jim's bargain boxes, you will hit patches of certain players, and I'm not gonna lie, I absolutely love it when that happens! At this particular show I ran into a stretch of Scottie Pippen (only half are shown), and...

... Hakeem Olajuwon! I also hit a patch of Mark Sanchez on the football side of things, left those for somebody else though :) Oh, and speaking of Hakeem...

I found a pair of these 1994-95 Skybox Emotion Ntense's in a different dealers $1 box, which made these my only "expensive" insert purchases of the day. This a set that I really like, but since I don't have the MJ, and I'd never pay the $100+ that it would take to get it, I don't think I'll ever have to worry about trying to complete it.

Just a few assorted mid to late 90's inserts, the Garnett Best Cuts sure didn't scan well.

Until just a couple of months ago I had been working on all of the Parallels from the 2013-14 Prizm set, as well as the 2014-15 and 2015-16 sets, but with the ridiculous prices that the rookies are selling for (I'm not paying over $100 for a kid who's yet to accomplish anything of note), I decided to pare back the collection and just work on some specific players (mostly of the retired variety). I really wish I would've been collecting these like this all along, I probably would've had a lot more fun doing so over the last couple of years... better late than never?


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Friday, November 16, 2018

Pigskin purchases

With all of the Secret Santa stuff that's been going on for the last couple of weeks, a few of my planned posts have gotten pushed back, two of those being the last of the recaps from the big September card show.

I've already covered the baseball, as well as all of the stuff that fit into the miscellaneous
category, so that brings us to the football side of things... and there was an awful lot of neat football cards to be had that day.

I ended up coming home with probably two posts worth of stuff, but I've done my best to try and condense it down to one. And just like the baseball cards that I featured a few weeks back, everything shown here today came from either a 5/$1, 6/$1, or a dime box. After finding so much in the bargain boxes, I didn't even bother going through anyone's more expensive boxes... long live the cheap stuff!

Might as well start with a few refractors, because everybody likes those, right?

I even found a couple of vertical refractors. Both of these are really great action shots, and the Steve Smith is #'d to /299, so that's something.

X-Fractor's are always fun too, the Chris Barnes Bowman Chrome is by far the most attractive of these in person. I really dig the Tony Gonzalez sepia refractor as well, and I was a bit surprised to get that one for 15 cents, because there's always a lot Atlanta people at these shows (especially the bigger one's), so Falcons can sometimes carry a premium here.

What would a card show be without 90's inserts? I just bought one of the Barry Sanders Leading Legends on COMC a couple of months ago, but I'm not opposed to the idea of having two (or more).

Two gold parallels, both from 1999, and both from two of my favorite late 90's sets.

Sorry for the bad picture on this one, but I knew that my scanned wouldn't be able to handle a mini that is this mini. I had no idea that these Card-Supial minis even existed, I've never seen one for sale anywhere, and I wasn't collecting Crown Royale back in 1999, so this was a completely new one to me. Sometimes minis can be not so mini, but for these cards, the term mini truly does seem apt, don't believe me? Well, here's something to give you a sense of scale:

See, that's a mini card! Edgerrin is being shown next to a pair of cards that were also acquired at this show. Danny is a promo from the 1997 Leaf Reproduction set, and even though I don't get terribly excited over the idea of owning rookie cards, but for twenty cents, I will grab any vintage HOFer's that I happen to come across.

2000 was the year of the purple insert! Well, maybe not, the Crowell actually has a silver finish in person, I think he just picked up some of Kurt's purple during the scanning process (look pretty cool though).

I've been pretty big on the Prizm basketball cards (pre 2016-17) for a couple of years now, but I've only just recently started scratching the surface on their football counterparts. I don't seem to be finding too many at shows so far, but I did come across this colorful trio from the 2014 set. I wish I would've known that Dan Hampton had a card in this set a little sooner, but no matter, now that I do I've already gone ahead and picked up a few more of his parallels on COMC, and will probably grab a few more during the upcoming Black Friday sale.

When going through dime boxes, I don't always pay a lot of attention to the newer stuff, but a few things will inevitably stand out, these were those things. The Clay Matthews insert is kind of neat, not only is it #'d to /188, but it's also got a sort of lenticular-esque thing going on. I will say though, that after a couple of weeks (or months), the Panthers insert isn't really doing anything for me anymore, so I guess I'll have to see if Colbey wants it.

The great thing about card shows is that you never know what you're going to come across, case in point, I just so happened to stumble upon one of my new favorite cards of all-time at this last show:

Look at that! I mean seriously, how awesome is this card? If you answered with anything less than "It's crazy awesome", you're dead to me! I saw Nick Barnett play a ton at Oregon State, and I saw a couple of his games with the Packers, but after that I kind of forgot about him... this image tells me that that was clearly a mistake on my part.

I tried to find out a little bit about the image, but didn't get very far. With all of the pink that can be seen, as well as the vampire fangs being sported by Mr. Barnett, it's obvious that it's October, and probably close to Halloween. Nick played for the Bills during the 2011 and 2012 seasons, and seeing that Topps released it's 2012 flagship in September of that year, this photo was obviously taken during the 2011 season. The Bills played a game at the Rogers Center (Toronto) on October 30th of 2011, which seems like it would be an appropriate time for fangs, but after looking at some pictures of the field, I just can't tell if it matches or not. The Bills New Era Field has the same dirt track around their field of play as well, so if it was a home game, it had to be their October 9th game against the Eagles. That as far as I got, and at this point I'm tired of trying to figure it out, and I honestly don't really care anymore.

I don't know how it is that I've gone this long without knowing about this card, but now that I do, I want as many copies as possible (base and parallels)!

Things got a bit wordy there at the end, didn't they? For anyone that is interested, I finally got around to scanning all of the basketball cards that were gotten at this same show, and I'm planning on having that post ready to go by Tuesday.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Last Secret Santa update, Penny Marshall, a scam, and a contest plug


I'm sure that some of you are getting tired of hearing about the Secret Santa, if so, you'll be happy to know that this will be the last update until I do the wrap-up post (it'll be done the exact same way that Matt always did them). Okay, so I got the last of the emails sent out yesterday afternoon, I made my list and checked it twice, but if you're a participant, and somehow you didn't receive an email from me with the name of the person that you'll be shopping for -- please be sure to contact me sooner than later so I can resend all of the information that you'll need about the person you drew.

Since I haven't been showing a lot of cards lately, I thought I'd shoehorn my most recently purchased Golden Age autograph into this post:

Penny Marshall is of course best known for her work on Laverne & Shirley, and to a slightly lesser extent, for directing A League of Their Own. Though she does have a slew of other acting and directing credits to her name as well. Ms. Marshall is my 25th card from the 2013 set, which means that I've now officially reached the halfway mark!

My email account through Gmail is usually pretty good about keeping spam/junk mail from reaching my inbox, but yesterday I received mildly interesting piece of mail that got through, one that I think might be of some interest to my fellow bloggers:

Cooperation with www.pennysleevethoug​hts.blogspot.com

 

Harvey Kayne harvey.kayne@gmail.com

Tue, Nov 13, 4:58 PM (14 hours ago)
to me
 
Hello,
My name is Harvey. I'm a freelancer who works for Media-Top, an online media agency.
Would you be interested in writing and posting an article for a fixed fee?
The article should be relevant to the category and to the readers of your site.
If you are interested, please let me know and I'll provide you with more details.
Also, if you own other sites please send me their URLs, so I can review them.
Depending on your local law, you may need to make it clear that the links you use are in
fact adverts.

--
Best Regards,
Harvey Kayne

Media-Top Online Services
harvey.kayne@gmail.com

Initially I just thought that this was going to be a blog comment from a name that I didn't recognize, but after clicking on it, I obviously realized right away that that's not what it was. After reaching the third line, it was clear that this was not on the up and up, because nobody in their right mind is going to be offering to pay me to write anything... ever!

This person clearly went through the blog to get to me (sneaky move btw), which is probably why Gmail didn't block it. After about 3 1/2 minutes of reading up on this Harvey Kayne (he is a real person) on Google, I came to the conclusion that while it's not quite as scammy as usual, it's still scam. Basically it sounds like they agree to pay you to write something for him/them, you then write an article and give it to them, and they reward you by coming up with a bunch of excuses as to why they don't have to pay you... and apparently people have fallen for it!

Since I have to assume that I'm not the only blogger to have received such an email, and even though I would hope nobody would be buying into this spiel, I still thought it was worth mentioning just in case.


And finally, Peter over at Baseball Every Night, has just started an Ugly Sweater contest. Nothing is being gained by me for promoting it, I just thought it looked like something that a lot of you might want to try and get in on, not only for the fun factor, but there's also a pretty solid prize being offered to the eventual winner -- so if you like fun, and you like the idea of choosing your own prize, just click on that link to get all of the details.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Monday, November 12, 2018

The Secret Santa field is set


The 2018 Secret Santa is officially closed to anymore new entrants. The good news is, we ended up with 30 people, which is far more than I thought we'd get. The bad news is, well, there is no bad news, so...

There are a couple of things that I wanted to mention real quick, so hopefully some of our participants will actually click on this post.

First off, thank you to everyone who helped promote this year's Secret Santa, I truly believe that was the real difference maker, especially when multiple people mentioned that they found out about it from other people's posts.

I would also like to thank the couple of non-blogging members of the TCDB for signing up, I was hoping that a few of you would join, and hopefully your participation will lead to more members of the site getting on board with future Secret Santa's (no matter who's hosting).

Also, a special thank you is in order for Peter, who offered to take two names if we ended up with an odd number of participants. Thankfully I didn't have to take him up on his offer, but it was still very generous of him to put that out there.

I will randomize all of the names sometime in the next couple of hours, and then start sending out emails. I've never sent out 29 emails before, but I would imagine that it's going to take a little bit of time, so I'll probably do half today, and get the other half done tomorrow (Tuesday).


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Friday, November 9, 2018

Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 9

  
Before I jump into today's post, I of course have to plug the Secret Santa real quick. As of this morning we're up to 30 confirmed participants, and there's plenty of room for more, so if anyone else is interested, you've still got until Monday morning to sign up.

This past Saturday was yet another one of the monthly 50% off sales at the Goodwill, and like everyone else, I was there bright and early, hoping to find some neat things at heavily discounted prices. [spoiler alert: I did!]

No matter how hard I try though, I just can't seem to get there when it opens. They're supposed open to at 8am, I arrived at 7:20, the parking lot was completely full, and it was already full on Supermarket Sweep inside (I have no idea what time they're actually opening).

As per usual, my first stop was the media section in the very back of the store. To get to this area, you've got to walk down one of 7 or 8 aisles/sections (knickknacks, holiday stuff, kitchen, etc.), it should come as no surprise to anyone reading this, but I always opt for the toys and games aisle.

Normally there isn't anything in the toy aisle for me to even stop and look at, let alone buy, but this day was different, as I noticed a bit of bright yellow sticking out from some sort of weird fuzzy stuffed animal-backpack thing -- turns out that that yellow thing was the base of a 1987 California Raisins bank.

If you're of the right age, you probably remember how big the Raisins were in the mid to late 80's. It seemed like they were everywhere for a couple of years there, and as a wee lad, I could not get enough of them, so much so that my mom even went out and got me the 45 of Marvin Gaye's " I Heard it Through the Grapevine" -- which also just happened to be my first record.

As far as the bank goes, I think it might of been a mail-away premium, but I'm not a 100% sure on that. There's quite a few on eBay, so that tells me that there were quite few of them made and distributed. One thing I know though, I absolutely adore this bank, and consider the $5 price tag to be quite reasonable.

Since this post is already starting to get pretty long, and I haven't even gotten to all of the assorted media that was purchased, I will skip over the part about the woman that literally tried to take this bank out of my hand, in what I can only imagine was some sort of fit of anger for not finding it herself (she's very lucky that she wasn't a dude trying that).

Finding that bank was only the beginning, and it was probably a good omen too, because the media area was absolutely packed with good stuff... stuff that nobody else was caring about.


It's not often that I come across a non-western Barbara Stanwyck film that I haven't seen, but apparently I did on this day, and I couldn't be more pleased about it!


I had completely forgotten about this picture, I've only seen it once, and that was many (many) moons ago. At this point I don't usually remember when and where I first saw something (unless it was in the theatres), but I'm pretty sure I saw this one on WGN sometime in the early 90's, my memory tells me that they were on bit of Chuck Norris kick (pun not intended) for a year or so, because I remember staying up late on more than one occasion to watch his older films.


There were an awful lot of sports videos there on Saturday, all of which were still sealed. As an aside, did you notice that old price sticker on the front of this one, apparently that was the bargain price too.


A lot of tapes were NBA related, but this was the only one that looked like it would be of interest to me, as a lot of the other one's were just like "The best of Shaquille O'Neal" or "The best of Charles Barkley" aka stuff I don't care about.


There probably won't be a single play shown on this tape that wouldn't draw a penalty flag in today's NFL.


This was just a backup copy. I think I might be one of the few people who can honestly say that they genuinely like this film.


I always enjoy finding movies that I hadn't heard of. The odds are high that I'm not gonna be digging this one too much, but for a quarter it's certainly worth giving it a go.


Somehow this one had flown under my radar too. As you can probably tell by the synopsis, it was yet another Invasion of the Body Snatchers clone, because there just isn't enough of those out there. Not a terrible movie though (I watched it Saturday night), without giving away any spoilers, I will say that the last ten minutes or so was completely unnecessary, but it's still worth seeing, especially if you're into these kind of pictures.


One of these days I'll actually remember to remove the plastic before taking the pics! This is a movie that you usually find in one of the public domain multidisc sets, so it was kind of cool to find a standalone copy (still sealed too).


One of these days I'll actually remember to... ! I thought the California Raisins bank was going to be the most obscure find of the day, that was until I found this sealed copy of Ladron De Cadaveres. Talk about unexpected, I mean I wouldn't have been overly surprised to find this in a thrift store back in Portland, but here in Tennessee this feels very out of place (like me). I haven't watched it yet, but I already know that there's almost no way that this movie will be able to disappoint me.


I thought I already had all of the PS1 games that I wanted, apparently I was wrong though! This is the second of a three game series, and while I vaguely remember the series, I don't remember ever playing any of the games -- which is a real shame, because I've played this for about two hours so far, and as much as fun as it is now, I can only imagine how much more I would've enjoyed it twenty years ago. I don't keep up with game prices anymore, but I would have to think that finding a copy of this game in such great shape (no scratches on the disc) for $3 was a pretty good deal.

I have to say that overall this was the best half-off Saturday so far, I just hope it's greatness doesn't spoil in any future trips, I'll just have to try and remember that this particular Saturday was probably an anomaly.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.