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.