Almost like it was meant to be

I recently pulled this ad out of water-damaged free comic book that I picked up. 

Normally I wouldn't have even bothered picking up a comic, even if it was free, in such a state, but after flipping through it and finding this ad, undamaged (save for a bit of toning), I decided to take the book so that I could pull the ad out. I have quite a few books with this ad in them, and have always liked it, but wasn't going to be destroying a whole book just to get a copy of the ad. 

It's been a few years now since I moved away from set building, but as was the case last year with the old Post sets, I've really been wanting to start working on the Hostess sets again. Thankfully I never sold, or gave away, any of what I had, so at least I won't be starting from scratch if I do give in to the urge. 

I haven't gone so far as to make any checklists or anything yet, but I do know that I've got at least 60% of the '76 set, and maybe 10-15 cards for each of the other sets. Obviously 10-15 cards isn't very far along, so I'd probably just start with 1976 and see how much joy I get out of trying to complete it before making any decisions about going after the other sets. I tend to believe that things happen for a reason, so finding this ad, at this particular time, almost makes me think that the universe is telling me that, yes, I should start working on the set again. Why the universe would care about me of all people, doing something as trivial as this though... well, that's a whole 'nother matter; and one that is most certainly above my pay grade.

I knew that I didn't have Steve Garvey, but figured that I could at least recreate the right side of the page. Turns out I don't Have Joe Morgan either! The recreation doesn't look very good with only one card, especially when said card is overlapping the card that's supposed to be overlapping it. If nothing else, I have to at least get Joe and Steve so that I can properly reproduce the ad. 

On an unrelated note: I sent out 1/3 of the envelopes/packages from my recent giveaway last Wednesday, and am dropping off an even bigger batch at the post office later this morning. That leaves me with five packages (Matt K., Nick V., Dan, Al, and Merlin) and two PWE's (our resident teenage bloggers seem to be unable to respond to messages... kids!) left to do. And if all goes well, those last five packages should be done by the end of the week.

COMC Shuffle #9

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard:


2013 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures #CEY

Half-man, half-Penguin... all Dodger!


1971 Topps #308

In last week's Shuffle I mentioned that I kept a few cards from the small port that I bought last year, this Cards card happens to be another one of those keepers. I was still thinking that I was going to be working on the '71 set at the time, so I held it out -- fast forward to now, and I'm no longer planning on working on the set, but technically speaking it still counts as a Bob Gibson card, so that's reason enough to still keep it.


2014-15 Panini Prizm Yellow and Red Mosaic Prizms #190

I asked folks on the Twitter last week if they thought that T-Mac had done enough to warrant his spot in the HOF. The consensus - and by "consensus", I mean the two people that actually replied [note to self: don't ask a basketball related question during the NFL draft] - was that he hadn't, and I happen to be of the same sentiment. I enjoyed watching him play, but nothing about his career numbers screams HOF.


2013-14 Panini Prizm Target Red Prizms #102

A few years have passed now, but I'm still slightly annoyed at the Blazers for trading Thomas Robinson and Will Barton to the Nuggets for Aaron Afflalo. Both T-Rob and the People's Champ were fairly reliable producers off the bench, and both brought a ton of energy with them every time they entered a game. Aaron Afflalo on the other hand, ended up bringing absolutely no energy, and pretty much did nothing during his 20 or so games in Portland. Thomas Robinson also had a couple of decent starts in place of an injured LaMarcus Aldridge, and seeing as how that was LaMarcus' last season in Portland, it would've been kind of interesting to see what Thomas could've done the next season with more playing time. In case you can't tell, I was kind of a fan of his! And just for sh*ts and giggles, here's my favorite T-Rob moment (which also happens to feature Will Barton):

2014 Topps Pro Debut Hat Patch Logo #MH-SM

Don't be surprised if this is the year that Seth finally gets called up to bigs, well, at least if he can keep doing what he's been doing through his first 19 games with El Paso this season: .350 BA, 28 hits, and 10 RBI's.


1941 Goudey #15

Before January of last year I had never heard of Dario Lodigiani, nor was I aware that there was Goudey baseball set from 1941. A bunch of these had been added to the site, most being fairly expensive, Dario here was the cheapest listing (probably because of the poor-to fair condition), and wanting just one example, I went ahead and made an offer that was quickly accepted. I'm glad that I saw them when I did, because by the next day all of the cards had been sold. My card is a little rough around the edges, the white spots are where someone had written some stats in pencil, which was later erased, causing the white spots, but there's no creasing, and the card hasn't been trimmed, so overall I was fairly happy about the purchase.

The Sports Collectors Digest has a nice article about the set if anyone's interested. And surprise, surprise, the SABR folks have a fairly decent Piece up on Dario -- that's now two weeks in a row of offering them praise, I believe that's a new record for me!


2013-14 Panini Prizm Retail Green Prizms #228

THIS is why I don't normally scan Prizm basketball cards!


1976 Hostess #64

Like a lot of sets that I've been working on for the last couple of years, I'm now on the fence as to whether or not I still want to try and finish off my '76 Hostess build. I think I'm a little over halfway done, but the thrill of the hunt seems to be gone. Hmm? Sounds like I'm not really on the fence after all.


2015 Topps High Tek Gold Rainbow Diffractor #34

I really do dig the 2015 Topps Tek, but like with a lot of other modern sets, I'm really only interested in the retired players portion of the checklist. Some of the cards look a lot better depending on the player/pattern combination, and I am of the opinion that the gold Ronnie Lott is one of the better looking cards in the set, easily ranking in the top five.


2012 Panini Black Friday Progressions - Magenta #30

I probably won't be trying to complete this rainbow, as I have no vested interest in Michael Floyd, I just couldn't pass up a /5 card for 75 cents. He'll just be one of my misc. Progressions. Oh, and all that gunk on the scan is from the allegedly new penny sleeve from COMC that I scanned it in (these mirrored back cards seem to scan better in sleeves, at least for me).

So, that's it for this week, but I'll have another exciting round of Shuffled cards next week, and hopefully for quite a few more weeks after that.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

A not so Secret Santa

Matt had mentioned in the past, that the most awkward thing about hosting the Secret Santa, was telling whoever drew your name that they did in fact draw your name, by doing so, your basically telling someone that they have to buy you something, and you know something... he wasn't wrong!

It may have been even more awkward for me this year, because I had to tell Nick, of Dime Boxes fame, that he had drawn my name for the second year in a row. I don't know what the odds of that happening are, especially since I wasn't the one doing the randomizing last year, but it did happen. Nick took the news in stride, as I expected him too, but it still didn't make sending the email any less easy.

Nick and I have exchanged cards a few times now over the last couple of years, so I knew that what ever was sent, would end up being good, and I was right.

The package started with a pair of big names from the 1973 Kellogg's set, aka the best Kellogg's set (yep, I said it), and much needed hall of famer from the '76 Hostess, which btw is the only Hostess set that I'm still working on. Both of these sets have been slow going, as I never see them at shows, and COMC rarely has any reasonably priced copies that I need.

I've been chasing the 2011 Legends Parallels quite a bit as of late, so this Paul O'Neil was a nice surprise. The Hitman Hearns Bread for Energy was even more appreciated, in fact when I went to cross it off the checklist I noticed that once this was removed I was down to needing just one more to complete the ten-card set, a quick jaunt over to COMC revealed that the last card, Norm Cash, was on sale, so I'm to report that this insert set is now officially in the books.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to revive my buybacks frankenset or not, I wonder if this is Nick's way of saying that I should? And if I'm not mistaken, this is the first TCMA Baseball's Greatest that I've added to those sets since last year's Secret Santa package from Nick. The guy that I was buying these from at the card show, hasn't been there in quite some time, so trying to complete the sets (cheaply) has become considerably more difficult.

While probably not the "best" card in the package, this '61 Topps Billy Muffett would rank as my personal favorite. If anyone's seen my newest tab at the top of the blog, you might have noticed that I'm looking for multiple copies of this card, why? Well, I don't exactly know! You see, I only just saw this card for the first time a couple of months ago while working on the COMC Challenges, and when I did it was love at first sight.

I don't exactly know why I like it so much, I mean Mr. Muffett didn't do anything overly special during his MLB tenure, and he never played for the Portland Beavers, which is a trait that has become quite appealing to me over the last few months. And it certainly isn't the appearance of the old Yankee stadium in the background, heck, that's shown in like half the cards from the '61 set alone. So like I said, I don't know what the appeal is, I just know that I want as many as I can get -- you'll see what I mean when I start getting to my COMC stuff.

I should also note that as per usual, I had to go and take the picture before taking the wax stain off, one of these days I'll remember to start doing the other way around.

It must be getting close to Christmas, because it's not everyday that someone sends you a vintage Willie Mays! I keep going back and forth as to whether or not I want to work on the 1972 Topps set.
I do love the set, and I've probably got half of it, but I just don't know if trying to complete the other half is even financially doable anymore -- even if I don't though, at least I now have another cool vintage Mays to join the couple of other old cards of his that I have.

It seems like it's been forever and a day since I was last able to cross a card off of my 1960 Fleer checklist, George doesn't look too happy about it, but I was!  And I'm not positive of this, so don't go and quote me on it, but I believe that this might have been the first card to show Mr. Sisler as a Brave, if that is indeed the case, I wonder if one could refer to it as his Braves rookie?

All of these were great, and really were more than enough, but Nick being Nick, he had to go and toss in some extras. And when I say extras, I'm talking about 60-70 more cards. There was easily two posts worth of stuff, but since I'm so behind with posts right now, I've decided to go the best of route, or, if you prefer, the Whitman's Sampler route:

I guess these would be classified as the miscellaneous section of the extras. Got a little bit of everything in here, I needed the Hornsby for my set, the Marichal Deckle is pretty neat, and there's even an Ichiro disc -- speaking of Ichiro...

Counting the disc, there were 19 Ichiro's in this package, all but the DeLong looking one were new to me, and even with that one I don't mind having a duplicate (or two). Nick didn't say as much, but with him being an Ichiro collector, I have to assume that these were all duplicates.

A few more Ichiro's, these being of the, shiny but rendered less so by the scanner, variety. Having not seen it before, I was impressed by the niftiness of the Gold Label card.

Some more odds and ends. Sometime in the upcoming year I plan on doing a post about my collection of minor league cards, I say collection, but it's really just a couple of hundred cards in a monster box -- the only question is, will I be discussing my finally getting around to organizing it, or will it end up being a massive giveaway post?

It wouldn't be a proper package from Nick without a large contingent of old-timers, all of these ended up being new to me, so I'm certainly not complaining.

And here's some old-timers with fancy borders. The 2005 Donruss Greats is apparently yet another one of the players of yore sets from the mid-2000's that I missed during my hiatus from card collecting.

Imagewise, the scanner really did a number on these two, no matter though, they look really great in person. Both will be nice additions to my newly created team binders, the Randle features a great action shot, and I believe that this is my first card of The Bird.

And finally, some more vintage in the form of a needed '62 Post card, and a rarely seen in person by me, 1970 Fleer Laughlin, featuring the once (in)famous Philadelphia Athletics $100,000 Infield (times have certainly changed).

Nick, thank you so much for the cards, and for being such a good sport about drawing my name... again! As much as I enjoy receiving packages from you, I do very much hope that someone else gets to benefit from your generosity next year, for your sake, and theirs.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.


P.S. Thanks to Nick for unknowingly providing the title for this post as well!