A purchase, a gift, and an anniversary

Has Topps always done parallels for their Fan Favorites Autographs? If so, how come I haven't seen them before? Is this the first year that they've done a purple one? I feel like I would remember having seen a purple autographed card before, but I don't. I guess it doesn't really matter though, I've seen one now.

I had forgotten to delete my saved search emails for Gene's base auto (as seen in my previous post), which is how I came to find out that he had parallel autographs in this years Archives as well. Parallel autographs really are a silly concept, and one that I'm not too keen to participate in, but here I am, the (semi) proud new owner of a parallel autograph.

I had mixed feelings about the purple when I first the listing for this card, now that it's in hand though, I think that I actually kind of like it. I'm not sure if other people don't like the purple border, or if I just lucked out some, as I got this one, after taxes and shipping, for under five bucks -- which is about a dollar cheaper than I got the base version for. One would think that a card numbered to /150 would fetch more than an unnumbered card, but I'm done trying to figure out why things sell for what they do these days, so I'll just say that I'm content with the price that I got it for, and was prepared to go a couple dollars higher if need be.

After finding out there was at least one parallel to Gene's autograph, I did something that I never do, I sought out a checklist for this years Archives set. Turns out there's four versions of this card, the base, purple (#'d to /150), silver (#'d to /99), and of course, what would a modern set be without a 1/1. I can't remember what color the 1/1 is, but that's obviously out, however, I can, and probably will, try to get one of the silvers though. Hopefully the silver version won't cost too much more than the two I've already gotten, because it's ugly as sin, but it would complete a row on one of Gene's pages, so my own personal collecting OCD will force me to get one; despite it's hideousness.

As okay as this card turned out to be, about a month ago, I was sent an even better one...

Dennis Smith doesn't have a lot of "big-time" cards (thankfully), there's really just three, so if someone were to say to me that they had a card of his to send my way, it's only natural for me to assume that they're planning to send a common base card, after all those do make up like 90-something percent of his catalog. Such was the case a few months ago when, Eric, aka The Snorting Bull, said that he had one of Dennis' cards for me. I figured he was talking about something like, I don't know, an early 90's Upper Deck card or something else along those lines, which, if I needed it, would've been great. Little did I know that, Eric, wasn't thinking so small, and proceeded to drop one of the "Big 3" on me...

For non-football card collectors, this is a 1991 Pro Line Portraits autograph, and also just so happens to be Dennis' only certified autograph (the 1994 Pro Mags autograph doesn't exist - it would be nice if someone who has any pull over at the TCDB would remove it from the site). A discerning eye may have noticed a hint of the Certified Autograph stamp in the lower right on the front of the card, but you can see part of it a little more clearly on the back.

Pack inserted autographs were still pretty new back in 1991, as I believe that they had only become a thing the year prior, and at the time of it's release, the Pro Line Portraits autograph checklist was the largest, and most ambitious to date. Looking at everything that's been produced since it's release, I'd argue that it's still one of the most ambitious sets to have ever been created. Probably one of the most difficult to complete as well.

A number of the autographs in the set were signed with pens that weren't ideal for the surface of these particular cards, causing the effect that you see up above. It's a minor drawback for some, but it doesn't bother me too much, especially since all of Dennis' cards seem to have been of this variety. I'm just grateful to have been able to mark this one off of the checklist, and am very thankful to Eric for making it happen. Trying to complete Dennis' entire catalog is one my few real collecting goals, and this was a big step towards doing so!

In other news, today is this blog's seventh anniversary. Time flies.

The blogs have changed quite a bit in just the last seven years, but I'm still here. With three blogs now, I'm down to only posting on this one a couple of times a month, which works well for me, and because of that I don't see myself going anywhere anytime soon. Besides, I pretty much hate all of the other formats that the "cool" kids are flocking to, so there really isn't anywhere else for me to go. I've had my ups and downs, but in the end, I think I'm gonna be a lifer. I know at this point that I'd miss everybody too much to ever be able to walk away. Crazy as it may sound, but for the most part, blog people are the only people that I'm interested in interacting with. Blog writers, and readers, may be a dying breed, at least that's what the non-blog folks keep claiming, but I tend to think that as long as there's blogs, there will be readers. It's not flashy, and it'll probably never reach "trending" status again, but long format collectible talk still has it's place, it just takes a special sort to realize that.

During my first few years doing this, I sometimes felt like I had to get a certain amount of posts in per month, and probably did force more than a few in order to fill that self-imposed quota. This caused much burnout, and many thoughts of giving up. Thankfully, I was able to get past this idea that I had to match the pace of other more prolific bloggers, and have long since found my comfort zone. These days I only post when I feel like it, and only post about the things that I think are interesting; there's no need for me to post about every single purchase.

A lot of bloggers who've left in recent years have cited declining readership as one of their primary reasons for closing up shop. I can't speak for anyone else, but I haven't noticed too much of a decline, although I gave up stat watching a long time ago; so maybe there has been a drop, and I'm just too dense to realize it. Either way, I do appreciate those who come around here and comment where they can, but even if some of those folks were to start going elsewhere, I'm at that point where I don't mind doing posts for myself. Unlike some of the other social media sites, blog posts show up in Google searches, so I figure even if people were to stop caring about what I'm putting out now, there's always the chance that they will do so at some later date.

I think I've rambled enough for one day, but before I go, I mentioned a few posts back about doing a contest to celebrate this anniversary, and I am going to, your just gonna have to wait about another month for it to drop. I'll be bringing back my old COMC credit giveaway, in which the winner will get X amount of my credit to spend on whatever they want (on the site of course). Since the site runs Black Friday sales for practically the whole month of November now, I figure that'd be the best time to give someone the chance to go on a mini-spending spree. I'll be starting the contest on the last week of October, so that should be something worth coming back for?

For the price of a pack

Looking at my purchase history, I see that I've now only bought five things on eBay so far this year. I know that I didn't buy very much on there last year either, but unless something changes in the next few months, I'll be setting a new personal record for fewest eBay purchases in a calendar year.

Between the lack of items being listed, and the stupid high prices of those that are, I just don't have much incentive to look for things on there anymore. I still get my daily saved search emails from them, 90% of which I can disregard without even opening thanks to them showing the items price in the title. And as far random searching goes, I'm down to about once a month on that. Not bad, considering there was a time not too many years ago when I'd be on there every other day searching for this or that. I may not care for them too much as a people, but in some ways I'm very grateful to the boom crowd, as they've given me back some of my free time. As an aside, I recently learned how to do Sudoku, and a lot of this free time that I speak of has been going towards that. My time spent reading has really dropped off in the last couple of weeks, as I've found that those puzzles are quite addictive. I suppose though, if one has to get addicted to something, there's far worse things to fall under the spell of (like eBay). So, yeah, random searches are down. Searches with a purpose are way down too, although I do sometimes still see something on the blogs, something that I like, and go see if there's another availble somewhere for a decent price; something like this....

I'm pretty sure that either Eric or Fuji posted about this 2021 Archives Gene Tenace autograph sometime in the last few months. Apologies if it was someone else though, I tend to only associate those two guys with Gene Tenace. Not being one to keep up with the latest releases, I usually only find out about new things after seeing them on the blogs. Such was the case with this card. After whoever's post, I knew that I had to have one, so I went looking for one of my own. And after just a few short weeks, I was able to have one in hand.

Google tells me that the average price for a hobby pack of 2021 Archives is $6 (seems like a lot, but what do I know), which is almost exactly how much this card cost after the shipping and tax were added in. Considering that I didn't have to go anywhere to get it, nor did I have to buy any packs to try and get it, I feel like six bucks was a pretty good deal.

Having not been collecting at the time, I had to look it up to find out this card is on the 2002 Topps design, which, with it's orange-ish gold border, works really well with the photo of Gene that was used. Speaking of 2002, if I didn't know any better I'd have swore that I had gone back to then to make this purchase, as it took all of two days to get here. Granted, it was only coming from one state over (GA), but still, two days, when's the last time you got an eBay purchase in two days? The USPS hasn't moved mail like that since probably... 2002!

As far Gene Tenace goes, I recently added what I have of him to a binder. I knew that I didn't have a lot of his cards, as it turned out though, my collection of him is even more meager than I had previously thought. I think I'm gonna have to try and do something about that.