The Wonders of Time Travel

Why is it that I can remember the lyrics to a 30 year-old song that I rarely ever listen to, but can't remember what I sent to a fellow blogger a little over a month ago? 

Just within the last few weeks I listened to "Rico Suave" all the way through for the first time in a couple of years, and was a tad surprised to find that I still knew every single lyric to it, including the Spanish bits, which is interesting since I don't speak a lick of Spanish. And yet, I sent, Jeff, author and blogger extraordinaire, from Wax Pack Wonders, a card sometime in the last 4-6 weeks, and for the life of me, cannot remember what it was. It makes no sense!

I still have Jeff's thank you note around here somewhere, so I could probably go find that and be reminded of which card was sent, but I shouldn't have to, it wasn't that long ago, I should be able to remember it. I'm hoping it'll come to me while I'm typing, and then I can just circle back and add an update; but until then...

My one card sent yielded around 20-something in return (most of which were scanned). A bit much, but the thought behind them is appreciated. One doesn't expect to get basketball cards from Jeff, and yet that's what most of them were. About half the cards were former Blazers, which is never a bad thing.

I don't go out of my way to seek out Clifford Robinson rookies, but still have more copies of these Fleer and Hoops cards than any sane person should have. I have a few copies of the Hardwood Leaders as well, but since it's one of my favorite insert sets of all-time, I won't ever turn down more, especially those of guys that I collect.

When I came back to card collecting I wasn't that interested in the stuff that I had collected the first time around, paying more attention to vintage, and the many things that had come out while I was away. Now that a dozen or so years have passed since my return, I find myself more interested in cards from my childhood/teens than anything else. I suppose it's normal for one to be drawn towards people/players that you can relate to. It may be a base card from a set that not too many people care about anymore, but the '95-96 Hoops card here is a perfect example of why I continue to find myself drawn to this era more and more. I like everything about it, the design, the photo, David's shoes, and most importantly, I can look at it and instantly identify everyone on the card; and still remember how they played. It's great card for cameo collectors, as you've got your choice of Dennis Rodman, Clyde Drexler, Kenny Smith, and Avery Johnson. Good stuff all around!

I've made the mistake of trying to read through a few basketball threads on Twitter over the last few years, and am constantly amazed at how dumb the NBA's modern fan base is. I don't understand how fans of a sport can know so little of it's history, and what's more, feel absolutely no embarrassment over their ignorance. John Stockton is often a target of these idiots. Sad as that is, it does bring me great joy to know that it'll be a very long time (if it ever even happens) before someone breaks his all-time record for assists or steals. That seems to bother those dummies quite a bit too, which makes me even happier. 

The card on the left was actually kind of rare back when it was new, but is now relegated to the dime boxes. Still a neat card though, one which features a young Gary Payton as well.

Being from Portland, being a good guy, and having had a solid career, I should collect A.C. Green, but I don't; he just doesn't move the needle for me. I thought it was kind of interesting to see him on both of these cards though.

All-Star inserts were hit-or-miss over the years. These weren't one of my favorites design-wise, but as mostly a player collector these days, I do appreciate these for being dual-sided with one guy from the East team on the front, and one guy from the West team on the back. It gives you options, as is the case with the Joe Dumars here, I don't collect him, but if you flip the card over... 

... you get John Stockton, who I do collect! I'm pretty sure that I already have one of the Pippen/Kemp cards, but can't remember who's binder it's in. Once I figure it out though, this one will go in whatever collection that it's not already in.

I got one baseball card too. It looks familiar, but I don't think that I have it. That guy in the background is kind of creepy. I'm not sure if he's supposed to be a ghost or what, but either way, he's appropriate for the season.

Thanks again, Jeff! 

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In other news, I was able to get in on one of the now famous monthly Time Traveling trades from, Matt, over at Diamond Jesters. 

I think that this was only the second or third time that I've participated on one of these, if only because there usually isn't much for me, and even when there is, it's often the sort of stuff that I know someone else will want more, so I just leave it for them to claim. This past month though, I had to get two. The Cliff Branch was a just because card, I like it, and wanted it, so here it is! I don't have a list for my Alzado's yet, but I do know what I don't have by sight, and this was one that I didn't have. Unfortunately for me, I didn't look at it close enough, and missed the slit under his armpit. I just saw the nice corners, and made my claim.

Fingers! You can see the gash much better here. That's the sort of thing that'll bug the shit out of me, so he's gonna need replacing. I wonder if this one would be good enough for Fuji's damaged card collection?

Thanks for doing what you do, Matt! You seem to be making a lot of people happy with this series of yours.

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Well, I've made to the end, and still can't remember what I sent to Jeff. I guess it'll just have to remain a mystery.

Oh, and "Rico Suave", yeah that hasn't aged very well. It's hard to believe that I could've liked that back when it was new.

Diverse dime boxes

Now that this year's Secret Santa has officially been set in motion, I can start catching up on things that normally would've been covered by now, namely the rest of the haul that I brought home from September's super mega card show.

I do have a few more thank you posts to do, but with the aforementioned Secret Santa, I've got some shopping to do, which means another card show will likely be in my future, and hey, there just so happens to be one in less than two weeks -- and if I do go, I can't imagine that I won't end up bringing anything back for myself, so I'm gonna try and get the last show's stuff taken care of real quick, that way I don't end up having two shows worth of stuff to catch up on. Hopefully the people that I owe public thanks to for items sent my way, won't be upset by having to wait another week or two before I gush over their generosity.

For those that don't remember, and why would you, the end of September show was one of twice a year 190+ table affairs, hence the super mega card show distinction. Oh, as a quick aside, I just saw that the next big one, which is at the end of February BTW, is set to have 240 tables with wares from 130+ dealers! Just goes to show what can happen when shows are promoted by someone who isn't motivated by greed, after all who would've thought that Nashville could hold shows that are now being compared to The National, and according to dealers who have set up at both, The National is losing ground to what's going on here. Oh, sorry, aside #2, I also just read that the September show had the usual array of dealers from various states (midwest to upper east coast), but apparently there was even a guy from California there. California to Nashville is a long way to travel just to try and sell some cards! I wish I would've known what table(s) was his, as I would've tried to buy something from him, but unless you're the sort to talk to every single dealer (I am not), there's really no way to know where everyone is coming from.

Anyhow, I've already mentioned that despite there being a gajillion sellers to choose from, I only ended up buying from four, two of which have already been covered (here and here), so let's move onto the third (even though it was actually the second purchase of the day). There's an older seller who's always there, and who always has a bunch of 3200 ct dime boxes from the three major sports, as well as some higher end vintage and autos. I've bought stuff from him many times over the last couple of years (although I still don't know his name), so I do always stop to check out his wares. He was obviously bringing out the big guns for this bigger show, as in addition to his normal set-up, he also had a dime box of non-sports (3200 ct), as well as a bunch of quarter boxes (or 5/$1) that were separated into baseball, basketball, boxing, football, hockey, and wrestling. Even though I bought from both tiers, I'm just going to focus on the dime boxes today, and save the quarter boxes for Wednesday.

Seeing as how non-sports cards are a bit of a rarity here (despite the bonkers amount of dealers), and don't ask me why, they just are -- so with that in mind I opted to search through the new non-sport dime box first (don't worry, there's some sports further down in the post). I found the three Bart Broder's within the first couple of cards, with my recent propensity for collecting duplicates, I of course had to grab all three. This particular Broder is new to me, given it's subject matter though, it's not too hard to figure out roughly when it would've been made.

As exciting as it was to find a dime box of non-sport cards, I was a little disappointed to see that at least half of the cards in the box were in pretty rough shape, with the bulk of those being from mid 90's DC and Marvel sets. This Deadpool was just about the only one that didn't have any smushed corners, otherwise I probably would've bought just about everything in there.

I was surprised to find these in there, and even though I don't normally go for cards that are this rough, I couldn't leave them sitting there. I'll be hanging on to the Man on the Moon, at least for the moment, but the Monkees are available to whoever wants them.

The one bad thing about dime boxes is, that because everything is only a dime, it can be awfully difficult to say no to things, even things that you normally wouldn't give a second look. Here's a perfect example, did I need expired game cards from the 1992 Winter Olympics? I'm pretty sure that I didn't, but they were only a dime, so...

I don't remember this particular contest, but I do recall quite a few others from the time, as well as a number of the promotions that were linked to that year's Winter Olympics. My favorite was the free plastic hockey stick that one could get if you bought X amount of Wheaties boxes, I think it was two or three. We lived in Beaverton (OR) at the time, and there was an Albertson's not too far away that was participating in the promotion, it was a pretty big deal for me and a lot of the other kids my age (9). The details are a little fuzzy, but basically you just went there and bought a couple of boxes of Wheaties, and they would hand you this beautiful blue and white plastic hockey stick (it came with a puck too) right there in the store, no sending away for anything, no waiting for it to arrive, talk about your instant gratification! This promotion also just so happened to start right around the time that rollerblades were exploding in popularity, so it didn't take long before a lot of us kids were playing roller hockey, even though no one was familiar with hockey in the least. I had two of those sticks, both had been broken and duct taped back together, until my mid teens, but a garage cleaning would eventually see them being thrown away. At this point in my life, it should come as no surprise to hear that I wish that I still had them, as they'd look really great up on the wall... duct tape and all!

There were some A&G mini's in the baseball boxes, but this was the only one from the non-sport box, and in case you can't tell, it's pretty fantastic! I kind of want to talk about the Carpathia some, but this post is getting kind of a long, and I don't even think that I'm to the halfway mark yet, so maybe I'll revisit the topic another day.

My days as a wrestling fanatic are long gone, but it was still pretty cool to find some of these 1987 NWA Wonderama cards. I remember seeing ads for this set in the back of magazines, always sold as a complete set BTW, but I had never seen any in person before. It's hard to tell from the crappy scans, but these are basically like mini photos, the image quality is that good.

I was such a big fan of The Powers of Pain when I was a kid, so the group shot featuring part of Paul Jones' Army is definitely my favorite of the bunch.

I don't know if anyone cares, but here's a back just in case.

See, I told you, sports! Another new to me set here, but Sportflix was a brand that I never bought any cards from, no reason why mind you, it just wasn't on my radar. The lenticular action of these backgrounds is pretty nifty, they sure don't scan well though, and the photograph that I used here isn't much better.

You're now looking at the first card from the '86 Topps set that I've ever owned (I've since gotten another one from Robby). I forgot about this one when I went to scan everything, so I've added this photo right before hitting publish. It has a bit of a punky corner, but was still probably a pretty good deal, what with it being The Fridge's rookie and all.

Some random shiny stuff, finding cheap Prism is always a good thing!

T-Mac was hanging out with The Fridge, and as such is a late another addition to the post. As far as base cards go, this one is pretty nice, now if I could just spot a famous person in the background...

I've mentioned many times before that I wasn't a Jordan fan growing up, but for some odd reason I still have an affinity for a number of his early 90's base cards, these two being a couple of my favorites. My fondness for these cards has grown even more since I started created my dozen or so player binders earlier this year, and since I also now enjoy finding as many duplicates of cards that I like, I'm not about to pass up a few more cheap copies of these two.

If memory serves, the 1994-95 Collector's Choice gold signatures averaged about one per box, maybe it's just me, but with those kind of odds, one shouldn't expect to find any in dime boxes -- yet I've done so in the past, and I did it here again. Obviously Clyde wasn't no scrub either, so why he was relegated to such a box, I do not know, I can guarantee you though that he's now in much better place... that being in a binder with other Drexler's! Anybody who's ever tried to scan or photograph these probably already knows that they are difficult to get a decent image of, this photograph isn't too bad, certainly better than the scan...

Wow, that looks terrible!

It's amazing how much difference can be made just by taking the photo at a slight angle. Definitely another one of my favorites from that day. I thought that finding one was pretty fantastic, but then...

... I found four more! Not quite on par with Clyde, but I'm not going to complain any. I've got player pages for Otis Thorpe and Jeff Hornacek, and Scott Skiles and Anthony Peeler will be headed to my team binders, which are basically just where by put all of the neat stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else -- although if I could find a few more interesting cards of Scott Skiles, I would likely start a page for him as well.

Looks like we've reached the end, but not a bad a couple of bucks spent if I do say so myself! They weren't as diverse as these dime boxes, but I did alright with his quarter boxes as well, and as mentioned I'll be taking a look at that stuff next time, so until then!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.