Christmas in January

I'd really like to do some sort of blogging thing for Christmas (send out gifts, do a giveaway, etc.), and have wanted to do so for the last couple of years now, but planning things in advance is not a strong suit of mine. It also doesn't help that time passes so quickly these days, so even if I do actually think about it say, sometime around Halloween, it always feels like October ends and then 1.3 days later it's the week before Christmas... and I've got nothing planned! I'd like to say that this year will be different, but I'm not gonna hold my breath (even if I did, blue and purple aren't Christmas colors).

One person who doesn't seem to have this problem is, Dennis, he of Too Many Verlanders fame. I don't know how he does it, but every year, come Christmas, a rogue elf from Michigan does his best to upstage Santa Claus by sending out packages of cards to both coasts, and all points in between.

I was among the lucky many to make the nice list (what Dennis doesn't know, won't hurt him 😉) this past year, and received a top notch bubble mailer for Christmas... in January! 

Time has already begun to fuzz the details, but there was some issue with either a seller on Sportlots, or Sportlots itself. I can't remember. Either way though, the package was delayed because all of it's contents weren't available to ship until a couple of weeks after Christmas. Dennis was very apologetic about this, which he didn't need to be since he absolutely zero control over the delay. Besides, getting a package for Christmas, in January, is not a big deal, there's no expiration date on Christmas presents; unless maybe you're getting food. Thankfully, Dennis didn't send any food.

Dennis had told me in advance that my package (typing "my package" feels odd under any context) was going to be more quantity than quality, but with some of the items, like this 1988 sticker, I'd argue that there was no shortage of quality either. It's funny how the old Panini stickers use to be everywhere, and now you really have go out of your way to try and find/get them.

Because of the whole "quantity" thing, this will be a very scan laden post, and I might as well get it going with some more Reggie's...

Had I not been overwhelmed with the task at hand when it came time to scan all of these, I might've taken some to arrange the cards a little better, but even so, I still got some good pairings; such was the case with card numbers 5 and 6 here. They are a couple of years apart, and the jersey has changed, but they're nearly identical shots.

The images on Reggie's cards basically fall into four categories: 1). Head shots. 2). Ball being dropped prior to the punt. 3). The punt. And 4). The after punt. 

My Reggie Roby collection is currently paged in chronological order, which is kind of neat, but there's a part of me that would like to organize it by image category. Maybe if I ever complete it I'll play around with that and see how it looks. I'm still a ways away from that though.

This was not a good scan!

I'm always hesitant to buy any tall boys from Sportlots, or to try and trade for any of them on the TCDB, because I figure with my luck, they're probably gonna show up bent in half. Dennis' luck must be considerably better, for not only was he able to acquire two of them, that were then sent to him undamaged, he also managed to get said two to me; also undamaged.

17 needed Reggie's (and the Bo at the top of the post) would've been more than enough for me, but Dennis didn't stop there...

Reggie Roby is my #1 collection when it comes to football, and even though it hadn't been planned, Dennis Smith has worked his way up to #2 (he won't be passing Reggie though). Neither are of much interest to most collectors, and are of zero interest to investors, so it's nice to still be able to collect a couple of guys who's card prices haven't been inflated over the last few years.

It looks like a couple of receivers were wearing #81 back in 1992, so I don't know who this is, but it doesn't matter, it's all about Dennis getting the pick; one of four that he had that year. Awesome card!

I'm hardly the first to say it, but I'd like to see Action Packed make a come back, provided of course that it's not under the header of one of the current card companies. I can't even imagine how ugly the set would be under Leaf's management 💩.

I have to do a double-take almost every time I see a card from 1992 Score, as the design always makes me think that it's a TRU set.

I hadn't noticed until I was marking everything off their respective checklists, but 1992 was very well represented in this package. 

Getting a cards lone parallel at the same time as the base is always nice. And I've probably said it before, but I really like the first couple of Collector's Edge sets for football. If I cared about more of the players in those sets, I'd probably go back and try to complete them. But I don't, so I won't be.

Prior to getting this package, I don't think that I'd ever seen a single card from the 1993 Fleer set before. I wasn't collecting football at the time, and the design doesn't look familiar at all. I know that collectively were all supposed to hate grey/silver borders, but I've always kind of like them; this despite not being a huge fan of the color itself. 

More stickers! Mongo is one of those guys that I always mean to look for cards of when I'm putting together in order somewhere, but just can't ever seem to remember to do so. Apparently Dennis didn't have that problem...

By all accounts, Steve has always been a standup guy, liked by seemingly everyone who ever met him, which makes his current situation seem just that much worse. Why is it that you never hear about assholes getting ALS? It's always the good people who have to have it inflicted upon them. From the last update I saw a couple of months back, it sure doesn't sound like he's gonna be able to fight it for too much longer either.

I don't know what the deal is with the Super Bowl stamped Stadium Club cards. Were they an in-pack parallel? Special Box set? I do know that sellers online tend to attach a small premium to them, as opposed to the Member's Only parallel that's to the left of it, those are usually just the same price as the base cards. And this was my first card of Mongo as a Packer. I do remember it happening, but seeing him in yellow and green is still a bit jarring. It was good move for him though, as he did get a ring out of it. I didn't realize that he had played every game that season though. Pretty impressive for a 37 year old playing that position.

No need to adjust your eyes, there are indeed four copies of the same sticker here. I figured these might all have different backs, but...

Well, two of them do! I suppose that there could be something different about the three Joe Morris backs, but if there is, I couldn't tell at the time.

I didn't have a want list/checklist for Steve prior to this mailing (I don't have one as of this typing either), but none of these cards were duplicates for me. That was pretty impressive on Dennis' part.

These two cards provide quite the contrast, don't they? If I recall, the Prestige card here was my first post-playing days of Howie. I never bothered to look, but I would imagine that it's got 87 parallels to collect for those so inclined. For now, I'm good with just this one.

Dennis seemed to have hit the sticker motherlode. I'm grateful to him for sharing some of the wealth from such a strike.

I think that this was the most football cards that anyone had ever sent me before, though there was that one baseball card too...

I'm thinking that all of our Bo's talk of equipment in recent months has started to wear off on me, because when I went to edit this scan, I noticed that the number on the bat didn't correlate to Bo's jersey number. Bo wore #22 with the Angels, and that second number clearly isn't a 2. I thought it was 29, but apparently that was Rod Carew's number, which was retired by the Angels in 1991; so that "9" must be a 4 (still looks like a 9 to me though). Eduardo Perez was #24. It's one thing to pose for a picture with someone else's bat, but to actually use it in a game is a whole nother can of worms. Why was Bo using Eduardo's bat? I know that he was on the downward trend, but you'd think that, Bo, of all people, would have his own bats. Have I inadvertently finally figured out something that Bo didn't know... bats? 

It's hard to believe I've been sitting on these scan since January. It feels like not more than a month could've passed since I received the package. Of course it's hard to believe that we're already halfway through 2023 too. I really don't care for this whole 'time moves quicker with age' thing. Not one bit!

Anyway, many thanks to Dennis for the extremely well thought out package. Heck, it was just nice of him to even think of me around Christmas. I do regret taking so long to get to the post though, but again, it just didn't seem like that long since I got the cards.

Some firsts

I thought cutting back to two posts a week would help me with posting more consistently. If the first two weeks of the year are any sort of an indicator though, my plan seems to be having the opposite effect, as I've only managed to finish two posts up to this point.

For what it's worth, I did start three posts last week, with every intention of finishing them, but I guess it just wasn't in the cards (pun intended) for me to do so. Some of it was my fault for allowing myself to be distracted by other non-blog things, namely reading (I finished my fourth book of the year already), TCDB stuff, and doing challenges on COMC (my credit is low, and lots of good things are being added to the site again). Then there was the stuff that I didn't much control over, migraine on Tuesday, and not quite migraine-level headaches on Wednesday and Thursday (it was just one of those weeks), all three of which made computering difficult, and not very desirable. There was also the snow that came at the beginning of the week, and now the snow that has arrived in time to close out the week, which doesn't physically prevent me from blogging, but does have a profoundly adverse affect on my mood, thus making me not want to write anything, or at least not anything that someone would want to read.

There were some high spots though, I worked out a couple of more trades on the TCDB, including a slightly bigger one. I made up the $15 in credit that I spent on COMC last weekend (really good sale on newly added vintage non-sport cards) by doing the challenges. With things starting to move on the site again, I'm thinking we might get a Spring Cleaning sale, and if so, I want to have some play money in place before it starts. The best thing to occur though came on Thursday, that being the arrival of a very unexpected package from, Dennis, he of Too Many Verlanders fame. Not only was the gesture itself a wonderful surprise, but the cards were pretty good too, a few of which were firsts for me.

Jamie Moyer has relic cards? This was news to me! Not that I'm overly surprised mind you, I mean anybody who's played in the last twenty years or so, probably has a dozen plus relics out there, I just hadn't ever looked to see what he had available. Now that I have, I can say that I'm a bit surprised that he doesn't have more. 2004 Upper Deck Awesome Honors Jersey is not a set that I had heard of/seen before. There appears to be two different versions, Gold and Silver, as well as an Update set that has a completely different checklist. As far as Jamie goes, the silver version has white fabric, and the gold contains a dark blue swatch. The gold are not serial numbered, but are supposedly limited to 165 copies of each. I don't usually seek out the relics, but this one is pretty neat, and was a first for me. It's probably silly, but now I kind of want the silver, if only because I could then say that I was able to complete my first relic rainbow.

Moving onto another first, my first Pro Magnet. I've seen these plenty of times online (always scanned as poorly as this one), but had never encountered one in person before. They're much shinier than I had imagined, and just better looking in general than I would've thought. I need more!

I haven't acquired any new Tim Brown cards for quite awhile now (at least a year), Dennis didn't know this (nor did anyone else), but thanks to him I can no longer say that. Oh, and for the record, this is the first card from 1999's Collector's Edge 1st Place that I've ever owned.

Colbey did a Litho-Cel break a few months back that I kind of regret not getting in on, as I can't really afford to get a box anymore, and had always kind of wanted to open one. Participating in that break might've helped with that some. I know that Dennis took a chance on it, but don't know if this card came from that opening or not. I do own one other card from this set, one of the Cels, but it's just a random one that I found in a dime box a few years back, and isn't of someone that I collect, so... I guess I could say that this my first Litho-Cel of someone that I collect, eh?

Coming out of college, I guess it wasn't too much of stretch to think that Ricky Williams might be a "Future Legend", but things don't always go according to plan, they certainly didn't with Ricky's NFL career. Still a fun insert though, my first from this set.

Upon first sight, I thought this was my first football Triumvirate, but once I loaded the scan into the post I remembered that I already had one of Herman Moore, which after a brief search I found sitting in a scan folder waiting to be posted about, so while this Terrell isn't my first football Triumvirate, it is the first one that I've ever shown here on the blog. I don't care who's featured on the card, I absolutely adore these. A lot of 90's stuff has really gone up since the Rona got going, but a lot of great football inserts from that era, like these, are still quite affordable. Some day I'd like to complete one of these trifectas, I have 2 out of 3 on a couple of basketball ones, but have been too forgetful to remember to look up who I need to complete them. In case anyone's curious, John Elway and Shannon Sharpe make up the rest of this particular trio.

Many thanks to Dennis for this wonderful surprise, it brought some joy to an overall not-so-great week. And even though he said that these were belated Christmas cards, last Christmas already feels like it was months ago, so I'm gonna choose to go ahead and just think of these as early 2021 Christmas cards :)

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Too many questions

Is it possible to be surrounded by too many generous people? Or, in other other words...

... is it possible to be on the receiving end of too many neat things? Before this year began, I probably would've said no, but looking at my scan folders, and seeing how far behind I am in giving public thanks for the (too) many(?) packages that have been sent my way, I can't help but start to wonder if...

... I'm getting too many Griffey's? Or things like...

Should I be focusing more on Bo baseball, or Bo football? Or does he have too many cards out there for someone to even bother focusing on either, and just try to get what I can, no matter the sport?

Did I wait too many years to start collecting...

... Steve Young?

Will a day ever come when I change my mind, and start to think that the 90's produced too many inserts and parallels?

How many times is too many for a person to be blown away by a card that was made from acetate?

Wow!

And finally, is it possible for me to say thank you too many times to the person who sent me this awesome package?

In case you couldn't tell, the questions in today's post were rhetorical, well, all except for the last one, as it's not possible to thank someone too many times for sending you something -- so many thanks, again, to, Dennis, from Too Many Verlanders, for sending me this wonderful assortment of cards a couple of months back. It was clear that a lot of thought went in to this package, and I was/am very  grateful for the effort that was put forth!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.