Christmas cards from The Collector

[Alternate title: Chris-mas cards from The Collector]

After having not done so for the last few years, it feels a bit weird to be posting on Christmas again. I don't normally have much cause to do so anymore, so I don't. This year however, I do, so I am.

A number of bloggers go out of their way to send cards out for Christmas each year, and while I have been a recipient of some of those mailings in the past, I wasn't expecting to be included in any this year. With that in mind, I was a bit surprised a few weeks ago when an envelope showed up from the former collector of pedestrians, Chris, who most people now know as just The Collector. Inside of said envelope was an actual Christmas card, which is always appreciated, and four cards for four different player collections.

Joe Rudi's don't ever show up in the mail (unless I buy them), so this might be the most appreciated card of the four that were sent. Even though it hasn't been by design, I think I have more post-playing days of Joe than not, and here's another one! I do really like though that, despite his last game taking place the year before, all three of the card companies still gave Joe a card in their '83 sets. I never collected '83 Donruss as a kid, and have only ever owned 3-4 cards from it, at best. Because of that, the design always feels a bit foreign to me. I kind of like it, and don't like it, at the same time; if that's possible.

I can't say it with absolute certainty, but this feels like it might be the only new Stan Humphries that I got this year. With most of my attention being focused on sets for at least the last half of the year, a lot of my player collections have started collecting dust; Stan being one of the dustier. I've gotta figure out a way to balance the two a little better. As for the card, I don't remember Collector's Edge ever making any chunky cards, but this ones definitely got some chunk to it.

If I had bought this one myself, you would've never seen this scan. But, since someone sent it to me, you are. Despite the atrocious scan, I do like these old Skybox Thunder and Lightning cards. After seeing how the front turned out, I didn't even bother with the back; but the Lightning is Stevie Atwater. I'm a bit biased, but to me, this card features the sets best pairing. Since I collect both of these guys I had two copies on my want list. The Dennis Smith collection is much further along, so that's where this one will be headed.

I just mentioned a few posts back that I didn't get nearly as many new (to me) Bo's this year as I would've liked, and then as fate would have it, a new one shows up. This one is definitely new too. I'm sure I've seen a few cards from this particular set on the blogs, but my brain is telling me that I've never seen it before. It looks like there's some design element missing on the bottom part of the card. Panini doesn't usually leave so much empty white on their cards. It's another modern card with a bonkers amount of gloss as well. I'd really like to know how they do that. Nice photo though. The lack of logos aren't as noticeable here as I've seen on a lot of Panini's other products in recent years. I appreciate that.

Many thanks to Chris for thinking of me this holiday season. To everyone else that didn't, screw off Merry Christmas!😄

Bo: Then and Now

It's a trivial thing, I know, but still, I kind of envy other bloggers who've kept track of how many mailing they've received from other people. I suppose I might've done so had I A). Thought I'd ever be blogging for so long, and B). Thought anyone would ever actually send me anything. But I didn't, so I haven't.

Again though, it's hardly even worth mentioning, but it would be nice to have a list with some numbers that I could quote when posting about a mailing from someone; especially today's someone.

I may not have a list to tell me how many envelopes I've received over the years from, Bo, from Baseball Cards Come to Life!, but if I did, he'd probably be at, or very near, the top of said list. Heck, I've even sent enough in return that his address is one of a few that I actually have memorized. As a quick aside, it's funny to think that when I was a kid, I could, and did, remember dozens of telephone numbers, as well as numerous physical addresses -- and today, I can't remember any phone numbers (or at least any that are more than three numbers), and have maybe four addresses in my mental rolodex; ironically all belonging to folks that I've never even met, or spoken to on the telephone. Odd times for sure. Anyway, back to Bo...

He was kind enough to send an envelope earlier this year, which I still hadn't covered on here, and now just a few weeks ago another one arrived --which I guess was all the incentive I needed to finally give some public thanks. 

Most of the cards from the oldest envelope were claimed from Bo's trade bait posts, including the Vida Blue/Gene Tenace rookie up top. And while I've never been, and never will be, "rookie card guy", I still appreciate being able to add that one to the Gene Tenace pages. I don't know if I'll ever be willing to splurge for the OPC version.

One of the few exceptions to the above 'claims' statement, was these two. I really can't remember why Dick and Wes were in here, which I suppose is why I shouldn't be waiting so long to do these kind of posts. As the young radicals might say, I need to "do better". I do collect Dick Groat though, and rarely ever add any cards to that collection, so... any Dick is good Dick 🙈🙉🙊.

As far Wes goes, I still don't know what to do with him. I'm sure that I'll figure out something at some point though.

I believe that this was my third copy of Boog's '64, and while I hadn't planned on doing a page's worth of this particular card, it's awfully tempting for me to want to do so whenever I see a one whole row filled with any of the same card. The presentation of the League Leaders card is very interesting with Harmon looking directly into the camera, and Boog and Reggie looking in opposite directions below him. 

Catfish is another one of the early 70's A's guys that I collect for reasons that are still unknown to me. And even though I haven't put much effort into it lately, nor have I even tried to figure out how many more I need, I am still attempting to collect all of the action cards from the '71 set. 

There's a part of me that wants to collect all of the late 80's/early 90's magazine cards. There's also a part of me that wants to add Gregg Jefferies to my list of player collections. Thankfully, I've been able to resist both wants... so far!

We never ate a lot of frozen pizza's when I was growing up, and on the rare occasion that we did, it was usually Tony's. I do remember when this set came out though, but I didn't like Tombstone enough to try to get my mom to get one so that I could get any of the cards. It is nice looking design though, despite the lack of logos.

I do collect Jamie, but I don't really want every single card of his right now, and I never remember to look for any of his more interesting cards; which leaves me with not much of a collection. I'm pretty sure that this one was just a tossed in extra, and it was much appreciated!

That takes care of the old envelope.

I knew that Bo had a few cards set aside for me, but didn't think he'd mail the two that I knew about, so I was a tad curious to find out what would be padding out this newest unexpected envelope...

Bo sent me an email a few weeks ago to let me know that he had a few extra Posts available. Leo here ended up being my only need (at least in the condition that I'm striving for with my Posts). I could've swore that I already had this one, but after checking my list, and double-checking in their binder, it turned out that I didn't. I guess I had just seen it enough times online that I thought that I already gotten it. I've been focusing on my Jell-O and Post sets quite a bit lately (you'll be hearing about this in the very near future), so it was really nice to be able to mark another '62 off of the list.

I'm really surprised that there weren't more takers on Bo's recent OPC trade bait post. People are always goin' on about OPC this and OPC that, but when someone comes along and offers up a bunch of 70's OPC for trade, it's radio silence. Were I working on any of those sets, or even a team collector, I would've been all over those extras -- as it stands though, Gene was the only card suited to my interests. It probably won't happen very often, but this an instance where I was able to get the OPC version before the Topps.

1991 Upper Deck might be the best football set, photo-wise, ever. And I'm probably wrong, but it also feels like it was the last football set to have multiple shots of blood spattered/smeared jerseys. I'm guessing that this wasn't Dennis' blood, and judging by those eyes, he was looking to shed some more. 

I didn't think I needed this card, and I see that my list on TCDB says that I already have one, and was apparently wanting another? I haven't gotten into the Reggie Roby/Dennis Smith binder yet, so I either wanted an upgrade, or something went awry when I was making that list. If it turns out that I didn't need an upgrade, it won't be the end of the world, as there's certainly worse cards to have two copies of.

The next three cards were very unexpected, especially coming from Bo. He obviously took a few minutes to look at my TCDB want list too, which was nice of him to do. I had (or still have, I think I forgot to go mark these off) four cards from the Pacific Lucy set on there, including this one, which just so happens to be Aaron Spelling's only real card. 

Most of the time when I add cards like these to my want list, it's because I want them for a themed page, and often times, said cards are the only examples for certain people, in this case; Bob Jellison and Elizabeth Patterson respectively. Unfortunately for me, it's been so long since I added these two to the list that now I can't remember which pages I wanted them for. I have no doubt that it'll come back to me, I just need to take a few minutes and figure it out (probably by looking through their list of credits). I also think that the timing of this envelope was a bit curious, as I was just finishing up Lucille Ball's autobiography, Love, Lucy, when these arrived. A very enjoyable book, by the way.

I know that we're a few days past Thanksgiving, but nevertheless, I'm thankful to Bo for all of our interactions, and envelopes sent, over the years. I'm also thankful to him for being so supportive of all of my various blogging endeavours. He's one of the few people that reads, or at least scrolls through, all three of my blogs; and I always appreciate his doing so.

I was planning to try and get caught up with the last two old envelopes from bloggers (Jeff and Fuji) before the end of the year, but another one just arrived from Tom a few weeks ago. There's at least two other posts that I really want to do as well, so I don't know, trying to squeeze in five posts during December will be quite the feat (for me). I think it'll be a Christmas miracle if I do.

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.

I've been... Smithed?

I'm familiar with the concept of 'Bipping' someone, but what do you call it when someone sends you a bunch of copies of the same Dennis Smith card? A Smithing? Have I been Smithed? If so, I guess it could've been worse... his name could've been Roger 😅.

If 'Smithing' hadn't been a thing before, thanks to, Trevor, from the Bump And Run Football Card Blog, it is now.

In the note accompanying this surprise mailing from last month, Trevor wondered if he may've gone a bit overboard with the the Dennis Smith's? Maybe, maybe not, who am I to say what is or isn't overboard. He also suggested, and this is how I know that he's actually reading my ramblings (thanks for that by the way), that I could possibly use them to start a page. Hmmm? I certainly hadn't planned on doing a page of just this card, but in honor of Trevor, I did do so. It's now the very last page in my Reggie Roby/Dennis Smith binder. Although, I did actually need one of these for my Dennis Smith collection, so as it stands, the page is 2/3 full.

Thankfully for all of you that have made it this far, there was more than just seven copies of the same Dennis Smith card in the envelope. Reggie's are always welcome. And this was the first new Steve Atwater that I had added to his collection in quite a few months. I had been doing a pretty good job of keeping track of that collection, but at some point I got lazy and stopped updating it on the TCDB. Now I have almost no idea what I do or don't have, and have thus stopped buy any new ones until I get it back on track. Knowing me, that'll probably be sometime next year.

Hey, another needed Dennis Smith! Apparently Trevor's the one to go to with all of your, or rather my, Dennis Smith needs. And I already had the Howie, but this one was much nicer, so being able to upgrade the old one was much appreciated.

These were the first two Warren Moon's that I've gotten in a while as well. He's one of those guys that I only ever seemed to find cards of at shows, and since I haven't been going to shows, there's been no Warren Moon's to find. I'm getting to the point where I almost hate tribute cards, but the Donruss here was done pretty well, and I can't say that I dislike it.

Thanks again for the surprise PWE, Trevor! Football hasn't been on my radar very much as of late, so these were a nice change of pace.

I know that name from somewhere

I've made a few purchases this month. Actually, scratch that, I've made more than a few purchases this month. Probably more than I should have. 

I don't keep track of such things, but I've probably acquired more cards this past month than the previous two years combined. Sportlots adding their new non-sport category to the site has been like siren song to me, I just can't seem to resist checking out all of the new stuff that keeps getting added every day. And the cheap prices haven't been helping either. I've been knocking off wants left and right, many of which had been highly sought after (by me) for years now. 

A lot of the things I've been getting have been available on COMC, unfortunately they're often being sold by people who think that just because they have the only one on the site, that any interested parties will be willing to pay 20-30 times more just because it's the only one available. I'm not that kind o buyer. I can easily pass up fifty-cent cards with $20 price tags on COMC, but apparently have no willpower when it comes to those same cards when they have a twenty-cent price tag on Sportlots. So, the bad news is that I've been spending more money than usual this month, but the good news is that I won't have too many more modern (post 1980) non-sport wants after everything that's been bought shows up. I'll probably be able to get back to my normal routine of one or two purchases a month come November.

Given that I've probably already bought over a hundred cards so far this month, I highly doubt that I'll ever get around to discussing the majority of those on here, but I did want to cover at least one small order, if only because I was so pleased with the cards themselves, the way in which they were packed, and the quickness in which they were received. The seller who managed to complete this trifecta is called Triplutz, although the outside of the envelope said WaxPackHero, which is a name that sounds terribly familiar, but I can't seem to place where I've seen/heard it before. For the time being, I'll just assume that it's one that I've seen on the TCDB; I don't have enough time to be racking my poor overtaxed brain over such things.

Despite my going on about non-sport cards for the last ten minutes, astute observers may have noticed a very non non-sport card leading off the post. Well, yeah, there are some sports cards being added to these orders too, plus blog psychology dictates that a post whose first image is baseball related will generate more clicks than one that starts with a non-sport card. Think I'm lying? Go through this post and tell me which card would've garnered more mainstream attention than that nifty Classic Bo (and other guys). 

I haven't seen any on the blogs, so I'm not sure if either card company still does it, but I really miss card backs that compared the stats of certain players like this. Is it just me, or do we never hear about Ruben Sierra anymore? That was quite a season he had back in '89. He led the A.L. in RBIs, slugging %, total bases, and led the majors in triples. He finished second to Robin Yount in the MVP voting that year too. And looking at the numbers, one could make the case that he should've won it. He put up very similar numbers two years later, finishing 8th in the MVP voting. Though, Ripken was the clear winner that year, and it doesn't even look like there was a close second. 

This is just a neat card all the way around.

With Topps getting the NBA license back, I can't help but wonder if they'll do another Archives set for basketball again. I suppose they could an NFL version now, too. Sounds like it's tailor-made for more cards featuring the '87 baseball design. Because that's what everyone is clamoring for, right? Right?

I probably had multiple copies of both versions of this card way back when, but those are long gone. At least I now have the gold one again.

Hey, it's my first ever Wacky Packages of any kind! And hey...

... here's my second! I've been trying to get some of the monster themed cards from the various WP sets for what seems like years now, and have had zero luck in doing so; until now. Granted, these are only from the 1991 set, but still, I finally got two off of my list. I like how "Vlad Bags" rolls off the tongue, but since my world still revolves around videos, blank tapes included, I think I appreciate the effort that went into designing "Mummorex" just a little bit more.

It's a bit hard to tell, but these are both 5-Stripers. The Wild Card Stripes are the devil of any collection that features a player from the early 90's. These may be the lowest on the stripe totem pole, but even so, I'm very glad to have them out of the way.

Some "influencer" out there must've done a thing about 80's title cards, because they sure have jumped in price over the last few years. Enough so that it couldn't have happened on it's own. It would've been nice to know that it was coming so I could've tried to finish my collection before the influenced were told to buy en masse. I still need about a dozen from the 70's through the 90's, this having been one of them. Thankfully, this guy had it listed for a pre-boom price.

I know that there are other people out there who collect every single player that I do. I'm not foolish enough think that any of them are that obscure. But, I do wonder sometimes if there's a collector out there for each and every celebrity and/or comic character that I collect. Sentinels are a perfect example of this question, I mean I'm sure plenty of people have Sentinels cards sitting in sets, but does anyone else have just a Sentinels collection? I do, though it is only a couple of pages worth of cards. This one was an upgrade for me. My old copy didn't fare so well in the box that it had been sitting in during my ten-plus year hiatus from collecting. A couple of moves probably didn't do it any favors either.

Sherri Martel... prrrrrrrr. I know I'm not alone when I say this, but Sherri Martel was one of my earliest crushes. I loved everything about her as a kid, or at least what little I knew about her way back when. It probably didn't hurt too that she was one of those rare women that just kept getting better looking with age. I also appreciated then, and even more so now, that she was always willing to mix it up with the guys. Looking back, she took some crazy bumps (and what other woman was jumping off the top of cages at that time!), unfortunately some of those crazy bumps are probably what led her to become addicted to pain pills and alcohol, which undoubtedly contributed to her untimely death. She doesn't have nearly as many cards out there as she should (a lot of them are modern parallels), but even so, it's always nice to be able to add a new one to my modest collection of hers.

Triplutz is one of those sellers that offers free shipping to a Sportlots box, which I will probably be taking advantage of in the very near future. The only reason I didn't do so this time was because not all Sportlots sellers are created equal, and I wanted to know how accurate this fellow is with his descriptions before placing a larger order with him (which is my standard operating procedure for that site). This guy obviously knows his stuff, so if you're ever inclined, you might want to take a look through his offerings. You won't be disappointed.

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?