Give a little, get a little

Jeff, from Wax Pack Wonders, recently let it be known that he was now working on the 1973 Topps baseball set. Having about a hundred cards left from my abandoned set build, and absolutely no use for them, I was eager to see if I could help. 

I wasn't able to knock off as many of his needs as I would've liked, but did find a few. 

Jeff, being the sort that he is, wanted to send something in return. Not having any public want lists for Jeff (or anybody else for that matter) to peruse, I just went and looked at his 'for trade' list on the TCDB, picked out 10 possible cards, and told him that I'd be fine with whatever combination of those he wanted to send. He sent all of them, plus an additional card. He's that sort, too.

It's probably been a few years now, but at some point I got, and showed off here on the blog, the gold version of this card. Ever since then, the base and silver versions have been pretty high up on my personal want list. I didn't think it would take so long to acquire the base version, but apparently the blue border is prone to chips and dings, and most of the copies online seem to be of that variety; which is what I didn't want, so I waited, and then waited some more. I saw this on Jeff's list, and figured that if anybody was gonna have a nice copy, it would be him. And I was right, it's very nice. I would've been quite content with just getting this one back for those 73's. 

Bo is one of the few players that I still actively look for cards of, and I feel fortunate to have gotten four needed cards in a single mailing. I didn't realize it until the cards got here, but the one on the right is an insert. I thought from the picture on the TCDB that it was from a subset. Nope, it's an insert, and a very subtle one at that.

I've thought to myself many times that I'd like to complete Danny's entire baseball run, but the idea never seems get much further than that. This is the one baseball card of his that I already owned, mine has a punky corner though; this copy is considerably nicer.

Cool card, terrible scan.

I'm not sure why, but lately I've been thinking about guys from my childhood that I should've been collecting (but don't), either from the beginning, or when I came back to cards a dozen or so years ago. Dave Winfield is one of those guys. It feels like it's too late to start such collections now, but that doesn't mean that I can't add the occasional interesting card of one of these guys to my "just because" binders.

I think I've mentioned it on here before, but after noticing that I had some pretty nifty Tim Salmon cards, I went ahead and decided to collect him, at least selectively. I don't want all 10,000 cards of his, but will try to add a "good" card to his pages from time to time. I thought this one was kind of interesting, or "good" if you will.

I remember seeing this card for the first time just a couple of years ago. I thought it was pretty neat, decided that I wanted a copy, and then promptly forgot all about it. I saw it again somewhere recently, and was even more enamored with it than I was a few years back. Finding it on Jeff's trade list just a few days later seems pretty coincidental, like it was just meant to be. Joe Carter is another guy that I should've been collecting. If it weren't for Bo's Gun show, this would've been my favorite card of the bunch; it is a very close second though.

Here's the extra one that Jeff threw in. I have 2 ½ pages of this card in refractor form, on e whole page in golden sparkle form, and maybe another pages worth of it's various parallels. I haven't put it away yet, but I think that this is only the second copy of the base version that I have. I should probably get at least one pages worth of this one too. This was a nice surprise, very unexpected it was.

Not being overly focused on acquiring cards right now, I'm more than happy to send things out and not get anything in return (I tried to do so in this instance). That being said, this was a cool bunch of cards to get in return for some others that I no longer wanted. If they could always be like this, I might actually try to get stuff in return more often. 

Thanks again, Jeff!

At least they weren't lost

Like a lot of other folks, I claimed a few cards back during Nick's big "Dime Box Anniversary Giveaway Extravaganza" series of posts some months ago. 

I'm usually a few days behind when it comes to blog reading/commenting, which isn't conducive with participating in giveaways. Such was the case here as well. I saw the first couple of giveaways days after they had dropped, and was not in the least bit surprised to find that there wasn't much left to claim by that point; Nick is a pretty popular fellow after all. My memory of such things has already begun to fog over, but I do seem to recall lucking into being early for at least two of the ten giveaway posts. In fact I think that those were where the bulk of my 11 claimed cards ended up coming from.

There was a period not too long after the series of giveaway posts that the blogs seemed to be nothing but people gushing over their various claimed goods. And given what, and how much, some of you claimed, I think you were completely justified in your gushing. 

I had to wait a little longer than most folks to get my stuff, hence the lateness of a proper thank you post. 

I'm not sure how many months passed since the extravaganza ended, and my cards arrived, but it was long enough that I had written them off as not going to show up. I figured that Nick had either forgotten about me, or that they had been sent, but had been "lost" somewhere along the way. Turns out that it was the former. It's not all that surprising either since Nick and I don't interact very often, and of the two possibilities, it's certainly the better of the two. I don't mind being forgotten about, but absolutely hate the thought of someone paying to send me something only to have it be misdelivered or pilfered while en-route. I was eventually remembered though, and was sent my claims, as well almost two team bags worth of  random stuff. 

As mentioned, I claimed 11 cards, mostly just stuff for player collections, well, save for George Foster up top. I thought about collecting him, but don't really want to take on anyone else at this point. He will instead be added to one of my pages of 80's cards that I like for whatever reason, but have no where else to put them (I have pages like that for 50's-90's). 

I was surprised to see this Finest Bo show up in one of those posts. I don't particularly care for the set itself, but have wanted this particular card for a couple of years now.

Junior is from the Topps Magazine. Those cards are very alien to me, so anytime I can get one of somebody I collect, I will.

I like this Fernando card, though I couldn't exactly tell you why. I just do. He'll be added to an 80's page as well. And I had seen this Larry Walker on the blogs many times over the years. It too has been coveted for a while. He'll be making his way onto a random 90's page.

Personally, I would've been fine with just those, but as mentioned, there were two additional team bags full of mostly random stuff. I say mostly because there were about 25 more Ichiro's in there, and I'm pretty sure that those weren't random.

I didn't feel like scanning everything, so here's just a few of my favorites. I particularly like the Donruss Classics and the Opening Day next to it. With me not going to shows anymore, it's kind of a rarity for me to go find the Ichiro binder so that I can add some new cards to it. I think 23 of the 25 cards were new to me, which wasn't too bad.

I don't normally collect reprints, but these were fun to find in with everything else. I've never even seen one of the Tom Barker game cards, real or reprinted, in person before. For a reprint, this one is on some really nice cardstock.

If I could go back and start collecting over, or even start back when I returned to card collecting in 2010, I would go after those SI for Kids sets, at least up to the mid 90's. A few of those cards are pretty pricey now, and I'd never pay $50 (or more) for a Tony Hawk "rookie" (I don't know if I'd even be willing to pay 50¢ for one), so trying to collect them at this point is pretty much out of the question. I feel like I really screwed up on that one. 

I think a few of these other cards were duplicates from Nick's many mini collections; approaching baseballs? Players with animals?

More mini-collection dupes? Microphones on cards? Guys signing things? Orel's in Cleveland?

More dupes? Baseball scratch-off's? Guys pretending to play the git-fiddle?

The mini-collection dupes were fun, and many will be added to binders, but my favorite of the extras was this Ken Griffey. I saw the '82 Donruss design showing just a bit while I was going through the cards and thought that it would be neat if it was Ken, or Dave Winfield, and did that slow reveal thing that Twitter tells me everyone who opens a pack these days does when there's a "hit" in the pack. I don't remember people doing that way back when, but whatever, I did it for this card; turned out to be a pretty good "hit" too. I probably you should've filmed it for the YouTube😊. Anyway, it's a neat card, and was a pleasant find amongst the stuff in Nick's team bag repacks.

Many thanks again to Nick for the cards. Considering I don't have any want lists up for public consumption anymore, he did really well in picking out extras (there was plenty more that were worth posting, and I totally would've done so if I could've gotten someone else to scan them all for me). I think going through these team bags was the most fun I've had while doing a card related thing this year, so I'm grateful for that as well.

Claims, Greed, Confessions, and a Prize

It wasn't that long ago that you couldn't go a single week without seeing a 'free stuff' post, heck, it wasn't even that long ago that you couldn't go a single day without seeing a 'free stuff' post (I'm looking at you, Rod!). Fast forward a few months, and now you're lucky if you see one a month. For the record though, I'm not doing them, but don't see myself doing another one before the end of the year. As for everyone else, who knows, the thrill may truly be gone, or perhaps it's just gone dormant for a spell. Either way, it was fun while it lasted.

Brian, from Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary, was on board with the free stuff trend right from the beginning, running weekly giveaways for many consecutive months. In some ways, a person of his standing getting in on the action so early, gave the thing a certain air of legitimacy that it might not have attained otherwise

Despite the many great cards that were offered by Brian for all of those weeks, I didn't really claim a whole lot from him, if only because a lot of them just didn't fit my collection. I did claim the Catfish Hunter insert one week, and when it eventually showed up, I found that it had acquired a couple of stowaways.

Hmm, "I didn't really claim a whole lot from him"? That's a bit of a lie. Well, it wouldn't be if I were to leave out the items that I got from his final free stuff post, as I had only claimed a few cards going into that post, but then I got greedy...

I arrived to Brian's last giveaway post late (as per usual), only to find that he was doing a special final giveaway edition, which was loaded with neat things, including a bunch of Juniors. Some had already been gotten, so I just asked to have whatever was remaining. Was that being greedy? Oh, and before you answer that, you should probably know that Junior wasn't the only player from that post that I claimed the rest of...

There was a bunch of Barry Sanders' too.

So, now that you have the whole picture, how about it, greedy? I'm leaning towards yay on this one, but what's done is done. Nobody's perfect, least of all me. I'm still happy with the cards no matter what you think!

Many thanks to Brian for indulging my deadly sin, and for his hopping on board the free stuff train somewhere between the first and second stop, his enthusiasm for the idea kept it on the tracks longer than I thought it would have (I don't why I'm trying to make train metaphors all of sudden, I'll stop now).

Hopefully you weren't thinking that that was the end of the post, I've still got much more content to come, but first I need to make a confession (or two).

This is tough, but here it goes: In my early days as a blogger/blog reader, I didn't always participate in people's accomplishments like I should have. And when I say accomplishments, I mean folks that have reached X amount of posts, or X amount of years as a blogger. Part of this was due to not knowing everyone yet, or rather knowing of everyone yet. Another part of it was that it took me a while to feel like I belonged enough to comment a lot, especially on celebratory posts that full of comments from longtime friends and readers. There's probably another part or two to my not commenting a lot early on, but can no longer remember what they might've been. The point is, I didn't comment a lot way back when, but have made an effort to do much more in recent years. I'm not gonna say that I'm anywhere near Fuji level when it comes to commenting, but I'd like to think that I leave my fair share. It took a few years to realize just how important comments are to blogs, more specifically, to those writing the posts. View counts can be (and often are) misleading thanks to bot activity, but comments aren't. Sometimes they're the only way for a blogger to gauge just how many real people are reading, and how engaged they are with what you're writing. This isn't always an easy pill to swallow, especially when your blog is ostensibly a sports card blog, but you cover many non sports cards related things (I'm speaking of no one in particular of course 😉).

And I know that I'm not the only one who'll occasionally click on a post, see that it's going to be a long one, and decide to come back later to read it, so I don't consider that to be a confession, however...

I have clicked on what turns out to be a long post, decided to come back later, and then forgot to come back later. It hasn't happened very often, mind you, but still, it has happened -- even once on a milestone post. Because of my goldfish brain, and because it's happened before, I now (well, for the last few years), at least when it's late at night, will leave a celebratory comment on any milestone post I see, even if I haven't read the whole post yet. If it's late, and the post is long, I'll come back later and catch up on what I missed, but just in case I forget to do so, I'll at least have a comment acknowledging the achievement already in place. That one's more of a peek behind the curtains than a confession, BUT, I do have one more real confession for you to chew on...

One night, right before starting to get ready for bed, many months ago, I did one last perusal of the blogroll for the day, and noticed that, Brian (still of HSACA), was celebrating his 1,000th post. And again, it was late (for me), I was tired, and it looked like it was going to be a longer post, so I decided to come back later -- but just in case, before leaving, I scrolled down, and left what I hoped would be a nice celebratory comment. That's not so bad is it? I didn't think so either, certainly nothing that shocking or worth confessing...

I don't recall how long afterwards it was, I'll just guess and say that it was two months later, a bubble mailer showed up from Brian. He hadn't said anything, so this was certainly out of the blue, and highly irregular if you will.

Inside was a well-loved repack box, full of cards no less, and a Steve Young insert of some sort. There was also a note, which mentioned that this was my prize for commenting on his 1,000th post all those months ago. Prize? I read that post, there was no mention of prizes... or was there?

I went back and looked for the post, found it, and after reading it, realized that it had happened again, I commented on it (like I said I did), but had forgotten to go back and read it the next day! I also found out what all of this prize business was about too, apparently the first 8 people to comment were going to get a prize, and you know what number the comment I left that night just in case I forgot to come back later was? That's right, #8! I had, and still have, mixed feelings about this. On one hand, prizes are usually fun, and I'm usually happy to win them if I've entered some sort of contest to do so. And on the other hand, which just so happens to be the larger of the two hands btw, I shouldn't have gotten a prize for leaving a quick 'just in case' comment (which also had a typo in it too) that night. I mean technically I did go back and read the post, albeit many months later, but still, somebody participating that first night should've gotten that eighth spot. 

I haven't done so yet, but I will be making it up to Brian at some point, and whatever it is will be good. So, now that I've cleared my conscious (not really, but it sounds good), let's delve into this prize that I didn't deserve:

You already saw the card in the toploader, but there was another Steve Young (technically there were two more, but you'll have to wait a minute to see the other) in the back of the box, a modern SPx, that scanned really weird. And I had no idea that Upper Deck had even done a modern SPx set, obviously they don't have the NFL license, so they had use older college era photos for their set, but they still look really good. I got all of my Steve Young's entered into the TCDB a few weeks ago, and found that these had been my first cards to feature him as a Cougar.

I noticed fairly quickly that this repack seemed curiously tailored to my collecting interests, almost like it wasn't just bought off the shelf and sent to me :)

I'm not too keen on these numbers sets, they feel very lazy to me. I'd never buy any of them on my own, even from the Ichiro set, but will add them to the binder if they come my way.

I've talked about this card, or rather the image, many times on the blog already, so I'll spare you another round of biased admiration. I will say though that I have many different versions of this card, and many copies of some of those versions, but this was my first Opening Day blue.

I don't care what anyone thinks about the DH position, I was glad to see Edgar make it to Cooperstown, no matter how he had to do it.

I only have a couple of the Showdown cards, but every time I get a new one, part of me wants to try the game just a little bit more than the previous time. One of these days I might even go read how it was played, and I'm really curious what kind of flow it had, as not all card games were created equal in that regard.

Are you noticing anything about this box yet? Maybe the Seattle-centricness of it?

I don't do sports what if's very often, but I do sometimes wonder how many more accolades Felix would've earned had he played for just about anybody other than Seattle? So many pitches thrown, for so little reward. It's kind of sad in a way, but also not really, because he did make more money than 99% of us could ever fathom making, so I think he'll be okay.

This scan would've looked a lot better had the cards been in chronological order.

There were many more cards of the above three guys in the box, but I think you get the idea, it was a good 'repack', and the box isn't even done giving yet...

I lucked out and got one of those 1:4 hits, and it wasn't some crappy autographed sticker of a player that no one's ever heard of before.

And as for the advertised pack, well, I lucked out there too...

There must've been some sort of mistake at the factory, because as you can clearly see, I got two packs instead of one, and neither were of the Triple Play variety 😲.

The only negative thing about this box to report would be that, is that the X-Files cards were bricked, and not just pull apart with snow bricked, no, these were full on Krazy-Glue bricked. I could tell that they were going to be before opening the pack, but had to try anyways. I had a picture showing the extensiveness of the bricking, but apparently I accidently deleted it at some point. It would've been to open, but the thought behind the pack still counts. The Bowman on the other hand, was perfectly fine. I've got it all scanned up, and will show the contents in a future post (sometime in January).

A thousand thanks to Brian for the prize, and all of the effort that clearly went into it. I didn't deserve it, but it was still greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

So many pockets, so little time!

                                           
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you with someone who's arms were full, but desperately needed something out of their pocket? They couldn't put whatever it is down, so they turned to you and asked if you could reach into their pocket and get whatever it was for them. You're not too keen on reaching into people's pockets, and are prepared to tell them as much, but before you can they hit you with old doe eyes and quivering lip routine. You try to resist, but it's just too much. Seconds later you begrudgingly agree to do so. They tell you which it pocket it is, and then turn a certain way to make it easier for you to achieve your goal, which it does, but also draws stares from curious onlookers. You take a deep breath, prepare for the worst, and reach in. Your deepest fears are quickly realized when your fingers encounter what later turns out to be a moist half-eaten sandwich, who's presence had been forgotten, and obviously went unmentioned by the owner of said pocket. Fearing what else may be found should you venture back in, you refuse any further pleas to make another attempt, a decision that ends up forever marring your relationship.

I hear a bunch of no's being shouted from the gallery, which I expected, I mean such a scenario has never happened to me either, but I have imagined similar scenes occurring the couple of times that someone has asked me to retrieve something from their pocket.

One persons pockets who I'm not afraid to reach into however are Julie's, she may be A Cracked Bat, but I think that we've all learned by now that she stores cards in her pockets, lots and lots of cards. 

I have no proof of it, but I'm convinced that at least part of Julie's daily attire must be made up of some sort of tactical gear, I can't think of anything else that sports so many pockets.

Not only are Julie's pockets full of cards, but they're good cards too, cards that folks actually want, no 2012 Triple Play for those pockets!

I believe Julie's 'Pick Pockets' feature is one of the older kinds of free stuff giveaways, it's been going on for most of this year, maybe longer, I don't know, I can't remember when she fired it up. I do know that I've claimed more than few cards from them, but had yet to show any here on the blog.

I mentioned in the last post that I had three scan folders going for Julie, last time was Julie1, and today the contents of Julie2 and Julie3 are being featured, all of which were cards obtained through Pick Pocket posts.

Everything was sort of in order of acquisition, but that got monkeyed with when I added a few cards that had accidently been added to another folder back to one of the "Julie's", and didn't take two seconds to properly label them. And now Blogger has done the old reverse order thing when the pictures were added to the post (Oh new Blogger, we were getting along so well!), I moved a few of them around, but got tired of playing with them, so I'm just gonna leave them half askew, it's not like anyone would've known had I not mentioned it.

Artistically speaking, one of these turned out much better than the other.

Scannily (it's a word, or at least it is according to Gogle 😉) speaking, one of these came out much better than the other. And speaking of scanning...

Jay from Card Hemorrhage said the other day that he was taking a break thanks to the poor performance from his new scanner. He didn't provide an example of what he was referring to, so I can't say for certain, but I'm willing to bet that it can't be any worse than what mine does to certain cards (i.e. most cards), with this Junior and the wonderful Curt Flood Deckle that led off the post being prime examples.

Looking at some of these cards that were gotten probably back in January or February, I can't figure why I scanned some of them the way I did. I mean why did I pair a 90's SI Kids with a modern finest? The only thing they have in common, at least that I know of, is that they're both awesome. Although, every time I see the Shaq card I have to do a double take, because the first glance always reads as "Snack" O'Neal, which could apply to his later career, but not so much to those early Orlando days.

It's not as bad as the previous pair, but here's another odd grouping, or not. I could just say it has a 'retro theme', three older players, and one older design? Stan should've gotten his own scan though, as it's by far my favorite card in this post.

Gypsy Queen is one of those brands that I just don't understand, and honestly don't care too. Most of the cards, and set designs, don't do anything for me. However (there's always a however), I will occasionally see one, or two, that strike my fancy, often in dime boxes, but in this case it was the Pick Pockets -- which worked out better, because I didn't have to go to Nashville to find them. I think I might be one of the few bloggers who'll admit to being a fan of MadBum's, and even though I have a small collection dedicated to him, I don't go out of my to find cards for it, anybody know why? Anyone? Did I hear someone say derpy face? If so, you are correct! Like 90% of his cards look similar to the above example, with many actually being worse. And it's definitely not what you'd call an aesthetically pleasing image, certainly not one that I'd be willing to shell out big bucks for. Dimes yes, dollars no.

As mentioned, the cards in this post are from all throughout the year, with all dates and times being lost to me. However (see, there's another one), I do remember the shiny Satchell, he came form the second to last round of Pick Pockets, and was the only card from that round that I claimed. I actually saw it the night that Julie put the page up, but after realizing that I only wanted one card, decided to sit back and see if anyone else wanted it more. Apparently they didn't, because it was still available for me to get a few days later.

Being the uber-generous soul that she is, Julie also included this nifty Junior to keep Satchell company during his journey south. I always forget that Sportflicks (or Sportflix) was still around in '95, heck, sometimes I even forget that I was still around in '95. I know someone who wishes it was still 1995... Junior! The world was still his oyster back then, and there seemed to be no limit to what he was going to be able to accomplish. Injuries are a real b*tch, especially when they happen to the good guys.

And with that, I am now caught up with all of the Julie folders... huzzah! Thanks again for letting me take so many cards from your pockets, Julie, and despite it taking me many, many, many months, to say so publicly, I really do appreciate it.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.