The Super Bowl of scan dumps (Part 1)

One of my unofficial goals for this blog, this year, is to finally get all of my old scans, some of which have been collecting virtual dust for upwards of three years, into posts. I don't know how doable this'll be, what with me only posting a couple of times a month on here now, but I'm still gonna try to have all of the old folders cleared by year's end.

I think that the easiest way to achieve this goal will be to do a series of themed scan dumps (like I did last Halloween). One a month might be enough to get caught up, and still allow me to talk about other things in-between dumps (😄). 

The first batch for this year will be a two-parter in honor of the coming Super Bowl. 

As I've said on many occasions, I haven't watched a current sporting event in many years now, with the Super Bowl being no exception. I can't remember what year it was, but the last one that I watched was the Patriots v. Seahawks.

I'm so out of touch with what's currently happening that I couldn't even tell you whose playing this year. The only reason I know it's coming is from hearing commercials on the radio. In year's past, you could know the game was coming by all of the commercials about the "Big Game" starting up. Those are still a thing, but in recent years you also get an influx of commercials for sports betting apps/sites as well. You know those, right, the one's that promise you the potential for fabulous riches if you'd just be willing to bet next week's paycheck. I'm sure that I'm in the minority, but I can't be the only one who thinks that those ads are gross. I hear them so often now that's already becoming hard to remember that there was a time when such things were considered taboo.

Anyway, despite my zero interest in current football happenings, I do still collect football cards; though I don't get them nearly as often as I used to. And when I do, they're are usually just for player collections (there's a few exceptions to that in this post).

Everything in this post came from COMC, and I believe that it's all been sitting in scan folders for at least two years, which - since I only request my stuff from them to be shipped once a year - means some of these could've been purchased upwards of 3-4 years ago.

I'm pretty sure that I got this card and the Bethea up top from the same seller, and only did so at the time because A). They were extremely cheap, and B). I didn't own a card of either guy and thought, at the time, that I should. Now that a couple of years have passed, I'm not so sure that I needed to.

Color-matching Prizms became all the rage for basketball collectors after the boom got going (mostly thanks to "influencers"), but I don't know if that same craze ever carried over to football. My interest in all things Prizm pretty much died once the boom started, and I've since sold off the bulk of my Prizm cards. I did keep all of the ones I had in player collections though. I think that this one in particular might just be one of my favorites, and is also one of my favorite Ronnie Lott cards (that I own).

I like the 2014 purple Prizm that I have for Fran a lot more than this 2015, but for less than a buck (I don't think that I would've paid more than that for it) this one isn't too bad. John Bunting didn't appear on a lot of cards, so it's kind of neat to see him lurking in the background of this one.

I briefly thought about collecting Tim Tebow, and I must've bought these two during that period. The thought didn't last long, and honestly, if I hadn't had these scanned I probably wouldn't have even remembered getting them. They're nice enough cards, I guess, but they're not doing anything for me these days.

Speaking of cards that aren't doing anything for me. I really enjoyed watching Mike Alstott play and did start collecting him a few years ago, but it wasn't until after I started doing so that I realized that his cards appear in an awful lot of sets whose designs are unappealing to me visually (I had the same problem with Ichiro). So, while I'd love to collect him, the thought of having a binder full of ugly cards, that I'd never want to look at, forced me to stop doing so. And even though I've decided recently to take on some SLU sets, this isn't one of them, so it's expendable. Fuji recently mentioned having a couple of binders of SLU cards, so I'll give him first crack at it. If he doesn't need it though, it'll be available (for nothing in return) to whoever else might want it. 

As far as set designs go, the '62 Topps Football is arguably the most unique from that decade. The little inset photo is where it's all about for me. The photo on this card is particularly good. It's hard to tell if John got that pass off or not. It looks like he did, but who knows. I'd also be curious to know who #74 in the photo is. I only know of two players from that time that wore #74, Bob Lilly, who it most certainly isn't, and Merlin Olsen, who was just drafted in '62, so it doesn't seem like it could be him either. 

John Brodie isn't a guy that I actively collect, but if I come across any cheap cards of his I won't turn them down.

Were it still doable, I'd love to try and collect all of the 90's Dufex parallel sets, but I think I'm a couple of decades too late such an attempt though. I'll just have to continue to be content with the ones I get for player collections. I'm not sure too, but I think that that's Natrone Means that Steve is about to bring down. I haven't heard Natrone's name mentioned in years, I should probably go see what he's been up to.

Seeing as how his cards are still so cheap, I really should put more effort into completing my Papa Nerf collection. As it stands, I've only got like 4 or 5 of his cards; though one of his better one's is in my coming COMC shipment. I don't how unique it is amongst kickers, but I always thought it was kind of interesting that he never missed a single game during his 15-year career.

Looking through my old scan folders sometimes leave's me wondering what I was thinking when I scanned certain things; this one being a perfect example. I mean, aside from both being for player collections, these two cards have zero things in common (okay, I guess they're both parallels, but...) and don't even look good scanned together.

It looks like shit in the scan, but those old Collector's Choice gold parallels still look really good in person. And their one-per-box ratio means that they can still be difficult to find (depending on the player, of course) thirty years later. This is another set that I wish I would've started working on back when they were new. I don't know if it would be completed by now if I had, but I'm sure that I'd have more than the three cards from it that I currently have.

The J-Stew is kind of an ugly die-cut from his stint with the Giants, which I never saw any of, but it's still sort of color matching, and had to be very cheap for me to have bought it.

Speaking of J-Stew...

All of these are blue parallels of one kind or another too, which look a bit better with his Panthers jersey than the light blue/Giants combination up above. I can't remember what it's called, but the Prizm on the right is my favorite from group.

I think if I didn't have anything else to collect, I'd seriously consider trying to complete full runs (i.e. all of the colors) of the old McDonald's sets. I really do like them. It's just not in the "cards" right now. 

My Steve Young collection has really fallen by the wayside since I stopped going to shows. The same could be said for Eric Dickerson too. In fact, I think that these last two cards might've been the last two that I've added to their respective collections. If you blink you might miss that this is a 1st Day Issue. The stamp doesn't stand out quite as much as it does for those of the baseball and basketball varieties. Still a neat card though.

The last three cards in this post are a bit off-beat for a football card post, but I don't know where else to put them, so...

Saved by the Bell: The College Years was the shits, and as a kid I found it to be a bit depressing as well. In my opinion, this card, a Prism insert of Bob Golic as Mike Rogers, is the only good thing that ever came from this shows existence. I think I have three copies in my Bob Golic collection, and am always up for getting more.

Ted Fritsch is best know for his time with the Green Bay Packers, but he also played in the NBA during it's early days, and even spent a year playing minor league baseball. I believe that this 1977 Fritsch One Year Winners is his only baseball card. I had an idea for a mini-collection that never panned out, and therefor no longer need this card, so if anyone wants it just say the word.

American Gladiators was a huge part of my childhood/early teen years. For fans of the show, who are also card collectors, aside from Topps' 1991 Gladiators release, there aren't a whole lot of options out there. To my knowledge, only two autographs of Gladiators have appeared in sets thus far, Lee Reherman, who was Hawk, being one of them (Jim Starr in Topps' 75th Anniversary set being the other). It's a bit of a stretch, but Lee did play football at Cornell University, hence his inclusion in this post.

My recent health issue (as mentioned on my non-card blog) has made computering rather difficult as of late, so this post is showing up much later in the week than I wanted, but I'm still gonna try and get part two out before the "Big Game", which I'm assuming (based, again, on the increase of radio ads) is this Sunday.

A first

COMC shipments have been a staple of this blog from the beginning, but today will be the very first time that I've been able to cover an entire shipment in one single post.

Normally my shipments are made up of hundreds of cards, which is a byproduct of often waiting a year or two to request shipping. However, today's shipment, built up for all of four months, is just 26 cards strong. 

I don't know how many people saw it, but back during the Black Friday sale, one of the perks for buyers was that people who requested shipments of 100 cards or more received a $4.99 shipping credit (basically free shipping when choosing the economy option) for that shipment, and would receive another one that was good until March 31st of this year. Having over two years worth of cards on the site as of the BF sale, it was not difficult for me to take advantage of this offer. I got my 200-ish cards shipped for free, and now had this other free shipping credit to play with.

I don't remember picking up 26 cards since the BF sale, but I guess it's easier to forget such things when your using earned credit, as opposed to cash, to pay for things. Had the shipping not been free, I would not have requested it, but it was, so I did. I waited until the 31st to request it, and was given a ship date of April 27th, which they met spot on.

I still have scan folders chock full of cards from the big two years worth of stuff shipment, but am bumping this one ahead, if only because it's the latest and greatest. I haven't gotten very many cards of late, so it was kind of fun fondle some cardboard again. Still wasn't fun to scan it though.

The post was led off by a really nifty Kellogg's Merlin Olsen. One of those scan folders that I mentioned has 4 or 5 more cards from this set in it, including a couple of HOF's for player collections; as was Merlin. There's a small part of me that would like to collect this set, but thankfully there's the much larger part of me that doesn't want to spend money on people that I don't care about. And it's a lot easier to listen to that larger part when money is tight, as it has been, and probably will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Cards from this set are really only worth, at best, about a nickel apiece. I overpaid by 35¢ for each of these, but didn't have to go anywhere to get them, or pay for shipping, so it was worth it to me. Denver Pyle (on the left) was needed for the Perry Mason collection. I didn't want a card of him as Uncle Jesse, which doesn't leave a lot of options. Hal Smith is needed for two collections, Perry Mason, and a Brady Bunch guest stars themed page. I don't know which one I'll use this card for yet, but he has a few more cards in the set, so it'll be easy enough to get another one of him.

I haven't looked yet, but I think I now have all of the Carnage cards from this Golden Web insert set. 

With the ridiculous prices that people are putting on all things Marvel these days, I don't spend a great deal of time seeking them out anymore. These last three were all found just looking through people's sale listings, and were all below the current COMC/eBay going rate. Because of said high prices, most of my character collections have had to be put on hold. With that in mind, it was nice to be able to add a few cards to them with this shipment, especially the Sentinels gold chase card.

Hey, it's my first Kahn's! I decided a few months ago that I was gonna start chasing Griffey Sr.'s cards a little more actively. I don't think it would be too hard to put together an entire playing day run of Seniors, Junior not so much, that is unless you're fabulous wealthy. And even though it's a little outside my comfort zone, I've been thinking about doing a post comparing the careers of father and son, and arguing (if need be) that senior actually had the better career overall, which would apparently contradict just about everything else I've read online.

More player collection needs, although this is only my second card of Tom's, so I don't know if that can really be called a "collection" yet.

I think I mentioned it before, maybe not though, I don't know. Either way, while I'm still collecting J-Stew in general, he's got so many cards out there, that I decided a while back to just focus on his blue cards. They're a little less plentiful, and they got the pretty color matching action going on. So far, I've just been picking the low hanging fruit, like these two dirt cheap refractors, which were both less than fifty cents apiece.

I've been trying to replace some of my lesser conditioned Franz cards when I can. It's funny to see all the kooky online Franz prices, because when I was a kid, you couldn't give away Franz cards in Portland. Every single person pretty much had an entire run of them tucked away in a drawer somewhere, and most of those folks weren't even collectors in the traditional sense; that's just how plentiful the cards were at the time. Nowadays, there seems to be a slight bit more demand for them online, though Clyde is the only one that people are paying the higher prices for.

I already showed Paul here back in my post about starting to collect the Fran Tarkenton puzzle. Bruce has since joined the fun.

With the Steve Stonebreaker elbow piece (not shown here) that I already had, I've now completed Fran's right arm. And yeah, I know, it's terribly exciting.

How's this for a mix? Jackie Cooper goes into the Columbo collection (see the last post). I didn't want one of the many cards of Jackie as a child, but this one worked perfect. Richard Loo is another new entry for the Perry Mason collection. And I got the stupid idea last year to try and do a Sarah Connor Chronicles themed page, which is where Summer Glau destined. I say it was a stupid idea only because three of the people from the show that you would want to see on such a page (Richard T. Jones, Garret Dillahunt, and Dean Winters) don't appear anywhere in card form. Considering how long Dean Winters has now been doing those Progressive Allstate (thanks, Brett!) commercials, you'd think there'd at least be a promo of some kind out there, but no, there isn't. Oh, and how is that Shirley Manson only has one card in some Jack Daniels (or some other booze) playing card set? That doesn't even seem possible! First world problem, I know. At least Fuji will appreciate my struggle to make this page happen :)

I've been thinking about adding Stan Humphries to the list of player collections for a few years now, and had been setting aside his cards just in case I ever did start collecting him. The only thing that was keeping me from officially collecting him was that I already had so many other player collections going, and didn't really want to take on another. I solved my predicament a couple of months ago though when I dropped around a dozen basketball player collections (I'm about to drop a few more too). With those now out of the mix, I figured I could take on one more guy. And unless I find out something really interesting about somebody who's currently flying under my radar, this'll be the last new player collection that I start.

As for the card, I've had this one in my watchlist for almost two years, just waiting for it to drop to a more reasonable price, which it finally did after a succession of ever increasing sales. I think it was down to $1.49 when I got it. This is the first football PPI from this year that I've ever held, so I didn't realize that a lot of the bits were raised, sort of embossed like. Allegedly these are limited to /250 copies, which I have no way of confirming, but either way it's pretty neat card.

I grabbed these two from the same seller right before I had to put in the shipment request. Both were on sale, and I figured I might as well celebrate my newest collection with a couple of "good" cards. I know that everyone loves all things 90's now, but a Printers Proof parallel for a phone card was just silly, and I dare anyone to argue otherwise.

This was my first football Rave. Apparently they go for a lot less than their basketball counterparts. 

I'll probably shock a few people by saying that I've never been much of a fan of the Back to the Future franchise. I've seen the first one a couple of times, and each of the sequels once. I know that it's beloved franchise (or at least the first two films are), but they just don't do anything for me. I like time travel stuff, love the 80's, but just don't care for those pictures. As such, I've never spent any time looking through the card sets, so it was only by happenstance that I came across one of the cards from the first set that I thought would make a perfect center card for an 80's themed page. I still haven't gotten my center card, but have acquired a few others for the page, including this very spiffy Huey Lewis from that old AGI Rock Star Concert Cards set. Huey's got a few card in the set, but this is the one that I wanted for my 80's page. There has almost never been anything more 80's than this card, and I absolutely love it! I actually won this card from one of their auctions too. It's great going through your account to bid on things because you can add the card to your account after paying for it, and avoid those brutal eBay shipping charges. I think this was just over a buck, and was very much worth it.

Here's some more auction wins. These Monty Gum cards have been on quite the rollercoaster over the last few years. They went from worthless before the boom, to crazy prices went the boom first started, and now aside from a couple of the bigger names, have pretty much slipped completely back into worthless territory. I got the Sarge for a childhood themed binder that I've started (more on that some other time. I've got a page dedicated to OMG/Akeem, and Jesse will go into the Portland Wrestling collection.

Orson Welles doesn't have nearly as many cards out there as he should, and trying to find one that wasn't made by Panini has been quite the task. I guess all I had to do was wait a little bit, because this 1959 Maple Leaf playing card practically fell into my lap through yet another auction. This was $1.54 well spent, and would be my favorite card from this shipment if it weren't for this...

From what I've been able to gather, this 1962 Dutch Gum is Barbara Eden's first card, or as the profiteers would call it, her rookie card. To me it's just her first card, and now it's all mine! I love this card so damn much, and couldn't believe that was only priced somewhere around $3. In this condition, I would've easily paid upwards of ten for it. I like too that the Dutch Gum folks had to tell everyone that she was a fox, as if no one would've known otherwise. And yes, I'm joking, Fox is the studio that she was with at the time -- my scenario is better though.

I wish that this shipping credit would've been dated a little further out, as I did get three more cards during the recent spring sale, and would've loved to have been able to include them in with these. I'll probably get those at the end of the year, so it's not like I'll have to wait that long.

It felt kind of weird getting an entire shipment into one post. I think the last time I had such a small order shipped from them was back in 2010 or 2011 when I has just found the site; that feels like a lifetime ago.

On a completely different, and final, note, I sold a card on eBay last week to Mark Armour, you know the SABR guy/pretty well known writer (of actual books). I thought about sending him a message saying that he was the first celebrity that I've ever sold anything to, but figured that he probably gets that a lot, so I spared him the message. It was still kind of neat though.

Splurging on Sportlots: Part Deux

I'm not sure how much interest there'll be in this second Sportlots post, after all, football isn't exactly the most popular sport amongst the bloggers/blog readers. And even those that are down with the "foosball" (a gold star to anyone who knows what movie that's from), might not be overly excited by a post that only features six players.

Why are only six players represented in this three-order splurge of mine? Well, as mentioned in the previous post, I got burned out awfully quick once I started to catalog my player collections, and have been very slow to come back to it. And as a result of that, I think I only have around 10 players cataloged. Since I'm not exactly rolling in dough right now, I'm not looking to get a lot of duplicates, so I'm pretty much just buying cards of guys that are inventoried, which isn't very many!

Seeing as how he has a crap-ton of cards, and I know that realistically I can't collect them all, I decided recently just start focusing on J-Stew's blue cards, mostly because they look good with the Panthers (and later, Giants) colors -- which isn't dissimilar to what I'm doing with Alex Smith's red cards. I mean I'll still be collecting any of his cards that I come across in the wild, especially if I ever start going to shows again, but as far as online purchases go, they're pretty much just gonna be blue for the time being.

I led off with a really nifty Topps Chrome blue refractor (2013, I think), which might just be one of the better looking modern cards that I now own (it's at least a thousand times better looking in person, possibly even two thousand). And here we've got a Finest blue refractor, not quite as exciting, but it was cheaper, so I don't expect it to be.

Given the era that he played in, it's not much of surprise to see that Jon's had a number of blue Prizm's, sometimes even multiple different blue's from the same set. This was a pretty good sampling, with at least one of his blue's being represented by the 2013, '14, and '16 sets.

You knew you were gonna be seeing some Reggie's, right? I was finally able to get a couple of his stickers, which haven't been as easy to come by as I had thought. I can't remember for certain off the top of my head, but I think there's still two more for me to look for.

It'd be interesting to know if any kids ever actually used Pacific's flash cards to improve their math skills? The Skybox is a prototype.

I love Collector's Edge, and I enjoy parallels (for the most part), but one thing that I've never been big on, is parallels of parallels. But, they're a thing, and if you're going for all of somebody's cards, especially someone who played in the 90's onwards, you're probably gonna have to get a few.

I've known of the 1995 Score's Red Siege parallels pretty much since I came back to collecting, but only recently just learned of the Artist's Proof's. They're quite attractive, but apparently don't scan worth a sh*t!

It's hard to tell from the scan, but these are Skybox impact Colors parallels (the 'impact' comes in various colors), which I also just recently learned of. I rarely pay any attention to how I'm laying cards out on the scanner tray, so if something interesting has occurred, I usually won't notice it until I'm editing the scans, or "writing" the post. This was one of those instances, as the layout makes it look like Reggie is a split second away from being laid out by Howie.

The destroyer of worlds pities the fool who doesn't learn math!

I've traded for Steve's Pro Set rookie twice on the TCDB, one was in less than ideal condition, and the other was damaged by the post office, so I decided to put myself out of my misery, and just buy a crispy one for 18¢. Also, I had never seen Score's football version of their Young Superstars cards before, and you know something, I really like them! 

Foil cards always seem to scan funny. There's no blemish/smudge on Steve's card, and yet, there's one on the scan?

Another completed 22K 'rainbow'. Now I just need the base, Nitro, and Nitro 22K to complete the full rainbow.

My scanner doesn't usually turn bright reds into brown's, but did here with this Leaf Red. Also, this is the first Summit parallel that I've ever owned, I really love it's crazy shininess.

I didn't realize when I was putting together my orders just how many Atwater's I was getting, but I need a lot of his cards, and one of these sellers had quite a few cheap parallels. It also helped that Steve is one of the ten guys who's cards I've actually inventoried.

I never saw a single promo, or special stamped card, for The National during my original collecting run, but have seen what seems like a never-ending parade of them since I've come back. It's kind of interesting to see just how many different things they did (most of which occurred during the 90's), but it's also terribly annoying too, especially since a number of them can be quite difficult to find. I'm not sure how difficult these 1995 stamped Silver's are to find, as there are a bunch on COMC, but before deciding to pay a dollar for this one, I did notice that COMC had never had one of Steve's before, so maybe some easier to find than others? Either way, it's a pretty card, and it's nice to be able to check it off the list.

If you're one of the few who made this far, thank you -- doubly so if you scrolled through both Sportlots posts. I don't make these kind of purchases very often anymore, and because of that, I wanted to make sure that everything made it onto the blog, even if the posts themselves weren't all that exciting writing-wise.

Bumped, and ran over by the generosity

Another day, another Trevor... hmm, I don't think that's how that old saying goes? But oh well, I'll go with it anyway.

I guess I'm clearing out the "T" section of my scan folders ("K" is next), Trevor, from THE RIPPIN' AND THE TRADIN', got his due last time, and today I'll give thanks for a pair of mailings from another Trevor, this time he of Bump and Run Football Card Blog, Trevor.

One of the bad things about letting mail days from fellow bloggers pile up is that you, or in this case, me, forget why they were sent. Of course stepping away from the blog for two months didn't help either. So I'm not entirely sure if this first batch from Trevor was sent in response to something that I sent him, or if it was sent just because? Either way though, it was much appreciated.

Speaking of "T's", I have to no idea what happened to the "t" in this scan (it's present on the card), looks like Trevor sent me my first 'Sarquest'.

The Robelmonster (sorry, Tom)! I'm not gonna lie, this pair of needs was the best part of this package. It's been a slow year for adding new Reggie's, but I did make a little headway the other day with my first order from baseballcardstore.ca (which we as bloggers all learned about thanks to Trevor), where I was able to grab 4 or 5 new ones (they haven't been added to the blog list yet).

Hard to believe that these were my first Sunoco stamps. It's also hard to believe how cheap one can still get unused packets of these for. I guess this one instance where age doesn't add value. Charlie built his Hall of Fame career in San Diego, so it's a little off-putting to see him with the Oilers.

As an aside, I've mentioned before about how much I've enjoyed watching old football games on YouTube (there's tons of them), as seeing entire games from before I was born is just awesome. But I've also just recently found out that a bunch of people have uploaded entire episodes of This Week in Pro Football, which I'm finding to be as equally great as the old games. I'm only bringing this up because Mel Blount got some screen time during one of the recent episodes that I watched, which served as a reminder for me to get this post done.

Collector's Edge went absolutely bonkers with the parallels during the mid to late 90's, and while I'm extremely fond of them, I, more often than not, can't remember which parallels are which just by looking at them. Such is the case with these two, they're something, I just can't remember what!

Trevor wasn't fooling around with that PWE, nor was he fooling around with the follow-up that arrived a few months later...

Free Stuff Friday's seem to have fallen by the wayside (I will be bringing mine back pretty soon though), but before they did, Trevor got in on the action too by offering up a very generous helping of cards, of which I claimed a few. If memory serves, I only noticed one Herman Moore in the post, and asked for it, but apparently there were more, so Trevor went ahead and sent them all. They were all new to me, so no complaints (not that I'd ever complain about free stuff mind you).

The artsy Moon, and the J-Stew rookie were both part of the freebies, but the '95 Reggie Collector's Choice was not, that was just another bit of generosity on Trevor's part. I didn't even know that Reggie had a card in that set, and now that I do, it's kind of a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it's now one of my favorite cards of his, but a curse because it means finding two more parallels, the Player's Club won't be difficult, but the Platinum Player's Club on the other hand, now that one might prove to be problematic.

Many thanks to Trevor for the cards (especially the Roby's), once I get back into the groove of things, I should be able to send on some reciprocation.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.