My new job... sports card appraiser?

Sadly, no, but I was recently asked to evaluate a small collection of cards for an upcoming sale.

As a few of you know, I have three different blogs; one of which is a non-card blog. And as I've probably mentioned on there a few times now, my mom volunteers at multiple places that are somewhat of the retail-ish variety. The above shoebox full of cards was recently donated for a rummage sale (it's not really a rummage sale, but I can't think of a better way to describe it at the moment). Seeing as how no one there knew anything about sports cards, my mom, the volunteer (though she's risen to more than that at this particular place), volunteered my services, as a longtime collector, in trying to help them come up with a reasonable price for the entire box... which they gladly accepted.

There was one small catch though, the box was donated one day before the sale that it needed to be in was happening, which meant that I only had a couple of hours the night before to go through it and try to come up with some figures that they could look at, and then choose a price that they'd be happy with. Now, this probably wouldn't have been much of an issue had it been one of those disappointing boxes full of nothing but late 80's/early 90's beaters that you often hear about other collectors and shop owners being expected to appraise, but it wasn't. Its contents were a little bit better than that, though still not one of those boxes of untouched tobacco cards that pop up from time to time. That sort of box will have to wait for another day (fingers, and toes, crossed).

I started by sorting everything by sport, and year. And as you can see, pretty much everything was of the early to mid 70's variety. As mentioned, this was kind of thrust upon me at the very last moment, so I wasn't able to get very many pictures before the sun went down (the lighting in my house isn't conducive to photos). Had I had more time, I would've at least moved the best card from each pile to the top to make this one photo a little more impressive.

We're a few weeks removed from this sale, so I can't remember all of the numbers at this point, but I believe that there ended up be around 425-475 cards in the box. About half of them were in P-G condition, and the other half was EX- to EX+. It was kind of odd how that worked. Trying to come up with a price was a bit tricky, as I didn't want to price too low and have some asshole flipper come along and profit from them (as opposed to the cause which the sale was for), but also didn't want to price it too high and scare away any and all interested parties. There were a couple of notable cards, which are usually what are gonna move a lot like this, so I based the price mostly on what someone would've had to pay at a show or online to get them; then tacked on an additional lower sum for the remaining cards. And despite the lack of time, I wrote out a page that could be taped to the box which contained a breakdown of the card totals by year (and sport, of course), and also highlighted the notable cards (and their condition) that were in the box.

This is the first time that I've ever been asked to do something like this, and even though it would've been nice to have a bit more time, it was a fun experience; one that I wouldn't mind doing again. And I heard after the fact that the folks who run the sale were very pleased with my efforts (the spreadsheet went over especially well), and I've since been asked if I wanted to assess another lot of items. And thankfully, this time I'll have a couple of months to work on it. I, of course, said yes. This lot isn't sports or trading card related, so when I eventually get around to blogging about it, it'll be over on the non-card blog (sorry for the tease, but I'd like to generate more traffic towards that blog too).

But wait... there's more! Just doing this thing for these people would've been rewarding unto itself, but from the outset, it was made clear that I could pull out, and buy, any singles that I might want. I can imagine that some (or a lot of) current collectors would take advantage of such an offer by plucking out all of the key cards (which would all be conveniently priced lower than they should've been as well), thus rendering the lot as a whole considerably less desirable. That ain't my way though. I already had at least one copy of each of the better cards in there, and while I wouldn't have minded getting more of each of them, I would want them for cheaper than I priced them at. Heck, I would've bought the whole box if it had been one of those ones you hear about people finding at a garage sale for $5-10, but again, I was trying to make sure that these people got what they were worth, so it was a bit more than $5-10. All that being said, I did end up buying five cards, only one of which might've been considered a key card.

I haven't put much effort into doing so in recent years, but I'd still like to acquire all of the '71 action cards at some point. This got me one card closer.

There was more '73 Topps in this lot than anything else. It's also where the bulk of the best cards were hiding. Despite being Willie Mays, I don't think anyone could argue that this particular copy would be overly desirable to the casual collector. And aside form a few weirdo's, it most certainly wouldn't be of much interest to the seasoned collector (or those suffering from gradeitis). It wasn't until my brief foray into the Twitter a few years back that I came to develop a small appreciation for miscut cards. Slightly miscut still doesn't do anything for me, but cards of this nature, are, to some degree. I still won't go out of my way to find them, but this one felt like a must have. I found an uncut sheet online, which was able satisfy my curiosity as to whose partially shown underneath. It's Billy Parker. This particular card has been a longtime want, and while I'd still like to get a decent looking copy at some point, this one is pretty nifty in the meantime.

I can't remember how old I was, maybe 7 or 8, but somewhere around there my grandpa gave me a stack of cards (bound by a couple of rubber bands no less) that was made up of '73 Topps baseball and football cards. They were the first vintage cards that I can recall seeing, and were most definitely the first that I ever owned. Because of this early exposure, I have an affinity for both designs, but the football one has held a bit more sway. I've thought about trying to build the set a few times over the years, even more so recently as I've been jonesing to work on one of the 70's football sets, but after looking through the small stack that was in this lot, I realized that while I love the design, many of the photos don't do a lot for me. 

Joe Namath's card was another longtime want, if only because of his silly Joe cap. Of the five cards I took out, it's the only one that I considered a key card in the lot. That being said, it does have a few minor indents on the back, and a scratch on the front that doesn't show in the scan. I won't feel any need to ever upgrade it though. And I was surprised that I didn't already have the Alzado in my small collection of his. Prior to checking, I would've put money down on my already having at least one copy. I guess it was good thing then that there was no one around to bet with.

Bo sent me a copy of this card a few years back, but I couldn't resist adding another one to the collection. One can never have too many Rick Hunter's.

As mentioned, I did pay the going rate for all of these, and perhaps even a little more for the Mays, as I really wanted that one.

I didn't go to the actual sale. I used to really enjoy such events, but with such a large percentage of people engaged in the #FlipLife these days, I find myself rarely wanting to be amonsgt their ilk (at some point in the near future I'm going to be doing a hatepiece on their sort). I did, however, get one item from it...

This thing really pops when photographed on a red cooler.

My mom found this in a box of free stuff, and even though it was most likely made for Poker players, she still thought it would be appropriate for me, and my activities, as well. And she was right, of course. I believe that it was meant to be stuck on one's vehicle, but I'm not of the put's crap on the back of the car sort, so I'll have to find somewhere else to display it. It's pretty neat though, especially for a freebie.

Christmas from The Collector

I don't know how kids these days feel about them, and I don't know how kids from generations prior to mine felt about them, but I do know that when I was young, the vast majority of kids didn't give two rips about greeting cards. Oh sure, we'd anticipate receiving them on birthdays, and for Christmas, but that's only because we'd be hoping that they contain some cash or a check. The cards themselves were merely a vessel for our new-found, albeit temporary, wealth. The cards that appeased us with an offering were tolerated, those that didn't, were as good as trash; that is of course unless mom got to them first, then they'd be put up on the fridge, mantle, etc. where you'd have to look at them for at least a month before they were taken down, only to then be squirreled away in a drawer somewhere for safe keeping.

Greeting cards have always seemed like a waste of money, and time, but mostly money, to me. I could appreciate the sentiment that they conveyed, but more often than not, a phone call would've sufficed.

Something has changed for me in recent years though, for I now actually look forward to getting greeting cards, and don't need them to contain greenbacks for me to appreciate them. I don't know why this is, maybe I've entered the grandma stage of my life (that's normal, right?), and now appreciate just being thought of on special occasions. Such was the case a few weeks ago when I received an unexpected package from, Chris, or as he's known on the streets, The Collector. 

My initial thought was not of the goodies that undoubtedly lay inside, no, I was thinking of how nice it was that Chris had thought about me; and being so near Christmas was just that much more meaningful. 

The contents of the package were a small bundle of trading cards, and greeting card, which clearly felt like it contained something else; probably more trading cards. In years past, I can say with complete certainty that I would've started with the bundle first, but in 2022, I guess I now am the sort who starts with the greeting card, and not because of the mystery bounty that's obviously being held within it's confines -- those were set aside until I finished reading the card. After reading the card, I did a very grandma-ish thing, and went and put the card on the entertainment center, you know, so that I could look at it when I'm in the living room. Now I could look at the cards...

That's really nice looking card, isn't it? Even if I weren't collecting Luke Easter, I still would've wanted this offering from TCMA, it's just that good! This had been on my Cheap Wants list, which meant that Chris had also taken the time to peruse at least one of my lists; that's awfully thoughtful too.

I can guarantee that is the worst scan that you'll see on the blogs today!

Here was another one of my Cheap Wants. Some may recall that there was a copy of this card in my last post too, yep, two arrived on the same day from two different people. Funny how that works. Now if I decide to start collecting Carney, which I'm still thinking about, I'll have one for that collection and one for my random 80's pages. If I don't start collecting him, I'll have two for the random 80's pages, and will have to get a third to finish off the row. Although, I actually wouldn't mind having an entire page of this card :)

Terry was the point guard of youth, and John was the point guard that young me was supposed to hate, but was actually a super-secret fan of (because you couldn't be a fan of anything Jazz in Portland when I was a kid -- that might've warranted a stoning back then).

I should probably note too that in case things are looking off, none of these cards are mis-cut, I've just been getting really lazy with my scans. I don't mind wonky scans, so hopefully you all don't either.

If I were to ever start building a 90's base set again, this one would be a serious contender. It's one of those sets that's just loaded with nostalgia for me. It's also a set that I can still remember a lot of the details from it's initial announcement through it's actual release. It was kind of a big deal at the time.

Here's another Cheap Want that Chris was able to knock off of the list. With this Gold Stamp parallel in hand, I have officially completed my 1992-93 Topps Archives Jerome Kersey rainbow (it's only two cards - base and gold). It's funny too, I remember the golds being a one per pack parallel, but that's a false memory, because the golds were released altogether in a separate box set. I know that I had a bunch of the golds way back when, but I know for a fact that I never got one of the box sets, so I have no idea where all of mine would've come from. I got a box for my birthday in 1992, and I guess over the years the memory of opening it has been altered some to include a gold parallel in each pack. Brains are strange.

Of all the cards that came from this unexpected package, Fred Cox was probably the unexpectiest of the bunch. I already the Alzado, but this one was nicer than my other copy. And I didn't realize it until I opened this package, but I completely forgot to look for both of these guys during COMC's recent Black Friday sale. Which then led to the further realization that I forgot to look for a bunch of other guys too, siiiiiigh. Hopefully I didn't miss out on too many deals; though, thinking back to the lack of deals that I came across, and remembering how few cards I picked up during the sale, I can't help but assume that I didn't.

Many thanks to Chris for sending what turned out to be the only Christmas card that I received this year. The trading cards that accompanied it weren't too shabby either 😉.

And if you haven't already done so, go check out the Young Guns series that Chris is currently doing. I know very little about hockey, and even less about hockey cards, so I've been learning a bunch about both thanks to this series. And of course, in typical Chris fashion, the series has been extremely well researched, and has been written in a manner that makes one think that he should probably be getting paid for doing this.

Merry Christmas everyone! 

The Wonders of Time Travel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks again, Jeff! 

*****************************************

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

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

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

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

**************************************

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

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

I couldn't stop with just one

I didn't start out life as someone who enjoyed collecting duplicates, in fact as a young collector  (a young set collector to be more precise), who rarely had anyone to trade with, duplicates were the bane of my existence. There was nothing worse than buying a pack of cards, only to find that you already had 90%, or more, of the cards in said pack. Sometimes I would try to circumvent this problem by starting multiple sets of the same thing, but more often than not, my duplicates would just end up in a box in my closet. It wasn't the ideal way to deal with them, but it was the only way I knew. Eventually I stopped collecting cards, and then a few years later, donated the bulk of my collection, including all of those duplicates, to a charity auction.

Fast forward a decade, and I unexpectedly started collecting cards again. And of course I just had to resume with my set collecting ways again, which meant more duplicates! A curious thing started to happen with some of those duplicates this time though, this being that I wasn't getting as perturbed as I used to be by all of the extras. Some were starting to become welcome. I wasn't full on collecting them, yet, but I was intentionally keeping them together in my keeper boxes (or as I was calling them, my "I'll do something with them later" boxes). I also wasn't going out of my way to seek out duplicates, yet, but was quietly grabbing extras of guys that I liked from dime and quarter boxes, especially those guys who appeared on cards of the vintage variety (Snapper Jones is the first example that comes to mind).

Fast forwarding a few more years, and I was finally able to break free from the shackles brought on by set collecting (that's just how it felt to me, I'm not knocking set collecting, or set collectors). Ever since then, I've been all over the place collecting-wise, which I think of as just trying to find my way. I was treading in completely new territory after all. Things are a lot more settled as of late. I'm pretty sure that I know now how I'll be collecting, and what I'll be collecting going forward. One thing that has emerged from all of this, that I shouldn't be surprised by, but still kind of am, is that I now enjoy collecting multiple copies of certain cards, and will actually go out of my way to seek them out.

I'm sure that no one remembers, but I did post last year after I had found out that not only had Alan Autry (aka Bubba), played football prior to going into acting, but that he also had exactly one card out there (well, technically he has two, but the short printed Topps Mexican is way out of my price range). At the time, I had just gotten a copy of that card from Sportlots, and even though I didn't mention it in the post, I kind of already knew that it wasn't gonna be the last copy that I'd be purchasing. I tried to fool myself a bit initially, by thinking that I'd get just one more, and send it off to see if I could get him to sign it. Well, I got that second copy, then found out that he's apparently not too keen on signing TTM requests. Not willing to risk the loss, I just held onto that second copy.

The trouble was, just two of the same card doesn't look very good on a page, so I bought a third from Sportlots to complete the row. The page did look better after that, but then the problem of what to fill out those other six slots with arose. He only has one card, and putting cards of someone else in that page wouldn't look very good either. Have you figured out where this is going yet? There really was only one option, for me, and that's to get six more copies to fill out the rest of the page. I was able to get two of those six just last week, from Sportlots again.

Although my goal is to complete this page, I already know that I'm not gonna stop with just four more. I'm sure that if I wanted to delve into it a little more, I could probably figure out why certain cards are appealing to me so much, I mean I have at least one row of duplicates in most of my paged player collections, and for a lot of them I don't need any more than that (unless I find some more in dime boxes), but there's just certain cards that I now want as many copies of as I can get. And honestly, I don't even care why this is, as flipping through these pages just makes me happy. That is what collecting is supposed to be about, isn't it?

I don't know if the Bubba pages will ever reach...

... 1990-91 Fleer Shawn Kemp (14 pages and counting) or...

... 1961 Topps Billy Muffett (3½ pages and counting) status, but that's okay, I've got a number of just single full page duplicate collections as well, and those are fun to flip through too.

Moving on...

The seller that I got these last two Bubba's from, twinrick, has a really good combined shipping rate for 4 cards (90¢), so I picked myself out two more cards to round out the order, neither of which were duplicates.

People still get all excited over rookie cards, right? I'm guessing that Bob Golic's Topps rookie probably won't move any needles, even for those who answered yes. Apparently this is one of those cards that has those silly C*, D*, and C* D* variations on the back. I don't think you can choose which one you get when buying on Sportlots. Mine is the C* D* version, and for the moment, that's good enough for me. Maybe I'll get the other two at some point, but it's no rush.

Please excuse the dust bits on the scan.

Three-Mile Lyle's got old Joe Theismann marked for death, and it's doesn't look like Washington's O-Line is gonna be able to prevent this murder from happening. 

Lyle is one of those guys that I'm gonna start pushing a little more to try and complete the rest of their playing days stuff. His cards are very cheap (Late edit: I forgot that he has a Topps Mexican too!), so there really isn't much of an excuse I can put forth for having not finished his catalog already.

With shipping, these four cards came to $1.62 total. Since I wasn't looking to spend much, I was rather pleased to get all of these for roughly 40¢ apiece. I'm sure I could've found Bob and Lyle for a less at a show, but I didn't have to get up at 3am, travel a couple of hundred miles to Nashville and back, or spend $30 in gas to do so. Sometimes it's worth paying a few cents more to get cards like these online, at least for me.

Tackling some player collections

I've talked a lot about breaking up set builds to start player collections in recent months, or at least it feels like I have been -- either way, it's a thing that I've been doing.

I don't know if I'm completely sold on player collecting yet, I just know that due to circumstances that arose early last year, circumstances that aren't likely to change anytime soon, I can no longer afford to work on all of the various vintage sets that I had been building, at least not with the hopes of completing any of them in a semi-decent amount of time. I suppose it would be possible to work on just one or two sets, but after spending some time trying to do so, I couldn't narrow down the list to just one or two. So while targeting specific players is still a fairly new concept for me, and is less than ideal, I figure that it'll allow me to still own, and see, a number of cards from the various vintage sets that I love so much, without having to go into debt trying to collect the entire thing. Another thing that I've realized is that if a bad month rolls around, and I only have say $10 to spend on cards, I'd much rather go get myself someone with name recognition and/or someone who's in the HOF, versus some no name who never did anything of note, but who's card still commands top dollar simply because it happens to be one of those mythical "high numbers".

More often than not, when I've mentioned pulling apart sets, it's almost always been baseball related, but I've been doing the same thing to my vintage football set builds as well, albeit very slowly. Much like on the baseball side, I've been surprised at how many cards of certain players that I've had, of course I've also been surprised by how few cards I have of certain players too.

I had a rare stretch of actually wanting to sort cards for about two weeks back in November, which worked out well what with COMC's Black Friday sale approaching and all. I used that time to work on some of the old football sets, to try and figure out who was being kept, and who wasn't. Despite the couple of weeks worth of effort, I only ended up getting through about half of my vintage football cards, but enough was done to still start making some lists, and to know somewhat who to focus on once the sale started.

Thanks to the Challenges being open quite a bit that month, I was able to build up a fairly decent amount of credit heading into the sale, and with some new found focus, as well as some surprisingly decent sales, I think I ended up getting more cards during the actual sale than I had in previous years. Looking back, most of my purchases during the sale ended up being of the vintage variety (baseball, football, and non-sport), all of which will be shown in due time, but in honor of tomorrow's "big game", I'll just be concentrating on the pigskinner's for today.

Being a native Portlander, George Shaw has been on my radar for a long time, but as a set collector, I didn't ever pursue his cards more than anyone else's -- but now that things have changed, I am! George had tremendous success during his amateur career, he led Grant high school to two state championships, before moving on to Oregon, where he would become an All-American in both football and baseball. Unfortunately this success didn't carry over to the pro's, some of that was his fault, and some of it was just bad timing. You see, George has the dubious distinction of being replaced by two rookie quarterbacks, both of whom go on to the Hall of Fame, during his career. He suffered a broken leg during his second season with the Colts, and was replaced by some kid called Johnny Unitas. Not surprisingly, George never got his starting gig back. Three years later he was traded to the Giants where he spent two unproductive seasons, before moving on to Minnesota. After a slow start, he would find himself being replace halfway through the season by another fresh-faced rookie, Fran Tarkenton. He'd go on to play one more season in the AFL with Denver before retiring.

If memory serves, Fred passed away a few days before the Black Friday sale started. His name hadn't been familiar to me, but after reading an obit online, and seeing that he invented the NERF football, well, I knew right then and there that he was gonna have to be added to my list of player collections. I picked up this '65 Philadelphia, his true rookie card, that day. Since his cards are considered to be commons, I didn't feel the need to go crazy with them during the sale, when most can probably be had for fifty cents or less at shows.

I don't pay a lot of attention to the yearly Hall of Fame classes for any sport, and am often surprised by who is, and isn't, already in the Hall of Fame -- as such, I was surprised to see a headline a few weeks ago announcing that Alex Karras was a member of this year's class, which is funny because I had been under the impression that he was already in the HOF, and had been for many years. As great as the front of this card is, the back might be even better:

Cartoons don't get too much better than that.

There aren't a lot of Ducks in the HOF, I can think of five off of the top of my head, so for the purposes of this post, and not wanting to go double check, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that there's five (feel free to Google it and correct me if I'm wrong). Now that I'm focusing on players, it feels only right that I start collecting a few, if not all, of those guys. I found this '66 Philadelphia during the sale, it's a bit off-center, but that's what made it affordable. More gradable copies sell on eBay for at least double the price of what I got mine for... thankfully I don't care about getting cards graded!

I'm not going to consider blank backs as an essential part of my player collections, but if one comes along cheap enough, I'll probably end up buying it anyway. Given it's condition, I don't think that this Bethea ever made it into circulation, making it a lot less interesting to me than a pack pulled blank, but for just a little over a buck I couldn't resist.

Unlike the Bethea, I strongly believe that this card may have come from a pack, as such I was willing to pay a little more for it. This also happens to be my first card featuring the Secretary of Defense.

Before the Black Friday sale I had never owned a card of Roman's before -- after the sale I found...

... myself owning...

... three!

When looking through all of the '77 Csonka's on the site, I noticed a great variety of different shades in sky color... I will not be collecting all of those variations!

Given it's obscenely low price, and despite the lack of any condition notes, I was thoroughly convince that there was going to be something wrong with this card, but to my great surprise, there wasn't (well, other than the crooked scan)! Although COMC did make up for it by having six other cards arrive damaged, but they weren't as important to me as this one was, so I guess it's a decent trade off.

This is my favorite of the bunch right here! Ernie Ladd cards can be had for a lot less than I would've thought, although it's probably just one of those deals where there just isn't a lot of people left who still care about his cards, which is then reflected in the prices. Whatever the reason, I was thrilled to pick up my second card of his, which also happened to be my first 1964 Topps -- I don't know how it is for anyone else, but this is one of those sets that I absolutely never see any of at shows.

Being a wrestling fan growing up, I always knew of him as "The Big Cat", but apparently that wasn't always the case. Although, after doing a quick search, I can no find reference to him as "The Giant Cat", so this might be one of those instances where someone at Topps didn't have all of their facts straight.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have no plans to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow, mostly because I'm not familiar with any of the guys playing, well that and the fact that I don't like how the sport is played these days. Now if the rules weren't so pillowy, and a few of the guys in today's post were still in their prime and playing in tomorrow's big game...


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