More from the Baseball Card Store (and Nine Pockets)

With new non-sport listings on Sportlots slowing down considerably, and not very much stuff being added to the Baseball Card Store as of late, the mini buying spree that I was on during October has come to a screeching halt. And this is good thing too. Not only did I go a tad overboard with the purchases last month, I also seem to have reached that burnout phase... just in time for the Black Friday sale on COMC!

Speaking of COMC, I don't want to make any predictions, but judging by the lack of real discounts that I've seen so far from their pre-BF sales, this might end up being a down year for what's normally their biggest event of the year. I hope I'm wrong, because I've got lots of earned credit available, but it's not looking promising so far.

And speaking of burnout too, dang I'm tired of scanning. I actually got completely caught up with that the other day, and can now start bindering the various stacks that have been growing throughout the year. It's funny, I was thinking the other day that I'm basically now a cold-weather binderer, as I rarely ever start putting things in pages until the cold shows up, which it has. And now that I'm caught up with all of my scanning, I have incentive to not buy any more stuff. I have about 40 cards sitting in my COMC account, and about a hundred sitting in a Sportlots box, but I'm at least a month or two away from getting those, so I'll worry about having to scan them whenever they get here.

As the title so blatantly implies, I've got another batch from the Baseball Card Store to show off. This was my second, and final, order from them during October. I think the couple that runs the site might've got a bit burned out too, as they were listing stuff like crazy last month, and now have done very little so far this month. And I don't blame them for that in the least, it can't be easy running that site with just two people doing everything.

I only bought one of these, and yet, two arrived. I probably should've checked to see if it one of my other purchases was missing from the order, but I didn't, and it's much too late to go back and do so now. At least there's a pretty big difference between the printing on these two cards, so they'll look good side by side in the Bo binder.

I didn't think there'd be much interest in the contents from this order, as there was a lot less variety in it than the last one, so I only scanned about half of it. I can't imagine that too many people care about 1991 Fleer football in 2022, but I scanned these if only because I was surprised to learn that I didn't already have them. 

This is the sort of thing that's usually gone within a few minutes of being listed on the site. I'm not sure how it slipped through the cracks, but I'm glad it did. I'm sure I've seen these Ames before, but like with a lot of things these days, my brain is doing it's best to convince me that I'm just seeing one for the first time. Either way though, this card was definitely my favorite from this package.

Apparently my scanner doesn't do Topps Coins very good. It seems to have focused on the rims which led to a blurring of the photos in the background. I never thought I'd be buying any of these again, and also wouldn't have thought to check the site for them (I only happened upon them by accident), but here we are! I don't know if anyone else use to get those pack repacks from Toy "R" Us, but there was usually at least one pack of these coins in there -- and because of that, I only associate them with those packs. I can't remember how many different loose packs came in those repacks, but I do recall that sometimes there'd be upwards of three packs of coins in there. I absolutely hated them as a kid, would always try to get one that only had one pack of the coins to try and limit how many of them I acquired. I'm still not overly enamoured with them, but I don't think I need anybody else now, so two won't kill me. And speaking of those repacks, damn if I wouldn't love to own just one of them at this point. You'd think that there would still be some unopened ones around, but if there are, they don't ever show up on eBay.

I don't know if I'll ever get around to making a list of my Junior haves, and even though I don't look for him very often anymore, when I do, I just go by what looks familiar, and what doesn't. I did pretty good with the 5-6 I got this time, only previously having the Swing Men. The card in the middle is kind of interesting in that it's crazy thin. I don't think I have anything else from that set, but I can't imagine that the base cards would all be so flimsy. It must just be the checklists that are like that.

I've been saying for awhile that I needed to start getting more of Papa Griffey, so I did -- he made up about a quarter of this order. And no, I didn't get two Topps', the one on the right is from up North...

Now I just need the micro, Tiffany, and Operation Desert Shield to complete the rainbow.

I never though I'd be seeking out any 1990 Score again either.

I know that it probably won't be happening, but I'd like to see Ray Caldwell get some more cards. 

People don't look like Ernie Lombardi anymore.

Had to get a few more from Demolition Man. I think I have all the cards that I wanted from this set now.

Near full sets of 1989 Batman, series 1 and 2, were added to the site right around the time I started putting together this order. There were a few stickers put up too, the two of which I really wanted were snagged by someone else before I could finish checking out. I still got a few of the wanted base cards though, including these two of the lovely Vicki Vale.

We as collectors often complain about card companies using recycled photos, with good reason; but this is one of those instances where it doesn't bother me in the least. Even as a kid, I thought it was odd that Topps released both a flagship set and Stadium Club set for Batman Returns. Granted, both of them have their appeals, but given how many of the same shots they used for the sets, one or the other probably would've sufficed. I thought it was interesting too that one of these (I can't remember which is which) is #13, and the other is #31.

I have a lot of fun trying to put together unconventional pages for certain themes. In this instance, Diamond, will be added to an unconventional Batman page that I've got going. It would be interesting to know if anyone reading this knew off the top of their head what connection, Diamond, aka Erika Andersch, had to Batman? Not wanting to wait to find out, I'll just tell you, she was one of the Red Triangle Circus Gang, more specifically the Knifethrower Dame, in Batman Returns.

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On a completely unrelated note, Greg, the man who continues to put card companies to shame, from Nine Pockets, recently held yet another giveaway for some of his creations. 

I don't think anyone has ever just given away as many of their customs as Greg has. Or if they have, I haven't encountered them. This time the giveaway was for an assortment of NES-styled stickers from various teams and sports. I have received quite a few things from Greg this year, and feel a bit guilty about the lack of items that I haven't sent in return. That being said, it was physically impossible for me not to try and get this 8-bit Blazer. I know that people have been making stickers for a long time now, but even so, there's still a small part of me that thinks that this must be some kind of sorcery. Regular people having stickers made of whatever they want... how is that possible!😛

I haven't decided yet who I want this to represent, so for the moment it'll remain unstuck, this'll definitely be making it onto a binder at some point in the not too distant future. 

Many thanks to Greg for the sticker, it looks really good. And to any other interested parties, you might want to go check a couple of posts back and see if he still has any that went unclaimed; I can assure you that you won't be disappointed.

Cards!

Looking back at the last ten posts or so that I've done, I see that not a lot of cards have made it onto the blog in recent months; maybe ten cards or less across those last ten posts. One might think that this was because I didn't have anything "new" coming in to talk about or show off, but it's actually been quite the opposite, where too much has been arriving and I don't even know where to start with it.

I mentioned just recently that I've been spending a lot of time as of late sorting cards, this after not doing so for most of the year. As nice, and relaxing, as it's been to spend some of my nights just listening to music while I put cards in pages, a number of stacks grew up during the year, and it's been slow going as I attempt to reduce their respective heights. And it seems like every time I start to see some progress, more cards show up!

It's amazing how many things have been found so far that I had completely forgotten about, especially those that were only bought in the last couple of months. I think I also pointed out sometime not too long ago that I find it funny how in the early days of the blog, I would post about every single new card that came in, and nowadays only, maybe, 5% of what shows up on my doorstep ever gets covered here. That probably isn't necessarily bad thing though as I would imagine that most of those older posts aren't very good (I certainly won't be going back to read them), lots of cards, yes, but probably very little substance. No soul if you will.

Some of my collecting interests are changing/shifting again, some of which will be discussed below, while others will be covered in future posts. With so few cards making into blog posts in recent months though, I figured that I'd try and make up for it a little today by going all smorgasbord on you, pulling out some of the cards that have recently been "rediscovered" from my stacks. A few cards from a few different orders to give you some idea of where my collecting head has been at this year. Spoiler alert, it's been all over the place!

I rarely remember what the impetus is behind most of the things I do, even in real time, so trying to go back to the summer and figure out why I decided that I needed some of Ray Caldwell's cards in my life is almost impossible. Whatever the reason though, I added a couple of his cards to one of my "larger" (maybe 15 cards worth) orders from Sportlots back in June(?) or July(?), one of which was the really nifty TCMA 1920 Indians card. A lot of people remember solely as the guy who got hit by lightning while out on the mound (you all already know that story, right?), got up after a spell, and then finished pitching the inning/game. It is a pretty great story, but like a lot of guys from his era, he was a character, one that could only exist during that time period, and as such, led a very interesting life. Surviving being struck by lightning was just the cherry on top of the interesting life sundae.

As far as this card itself goes, well, to me it's just about perfect. Action cards are always fun, but if you've got to get a card of someone who isn't in motion, they just don't come too much better than this.

The back is pretty great too. I'm sure some would complain about the lack of stats, but this set was covering the teams 1920 season, so you get everyone's stats for that particular season, nothing more, nothing less.

Again, I don't know why, but a number of my summer Sportlots orders had TCMA cards in them, another of which was this Dick Wakefield from TCMA's War Years set. I don't if I was thinking about doing so at the time, but I've been thinking about starting a Bonus Baby collection. If I do, I've got numero uno covered, as back in 1941,  Dick was the first prospect to be given a check, or bonus, to skip the minor leagues and sign with a team. The term "bonus baby" didn't even exist until a few years later, and as such, Dick, and his contemporary babies, don't even appear on the official list of "bonus babies". In fact, everyone before 1947 is usually absent from the lists that you'll find all over the internet.

I had a shipment of around 250 cards arrive from the Baseball Card Store back in November, right around the time that I finally felt like sorting again. Since these were the newest cards at the time, I started putting them away before even scanning any for the blog. A lot of the order was made up of early 90's Blazers (and former Blazers) and Marvel cards, neither of which are things that blog readers are clamoring to see, so you probably dodged a bullet this time. At some point though, I did think that maybe I should scan a couple of cards for a post, and grabbed a few of the stragglers for your viewing pleasure.

1997-98 Hoops is a much maligned set, but I've always liked it. I dislike sets with replaced backgrounds more and more as I get older, this set however will forever be immune to that hate, as it's got quite a bit of nostalgia for me. Here we have a pair of former Blazers (childhood favorites), which is actually a trio of former Blazers, as Otis Thorpe got a cameo on Cliff's card.

It's been almost 30 years since this set came out, and I still get a kick out of the singles that can be put together to form a scene. It wasn't the first card set to borrow the idea from old sticker albums, but did have the most combo cards at the time.

Shreck, aka Terror, is one of my favorite comic book characters of all time. Originally an Epic character, Marvel convinced his creator to bring him over to the Marvel universe, where the big plans that they had for him evaporated before they even got started, and the character quickly faded from most peoples memory. As a reader of comics, I do wish that Marvel would've never gotten their hands on the character, but as a card collector, I'm glad they did, otherwise no cards of him probably would've ever been produced. I have a couple of copies of "Terror's" "rookie" card, but couldn't pass up another cheap one. 

I thought I already had a copy of this one for the Carnage collection, turns out I didn't. 

I grabbed a number of the hologram variants from the '91-92 UD set, but pictures of tiny holograms on the backs of cards aren't that interesting to most people, so here's one of the fronts. I kind of like the different holograms myself, but will not try to convince anyone that they're more pleasing to the eye than an action shot featuring a rookie Dikembe Mutombo taking it right at Manute Bol.

I don't know if the person formerly known as Twitch was the first person to do it, I'm assuming not, but they were the first person that I saw do one player collections. I've since seen some folks on Twitter who do it, and as of late, Gavin has been doing it too. I always liked this concept, but could never commit to it... until now! I continue to want to pare down my collection, and I feel like this sort of thing will help do so. There's still gonna be a bunch of guys and gals who I want everything from, but there's also plenty of people who I'd be content to have just one page's worth of stuff from. As I've already started doing this, I'm finding that most of the one page heroes are of names that would have been recognizable to younger me, or rather folks who I regularly pulled from packs as a kid. Orel is just such one of those guys. I've never had a desire to collect him before, but at the same time it feels like he was in every single pack of baseball cards that I opened as a kid. I'm gonna try to get a good mix on these pages (base, inserts, parallels, etc.), but all will be hand chosen for one reason or another. This particular card was picked because I can't imagine that he was shown batting on too many cards, which is kind of neat, and the color matching border just put it over the top. I also grabbed a Fernando card from this set for his page, if only because he's shown as an Oriole.

This card checks off so many 90's boxes: Sticker, check! Neon colors, check! Crazy squiggles all over the place, check! Glow in the dark, double check! It just doesn't get too much more 90's than this! Tim is getting the one page treatment as well, and so far I've got some pretty dope cards for him. Depending on the five more cards that I get to fill it, his page might end up being the most interesting.

I had about 30 Hollywood Starline cards in this box, about half of which I was hoping would be upgrades, and thankfully they were. 

I'm still undecided as to whether or not I actually like the various Senior League cards. On one hand it's nice to get a few more "playing days" cards for player collections, but on the other, some of the cards are terribly depressing.

I had never seen Donruss' 2001 release before. From what I can gather, it looks like at least for part of the set that the borders are color matching, some of which are more attractive than others. I haven't gone through the checklist yet, but I did see a nifty red Junior that I'd like to get at some point. As for Cal, he's getting a page too. So far this is it for the page though. I do have a few inserts that I was going to add to it, but upon recent reviewing, I decided that I didn't care much for those and will now need to find a new home for them.

I took advantage of the Baseball Card Store's free shipping offer on Black Friday, but haven't heard anything about the order since. I should have about a hundred more cards coming, but don't know when that will be. Hopefully I'll get a few more things put away by then, and won't have to just show a couple of the leavings from it.

My two years worth of accumulation from COMC came in November, and aside from making sure that everything was there, haven't done much with it's contents since. For the sake of this post though, I did pull out a couple of cards, one of which was one of these; the other two came from TCDB trades earlier this year. I've talked about it on a couple of separate occasions already, and won't go into it again, but this is my favorite modern parallel of someone who I don't collect. These were #'s 5, 6, and 7. Ideally I'd love to get enough to fill a couple of pages, but for now I'll be content if I can just get two more to fill up a page.

Speaking of duplicates! This is '61 Billy Muffett #27. God, I love this card! Prices for decent looking copies have gone up a tad on the site, so I probably won't be getting too many more from there. Most of the other online prices aren't very cost effective either. One of these days I really need to start going to shows again.

Color shifts are so damn hard to find on COMC that I feel like I've struck gold every time I do actually encounter one. I just recently put this mini collection into a page finally. I was a bit disappointed to find that I only had six of them though, I thought I had more. But again, hard to find, so I guess six is better than none.

I had built up 72 cards in my COMC account since I requested my two years worth to be shipped back in May. I then bought a little over 30 cards during all of the Black Friday sales, which put me over 100, and qualified me for their free shipping promotion, which I did take advantage of. I just got notified on Friday that my cards had shipped, one week before their original estimate. I think it's safe to say that things have greatly improved over there in Auburn. Between the last shipment and this one, if I wanted to get lazy here on the blog, I'd probably have next years content already covered. I won't be doing that, but the thought is somewhat appealing.

This card appeared in a recent Diamond King post that I commented on, and to my great surprise, showed up just a few days later in my mailbox. All I said was that it was a pretty cool card and that I couldn't believe that Kevin had found at a sow there in Portland, and then like magic, here it was! Oh, and it is a pretty cool card - a '61 Dutch Gum for those that care - my first 'playing days' Kirk Douglas. Many thanks again to Kevin for the very unexpected gift.

The final duo for today are the most recent cards to grace my mailbox, a pair of wonderful customs from Greg's most recent giveaway over on Nine Pockets. This is my second batch of Greg's customs, and there every bit as neat as the last ones. I don't know who prints them, but I still can't get over how good these cards feel in hand, I mean they actually feel like real cards. Desperado is a film that I will forever associate with my teens. I saw it in the theatre with a friend and his family when I was either 12 or 13 (depending on what month it was released that year), and can distinctly remember buying it on VHS at a Target about two years later. That video got a lot of viewings, as it was always a popular option when friends were over. I can't say with absolute certainty, but I believe that if we didn't rent anything, this and The Lost Boys were the two videos that got watched the most when friends were staying the night. An odd combo for sure, but I certainly wasn't going to complain. Thanks to Greg for the giveaway! 

One good thing about spending a bunch of time handling cards again has been that now I feel like blogging about cards again. Feeling and doing are of course two different things entirely, and whether or not this want to do so will actually translate into more posts with cards in them, remains to be seen. I could do posts like this for the foreseeable future, but I suspect that they might get a little old, very quickly. Who knows, just typing out loud, as usual. I can at least say that the next post will be card related, although it also include some crafting as well... yes, crafting!