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.

Christmas cards from The Collector

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The harbinger

Something strange has been happening.

Over the course of the last six weeks or so, four of my fellow bloggers have seen fit to send me something. And these haven't been just any old something's, no, these mailings have all been of the extremely thoughtful variety.

I'm at a bit of loss as to why I've been on the receiving end of so much generosity all of sudden. I haven't done anything of note for anyone in real life, or online, as of late. In fact, I've been feeling kind of prickish for the last couple of months, and have done very little to hide it. I'd like to think that this hasn't been one of those instances of good things happening to bad people, but if it isn't, I don't know how else to explain it. Although, I suppose with my ever increasing forgetfulness, that I did something awesome for somebody, and either can't remember it, or didn't realize that I had even done it? Or maybe, I'm about to do something awesome for someone, and these have all just been a universal pre-thank you. I think I'll choose that one. So, lookout world, I'm about to do something awesome! 😉

In the meantime...

I fully intend to post about all of these recent gifts, although I'm doing so out of order. I just covered the second one the other day, and am now circling back to the one that kicked all of this off.

I don't recall when it was exactly, but I got an email from, Greg, everyone's favorite Borg connoisseur from The Collective Mind, asking if I'd be interested a couple of extra Bo Jackson Star sets that he had picked up during he and his friend's annual week-long card shop crawl (I don't know how they do it!). Not having much to send out to people anymore, I usually decline (politely) offers like this, but having never come across any of these at a show, or even online, that I know of, I found myself unable to turn them down.

Having only been acquainted with them since returning to collecting, I admittedly know very little about the early nineties Star sets. I know that a lot of popular athletes of the time got their own sets, and that the sets are usually "limited" to a certain amount that were produced, but other than that, I've got nothing. 

Not being right in front of me at the moment, I believe that this Silver one is from '91. A couple of decent images in there, but I think I like the variety...

... offered in this Gold 1990 set a little bit more! I have my Bo binder arranged a little differently than my other player collections. I have his baseball playing days Royals, White Sox, and Angels separated by team, with the post playing days stuff after that. The playing days football is separated from the post playing days stuff. Broder's are separated as well. I guess now I'll be adding some Star pages to the mix as well.

Greg sent about two team bags worth of stuff to go along with the Star sets, which was way too much to scan, so I'm just gonna hit some of the highlights. I've seen a lot of Bo Broder's over the years, but this one was new to me. It's one of those double-sided affairs.

Moving on to some of the non Bo's...

I never bought any packs of Skybox Impact, and aside from possibly a Reggie Roby, I'm not sure if I even own any cards from the set. Apparently Ronnie was featured somewhat prominently throughout one of it's subsets. One of these days I'll have to look and see if anyone else got this many cards in it.

Few guys can say they could hit as hard as Ronnie Lott, Stevie Atwater is one of those guys. Both guys probably wouldn't even be allowed to play in today's NFL. Two of these four were new, and the other two were much appreciated upgrades.

I think I've only mentioned Mike Alstott once on the blog, and that had to be a couple of years ago. How Greg was able to remember that I do not know. There were a lot of Alstott's in this package, which is kind of good news/bad news sort of thing. The bad news is that at some point since I mentioned him, I realized that he has a lot of uninteresting cards, and decided to shelf the idea of collecting him. I took what I had, which wasn't much, and just added them to my random binder of 90's football. Now for the good news, most of the cards that Greg sent were pretty neat, and will also be going to that binder, or possibly a second one, as the first one is getting awfully full. I seem to like a lot of different 90's football cards, many for different reasons.

I have the foil version of the card on the left, so that'll be nice to be able to pair them up now. And I thought that I had scanned them together, but I'm not finding it. Either way, there was three copies of the middle card included, which is something that I'm all about. The card on the end is an insert, and like most 90's inserts, scanned like 💩.

Greg must have the memory of an elephant, because I'm pretty sure that I've only ever mentioned Jim Everett on the blog once before as well. At least I haven't stopped collecting him though, I'm just not doing so actively at the moment. I'm sure if I ever start going to shows again, I'll pick his collection back up. In the meantime, I'm just setting aside any cards of his that I come across. There were about a dozen cards of his in this mailer, many of the shiny variety, and yet, my favorite of the bunch was the very un-shiny 1993 Topps in the top left corner. Such a great action shot!

Though a longtime fan, I didn't realize that Stan had gotten so many neat cards over the years until I started actively seeking them out.

See what I mean! Of the 50 or so cards that I now have of him, I can't say that a single one is uninteresting. He's gotta have some, everybody does, but I just haven't seen any of them yet.

Many thanks to Greg for the Bo sets, and for all of the unexpected extras that were accompanying them. 

Also, sort of inspired by this mailing, I decided to put back up some want lists, at least temporarily. People do occasionally ask me about such things, so hopefully this'll prevent them from having to waste any of their time sending me an email. Also, even though it worked out okay this time, the lists should prevent any confusion as to who, or what, I'm currently collecting. They're still a work in progress, but since I always get so uncomfortable having anything like that up, there's every possibility that I'll take them down again before they get finished. I'm so uncomfortable even mentioning them, that I'm more than half tempted to delete them right after this post goes live. I guess if you're reading this a couple of days from now and there's no longer any pages at the top of the blog, you'll know what happened 😓.

Birthday splurge

Try as I might, I can't seem to hold off the coming of my least favorite day of each year; that being my birthday.

Some would, and did, refer to this years occurrence as a milestone, and I guess they were sort of right. After all, it's not everyday that someone other than Jack Benny celebrates their 39th birthday for the second year in a row 😉. 

Depending on when this is posted, I am now 10-14 days removed from this yearly abomination, and don't seem to be any worse for wear (I'm not counting the recent smashing of my thumb with the back of a hatchet, as that was unrelated). Everyone says that life begins at 39 😉, so who knows, maybe they're right and I'm just getting started.

With this whole "milestone" thing in mind, I decided that I'd wanted to do something to mark the occasion. I've known for months that the Nashville cards show was going to be on the weekend of my birthday, and that it wasn't going to be your average bi-monthly show. No, this was gonna be a 450-table affair that was spread over three days. I thought briefly about going, but I would've wanted to be there on the first day, which was a Friday. However, thinking of having to deal with Nashville traffic on a Friday was enough by itself to keep me away. Not to mention, I'm still not ready for the boom crowd (Boomers?). I've heard about their kind of crazy, and I don't want any part of it. I've also changed what I collect so much over the last few years, that I just don't think I'd find enough things there to justify the expenses (gas) for such a trip.

Having made up my mind a few weeks in advance not to go, I decided that I would instead make a couple of small purchases online. Not only did this save me from all of the terrors that were inevitably waiting for me in Nashville, but it also freed up the Friday before my birthday, which I ended up spending in Knoxville instead (if you're so inclined, I already wrote about that here). I have no doubt that I made the right choice.

I had been eyeing two cards from a seller, Jim and Steve's Sports Cards, on the Beckett Marketplace for about a year now, and decided to finally get them. Of course, I had to see if I could add a few more things to the order, it's kind of silly to pay $4-5 in shipping just for two dollars in cards, right? Right.

I knew nothing of 1990 Topps Heads Up! until I was looking through these peoples selection of Bo items. I probably should've looked into it a bit more before adding this to the cart. I thought from the picture that it was gonna be a card-sized head, but nope, turns out they're like 4"x 5", or thereabouts. It's a giant head! The only thing that I can think to do with it is to put on the inside front cover of the Bo binder. 

Just in case I wasn't the only one who had never seen these, here's the back. The suction cup prevented it from laying flat on the scan tray, which caused the blur, but you can still see most of what's going on here.

I was, and still am, unfamiliar with these as well. From what I can gather from COMC, these come from a sheet that was inserted into a 1991 book about... kids who grew up to play professional basketball? I don't know, and honestly I don't really care, they were just something different that I could add to these two player collections.

I don't know what the origins of this set of University of Kentucky playing cards are either, it just looked fun, so I grabbed the Bowie, even though I'm not really trying to collect any of his post-playing days stuff.

I probably had multiple duplicates of this sticker back in 1990-91, but all of my old Panini stickers were in with the cards that I donated to a charity auction back in the early 2000's (because I didn't think that I'd ever take up card collecting again).

A part of me has been thinking that I'd like to take an extended break from cards if I ever complete the Reggie Roby collection. Counting what you'll be seeing in this post, I'm about 40 cards (and other assorted items) away from finishing his catalog. Unfortunately for me, no copies of his Wild Card 1000 Stripe have shown up recently, and even if one did, it would probably be in an eBay store with a stupid high BIN, so I might have to be sticking around for a while longer.

Having grown up with Franz Blazers cards, I'm no stranger to cards coming with bread, but even so, it's still a little weird to think of a football card coming with your bread. That wouldn't have gone over very well in Portland. I like this one quite a bit though, it's now one of my favorite Reggie's. Oh, and this was the card that led me to this seller in the first place. I figured that if they hadn't sold it in the last year or so, that that might mean that I was suppose to buy it.

If I had anyone to play it with, I would've bought that old Franchise board game years ago. I could be wrong, but I always thought that it looked like a cross between Monopoly and fantasy football (fantasy football before it became the lame version that everyone likes so much now). And sure, the players are all from 1989, but those are the guys that I know. I think it would still be fun. Since I probably won't ever be buying the actual game, I might as well start picking up the game cards that I need for player collections. I think I still need 4 or 5 more, but I got the most important one crossed off the list.

In case anyone cares about the backs.

The last item from these folks was a bit disappointing, as it's in much worse shape than the advertised NM (there's always gotta be one). McDonald's didn't do Dennis any favors with this tightly cropped photo. A wider shot would've been pretty cool, we would've been able to better gauge how this meeting between Dennis' and Bruce Hardy turned out.

With shipping, this order came out to just about $20. Were these worth $20? Probably not. Buyers remorse set in right after I placed this order, but that's pretty normal for me these days. I still feel it a few weeks later.

I can't remember what night I did the Beckett order, but the day after I did so, I made another small purchase on Sportlots, from a person calling themselves, vogs59xa. I feel like I might've bought from them before, but I'm not sure. Like the Beckett seller, I've had three cards from this person sitting in my cart for about a year. After seeing that the shipping price for three cards would be the same for up to 10, I started looking for a few more to pad out the order.

I'm not really sold on magnets as collectibles, even if their appearance, and distribution, were similar to that of trading cards. I also don't remember them in the least when they were new, so I have no connection to them or their concept, and therefor don't really like them all that much. That being said, they do add a little bit of spice to player collections, and at a quarter apiece, I didn't have to break the bank to add them to said collections.

For a magnet, this one actually looked pretty good (too bad you can't tell from the scan), but unfortunately the front of it is peeled down some up in the right hand corner. I'm not sure why this person would send something with this kind of damage when it was listed as NM. I certainly never would've done that. I guess they were hoping that I wouldn't notice (no honor among thieves?)

The first run of Gold Medallions never scan good. Oh, and this card was far from the stated NM as well.

I think that this sticker put me at about the halfway point with the Dennis Smith collection. I think I only need two more of his stickers now too.

Magnets? Dog Tags? Shit was crazy back in the 90's! I thought I was just ordering the regular version of this "card", but I got the Plus parallel instead. Normally I'd send them a message and let them know that they accidently sent a slightly rarer version, but I figure that this makes us even for the two damaged cards that they decided to send without saying anything.

This may look like just your average old 1990 Topps, but it's actually the Tiffany version. I'm pretty sure that this is the first Tiffany card that I've ever owned. I always kind of wondered how easy they would be to tell apart from the regular Topps version. If the 1990 set is anything to go by, it would be very easy to tell them apart. The glossy finish on here is very noticeable, and it could never be mistaken for one of the regular cards.

Both of these are kind of boring parallels, the Choice is a Silver (because of the big silver 'Redskins' across the bottom), and the UD is an Electric Gold (because of the gold 'Electric' up in the left hand corner), but they were both needed, and cheap. I do really like the image that they used for the Choice though; if I tried to do that I'd probably never walk again. Physically, I'm in pretty good shape, but I've never been very flexible.

With shipping, this group came to a little over $5. Was it worth $5? I guess it was. I probably couldn't have found all of them at a show for less than what I paid here.

So there's my $25 birthday splurge. I do feel like I could've gotten something else more enjoyable for that amount (or less), but what's done is done. At least I got a few more Reggie's out of the deal... and a giant Bo head!

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

Before you go, I mentioned in the last post that I thought that I was forgetting another blog that I thought everyone (who doesn't already know about it) should go check out, and I was right; If You Build It, They Will Come was the odd-man out. This guy's collection is quite varied, and includes all sports, some non-sports, old stuff, new stuff, etc. Given the variety that he posts about, one would think that there would be the occasional something for just about everyone's tastes. So, if you have a few minutes, maybe you could use them to go say hi.

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.