Vaccine troubles, McKay's, and Harry Hulk Woman!

I've been meaning to get the rona vaccine for months now, but for one reason or another, just kept forgetting to do so.

Some may wonder how that was possible, and to that I'd say it was easy. A). I've been busy all summer, B). Goldfish brain, C). I rarely pay any attention to the "news", D). I kind of live in a bubble out here in the sticks, and E). I haven't been overly fearful of catching the rona.

Despite all that, I really did think that I should get it, not necessarily for my well being mind you, but I figure that in the long-run, it would be beneficial to society as a whole for me to get it (and I don't even care about the general public all that much!).

The original plan was to get the J&J jab, but apparently I waited too long, because when I finally went to get it back in August, I was told that that particular option was no longer available around here. I could get the Moderna locally, or drive to somewhere like Knoxville or Nashville for the J&J. I'm not a big fan of needles, so only having the two-shot option at my disposal was a tad disappointing, but I also didn't feel like driving for a couple of hours just to get stabbed by a faceless whitecoat. Despite my dislike of needles, I swallowed my disappointment and went with the local Moderna.

The first shot was fine, just a sore arm for a couple of days, and I was back to my usual plucky self. Having not read about any of the other potential side effects, I assumed that I was basically in for the same thing when I got my second shot last Thursday... and I couldn't have been more wrong!

The shot itself was okay, and I felt fine right afterwards. I had the day off, and thinking that only a sore arm was coming, I spent most of the day outside hauling wood. I felt fine after that too, not even a sore arm. It was almost exactly 8pm that night when things started to go to shit.

The first side effect to come on was the chills. I went from just a little shaky, to teeth chattering in less than an hour. I could tell I was gonna be in for a long night. Despite it being over 70° in the house, I turned off my ceiling fan for the first time this summer, and went to bed wearing sweats, socks, and a t-shirt. I was wearing all that and still needed multiple blankets to fall asleep (I usually just have a sheet on my bed during the summer). I fell asleep quicker than I thought I would, but woke up two hours later amid a nuclear meltdown. I was sweating profusely, and had acquired an incredible headache. I never did go back to sleep. When I finally got up in the morning, I did so despite the headache's increase. And let me tell you, even for someone who grew up with migraines, and still gets frequent headaches of varying degrees, this was a headache for the ages!

Friday was fucking miserable. I couldn't get the headache to go away, and spent the whole day either feverishly sweating, or trying to shake out of my skin from the chills. I tried to play through it and do some stuff around the house, but I couldn't stand confidently for any length of time, so very little ended up actually getting done. I ate as little for dinner as I can remember in recent memory, and then my whole upper arm started turning red. Apparently that's not uncommon, but was still a little off-putting. Being dead-ass tired, I went to bed at the unheard of hour or 8pm Friday night, fell asleep immediately again, and slept for eight straight hours, which is also unheard of for me. Saturday was considerably better, only a minor headache, and only one bout of sweating. At least I was able to finally to some stuff again. I really hate not being able to do things!

I was mostly back to normal on Sunday, but I'll come back to Sunday in a moment. First, I wanted to point out that I never planned on telling anyone publicly that I got vaccinated, that's not my kind of flex. I only decided to do so after I had so much difficulty with it. I think it's good for those that still haven't gotten vaccinated to know that this kind of reaction is possible, but you know what, as sucky as my experience was, I'm still alive, and if you by chance have as much difficulty with it as I did, it'll be sucky, but you'll live too! Normally I'm not one to tell people what they should and shouldn't do, but this is one instance where I think it's necessary: If you haven't been vaccinated yet, and are able to be vaccinated, STOP BEING A SELFISH PRICK... and go get that prick!

PSA over, now let's get to some fun stuff.

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As mentioned, I was mostly back to normal Sunday morning, which was good, because I had a thing I had to do in Knoxville on Sunday. It might've been able to be pushed back, but I didn't want to do that. So, since I knew I'd be able to drive, I went and did my thing. Knowing that I'd be in Knoxville, I knew I'd have to make time for a stop at McKay's (a Disneyland for lovers of physical media) while I was there too, and I did.

It's been a few months since I was last there, and I've never gone on the weekend before, so in terms of people, and potential finds, I didn't really know what to expect. My other thing didn't take too long, so I had almost three hours of time blocked off for searching.

Normally I like to save the best for last, but if your a sports card fan, and you read all of that opening jibber-jabber, I think you deserve to see what I'm pretty sure was the deal of the day first...

I'm not much of a Twitterer, and I rarely tweet about anything before it shows up on the blog, but I thought a few people might get a kick out of this, so I went ahead and mentioned on there Sunday night. Turns out, more than a few people got a kick out of it, as I think it might've been my most liked tweet ever, for whatever that's worth.

Anyway, I had never even heard of this book until everyone's favorite Owl blogged about a couple of weeks ago (sorry, I wasn't able to find the post to link up here?), but from the post itself, and all of the ensuing comments, I was able to gather that this book was kind of a big deal for a lot of people. Oh, and that it wasn't cheap on the secondary market either. It seemed somewhat interesting to me, but not enough for me to ever be shelling out big bucks for, so I basically just forgot about it -- that is until I was looking through the hobbies and collectibles section on Sunday, and noticed a massive book on one of the bottom shelves that said "Topps Baseball Cards" on the spine. I thought it might be the same book when I reached down to see the price, which by the way, going from Night Owl's post I thought would at least be $20. Turned out to be $2 (left the sticker so you could see it)! The dust jacket's seen better days, and a couple of the pages were dog-earred, but still, two bucks seemed like a pretty good deal (and the folks on Twitter agreed).

The one thing that I don't recall seeing mentioned in NO's post, was just how massive this book is, it's gotta weigh at least 10 pounds, and could easily be a murder weapon in Clue. I certainly got a workout lugging this thing around the store in one of those hand baskets for almost two hours.

I took a couple of pictures of the inside for someone on Twitter, and figured that I might as well show them here too, just in case I'm not the only one who hadn't been familiar with the book.

Anyway, I hadn't been seeking the book out, but it is kind of neat to have found a cheap copy. I have no doubt that it'll come in handy from time to time.

Everything else gotten was to appease my inner youth, and probably won't be of much interest to sports-only fans. Feel free to skip this next part.

I'm always on the lookout for cheap older film rags, and was fortunate enough to find a few this time.

This last issue here was the real prize, as I may be one of the bigger Captain Power fans you'll ever come across in the blogging world (I've got the entire toy line, all of the videos, and some other assorted paraphernalia). This issue had apparently been flying under my radar. And as a bonus, they're talking my episode of Star Trek as well.

The old 90's Marvel novels aren't cheap anywhere, and McKay's is no exception. The average price is in the $4-5 range, and as such, I rarely ever get any. I still look just in case though. Had some luck this time with one off condition book for $1.50, and...

... one nicer copy for $2.50. I'm very much looking forward to these!

It wouldn't be a trip to McKay's without bringing home at least one Christopher Pike. I've had the second book in this trilogy for a while now, but have been waiting to get the first before reading it. I started reading this last night, and am a tad surprised to find that it's kind of like I Know What you did Last Summer, ten years before that was a thing. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't think it would be along those lines.

It wouldn't be a trip to McKay's without getting at least one Bobby Stine as well.

At $3.50, this was my most expensive purchase. It's okay to splurge every now and then though, especially when paying with trade credit.

Overall, it was a good trip. The next one is gonna have some lofty standards to live up to!

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I received a fun PWE from, Greg, of Nine Pockets fame, earlier this week. I'm sure that most have already heard about it by now, but Greg has started a new business venture, and was doing a giveaway to celebrate (it may still be going on, I don't know, you'll have to check). Everyone got their choice of three of his recently printed customs, and for me it was an easy choice.

I'm a big fan of the Dirty Harry series (they're more relevant now than when they were originally released), so this was a no brainer. I never thought I'd see Harry Callahan on a baseball card, but here we are!

My scanner didn't do Greg's cards any favors, so if you haven't seen one in person yet, just take my word that they look way better than they do here. 

I grew up watching both of these series', in syndication of course. 

I only chose two cards, but Greg threw in a third...

CHiPs is one of a very select few shows from the "classic television" era that I've never seen a single episode of. I have seen Erik Estrada on quite a few other shows though, and do have his Adventure Time autograph, so now my Double E collection is two cards strong.

I really dig the '74 All-Star combos that Greg put together, and if he ever revisits the theme, I'm hoping for a Steve Austin/Jamie Summers pairing. I think that would be really neat.

Many thanks for the giveaway, Greg! Hopefully your new cards will sell like hotcakes, they're certainly gonna get enough publicity in the coming weeks to do so :)

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In other news, the COMC shipment that I requested back in April arrived last Friday. It actually wasn't that far off the original estimate. I thought it was gonna be considerably later though, given that the last time I looked at the counter, it said that there were something like 140,000 items still ahead of mine -- then I got an email two days later saying that my stuff had shipped. I've got 189 cards in here, and no idea when, or how, I might start showing any of them. 

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And one other thing of small note, I can never remember exactly when it is, and I don't feel like looking it up, but I do know that this blogs anniversary falls somewhere between September 15-19. I don't plan on posting anything else in the next couple of days, so I'm just gonna go ahead and congratulate myself now on being able to stick around for 6 years. I'm haven't been posting nearly as much as I used to do, but I'm still around, and I've outlasted a number of far superior blogs, so that's something, I guess?

If I come into any sort of windfall in the next couple of months, I might try to do a belated contest of some sort, but in the meantime, this'll have to do for now. 

I think I've gone on long enough for one post, and I've got about a weeks worth of blog reading to catch up on, so until next time...

Winning

It's been a been long time since I've done a fluffy "Here's some crap I won on eBay!" post, in fact after going back through the archives, I can tell you that it's been over eight months since such a post appeared on this blog... so I guess one could say that I'm overdue?

So I'm gonna do just that today, but before I get to those fluffy eBay wins, I've got to give some public thanks for a very unexpected win that came via a contest on Twitter.

Between people's unsolicited political opinions, and the apparently never-ending Astros saga, Twitter has been pretty unbearable as of late, even more so than usual. I've stated recently that I'm down to about five minutes or less spent on the site per day, well, in recent weeks you can probably knock that estimate down by another three minutes or so.

Now if you've ever spent any time on Twitter, you know that there are no shortage of contests, and if you haven't, well, there's a lot of contests! As far as cards go, these contests are usually for some autograph of whoever's the current flavor of the week, which I never enter, in fact I hardly ever participate in the giveaways, that being said -- I did recently come across one that was worth entering.

I don't know what I was more surprised by, the fact that @Very_Cool_Cards was willing to give away a 1968 Topps Game Hank Aaron, or that I ended up winning said playing days card of the true home run king? That was a rhetorical question by the way, as me winning would be the bigger surprise of the two. It's been a few weeks since the contest, I still can't believe that I came out on top, especially since were at least 150 people that entered (many of whom were probably much more deserving). I just finished cataloging my humble little Hank Aaron collection this past weekend, and after doing so, I can say with all honesty that this one is now amongst my favorites -- it was also my first "good" Topps Game card, so that was pretty cool too.

I hadn't had the good fortune to have any real contact with Damon, the man behind the Twitter handle, before this, but hopefully that'll change going forward. Thanks again for the contest, Damon. You made this particular blogger very happy!

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One of the twice a year super mega card shows is happening in Nashville this weekend, and I had been looking forward to it for months, but I found out a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't be attending (more on this in Saturday's post), so I decided to use the money from a recently sold card, money that had been reserved for the show, and spend it elsewhere. This "elsewhere" ended up being eBay.

I don't spend very much time on the eBay anymore, between the ever increasing shipping costs, as well as the ever increasing amount of people who seem to have no idea how to properly package stuff, it's just not worth the effort most of the time. However, I do still check for certain things from time to time, one of those things being cheap vintage monster/horror magazines (don't worry, there are more cards below). Usually these searches don't yield much, as there are still a lot of collector's out there who are willing to pay big bucks for such magazines, thus not very many cheap one's showing up.

It was during one of these searches, that I found two different sellers who were auctioning off fairly decent sized collections (60's-00's), all of which were ending on the same weekend. The first seller had nothing but magazines, while the second seller had magazines, comics, and even cards.

Despite thinking that I probably wouldn't actually end up winning anything, I still went through all of both sellers items, and added a bunch of stuff to my watch list, then a funny thing happened... I won some stuff... from both sellers no less!

I can't remember who recently said that we should be sharing the names of the good sellers on eBay, but I agree, especially as the amount of bad one's continues to increase. So, with that in mind, here's the first group from mikestoysoc:

Up until now I had been completely unaware of Monster Fantasy, granted it only ran for four issues back in '75, but still...

I ended up going a little outside of my comfort zone to acquire the first, and...

...second issue! Number's 3 and 4 were available too, but having never read the magazine before, I didn't want to take the chance that they might not be any good -- after reading the first one, I can say that I should've taken that chance. But oh well, I can always try and get the other two later on.

This is probably a good time to mention that I'm not going too deep into these right now, because I'm toying with the idea of doing a series later in the year for Halloween, and these, along with some of the other magazines in my collection, would likely be revisited (and much more in-depth).

I can even begin to tell you how much I LOVE obscure one-off's, and this one fits the bill perfectly. I realize that the subject matter isn't for everyone, but it still makes me wonder why someone would go through all of the trouble to get a first issue printed ('77), and never do a second? As an aside, I don't how a kid was ever supposed to try and save their allowance back in the 60's and 70's, I'd never even be able to make it past a comics rack/magazine stand without spending all of my weekly allotment.

I'm ashamed to say that I avoided Scary Monsters for a really long time, primarily because I didn't think that a contemporary monster magazine, written by contemporary writers, could be any good, and boy was I wrong... which is precisely why one shouldn't judge a magazine without ever having read it! The articles are actually written (mostly) by folks who were fortunate enough to be around during peak monster madness, i.e. the 50's and 60's. If I hadn't found a cheap beat up copy at a bookstore a few years ago, I may have never given it a chance. Since then, I've picking up more cheap copies whenever I come across them, which is very often by the way. This seller only had a few issues, and few of them were drawing an unusual amount of attention, but I was still able to grab the 2011 & 2012 year end annuals.

If you click on this seller's link, you'll see that they don't have a great rating, but the had decent combined shipping rate, and more importantly, they pack my magazines really well, and to me that's all that really matters.

Alright, on to seller #2, aka bthoven14. They had a lot more variety available in their round of auctions, but they were also offering free shipping, which meant that it was also a lot harder to land things on the cheap.

See... more cards! They had multiple copies of this Kaline Nu-Scoops, in varying conditions, and I think I might've gotten the very last one (I kept getting outbid on the others). Not only is this just an awesome card, but it also happens to be my first Nu-Scoops. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm always forgetting that this set even exists, then I see one that Nick got at a show, and I'm like "Oh yeah, that's a set, isn't it?". Now that I finally have one, I even went and looked at the checklist, bad move, there's apparently quite a few cards that I didn't know I needed and/or wanted.

For all of you back addicts out there.

It wasn't until I started pulling apart all of my abandoned set builds, that I realized just how many cards of Boog I had, certainly enough to warrant yet another player collection. This seller had a bunch of 1970 Scratch-Off's, and many copies of each card, including Boog. I didn't get the nicest copy, but I did get the cheapest, and it is unscratched, so I'm content with the purchase.

Starlog was always very hit-and-miss for me, some issues were really good, while others were almost unreadable. There used to be a place in Portland called Periodicals Paradise, which in it's original guise, sold nothing but back issues of magazines. It went through many changes over the years, and moved locations many times, becoming a little less of what it was each time it did so. But in it's original form, and original location, it was just about the greatest store that has ever been. I bring this up, because way back when, 25+ years ago to be more specific, they used to always have back issues of Starlog for a buck each -- and I haven't seen one in the wild since they left their original location. This one obviously didn't come from the wild, but it was just a shade over a dollar, and looked interesting, so...

And finally, a non-annual issue of Scary Monsters. This seller packaged everything really well too, so you can take solace in that should you ever decide to throw any business their way.

I actually bought stuff from three different sellers over this particular weekend, but after dealing with two stand-up individuals, it should come as no surprise to hear that the third ended up being a flake. After a couple of weeks of nothing, I contacted them to find out what's what, and got the old "Sorry, my dog fell down an abandoned mine shaft, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". Then it was "Sorry, you know that abandoned mine shaft that I mentioned my dog falling down, well, now an asteroid has hit it, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". which was then followed by "Sorry, you're not gonna believe what happened now, you remember that mine shaft that my dog fell down, the one that was subsequently hit by an asteroid, well, now a mountain has fallen on it. Darndest thing I ever saw, it just tipped over, right onto that asteroid crater, the one where the mine shaft that my dog fell down was, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". I may have exaggerated this series of messages just a tad, but it's close enough for you get the gist. I did finally request, and get, a refund, as they clearly had no plans of ever sending anything. Thankfully the item in question wasn't anything rare, or otherwise hard to come by, but it's still kind of sucky when you think that you're going to get something, and then because of some incompetent human, you don't.

So there you have it, not nearly as much stuff as would've come from the card show, but I'm good with that. This group has a quality over quantity feel to it, and that's something that I most certainly wouldn't have been able to say about the haul that most likely would've been brought home from the show.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.