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.

I've been... Smithed?

I'm familiar with the concept of 'Bipping' someone, but what do you call it when someone sends you a bunch of copies of the same Dennis Smith card? A Smithing? Have I been Smithed? If so, I guess it could've been worse... his name could've been Roger 😅.

If 'Smithing' hadn't been a thing before, thanks to, Trevor, from the Bump And Run Football Card Blog, it is now.

In the note accompanying this surprise mailing from last month, Trevor wondered if he may've gone a bit overboard with the the Dennis Smith's? Maybe, maybe not, who am I to say what is or isn't overboard. He also suggested, and this is how I know that he's actually reading my ramblings (thanks for that by the way), that I could possibly use them to start a page. Hmmm? I certainly hadn't planned on doing a page of just this card, but in honor of Trevor, I did do so. It's now the very last page in my Reggie Roby/Dennis Smith binder. Although, I did actually need one of these for my Dennis Smith collection, so as it stands, the page is 2/3 full.

Thankfully for all of you that have made it this far, there was more than just seven copies of the same Dennis Smith card in the envelope. Reggie's are always welcome. And this was the first new Steve Atwater that I had added to his collection in quite a few months. I had been doing a pretty good job of keeping track of that collection, but at some point I got lazy and stopped updating it on the TCDB. Now I have almost no idea what I do or don't have, and have thus stopped buy any new ones until I get it back on track. Knowing me, that'll probably be sometime next year.

Hey, another needed Dennis Smith! Apparently Trevor's the one to go to with all of your, or rather my, Dennis Smith needs. And I already had the Howie, but this one was much nicer, so being able to upgrade the old one was much appreciated.

These were the first two Warren Moon's that I've gotten in a while as well. He's one of those guys that I only ever seemed to find cards of at shows, and since I haven't been going to shows, there's been no Warren Moon's to find. I'm getting to the point where I almost hate tribute cards, but the Donruss here was done pretty well, and I can't say that I dislike it.

Thanks again for the surprise PWE, Trevor! Football hasn't been on my radar very much as of late, so these were a nice change of pace.

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 😓.

A Baseball Card Store Top 10

Everybody loves top ten lists, right? Wrong. I don't care for them all that much. I care even less for scanning lots of cards though, so when my accumulated order of around 125 cards arrived from the Baseball Card Store a few months ago - while I was away from the blog - I knew I wasn't going to want to scan them all, so I plucked out ten of my favorites, scanned them, and sat on the scans until I returned to the blogging fold. I've been back for a weeks now, and figure that this is as good of a time as any to make a list out of the cards and post it.

#10: 1992 OPC #645 Deion Sanders

1992 Topps is the last baseball set that I remember completing during my original collecting run. Almost thirty years have passed since then, and my memory, especially when it comes to cards, isn't nearly as sharp as it once was -- as such, I often see things on the blogs, or somewhere else online, that I know for a fact I once owned, but upon seeing now, have absolutely no recollection of ever laying eyes on it before. 1992 Topps is one of those sets that this happens with on a fairly regular basis, and did so again when I espied this Deion Sanders. It's not the most interesting of cards, that's for sure, but I don't remember it in the least... so here it is! Also, it's an OPC, so that makes it a tad different, and dare I say, better?

#9: 1994-95 Fleer All-Star Weekend #23 Clifford Robinson

This card isn't all that interesting either, but after trying to trade for twice on the TCDB, and having one show up damaged by the post office, and the other being sent by someone who was completely comfortable sending people shitty cards (that weren't described as such), I was just really glad to finally get a nice one, and be done with it.

#8: 1995 Collector's Choice Update Stick-Ums #86 Steve Atwater (and others)

Unfortunately for me, I had stopped collecting football by the time Collector's Choice had come on to the scene, and therefor missed out on quite a bit -- including these nifty quad-stickers. I haven't looked through the checklist, so I don't know if I'll ever have cause to buy anymore, but was happy to be able at least one to the collection (the Steve Atwater collection to be more specific).

#7: 1992 Donruss #470 Bo Jackson

If someone had told me by the late 90's, that a time would ever come where I'd look favorably upon on Donruss' 1992 offering, I'd have said they were batty. But here we are in 2021, and here I am saying that I actually dig the '92 design. I wasn't overly fond of it as a kid, and really disliked it by the time I stopped collecting, so I'm not sure what brought about the change? Well, that's not true, I think a big part of it is just that after the last twenty years of mostly terrible, and certainly overly busy, card designs, I now have a much deeper appreciation for the simpler, and less busy, designs of old. There may be a tad of nostalgia mixed in as well, but I'm not ready to commit to that yet.

Funny thing about this Bo too, I actually received two copies in the order, which I'm sure I did accidently, as these cards were purchase over about a six-month period, and I never keep track of what I've already bought from the site. I don't mind owning two copies of this particular card, and they were only ten cents apiece, so it definitely isn't a "loss" by any stretch of the imagination -- but when I went to enter the card onto my TCDB list for Bo, I noticed that it was one of those ones that had the annoying period/no period variations, and as luck would have it, I had gotten both in my order

This example would've been much easier to see had I layered the cards on top of each other, but I didn't, so in case you can't tell, the card on the left doesn't have a period after INC, and the card on the right does. These variations are terribly lame, but like a lot of people, I feel like I have to get both for player collections. At least in this instance though, I didn't have seek them out, they both just came to me of their own volition.

#6: 1994 Topps Ren & Stimpy All Prism #46 Come on and get your Log!

I was big Nickelodeon kid. Aside from the little kid stuff in the mornings, I loved pretty much every show on the channel. Cartoon or live-action, new or old (Nick at Nite), it didn't matter, I loved them all. Except for The Ren & Stimpy show, I never did understand what the appeal of that one was. However, I was an anomaly, and all of my friends liked it, so even not being a fan, just from the time spent at other people's houses, I probably saw every episode at least once. And while I may not have been a fan of the show as a whole, I did enjoy bits and pieces from time to time. One of those bits being the commercial for Log (*from Blammo!). Looking back, it's still my favorite thing to come from that show, and so when I saw this card (from a set that I don't recall ever seeing), I knew that I had to have it. As per usual with cards like this, it looks much better in person. 

                  

#5: 1994 Classic Pro Hockey Prospects #239 Manon Rheaume

A hockey card? From a Canadian site? I know, it's crazy, right? I've only got like a dozen cards in my Manon Rheaume collection, so I wasn't surprised to find one that I didn't have, but was a little surprised to find one with her as a Knoxville Cherokee. I didn't even know such a card existed! Pretty neat though.

#4: 1996 Playoff Contenders Open Field #3 Herman Moore

Herman made the list simply because I think that this set is really cool! Oh, and I miss holograms, that's all.

#3: 1993-94 Topps Stadium Club #173 Shawn Kemp

High Court was kind of a boring subset, but this card makes the list on the strength of the photo alone, particularly for the way the fingers of Shawn's off hand are grazing across Chuck's head (for good luck?) as he soars in for the finger roll.

#2: 1987 Topps Who Framed Roger Rabbit Stickers #3 Jessica Rabbit

Do I really need to explain why this card made the list? :)

#1: 1984 Fleer V #24 Willie's Our Friend

It seems like it's become very trendy to attribute rookie card status to all manner of non-sport cards. Personally, I see it as kind of silly, and a rather piss-poor attempt to inflate the values on what have traditionally been low-value cards. But what do I know, apparently modern collectors are willing to fork over gobs of cash for Iron Man "rookie" cards, and are willing to take out a second mortgage to afford that elusive PSA 10 Volkswagen Beetle "rookie" card. I don't get it, but if I did, I'd be pointing out that this right here is a Robert Englund (best known as Freddy Krueger for you non-film fans) rookie card, and to my knowledge, hasn't been talked about very much, and therefor might be something worth trying to get. But I don't get down like that, so to me it's just a neat card, and one that I had never seen before. I have kind of a side collection going of actors and actresses who appeared in horror films, and this was great addition to that collection.

Fleer sure didn't put a lot of effort into these backs, did they? By the by, any fans of the original V series reading this? I don't expect there to be, but if there is, let yourself be known. I'm a big fan of the original films/series', and go back and watch everything about once every two or three years. My copies are still on VHS, but someday I'm hoping to upgrade to DVD.

I've got about 200 more cards waiting to be shipped from the Baseball Card Store, and since this was a lot easier than scanning crap-tons of cards, don't be surprised if you see another one of these lists pop up here sometime in the next few months.

And on a related note, anybody notice the changes that have been occurring over on our favorite dime cards site? I can't say that I'm liking them too much, but if it proves to be beneficial for the couple running the site, then I'm all for it. Those two deserve all that's coming to them... in a good way! [Geez, that sounded menacing 😮]

Two trades, two purchases, and some videos

                              
I haven't been feeling very bloggy lately. My dear old friend, depression, has decided to pay me a visit, and as per usual, is making it very difficult for me to want to do anything -- especially if that anything requires me to be on the internet. This has led to no new posts for the last ten day, and I'm probably a week or so behind in my blog reading (I am planning to hit a few of those before this goes live though).

Despite not posting for the last week and a half, I see that the view count on all of my recent posts is way up, which can mean only one thing, the bots have been active during my absence. I guess I should be thankful that I haven't been spammed into oblivion during this time as well. Although, some of those spam comments have been getting kind of funny, so maybe them showing up wouldn't be the worst thing ever.

Thanks to a bunch of trades on the TCDB, as well as some of that famous blogger generosity, cards have been coming in fairly steady for at least a month now, mot of which I've yet to scan though. It's just piling up, waiting for me to want to spend a few hours scanning. It might be waiting a while.

I do have a few (two) older trades ready to go though, like this one from a fellow called, OC2410, who just so happens to live in the same state, about two hours down the highway from me.

The trade was made up of all things Steve Atwater on my side, the "highlight" of which was this 1998 Finest refractor. I kind of hate this card though, hence the "highlight". I know I talked recently about my general dislike of the Finest brand, so I won't rehash that, but I don't like this design, I loathe the peel, and am not enamored with the refractoriness of it. That being said, it is considered to be a "good" card, and I did need it for the collection, so I wasn't about to pass up an offer from the only person on the site who had one up for trade.

Most of my trades have been of the base card variety, which has been fine, as I do seem to need more than I thought I did before joining the Database. Also, most of my trade bait isn't the sort that's gonna land me many SiCk HiTz, or at least that's what I thought, as I was able to trade a pair of semi-recent serial numbered football cards to, briznuts (I have no idea what that means), for what I consider to be a 90's sIcK hIt...

I don't remember what the odds were on the Player's Club Platinum's back in 1995, but I'm pretty sure that they averaged out to about one per box. I never got a box of this year's CC way back when, and wasn't fortunate enough to pull any of the Platinum's from from the few packs that I did get. However, I have been in the right place, at the right time, to find a few in dime boxes over the years. I've also gotten a few ridiculously cheap copies from COMC as well. That being said, none of my cheap finds were on the level of this Reign Man. Many thanks to briznuts (unfortunately I can't remember his real name) for making it happen.

Between all of the stupid-high prices, and lack of reliable places to buy from, my card purchases have continued to dwindle. I never would've thought the day would come when I'd be extolling the virtues of Sportlots, but it has, and I am! For my money, it's the best place to buy cards these days. The site's list of sellers is continually increasing, and most of their prices are still those of the pre-Rona boom.

I made a pair of small purchases recently, starting with a pair of vintage variations:

A lot of my basketball focus as of late has been on former Blazers, and while I already had both of these fellows in white-back form, I didn't own their grey backs...

This pair of '77-78's came from a seller called chevyvan, and after shipping was added, were 90¢ apiece. Given their awesome condition, I was more than happy to pay less than a buck for each of these. There was also a Geoff Petrie available, which I would've bought, had it not been all wonked up from some sort of printing issue (smeared ink on the front).

My other purchase, a 1998 Upper Deck Arby's Jerome Kersey, came from a guy called kbartell:

I only just recently learned of this set's existence from the TCDB. Jerome is the only card from it that I had to have, though I wouldn't walk away from the Gary Payton were a cheap copy ever to present itself. The seller had a number of Seattle based regional issues, so it wasn't much of a surprise to see that were located in WA, in a town that I know quite well by the way. Anyway, it's a neat card, and I'm glad I was able to find out about it all these years later.

I think it was about two weeks ago now that I stopped in at the Dollar Tree, and the Serenity Thrift that's right next door. DT was a bust, but for the second time in as many months, Serenity's media section was overflowing with videos. Someone older must've passed, because a good number of the newly acquired videos were of older films, you know, stuff that the youngsters won't even give a chance. It took a good 40 minutes to go through everything (this included pawing through the cassettes and vinyl as well), but it was worth it, as I found half-a-dozen videos that I couldn't leave without.

I can't remember specifically which year it was, but some time around '95 or '96, my mom bought this very edition of The Uninvited for us. I want say that it was $19.99, and probably came from Suncoast, as other than specialty catalogs, they were the only ones that carried films like this at time. Being a film that we both liked, it more than paid for itself over the years. Unfortunately, the video disappeared at some point, somewhere in the late 2000's, during a move I believe. Neither of us noticed that it was missing for quite some time, and we don't even know which of us had it at the time of it's disappearance. Between the two of us, there was a lot of moving going on that time, so there was really no way to figure out what had happened after the fact. We also established that are shared copy of Poltergeist II on DVD, vanished as well. But nothing else. Anyways, by then it was available on DVD, but only on a Criterion Collection disc, which if you know DVD's, then you know that the CC DVD's can be quite expensive. Being a cheapskate, I never forked over the cash to get the DVD, and was resolved to wait until I could find another copy of the film, in any format, somewhere in the wild -- which I obviously finally did! It was really nice to see this one again after all of these years, and the film itself is still just as good as it ever was.

I never cared to see John Cameron's Titanic, I'll leave that version to everyone else, and will take this version instead.

I've owned Father of the Bride on video for a long time, but aside from watching it on TCM, had never come across the sequel before. Once again, everybody else can have the Steve Martin remakes, I'll take the originals.

The Fugitive might be only big show from it's era that I've never seen at least one episode of. It wasn't on in syndication when I was kid, and we couldn't just plug every desired thing into an internet at the time (thankfully), so it's just been one that has escaped me up to this point. My mom watched it when she was young, and still likes it, so I grabbed this for her.

I know that I've seen it, but I can't remember a single thing about Meatballs. I can tell you though that I've seen Meatballs 4 more times than any person should've, thanks in large part to it's constantly being on late night cable back in the mid to late 90's. If you want to do yourself a favor, don't ever watch Meatballs 4, trust me, I know what I'm talking about!

In general, I'm not as big of a fan of Scooby-Doo as I used to be, and don't care one bit for any of the newer stuff. I do however still have some affinity for the films that were produced during my childhood, and seeing as how it's from 1987, The Boo Brothers fits right into my wheelhouse. I watched this the day after I got these videos (The Uninvited was the night of), and it was more enjoyable than I thought it would still be. Sometimes it's nice to not always be disappointed :)

In other news, I put in a shipment request on COMC since my last post. I had intended to wait a little longer to do so, but things seem to be getting even worse for them, and they're are starting to make me nervous. It's funny, things appeared to be getting better a few months ago, packages were starting to get mailed sooner than expected, people were getting their cards processed again, and then just like that, everything went to shit again. Only this time, it's worse than it was before. I'm really glad I don't have anything for sale on the site, as a lot of people, especially the larger sellers, could be shit up a creek if the company goes under. Knowing this, I'm a bit surprised that more sellers aren't running bigger sales in order to reduce some of their inventory, just in case. They say my stuff will be shipped in August, hopefully they can keep their virtual doors open until then. Of course too, in typical fashion, two days after I requested the shipment, a card that I've had in my watchlist for at least two years now, that hadn't ever gone on sale, went on sale, 68%, and I had to buy it. I'm also starting another collecting project that I'll cover in the next few weeks, and got a card for that too the other day. 

I also go notified a few days ago that my accumulated order from the Baseball Card Store, that I paid for over a month ago, has finally shipped -- so that's something?

And as mentioned at the beginning of the post, I'm in six kinds of funk right now, so don't be surprised if my posting becomes even more sporadic during the coming weeks. There's a lot of other blogs out there though, so I think you'll live.