Splurging on Sportlots: Part 1

I mentioned at the end of my previous post that I was expecting this week to be busy, and surprise surprise, it has been!

The weather is getting really nice, really quick. Meaning that any free time (during daylight hours that is) has been, and will continue to be, spent getting things ready for spring/summer. All of the various storms that have rolled through in the last year or so, have really taken their toll on the house's siding, and I've been waiting for a stretch of dry weather to fix all of the various problems before any major summer storms can come and make them worse. It's been slow going so far, but I think I'll be done with as of Friday. It's almost time to start planting things as well, so there's plenty of garden prep to do as well, including my "favorite", tilling :(

All of these hours spent doing extracurricular work has got me plumb tuckered out, mentally and physically (I suspected that it would). As such, I'm not looking to write the card blog equivalent of "War and Peace", at least not this week. So as planned, I'm gonna drop a two-part Sportlots order on you. 

Thanks to an eBay sale, I had some extra money last month (scroll down to find out what I sold), and decided to treat myself to some cards. Normally I would've just saved it for a show, but I'm not feeling the idea of driving to Nashville any time soon, and with eBay being kind of sucky right now, I decided, after doing some looking around, to spend some of my ill-gotten gains on Sportlots. I ended up buying from three sellers (acardman, shaner18, and whoops24), and to my great surprise, wasn't disappointed with anything from them (are the sellers on Sportlots actually getting better?).

Today's post will cover baseball(warning: there's not very much)/basketball portions, and if I can get it done by then, Friday's post will be all football (and I know how excited you'll all be for that one).

I grew up in Mother's Cookies country, but only ever encountered the various Mariners issues (which were so plentiful at the time that you couldn't even give them away). In fact, until my late teens, I was under the impression that the only cards Mother's made were those of the Mariners variety. Of course I've learned otherwise since, but it's still a little off-putting to see an MC card featuring a non-Mariner. This one does spotlight a future Mariner, but it still looks odd to me.

Jamie looks so young here! And to my knowledge, this is the only card in which he can be seen sporting his ill-advised hoop earring. I know that almost of us went through a rebellious phase when we were growing up, and probably made a few poor decisions during said phase, but even so, this earring was an especially bad idea on Jamie's part. I know that he got rid of it fairly quickly, and refuses to ever talk about it, so if it weren't for this card, most people might not have ever remembered what the media dubbed, "Earring Gate".

I guess it's because I wasn't collecting in the mid-aughts, but I am not familiar with Topps Cracker Jack in the least. I remember the mini '91 Topps' that came in Cracker Jacks, but that was about it. I see that Topps did all of the usual stuff with this set, mini's, parallels, 1/1's, etc. I've looked at a few other cards in the set, and am not overly impressed. I did like this card though, which is a mini by the way. 

Speaking of mini's...

This Bo is so mini, it's Micro! MicBo? Bocro? I had actually never seen one of these in person before. I had always just assumed that they were about the size of the above mentioned Cracker Jack cards. Turns out that I was wrong though, as they're even smaller...

I don't know why, but I really love this photo! The only thing that would've made it better is if Bo had been playing for one of the 'bird' teams.

I don't know if anyone's noticed or not, but I haven't been doing much baseball here on the blog in recent months. In case anyone has noticed, and wondered why, it's simply because I still don't have the majority of my player collections inventoried. I'm kind of burned out on adding lists to the TCDB, and am down to adding about one player a week at this point, which makes for some very slow inventorying. I think that Bo is the only modern baseball player that I've done so far, so I didn't have to get up and go look at what I already had while placing these orders. And I don't have very many cards of Jamie Moyer, so it's pretty easy to remember what I do and don't have. Everybody else is a little more difficult.

All of the baseball or bust folks can probably bounce now, as that was the extent of my baseball purchases. Whoops24 had a few more $1 and up baseball cards that I was interested in, but I wasn't looking to go too crazy with my spending. If they're still available in another month or two, I'll probably go back and grab a few of them.

I think it's because a lot of newer collectors are just finding out about it, but I feel like I've heard and seen more talk about the 1988 Fournier Estrellas set in the last year or so, than I had in the previous thirty. Of course most of these people only care about the MJ card, which isn't a bad thing if you're of the sort that doesn't, because the rest of cards in the set can, for the most part, still be had for very little. 

It's been a long time since I last acquired any new 1991-92 Fleer Wheaties. If the shipping wasn't so prohibitive, I'd just try to get some of the full sheets and cut out the cards that I still needed, but as long as it saves money, I'm okay with going the singles route too.

A Wheaties back for anyone who may be interested.

As a kid, I thought that there was almost nothing cooler than the Tony's Pizza Fleer sets. The only thing that edged them out in terms of coolness, was the McDonald's Hoops/Upper Deck sets. I used to have a complete set of both of the Tony's sets, but that was long time ago. Owning complete sets doesn't really do much for me these days, I'm mostly just trying to fill out player collections. 

More Tony's! If I was actively adding cameo cards to my player collections, I'd have to get two more Thunder Dan's, as both Buck Williams and Terry Porter are clearly shown (same goes for the Cliff up above where James Edwards reaching into the frame).

1989-90 Fleer has really shot up in price as of late, which seems a little weird to me, but it's the usual, MJ, and graders. It doesn't really matter to me either way, as long as I can still upgrade a few more cards on the cheap, like this uber-crispy Moses that cost me all of 18¢.

Some months ago I decided to open up my 1989-90 Hoops Superstars boxed set, and pull out all of my player collection needs. Before doing so though, I did decide to check eBay, and despite all of the current card craziness, was still surprised to see how much these sets that you couldn't sell at any price two years ago, were currently going for -- but then again, MJ, and the graders! I already had a loose MJ, as well as a few others, so I decided to sell my set, and just buy the couple more that I needed for 18¢ apiece off of Sportlots. My set sold like six hours after I listed it, the funds of which covered this Sportlots splurge, and then some. 

Oh, and I'm assuming that most of you are familiar with this set, but in case I'm wrong, yes, the borders are supposed to be yellow, my scanner just didn't pick it up very well.

Panini stickers were one of my favorite things to collect as a kid. There was so much variety, and they could be found at every grocery store, for not very much money. All of my stickers are one of the few things that I wish I had held on to when I stopped collecting, but how was I to know that I'd be so nostalgic for them 20 years later. Oh well, most of the singles can still be gotten on the cheap too.

I got a bunch of 91-92's. These can be a real pain to get off of the scanner tray, hence the bad photos.

I don't have a checklist going, but I'm fairly certain that I only need a few more from this set now.

If you didn't know any better, you'd swear I was a Celtics fan. I'm not by the way, I just collect a number of the teams former players. Larry is from one of those team sheets that were given out at games. I always liked the Tower of Power inserts. Top Flight? Not so much.

I still like the '93-94 Hoops set quite a bit, though I never owned a lot of it as a kid, which is kind of weird in retrospect since Hoops was my primary basketball brand. The LJ is a promo, and the other two are obviously 5th Anniversary parallels.

Seeing as how I rarely buy from Sportlots, I took this opportunity to grab some cheap Cliff Robinson inserts and parallels. I didn't scan the back, but this particular Stick Ums is of the Italian variety.

With this blue parallel, my Cliff E-XL rainbow is now complete. Granted, said rainbow is made up of only two cards (base and blue parallel), but a rainbow's a rainbow, right?

My scanner made this Topps at 50 look like absolute 💩.

Ditto on the blue Fleer Brilliants. I've never been a fan of the Mystique set, but a gold for 18¢ was awfully difficult to pass up.

Post-2000 basketball sets do very little for me, but I kind of like the looks of this Fleer Tradition. I also really dig the shade of green that they used for the parallel. It's very close to the color of my bedroom walls (center stage green).

I'm not sure how it is that I've gone the last ten years without knowing that Topps went back to the tallboy well at some point while I was away, but apparently they did back in 2001 with their High Topps release. Seeing as how I'm just now finding out about them, they obviously went over about as well as Fleer's attempt to bring them back in the previous decade. Collector's by in large didn't care for them in the 90's, and clearly still didn't in '01. Given how unpopular they are today, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I don't think that we'll ever see another set of tallboy's released. I mean seriously, can you imagine what would happen if Panini made a tallboy set? Today's "investors" would lose their collective sh*t! 

I don't have my LJ cards inventoried yet, but was certain that I was buying a duplicate hologram (because it was cheap), turns out though that I didn't already own a copy, so I guess that was a small win on my part. And t's impossible to tell from the scan, but the Metal is a Silver Spotlight.

My 1997-97 Metal Universe Reebok Silver didn't scan so well. I think I can almost guarantee too that you won't see a worse looking scan on the blogs today, it's that bad. I already had two of the Starquests, but wanted at least one more so that they could fill the row of a page.

That'll do it for this group. If you're one of the few folks out there that enjoy football cards, you might like Friday's post. If you're not one of those few, well, Sunday's post will be baseball related (another card bought from the sale of that Hoops Superstars box), so you can just wait until then to come back around.

My first TCDB trade?

According to those in the know, when it comes to trading cards, the Trading Card Database is the be-all-end-all of, well, all things trading cards. I've already documented my attempt(s), and subsequent failure(s), to try and use the site in any sort of meaningful way, so I won't be going into that again here today. I'll figure out how to properly use it someday, it just won't likely be anytime soon. In the meantime though, I am still a member of the site, and seeing as how it's been very good to the blogs, I'd always be available to assist it if I were ever to be called upon to help (I can't imagine a scenario where the site would ever need me in any capacity, but I'm just saying that if they did...).

Obviously there are tons of bloggers who use the site, many of whom I've had contact with over the years, but for someone who's never used the site to do any sort of trading, I've had a surprising number of interactions with it's non-blogging members as well, and even received some cards from one them earlier this year (which was a first).

Most of my interactions with the non-blogging members have been Secret Santa (is that even going to be doable this year?) related, or Free Stuff Friday related, but I've also received a few emails about things that were seen on the blog, and once even received an offer to buy something that was seen on the blog -- which was declined, but I certainly didn't mind being asked. One of those people in the first group would be, Kari (user ID: karsal), who joined us for last year's Secret Santa, and just so happened to claim a few cards from my first FSF. I always say that I'm not looking for anything in return when it comes to the FSF stuff, but am not about to turn up my nose to things being sent back my way, which was exactly what happened with Kari; I wasn't looking for anything in return from him, but wasn't going to not open up, and gleefully accept, the PWE that showed up in my mailbox.

Having never received anything from Kari before, I had no idea what to expect from this envelope, but ended up being very pleased with it's contents.

The bulk of the envelope consisted of inserts from the 1998-99 Topps Chrome Season's Best set. If memory serves, Topps introduced Season's Best with their 1996-97 flagship, and Chrome, sets, which without looking it up, I know ran at least through to the 1999-00 sets. The appeal of SB, at least in this humble bloggers opinion, was that it was usually at least 20 cards deep, and was made up of multiple different designs, so it was like getting multiple different sets in one.

The SB inserts are considered to be low-end these days, which is unfortunate, because they still look really good, regular and chromed, even today -- well, except for some of the 1997-98 Chrome's, as though are prone to greening.

Depending on which day of the week you were to ask me, I'd flip-flop between which year was my favorite for the Season's Best, some days it would be 1998-99 edition, and others it would be the original 1996-97 release, which are like night-and-day when compared to these.

It goes without saying, but as with all things shiny, my scans do not do these cards any justice, especially on the Newcomers design.

Kari also snuck in another insert from the 1998-99 Chrome set as well...

I don't think that I'm covering any new ground when I say this, but 1998-99 was a good year for basketball inserts/parallels. Some my say that there were too many that year, but I'm not one of them, I never get tired of seeing them, and can really never have too many of them. Surprisingly, most of these were new to me, although I did have 1 Duncan and 3 Robinson's already, but I don't mind, duplicates of these are more than welcome, and with 4 Robinson's now, I can't help but wonder if I should try to go for an entire pages worth?

Despite today's title, this obviously wasn't a trade per se, more of an exchange, and it wasn't done through the TCDB, but it was with a non-blogging member of the site, so I guess it was more like my first... TCDB related exchange?

Thank you again, Kari, the selection here was top notch, and the cards were very much appreciated. Hopefully one of these days I'll have more cards that I can send back across the border, as I think that these were considerably better than what you claimed from that first FSF way back when.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Today is a card show day, and not just any old card show day, no, it's one of the twice a year super mega 200+ table Nashville card show (aka the baby National) days... and I'm not there!

I mentioned in the last post that I had been looking forward to this one for months, since September to be more specific, only to find out a couple of weeks ago that all of this waiting had been for naught.

I had originally planned on starting this post off with a bit of a rant, but after thinking about it, I realized that a). The last thing the internet needs is yet another person ranting about something, and b). The rant would be completely irrelevant to anyone not attending the show, which is probably everyone reading this, so why bother?

So instead of ranting, I'll just say that a few changes have been made to how the big shows are being run going forward, including the addition of an admission fee, and I'm not happy with these changes, so I decided not to attend -- which wasn't an easy decision by the way, as these big shows started almost right after I moved here, and I had attended every single one up until today's.

If the changes to the show weren't enough to keep me away, the weather probably would've been. We've had what I'm hoping is the last of the winter weather over the past few days; cold, snow, icy roads, etc. Things are supposed to be getting better tomorrow, but until then, I wasn't too keen on being out on the road at 4:30am, and possibly hitting some spots of black ice. I'm at about 1,900 above sea level, so things are much worse weather wise here than they are down in Nashville, but it does take a bit to start getting to those lower elevations. And not to toot my own horn, I'm a pretty solid driver, especially when doing so under less than ideal road conditions, but it's everybody else that I sometimes worry about.

I think that just about covers everything, so instead of going to the show today, I'm hoping to get outside for a bit this afternoon, and then tonight I'm going to sit down and open up the cheap box of 1991 Upper Deck football that I got the other day. Oh, and I've got this here post to finish up as well! I figured that since I won't be having a bunch of stuff from today's show to blog about, I might as well as get to the last of the cards from September's super mega show (my last super mega show?).

And since I know there's a lot of baseball only people out there, I'll warn you in advance that there is no baseball in today's post, but there was a reason for that, one which I will try to cover at the end of the post.

I actually started this post back in October, but quickly realized that it might be a while before I finished it, so I made a few notes in the draft so that I wouldn't forget some of the details -- and I'm very grateful to my past self for doing so, because I had indeed forgotten most of the details.

Everything you see here today came from the last table that I stopped at that day, and even though the dealer had decent sized spread, I still probably would've missed it had I not done one last walk through. I was pretty tired by the time I stopped here, and seeing how many monster boxes this guy had (at least 30), I did initially think about just walking by, but there was a sign that said everything was a buck - a dollar table if you will - and with as many boxes as there were, I couldn't help but at least look through one to see if there were any deals to be had. Everything was separated by sport, and I just started looking in the basketball box that was closest to me. The above 1993-94 Scoring Kings was the first card in the first row of that first box that I looked in, and after finding it, I knew I was going to be stuck going through as many of those boxes as I could.

As cool as it was to find that Nique, I couldn't figure out how it was still there, I mean the show had been open for over four hours by the time I hit this table? I would end up having this same thought many times over the course of the next hour or so.

One doesn't find a lot of Jordan inserts in the cheap boxes anymore, so this one was definitely a surprise. I thought for sure that once I got home I'd find a hidden crease through it, or some other similar issue, but it ended up being completely fine (all of these were photographed, hence the weird glare spots and wonky angles).

I think I got to these boxes just at the right time too, because a guy showed up just after I found the MJ, and asked the dealer if there were any Jordan's in the boxes? The dealer said that there were, and the guy then proceeded to go through all of the basketball and pulled out all of the MJ base cards, most of which I had already passed on.

Spectralight's are another thing that I'm not accustomed to finding at shows, in fact I don't think that I had ever found a single one at show before. I thought just finding one of the Reign Man was cool, but a few cards further I hit a run of them...

These don't photograph well, and they scan even worse, so for those who aren't familiar with this parallel (for you baseball fans, think Cyber Stats), so I tried, and failed, to give you a better angle.

Had they been cheaper, I probably would've gotten them all, but since they were $1 each, I just went with guys I collect... and Dee Brown, who I will always be very fond of! I ended up leaving behind a bunch of guys like Greg Anthony and Billy Owens, but I was, and still am, pretty happy with what I got.

Of everything in this post, this is probably the only card that I overpaid for, but I don't think by much. There were a few other Dr. J parallels from this set, but the pink was the only one that I really wanted at the time.

I almost got a Barkley Generations as well, but part of the bottom had been peeled up (probably from getting hooked on a toploader), so back into the box he went.

Most of my regular readers probably already know that I'm not big on rookie cards, but for a dollar I wasn't about to pass up one of Timmy D! It wasn't until I got home that I noticed it was a Minted in Springfield parallel, which of course was even better than the base rookie.

Despite what you've seen here, probably 95% or more of the basketball boxes were made up of low end 90's inserts (dime box material), newer low end parallels (dime box material), and 90's base cards (nickel box material). The base was all very sharp though, so I'm thinking that he was hoping that the graders might be all over those -- they didn't seem to be while I was there.

After looking through the basketball, I really wanted to call it a day, but I had to give the football boxes a chance as well, although I knew that I wouldn't be going through them all, as there had to be at least double the amount of the basketball.

The first card from the first box was this '68 Joe Namath. He's got some wrinkles, and some spray paint(?), but it's still a playing days Namath, my first playing days Namath. Despite it's problems, I still really like it, although I wish I knew the story behind the paint.

Looking at it again now after almost five months has passed, I'm not as fond of this one as I was at the time, but that happens sometimes, it's definitely not the end of the world.

Not being alive at the time, I still find it weird to see, or even think of, O.J. as a Niner.

I always say that I don't much care for rookies, and yet this is now the second one in this post. I've never owned a Bo football rookie before, and sure it's got a few surface scratches, but it's still a Bo rookie, and even in this condition it's got be worth a buck, right?

I had only gotten through a couple of the football boxes when a guy showed up with his, I wanna say 5 or 6 year old son. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but this kid was a little bundle of energy - as most young boys are - darting to and fro, and clearly wanting to be anywhere but there. Dad clearly wanted him to start collecting football cards though, so he reigned him and was trying to get the kid to pick out some cards that he liked. The kid obliged, sort of, he just walked over to the boxes and started pulling out random cards and saying things like "Ummmm... this one?", to which the dad would reply "The BENGALS?!?!". Then the kid would put the card back and try again, which was met with "The COWBOYS?!?!". It became apparent pretty quick that not only did dad want his son to be a football card collector, but he also wanted him to only collect whoever dad's team was, and was starting to get agitated over the fact that junior had clearly forgotten who dad's team was. After listening to a few minutes of this, I was ready to explode on dad. I could tell that this a$$hole was the same sort that most likely makes his kid watch all of "his" team's games, and probably tells him when to cheer and boo as well... and I f*cking loathe those kind of guys! I know that parents don't like to be told how to raise their kids, especially by those of us without kids, but it was around 90 degrees that day, and that kid shouldn't have been at that show -- he should've been out at on a shaded playground somewhere, and been allowed to just go crazy for a couple of hours... as all kids should be allowed to do on nice summer days.

Since I'm not one to make a scene, at least not at this point in my life, I decided to just forgo the rest of the football boxes, as well as the unseen baseball boxes, and pay for my stuff and leave -- which I did.

So even though I didn't get through all of these boxes, I still found a couple of neat things, and those coupled with the rest of the stuff that I came home with, made for a solid day's work. I have no idea when I'll be going to another show, but I don't have any shortage of blog material, so missing today's show really won't have much of an effect on me in the long run.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.