Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 15

I had so much success last month when I went to Goodwill the day before the 50% off sale, that I decided to forgo this months sale, and go the day before again.

Spoiler alert: I wasn't quite able to duplicate last months success, but I can assure you that it wasn't for lack of trying!

Last month, all of the video shelves were completely full, and so was the spinny rack of DVD's. By comparison, the video shelves were only half full this time, and the DVD rack was only about 40% full. It was a little disappointing to walk in and see that, but since it takes me 35 minutes to get there, I'm still gonna try and get my money's worth -- besides, just because the shelves are only half full, doesn't mean that there still can't be some good stuff in there.

Having not had cable/satellite for a number of years now, I'm a little out of touch with what all of the various stations have been up to, for example, is TNT still making westerns? I remember back in the late 90's and early 2000's, they seemed to have a new original movie practically every week. Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but they did crank out more than a few. The only that I watched at the time, was Purgatory (has since been bought on DVD too).

I like westerns, so I don't know why I didn't watch more of these films? Maybe I can just use my standard "There were too many other things to watch at the time", it works in most cases when talking about shows/movies from that era because it's true. Anyways, never saw Crossfire Trail, at least not until last week when I brought these home. Good movie, standard fare as far as westerns go, if you've seen a few of them, you can kind of guess how this one's gonna play out. Everybody did a good job acting wise though, you can really tell that Mark Harmon enjoyed getting to play a bad guy.

I have the whole series on DVD, but Amazing Stories is one of a handful of shows that I'll still buy episodes on tape of, even if I already own them in another format... if only because they remind me of my childhood.

I didn't watch a lot of Disney when I was growing up, especially the live-action stuff, as such there's quite a lot of that I have never seen, or even heard of -- No Deposit No Return being one of those. I may not have ever heard of it before, but it didn't take much to sell me on it, seeing Darren McGavin in his Kolchak suit was all that was needed for me to pick this one up.

I don't recall where I was, but a couple of weeks after I moved here to TN, I found volume IV of this series, Greatest plays, and hadn't seen another one since. It's kind of neat to finally find another one, especially one that looks like it's going to be really good.

At this point I had looked through all of the videos, since I was holding four tapes, I figured I might as well go back through them and see if I could get to the 5/$2 threshold (they're fifty cents apiece otherwise) -- but before I could start doing so, a woman that works there came out from the back with a cart of videos (how fortuitous!). Since there was no one else looking at videos, I figured that there was no need to crowd her, so I moved over to the DVD's while she unloaded the basket.

As I already mentioned, the DVD rack was only about half full, and about half of those were leftover from last month, but I did find one thing of interest though. The Equalizer and John Wick came out within a month of each other, so it's almost impossible to read about either online, without seeing a comparison to the other. You'll find plenty of "debates" over which is better, although more often than not, these "debates" just end up devolving into name calling... this is how our modern world works after all! Personally, I like John Wick more, but I'm a fan of the more traditional revenge pictures, so that's probably why I lean the way that I do. The Equalizer is still a solid film though, my only real complaint is that I wish it would've been a little bit more like the television show, but I'm guessing that's just a me thing.

After taking what felt like forever, the gal finally gone done putting out the rest of the videos, and now there was three more shelves worth of stuff to look at, as well as some competition in the form of two guys (one of whom was a hipster wearing a kitschy video store shirt) that showed up seemingly out of thin air once she got done. Thankfully though, I'm a seasoned vet when it comes to scanning VHS titles, so before they could even finish the first of the newly stocked shelves, I was already grabbing the only thing worth taking off of the third shelf (eat it, hipster!).

Look at that beauty! You don't see a lot of tapes like this in the wild anymore, as most of them, as well as pretty much all of the big box horror, are in private collections (or sitting in eBay stores). I have more than a few obscure horror videos, but 99% of those were acquired decades ago, back when almost nobody cared about such things. Most of the 80's slasher pics were not very good, they're made up of mostly just boobs and blood, but almost always had great video covers, which is where most of the value lies -- (most) people don't collect them for the film itself, they do it for the covers, as they remind them of being a kid/teen and wandering down the horror aisle(s) of their local video stores. In a way, it really is nostalgia in it's purest form. I sure am glad that I waited for that woman to put those tapes out (I almost didn't), because finding this one really made my day. And I almost forgot, the best part about this particular tape? It's not an ex-rental, which is pretty darn rare for something like this.

I may not have found as many videos as last month, but overall I don't think that I did too bad, I mean it was certainly worth the trip, and in the end that's all I really care about... getting enough to justify me going out. I also made a somewhat rare (at least for me) stop at Big Lots that morning as well, a stop that yielded some surprising goodies, which will be covered in Wednesday's post. And yes, I know, two video/DVD posts in a row, deal with it!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

COMC Shuffle #26

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard!

1970 Topps #324

This has always seemed like an odd photo to me, not quite as awkward as the Hank Aaron from this set, but it definitely doesn't look natural.

1999-00 Upper Deck Ultimate Victory - Ultimate Collection #146

This was just an impulse purchase, it was cheap, shiny, and just so happened to be a hard to find 90's parallel, so...

1971 Topps Milk Duds Whole Box

If Willie Davis ever asks you if you'd be interested in seeing his famous disappearing bat trick, take my advice and... run away as fast you can!!!

2018 Panini Classics Timeless Tributes Orange #102

I love Eric's card from this set, but after getting this basic orange, as well as one of the orange Optichromes, I can honestly say that I probably need them. The blue's and gold's look great, but the orange's not so much (at least not for Dickerson).

2013 Panini Cooperstown Collection Green Crystal Shard #32

Replacing one logo for another. That's exactly what Panini did with this photo, Jimmie now looks like he's playing for the National Baseball Hall of Fame's... can't say that I've ever heard of that team before?

1909 T206 #?

Harry Gaspar (misspelled on the card) played four seasons of professional ball, all with Cincinnati. During this time he compiled a record of 46-48, with his best season being his first (1909), in which he went 19-11, with a 2.01 ERA. In 1910, he and Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown led the majors in saves, each notching seven respectively.

I had forgotten that there was a stamp on the back of this one. Now I'm gonna have to go find it and see if I can see what it says.

1974-75 Topps #30

Set need. This card proved surprisingly difficult to find in decent shape for a realistic price.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Yellow and Red Mosaic Prizms #209

Recently I responded to a question on Twitter by a posting a picture of Shawn Kemp's 1990-91 Fleer rookie, this then led to someone who I didn't know that I was mutually following mentioning growing up in the Northwest and watching him and Gary Payton, I then said that I saw plenty of them while growing up in Portland, which led to them to reveal that they too were from Portland!!! Portland isn't a small place (at least not anymore), and I know that a lot of people have come from there, but it's still always a bit of a surprise when I encounter a fellow native.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Blue and Green Mosaic Prizms #198

Even though the 2014 set has two different kinds of all-blue Prizms (regular and mojo), I think that Elgin looks best on the blue-green combo, although him on those all-blue's looks pretty good as well, and I certainly wouldn't mind getting a few of them :)

2000 EX - E-Xceptional Red #7 XC

When talking about the big three, it's kind of amazing to see the difference in price with E-Xceptional inserts. On the basketball side they keep going up, most of the baseball are still fairly cheap (a few have gone up though), meanwhile the football is in the gutter and isn't showing any signs of climbing out anytime soon. As far as this insert goes, most of my examples are of the basketball variety, but over the last year or so I have started picking up more of the super cheap football's.


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Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 14

Last month's trip to Serenity Thrift was highly unusual, in that there video section was completely full, in fact their shelves were so full that the excess tapes had spread over to one of the book bins. Seeing as how videos (and DVD's) are my primary goal when going to any thrift store, this overflow of VHS was certainly not a problem, when it comes to videos... there's no such thing as "too much"!

I mentioned at the time that I usually only stop in there about once every six months or so, but because of their anomalous excess of tapes, and the unexpected bounty that resulted from that excess, that I would be returning much sooner than normal, and true to word, I did!

It had been about a month as of last week, and I figured that that was enough time to have let passed in between trips, plus I had to, or at least wanted to, check out all of the Halloween goodies at The Dollar Tree that's located right next door to the thrift store.

So, was it a successful trip? Was it a bust? There's only one way to find out...

After finding multiple Disney Afternoon tapes last month -- which are becoming increasingly rare to find -- I wasn't expecting to come across any more, but I did, well, one to be exact. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but this was sitting right next to a Back to the Future box set, which I would've also bought had it not been an ex-library copy.

I know that we're all supposed to be sensitive to head injury's, and offended by the barbaric testosterone laden sport that is football (at least that what Twitter tells me), but g**damn do I love these kind of videos! Think of me what you will, but I still enjoy seeing quarterbacks getting smoked, and receivers getting dead when venturing across the middle. Also, this box is the same on both sides, hence only seeing the one side.

This came from a local high school, who I'm assuming finally upgraded (DVD?), funny though, I didn't think anything like this was still shown classrooms. They had another one on the geography of the Bahamas, but I left that one behind. When I went to pay, one of the gals at the counter just couldn't not mention that they had a bunch of these last week, which of course didn't do many me any good, and probably didn't need to be said.

A Fred Astaire film that I wasn't familiar with? Yes, please! As an aside, the cover is very Vertigo-ish, which I found to be quite appealing as well.

Last Christmas I watched The Santa Clause for the first time, and enjoyed it quite a bit more than I thought I would, and I've sort of been keeping an eye out for the sequel ever since -- but it's gonna be a few more months before I have an opinion on it.

Geez, Dream a Little Dream is a film that I haven't thought about in forever! Anybody remember that one? Kind of crappy knockoff of Freaky Friday. I always enjoy seeing the Corey's, but that movie was not good. And if I'm being honest, I kind of forgot that a sequel had been made, I never saw it, but I'm guessing that it too will not end up being very good... but I still had to give it a go :)

I can't remember how many videos were brought home last month, so I can't say whether or not this was a more successful outing, but finding six this time was pretty good, certainly worth going that's for sure. And I found a couple of things for some future Halloween craft projects at The Dollar Tree, which is always a plus, now if I could just stay focused long enough to work on some of those projects...

***** BONUS CONTENT *****

My mom took a mini-vacation last week, and even though it turned into more of a working vacation, she still found some time to hit up a couple of thrift stores in the area, thrift stores that ended up yielding a couple of more videos for yours truly!

Generally speaking, I'm not huge fan of sports movies, well, at least not those that revolve around the big three -- but I will certainly give this still sealed 2-tape set a try. I've never seen either of these films, and was only familiar with the Jackie picture, although after reading the synopsis, I think that the Campanella biopic is going to be the better of the two.

I'm always down for retrospective's of stars from the golden era.

Body and Soul fits into the category of "been meaning to see it for years, but have never had the opportunity to do so"... it's always nice to be able to remove something from that list :)

Many thanks to my mom (she doesn't read the blog, but it's still good to give public thanks) for the videos. And for anybody who might be interested, I went to Goodwill, and Big Lots, a couple of days after going to Serenity Thrift, both provided me with plenty of goodies (especially Big Lots), and both hauls will be shown in separate upcoming posts.


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Life's a beach

We didn't do traditional family vacations when I was a kid, but seeing as how we weren't a traditional family, the lack of traditional vacations sort of makes sense. This isn't something that I would ever complain about though, because instead of family road trips to the Grand Canyon, or trips (by car or plane) to Disneyland, we would pop over to the beach for 2-3 day stays multiple times each summer.

I say that we didn't take vacations, but there was the one trip to Seattle that we took when I was about nine years old. Thanks to yours truly, this trip was a complete and utter trainwreck. I can't remember what my deal was, but I was not happy to be there, and I made sure to let it be known during our entire stay. In retrospect, this disastrous excursion may have been partly responsible for my mom not wanting to venture too far from Portland when it came to future outings. I was just talking about regrets a couple of days ago, and this is one that is definitely on the list, as I still regret ruining this trip by being such a little a**hole. But I digress...

My earliest memory of being at the beach is pretty vague, there's no specific place involved, it's just me going around and trying to "rescue" stranded jellyfish. Due to the potential of possibly being stung, I wasn't allowed to help the big Pacific Sea Nettle's, but everybody else was fair game. It's very foggy, but I can remember going around and scooping my hand under them so that there would be a layer of sand between us, and walking each one that I found back down to the water. Looking back, the odds are high that many of them were already dead, and the one's that weren't, would've most likely just washed back on to shore, attempting to relay these facts to young me would've been pointless though -- I had a job to do, and silly grown-up words weren't going to prevent me from doing it.

The earliest memories that I have of a specific beach trip come from the year after my grandma died. My grandma was diagnosed with leukemia in 1988, and by March of '89 she was gone. The main part of my family wasn't very big at the time of her diagnosis, but she was the foundation, so her passing really did a number on everyone, especially my grandpa. Even though she was only in her early 50's, I think it was the suddenness of the disease that affected everyone so much, you know, it was like one moment she was being diagnosed, and then in the next moment we were at her funeral. I was only six at the time, and I was very close to her, but it would be years before I started noticing the effects that her death, and subsequent absence, had on me.

Fractures in the family dynamic started occurring almost immediately after my grandma's death, although I wouldn't learn of this until about a decade later, but early on there were some attempts to keep things together... namely a family beach trip in the summer of 1990.

My grandpa was fond of Seaside, so it was decided (by who I don't know) that a house would be rented for a couple of days, and everyone who could go, would go. Most of my memories from this outing are lost to time, but I do recall that not everyone was there (a couple of aunts and uncles were missing), and that I had to share a bed with my grandpa, which might not have been so bad, but my grandpa was notorious for his loud snoring (think wall shaking), so I probably didn't get a whole heck of a lot of sleep over those couple of days.

The other thing that I remember is that Seaside was awfully crowded, which didn't appeal to my mom or myself (even at eight years old I didn't like crowds). They did however have a really wonderful arcade, which had I been older, I probably would've spent the whole weekend in, but being so young, I needed supervision, and nobody wanted to spend a lot of their time watching me play games, so I don't think I got more than an hour or two there that weekend.

The summer of 1991 saw another planned trip to Seaside with the family, but before that took place, my mom and I went to Rockaway Beach for the fourth of July. I believe that this was my first time going there, and It. Was. Great! Rockaway truly was a breath of fresh air (literally and figuratively). At that time it was still a sleepy beach town, a sleepy beach town that also just so happened to put on a massive fireworks show each Independence Day. And for being such a small town, it sure had a lot of great places. Practically right across the street from our motel, the Silver Sands, was an antique book/junk shop that in retrospect I wish I would've been a little older so that I might've appreciated it more. And then like a block away was a card shop (I wish I could remember what it was called), and for being located in such a small place, it sure was stocked well (the owner was really nice too). The only thing I remember buying there that first year was a couple of packs of 1991 Wild Card football, and that only stands out because I pulled a 1000 stripe out of one of those packs -- although the significance of that card was lost on me at that time, as I didn't really understand what the deal with the stripes was.

The family trip to Seaside came later in the summer, and it would end up being quite the disaster, but at least this time it wasn't my fault. My uncle's fiancée (my soon to be aunt) was... hmm... how to phrase this? Let's just say that she was under the weather, and it made for an unpleasant trip... for everyone! My mom was so disgusted after this, that she decided that her and I would be skipping the following year's family trip, which actually led to us skipping the next couple of years.

The summer of '92 proved to be a good one, as we returned to Rockaway for the 4th again, and then later in the summer we went to Newport for a weekend. I had some early birthday money when we went to Rockaway that year, which ended up getting spent on a box of 1992 Wild Card Basketball, and a few more packs of '91 Wild Card football. The box was as good as I would've wanted it to be, but the football packs were where the magic was, as they yielded yet another 1000 stripe [even then I still didn't realize how amazing this was, I would eventually pull two more years later from different locations... I still haven't ever heard of anyone else ever pulling four 1000 stripes]

My first trip to Newport ended up being pretty good too. They have the big aquarium there, which is somewhere that I would recommend people going at least once, but the real treat, at least for me, was the Ripley's Believe it or Not! museum. I loved everything about Ripley's when I was a kid, so even though the museum was a bit cheesy, and not overly large, I absolutely adored it. There was also a wax museum right next door, but that didn't do a lot for me at the time.

1993 saw us return to Rockaway for the 4th once again. This would be the year that I got a box of 1992 Topps Archives as an early birthday present (no more packs of Wild Card football though), and can recall opening up the box at the motel. I think that then later in the summer we went to Lincoln City, which I don't have any recollections of.

My mom and I would continue to take at least two trips to the beach each summer until about 1997, always to Rockaway for the fireworks show, always staying at the Silver Sands, mostly because of the indoor pool (if you've ever been to the Oregon Coast, then might understand why an indoor pool was so appealing) -- and later in the summer it would either be Lincoln City or Newport. Somewhere between 1993 and 1997 we would attend one more of the family's beach trips, I can't remember where it was, but it wasn't Seaside. By then the family had grown quite a bit (kids were being cranked out left and right), so it was quite a bit different then it had been five or six years earlier.

I don't recall why it is that we stopped going to Rockaway, but by the time we stopped going it had changed quite a bit as well. Both the book/junk store, and the card shop, were just memories by then, and the town was becoming more touristy - probably why the Silver Sand's prices went up - which now that I think about it, is probably why we stopped going.

The trips may have stopped, but I will always associate 1991 Wild Card Football, 1992 Wild Card basketball, and 1992 Topps Archives with Rockaway, more specifically that card shop in Rockaway. At one time I had quite a few cards from all three sets, but all of them (save for the 1000 stripers), and so much more, was donated to a charity auction in the early 2000's. I had stopped collecting by then, and hadn't planned on ever coming back, so when I heard about the auction, it seemed like as good a place as any to give the bulk of my cards too. There have been a few times since I started back up with the card collecting, that I sort of regret giving away all of those cards, but then I remember how excited the woman who ran the auction was to get the donation, and knowing that the proceeds went to a very worthy cause, it makes me feel far less regretful.

Since returning to collecting I have a picked a number of 1991 Wild Card football stripes, as I do still like that set quite a bit. The Wild Card basketball is a lot less appealing to me at this point, it's the college jersey's, I'm just not a big fan of cards with guys in there college uni's. And the Topps Archives, well, I still love the hell out of that set, but have had little luck finding any in the wild. I've maybe come across 2 or 3 of the gold parallels over the last nine years, and that's it.

A couple of months ago, Randy, who can be found on Twitter @RefsInTheBack, picked up a box of Archives, seeing this provoked many memories, many of which you have just read. Because of the memories, and because of my inability to find any cards from this set, I took advantage of the offer that Randy made a few days later when he asked if anyone was interested in any of his duplicates. I really only wanted a couple of cards (at least for now), and Randy was kind enough to send those couple of wants my way. So many thanks to Randy, not only for the cards, but for providing the inspiration for today's post as well.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

COMC Shuffle #25

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard!

1975-76 Topps #77

Walt Wesley was a decent player, but he was no match for Bill.

2016 Panini Certified Mirror Red #98

I know that I haven't seen all of his cards, but of the one's that I am familiar with, this is by far my favorite, I just really love the photo. I can't remember how many parallels this card has (10-12), but I do know that I have all but four of them... I'm not going to hold my breath over thinking that I might ever get the black 1/1 though!

1969-70 Topps #87

One of the oft forgotten members of the Blazers '76-77 championship team. Herm retired after getting his ring, despite having only played eight seasons, and at 30, still being young, and healthy, enough to have continued to contribute for many a team. And like a lot of ex-Blazers, Herm stayed in Oregon after his retirement, where he lived and worked until his passing in 2005.

1995-96 Topps Power Boosters #286

The '95-96 season was not a good one for Mark, in fact it would end up being his worst season, as injuries limited him to just seven games. Being the competitor (and great player) that he was, Mark did bounce back and play for two more season with Golden State and Orlando -- even leading the league in free throw percentage (90.6) during the '96-97 season.

2011 Topps Chrome Blue Refractor #50

Blue refractors and Ichiro go together like cream corn and wrestling :)

1975-76 Topps #324

Having folded after the previous season, the Sounds were just a memory by the time this set came out. Like most of the ABA franchises, the Sounds had been struggling financially, finishing the '74-75 season with a record of 27-57 only served to hasten their demise. Despite that terrible record, they still ended up making the playoffs (did I mention that the ABA was struggling?), losing to the eventual champion, the Kentucky Colonels, in the first round. Looking back, it's hard to believe that a team with the likes of Mel Daniels, George Carter, Freddie Lewis, Chuck Williams, Rick Mount, and Roger Brown (among others) could've finished so low in the rankings. No surprise that they would've done so poorly in their matchup with the Colonels though... that team was built to win!

1999 Pacific Revolution Icons #4

90's? Insert? Die-cut? Shiny? Pacific? Barry Sanders? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and YES!!!!

2014-15 Panini Prizm Blue and Green Mosaic Prizms #247

Panini went off the beaten path with this image. Instead of using one of the tried and true pictures of Spud from the late 80's, they went against the grain and selected a shot from his second stint with the Hawks. Spud came back to Atlanta for the 1995-96 season, which also happened to be the season that the Hawks rolled out their new logo (of which Spud is sporting). Funny thing is, Spud didn't end up playing in Atlanta very long, as he was traded to Minnesota after just 32 games -- meaning that this photo came from a rather narrow time period.

1962 Topps Mars Attacks! #25

This card is just a tad miscut, but you know something? I. Don't. Care! When it comes to this set, as long as it's not too creased, or missing too much paper, I'll pretty much take whatever I can get.

2012 Panini Black Friday Kings Cracked Ice #1

I didn't really need it, but I got this cracked ice to accompany my 3/4 completed Progressions rainbow anyway. If I remember correctly, these are unofficially numbered to /25, but no actual serial number was printed on the card though... your guess is as good as mine as to why not?

I don't know if anyone noticed or not, but I skipped last week's Shuffle. I was working on a long non-card related post earlier in the week, which I subsequently got stuck on, then couldn't get unstuck, got annoyed, and because of this I ended up not wanting to blog for the rest of the week... hence the missing post!


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Trying something new

"Regrets, I've had a few. But then again, too few to mention."

As many of you undoubtedly already know, that's a snippet from the song, "My Way". Penned by hitmaker extraordinaire, Paul Anka. And performed by the great Frank Sinatra.

As timeless as the song has proven to be, many would argue that it has been played to death (wait for the intended pun), not only has corporate radio done what corporate radio does, but it's also been a mainstay at funerals for the better part of 50 years now.

The song has been covered in linear fashion, and has also been covered after being rewritten (Sid Vicious). In no way would I ever compare myself to Paul Anka, or think that I could do any of what he has done better, BUT if I were to rework the quoted lyrics in order make them sound a little more like something I might say, well, they might look a little something like this:

"Regrets, I have more than a few. But then again, far too many to mention."

Regret is a terrible thing. From ancient Greek philosophers to modern day TED talkers, everyone seems to have a theory on the nature of regret, all of which is of course just theory, and is really only helpful to those who's beliefs are in line with whoever happens to be theorizing.

Sometimes you'll hear people say something like "What's done is done", or even worse, "When I die, I'll be doing so without any regrets". My first response to the latter is always "Well, bully for you!".   Because when my time comes, much as I hate to say it, I will be laden with regrets (hopefully a carry-on is allowed).

Having so many regrets is terribly unhealthy, I know, but that's just the way I am. Some of the bigger ones creep into my mind on nearly daily basis, there are so many things, that given the opportunity, I want to go back and change -- things that, for lack of a better term, will continue to haunt me for the rest of my days. I may poke fun at those who claim to be regretless, but in all honesty, I envy the hell out of them!

Most of my regrets involve life altering decisions that were incorrectly made, or not made at all. But I also have plenty that are centered around more trivial things, like collecting. Thankfully those of the collecting variety don't creep into my psyche very often, and when they do, they don't tend to stick around very often.

One thing that I've come to realize as of late, and wish that I had done differently, was to have taken more time to appreciate individual cards... stop and smell the cards if you will :)

Growing up as a set collector, and a rather obsessive one at that, I can remember so many times where I should've taken the time to slow down and just enjoy the cards for what they were, instead of always worrying about whether or not whatever set was getting any closer to completion. I mean seriously, there were times where I would open a pack, flip the cards over, and just go through the numbers while looking at my checklist -- it didn't matter who was in the pack, it was all about whether I needed the card or not. Now it wasn't always like that, but looking back, when it was, I don't think I was having a great deal of fun with collecting cards.

Because of my predisposition for sets, I didn't do nearly enough appreciating of individual cards, and I regret this, things probably would've been a lot more fun if I had been able to just collect cards that I liked, rather than always (and I mean always) having to work on sets. I also probably wouldn't have ever stopped collecting cards, but by the late 90's I was just so overwhelmed, and so burned out, that I just walked away cold turkey.

The only anomaly during that original run was my Ken Griffey Jr. and Larry Johnson (basketball) collections, and even then, those were only made up of duplicates, as anything that wasn't a duplicate, HAD TO GO TOWARDS A SET!

A lot of kids had favorite cards, but again, I was a weirdo, so save for a few rare exceptions, most cards just didn't stand out to me. My memory for most of my early card collecting days isn't great, but I do remember those couple of rare exceptions where a card did stand out. There was my '87-88 Fleer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I don't know where I got it, but it was one of my prized possessions as a kid. Warren Moon's 1990 Score Hot Gun was a big one as well, if only because I had never seen a card quite like that. Then there was Shawn Kemp's 1990-91 Fleer rookie, a card that I'm still deeply in lust with. And the only other one that really grabbed my attention was this one:

I know it's just a guy punting a ball, but this image still gives me the feels even today. Besides just liking the card for aesthetic purposes, and the memory of doing so as a child, there is also a partial memory of me looking like an idiot that is attached to this card.

I'm pretty sure that given the friend that was involved, what I'm about to type took place in 1990. I was over at a friend's house, and we just happened to be walking through the living room while his dad and some other guys were watching the Dolphins v. somebody, and guess who was punting the ball at that very moment? If your answer was Reggie Roby, than you'd be correct! Anyways, I immediately recognized him, and said, in a much louder voice then necessary, "THAT'S THE GUY FROM THE CARD!". You'll often hear people speak of record scratch moments, well, this was one of them. All the talking that was being done ceased in an instant, and all eyes turned to me. In that moment, I realized that a) I had not used an indoor voice, and b) nobody had any idea what I was talking about. Needless to say, eight year-old me couldn't find a hole to crawl into fast enough. Thankfully we didn't live in that area for too much longer, so I wouldn't ever have to be reminded of that incident by any of the people who were there, although it would've been nice had that memory been one of the many that has since fallen by the wayside.

I would later see Reggie play many times, all from the comfort of my own home, and was always impressed with him as a player. I would also later get more of his cards, many of which featured images similar to his 1990 Pro Set card, meaning that I would at least stop and take note of them before placing the card in it's proper place within a set.

[I'm jumping ahead a bit here, but I'll be circling back around to Reggie in a minute] After about a decade away, I came back to card collecting in/or around 2010, and unfortunately I fell right back into set collecting. Things were going alright for the first couple of years, but as the years increased, so did the number of sets that I was working on. Sometime last year I started to sense that familiar feeling of being overwhelmed, which was being followed by a burnout chaser. Although unlike back in '99-00 when my first card collecting run ended, I now have a blog, and have met a lot of great people because of it, so I wasn't too keen on quitting collecting cold turkey again. Instead, I went through all of the sets that I was working on, and through a process of elimination, ended up cutting my workload in half. This seemed like it might work at the time, but it didn't take long before I realized that even half of what I was working on was still too much, so late last year I stopped working on all but four sets -- and those four were autograph sets, so definitely not your traditional "sets".

Stopping work on all sets was a good thing, as I'm no longer feeling overwhelmed, or feeling like I have to buy something. Since late last year I've pretty much just been a "in the moment" type of card collector, where I just get whatever appeals to me in that moment. As freeing as no longer working on any sets has been, it's also kind of left me feeling a tad rudderless. I've had no direction, which I think has been responsible for the waning interest in cards that I've been experiencing for the last couple of months.

I don't want to start up with any sets again, but some direction would be nice. I had the buybacks frankenset going on a few years ago, which I did enjoy for a time, but prices on those starting going up, and I wasn't willing to pay the newly risen prices for the ones I wanted -- plus a lot more people started doing them, so the semi-originality of it became lost, and so did my interest. The idea of a frankenset is still appealing though, it would give me direction, but I wouldn't have to follow any set rules. But what kind of set to do? Night Owl has his mini A&G set, Dayf has his non-sport set, both of which are quite appealing, but I don't want to knowingly copy someone else's idea. I also like the idea of doing an all vintage frankenset, especially since I've got so much unwanted vintage from now abandoned set builds (is anyone else already doing an all vintage frankenset?).

I've also thought about trying to collect a player's entire run. There would be some direction in that, but not in a traditional sense. The only problem with that is, who to collect? Modern player's are out, I don't care enough about any of them, and even if I did, with the way cards are produced these days, whoever it would be would just have too many cards to be able to complete their run... namely the gajillion 1/1's that are produced each year. So that leaves someone from the past, problem is, again the way cards are now being made, pretty much anyone I can think of has cards in modern sets, which means more superfractors, printing plates, etc. And that just won't do!

I believe the answer to the above question may have come to me quite accidently a couple of days ago while putting away some cards. I was flipping through one of my semi-newly created football binders that's sorted by team, I stopped to insert a few Dolphins, one of which was the Reggie Roby 1990 Pro Set, and it came to me, what about Reggie Roby? A quick trip to the TCDB told me (assuming that their numbers are correct) that he has 141 cards (I'm not counting the TriStar cut signature... those aren't real cards!!!!), that seems doable, especially since none of them are 1/1's. He retired right about the time that inserts started getting crazy, so there wouldn't be a ton of parallels to chase, in fact I only see three cards that could be a problem: 1991 Pro Line autograph, 1992 Wild Card 100 stripe, and the biggie, his 1992 Wild Card 1000 stripe (COMC has had two that have sold for less than $4).

As mentioned earlier, I liked him as a player, and from everything I've read, he was a good person (he passed away in 2005 at only 43 years old), which coupled with the reasonable amount of his cards to chase, means that I think I'm gonna go for it... I am now officially trying to complete Reggie Roby's entire card run!

Now that such a decision has been made, it only makes sense to go see how many cards of his I already have. Hmm? That search didn't turn out too well, apparently the only other card that I still have of his, is this 1990 Score... not a good start! I do however have unopened boxes of both 1990 and 1991 Topps, so I guess there's a chance that those boxes might have a few of his cards, but basically it looks like I'll be starting from scratch.

I must admit that I am a bit nervous about starting such a collection, but not because I haven't done anything like this before, no, it's more of a "I'm worried what Panini might do" kind of thing. Just because they haven't been including him in any of their newer sets, doesn't mean they won't start doing so at some point, especially if he ever makes it in to the HOF (a lot of people seem to think that he should already be there), because then the presses would be fired up, and 1/1's would start being printed en masse, after all... it is "their way"! So here's hoping that Panini doesn't end up making me regret this decision as well.


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