Cards on Cards sends LOTS of cards!

Was it last year? Or was it earlier this year? Hell, I can't remember, and I guess it doesn't really matter when it was, all that matters is that at some point in the past, Kerry, he of the long-running Cards on Cards, mentioned that he was fond of, and collecting, the 2005 and 2006 editions of Topps Turkey Red -- base, and parallels.

I don't know how anyone else felt about him mentioning this, but I was both happy, and relieved. You see I had had a stack of '06 red Turkey Red's sitting on a shelf for months (from yet another abandoned set build), wondering what I was going to do with them. They weren't sellable, and I hadn't seen anyone else wanting them, so I was feeling like I was going to be stuck with them fr awhile, or at least I was until Kerry's post came along.

I'm usually pretty slow to get things shipped, but I was motivated this time, so it didn't take me long to package up the stack of 60-70 (80?) Turkey's, along with a few other Kerry-esque things that I had laying around, and send them off.

I was feeling pretty good after that too, and not because I was able to send a bunch of cards to a fellow blogger, don't get me wrong, that was nice too, but the good feelings were coming from being able to get rid of so many unwanted cards in one fell swoop -- which has been a goal of mine this year (hence starting up the Free Stuff posts), and looking at the rate I'm going, probably next year as well.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when a chunky bubble mailer showed up from Kerry less than a week later, but I still was. I would soon find out that this rotund return-fire was made up of nothing but basketball cards, lots and lots of basketball cards, 119 to be exact... so much for getting rid of some cards!

When someone sends this many cards, it's kind of hard to weave any kind of narrative into the post, and for me it's difficult too because I don't know how many to show, I mean the entire package would be a bit much (even for me), but just doing three or four seems like it would be disrespectful to the person who sent the cards. So, I guess since Kerry pretty much just went through the list of players that I collect, and nearly hit all of them, this is just gonna be an oversized "look what I got" post, broken down mostly by player...

I don't know what set the Essential Legends insert is from (nor do I care), but I got Dennis Rodman out of a dime box last year, and now Kerry sent another handful or so of them -- if I was so inclined, I might actually think about building the set, as they're really attractive in hand.

In case you couldn't tell, there were a number of '04-05 Gold Medallions in this mailer, all of which were my firsts from that set.

Should've scanned the horizontal cards horizontally, but the gold Iverson does look kind of neat standing up.

This package arrived about a week before Kobe died, thankfully Kerry didn't send anything that the masses were overpaying for at the time, although if he had, I would've sent it back, as he couldn't have predicted what was gonna happen right after these were sent.

The top two were my first cards of Tony Parker in a Hornets jersey, and man do they look weird!

GP in a Lakers uni still doesn't look right either.

A bunch of these Studio's were included as well, nice set, the background has a kind of hologram/refractor vibe going on, which of course doesn't scan well.

With all of this MJ stuff going on right now, I've seen a lot of talk about who's the best ever? Who was the best at this? Who was the best at that? Well, here's a not so hot take... The Reign Man gets my vote for best in-game dunker ever! Oh, and speaking of Michael...

I'm not entirely sure if this empty pack was included for collecting purposes, or was just being used to protect the cards, but either way, I'll take it. I've started saving some empty wrappers, mostly those of the 90's variety, and it's been kind of fun to do so (finally found a good use for card savers!), I just wish that I would've starting saving them much sooner... like back in the 90's!

Judging by all of the Pippen cards in my COMC watchlist that have sold, or bought and are being attempted to flip for 20x what the normal going rate is, Scottie must be getting some love in that MJ series... it's about time! I say it all the time, but no Pippen, equals not a single ring for Jordan. There was no way that Michael was ever going to win anything by himself, not in that era, when there were still more than three teams who had a legitimate chance of winning it all.

It's really fun getting a base card and it's parallel in the same package.

Lot and lots of LA's! The bottom left is one of those faux blank back parallels, not something that I would normally go out of my way to buy, but I'm grateful for any free one's (of players that I collect) that get sent my way.

Not only did Kerry send a large sampling of players, but he also (in case you haven't noticed yet) sent representatives from many different sets, so I might as well give a small sampling of those too...

You can't go wrong with the 90's.

More 90's is even better!

Aughts and teens have their appeal as well.

I think I've only shown about half of what was sent, but you get the idea. Apparently Kerry's been sitting on some cool sh*t, and I'm very grateful that he was willing to send some of it my way. Also, I don't know if all of these came from packs or not, but if so, Kerry has considerably better pack opening mojo than I do, mine seems to have taken a permanent vacation -- but if can keep receiving mailers like this, it doesn't need to bother coming back, because this stuff is better than anything that I'd be pulling from packs anyway.


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Life after lockdown

Sunday's post covered my last purchases before the world went dark, and now that someone's turned on a light again (at least here in TN), I thought I'd "show off" my latest purchases.

One of the places that I've missed going to the most during the quarantine, was the local antique mall. For being out in the middle of nowhere, this place never ceases to amaze me with how much good stuff the vendors have, the prices aren't always great, but at least there's usually plenty of neat things to look at.

I think at this point it's now been back open for about a week and a half, and I went last week, so you can see that wasted little time in going back. I could tell that a number of vendors have been in since the reopening to restock and/or switch items out items from their booths, and even though I was told that plenty of people had been there shopping since it's reopening, there still seemed to be no shortage of fun things to look through, and in my case... to buy!

I have to admit one thing though real quick, my reason for going so soon wasn't entirely for myself, no, you see I forgot all about the rapidly approaching Mother's Day, and didn't have anything on hand, so trying to find something for mom was the primary goal on this particular day.

My favorite booth was among the many that had obviously been restocked since the reopening. There were a number of freshly opened early 90's boxes to select packs from, one of them being 1990-91 Skybox, which was rather fortuitous, as I've had the want to open some packs from this particular product since reading Roy's pack break last week. The twelve packs of series 1 came from one of those newly opened boxes, while the three packs of series 2 came from a box of misc. loose packs. At $0.69 apiece, I know that I overpaid, but I don't see card shows coming back anytime soon, and I don't want to buy a ridiculous priced box off of eBay right now, so my options are sort of limited for the time being.

The singles boxes that are also in this booth, had not been restocked, but I looked through them for what was probably the 20th time anyway. I ended up grabbing two more of old #12 himself. Did I need two more derpy faced Jordan's? No, not really, but again, no shows, and I felt like buying a couple of cards. At 39¢ (don't ask me how they came up with that price) each, these were about 29¢ too much, but I think that's still much less than the current going rate for this card.

Moving on to a different booth now. I found a small stack of Crazy magazine, and this one caught my attention. It's got a little bit of wear, but the $1.50 price tag was good, so here it is. Crazy isn't something that you all that often, so for anyone not familiar with the magazine, it was published by Marvel, and ran from the early 70's to sometime in the early 80's. And as you can probably tell from the cover, it was another MAD, Cracked, etc. satire magazine, although some of the jokes are little more adult-oriented than those of other parody magazines from the time.

Bottle collecting has become really big for me in recent years, and even though I enjoy finding them out in the wild more than buying them, I will occasionally break down and buy something, especially if it's something that I know I have no chance of finding on my own... like this NuGrape bottle!

I guess there is a chance that I could find one of these, but the odds of the applied (painted) label not being worn or washed off, are pretty low, especially if I were to find one in the creek.

This bottle dates to '48, and other than the inside needing a cleaning, is in pretty good shape overall. It's interesting too that I normally can't take a decent bottle pic to save my life, but these came out okay, I might've finally found the right place in the house to take bottle pics -- if so, this could be bad news for anyone reading, as that might mean more future bottle posts!

That'll do it for my purchases this time, not shown are the items that I found for my mom, and yes, I was successful in that pursuit as well. Although I'm pretty sure that had I not found anything, the 30'x1'x1' drainage ditch that I spent Sunday digging out for my mom's new garden, probably would've made up for the lack of trinkets.

Since this post was so short (at least by my rambling standards), how about a bonus round?

My short term memory isn't what it used to be, and doesn't seem to be getting any better, so anytime I'm out and around lots of stuff (antique malls, card shows, etc.), I tend to take a lot of pictures, this is usually done for items that I want to look into more when I get home, but sometimes it'll also be just for things that I don't want to forget -- things for reference if you will. Anyway, I always end up taking a bunch of pics at this antique mall, but don't ever share them on here, as they're for personal use only, but again, short post! So I'm breaking tradition and sharing a pair today.

I really don't need an Electric Football, but this one sure was tempting! It has all of it's pieces, and looks to be in unplayed condition. After checking the eBay, the price seemed to be relatively reasonable too, but still, I don't need it (I'm trying to convince myself of this, more than I am you).

This glass motor oil bottle was a beauty, and the spout was absolutely gorgeous, but for being a generic bottle (brand/company bottles are much more desirable), it was very overpriced ($50). I'm pretty sure that they think that the Duraglas name on the bottom is the name of the brand, it isn't, it was a glass making process, and didn't start being used until 1940, so the sellers date of 1926 is a bit off as well. Even being generic, and likely from the late 40's to early 50's (which was the tail end of the glass motor oil bottle era), I still would've been all over it had the price been more reasonable, say in the $15 range.

Okay, that's a little better length-wise, but how about a second bonus round?

I snapped this picture at a red light on my to the antique mall. It's hard to tell because of the vehicle in front of me, but this was like a big double trailer, being pulled by a smaller semi (I'm sure that those have a name, but I don't know what it is), and had at least a dozen llamas in it. The guys and/or gals that I could see were absolutely adorable, and since llama moving isn't something that I see everyday, I had to try and get a picture.

Third bonus round? I'm kidding, I think I'm good for today, especially since tomorrow's post is going to be picture heavy (and of the card variety), so until then...


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Life before lockdown

After two months of being closed, the state of Tennessee partially reopened last week. I know that this is a hot-button topic for a lot of folks (is there anything that isn't these days?), half of the masses seem to want everyone to hide under their respective beds until a vaccine is created (a vaccine that's starting to sound rather improbable at this point), and the other half are calling for public orgies to build up the herd immunity. Not wanting to delve too deeply into the subject right now, I'll just say that, like with most matters of this nature, I fall somewhere in the middle, and can (sort of) see where both sides are coming from, but don't agree with either. Also, even for someone like myself who doesn't go out a whole heck of a lot, it's been a long two months of not being able to go anywhere but the grocery stores.

My county, as well as all of the surrounding counties, have been pretty lucky, and have had very few "reported" cases so far, as such I've yet to have any real fear about going to get groceries, and won't have any hesitations about visiting any other newly reopened local businesses. One such business is the Book Cellar, which is the only semi-local bookstore, and is a place is that I usually try to go into at least once a month (I've blogged about it many times, but every trip doesn't always yield enough to warrant a post). So like most places, they just reopened, and I didn't waste any time in going!

Unfortunately, this was one of those times where I didn't end up buying much, and the four things that I did buy will end up going to two people who read the blog, so showing them would ruin the surprise -- but fear not, I also went two months ago, just a few days before the shutdown, and walked away with many things, things that I've been very slow to get to. I also hit up the thrift store (Threads of Hope) that's kitty corner to the bookstore, and found a few things there as well, which will act as this post's closer (hey, look kids, I can make the baseball references too!).

I haven't got to this one yet, so I don't have much to say, but it certainly sounded like it would be worth a buck. Oh, and a brief  message to all publishers, past and present, pasting a photo of Sophia Loren on the cover is a good way to sell more books :)

I had such high hopes for this book, and everything was going pretty good until I hit about the 60% completed mark, then it went completely off the rails, or at least it did in my mind. It was at that point that the killer was revealed, and more importantly, the killer's motive, which I found to be rather gross, and completely killed (pun intended) any interest I had in finishing the book, so I didn't! It may have a great ending, but either way I'll never go back to find out.

Hitchcock anthologies are always money, and this one was no exception! I don't know what it is, but the older I get, the more I enjoy short story collections, my only complaint is that books themselves always go by too quick, more often than not I seem to be left wanting more stories.

That covers (another intended pun) the books, but seeing as how the Book Cellar sells more than just books, it's almost impossible for me to go in there and not pickup a few videos/DVD's as well...

I thought that I had seen this one before, but it became apparent that I hadn't after just a few minutes in. Turned out to be pretty darn good, although I had little doubt that would given the cast. Having viewed Tombstone a number of times over the years, I thought it was kind of interesting to see the elements that it borrowed/reused from this film. Also, I know this will probably be considered sacrilege, but I liked Kirk Douglas' Doc Holiday more than Val Kilmer's, Kirk's portrayal was much more believable.

Here's one from "How did this come out, and me not know about it?" files. 1999... TNT original movie... I should've been all over this! As such, I had never even heard of it. This one wasn't great, but was good for a late 90's TV movie, I mean I could, and probably will, watch it again at some point. A bit predictable, but still fun.

The next couple of films here are ones that I've seen many times, but don't own, and was in the mood to watch again, so I grabbed them.

I can't remember who or where it was, but I was listening to somebody talk about Labyrinth not too long ago, and even though it was never one of my favorites, hearing someone wax nostalgic for it, made be nostalgic to see it again... still not one of my favorites BTW!

This used to be on TCM rather frequently, but with me not having cable/satellite for a couple of years now, I've had no way to watch it. I thought it was interesting to find that this copy has an old McKay's price sticker on the front too, and seeing as how it's a rather hefty price, and knowing that McKay's doesn't really sell videos anymore, I'm guessing that this sticker might be in the ten years old or older range.   
 
As mentioned, I also went to Threads of Hope that day, which isn't my favorite thrift store, mostly just because they don't normally have much for me, lots of clothes, and I don't look at clothes very often, so going in there isn't must when hitting up the bookstore (even though it's within spitting distance of the bookstore). All that being said, I'm glad that I decided to go in on this particular day, not only because I ended up finding two things of interest, but also because of the shutdown that would occur just a few short days later.

It's not very often that I come across 1,500 piece puzzles, but when I do, and their only a buck, I'm probably going to end up buying them. I'm actually working on this one right now, and it's moderately difficult, which has been nice. Also, I hadn't been familiar with Pieter Bruegel, or his work, before getting this puzzle, but would now consider myself a fan. My crappy picture here certainly doesn't do this piece any justice, but if you enjoy art, and like the looks of this puzzle, I'd highly recommend checking out more of his paintings.

One of the primary reasons for me not going into this thrift store very often, is that they don't have a large selection of videos/DVD's, and true to form, they didn't on this particular day either, but the small selection did yield a rather big find, at least for me! I hadn't seen Teenage Doll before, but knew that the other two films were worth the $2 price tag, and after watching Teenage Doll... I can still say that the other films were worth the $2 price tag :)

With most businesses now open again, I was also able to finally get back to the antique mall, and even though I didn't buy a lot, I think I'll keep this non-card post streak that I've got going, and write up a quickie on those purchases for Tuesday (technically speaking, there will be cards in that post, it just won't be an only cards post).


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

It's in the bag

There's been some talk of non-card collections on the blogs as of late, and even though I've already covered plenty of non-card stuff/collections here in the past, I figured that if everyone's jonesing for some non-card stuff, who am I to disappoint?

Today's collection isn't so much of collection as in I go out of my way to collect them, so much as it is that for whatever reason I've saved a bunch of them over the years, and now have a "collection".

Most of this "collection" is still in boxes from cross-country move five years ago, and I wasn't about dig into those just for a post, so you're gonna have settle for just a few examples, or in other words... what I could find in the five minutes or so that I spent searching for them!

I guess this would be a good time to mention that this "collection" that I'm speaking of is... plastic bags... yes, plastic bags! But not just any old grocery store bag mind you, no, I'm talking about the more heavy-duty bags that you would usually (or used to) get from businesses, which were more often than not, of the non-food selling variety.

I don't recall when, or why, I started saving bags, but I did, and have accumulated quite a few over the years, enough that if I ever get around to opening up some boxes, I might have think about doing a part 2, as those currently boxed examples are likely to be far more interesting than what I've got for you here today.

So, is anyone still reading this? I'm gonna go-ahead and assume that there isn't, so from here on out I'll just be talking to myself:

Me: Hey, Jon!
Also me: Yo!
Me: You feeling like checking out some bags?
Still me: Bags? What like... dirtbags... or fleabags... or...
Me: Ha! You're so funny! No smart-a**, like plastic bags.
Me to the second power: Plastic bags? Sounds kind of boring.
Me: Perhaps, but it's not like you have anything else to do right now, and don't try to say that you do, because I'll know that you're lying!
me: ...

Seeing someone Twitter about Amoeba shuttering it's original Hollywood location the other day, was sort of the impetus for this post. Though I've never been to one of their physical locations, it's still unfortunate to hear that such a well known place would have to close a store (which was their first) due to the corona lockdown, but I would imagine that the rent/taxes are pretty incredible there, and were just too much to eat with no customer base coming in. I bought a bunch of cheap CD's from them on multiple different occasions back in the mid-aught's, and got at least one bag with one of those purchases. I was losing my light when I took this photo, so it's hard to tell that bag is much more yellow than it looks, not quite Tower Records yellow, but yellower than this. Oh, and speaking of Tower Records...

Couldn't get the right shade of yellow in this pic either.

What would a pseudo bag collection be without at least one form Tower? I actually have a few Tower bags, all of which are of the older variety, pre-dot.com old. Although this one isn't too bad, if only because of it's heavy-duty snap together handle. Thanks to it's high prices, Tower was never one of my favorite places to purchase things, but it was very easy to spend a couple of hours just walking around and looking at things, especially in the days before the internet, because they used to have a lot of stuff that just couldn't find anywhere else.

Rogue Toys started out in Las Vegas, and then opened up a second store in Portland (OR) of all places, and of course they just had to do so a couple of months after I moved here -- although in retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I moved before it opened, as I know would've ended up going there way too often, and spending way too much money. I think it's been about two years now since I bought a NECA Robocop NES figure from them online, they had it cheaper than everyone else at the time, and although they packed it extremely well, there was no way that they could've packed it well enough to survive the ice pick that the box suffered sometime during it's time with the USPS. I don't that it was actually an ice pick that went through the box (could've been a screwdriver too), all I know is that when I got it there was a very noticeable hole going through the shipping box, through the padding in the box, and in to the figures sealed box. I had heard people say that they've had trouble with the USPS when it comes to paying out claims for damaged items, but I filed a claim, and had it accepted in less than a day, so I don't know if I was just lucky, or if those other people just weren't doing something right.

And here's my newest bag! I just recently bought a few more old issues of Scary Monsters Magazine from a person on the eBay, and to my great surprise they arrived in this circa-'92 SMM bag. The bag has definitely been around, but was still very nice to receive... now if I could just get one of those old catalogs :)

That's gonna do it for what isn't packed away, but I do have one more "sort of the same, but not really" thing that I can tack on to the end of the post...

It should come as no surprise to longtime readers of this blog to find out that I've got quite a few vinyl lunch/trick-or-treat bags from McDonald's as well. This particular McBoo bag was found by my mom at a sale sometime last year, is in minty fresh condition, and the glow-in-the-dark still glows too. I don't feel like looking up the exact year that these came out, but I want to say that it was in either 1990 or '91, because I do remember them fairly well, although I never did use one for procuring candy, because a) They were too nice to take out and get all soiled, and b) They weren't big enough to hold all of the candy that I knew was gonna be gotten... that's what pillow cases were for!

If there is actually anyone who made it through this one, thanks for reading a quick post about bags, and to all that took off early, or didn't even bother to click on, I completely understand!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.