Catching up

                                        

Even though it hadn't been planned, my two months away from the blog seem to have done me a world of good. It has rejuvenated my interest in blogging, enough so that I dare say I'm currently enjoying the blogging process more than I ever have.

A lot of this renewed zeal comes from the starting of my second blog, and the prospect of a third coming soon (all I need is a name?). But I think that the excitement from those will carry over to this one as well, at least that's what I'm hoping. This old blog has been in need of updating for quite some time now, some new life if you will. 

One of the bigger changes has been, and will continue to be, is to no longer waste time (yours and mine) on every single item that rolls through Penny Sleeve Station. The only exception to this will be when another blogger, or someone associated with the blogs, takes the time to send me something. Which leads me to my next point...

The only negative that I can think of in regards to my being away from the blog for two months, was that I wasn't giving proper thanks (aka public thanks) to the friends who spent the time and money to send me stuff. For example, Bo, the ghost sign specialist of Baseball Cards Come to Life! fame, came into possession of an extra '61 Billy Muffett, and even though it's a little rough, I had to have it. Bo obliged, by not only sending along the Billy Muffett - my 27th copy by the way - but was also kind enough to pad out the rest of a PWE with some more items of interest.

Jim Brown is always a welcome sight around these parts. Originals would be better, but reprints won't be turned away :)

I've acquired a few matchbooks this year, which has been a few more than I've ever acquired. Is Bo responsible for this? Maybe. Am I now collecting matchbooks? NO!!!! Is Bo trying to push me towards matchbook collecting by sending this matchbook? I don't know, you'll have to ask him. Do I appreciate the thought behind sending this particular matchbook? Yes, of course, I do! 

I don't go to eateries, but I am quite fond of Knoxville, and am now thinking that in honor of Bo, I should go by this place and take a picture of it with the matchbook. Wallet matchbook photo?

I never kept track of such things, but I think the only person who's sent more stuff down here than Bo, is, Chris, the hopeless romantic behind The Collector, and The 1993. 

This particular round included some cards directly from my TCDB wantlist. Top honors go to the '92-93 Parish. Robert Parish v. Bill Cartwright are the kind of battles I miss, and the lack of anything even close is partly responsible for me not being able to watch basketball these days.

Along with 8 of my wants came this pair of Juniors, both of which were new to me. Not going to shows anymore, the only time I see Juniors is when someone sends some. I suppose I could try to trade for some on the TCDB, but he's one of those guys who's cards are much more fun to find in person, and buying or trading for them online just isn't the same. Does that make any sense?

It's only taken 14 years, but I was finally able to participate in a Time Traveling Trade with, Matt, the Clown Prince of April Fool's from, Diamond Jesters. I collect a lot of stuff, but other traders seem to always be sending him everything but what I collect. That was until some months ago, when this wonderful Three-Mile Lyle showed up, which was just icing on the cake for the card that I really wanted (and yes, that's a second plug for the new blog!).

Another popular series of trading posts that I hadn't been able to get in on, are (were?) the weekly trade bait posts from, Johnny, of the recently silent, Cards from the Quarry. Despite never having been a huge fan of the Gold Label line, I knew immediately upon sight that I had to try and get this semi-low numbered Bo parallel. Thankfully I had enough trade bait of my own to make it happen.

I have had probably close to fifty copies of this Duckworth over the years, but now when I finally need one, I found myself without. Johnny was kind enough to rectify that, and he even sent along a much needed Double R too.

I can't remember when I did it, but at some point earlier in the year I quietly added a half-assed most wanted list to the top of the blog. It was only partially finished, and I never went back to it. I'm not sure how many people noticed it, but I know of at least one who did, that being, Greg, the eagle-eyed noticer of unnoticed things, from the far too quiet, The Collective Mind.

This '76 Alzado, which had been on said most wanted list, might've been the crispest card from that set that I've ever seen. It looked like it had come straight out of a vending box. And even though I'm not into the whole grading thing, it's pretty hard not to notice a semi-vintage card that's still that sharp.

I had completely forgotten that I had asked Greg to set aside this Amelia Earhart, thankfully for me, Greg didn't! This had been a longtime want.

A healthy dose of Vlad's made up the bulk of this mailing. I pulled just a few of the fancier ones for scanning.

I almost never come across 90's Tek, so I don't even need to figure out/write down which pattern this one is, because I can guarantee that I'll never stumble upon another one. Ionix was a cool brand, and one that thankfully neither Topps or Panini will ever own.

And last but certainly not least (I was trying to go in order of everything's arrival), I won a prize from, Brendan, the enigmatic proprietor behind, The View from the Third Floor. 

Brendan did a months long series on his 100 favorite films (my favorite blog series of the year). There was a contest accompanying the series, one which I was all gung-ho to participate in, at least at first. After a few weeks I started to feel guilty about all of the stuff that he's sent, and the lack of stuff that I've sent in return, so in the hopes that whoever was behind me would catch up and eventually win, I stopped guessing, and just tried to comment where I could. Thankfully someone did overtake my top spot, but apparently second place got a prize too, which has how I came into this mailing. 

I'd be lying if I said I knew who Tyrann Mathieu is, but John Riggins I know, and collect! It's kind of interesting to see that Panini went with a Jets era photo, it's a nice change. Both of these parallels come from the 2019 Black Friday release, which apparently had quite a few more parallels than the sets early days. Despite the shitty scan, I really like the look of the Riggins in person (it's also #'d to /99 in case you can't tell), just don't ask me what the name of the parallel is.

I don't know what the prize for first place was, but I can't imagine that would've been any better suited to my collection than this second place prize was. Normally I'd be less than enthused over receiving an initialed stickergraph, but J-Stew is one of my guys, so obviously that greatly elevates the card in my mind. I only had one other autograph of his, in which he's pictured as a Duck. And now I've got the Panthers covered, I just need to see if he's got one in a Giants uni to complete the trifecta.

Many thanks to everyone who's traded with me, allowed me to win a prize, or who's sent something just because over the last few months. Everything has been most appreciated!

Pack Sampling: 1992 Impel The Uncanny X-Men

Collecting cards, or any other item for that matter, has always been a fairly lonely hobby for me. Aside from a friend who collected baseball cards when I was really young, and a friend who briefly got interested basketball cards during my teens, it's pretty much just been a thing I do, by myself, for the majority of my life.

The only real exception being a magical two-year period from 1991 to 1993, when I found myself surrounded by kids, kids my age and a little older, who collected, talked about, and traded all things comic books.

We moved to Beaverton (OR) in 1991. Summer had just begun, and despite all the other homes in the vicinity, I can remember thinking how desolate the place felt. I didn't see any people out doing things during the first few days, and more importantly, I didn't see any other kids. Turned out though that all I had to do was get out and explore my new surroundings, because once I did, I found other kids, lots of kids in fact, and by summer's end would have more friends than I had ever had up to that point, or would ever have again.

Finding friends was great, but finding out that the majority of these new friends collected comic books, comic cards, and comic related action figures, was like a dream come true for the then nine year-old me. 

I was already working at my uncle's comic book shows by that time (this was the source of much envy from my new friends) , so I knew how popular such things were with kids my own age, but still, I never could've imagined that there was a place, outside of the shows, where I could be surrounded by so many of them -- but there was, and for the next two years, I was.

Things would get even better that first fall when 4th grade started, as I found that kids outside of my immediate vicinity collected as well. These were kids that generally lived a couple of miles or more away from my core group, and were rarely seen outside of school, but once we got to school everybody was the best of friends (for the most part), which worked out really well when one was a card or two from a particular set, because everyone had duplicates laying around, and everybody was always looking to trade. Comic books were traded at school on a fairly regular basis, and even though I never did so, action figures would often get swapped too. It was a good time to be alive.

This trading network would continue pretty much unchanged until I moved away in 1993. We moved far enough way that I really wasn't able to keep up with all of my neighborhood friends anymore. I only stayed in contact with one friend, and he was one of the select few who didn't collect anything, so I have no idea how long everyone else continued collecting. I would continue to do so until around 2000, when I took a ten-year hiatus from almost all things collectible, save for a few comic books from time to time, and those were for reading, not collecting.

I have a strong affinity for that 1991-93 time period, and the older I get, the more often I revisit it. And although rarely discussed, I will forever be drawn to comic related items from that two-year span as well. It was with all of this in mind, and a healthy dose of depression induced nostalgia (the two go hand-in-hand for me), that I purchased a lone pack of 1992 The Uncanny X-Men off of Sportlots a few months ago.

Even by 1992, the '90 and '91 Marvel Universe sets were still kings of the playground. Despite being released ahead of the now iconic X-Men: The Animated Series, I don't recall there being a lot of interest in the set from my friends. It probably didn't help too that packs from this set weren't for sale anywhere around us. I only remember ever getting a few packs at my uncle's shows, and then a few more some years later at Things From Another World (that's a comic book shop in Portland that still exists, but was much better in the pre-internet days). 1993 saw the release of X-Men Series 2, which was/is much more strongly associated with the cartoon, and therefor was, and still is, the more popular card set of the two. It's also worth noting that because the second series was just called, X-Men Series 2, most people nowadays just refer to the first series, as X-Men Series 1. I, on the other hand, still call the first set what it was called when I was a kid, The Uncanny X-Men.

Because of the difficulty of finding it at the time, and it's lack of popularity amongst my peers, The Uncanny X-Men is one of the few sets from this period that I never completed. With the ability to trade gone after I moved away, my only real option for finishing sets like this was if I came across some cheap packs, and was fortunate enough to pull the cards I needed from said cheap packs. That never happened with this one, and as the years passed, the completion of it became less and less important.

Like pretty much everything else in the last year, boxes and packs (but not singles) for this set have skyrocketed in price on the secondary market. After so many months, I can no longer recall how much I paid for the pack, but there were no other bidders, and it was basically gotten for the price of shipping -- which was multiple times cheaper than the current going rate on eBay.

As the front of the pack mentions, aside from the base set, one has a chance at pulling cards from one chase set, Gold holograms. It was also possible to find signed cards from the great Jim Lee . The holograms are still just as great as they ever were, and the autographs, if memory serves, were just base cards signed on the back by Jim Lee. Despite the lack of glitz, I would have to think that the autos have increased in desirability over the years, as most young kids wouldn't have been overly excited by such things back in 1992. Holograms on the other hand...

It had been so long since I last opened up a pack of this stuff, that I had completely forgot that the charts for the characters ability ratings were on the inside of the packs; had I known otherwise, I would've been a little more careful opening the pack. i.e. I wouldn't have just torn it open.

Assigning numbers to a characters abilities was kind of a big deal in the early 90's, at least as far as a lot of the card sets went. They were a starting point when looking at who might fare against who in a battle. My friends kept our "What If?" conversations relatively civilized (surprisingly!), but there were a few heated debates at school, especially if someone started cross-comparing ratings from different sets (I'm looking at you Marvel Universe!).

I had also forgotten that you only got seven cards per pack, so was surprised by the overall thinness of the pack. But again, the pack was cheap, and when you think about it, you really can't put a price on nostalgia, can you? (sounds like a tag line from an old Franklin Mint ad)

The first card out of the pack, Dark Phoenix, just so happens to be one of the better looking cards from the set. I wasn't a huge fan of the alternate Jean Grey as kid, at least not until I saw The Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Sagas episodes of X-Men: TAS, than I began to pay a little more attention to the character.

Oh, and speaking once again of the animated series has reminded me of this:

                         

You're welcome! Now back to the regularly scheduled post...

The abilities graph wasn't the best in this set, but it still did the job. As you can see, her mental powers are at 7 across multiple rows, or in other words, are off the charts -- this was basically code for, you don't f*** with the Phoenix!

A lot of people are only interested in the big names, but at this point, I appreciate these early 90's sets more for the lesser known, and forgotten, characters like Polaris, and...

... Caliban! Though I should mention that with fresh faces being needed for the myriad of comic related films and television series being produced these days, a lot of the once lesser knowns have seen a bit of a resurgence, even if it just to provide a meaningless death to advance the story, or worse yet, cannon fodder for the more popular characters.

I've never been able to get behind Forge, 'Exceptional Tinkerer' just isn't very exciting as far as mutant powers go. And big muscles, and big guns, doesn't make that particular power any cooler either; they actually make the power seem even less cool.

Lots of 90's star power here. I liked the early version of Shatterstar, but lost interest him as his character progressed. Ditto with Domino (how's that for some literation?).

Despite the coolness factor of the Dark Phoenix, this is my favorite card in the pack. It depicts the first encounter between Mutant X/Proteus, and the X-Men. Nightcrawler and Wolvie didn't fair so well, were the next few panels shown, both would be seen incapacitated, and in a bad way. Had Storm not been able to weaken Proteus, Nightcrawler probably wouldn't have survived the battle.

No autographs or holograms (not that I was expecting any mind you), but still a pretty solid pack. It even inspired me to do something that I haven't done in over two years, which is to try and complete a set. Thankfully I held onto what I had gotten as a kid, after finding my stash, and then resorting them, I found that I needed about half of the 100-card set. This pack alone took care of four of those needs, and between the Baseball Card Store, and a TCDB trade, I've been able to acquire all but nine in the last few months. I suspect that I'll have it finished by years end, but even if I can't; I've waited 30 years to finish it, I think I can wait a few more if need be.

New blog, and some other things

Hey all, it's been awhile, huh? Like most of my past absences, I didn't mean to stay away for so long, it just happened.

My want to blog has been strong in recent weeks, but after not "writing" for over two months, I found myself having trouble trying to get back into the swing of things. I think I've got it down again now, so you're gonna be stuck with me until next year's inevitable disappearance.

I'd like to think I've been busy to doing big things during my sabbatical, but that's probably subjective, so I'll just say that I've been doing some stuff, one such bit of stuff being to get everything in place to launch a whole new blog -- which I just did yesterday by the way.

Despite it being an all baseball blog, mostly of the older variety, it's going to be a very niche blog, and I'm not expecting there to be much interest in it. With that in mind, I'm not gonna ask you to follow it, retweet it, or anything else of that nature. I figure if you want to check it out you will, and if you don't, you won't. Either way is cool with me. I've always maintained that this blog, the one that you're currently reading, was not created just for my own enjoyment, but the new one was. I fully plan to be writing just for the sake of writing on that one; if anyone actually comes around, well, that'll just be a bonus.

I will add though, that if anyone does go on over, it's been some time since I had to try and figure out how to create a layout, and with the 'new' Blogger in place, it seems to be a little harder than the last time I did so. Many tweaks will still be necessary, but it's up and running, and doesn't look too terribly bad. That's all that I really cared about to begin with.

It feels a little weird to start a new blog at a time when my old one is just hanging on by a thread, but the subject matter of the new one will be of much more interest to me than what I've been doing around here for at least the last year or so. I'm hoping that the passion for the new one will rub off on this one, possibly inspiring better posts for those who choose to just read this one. Time will tell though. At the very least, you can expect a few changes around here in the coming months. Of course, I have said that before, so maybe take that last part with two grains of salt :)

In other news...

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I finally took Newspapers.com up on their free-trial offer last week, and all I can say is, wow, that is some site! I didn't think that it was possible for me to enjoy something on the internet as much as I enjoyed that site. Apparently I was wrong though, as I thoroughly enjoyed that site, spending upwards of a couple of hours on it each day throughout my trials duration. 

I was able to get a lot of research done for the new blog, as well as some material for another blog I'll be starting in the very near future. That's right, I'll be trying to juggle three blogs by summer's end. I would've had that one up and running by now too, but the perfect name that I came up with for it, is already taken (by someone who's only blogged once in the last three years 😡), and I haven't been able to come up with another name since. I put all my eggs in that basket!

I won't be able to afford a full-time subscription to the Newspapers.com, but am gonna try to swing a few months worth here and there; I've only just scratched the sites surface. Also, I think I'm going through withdrawal, I got really used to having access to that site, really quick.

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I also went to Chattanooga last week for the first time. It was a long drive (about an hour and fifty minutes each way). I had been wanting to check out the McKay's there for quite some time... it was nowhere near as good as the one in Knoxville... and I probably won't be going back. I managed to find one book, and two DVD's for myself. And one book, and one DVD for my mom. No post coming. I took a few pictures on my way there, while driving (don't do that kids), most of which didn't turn out so good, but a few weren't too bad:

I don't remember exactly where these were on the way, and the windshield was a tad dirty, but as I said, they don't look too bad.

I got a brief glimpse of the Sequoya Nuclear Plant, and was hoping that the highway would turn back that way for me to try and get a picture, but it ended up going the other way. Still a neat sight though.

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It's been a few years since I last saw a Luna Moth (whenever the last time I posted a picture on here of one was), so it was pretty cool to spot this one a few weeks back. She (I don't know it's sex, but I'm gonna call her a she) wasn't the biggest one that I've seen, but was still a good 4" long, and wasn't showing any signs of decay yet (they only live for like a week, and will often be spotted clinging to things with parts of their wings rotting away -- it's both sad and gross at the same time).

In other nature news:

We have had a LOT of black snakes around the house this spring/summer, which isn't a bad thing, as they keep the rodents at bay. I don't normally take pictures of them, but this one was right under the laundry room door. Thankfully I always look before I step out. It was kind of funny too, after he ( this one was a "he" to me) saw me, he hid his head under the piece of creek driftwood at the top of the photo, like maybe I wouldn't notice the rest of his two and half foot body if I couldn't see his head :)

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Card collectors lamenting over not being able to find unopened retail product has been a daily occurrence for over a year now. I don't get it, but the Walmart that I go to never ran out of cards, and always has boxes out for whoever. I couldn't tell you what those boxes (and packs) are, because I never go in for a closer look, but they are there. My problem has been that the store rarely ever gets any of the cool new toys in, and when they do, they're gone almost as fast as they're put out. Imagine my surprise then when I actually found this Berserker Predator from Lanard's semi new-ish Alien/Predator line last month. The Alien figures look like poo, but from what I had seen online, I knew I'd want the Predator figures if I ever found any in person. This was the only one that was on the peg, but it was the one that I wanted the most, so if I was meant to only ever find one, I'm glad that it was this one.

He'll be coming out of the package at some point, but for now I've just been enjoying him like this on my desk.

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A few of my blogging friends have been kind enough to send me a few packages in the last couple of months, and I received an order from the Baseball Card Store not too long ago. There's been a few purchases from eBay as well, and some TCDB trades, so I've got no shortage of material in the weeks to come. Hopefully there'll still be a few people around to see it.

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.

Flash Freebie #1

As promised last week, here's your first installment of what I'm hoping will become a regular, albeit random, feature here on the blog: Flash Freebie!

I did decide to create one rule since posting the teaser, that being that if you win one, you're ineligible for the next one. This'll hopefully give more than one person a chance to win things. So if you win today, you'll have to sit out #2, but will be eligible again for #3 whenever it shows up. 

Also, I decided that since I'm giving something away, the least I can do is to force people to have to click on the post to see what's being given away, hence the Flash logo for a header, and all of these words being typed before showing the card that's being given away; this'll conceal what's being given away just by perusing the first couple of lines when viewing their reading list. Future giveaways will probably feature about 600 letters worth of gibberish at the beginning of each one to accomplish this same goal.

I don't feel like adding all of this up, but it looks like there's enough there to mask what's being given away this week, so here's the first giveaway:

I'm not sure how much interest this 1954 Bowman Toby Atwell (#123) will generate, but it's somewhat old, and in really solid shape, so I guess we'll see. 

Toby broke into the bigs in 1952, so if you are interested in winning this card, all you have to do is be the fist to tell me: How many triples did he hit during his rookie year?

I'll do my best to confirm the winner as soon as the right answer comes in, provided there are any interested parties of course.

This one takes the cake

I have been using COMC since 2012, and in that time I feel like I've seen most of what the site has had to offer, the good, the bad, and the ugly, if you will.

Despite all of the ugly in the last year, I still use the site on a fairly regular basis. I currently have 185 cards sitting in my account, and have been adding to that number a couple of times a week for over a year now. I search the new listings for a few players on a daily basis, and do some more extensive general searches once or twice a week.

As I'm sure many have experienced, general searches often lead to rabbit holes, where one is likely to encounter items that he or she didn't initially set out to look for. Such was the case the other night, when a series of unplanned clicks led me to what may be one of the more "interesting" listings that I've encountered on the site in the last nine years:

Now I've seen some rough looking cards on the site over the years, most of which have been on the rarer side, this poor Hank Sauer though, well, I'm fairly certain that it now holds the honor of the being the most beat-up piece of cardboard that I've ever seen on COMC. And what's more, it's not rare! This is card #45 in the set, so it's not one of those mythical "high numbers", or an "SP" as the kids are so fond of saying. It's not Hank's rookie. It's not error of any kind. And yet there it is, sitting on the site with a $2.75 price tag. [Two to things to note: 1). Apparently I'm too old to figure out how to do a screenshot, and 2). The price will show higher if you're not signed in]

I find it interesting too that this card has probably been on the site for more than a few years now, because COMC hasn't accepted non-rare items in this kind of condition for at least the last 5-6 years. So not only did it's owner pay to ship it to them, but they paid for it to be processed, and because it's priced over the 75¢ threshold, have been paying a penny per month in storage fees for as long as it's been on the site. The storage fees for five years alone, would be over fifty cents, which is about fifty times more than the card is "worth".

I'm sure that some would disagree, but to me, what's left of this card is nothing but recycling. Again, it's not rare, more copies of it exist than there are interested parties in owning one, and that number will only continue to increase with time. I almost never care how people spend the money that they've earned though, so if someone wants to drop almost $3 on this, who am I to say whether it was right or wrong? I would hope that they've done a little research before clicking on that Buy Now button though, as much nicer copies can be had for less, even on the very site that's currently housing this curiosity(?).