Cards!

Looking back at the last ten posts or so that I've done, I see that not a lot of cards have made it onto the blog in recent months; maybe ten cards or less across those last ten posts. One might think that this was because I didn't have anything "new" coming in to talk about or show off, but it's actually been quite the opposite, where too much has been arriving and I don't even know where to start with it.

I mentioned just recently that I've been spending a lot of time as of late sorting cards, this after not doing so for most of the year. As nice, and relaxing, as it's been to spend some of my nights just listening to music while I put cards in pages, a number of stacks grew up during the year, and it's been slow going as I attempt to reduce their respective heights. And it seems like every time I start to see some progress, more cards show up!

It's amazing how many things have been found so far that I had completely forgotten about, especially those that were only bought in the last couple of months. I think I also pointed out sometime not too long ago that I find it funny how in the early days of the blog, I would post about every single new card that came in, and nowadays only, maybe, 5% of what shows up on my doorstep ever gets covered here. That probably isn't necessarily bad thing though as I would imagine that most of those older posts aren't very good (I certainly won't be going back to read them), lots of cards, yes, but probably very little substance. No soul if you will.

Some of my collecting interests are changing/shifting again, some of which will be discussed below, while others will be covered in future posts. With so few cards making into blog posts in recent months though, I figured that I'd try and make up for it a little today by going all smorgasbord on you, pulling out some of the cards that have recently been "rediscovered" from my stacks. A few cards from a few different orders to give you some idea of where my collecting head has been at this year. Spoiler alert, it's been all over the place!

I rarely remember what the impetus is behind most of the things I do, even in real time, so trying to go back to the summer and figure out why I decided that I needed some of Ray Caldwell's cards in my life is almost impossible. Whatever the reason though, I added a couple of his cards to one of my "larger" (maybe 15 cards worth) orders from Sportlots back in June(?) or July(?), one of which was the really nifty TCMA 1920 Indians card. A lot of people remember solely as the guy who got hit by lightning while out on the mound (you all already know that story, right?), got up after a spell, and then finished pitching the inning/game. It is a pretty great story, but like a lot of guys from his era, he was a character, one that could only exist during that time period, and as such, led a very interesting life. Surviving being struck by lightning was just the cherry on top of the interesting life sundae.

As far as this card itself goes, well, to me it's just about perfect. Action cards are always fun, but if you've got to get a card of someone who isn't in motion, they just don't come too much better than this.

The back is pretty great too. I'm sure some would complain about the lack of stats, but this set was covering the teams 1920 season, so you get everyone's stats for that particular season, nothing more, nothing less.

Again, I don't know why, but a number of my summer Sportlots orders had TCMA cards in them, another of which was this Dick Wakefield from TCMA's War Years set. I don't if I was thinking about doing so at the time, but I've been thinking about starting a Bonus Baby collection. If I do, I've got numero uno covered, as back in 1941,  Dick was the first prospect to be given a check, or bonus, to skip the minor leagues and sign with a team. The term "bonus baby" didn't even exist until a few years later, and as such, Dick, and his contemporary babies, don't even appear on the official list of "bonus babies". In fact, everyone before 1947 is usually absent from the lists that you'll find all over the internet.

I had a shipment of around 250 cards arrive from the Baseball Card Store back in November, right around the time that I finally felt like sorting again. Since these were the newest cards at the time, I started putting them away before even scanning any for the blog. A lot of the order was made up of early 90's Blazers (and former Blazers) and Marvel cards, neither of which are things that blog readers are clamoring to see, so you probably dodged a bullet this time. At some point though, I did think that maybe I should scan a couple of cards for a post, and grabbed a few of the stragglers for your viewing pleasure.

1997-98 Hoops is a much maligned set, but I've always liked it. I dislike sets with replaced backgrounds more and more as I get older, this set however will forever be immune to that hate, as it's got quite a bit of nostalgia for me. Here we have a pair of former Blazers (childhood favorites), which is actually a trio of former Blazers, as Otis Thorpe got a cameo on Cliff's card.

It's been almost 30 years since this set came out, and I still get a kick out of the singles that can be put together to form a scene. It wasn't the first card set to borrow the idea from old sticker albums, but did have the most combo cards at the time.

Shreck, aka Terror, is one of my favorite comic book characters of all time. Originally an Epic character, Marvel convinced his creator to bring him over to the Marvel universe, where the big plans that they had for him evaporated before they even got started, and the character quickly faded from most peoples memory. As a reader of comics, I do wish that Marvel would've never gotten their hands on the character, but as a card collector, I'm glad they did, otherwise no cards of him probably would've ever been produced. I have a couple of copies of "Terror's" "rookie" card, but couldn't pass up another cheap one. 

I thought I already had a copy of this one for the Carnage collection, turns out I didn't. 

I grabbed a number of the hologram variants from the '91-92 UD set, but pictures of tiny holograms on the backs of cards aren't that interesting to most people, so here's one of the fronts. I kind of like the different holograms myself, but will not try to convince anyone that they're more pleasing to the eye than an action shot featuring a rookie Dikembe Mutombo taking it right at Manute Bol.

I don't know if the person formerly known as Twitch was the first person to do it, I'm assuming not, but they were the first person that I saw do one player collections. I've since seen some folks on Twitter who do it, and as of late, Gavin has been doing it too. I always liked this concept, but could never commit to it... until now! I continue to want to pare down my collection, and I feel like this sort of thing will help do so. There's still gonna be a bunch of guys and gals who I want everything from, but there's also plenty of people who I'd be content to have just one page's worth of stuff from. As I've already started doing this, I'm finding that most of the one page heroes are of names that would have been recognizable to younger me, or rather folks who I regularly pulled from packs as a kid. Orel is just such one of those guys. I've never had a desire to collect him before, but at the same time it feels like he was in every single pack of baseball cards that I opened as a kid. I'm gonna try to get a good mix on these pages (base, inserts, parallels, etc.), but all will be hand chosen for one reason or another. This particular card was picked because I can't imagine that he was shown batting on too many cards, which is kind of neat, and the color matching border just put it over the top. I also grabbed a Fernando card from this set for his page, if only because he's shown as an Oriole.

This card checks off so many 90's boxes: Sticker, check! Neon colors, check! Crazy squiggles all over the place, check! Glow in the dark, double check! It just doesn't get too much more 90's than this! Tim is getting the one page treatment as well, and so far I've got some pretty dope cards for him. Depending on the five more cards that I get to fill it, his page might end up being the most interesting.

I had about 30 Hollywood Starline cards in this box, about half of which I was hoping would be upgrades, and thankfully they were. 

I'm still undecided as to whether or not I actually like the various Senior League cards. On one hand it's nice to get a few more "playing days" cards for player collections, but on the other, some of the cards are terribly depressing.

I had never seen Donruss' 2001 release before. From what I can gather, it looks like at least for part of the set that the borders are color matching, some of which are more attractive than others. I haven't gone through the checklist yet, but I did see a nifty red Junior that I'd like to get at some point. As for Cal, he's getting a page too. So far this is it for the page though. I do have a few inserts that I was going to add to it, but upon recent reviewing, I decided that I didn't care much for those and will now need to find a new home for them.

I took advantage of the Baseball Card Store's free shipping offer on Black Friday, but haven't heard anything about the order since. I should have about a hundred more cards coming, but don't know when that will be. Hopefully I'll get a few more things put away by then, and won't have to just show a couple of the leavings from it.

My two years worth of accumulation from COMC came in November, and aside from making sure that everything was there, haven't done much with it's contents since. For the sake of this post though, I did pull out a couple of cards, one of which was one of these; the other two came from TCDB trades earlier this year. I've talked about it on a couple of separate occasions already, and won't go into it again, but this is my favorite modern parallel of someone who I don't collect. These were #'s 5, 6, and 7. Ideally I'd love to get enough to fill a couple of pages, but for now I'll be content if I can just get two more to fill up a page.

Speaking of duplicates! This is '61 Billy Muffett #27. God, I love this card! Prices for decent looking copies have gone up a tad on the site, so I probably won't be getting too many more from there. Most of the other online prices aren't very cost effective either. One of these days I really need to start going to shows again.

Color shifts are so damn hard to find on COMC that I feel like I've struck gold every time I do actually encounter one. I just recently put this mini collection into a page finally. I was a bit disappointed to find that I only had six of them though, I thought I had more. But again, hard to find, so I guess six is better than none.

I had built up 72 cards in my COMC account since I requested my two years worth to be shipped back in May. I then bought a little over 30 cards during all of the Black Friday sales, which put me over 100, and qualified me for their free shipping promotion, which I did take advantage of. I just got notified on Friday that my cards had shipped, one week before their original estimate. I think it's safe to say that things have greatly improved over there in Auburn. Between the last shipment and this one, if I wanted to get lazy here on the blog, I'd probably have next years content already covered. I won't be doing that, but the thought is somewhat appealing.

This card appeared in a recent Diamond King post that I commented on, and to my great surprise, showed up just a few days later in my mailbox. All I said was that it was a pretty cool card and that I couldn't believe that Kevin had found at a sow there in Portland, and then like magic, here it was! Oh, and it is a pretty cool card - a '61 Dutch Gum for those that care - my first 'playing days' Kirk Douglas. Many thanks again to Kevin for the very unexpected gift.

The final duo for today are the most recent cards to grace my mailbox, a pair of wonderful customs from Greg's most recent giveaway over on Nine Pockets. This is my second batch of Greg's customs, and there every bit as neat as the last ones. I don't know who prints them, but I still can't get over how good these cards feel in hand, I mean they actually feel like real cards. Desperado is a film that I will forever associate with my teens. I saw it in the theatre with a friend and his family when I was either 12 or 13 (depending on what month it was released that year), and can distinctly remember buying it on VHS at a Target about two years later. That video got a lot of viewings, as it was always a popular option when friends were over. I can't say with absolute certainty, but I believe that if we didn't rent anything, this and The Lost Boys were the two videos that got watched the most when friends were staying the night. An odd combo for sure, but I certainly wasn't going to complain. Thanks to Greg for the giveaway! 

One good thing about spending a bunch of time handling cards again has been that now I feel like blogging about cards again. Feeling and doing are of course two different things entirely, and whether or not this want to do so will actually translate into more posts with cards in them, remains to be seen. I could do posts like this for the foreseeable future, but I suspect that they might get a little old, very quickly. Who knows, just typing out loud, as usual. I can at least say that the next post will be card related, although it also include some crafting as well... yes, crafting!

A good problem to have

I have read quite a few books this year. I read quite a few last year too. Not as many as this year though. Knowing that I would at least be keeping up with last years pace, I had planned on keeping track of how many books I read this year, and then doing some sort of year-end recap post. I was also going to make a list of what I had read and possibly make a worst to best list. 

Unfortunately, I've found out that I'm not very good at keeping track of those kinds of statistics, so there won't be any such post (this is where the sad faced emoji goes). I do know that I read five books in each month of January, February, and March. I also know that I read ten books during two different summer months. That's 35 right there, but after that I don't know. Based on how many other things that I didn't do this year, i.e. blog very often, sort cards, watch too many movies, reorganize my neglected stamp collection, etc.; I'll go ahead and assume that I did at least five books a month during the rest of the time that I wasn't keeping track as well.

As of this writing, Dec.7th, I've only just finished my first book of the month, so it looks like December might end up being a down month. Trading cards are most likely going to be responsible for this, as I've already spent six hours over the last seven days putting cards in binders. I have done almost no sorting this year, and because of that have stacks and stacks of cards piled around, some more precariously than others. It's been kind of therapeutic to do this again, but I'm doing it at night, which is when I read, and I'm already missing that time spent reading. I fear that not all of my stacks are going to get finished.

Reading is a good way to spend ones time, but unless you live close to a library, having enough reading material can sometimes be a problem. I was really having trouble doing so earlier this year, often times only having 2-3 books to choose from at any one given time. Thankfully though, I'm closing out the year strong with book purchases galore. I've been doing good on my own, but also got a recent assist from my mom as well.

There was a big semi-local book sale a few weeks back, one that I was going to attend. There was some stuff that needed to be done on that particular morning, which was gonna keep me from getting there when it opened, thus potentially missing out on some of the better items. And this is where mom comes in! She was there when it opened, and over the course of the next hour or two, sent a bunch of pictures via text asking if I was interested in various things, some of which I was...

I had this book many years ago. Ironically it was donated to a book sale. What comes around, goes around?

Anybody know the answer to this books title without looking it up?

There were about half a dozen different Cardinals books at this sale, but this was the only that I asked my mom to grab.

I have the "Boys of Summer", but have never read any of Roger Kahn's other works, so this'll probably be a good gauge as to whether or not I do ever want to try any more.

Old library book...

You don't need a synopsis to figure out what this one's all about.

Another old library book...

... albeit a much more interesting one!

This book covers every major leagues roster up until 1973. I haven't encountered a book like this before, and while it would've been much more impressive in the pre-internet age, I'm sure that I'll still be able to find some things of note. Might even be able to get a blog post out of it? Does anyone ever read non-fiction books out of order? I do all the time, and will be doing so again with this one when I jump ahead a hundred pages to start with the Federal League stats.

Sample page.

In addition to all of the books, there was also a lot of other forms of media represented at this sale, so I got pictures of those sections sent to me as well.

I started off the post with some stats, sort of, and while I don't have any numbers to back it up, I'm pretty sure I bought the least amount of videos and DVD's this year, than any other year in my adult life. My interest in such things hasn't diminished, it just seems like they're not as prevalent as they used to be anymore, especially videos. The Book Cellar stopped taking videos this year, and one of the local thrift stores stopped as well. I've heard people in other areas reporting the same thing, so I know it's not just a here thing. I will be an unhappy camper when the time comes where I can no longer find used videos to peruse.

I think I may have seen this episode when it originally aired, but won't know for sure until I watch it. This is a 3-tape set by the way, not something that you encounter very often.

I don't care about newer Titanic books or television specials, but won't turn down an older 90's piece.

It's funny how many things around here you can find with old McKay's stickers on them. They haven't sold videos for awhile, so I always leave those stickers on. The ones on books go though.

I haven't seen this since it's original airing. I remember not being crazy about it at the time, but 20+ years may have changed my opinion. Like I mentioned earlier, I haven't been watching as much stuff as I usually do, so even the things I'm looking forward to, usually end up taking me a couple of months to get to.

A 90's cable favorite.

I used to always find copies of this at the Value Village in Vancouver, WA, but had seen it enough times that I didn't buy any of those copies at the time. Fast forward a decade (maybe a little more), and I haven't watched again in all of that time, and am now taking a chance on a very beat up copy. 

Given how many items my mom found, and how late in the day it was getting, I didn't end up going to the sale myself. I saw what was available from a few other sections, which didn't contain anything else for me, and really, all I missed out on was possibly wandering through the history section (too many books to send detailed photos of), and I'm okay with that. There's no shortage of history books at just about any place that sells books. I will be going next year though.

I'm not lucky enough to live near one of those Dollar Tree's that has all of the great movies and television show seasons on DVD and Blu-Ray, but up until the corona got going, the nearest store did get some decent books on a fairly regular basis. It's been pretty spotty for the last two years though, and not just on books, the store itself seems to be struggling to get much of anything, well, anything but junk food. With junk food not being my thing, I haven't had much occasion to go as of late, and as such, have only been going in there about every 3-6 months. It had been on the upper end of that estimate before I got the urge to go last week. There were still a lot of empty shelves in there, but to my surprise to book section looked pretty well stocked, and wouldn't you know it, I found a book!

And here's what I just finished reading, my one book for December so far. I didn't realize that it wasn't written by a Brit, and starts off in Britain, so with me not being an anglophile it took a little effort to get into it. Ultimately I'm glad that I stuck with it though, it wasn't perfect, but was definitely worth a buck.

Seeing as how I was right there, I couldn't not go into the Serenity Thrift that's right next door... 

Hey, another book! At over 850 pages, this is one chunky MF'er. I'm really looking forward to this one, but probably won't start to tackle until January.

I was also in Crossville last week too, and even though I was just there 2 or 3 weeks ago, I made quick stop at the Book Cellar to see if anything new had come in. Turns out that quite a bit of new stuff had been brought in during those couple weeks.

I know from past posts that there aren't a lot of X-Files fans coming around here, so I didn't bother with of the backs. This was an exciting haul for me though, especially since I've never even seen two of these on the secondary market before.

I've been on a big film novelization kick in recent months. 70's and 80's examples are of particular interest to me. I haven't seen Cocoon for a couple of decades, so I doubt I'll even notice any of the differences that usually find in novelizations with this one.

I always seem to be ending my physical media posts with Scholastic book. You might be complaining about that, but I'm certainly not.

I may have started last year low on books to choose from, but have closed it out with a glutton of purchases to restock my options during the first few months of the coming new year. And I'm still gonna try to hit McKay's one more this later this month too. Don't worry though, this'll be the last post of it's kind for the year, I promise!