The Mick and The Stilt

Let me start off by saying that isn't going to be a post about some new buddy cop movie, despite a title giving that impression. Rather it will be to show my two splurge purchases from this past weekend's card show.

There were plenty of other cards gotten at the show, but those will have to wait for future posts. More money was spent than planned as well. But I have learned the hard way that if a good deal (or deals)presents itself, it is usually a good idea to jump on it, because you might not ever get a chance to get the item for that price again. I have had a number of instances in which I didn't take advantage of that "deal of a lifetime", and most of those instances are still haunting me.

First up is a card of a fellow you normally wouldn't expect to find for anywhere near a reasonable to good price at a show.


1968 Topps Mickey Mantle #280:

This came from my favorite seller who unfortunately has moved out of state and won't be setting up at the shows nearly as often anymore. He is the one who always has about a dozen dime boxes that attract attendees (myself included) like flies to you know what. He usually doesn't have a lot of vintage, so I was somewhat surprised to see that he had brought quite a bit for sale. Another thing I really like about this seller (Jim) is the fact that he will negotiate back and forth until a price that both parties find satisfactory is reached, which can be pretty interesting to see (or hear, if you are looking through his boxes while it's occurring). The price on this would be about the same as ebay on a good day, make that a very good day.

On to the second splurge card.

1972-73 Topps Wilt Chamberlain #1:

This one came from a seller I hadn't seen before who didn't have prices on anything, which is usually a bad sign for me as it means the price will have to be looked up in an ever present beckett. But I figured it was worth a shot since this card has been alluding me for a while now. So after a mobile version of the beckett was consulted by the seller a price was quoted and then countered by me which was accepted instantly, I was able to knock another big name out of this set. I paid about the same price on this one as you could get on ebay, but at least I didn't have to worry about some slight crease/wrinkle that seller either missed or failed to mention and the go through all the trouble of sending it back.


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A shiny surprise!

(Editor's note: I know this starts off a little long winded, but hopefully the payoff at the end is worth reading it for)

About two weeks ago on one of the usual twice a week trips to Walmart I wandered down the card aisle (which I always do) to see if there was anything new in the clearance bin, and to my surprise there was actually something other than the usual 2013 and 2014 Topps baseball. Before I continue though I just wanted to mention how weird it still is for me to say I was shopping at a Walmart, especially since before moving to Tennessee almost a year ago now I had never been in one before. Back home (Oregon/Washington) there are Walmart's but as much as I hate to say it, usually only a "certain sort" shopped there (I won't go into what "certain sort" means). Plus they don't have as much of a foothold as they do everywhere else. Here however, they are the lifeblood (along with any store that has the word "Dollar" in the title) for people of all walks. I'm just still getting used to going there so often, that's all.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled story: Actually before I even looked in the bin I noticed a rack pack (I just learned that's what they are called) of marked down 2013-14 Panini Prizm basketball sitting on a shelf all by it's lonesome. And after my card show purchase a few months ago of some of the parallels I have developed an interest in the set, so I thought it would be fun to actually open some packs from said set. So after searching the clearance bin I found two more packs buried under all the obligatory Topps packs. I felt fairly fortunate to find these, since I know for a fact they hadn't been out the week before.

So let us see what was gotten from three rack packs of 2013-14 Panini Prizm:

The lighting isn't very good on this picture due to the fact that I didn't think to take picture until the moment before opening. I also wanted to mention that these packs had a layer of dust/dirt on them, like they had been sitting in the back for quite some time.

Each rack pack is made up of three retail packs (4 cards in each pack) and one blue pack which contains three of the Red, White, and Blue parallels.

Here are a few of the highlights as far as the base set goes:

These cards really don't scan well. They are reduced from a mirrored silver to an almost gun metal gray.

Each pack also contains one of these HRX rookies, that don't count as one of the four cards in the pack:

They have a bar code on the back that I'm assuming you are supposed to use your phone to scan, and they talk to you or something.

Here is the three retail green parallels that I got:

And the three Walmart blue parallels:

Up next will be the nine total red, white, and blue parallels that come in the blue packs:

Saving the best for last and the reason for the post title. It was only about four packs in that I came across a card that was turned around. And of course being the dummy that I am, I just thought it was weird that the pack stuffing machine had made a mistake and put one of the base cards in backward. That was until I turned it over and saw this:

Needless to say I was quite surprised, but not as surprised as when I turned it back over and saw this:

That's right, serial numbered 3/5! Sorry for the bad pictures, the number was proving difficult to show. Apparently this is a Walmart blue parallel autograph, although I still haven't figured out why some are numbered to upwards of 99 and some are to just 5. And since there are no stated odds on the pack for getting one of these I can't throw out any numbers at you, but it seems like the odds would be something like 1:and quite a lot. In general I'm not a big fan of sticker autographs, but in this instance I don't mind one bit.

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COMC Hoard part 8: Non sports

I wanted to start off by saying that is not even funny how far behind I'm getting on posts right now. I still have stuff from two card shows ago that I wanted to show, and now I have stuff from the card show yesterday to add to the pile.

 I still haven't finished with these COMC posts, and now there is another batch of cards coming from them. I have been very fortunate in the last couple of weeks to be right on the ball when sellers seem to be trying liquidate their inventory with 70 to 80 percent off sales, and you really have be on those soon after they are posted otherwise all the other sellers show up willing and able to cannibalize one of their own to then mark everything up for resale. So it hasn't taken me long to get to 100 cards and therefor get the $5 credit one gets for requesting shipment on over a hundred cards, plus I was able to use my free shipping that I got from one of the scratch offs that they included in the Black Friday shipments.

And on top of that there is trade material from Mark Hoyle that I will try to get posted this week, not to mention some of the other various acquisitions from Ebay, Sportlots, etc. Hopefully it's not considered a faux pas to show things that were gotten months earlier, since I will most likely be doing that for quite awhile.

All that being said, I guess it's better to have too much to show rather than not having enough. So let's get to the cards, shall we?

These will go from oldest to newest, starting with something a little different.

1910-ish tobacco college series felt blankets for the University of California:

Before getting this one I had never encountered these before. There doesn't seem to be very much definitive info about them available. It seems they were put in with many different tobacco products beginning around 1910 and ended around the time of the first World War. They came in two different sizes, this one being of the small variety measuring around 2.5''x 3.75". Also each school seems to come in a variety of different color combinations. It really amazes me that things like this have survived in such great condition, but that doesn't appear to mean much price wise as their doesn't seem to be very much interest in these.

1941 Goudey Sky-Birds Chewing Gum #9 U.S.A Curtis Pursuit Plane:

This is only the second card I have gotten from this set, and it is in far better shape than my other one. The vivid colors on the cards from this set are very appealing to me. The backs on these are intentionally blank so I didn't bother scanning it.

Next up is three cards from a set I absolutely adore!

1952 Topps Look n' See:

#127 Galileo

#30 Charles Lindbergh



#45 Amelia Earhart

I LOVE these cards. I was really happy to get the Amelia Earhart for the price I did as she is the third most expensive card in the set, behind  Rembrandt and Babe Ruth.

1953 Bowman Television and Radio Stars of NBC #58 Ronnie (Christopher) Walken:

This seems to be a very popular card amongst the bloggers, as I have seen it featured on multiple blogs. I don't know how many people are actually working on the set though.


1953 Topps Who-Z-At Star #79 Errol Flynn:

Another set being built at a snails pace. Cards from this set seem to be hard to get in decent shape for affordable prices. I was curious if anyone reading this has even seen any of Errol Flynn's films? If so, do you have a favorite? I have always been particularly fond of the Dawn Patrol remake.


Moving on. Here's two from the 1962 Topps Civil War News set:

It's funny how tastes change as on gets older. When I was growing up I really didn't like this set, and now I find myself liking it more and more as time passes.


1962 Topps Mars Attacks #46 Blast off from Mars!

It's hard to believe this is my first card from this set (although now there are more on the way). It has a small crease on the right side, but I don't care it's still neat.


 Here are four cards from the 1966 Topps Lost in Space set:

And one of the backs:

I didn't think there would be too many fans of the show reading this, so that's why I only scanned one of the back's. This is one of those shows that I watched a seemingly endless amount of reruns from, while growing up. I didn't realize until very recently how heavily collected this set is, which is probably why I can't find any singles cheap.


1969 Topps Brady Bunch #50:

Looking at this card all I can think is "Geez, I sure would like to have all the stuff that is pictured in Brady's boys room". Seriously look at all those neat things! Oh, I forgot to scan the back of this card before putting it away, so no back shot.


And finally a card of Rutherford B. Hayes from the 2007 SP Legendary Cuts Legendary Americana insert set #'d 183/550:

I know that technically this comes from a baseball set, but the majority of this insert set is non sports figures. I can't remember how many cards are in this set (around 60-70) and each one is serial numbered to 550, which makes it a slow set build.

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TTM Triumph #13: Toby Kimball

Here's another successful recent return:

Mr. Kimball played four years of college ball at the University of Connecticut (1962-65) where he averaged 18.4 points and 17.9 rebounds a game over three seasons (freshmen were ineligible), in his senior season he led nation in rebounding with 21 a game. He was drafted in the third round of the 1965 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics.

Since he knew he wouldn't get to play very much in his rookie season he talked coach Auerbach into letting him play in Italy for a season, where he led his team his team to an Italian Cup Title as well as the World Cup Championship. He came back and played one season with the Celtics before being selected by the San Diego Rockets in the 1967 expansion draft. He would go on to play for six teams over nine seasons in the NBA. Over his career he averaged 6.1 points and 6.8 rebounds a game. He suffered multiple injuries during his career, so his full potential was likely never achieved.

As always a big thank you goes out to Mr. Kimball!

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Cardboard Art

I thought I would do a quick post to show the five 2015-16 Panini Court Kings box toppers that I got from Sportlots about two weeks ago. I had originally thought I might want to try and get a box of these, but after seeing how few cards make up a box and seeing the base card design (which I don't really like) I decided to pass. That being said, I really like the look of the box toppers. And with fifty cards in the set, it seems like completing them might be possible, especially if I can get the rest as cheap as I got these (they averaged out to about $1.50 each).

The fifty card set is comprised of 25 Career Progression cards and 25 Panoramic cards.

These first two are from the Panoramic group:

#20 Derrick Rose

#22 Kevin Durant

And one of the backs:

And these next three are from the Career Progression group:

#7 Brandon Knight

#12 Ray Allen

#21 Gary Payton

And the back:

These cards have a neat canvas type feel to them as well. The only real problem with collecting these is the size, as the 5x7 aspect ratio makes them hard to store. I do have two minor complaints with the set though. 1: Since the set isn't very big I don't like that there are a couple of guys in both groups, but I guess people might lose their minds if Lebron James didn't have two cards in the set (I would have been just fine if he didn't have any). 2: With the inclusion of player's from the past in most sets these days, I don't know why they include a couple in the Career Progression group. I know Gary Payton is technically from the past but I would have liked to have seen a Bob McAdoo, Tiny Archibald, Alcindor/Jabbar, etc. included in here as well. But even with these minor complaints, I fully intend to try and complete the set at some point (probably when everyone else loses interest in them, which will most likely be in a few weeks or so).

On a completely different note I wanted to show a couple of pictures I took during the recent snowfall. We had around 9 inches of snow. And yes I know a lot of places had considerably more, but I think that what we had is considered quite a bit for Tennessee.

This first picture is a view from the back porch:

The frog pond that is towards the back of this picture could double as an ice skating rink.

This next one is from the front porch:

And the last one here is my favorite:

This little fellow (or gal) was temporarily separated from the rest of it's herd after I accidently scared them away. But don't worry the mom came back and waited about 100 yards away for him (or her).

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