Christmas cheer from California

There seems to be a lot of Christmas love being spread around the blogs this year. Oscar, of ATBATT fame, is contributing to that in a very big way by continuing his now annual Operation Cardboard Christmas, which ensures that a lot of bloggers out there will be receiving a mailbox/stocking stuffer this holiday season.

Oscar was kind enough to include me in this year's mailings, which means I now have a few a cards to show off/publicly give thanks for:

The base card portion of the package features representatives from 1988 Pacific Legends, 2011 Topps Lineage, 2016 Archives, and 2017 Archives. I'm pretty sure I have the Kiner, but the other three are new to me.

Here's a really attractive card from the 2011 Topps 60 insert set. I have never seen this one before, but I really dig it.

 A pair of needed horizontal Chasing History inserts.

A trio of needed vertical Chasing History inserts, and even though it's a little hard to tell from the picture, the Koufax is a silver Holo-Foil.

Some needed sparkle in the form of a 2011 Platinum Diamond Anniversary, and a 2013 Emerald Foil.

And closing it out with a pair of needed 2011 Cognac Diamond Anniversary rookies.

Of the last four cards shown, I only have a list up for the Platinum Diamond's (but they are hardly ever mentioned here), and I rarely talk about the Cognac's or the Emerald Foil's (only because I don't come across them very often)... and yet, Oscar knows/remembers of my love for them, which is really awesome, and not to get all sappy here, but it does kind of makes me feel like I'm a part of something special :)

Thank you again for the cards, Oscar! It won't be before Christmas, but I will definitely try to have something headed back in your direction sometime soon.


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Tales from the Thrift Store vol.3

In last week's Bookstore Bonanza post, I mentioned hitting up two thrift stores that day as well, and since I didn't buy enough to warrant two posts, I figured I might as well combine the purchases from both stores into today's post.

First up is the A Time 4 Paws thrift store, who's sales benefit a non profit no-kill animal shelter of the same name. This was the only second time that I've been to this store, mostly because it's not in a direction I usually go, but considering what the money goes towards, I really should try to get there more often.

Other than what is stated in English, I know absolutely nothing about this album, but for $1.50 it was certainly worth taking a chance on. It will probably still be another month or so before I have the turntable unpacked, so for the moment this will just be added to my ever growing pile of vinyl that needs to be listened to.

Considering that I've never been in a Starbucks before, I seem to have a lot of their compilations, especially of the Rhino variety. I have like half these tracks on other CD's, but getting the other half for only $2 was a pretty solid deal.

I always enjoy finding videos of movies that aren't on DVD (at least not in this country). Never seen it, but it sounds good.

A still sealed copy of Point Blank on DVD for $2? Consider me officially all over it!

Next up, I hit the Threads of Hope thrift store, which is located right across from the bookstore. Even those particular store doesn't usually have anything for me, I still try to pop in there real quick after trips to the bookstore.

This movie came out in 2000, and somehow I'm just now hearing about it! I honestly don't even know how that's possible, as at that time, I would've still been haunting local video stores on a fairly regular basis and I most certainly should have seen it amongst the new releases.

Justice League in a clamshell? Yes, Please!

Scooby-Doo meets Batman in a somewhat squished clamshell? Sounds good to me!

Between the trip to the bookstore, and the two thrift stores, it's was definitely one of my better outing's in quite a while. I was able to replenish my always dwindling VHS "to watch" pile, and I was able to get two blog posts out of it, which is a win-win in my book.


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Golden Willie

I hadn't planned on posting anything today, but after it's arrival in the mail yesterday, I just couldn't resist doing a quickie to show off this recently won 2013 Panini Golden Age Willie McCovey Museum Age:

I really like the look and feel of this swatch, and having not seen this one before, I was surprised to be able to pick it up for so very little. With this card, I now have 17 of the 40 relic cards from the 2013 edition of Golden Age.


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Mission accomplished

For anyone who may have missed it, I am very happy to report that just a couple hours after last night's post, Sportlots finally decided to take some action by removing all of hock2015's listings. I don't know if anything can be done for the people who have already bought from this "dealer", but at least quite a few others will not be getting taken.

Before I go any further I wanted to give thanks to Michael Reese, who also took the time to contact Sportlots about this matter. Michael was also kind enough to share this reply that he received:

"Yes, all auctions from this seller has been pulled and put on hold until we can confirm one way or another if these are legit cards. It’s not possible for me to accuse them as such based on images, but agree that these are very suspicious. I will get to the bottom of this and they won’t be listing anymore until we can confirm.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention."

I know some of you might be getting a little tired of reading about this, and honestly, I was getting a little tired of talking about it, but I do believe these posts served their purpose... which was simply to get a few people on board who were interested in trying to prevent some of our fellow collectors from being the victim of fraud, and you know something? That is exactly what we did!


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Really?

I know I said wasn't going to bring it up again, but after seeing hock2015's newest batch of counterfeit's on Sportlots this morning, and all the subsequent bids being placed shortly thereafter... I just couldn't let it go.

All of today's listings, not surprisingly, look like they came out of the exact same mold as the last group. And of course, they're all the biggest names, and key rookie cards. So in an attempt to keep showing how bad these, here's just a small sampling of what was listed today:

I don't really know what I hope to accomplish by dedicating yet another post to this matter. I guess the best I could hope for, would be if just one of the people who have bought from this person to see one of these post's, show their card(s) to an honest seller (card shop, card show, etc.) for them to assess -- and once they find out it's a fake -- contact Sportlots, who will then finally remove this seller from the site.

It also wouldn't hurt if these posts inspired more people to contact Sportlots, and ask them to take some kind of action, before more people end up getting duped.

And one final thing, many thanks to Jeff, of the Fan-Attic Sports Cards Blog, for helping spread the word by adding links to my previous two posts (which are here and here) in a post he did last night.


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Bookstore Bonanza #2

Last Friday was the first opportunity I've had to get out and do something fun in what feels like month's. Since I'm a rather boring person, "fun" meant hitting up the bookstore, two thrift stores, and Walgreen's (I was looking for something that was supposed to be carried there, but apparently isn't in this part of the country). Today's post will cover the bookstore portion of that trip.

In case anyone missed the first post in this bookstore series, you can check it out here to see what's what. For anyone that did read the first one, you shouldn't be too surprised to hear that this will be another all VHS post. So if that's not something you're interested in, I won't be offended if you decide to skip this one.

This is one of those movies that I have been meaning to see for like twenty years now, but just hadn't ever gotten around to it.

 I have seen Farewell, My Lovely a few times, but I had yet to see the second (and final) of Robert Mitchum's Philip Marlowe pictures.

 I can't remember if I ever saw this picture or not, I guess I'll find out once I start watching it.

 Had never heard of this 1986 TV movie before, should be good though.

It would've been physically (and mentally) impossible for me to have not bought this!

 Familiar with it, but haven't seen it.

Believe it or not, this is the first time that I can recall seeing this anywhere on video (or DVD). This is one of those movies that I identify with television, as it seems like there was a time when it was airing on TBS like every week for what seemed like years.

Never heard of this one before either, but I'm always up for an 80's romcom.

For anyone who may be interested, I will be covering the thrift store(s) portion of this outing sometime in the next couple of days, and as crazy as it sounds, there will actually be a couple of non-VHS related items... just a couple though.


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