Free Stuff Friday #3

I don't know about everyone else, but I could sure use a pick-me-up right about now. I can't tell which is worse as of late, the actual virus that's going around, or all of the bulljive that's being spewed forth by the media/politicians (both sides)? Actually I do know which is worse, and it's too bad we can't strike up some sort of deal with the virus itself, you know like "You can take all of our politicians and national media member's, but then you've got to go away... and not come back!". I'm guessing that most of you would be on board with such an agreement as well, and those who aren't, probably will be soon.

Anyways, it's been a little longer than planned since my last Free Stuff Friday, but to make it up to you I've got an assortment of mostly vintage stuff again, mostly baseball, but there's a bit of football, basketball, hockey, non-sport, and even two non-trading card things.

I don't think I have as much to offer this week as I've had in previous installment's, so maybe try to use a little bit of discretion when claiming this time (I don't have any sort of arbitrary number in mind, just try not to go too crazy) after all it would be nice if more than two people were able to get things. That being said, if there's a bunch of stuff still here by say Sunday night, and you've already claimed a few things but still want more, then feel free to come back and claim whatever's left. And as per usual, I'm not looking for anything in return, all I ask is that please make sure that the stuff your claiming is for your collection, and not your box of trade fodder.

And with all that's been going on, if there's anyone out there who isn't too keen on receiving mail right now, just let me know, and I'll be more than happy to hold your claims until you are.

Oh, sorry, one more thing. Be sure to check out Brian's weekly offerings, he's really taken the ball and ran with it! Rod has been giving away some stuff lately as well, so it would probably be in your best interest to go see what's what. And then there's Julie, and her Pick Pockets, which isn't limited to just Friday's, but is putting everyone else to shame with her amazing generosity.

Ok, I think that's everything, so without further ado...

With just a creased corner, Jim is the best of this bunch condition wise, everybody else has a crease through them, and Roy also has some paper stuck to his back.

Please note that since this will probably be the only time I ever have any 1960 Leaf to give away, I'm gonna limit these to one per person (you can still claim other stuff with one of these as well though), at least until Sunday night, if there's any left by then, feel free to come back and get the rest. Update: These have all been claimed.

All of these have problems, Ray is the worst though, as he's got a crease going through him. Update: Ray has been claimed.

All kinds of problems with these two!

If memory serves, these are all crease-free. Update: The N.L. Leaders has been claimed.

I don't think there were any creases here either. Update: All three of these have been claimed.

Ron's got a major indent thing going on his first name, and Tom's creasing is even worse than it looks in the scan. Update: Both of these have been claimed.

 Vintage OPC! Both with problems. Update: Both of these have been claimed.

Billy is cracked, Franco is a bit brown (bread staining?), and Al's got a creased corner. Update: All three of these have been claimed.

Now I'm taking a page out of Brian's book, although I have much less hockey to offer than he does. The '73-74 has some staining (water?) at the bottom, but no problems with the Esso sticker. Update: The trophy has been claimed.

This '66 Black Bat has some obvious issues, and the back is as bad as the front. Update: This has been claimed.

Here's something you don't see every day, 1978 Sunbeam Taystee bread DC stickers. These are both browned and ripply, they must've been come from a particularly oily loaf. Update: These have been claimed.

 Two WWI era postcards...

Both are unused, but they both do have a crease running through the middle, and the Underwood & Underwood (top card) has a bit of staining on one side.

And now we get to a couple of newer things, namely some inserts...

... from the 2012 Cooperstown set. Update: These have been claimed.

That'll do it for this round, feel free to start registering those claims!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

I am a filthy liar

Last Friday's post saw me letting everyone know that, save for an upcoming Free Stuff Friday, I would be taking the rest of the month off from blogging, and now less than one week later, here I am... blogging again!

What I can I say? After just six days I'm already missing everyone. It's funny, I've gone weeks between posts before, which have always been unplanned, and had no problems -- but apparently I'm not very good at taking planned breaks, because I was itching to come back within just a couple of days of what I thought was a much needed respite.

I've got much to say after the last six days (see below), all of which could've waited until April, but given what were all currently dealing with, the want to interact with the closest thing to real friends that I have has been strong, stronger than usual, so hopefully me lying about not posting again until next month will be forgiven.

Besides wanting (needing?) to keep in touch with all of you, another thing has brought me back early, namely a PWE that I received this past Monday. I mentioned in the last post that I've been fortunate enough to have received a number of packages/PWE's already this year, so getting another one isn't exactly out of the ordinary (feels weird to type that), except it was, if only because I have no idea who sent it?

There was no return address, no note, and I don't recognize the hand that was used to write out my address on the envelope. There wasn't even a postmark, just a faint, but smeared cancel.

In 4½ years of blogging I've never received a mystery parcel, and while it was kind of fun, I would rather know who it is, if only so that I could properly thank them. Whoever sent it, obviously knows of my interests though, as I do like me some horror, and still think the world of holograms.

There were two cards in the PWE, both from Impel's semi-forgotten 1991 A Nightmare on Elm Street set. Early holograms don't always scan the best, these being no exception, so here's a slightly better look at this one...

Much better! If memory serves (which it's doing less and less of these days), there were only two holograms in this set, and I've never owned either before, so if I were to say that finally getting one was pretty neat, how the heck am I supposed to describe getting two?

I couldn't get a decent scan of old #H2 here to save my life, so hopefully this will suffice.

I am very grateful to whoever thought enough of me to send these, hyperbole aside, they may have been the very last thing that I expected to see fall out of this envelope, so thank you for the very pleasant surprise. But seriously though, please reveal your identity, if only so that everyone else can know how awesome you are!

Moving on...

I mentioned the planned Free Stuff Friday, which I thought about trying to do tomorrow, but I don't have anything scanned, and will be busy most of today, so I'll just go ahead and do it next week -- until then, this picture will serve as a small preview of what's coming! I realize too that some folks are getting a bit hinky about receiving mail, so if that's you, please don't hesitate to participate next week, as I'll be more than happy to hold your claims until you're comfortable receiving parcels again. As an aside, I normally get my posts out around 11am CST, but I'm thinking about pushing the Fee Stuff posts back to 5pm-ish, and am curious to know if that's any better, or worse, for the folks who like to participate?

I've made more headway with my great card sort this past week as well. Baseball is finished, football is at about 80% done, and basketball, well, I don't have a percentage for basketball, but for all intensive purposes it's basically done, I just need to finish grouping some of the like-minded stuff together. I might actually do a short recap, with plenty of photos, about all of this next week, it'll probably won't be too terribly exciting, but a few people might enjoy it.

All of this sorting has inspired the creation of even MORE player collections, all of which I'm hoping to catalog at some point, with that in mind, I turned my attentions to my loose pack stash a couple of days ago, as it would be nice to know if any of said packs contain cards for said player collections.

Save for six packs from September's card show that I forgot to add to the stack before photographing, this was my stash of loose packs, I say was because they've all been opened since this photo was taken, and all but a couple of stinker packs will eventually make their way onto the blog. It's funny too, because unlike a lot of people, I never intended to have a stash of any kind, I just bought a few packs, never got around to opening them, then rinse and repeat... and two years later I had a mini-stash!

Speaking of stashes...

Not quite as impressive as the boxes shown off by Fuji and Ryan a couple of weeks ago, but this (pay no attention to the TV Guide's) is my unintentional box stash, plus the two 1993-94 Topps rack packs that I bought right before everything went bonkers. These are all gonna have to be opened up sooner than later too, especially the football, because those will definitely have some player collection guy's in them. The 1990-91 Fleer basketball boxes seem to be going up in price for some reason, I bought my two for $7, which seemed a bit overpriced, from the guy at the "copy/print/card" shop in town maybe a year ago (everything else except for the 1997 Zenith came from there too BTW), and when I was just in there a few weeks ago, I saw that he now has them for $25 a box! Seeing his new price made me check eBay when I got home that day, and believe it or not they seem to now be selling in the $20-25 range -- I just don't understand why? There is nothing rare to be found in these boxes, there are literally millions of copies of each card in this set still floating around... I sure hope this surge in price isn't because everyone started (re)discovering just how awesome my beloved Shawn Kemp rookie is!

I was going to close this post with some thoughts on all of this virus business, but I suspect a lot of people are reading the blogs to try and get away from what's going on out there right now, so I will skip doing so for the time being. I will say though - and this is card related, so it might apply to a few people - that if you're like me at all, and rely heavily on the credit earned from doing COMC's Challenges to augment to your collecting budget, you might want to start getting used to the idea of them being closed for a while. Their recent emails indicated that processing of submissions has been slowed, and could very soon be halted, which would mean no more Challenges, so you might want to get to doing them while you still can, and if you have some credit built up in your account, it might be a good idea not to spend all in one place. They also asked that people not request any shipments for the time being, so depending on how long that's in effect, there's a good chance that we won't be seeing a Spring Cleaning sale this year.

On a much lighter note, I've been selling some more stuff on eBay as of late, and it was through one of these recent sales that I met, Dan, from 1978toppsfootball.com. Not only is Dan apparently a preeminent expert when it comes to the 1978 Topps football set, he's also really into buybacks, so much so in fact, that I think that he could be called the new king of buybacks, I mean dude's only six cards away from completing the '87 Topps baseball set... in buyback form! The site is still a work in progress, but if you're looking for something to do, you might want to head on over and check it out sometime (there are tons of pictures).

And finally, on a very positive note, Tim has decided to start smelling the cardboard again. This was a most excellent surprise, as even though his blog isn't that much older than mine, it was still amongst the earliest blogs that I read once I found out that there was such a thing as card blogs. So if you haven't already done so, go say hi, or welcome back, or something, as long absent bloggers returning to the fold is always cause for celebration!

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Taking a brief respite

Trying to write posts for the blog has been an absolute struggle as of late, hence only one published post through the first eleven days of this month. I thought it was because of all the card sorting I had been doing, you know, maybe I was just getting carded out? But now I think it's just a combination of a bunch things, and since I'm getting a little tired of starting posts, only to get stuck on something halfway through, then take a break from it by starting another one, only to have the same thing happen again, and so forth and so forth ... I'm just gonna go ahead and take a few weeks off from the blog.

I'll come back and do a Free Stuff Friday in a couple of weeks, but other than that, I don't anticipate doing anything else on here until April. Although I will be reading and commenting where I can on everyone else's posts, I'm about a week behind right now, but hopefully I can get caught up now that I don't have to worry about trying to write anything for a few weeks.

I've been fortunate enough to have received quite a few packages from fellow bloggers this year, so many in fact that I think I've reached my yearly average, and it's only March! I'm very grateful for all of the stuff that has been sent, but have yet to post about any of it, so that's gonna be my top priority come April... lots and lots of thank you posts!

Just so this post doesn't end up being imageless, and because I didn't know where else to show them, here are the most recent pickup's for my Reggie Roby collection, which came from last year's COMC horde -- I haven't gotten any Reggie's so far this year, so tecnically speaking, these are still recent to me.

I should probably point out that I used my new-ish phone (my old one crapped out) to take these pictures, which I'm still trying to figure out how to use btw, so the pictures are all a bit wonky (especially on the next card). Anyways, this is a 1990 Pro Set Reggie error, he's got Franco Harris printed on his back. Technically speaking I didn't need this card for the collection, but I wanted it, so I went ahead and overpaid (in earned credit) to get it.

I don't have the same affinity for Sports Illustrated for Kids, the magazine or the cards, that a lot of folks seem to, but I do like this card. I'm pretty sure that I even had a subscription to the magazine around the time that this card came out ('89), as I distinctly remember this particular design, but have no idea if I ever owned the actual card or not.

Reggie only has two refractor's to his name, this one from the '95 Finest set, and another more expensive from the previous year's Finest. This one doesn't have any greening, and the "Peel and Remove" isn't right over his face, so I was more than happy to pay a whole $0.75 for it.

Three new additions might not seem like a lot, but it's certainly better than no new additions! So on that note, I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks for another Free Stuff Friday, and spoiler alert, there's gonna be lot's of old stuff again, mostly off-condtion, but still old :)


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Making room for Moyer

It's been another slow week around here on the blog. Apparently I'm incapable of sorting lots of cards and working on blog posts at the same time, not literally at the same time mind you, just on the same days.

Not working on posts has been a bad thing, but by not doing so I've been able to get through about 75% of my cards, or at least the one's that were questionable as far if I wanted to keep or not. So far the sort has gone really well, the boxes of stuff to sell and giveaway continue to outpace the keepers, and since trying to thin the herd was the whole point of doing this, so I've been quite pleased with how it's been turning out.

It's been going a lot quicker than I thought it would too, which is also nice, given how much I hate sorting large volumes of cards. I am definitely getting tired of this big sort, and even though I'm fairly close to finishing, I think I'm gonna take the rest of this week off, and probably next week as well. This will hopefully give me a chance to get a few finished posts stored in the reserve, and go back to the sorting in a few weeks.

Aside from the finding so many cards that I no longer feel the need to keep, the other big thing to come from this endeavor is a bunch of new player collections. Most of those have been of the football variety, but there has been a few baseball players added as well, although only one of them has played semi-recently, that being Jamie Moyer.

I can't imagine that the starting of this collection will be of much interest to too many people, but I haven't been doing very many baseball posts as of late, so any excuse to do one...

The good thing about me starting new player collections is that I'm usually only starting with a couple of cards, so it's pretty easy to get all of them into one post, and Jamie Moyer is no exception!

The idea to start collecting Jamie came when I found his card in a stack of 1995 Score Gold Rush that I was going through, a card that I didn't even recall having -- which by the way, is part of the reason for this big sort, as I'm officially tired of finding things that I didn't remember having! Anyways, at one time I was pretending to work on that set, and had bought a cheap lot or two on eBay, which got inventoried, and then put in a box, where they've been sitting now for at least five years. Jamie ended up being the only card that I'm going to keep, so in my mind that was a very successful go through.

After mulling over the idea of starting a Jamie Moyer collection for a couple of minutes, and then deciding that yes, I did want to do so -- I went in search of other card of his.

Off the top of my head, I could only think of one other card of his that I had, that being a 1987 Topps rookie blank back that I got off of Listia a number of years ago. I can't remember exactly when I got it, but if I had to guess I'd say it was five or six years ago, definitely pre-blog, because I was using that site quite a bit back then... back before greed took hold of the site's creator(s).

I don't have a lot of contemporary baseball cards, so I knew that if I were going to find any more of Jamie's cards, I'd have to turn to my misc. team binders, which is basically where I just stash the random stuff that I like, but doesn't fit anywhere else. Those two binders ended up yielding another two cards, one of which is this bitchin' white Turkey Red.

It's hard to believe that it's been over twenty years since he joined the Mariners, 24 to be exact! I had only seen him pitch a couple of times before he came to Seattle, and honestly didn't think too much about him either way before doing so, but being a die-hard Mariners fan at the time, it didn't take long to warm up to him. His pitching style was unique to say the least, and he had/has a very likable personality, which always make it easier to root for someone. In fact, I liked him so much, that he ended up being one of the few players who's career I tried to actively follow after leaving the team. And I was very happy for him when he was able to get that ring with Philly, although I would've much rather seen him do so back in 2001 with the Mariners.

Though it was found in one of my random team binders, this card comes from yet another abandoned set build, and I believe that this could be considered a sunset card as well, or at least one of his many sunset cards that were released in 2012.

Four cards isn't much of a start, especially since the TCDB says that he has almost 1,200 to his name, but at least these four cards make up for a nice cross section of his career. I would imagine too that some of those almost 1,200 cards are stickers, postcards, etc., so the actual number might be a little closer to 1,100... which is still an awful lot of cards to chase!

Oh, and speaking of the TCDB, I had some time the other morning to play around, and rather than trying to work on a blog post, I instead spent some of that time taking the site for a test run, a test run that ultimately ended with me driving into a metaphoric brick wall. Talk about confusing! I tried to add some cards to a collection list, at least that's what I thought I was trying to do, but it sure didn't turn out so well. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but I think I'm gonna have to hit up the YouTube and see if anyone's made a "TCDB for dum dums" video, before trying again. But seriously though, I will try again, it just might be a few weeks before I feel like failing again.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Today is a card show day, and not just any old card show day, no, it's one of the twice a year super mega 200+ table Nashville card show (aka the baby National) days... and I'm not there!

I mentioned in the last post that I had been looking forward to this one for months, since September to be more specific, only to find out a couple of weeks ago that all of this waiting had been for naught.

I had originally planned on starting this post off with a bit of a rant, but after thinking about it, I realized that a). The last thing the internet needs is yet another person ranting about something, and b). The rant would be completely irrelevant to anyone not attending the show, which is probably everyone reading this, so why bother?

So instead of ranting, I'll just say that a few changes have been made to how the big shows are being run going forward, including the addition of an admission fee, and I'm not happy with these changes, so I decided not to attend -- which wasn't an easy decision by the way, as these big shows started almost right after I moved here, and I had attended every single one up until today's.

If the changes to the show weren't enough to keep me away, the weather probably would've been. We've had what I'm hoping is the last of the winter weather over the past few days; cold, snow, icy roads, etc. Things are supposed to be getting better tomorrow, but until then, I wasn't too keen on being out on the road at 4:30am, and possibly hitting some spots of black ice. I'm at about 1,900 above sea level, so things are much worse weather wise here than they are down in Nashville, but it does take a bit to start getting to those lower elevations. And not to toot my own horn, I'm a pretty solid driver, especially when doing so under less than ideal road conditions, but it's everybody else that I sometimes worry about.

I think that just about covers everything, so instead of going to the show today, I'm hoping to get outside for a bit this afternoon, and then tonight I'm going to sit down and open up the cheap box of 1991 Upper Deck football that I got the other day. Oh, and I've got this here post to finish up as well! I figured that since I won't be having a bunch of stuff from today's show to blog about, I might as well as get to the last of the cards from September's super mega show (my last super mega show?).

And since I know there's a lot of baseball only people out there, I'll warn you in advance that there is no baseball in today's post, but there was a reason for that, one which I will try to cover at the end of the post.

I actually started this post back in October, but quickly realized that it might be a while before I finished it, so I made a few notes in the draft so that I wouldn't forget some of the details -- and I'm very grateful to my past self for doing so, because I had indeed forgotten most of the details.

Everything you see here today came from the last table that I stopped at that day, and even though the dealer had decent sized spread, I still probably would've missed it had I not done one last walk through. I was pretty tired by the time I stopped here, and seeing how many monster boxes this guy had (at least 30), I did initially think about just walking by, but there was a sign that said everything was a buck - a dollar table if you will - and with as many boxes as there were, I couldn't help but at least look through one to see if there were any deals to be had. Everything was separated by sport, and I just started looking in the basketball box that was closest to me. The above 1993-94 Scoring Kings was the first card in the first row of that first box that I looked in, and after finding it, I knew I was going to be stuck going through as many of those boxes as I could.

As cool as it was to find that Nique, I couldn't figure out how it was still there, I mean the show had been open for over four hours by the time I hit this table? I would end up having this same thought many times over the course of the next hour or so.

One doesn't find a lot of Jordan inserts in the cheap boxes anymore, so this one was definitely a surprise. I thought for sure that once I got home I'd find a hidden crease through it, or some other similar issue, but it ended up being completely fine (all of these were photographed, hence the weird glare spots and wonky angles).

I think I got to these boxes just at the right time too, because a guy showed up just after I found the MJ, and asked the dealer if there were any Jordan's in the boxes? The dealer said that there were, and the guy then proceeded to go through all of the basketball and pulled out all of the MJ base cards, most of which I had already passed on.

Spectralight's are another thing that I'm not accustomed to finding at shows, in fact I don't think that I had ever found a single one at show before. I thought just finding one of the Reign Man was cool, but a few cards further I hit a run of them...

These don't photograph well, and they scan even worse, so for those who aren't familiar with this parallel (for you baseball fans, think Cyber Stats), so I tried, and failed, to give you a better angle.

Had they been cheaper, I probably would've gotten them all, but since they were $1 each, I just went with guys I collect... and Dee Brown, who I will always be very fond of! I ended up leaving behind a bunch of guys like Greg Anthony and Billy Owens, but I was, and still am, pretty happy with what I got.

Of everything in this post, this is probably the only card that I overpaid for, but I don't think by much. There were a few other Dr. J parallels from this set, but the pink was the only one that I really wanted at the time.

I almost got a Barkley Generations as well, but part of the bottom had been peeled up (probably from getting hooked on a toploader), so back into the box he went.

Most of my regular readers probably already know that I'm not big on rookie cards, but for a dollar I wasn't about to pass up one of Timmy D! It wasn't until I got home that I noticed it was a Minted in Springfield parallel, which of course was even better than the base rookie.

Despite what you've seen here, probably 95% or more of the basketball boxes were made up of low end 90's inserts (dime box material), newer low end parallels (dime box material), and 90's base cards (nickel box material). The base was all very sharp though, so I'm thinking that he was hoping that the graders might be all over those -- they didn't seem to be while I was there.

After looking through the basketball, I really wanted to call it a day, but I had to give the football boxes a chance as well, although I knew that I wouldn't be going through them all, as there had to be at least double the amount of the basketball.

The first card from the first box was this '68 Joe Namath. He's got some wrinkles, and some spray paint(?), but it's still a playing days Namath, my first playing days Namath. Despite it's problems, I still really like it, although I wish I knew the story behind the paint.

Looking at it again now after almost five months has passed, I'm not as fond of this one as I was at the time, but that happens sometimes, it's definitely not the end of the world.

Not being alive at the time, I still find it weird to see, or even think of, O.J. as a Niner.

I always say that I don't much care for rookies, and yet this is now the second one in this post. I've never owned a Bo football rookie before, and sure it's got a few surface scratches, but it's still a Bo rookie, and even in this condition it's got be worth a buck, right?

I had only gotten through a couple of the football boxes when a guy showed up with his, I wanna say 5 or 6 year old son. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but this kid was a little bundle of energy - as most young boys are - darting to and fro, and clearly wanting to be anywhere but there. Dad clearly wanted him to start collecting football cards though, so he reigned him and was trying to get the kid to pick out some cards that he liked. The kid obliged, sort of, he just walked over to the boxes and started pulling out random cards and saying things like "Ummmm... this one?", to which the dad would reply "The BENGALS?!?!". Then the kid would put the card back and try again, which was met with "The COWBOYS?!?!". It became apparent pretty quick that not only did dad want his son to be a football card collector, but he also wanted him to only collect whoever dad's team was, and was starting to get agitated over the fact that junior had clearly forgotten who dad's team was. After listening to a few minutes of this, I was ready to explode on dad. I could tell that this a$$hole was the same sort that most likely makes his kid watch all of "his" team's games, and probably tells him when to cheer and boo as well... and I f*cking loathe those kind of guys! I know that parents don't like to be told how to raise their kids, especially by those of us without kids, but it was around 90 degrees that day, and that kid shouldn't have been at that show -- he should've been out at on a shaded playground somewhere, and been allowed to just go crazy for a couple of hours... as all kids should be allowed to do on nice summer days.

Since I'm not one to make a scene, at least not at this point in my life, I decided to just forgo the rest of the football boxes, as well as the unseen baseball boxes, and pay for my stuff and leave -- which I did.

So even though I didn't get through all of these boxes, I still found a couple of neat things, and those coupled with the rest of the stuff that I came home with, made for a solid day's work. I have no idea when I'll be going to another show, but I don't have any shortage of blog material, so missing today's show really won't have much of an effect on me in the long run.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Winning

It's been a been long time since I've done a fluffy "Here's some crap I won on eBay!" post, in fact after going back through the archives, I can tell you that it's been over eight months since such a post appeared on this blog... so I guess one could say that I'm overdue?

So I'm gonna do just that today, but before I get to those fluffy eBay wins, I've got to give some public thanks for a very unexpected win that came via a contest on Twitter.

Between people's unsolicited political opinions, and the apparently never-ending Astros saga, Twitter has been pretty unbearable as of late, even more so than usual. I've stated recently that I'm down to about five minutes or less spent on the site per day, well, in recent weeks you can probably knock that estimate down by another three minutes or so.

Now if you've ever spent any time on Twitter, you know that there are no shortage of contests, and if you haven't, well, there's a lot of contests! As far as cards go, these contests are usually for some autograph of whoever's the current flavor of the week, which I never enter, in fact I hardly ever participate in the giveaways, that being said -- I did recently come across one that was worth entering.

I don't know what I was more surprised by, the fact that @Very_Cool_Cards was willing to give away a 1968 Topps Game Hank Aaron, or that I ended up winning said playing days card of the true home run king? That was a rhetorical question by the way, as me winning would be the bigger surprise of the two. It's been a few weeks since the contest, I still can't believe that I came out on top, especially since were at least 150 people that entered (many of whom were probably much more deserving). I just finished cataloging my humble little Hank Aaron collection this past weekend, and after doing so, I can say with all honesty that this one is now amongst my favorites -- it was also my first "good" Topps Game card, so that was pretty cool too.

I hadn't had the good fortune to have any real contact with Damon, the man behind the Twitter handle, before this, but hopefully that'll change going forward. Thanks again for the contest, Damon. You made this particular blogger very happy!

**************************************************************************

One of the twice a year super mega card shows is happening in Nashville this weekend, and I had been looking forward to it for months, but I found out a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't be attending (more on this in Saturday's post), so I decided to use the money from a recently sold card, money that had been reserved for the show, and spend it elsewhere. This "elsewhere" ended up being eBay.

I don't spend very much time on the eBay anymore, between the ever increasing shipping costs, as well as the ever increasing amount of people who seem to have no idea how to properly package stuff, it's just not worth the effort most of the time. However, I do still check for certain things from time to time, one of those things being cheap vintage monster/horror magazines (don't worry, there are more cards below). Usually these searches don't yield much, as there are still a lot of collector's out there who are willing to pay big bucks for such magazines, thus not very many cheap one's showing up.

It was during one of these searches, that I found two different sellers who were auctioning off fairly decent sized collections (60's-00's), all of which were ending on the same weekend. The first seller had nothing but magazines, while the second seller had magazines, comics, and even cards.

Despite thinking that I probably wouldn't actually end up winning anything, I still went through all of both sellers items, and added a bunch of stuff to my watch list, then a funny thing happened... I won some stuff... from both sellers no less!

I can't remember who recently said that we should be sharing the names of the good sellers on eBay, but I agree, especially as the amount of bad one's continues to increase. So, with that in mind, here's the first group from mikestoysoc:

Up until now I had been completely unaware of Monster Fantasy, granted it only ran for four issues back in '75, but still...

I ended up going a little outside of my comfort zone to acquire the first, and...

...second issue! Number's 3 and 4 were available too, but having never read the magazine before, I didn't want to take the chance that they might not be any good -- after reading the first one, I can say that I should've taken that chance. But oh well, I can always try and get the other two later on.

This is probably a good time to mention that I'm not going too deep into these right now, because I'm toying with the idea of doing a series later in the year for Halloween, and these, along with some of the other magazines in my collection, would likely be revisited (and much more in-depth).

I can even begin to tell you how much I LOVE obscure one-off's, and this one fits the bill perfectly. I realize that the subject matter isn't for everyone, but it still makes me wonder why someone would go through all of the trouble to get a first issue printed ('77), and never do a second? As an aside, I don't how a kid was ever supposed to try and save their allowance back in the 60's and 70's, I'd never even be able to make it past a comics rack/magazine stand without spending all of my weekly allotment.

I'm ashamed to say that I avoided Scary Monsters for a really long time, primarily because I didn't think that a contemporary monster magazine, written by contemporary writers, could be any good, and boy was I wrong... which is precisely why one shouldn't judge a magazine without ever having read it! The articles are actually written (mostly) by folks who were fortunate enough to be around during peak monster madness, i.e. the 50's and 60's. If I hadn't found a cheap beat up copy at a bookstore a few years ago, I may have never given it a chance. Since then, I've picking up more cheap copies whenever I come across them, which is very often by the way. This seller only had a few issues, and few of them were drawing an unusual amount of attention, but I was still able to grab the 2011 & 2012 year end annuals.

If you click on this seller's link, you'll see that they don't have a great rating, but the had decent combined shipping rate, and more importantly, they pack my magazines really well, and to me that's all that really matters.

Alright, on to seller #2, aka bthoven14. They had a lot more variety available in their round of auctions, but they were also offering free shipping, which meant that it was also a lot harder to land things on the cheap.

See... more cards! They had multiple copies of this Kaline Nu-Scoops, in varying conditions, and I think I might've gotten the very last one (I kept getting outbid on the others). Not only is this just an awesome card, but it also happens to be my first Nu-Scoops. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm always forgetting that this set even exists, then I see one that Nick got at a show, and I'm like "Oh yeah, that's a set, isn't it?". Now that I finally have one, I even went and looked at the checklist, bad move, there's apparently quite a few cards that I didn't know I needed and/or wanted.

For all of you back addicts out there.

It wasn't until I started pulling apart all of my abandoned set builds, that I realized just how many cards of Boog I had, certainly enough to warrant yet another player collection. This seller had a bunch of 1970 Scratch-Off's, and many copies of each card, including Boog. I didn't get the nicest copy, but I did get the cheapest, and it is unscratched, so I'm content with the purchase.

Starlog was always very hit-and-miss for me, some issues were really good, while others were almost unreadable. There used to be a place in Portland called Periodicals Paradise, which in it's original guise, sold nothing but back issues of magazines. It went through many changes over the years, and moved locations many times, becoming a little less of what it was each time it did so. But in it's original form, and original location, it was just about the greatest store that has ever been. I bring this up, because way back when, 25+ years ago to be more specific, they used to always have back issues of Starlog for a buck each -- and I haven't seen one in the wild since they left their original location. This one obviously didn't come from the wild, but it was just a shade over a dollar, and looked interesting, so...

And finally, a non-annual issue of Scary Monsters. This seller packaged everything really well too, so you can take solace in that should you ever decide to throw any business their way.

I actually bought stuff from three different sellers over this particular weekend, but after dealing with two stand-up individuals, it should come as no surprise to hear that the third ended up being a flake. After a couple of weeks of nothing, I contacted them to find out what's what, and got the old "Sorry, my dog fell down an abandoned mine shaft, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". Then it was "Sorry, you know that abandoned mine shaft that I mentioned my dog falling down, well, now an asteroid has hit it, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". which was then followed by "Sorry, you're not gonna believe what happened now, you remember that mine shaft that my dog fell down, the one that was subsequently hit by an asteroid, well, now a mountain has fallen on it. Darndest thing I ever saw, it just tipped over, right onto that asteroid crater, the one where the mine shaft that my dog fell down was, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". I may have exaggerated this series of messages just a tad, but it's close enough for you get the gist. I did finally request, and get, a refund, as they clearly had no plans of ever sending anything. Thankfully the item in question wasn't anything rare, or otherwise hard to come by, but it's still kind of sucky when you think that you're going to get something, and then because of some incompetent human, you don't.

So there you have it, not nearly as much stuff as would've come from the card show, but I'm good with that. This group has a quality over quantity feel to it, and that's something that I most certainly wouldn't have been able to say about the haul that most likely would've been brought home from the show.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.