A first

COMC shipments have been a staple of this blog from the beginning, but today will be the very first time that I've been able to cover an entire shipment in one single post.

Normally my shipments are made up of hundreds of cards, which is a byproduct of often waiting a year or two to request shipping. However, today's shipment, built up for all of four months, is just 26 cards strong. 

I don't know how many people saw it, but back during the Black Friday sale, one of the perks for buyers was that people who requested shipments of 100 cards or more received a $4.99 shipping credit (basically free shipping when choosing the economy option) for that shipment, and would receive another one that was good until March 31st of this year. Having over two years worth of cards on the site as of the BF sale, it was not difficult for me to take advantage of this offer. I got my 200-ish cards shipped for free, and now had this other free shipping credit to play with.

I don't remember picking up 26 cards since the BF sale, but I guess it's easier to forget such things when your using earned credit, as opposed to cash, to pay for things. Had the shipping not been free, I would not have requested it, but it was, so I did. I waited until the 31st to request it, and was given a ship date of April 27th, which they met spot on.

I still have scan folders chock full of cards from the big two years worth of stuff shipment, but am bumping this one ahead, if only because it's the latest and greatest. I haven't gotten very many cards of late, so it was kind of fun fondle some cardboard again. Still wasn't fun to scan it though.

The post was led off by a really nifty Kellogg's Merlin Olsen. One of those scan folders that I mentioned has 4 or 5 more cards from this set in it, including a couple of HOF's for player collections; as was Merlin. There's a small part of me that would like to collect this set, but thankfully there's the much larger part of me that doesn't want to spend money on people that I don't care about. And it's a lot easier to listen to that larger part when money is tight, as it has been, and probably will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Cards from this set are really only worth, at best, about a nickel apiece. I overpaid by 35¢ for each of these, but didn't have to go anywhere to get them, or pay for shipping, so it was worth it to me. Denver Pyle (on the left) was needed for the Perry Mason collection. I didn't want a card of him as Uncle Jesse, which doesn't leave a lot of options. Hal Smith is needed for two collections, Perry Mason, and a Brady Bunch guest stars themed page. I don't know which one I'll use this card for yet, but he has a few more cards in the set, so it'll be easy enough to get another one of him.

I haven't looked yet, but I think I now have all of the Carnage cards from this Golden Web insert set. 

With the ridiculous prices that people are putting on all things Marvel these days, I don't spend a great deal of time seeking them out anymore. These last three were all found just looking through people's sale listings, and were all below the current COMC/eBay going rate. Because of said high prices, most of my character collections have had to be put on hold. With that in mind, it was nice to be able to add a few cards to them with this shipment, especially the Sentinels gold chase card.

Hey, it's my first Kahn's! I decided a few months ago that I was gonna start chasing Griffey Sr.'s cards a little more actively. I don't think it would be too hard to put together an entire playing day run of Seniors, Junior not so much, that is unless you're fabulous wealthy. And even though it's a little outside my comfort zone, I've been thinking about doing a post comparing the careers of father and son, and arguing (if need be) that senior actually had the better career overall, which would apparently contradict just about everything else I've read online.

More player collection needs, although this is only my second card of Tom's, so I don't know if that can really be called a "collection" yet.

I think I mentioned it before, maybe not though, I don't know. Either way, while I'm still collecting J-Stew in general, he's got so many cards out there, that I decided a while back to just focus on his blue cards. They're a little less plentiful, and they got the pretty color matching action going on. So far, I've just been picking the low hanging fruit, like these two dirt cheap refractors, which were both less than fifty cents apiece.

I've been trying to replace some of my lesser conditioned Franz cards when I can. It's funny to see all the kooky online Franz prices, because when I was a kid, you couldn't give away Franz cards in Portland. Every single person pretty much had an entire run of them tucked away in a drawer somewhere, and most of those folks weren't even collectors in the traditional sense; that's just how plentiful the cards were at the time. Nowadays, there seems to be a slight bit more demand for them online, though Clyde is the only one that people are paying the higher prices for.

I already showed Paul here back in my post about starting to collect the Fran Tarkenton puzzle. Bruce has since joined the fun.

With the Steve Stonebreaker elbow piece (not shown here) that I already had, I've now completed Fran's right arm. And yeah, I know, it's terribly exciting.

How's this for a mix? Jackie Cooper goes into the Columbo collection (see the last post). I didn't want one of the many cards of Jackie as a child, but this one worked perfect. Richard Loo is another new entry for the Perry Mason collection. And I got the stupid idea last year to try and do a Sarah Connor Chronicles themed page, which is where Summer Glau destined. I say it was a stupid idea only because three of the people from the show that you would want to see on such a page (Richard T. Jones, Garret Dillahunt, and Dean Winters) don't appear anywhere in card form. Considering how long Dean Winters has now been doing those Progressive Allstate (thanks, Brett!) commercials, you'd think there'd at least be a promo of some kind out there, but no, there isn't. Oh, and how is that Shirley Manson only has one card in some Jack Daniels (or some other booze) playing card set? That doesn't even seem possible! First world problem, I know. At least Fuji will appreciate my struggle to make this page happen :)

I've been thinking about adding Stan Humphries to the list of player collections for a few years now, and had been setting aside his cards just in case I ever did start collecting him. The only thing that was keeping me from officially collecting him was that I already had so many other player collections going, and didn't really want to take on another. I solved my predicament a couple of months ago though when I dropped around a dozen basketball player collections (I'm about to drop a few more too). With those now out of the mix, I figured I could take on one more guy. And unless I find out something really interesting about somebody who's currently flying under my radar, this'll be the last new player collection that I start.

As for the card, I've had this one in my watchlist for almost two years, just waiting for it to drop to a more reasonable price, which it finally did after a succession of ever increasing sales. I think it was down to $1.49 when I got it. This is the first football PPI from this year that I've ever held, so I didn't realize that a lot of the bits were raised, sort of embossed like. Allegedly these are limited to /250 copies, which I have no way of confirming, but either way it's pretty neat card.

I grabbed these two from the same seller right before I had to put in the shipment request. Both were on sale, and I figured I might as well celebrate my newest collection with a couple of "good" cards. I know that everyone loves all things 90's now, but a Printers Proof parallel for a phone card was just silly, and I dare anyone to argue otherwise.

This was my first football Rave. Apparently they go for a lot less than their basketball counterparts. 

I'll probably shock a few people by saying that I've never been much of a fan of the Back to the Future franchise. I've seen the first one a couple of times, and each of the sequels once. I know that it's beloved franchise (or at least the first two films are), but they just don't do anything for me. I like time travel stuff, love the 80's, but just don't care for those pictures. As such, I've never spent any time looking through the card sets, so it was only by happenstance that I came across one of the cards from the first set that I thought would make a perfect center card for an 80's themed page. I still haven't gotten my center card, but have acquired a few others for the page, including this very spiffy Huey Lewis from that old AGI Rock Star Concert Cards set. Huey's got a few card in the set, but this is the one that I wanted for my 80's page. There has almost never been anything more 80's than this card, and I absolutely love it! I actually won this card from one of their auctions too. It's great going through your account to bid on things because you can add the card to your account after paying for it, and avoid those brutal eBay shipping charges. I think this was just over a buck, and was very much worth it.

Here's some more auction wins. These Monty Gum cards have been on quite the rollercoaster over the last few years. They went from worthless before the boom, to crazy prices went the boom first started, and now aside from a couple of the bigger names, have pretty much slipped completely back into worthless territory. I got the Sarge for a childhood themed binder that I've started (more on that some other time. I've got a page dedicated to OMG/Akeem, and Jesse will go into the Portland Wrestling collection.

Orson Welles doesn't have nearly as many cards out there as he should, and trying to find one that wasn't made by Panini has been quite the task. I guess all I had to do was wait a little bit, because this 1959 Maple Leaf playing card practically fell into my lap through yet another auction. This was $1.54 well spent, and would be my favorite card from this shipment if it weren't for this...

From what I've been able to gather, this 1962 Dutch Gum is Barbara Eden's first card, or as the profiteers would call it, her rookie card. To me it's just her first card, and now it's all mine! I love this card so damn much, and couldn't believe that was only priced somewhere around $3. In this condition, I would've easily paid upwards of ten for it. I like too that the Dutch Gum folks had to tell everyone that she was a fox, as if no one would've known otherwise. And yes, I'm joking, Fox is the studio that she was with at the time -- my scenario is better though.

I wish that this shipping credit would've been dated a little further out, as I did get three more cards during the recent spring sale, and would've loved to have been able to include them in with these. I'll probably get those at the end of the year, so it's not like I'll have to wait that long.

It felt kind of weird getting an entire shipment into one post. I think the last time I had such a small order shipped from them was back in 2010 or 2011 when I has just found the site; that feels like a lifetime ago.

On a completely different, and final, note, I sold a card on eBay last week to Mark Armour, you know the SABR guy/pretty well known writer (of actual books). I thought about sending him a message saying that he was the first celebrity that I've ever sold anything to, but figured that he probably gets that a lot, so I spared him the message. It was still kind of neat though.

Just one more thing

Sometime early last year, I bought the complete series boxed set of Columbo on DVD from eBay. The price that I got it for was incredibly low at the time, and I was excited about that, and the fact that this was gonna be my first chance to watch the series from it's beginning, as despite my watching many of Columbo's contemporaries as a kid; I never did get into this particular show. I can remember it airing daily in syndication on A&E during the 90's, but there was just too much other stuff on to watch at the time for me to ever give it a try. Fast forward a number of years and there's a LOT less interesting stuff being made, which means that there's now more time for me to go back and catch up on the stuff that I couldn't fit into my schedule as a youngster.

As is often the case, at least for me, the eBay seller wasn't exactly truthful when describing the condition of the boxed set, and it's discs. It was stated that the discs were in "Like new" condition, when in reality quite a few of them were scuffed. Now I don't know about anyone else, but I've terrible luck over the years with scuffed discs not working, and since I knew that it was gonna take me considerably longer than 30 days to watch the entire series, which was the window for returns, I went ahead mentioned to the seller that I was gonna be requesting a return on the set. Then, before I could even start the process for the return, the seller just refunded the entire purchase, and seemingly had no interest in receiving their DVD's back. 

Some folks would probably consider this a win-win, you get the DVD's and your money back. Unfortunately, I didn't look at it like that. I do like getting things for free, but not like that. I tried to contact the seller twice, and told them that all they had to do was pay for the return shipping, get it back, then relist with a proper description; somebody else still would've bought it. They never replied back though. I remember this happening a couple of times 10-15 years ago, and I just paid to send it back, as I was comfortable keeping the item without paying for it. Of course, I also had a lot more disposable income back then too, and could eat the shipping costs a little easier. Money is much tighter these days, and as much I didn't want to keep this set that I didn't pay for, I resent me having to use some of my monthly play money to send it back even more. So, I didn't! The seller made their choice, and even though I still don't like it, I made mine.

Now, over a year later, I'm only up to the fifth season (I don't watch television nearly as often as I used to), but so far, the discs are working fine. Having seen a few episodes here and there over the years, I knew that I'd enjoy the show, but am not sure that I expected to like it as much as I have. As many others will, and have, attested to over the last 50 years, it's pretty fantastic. In fact, I'm enjoying it so much that, towards the end of last year, I decided to start a Columbo themed card collection.

I already have a few other television themed collections going: Kolchak, Project U.F.O., Perry Mason, Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, and Batman: TAS (I think there might be one more as well, but I'm drawing a blank as I'm sitting here typing). Taking on one more wasn't that big of a deal.

Basically these collections are just me trying to get a card of as many people who have appeared on the shows as possible. Being pretty burned out on all things sports right now, these collections have received most of my attention over the last six months or so. For this particular one, I already had a few cards that weren't part of any other collections, and then I was able pick up a few more on COMC during the Black Friday sales. I grabbed some for a nickel apiece from the Baseball Card Store during their Black Friday sale too. 

I don't normally cover these collections on here, if only because I don't think anyone cares, but I was already scanning some of the stuff from the Baseball Card Store and COMC earlier this year, and with the cards already out and all, I figured I might as well scan what I already had to go along with the new pieces, and get a post out of it. 

For the time being, the cards are bindered by aesthetics, but will eventually be rearranged chronologically; so everything is a bit screwy here too.

"Lovely but Lethal"

I will replace this card eventually, and then move it over to themed page that I've got going for guest stars of The Brady Bunch.

"Negative Reaction"

Don Gordon appeared on SO many great shows, and yet to my knowledge, this is his only card. Oh, and all of the 2009 Rittenhouse Twilight Zone 50th Anniversary cards in this post, were gotten for a nickel apiece during the Baseball Card Store's Black Friday sale.

"Lovely but Lethal"

Thankfully, I already had a number of Starline's that weren't being used elsewhere. It's amazing how many people in this set appeared on the show at some point.

"Publish or Perish"

Seeing Mickey Spillane on an episode was really great. Trying to find a card of him, not so much. This one comes from a 1987 board game (?) called Motto. 

"Publish or Perish" and "Try and Catch Me"

Mariette Hartley had such a wonderful voice. Had she been born a little earlier, I have no doubt that her talents would've been in great demand from radio producers of the era.

"The Most Crucial Game" and "Troubled Waters"

Ideally, I'd like to have a card to represent each episode that a person was on, but in most cases that isn't realistic. A lot of these folks just don't have a lot of cards. Dean Stockwell has a Dune card that is terribly uninteresting, and pair of slightly better Face to Face game cards. I think this one was 78¢ on COMC during the BF sale.

"Murder by the Book" and "Lady in Waiting"

Marcia Wallace had two very small parts during the first season (one of which was uncredited). I had to get a little creative for her entry.

"Identity Crisis"

I'm pretty sure that this is Robert Sorrells' only card as well.

"Old Fashioned Murder"

Tim O'Connor has a couple of cards in the '79 Buck Rogers set, this sticker just so happened to be the cheapest.

"Mind Over Mayhem"

Given how groundbreaking Forbidden Planet was, you'd think that there would be more cards out there featuring Robby the Robot, but aside from a couple of movie poster reprints, there isn't a whole heckuva lot to be found.

"Mind Over Mayhem"

When possible, I prefer to get cards of people looking like they did when they appeared on the shows. It's usually pretty hard to do, but in this instance, Lew's appearance is spot on. I still need another copy of this card for a Stephen King themed page that's taking longer to complete than I had originally thought.

"The Greenhouse Jungle"

I had been watching a  cool promo card of  Arlene Martel's going into the COMC Black Friday sale, hoping that it would go on sale, then some asshat had to go and buy it for full price the night before the sales started. This is a poor substitute for that card.

"Double Shock"

The glossy finish on this card didn't scan very well, but this being my first card from one of these Americana sets (I've since gotten a few more), I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of them. Oh, and for anyone who's a fan of Ms. Newmar, she will be the subject of another post on the new blog at some point in the next couple of months :)

"Swan Song" and "Last Salute to the Commodore"

John Dehner has gotten some better looking cards in recent years, and with yearly Twilight Zone sets still being released, I fully expect him to get a few more. If the opportunity ever arises, this one will be swapped out.

"Fade into Murder"

I knew if I kept this card long enough, I'd find a use for it!

"Now You See Him"

Robert Loggia is another fellow who is woefully underrepresented in the trading card market. Want a card of him, well, I hope you like this one, because that's about all there is. I thought it was kind of funny too, to find out a couple of months ago that Phil had bought a copy of this one right around the same time I got mine. I'd say great minds... but I don't want insult Phil with the comparison.

"The Most Crucial Game".

I went back and forth with these additions. The episode that all of these guys appeared in aired November 5th, 1972, so my first thought was that that would coincide rather well the 1972-73 Topps basketball release. As you can see, all six are represented in the set, but I've kind of fallen out of love with it over the last couple of years. Plus too, a few of these are not overly great looking poses. With that in mind, I then set about to try and find each players best looking card, which yielded cards from three different sets, and different teams as well. That just wouldn't do, so I went back to the original plan. Thankfully, I still had an abandoned set build that I could raid.

Now for the fun part...

If you've ever seen the show, then you already know that a lot of attention is paid to the murderers -- they are the main guest star of each episode after all -- so I thought would be fun to give them their own section in the binder, or as it's currently called, The Rogues' Gallery (the book in yesterdays post on the new blog was a happy coincidence).

And for anybody who hasn't seen the show, and is worried about spoilers, don't be, pretty much the whole first act of every episode is spent showing the murderer setting up their nefarious plan, and then executing it. And as mentioned above, the primary guest star is always the murderer, so you already know who it is going into each episode. 

The Rogues' Gallery isn't order yet either, but will be when I get a little further on with the condition.

"Prescription Murder"

The great Gene Barry was the first baddie, playing the killer in the first film. I had to borrow this card from one of my Sci-Fi HOF pages (War of the Worlds, of course).

"Death Lends a Hand", "The Most Crucial Game", "Double Exposure", "Columbo Goes to College"

I'm glad that I don't have to get three more Robert Culp cards for this collection, because the pickings are rather slim for him as well. Though I do still need one more card of for another collection.

"A Stitch in Crime"

I didn't want a Spock card to represent Leonard's addition, which doesn't leave much to choose from as far as he is concerned. This is just a placeholder, as the card I really want is currently sitting on COMC, but I'm not willing to pay the $3 price tag.

"Death Lends a Hand" and "The Greenhouse Jungle"

1951 Greiling Film Stars for the win! I love this set, and I love Ray Milland, so I couldn't ask for a better entry than this.

"Fade into Murder" and "Butterfly in Shades of Grey"

As was the case with Leonard Nimoy, I didn't want to use a Capt. Kirk card for Bill Shatner, which, once again leaves me with very few options.

"Troubled Waters" and "Last Salute to the Commodore"

Of all the people in this post, Robert Vaughn probably has the most variety to choose from, as far as his cards go that is. I've got cards of him in multiple collections, and all are completely different from the others. These Man from U.N.C.L.E. are really fun, and since no one really cares about the show anymore, they're usually pretty cheap too.

"Lovely but Lethal"

"Lovely but Lethal" is the only episode so far that I have all of the main stars for, those being Vera, Vincent Price, and Martin Sheen. And just for the record, yes, that was a hell of a cast!

"Any Old Port in the Storm"

I've had this Donald Pleasence for years, but had nowhere to put him. Then I decide to start this collection and a John Carpenter themed page right around the same time, and now there's not enough of the Donald to go around! Columbo gets the nod if only because it was further along. Another copy will be in my future though.

"The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case"

Theodore Bikel was a tremendously talented character actor, and is yet another fellow that I need more cards of for other collections. Now if someone like Upper Deck would just make some more cards of him already. I don't care about more ePack cards of some kid that appeared for thirty seconds in the latest Spider-Man, I need more cards of Theodore... ASAP!!!

"A Matter of Honor"

This card may be replaced at some point too, but I don't have any other options in mind at the moment. I don't want to use a Khan card for Ricardo, but may end up doing so, but it's no rush, so I'll worry about it later.

*Not shown in the post -- Dawn Wells: I haven't decided which Golden Age card to use for her yet, but am strongly leaning towards the 2013 playing card.

There's not a lot of variety here for the moment, at least as far as the card sets go, it all pretty much just Starline and '09 TZ. I've mined those sets for their worth, so they'll be no more of those. I've currently got 30-40 other cards earmarked for future purchase, and there's probably at least 50 more out there that I'll identify later on, so there will be quite a bit more variety as the collection continues to grow.

For the most of these kinds of collections I prefer to use officially released items, but there are some big names that appeared on this show who do not have any official cards, most notably, Jack Cassidy. If he had only played a bit part in one episode, I'd be okay with leaving him out -- but he played the killer three times, and is a lot of peoples favorite ne'er do well; I can't leave him out! Obviously a custom will be needed. Greg has said that he would try to make some customs for me, and if I can ever get my list done (I've got people missing from other collections too), Jack will be one of the first ones that I request. I might see if he can do a Peter Falk too, as he's only got game/trivia cards, poorly made foreign cards, and a few not so great foreign stickers. 

It's been a while since I last did a post this long, on this blog. Feels weird. I'm gonna start working on a crazy-long bio post for the Beavers blog, so it might be another week or two before I have time to post on here again. You'll live though, I know you will.

Picking up scraps

Having not bought anything since early January, and no longer doing any trading, mail of the fun variety has pretty much stopped showing up altogether.

I do have two packages coming, but aside from those, I fully expect things to remain status quo for the foreseeable future. I'm not complaining though, as my heart just isn't in cards right now (which is part of the reason I started the new blog). That being said, I still find some joy in certain things from time to time, especially when looking through the duplicates that, Bo, of the somehow daily Baseball Cards Come to Life! (how he is able to post so frequently I will never understand), makes available for trade after each of his vintage baseball card lot purchases. Not working on sets anymore, there isn't as much for me to claim as some others are able to, but occasionally something in my wheelhouse will pop up, and so far, I usually have pretty good luck in getting those particular cards.

Despite it now being 2-3 months since my last envelope of claims arrived, it's still my last piece of card related mail to arrive, so I guess I can technically still refer to this as my most recent mail day?

The Gerry Staley up top is probably my favorite of the bunch, it was the only combo card that Topps ever did for him. If I was more motivated right now, I'd make more of a push to complete my collection of his stuff, as he's one of those guys who, not surprisingly, hasn't received a bump from the boom crowd. But I'm not, so hopefully no one else will discover how awesome he was before I feel like actively collecting again.

This color shift didn't scan very well, but you can still kind of see what's going on along the border, and even more so up at the team name. I don't know what was going on with the printers back in 1970, but they produced quite a few of these that year.

Don's a little rough, but it's a black bordered '59 that I didn't already have. I can always upgrade later if need be.

The first four cards represented my claims, Tim here was a card that I inquired about via email (Bo has a lot of '93 Donruss duplicates). I guess I sort of have a Tim Salmon collection going now, although for the time being I'm only seeking out specific cards. The image on this one isn't anything to write home about, but I love these red, white, and blue Rated Rookies. I've got Bret Boone already (which also came from Bo), and I think this was only other guy in the set that I would want who got one.

And finally, two suprise '61 Billy Muffett's. They definitely fall into the well-loved category, but both were still a welcome sight. I've lost track again of how many I have, but I think these two were added to the fourth page. That's at least 29 then, which isn't bad... I still need more though!

Many thanks again to Bo for the cards. It's always fun to paw through someone else's unwanted stuff, even if it is being done virtually. Unexpected Billy Muffett's are pretty good, too.