While we look at this awesome sketch card...

...received as part of a trade from card collecting's best-loved Brony, let's talk a little about how I've been pluggin' along on my collection, my trades with y'all and so forth way too fast to keep up with posting about it.

I end up scanning a lot more than you folks see me posting about. I'd love to write about it all, but between living a life or some semblance of it and my well-documented sleep issues, I don't get to everything. Working on that some, but it's still tough. I also still have a very uneasy relationship with "Looka whut I got!" posts (even when what I have is sometimes so awesome that it's impossible not to want to share it with people) when so many people are having such a hard time making ends meet. It shouldn't shock any of you to hear that I also do have a hard time, and that a lot of my card buying is part of a greater compulsion that I do struggle with from time to time, much as dayf has his own well-documented struggles...

...anyway, yeah, as you've seen just by the small sample size that I post, I do struggle at balancing a healthy, sane, responsible, fiscally sound existence with ZOMG CARDS. Workin' on it, though.

Back to the stuff we don't get to here. I could just bomb y'all out with unexplained scans of cards, as I've done at times, kinda Tumblr-style, and I probably will do that at times just to catch up on things a little. I started this site to write about cards, though, not just be a content farm for Google Images.

So, I'll probably just continue as I am, writing and posting when the muse strikes me. I don't want this to be "work", obviously, and it wouldn't be fun to read if it became "work".

This "mostly thinking out loud, but with ponies" post was brought to you by the large pile of cards in front of my computer.

So yesterday was one of the best mail days in the history of the Postal Service.

First there was this. It took a while to get here, eBay seller was slow mailing it I guess (though they threw in a '72 Topps Sandy Alomar and an '81 Fleer Star Stickers Rod Carew, I think to make up for the delay), but it's a '71 Topps Frank Robinson (from the 2nd to last series, which I think is a good deal harder to complete than the highest one) and it was $3.63 shipped. Yeah, I dunno either. There'll be more of that "Was anyone on eBay paying attention?" later in the post.

Next up, we have my first playing era Gordie Howe card, another from the '68-'69 set that my kickass Tim Horton card is from. I'm not planning on starting a big Gordie collection (I'd kind of like things like a house, a savings account, my vital organs, etc. a little more), but this is one of three of his that I wanted (the others being '71-'72 and '79-'80; all of these choices are because I love the designs of the cards), and I got it for about $15 shipped. Rough corners, well loved and with a couple of creases, but not ugly by any means. Might've gone a little high on it given the condition, but these don't come up in an affordable condition too often.

Then there's this guy. Remember him? Blurry shot, in an oooooold non-recessed screwdown, so he was a gamble at $17 and change, but holy goddamn, this card is NICE for the price. Low book on it's something like $50, so I'm totally happy with it.

Then there's this, from the same post where you first saw the Maris...

Yes, this is indeed a '53 Bowman friggin' Color Gil Hodges. If you're not familiar, cards from this set are murder to get in any condition. Low book on this is about $175. Yes, there's a faint crease across the center of the card that you didn't even notice until I mentioned it, and it's pretty damned off-center, but this cost a grand total of 36 cents more than the Maris did.

$18 shipped. Right around what the Fair to Good price should be for something like this if we're being logical, but people are not logical when it comes to '53 Bowman Color.

$18 for this beautiful bastard of a card.

Not only that, but I won the thing in the middle of Ernest Borgnine Night!

Was anyone paying attention on eBay last Wednesday?

To keep you folks from killing me in my sleep, I won't talk about the pile of '67 Topps commons I got in a set-filler lot.

Yeah, the mail was kind of awesome yesterday.

And, on a less serious note...

Forgive me if I've posted this before, but I don't think I have...

...and that's a damned shame.

I paid a dollar for this back in October at White Plains.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, "You paid a buck for a severely damaged, heavily burned baseball card of a guy you don't even actively collect?" If you did, stop reading this and go collect Krugerrands or something. I know my readers, and y'all get it.

This baseball card made it through a fire, almost 50 years ago. 

Really think about that.

Was it a house fire?

Did this card outlive the kid who owned it?

If the kid did survive, did he save this card from the rubble and hang onto it because he loved it, or did someone else find it and snag it?

Those are just the questions surrounding the fire.

From there, it survived the next 5 decades who knows where (at least two of those decades were pretty abusive toward baseball cards), and eventually made it into a card dealer's hands, where I found it, bought it, and have scanned and documented it for you all to see, and ideally it'll remain on the Internet for as long as there's an Internet.

Now, if you think too deeply about anything, you can come up with astronomical odds against it happening, but in this case, it's not that much of a stretch to say that there were huge odds against this card surviving for this long and eventually being documented for posterity. Hell, because the end of last year was such a crazy time, it even took me 4 1/2 months to document something this spectacular. Thankfully it didn't happen (fires and natural disasters are things I really don't like to think about too much for obvious reasons), but what if there was another fire between the time I purchased it and now? Would I have saved the card? Would someone else have? Would they have thought to document it if they did?

Yesterday's mail...

Spent a couple of bucks on this at the beginning of the week. Now, I know Rick's actually a pretty good TTM signer, but I really love the look of this card. Has there been a relic card of Rick? I'm running into some of that with guys I collect, very limited relic cards out there or none at all (I don't think Mike Norris has any, and the Topps Twitter person's probably tired of me asking them to put Mike in Archives).

Oh, and I got this.

It took MONTHS for one to show up on eBay after Chris Olds mentioned him being in this set and got my attention focused on getting a Bill Murray baseball card, but one finally did and I spent too much money (relatively speaking) on it. This is the "trade this card in and get a free card of someone who isn't Bill Murray" coupon card, one of three Murray cards in the '88 Salt Lake Trappers set (the other two are the one Chris featured in Beckett Monthly and one with Bill and Brian Doyle-Murray; I don't think there are any others besides those). Love the expression on his face on this card.

!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Best Dodgers Card Of The 1960s...

 

...showed up in my mailbox today. 

Yeah, it's pretty much the antithesis of a Brooklyn Dodgers card (where a lot of my focus is these days), despite two guys who were on the last team taking up residency on it.

It's still awesome.

Some Non-Card Stuff I Collect: Set Lists

I had these in the scanning pile, and figured I'd post them here, too. These are set lists from live shows I went to last year. I have a bunch more that I'll probably get to scanning eventually, but these were in front of me, so I figured I'd share...

This one's from The Bangles, if you couldn't guess from the song titles. Friend of mine by the name of John won a radio contest and I was his +1, so I got to see them and meet them after the show. Happily, one of the roadies also hooked me up with this set list for them to sign. Sweet ladies, funny, and they still put on a terrific show.

This one isn't signed, but it's still really cool. It's from Ace Frehley's solo tour of a few months ago. My friend Peter was doing sound for Ace (yes, I have really cool friends), so he hooked me up with the soundboard copy of the set list when I saw Ace in Allentown, PA. Didn't get to meet Ace or anything, but it was a great show (though Ace got the set list scrambled a bit, so I didn't get to hear "Rip It Out", sadly).

If you guys and gals want to see me post more stuff like this along with the card stuff, let me know. Also: thanks again to both John and Peter for hooking me up on these shows!

Another cool card of Donnie...

...that I got in with a lot of miscellaneous f00'ball stuff:

A Tale Of 3 1995 Topps Cards

"Jackson waits for the pitch...and here it is..."

*crack*

"IGOTITIGOTITIGOTIT"

"You're trippin', Donnie. I got it."

All 3 of these came from COMC last week, and all 3 finished base Topps runs of the players in question.

Oisk!

If I'm not mistaken, this card completes my Topps base card set of Brooklyn Dodgers named Carl who played for the team in the 1950s. I'm getting reasonably close on Bowman, too, but I think Topps Erskines and Furillos are done now!

Canadians, hockey fans and people who enjoy great coffee...rejoice!

I found this for a decent price this morning, went apeshit and hit the Buy It Now button!

This is probably the beginning and end of my Tim Horton player collection, but I fell in love with this card when I first saw it a few years ago, and knew I had to get one eventually. It's on its way here now.

Super Bowl Sunday Post Bomb! The Joy Of A Completed Team Set

 

 

Super Bowl Sunday Post Bomb! '54 CRAAAAZY!

You know how I said I've been getting some '54s when I posted that Jackie Jensen yesterday?

Well, I've gotten a couple of lots over the past month or so. Here they are, give or take a couple cards.

This was lot #1. It was really poorly titled on eBay, or there'd be no way it woulda happened.

Roy Face was card #1 in the 4 card lot I got Jackie Jensen in. I keep kinda toying with going after more Pirates of this era, guys like him, Dick Groat, Bill Virdon, the ones who weren't Hall of Famers but were pretty darned good.

Hey, a Milwaukee Brave! Don't have a lot of these.

And Dave Hoskins rounds it out. Speaking of, his cartoon from the card back gets filed under the "things that should never happen" category...

1. Kudos to him for having the guts to pitch and 2. What kinda world was/is it where this is what we talk about on kids' bubble gum cards?

Lot #3 was a bigger one, mostly beaters but fun ones. There's a Clem Labine missing from the scans of these, because it's goin' to Night Owl, and because I've already posted my own '54 Labine way back when.

If I'm remembering correctly, Herm Wehmeier was Hank Aaron's least favorite pitcher to hit against. It's also Hank's birthday today, so happy birthday, Hank!

Oh yeah, one more from this beater lot...

'Sup, Harvey? Can anyone figure out who the card next to him on the sheet was, from the little bit of it that's on this miscut?

Last '54 lot to show you today, and it's a one-carder...

How do you do, Mr. Hodges? Told you guys there was more Gil coming. (There's also a '65 coming up in a trade post I need to get to.)