Like Miggy, 'Melo, and Gronk...

I'm on leave from work on the 29th and 30th of June.  (It's the 29th as I write this.)  Two ten-hour days uses up my Personal leave exactly.  I've still got vacation and sick leave left.  This is intentional...

Because on Wednesday, July 1, I become officially retired from the FCPS school system after 22 years, 7 months.

I would have stayed a couple more years to reach 25.  I enjoyed the people I worked with, and liked fixing chromebooks, laptops, desktops and the occasional 3D printer, moving freight around in the basement, managing the repair parts inventory, installing new equipment in the school lab rooms, and to a lesser degree, taking Help Desk phone calls.  Unfortunately, the big boss decided to move half of our staff to another group, and restrict the five of us who would be left to Help Desk phones ONLY.  I said, "no thank you."  And here we are.

No more early mornings unless it's something special.  No more long days without snacks or naps.  No more commute.  No more fast food lunches.  (Well, OK, less of them at least.) 

More time for whatever I want, including projects and maintenance around the house, organizing the card room (better), putting away all the stuff I've brought in for the last two years, consolidating my lists from this site and the TCDB, working on my classic cars, arranging everything in the garage and basement, and finding more card shops!

Angela has July off too, so we will be filling the days with fun stuff.  After that, my blogging, sorting, trading and maybe even selling will leap to new heights!  Not sure I'll be a Hall Of Famer like the guys in the title, but if there's one for the card world, I might be closer soon. Stay Tuned!

Getting There Is Half The Battle - And Less Now

Attended the National Battlefield Card Classic in Gettysburg over Memorial Day weekend.  Held at the All-Star Sports Complex near the Eisenhower hotel, it is now only 15 minutes from my house, making it the most convenient show venue.  

Unfortunately, it was steadily showering when I got there, and I had to walk close to a quarter mile from where I parked to the entrance.  So standing in line was a little damp.  The show was pretty much 50/50 sports vs. Pokémon/MagicTG, but that's par for the course these days.  Those gaming cards sure are colorful, but they all look the same to me.

The other "as usual" was that the majority of my days' haul was the same things I usually find at shows now - namely player collection singles from the most current sets, and base, parallels and hits from my two modern football PC guys: Jayden Daniels and Jordan Addison.  An addition that I can make to that list now is Angela's guys: Brett Favre, Eli Manning, Peyton Manning & John Riggins.  

Here's what I got, but not in the order I got it: 

Some parallel '25 Ginter action with both the silver and Chrome Bo, silver Torre, X black Fisk, and mini Sutter.  This kind of stuff is hard to track, even when I try to make lists.  I don't put it on their web page, because it would make the listings way too long, but only having odd lists of certain years and certain sets isn't much help either.

Found a couple of the Manning boys, including a really fancy Topps Chrome Fortune 15 Peyton.  These were all in a quarter box, I believe.

As were most of these Brett Favres.  The first two are numbered, so they may have been a buck a shot.

The Modern Artist (blue) is /99 on the back.

The Resurgence is /275 on the top left corner of the front.

And finally, the first purchase I made was this Jordan Addison Flawless Collegiate Gold patch auto /10 for $40.  It was marked something like $175 on the sticker underneath.  The dealer said he was surprised it had not sold in four shows up until then.  I'm glad I got the markdown.  It still showed the three digit price on COMC, which is what I gauge prices with.

The Phoenix Rookie Rising Jayden Daniels is a regular mainstream insert....

The middle card is something else.  I asked the dealer what it actually was and he wasn't sure.  (It was the dealer's young son and he said Dad handled all the buying.)  They were priced at $25 and $15 or so, but I asked the Dad if he'd take $30 for the pair and he did.  I managed to find out later what the middle one is.

It's a custom from a WhatNot user (who's a Giants fan...??) and sells them for exactly what I got mine for.  I think it was worth it for a nice looking and unique addition to my collection, whether it's official or not.

That's really all I came up with.  There were only a few vintage dealers at the show, and they seemed rather overpriced, so I didn't look for my '61 set build at all.  I'll wait for the bigger shows in the fall.  Thanks for stopping by!