Monday Mega Mail Day

The post office tends to save up packages for Monday deliveries around here.  Which works out for me because I don't tend to plan much for Monday evenings otherwise, (#old guy, #mondayssuck) so it's nice to come home and have some new cards to check off.

Last week on the 6th of November, I got the mother lode.  My constant trade friend in Michigan sent me the latest batch, and it came with several TCDB friends.

Addresses blurred for internet protection.

First up, Stuart's offerings....

About half player collection and half set needs, starting with the Heritage box topper of Vida Blue.  The '72 is a regular Topps for Manny Sanguillen.  I have trouble keeping track of those extra cameo appearances, so I end up searching for extra copies of '70s subset cards years after completing the set and filling in my PC guys' regular issue.  The '75s are all O-Pee-Chee for PCs, but I had most of them already.   The Hernandez is such a cool shot, and I've been able to snag the regular, red foil, and now shiny version of that Heritage card.  The rest are set hits - 2013 Cooperstown, 2006 Heritage, 2005 UD All-Star Classics, 2003 XL Football, and a complete set of the round-corner glossies from 1977-78 Topps hockey.

And now, in no particular order, are the Database trades.  First up, from GoldenEagles555, a few non-uniformed Redskin players, and a couple '97 Stadium Club hits.  That SClub set is one of several that have been pounded by TCDB traders.  I'm so happy to move extra stuff to build sets like that, even though they would be cheap to buy, sending (in as many cases as possible) more cards than I'm getting is just awesome.

And the diversity of some of these trades (and traders) is great too.  Check out that red foil Spider-Man!  And continuing the theme of strong guys in red outfits, Tony Gonzalez Upper Deck rookie, and three Ultras of more Washington players.  Thanks to Hector, aka HDZLV.

Another nice mix from BCMeeker.  I'm down to about a half dozen on this 1990-91 Skybox basketball set.  Stuart started me off with a lot of about 1000 cards that I dug my set out of and then entered the extras for trade, and then I put my remaining wants on the database and two out of every three trades have had some of them in it.

And these two might look familiar.  This happens sometimes when two trades hit at the same time.  But I've killed off so many Washington needs that they've probably surpassed set hits in my trades on the site.  Which is just incredible, because digging out two to ten singles from each product in shops and at shows would take forever, and I know there are tons of collectors who have them and don't need them.  It's a win-win.

More stuff from the sports spectrum from CraigB56.  Late 90's hockey, and one of those Donruss game cards that are pretty easy to come by on TCDB.  The Dotson Score is for the Washington collection, but the Addison is my latest player collection.  The Vikings WR went through the school system that I work for.  I've got a co-worker that coached him in middle school.

The other bubble mailer was from JFCard.  I didn't spread these out too far.  There's the Jordan from the Skybox set, along with an '84 Fleer Update Darling for that set, and a SportFlics Keith Hernandez for his PC.  The stack is mostly 1997-98 Score hockey, a few other newer set hits, pretty much all of the first year Capital O-Pee-Chees for that team binder, and some other odd PC needs.

I got one more package the next day from sfurukawa, which was bigger than any of these.  I just didn't take a picture of it.  It was a 300 count box full of mostly Washington football, but also a complete set of 1988 Sportflics Gamewinners, and a handful of baseball PC cards.  That was an unusual trade where I actually got more volume than I sent - but his end was all 1975 Topps baseball minis.

I combined that shipment into the stacks of all the above inventory and sorted by sport.

Here's a lower angle so you can see the quantities.  Not bad for a week of trading...

I've completed 11 trades and have that many still in progress (in transit) for the month of November so far.  And we're not even halfway through!

I also did 11 last month - starting with one on the 11th and the others on the 18th and beyond - after turning them off for August and September to try to recover from the National and Michigan hauls.  (Which I really haven't.)

In October, those trades added 185 baseball, 20 hoops, 73 football, and 5 hockey.  283 total.

And this month has brought 50 baseball, 54 hoops, 416(!) football, and 121 hockey.  641 total.

I bet I've moved a lot more than that to good homes too.  Gotta love Database trading!

A Diverse Portfolio

Just a quick "look what I got" trade post.  Made a trade with a member of the trading group I've been part of the longest.  Mr. William McCaleb sent me this congregation of cardboard that was the most diverse I've received in a good while.  It hit several obscure parts of my collection - a couple of which hadn't changed in a while and a new one that I started with this delivery.

2013 Allen & Ginter Ripken insert - Ginter inserts will be on my wants until I stop collecting or they stop making A&G.  

2009 Topps Mayo Pedroia & 2009 Topps Heritage Lowe SP - these are both from the same set.  Dustin is the last of the Mayo inserts that are "numbered" with "TME" (the Target versions).  I need all ten of the "WME" (Wal-Mart) versions.

More Ginter - this time 2012 Short Prints.  They will stay on my lists longer than the inserts I'm sure.  But at least they're not as hard or expensive to get as Heritage SPs.

Speaking of Heritage again, these are the first 2021 Heritage I own, and I only want two more - the WS highlights with Vida Blue and Gene Tenace.  These are for player collections (and the Space binder.)

Now it's gonna get weird - Golden Age mini Baseball Caramels Red and Carolina Brights green versions.  Scanning was easy because I had an extra Caramels blue one so I got the front while showing the new back versions all at the same time.  Surprised me that the red one is the first of my player collection guys I have in this color.  Still looking for Fisk, Keith Hernandez and Apollo 11 in the crimson, as well as others of those.

A 1999 SP Top Prospects of one Michael Jordan in a Birmingham Barons uniform with a bat!  This is one of five Retrospectives of Jordan that make up half of the insert set.  The first five are Ken Griffey Jr. with the San Bernadino Spirit.

Now we're over the top.  From the 1993 Marvel Skybox series, these two Red Mirror Finish inserts cut my want list in half.  Just Need Spider-Man 2099 and "The Specialist" to take these out.  Toughest part is going to be finding where I've put this set box.

And finally, if you've just started watching the NBC series "The Endgame", you know who this is.  The lovely Morena Baccarin graces this "Women of Serenity" diecut.  She played Inara Serra in the sci-fi series Firefly (and the movie Serenity).  This kicks off another non-sport mini collection of her which really only contains a few other cards.  She was also in Stargate SG1 and Gotham, but most of those cards are autographs that go for about $300 if you can find them. 

Thanks to Mr. McCaleb for a great trade!

Collector's Log: Stardate 198208.26

Resuming the series on my collecting exploits back in 1982.  Except for Christmas, I've been slacking for about six months on these.

Let's pick up the log entries from late in August....

Gaithersburg is about a half hour south towards DC.  I'm trying to recall what shop this might have been.  Might think of it later...

Picked up this fine '56 for my EH player collection.  I have most of my EH cards scanned, but can't find a post showing them all off.  Maybe I never did it....?

Nice to have the original and the Archives copies.  Bonus Yankee box set card at the bottom.  These were joined later by the '55 Bowman and corresponding Archives copy.

I ended up with the entire ROM series - 75 issues.  Not that they're worth much of anything.  There was another series produced later by IDW that I've never seen.  Based on a toy, the comic outlasted the toy by a large margin.

Only have a few Star Wars comics from the 70's.  Now they would have been worth something.  Ah well, story of my (collecting) life.

 

Hard to tell which Kessingers I got this time.  It's not the '68, since that one was obtained just back on the 24th of June.   Must have been a couple somewhere between these two.

I can also only guess as to the Angels I got for my buddy Mike.   Probably from the new crop in 1982, but it couldn't be that many for a lucky buck.

Not a bad daily schedule.  Start and end with creative classes.  In case you can't translate, here's what it means:

1st period - Drawing & Painting - learned from an established local artist. 
2nd - French - My accent was decent, but my vocabulary has all but faded away.
3rd - Algebra II - Mrs. Thomas was a trip.  Did well in math (as far as I went).
4th - Contemporary Issues - My least favorite classes were history and social studies type things.
Lunch - Usually bought what they were serving - which was only one or two choices.  Nowhere near all the options and packaged add-ons they have today.  Probably had those milks in a plastic bag that you stabbed with the pointed straws.

5th - English
6th - Chemistry - with Mrs. Vaughn.  Beehive hairdo and glasses, but she was really cool.
7th - Filmmaking - (8mm and VHS video.  I had this class from 9th grade on, but never became the next Stephen Speilberg.)

"3 Hits" was a game we used to play at the backstop.  You would get up to bat and after three hits, you would rotate out to pitcher or outfield.  Some of us would get our three in ten pitches or less, but sometimes someone would take forever.  Easier than playing a game with only three or four people.

The last note is about an episode of the detective series starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers called Hart To Hart.  The show was about two millionaire jet-setters who always managed to find mysteries wherever they went.  Their exploits ran for five seasons, and then eight tv movies.  They still run on the Hallmark channel according to Wikipedia.
The blog 1207 Consecutive Games has a post all about the episode.

(More Than) A Few Of My Favorite Things Part 2

Cars - Mustangs and Datsun 280Z.  The best time period for Mustang designs is the early 70's.  They're huge, cool, and badass.  Boss 302, Mach 1, with the stripes and big engines.  The only reason I wouldn't own one would be that there are a ton of them around.  Though that really applies to the newer ones more than these classics.

The Z was really my first favorite car.  I just love the body design.  There hasn't been much of anything like it since.  Don't think I've ever actually sat in one, but have always admired them.  Not sure I'd even fit in the thing.

Card set - 1971 Topps.  Some people like the psychadelic tombstones of the next year, or the dual color '75s, but for me, I gotta stick with the coolest.  The black bordered '71 set always takes it.

Comics - Deathlok, Spider-Man, Iron Man.  Of all the heroes, I've probably got the most Spider-Man titles in my collection than any other.  It helps that he had like five different titles at certain times - Amazing SpM, Marvel Tales, Peter Parker the Spectacular..., Marvel Team-Up, etc.

 

I followed Iron Man from just before issue #100 through the alcoholism issues, and beyond.

But my favorite character of all is Deathlok.  You could say that he's Marvel's version of RoboCop before RoboCop came along.  He's a cyborg assassin who has a computer embedded in his head (that he argues with all the time).  There have been several incarnations of his story over the years even into this decade.  I saw where he was a minor character in the Agents of SHIELD tv show, but I've never seen those episodes.  His are the only books I own that were produced after the mid to late 90's.

Honorable mention to Machine Man.  (There's a theme developing here, don't you think?  Two cyborg comic heroes featured on a blog with a Borg theme)

 

And these were the Guardians of the Galaxy, not the raccoon and tree people they are now.

Baseball Players - Luis Tiant, and Jim Palmer.  The bulk of my player collections are guys from the 70's.  So my favorite players from then will be the top few PC guys.  El Tiante is just the coolest guy, and Palmer won a ton of games for my home team Orioles.

Movies - Dirty Harry series, Three Days Of The Condor, Cannonball Run / Smokey & The Bandit.  The Star Wars movies go without saying, so I won't rehash that whole thing.

Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in five movies from '71 to '88.  That's just good fun.

My other choice is a rather obscure movie with a stellar cast and director.  It's a spy thriller that was updated and made as a mini series on AT&T / Audience Network just a year or two ago.  That show was good too. 

And there were a few different movies that kinda blend together from back then.  Burt Reynolds stars in Cannonball Run (1 & 2), Smokey And The Bandit (1, 2, and 3).  All of them about cars, babes, cops, and living fast.  Not deep plots, but some memorable scenes.

Music - The 70's were the foundation of all the guitar based rock that I love so much.  Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, the Doors, KISS, Queen all started then.  I don't necessarily like some of their early albums, but all of them have classic tracks from back then that you still hear all the time today. 

And Dio with Rainbow just never gets old.  He's the godfather of metal, having enjoyed an illustrious career with Rainbow, Black Sabbath and as a solo act.

TV Shows - There were several hero action shows at that time.  Bionic man and woman, Wonder Woman, Charlie's Angels of course.  And cop dramas like Starsky & Hutch, Kojak, Baretta, McCloud, and the Rockford Files.  I remember all that stuff.  Especially the theme songs.  SWAT had the coolest one.  I even had the 45rpm record.

The funniest show on tv was the Carol Burnett show.  Used to watch it at my grandma's house.  Tim Conway and Harvey Korman were always cracking each other up.  Vicki Lawrence went on to do Mama's Family, which was a series based on skits from the show.  They taped live in front of an audience.

Cars - Mazda RX-7, Toyota Supra.  My Mom had a couple Camaros in the 80's.  She started with a '75, then traded that in for a silver one in the new style around 1983 or so, then a year or so later swapped that one for a white one that she put clear headlight covers on with cute little butterflies on them.
I always liked the RX-7.  A friend in college had an older one that he traded in on a Porsche 911.  The Mazda was much easier to drive.  Never learned much about the rotary engines or anything, but wanted one as my first car.  Test drove one around 1986 when the design changed, but I couldn't afford it at the time.

Also kinda liked the Supra.  My first car was a Celica, but not a Supra.  They were separate models back then.

Cards - My collecting stopped in 1984, so I consider anything after that to be inferior.  But '83 was a great year for designs.  Fleer and Topps put out one of their best efforts of the decade.

 

Honorable mention to 1988 Score, which I'd pick up much later.

Comics - This was the bulk of my comic collecting.  I was into a lot of Marvel books, Limited Series, Spider-Man titles, etc. Later, the universes were being revamped, and I read both sides.  Both DC & Marvel have done it all over again since, so I don't know much about current heroes or their legacies.

Baseball Players - Cal Ripken, Jr. and Julio Franco.  I watched a lot of Cal Ripken, being an Orioles fan.  I don't actively collect him as a player (there's WAY too much), but I've been snagging up his tribute sets and the like lately.  He's one of the most respected players ever and was on my home team his whole career.
I didn't know about Julio Franco until after he stopped playing.  It just fascinated me that a guy would play that long.  He played for teams that I have no connection to, so I'm probably into his cards more than being a dedicated fan.  So many of the other players I like started in the latter part of the decades, so they crossed over the 70's and 80's.  Franco is more defined as an 80's (and beyond) player to me.

 

Music - Sheena Easton to Huey Lewis to Dokken.  First album I ever bought (on cassette) was the gorgeous Scottish lass with the powerful sweet voice.  Sheena Easton was big in the 80's.  Catchy tunes that promoted girl power and love.  And gosh, those eyes.  She even made it into some tv shows - one time marrying Don Johnson on Miami Vice.

Still looks pretty good these days....

Then I got the first KISS album without their makeup and discovered how guitars could make music heavy and strong.  I was hooked.  I've been a metalhead ever since.  Dokken was my first favorite hard rock band.  They had great riffs and rhythms, but were still melodic and you could sing along.  Love their clean sound.  It always seemed like they were the most "natural" band I knew, which means if I was air-drumming along, and hit that cymbal at the end of a lyric line, it was really there.  They did a lot of mugging for the camera in their videos, but I think that was more the director than them being silly.

And of course, the best leather and studs metal band, Judas Priest.

Still into all these bands.  I live on the same few channels on SiriusXM in the car that play these bands.

Movies - Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Die Hard, Witness, Field Of Dreams.  Harrison Ford is great.  All kinds of great action and adventure movies in the 80's.  I watch Die Hard every time it comes on.  And we did a scene from Witness in one of my college film classes.  Copied it shot by shot.  And who in this hobby doesn't like Field Of Dreams?

We had a kid that looked just like the original.  Our Danny Glover actor didn't show, so we substituted with one of us white dudes.  The gun was even bigger than what Glover had.  (Warning - the scene gets a little bloody)

TV Shows - Dukes Of Hazzard, Miami Vice, Airwolf.  More action, adventure and pretty girls.  Nobody ever totaled a car or got hurt in Hazzard County car chases.  Miami Vice was just cool with Jan Hammer's soundtrack in the background.  And there were a few shows like Airwolf that were borderline sci-fi and just fun.  And they had cool theme tracks too.

Here's the musician incorporated into scenes from the show in a music video.  He's not quite as badass as Crockett & Tubbs.

An intro to Airwolf:

Whew!  These are marathon posts and they take even longer to compose.  But now I've got three decades left!