Launch Status: Aborted

Unfortunately, my plans for the Michigan trip and the National had to be cancelled.  I've been experiencing cyclical fever, fatigue and other symptoms for almost two weeks now.  I just wasn't going to be able to make the drive back and forth, and wade through all the crowds.  So I called it off.

The upside is, it probably saves me several hundred bucks in the short term, and lets me possibly get ahead of all the stuff that's piled up since I went the last time that I haven't put away yet.

But I really would have liked to be able to shop at some of the dealers that I only see there...

Aspirations

A co-worker gave me a factory set of 1991 Classic Best minor league cards a while ago.  It's a 450 card set that comes in a custom box with each block of 100 cards wrapped in cellophane.  This set had sort of a defect in that two of the blocks were of the 200 numbers, so I was missing the 100's.  I put them on the Trading Card database and they've come rolling in.

There are many players who went on to have significant major league careers.  Like these two:

But some of the others who didn't quite make it have similar names to those that did.  Though not all of the successful people made it in Major League Baseball.  

Cristobal Colon only played 14 games for the Texas Rangers.

He could have been Bartolo Colon!

Steve Rolen never made it beyond A+ ball. 

Scott Rolen has been on the HOF ballot.

Fred Russell was "straight outta Compton" but only had a few years at A level.

Bill Russell was a staple for the 70's and 80's Dodgers.

Oscar Munoz pitched ten games for the Twins in 1995, going 2-1.  

If he was Anthony Munoz, he would be a Hall of Fame lineman.

Jeff Jackson played from 1989 to 1998, but didn't go higher than AA.

Everyone knows what Bo did in two sports.

Some guys just weren't meant to be athletes.  Paul here actually appeared in 18 games for the Orioles in '93, with a .213 batting average.

As Harry Caray, he would have had a long career in the broadcast booth.  (Not to mention tributes by Will Ferrell.)

Freddie Davis, Jr. went five seasons in various levels up to AA with a total record of 12-11.

Sammie Davis, Jr. has been called the greatest entertainer in the world.  He started in Vaudeville at age three, was part of the Rat Pack with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, and was in show business until his passing at age 64.

Rod Bolton was called up a couple times for the White Sox in '93 and '95, but only amassed a record of 2-8 in 156 innings.

Michael Bolton started as a hard rock singer in 1975, but switched to adult contemporary in the 90's and had nine #1 hits among 24 albums.

Kelly Lifgren was 28-44 from 1988 to 1993 with a 5.13 ERA.

Nils Lofgren (left) has been a musician since the late 60's and is a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band as well as Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

Donovan Osborne actually played nine years in the majors, but over a 13 year span.  He did not play in 1994, 2000, 2001, and 2003.   His career ERA is a respectable 4.03 with 558 strikeouts.

But he's not the Prince Of Darkness!

Oh, what could have been!

My Extended Vacation

My silence the last couple weeks was planned.  I left on vacation overnight on Monday the 25th of July for the west coast.  Second year in a row, but this time it wasn't to buy a car.

I've got family that live in the Sierra Foothills.  It was nice reconnecting with them and some other cousins from the Northwest area.

They're up in the Gold Rush country in Calaveras County.  It was over 100° several days.  But I liked that better than 90° and high humidity over here in the East.

They're just down the road from the Big Trees State Park.  Pretty impressive.

Managed to find a few cards in an antique store in one of the little towns we visited.  Ruth and the Cubs were the same price.  There was a whole 16" long box os HOFers and stars.  There are a lot of card shops back near Stockton, but I was too far away.

Saw a lot of stuff about the Gold Rush era and how they lived and got around in the late 1800's.

Including the steam trains that are still running.  They use these in a lot of movies and television shows.  This particular one was in Back to The Future III.  We were also in Columbia Park, which is a period town that is preserved largely as it was and was also used in the movie.

We had a layover in Vegas on the return flight.  I stopped in the Raider Nation store while my uncle played a few machines.

I suspect that stop is what led to the rest of my time off...

About three days after I came back, I was home from work and had gone to the grocery store (masked).  I put everything away and went to lay down.  About 6 pm, I tried to get up, but the room was spinning so hard I couldn't walk.  I struggled to move downstairs to try to eat something, but it just wasn't getting any better.  Sparing you the gory details, I got sick a few times and finally called for an ambulance about 10 o'clock.  

They gave me something for the dizziness and sent me for a CT scan. I had told them I hadn't been tested for COVID in a while and had just traveled.  It turned out positive.  I stayed overnight for observation and felt a lot better after a couple days.  I've been home on ten day quarantine ever since.  Today is the last day.  I just did a home test and it came out negative.👍

The upside of my quarantine is that I finally had a chance to binge watch Star Trek: Discovery so I can then get on board with ST: Strange New Worlds.  I'm on Season 2.  I have the first two seasons on Blu-Ray disc.  For the seasons after that, I'll use Paramount streaming.

Have just now started reading blogs again.  I had a trade or two in the works, but I won't start handling too many cards until next week when I'm free & clear of the virus.

I'm pretty sure all of my submitted cards are now on sale on COMC.  I've sold 18 cards so far for a total of about $66, and I spent last night picking out cards I need that they can ship me.  It went up to the wire (August 11 deadline) for them to get everything up, even though the last bunch was from the same sets that went up earlier.  I really don't understand their process. But for now, I'll just see how much I can move before they start charging me for storage.

I am not looking forward to getting up early Monday morning....

Not Found On Google

You may be having trouble looking at my want list site.  The link over there to the right is probably not giving you my pages.  (Bleep bloop it in the comments as to what you're seeing, I'm curious.)

Google has shut down their "old" style websites in favor of a new version that seems to be limited to six themes or templates, all of which are excessively generic and not geared to the kind of pages that work well for plain text lists.  

I tried to convert my site into the new format, but found it incredibly labor intensive, since the conversion ruins all the formatting (which I am very OCD about), distorts all the fonts and combines certain text with adjacent paragraphs that must be manually separated.  After trying to make my Home page into something feasible, I got too frustrated and gave up.  

It is now impossible to embed pictures into your text.  On these pages, images are either the full width of the text page, or in their own isolated column, which pushes the text into a narrower field.  The football image above was meant to be that way, but the smaller one belongs much farther down the page.  Another image did stick about halfway down from there, so I have no idea.

This screenshot also shows the editing view and three images that were previously embedded and now wander aimlessly at the beginning of the section.  Conversion divides the text into sections when the spacing changes.  This would be useful if you did one for each set, but that would probably prove way too time consuming and cumbersome.

I had experimented with putting my lists on additional pages here on the blog, and so I spent several hours updating and pasting in the rest of my Baseball page last night.  You may have already seen the Baseball Wants tab above this blog page.  Unfortunately, even though the editing is similar to the old Google site, the page width is smaller and not indicated very well on the editor, so I kept having to go back and tweak a lot of listings for spacing and wrapping.  And then I had to go through and manually color each set heading and the text so it is easier to read against the black background.  In places where I used small type for descriptive details, etc., it shows here as another couple sizes smaller.  I changed a lot of it to regular size, but didn't get it all, so I'll just leave it for now. 

It'll do.  Once I get the other pages up, the level of work will decrease dramatically.  I don't think adding and subtracting things should be too bad.  Though I kept feeling like each time I saved and previewed the page, things would change.  I suppose I shouldn't be so OCD about how it all looks, but I like to keep it neat and readable.

So for now, this is what I'm going with.  I also put some baseball sets into my Collection on the Trading Card Database.  Now that you can add a whole set at once, and then go in and click out what you're missing right into your want list, it's not such a tedious process.  But if I'm at a show or shop, I want to see all my want lists at once so I can scroll up and down, and the Database can't do that (at least not that I've seen).

If you guys know of another simple free website service that works well, let me know below.  I saved all my pages before they got locked down, so I have all my data.

And thanks a lot, Google....

Numerous Notes

I'm still not really in the swing of things as far as posting regularly, but in an effort to move that along, here are some quick things I wanted to throw out to you.

Thanks to a couple good samaritans who helped me get the old Buick back home today after it broke down in the middle of a three lane road in the busiest part of town.  The ol' girl was about out of gas when I left for a show this morning, and has been hard to start the last few times.  I got her going and made it to the gas station OK, but after filling up, she quit on me and it took about 20 minutes of holding the hood up and cranking on it to get out of the road.  Then she quit again when I got just around the corner going the other way.  A couple gents helped me push her all the way out of the traffic lane, and another guy named Leroy stopped twice - the second time to bring starter fluid and we got her going again.  I made it home OK after that.  I think there must have been sediment in the bottom of the gas tank that got drawn up into the engine when it was low, and then got stirred up when I filled up.  Who knows...

I thought about posting my J.R. Richard player collection after he passed a while back, but never did.  I'll look to see how many oddballs I have of him.  Let me know if that's something you'd like to see.

I bought two boxes of 2021 Allen & Ginter and need to trade for about half the base set and bunches of inserts.  I have player minis and a couple hits and inserts available.  I know Nachos Grande has a lot of trade fodder.  Anyone else?  I got a Yadier box topper and an Arenado N43.  (Cardinals hot toppers!).   I also got a Rip card and figured out a special technique for opening them that I will post right after this.

Got a PWE from Jon at Penny Sleeve blog.  Thanks for the sharp '57s!  I do actually prefer centering to corners, but it was great getting them anyway - much appreciated!

2021 Topps - Send In The Clones

What's up guys?  How is everyone doing?  

Very quickly, I've still been buying cards online and making a few trades here and there.  I managed to put away about half the huge pile of incoming pasteboard I had on my desk in the last couple weeks.  I've slacked off reading blogs too.  Starting to catch up a little...

Unfortunately, it seems that the romance I was anticipating has fizzled like Oriole playoff hopes.  It's fine though.  Guess ghosting is better than outright rejection...

But anyway, so I saw a two blaster break of 2021 Topps on the IFSportsCards YouTube channel.  Watched a few of Ian's videos, and he's a cool dude.  His tastes are very rookie centric, but that's typical these days.  He's lucky enough to have an adorable wife to share his hobby with, too.  Check them out.

What I saw from the cards 100% confirmed my commitment to cease the collection of the Topps flagship set and switch over to something like Allen & Ginter instead.  I've repeatedly pointed out that the creativity in flagship has been dwindling for years, and all the original ideas show up in the other sets.  That is more evident in 2021 Topps than ever.

Of the ten or so inserts in this set, seven of them are either reprints of particular cards of the past, or use the same design as a previous issue.  That leaves three.  One of those is just big stars in an insert. The other is a blatant repeat of an insert from ten years ago.  The remaining one is the lone original idea.

That lone insert is called Stars In Service.  It highlights the charity work that players do for their communities and humankind.  Trade me for these, please!

The theme this year is 70 Years of Topps.  (Still remember the 65th anniversary foil stamping on buybacks?  Topps 60?  Yeah, anniversaries are fine, but it's almost too easy to do it every five years or so.)  The "here's another card of your favorite big stars" insert is Topps Platinum Players Die Cuts.  25 (hey kudos for keeping it under 100) superstars against a vaguely number shaped cutout.  The photos are cut off by the die cut edges.  Woo...

The only other "non-player" insert set is The History of Topps.  Which is not to be confused with the "History of Topps" from 2011.  Or actually, it is, because five out of the ten cards in each set are the EXACT SAME.  Here are the checklists:

2011 Topps - History of Topps
HOT-1 Topps Is Founded By The Shorin Family          
HOT-2 1951 - First Cards Are Sold          
HOT-3 1952 - Sy Berger Creates The First Complete Set          
HOT-4 1957 - Topps Sets The Card Size Standard          
HOT-5 1972 - Topps Goes Public          
HOT-6 1974 - First Topps Traded Set          
HOT-7 1989 - Topps Reintroduces Bowman          
HOT-8 1994 - Topps Moves From Brooklyn to NYC          
HOT-9 2007 - Eisner & Co. Buy In To Topps          
HOT-10 2009 - Topps Receives MLB Exclusive 

2021 Topps - The History of Topps
HOT-1 Topps is Founded by the Shorin Family          
HOT-2 First Baseball Playing Cards Are Sold          
HOT-3 Sy Berger Creates the First Complete Set          
HOT-4 First Topps All-Rookie Team          
HOT-5 Garbage Pail Kids Introduced          
HOT-6 Topps Re-Introduces Bowman          
HOT-7 Topps receives MLB exclusive          
HOT-8 Topps Digital Apps Launched          
HOT-9 Topps Now Introduced          
HOT-10 Project 2020 Takes Off 

Updated for Garbage Pail Kids (???), Topps BUNT (dead), Topps Now (which was it's own insert set already), and Project 2020.

EVERYTHING ELSE that isn't a relic or autograph is a repeat of a past design or a chronicle of past cards - mostly rookie cards that you've seen a million times.  And yes, according to the Database, they are going to do Archives and Heritage again this year!  These inserts could make up half of those two sets, which would make room for some of that "innovation" that Topps promised would come with their exclusive contracts. 

1951 box toppers - (Archives)  Today's stars in the '51 Current All-Stars design

1952 redux - (Heritage)  Today's stars in the '52 design (again)

1986 anniv. tribute - (Archives)  Today's stars in the '86 design on it's 35th anniversary.

70 Years Of Topps Baseball - (Archives)  Today's stars in each of Topps designs from '51 to 2021 that will dilute Archives for years to come.  At least they put Robin Yount in the '72 design so they wouldn't duplicate one current guy in this year's Heritage.  There will still be three or four of the same ones used in Archives.   *Sigh*.

Iconic Card manu patches - Reprints of the same old rookie cards in fabric patches with blank backs.  (Dangit, I guess I want this Palmer (Update: got Heem) and Bo Jackson.)

Topps Double Headers - Reprints the fronts of the first and last card of star players on the same card.  And they have the 70th logo on the front too.  So you better hope your dealers sort their inserts, because unless you're holding the checklists, you'll have to check the backs of all the 70 Years stamped reprints and these to make sure which set they go with.  (Got the Palmer.)  Most of the rookie cards are also among the patches above.

Topps Through The Years - Reprints base up to high end cards of star players.  Well, this is kinda new - not only reprinting the regular ones you see like Cal Ripken, whose '82 Traded makes its third appearance as an insert in 2021, but now reprinting autographed mojo hits so you poor people can see what they looked like since you can't afford the real thing. 

That's it.  There are no other insert offerings to Topps Flagship.  They're all reproductions or used designs.

Oh and as for the base design....

There's a border....ok....the 70th logo, like on most of the inserts too....team logos are always good....Totally unreadable name and position in a bar that's way too small....the honeycomb pattern from 2016 parallels.....and these multi-tone blue hockey sticks that protrude into the heads of the players in horizontal photos.....

Yeah, I'm out...