This Is Why We Mark 'Em Non-Machinable

Made a trade last week with TCDB user tntcardsstg (Trevor from Bump And Run Football blog) for 25 cards.  20 of them were for Angela - mostly Eli Manning, a Brett Favre and a John Riggins.

I get the daily USPS emails that show what mail is coming that day.  There was a picture of the mailpiece there, but it didn't appear in my mailbox.  But the postal gal (I could tell by the handwriting) said contact them to verify that it was mine.  It looked like this:

It probably was marked "non-machinable", but we all know they try to put it through anyway.  This one lost so much of the envelope that there was no destination or return address left at all.  I'm guessing it just arrived stacked between the other couple trades I got that day.

Here's the envelope, or what was left of it.

Luckily, the cards were fine.  I showed the gal at the post office the TCDB trade page when I went to pick them up.  It was the perfect way to verify where they were supposed to go.  I should have said that any stray packages of cards are probably mine, but who knows?

Thanks Trevor!  Looking forward to the next round!

I don't blame him for anything.   This just happens now and then.  Glad they made it OK.

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...

More Mixed Mailings

Ugh, I'm slackin' again.  It's just a lot right now...

Ideally, I'd be posting almost every Trading Card Database trade I make like a lot of other blogs, but there have been so many lately that by the time I get the incoming ones marked received, moved to the proper collections, then marked off my want list, and then pack up the half dozen new ones going out, it's close to bedtime.

And on top of that, this week I'm having another go-round with a kidney stone.  I think today I might have passed it, so hopefully that's over.  But Monday and Tuesday were kinda rough, although I packed up nine trades last night.

So anyway, I managed to take some pictures of a mailday from a couple weeks ago now.  I didn't get any blockbuster cards, but it's always fascinating (at least to me) the eclectic mix of stuff that TCDB trades bring in.

So four envelopes showed up.  Not sure if it was on a Monday or not - that's usually when I get the most at one time.

Open each to the first layer - two Christmas cards!  They were really just used as containers, and weren't signed or anything, but it's kinda cool.  

I'm thinking I'll have to turn trades off here soon, I haven't even scratched the surface of Christmas shopping etc. yet....

The first card revealed is a 2006 UD Rookie Debut insert of DeShaun Foster.  The trader - tinyzinterfere - listed his address as Israel.  But this envelope showed up with a return address in NYC.  I've seen that before.  Not sure how that works.  But hopefully he and his are not affected by the ugly stuff going on over there.

Opening the greeting cards and paper sleeve reveals the contents of the other packages.  

This is what trader AbeBauman sent me.  A Super Teams Kranepool, a "no hash marks" (the vertical lines in the lower blue band) 1990 Topps football LL card, and a Ginter mini insert.  He also contributed on of the Louis Oliver cards that you'll see in a bit.

CoachMoore sent me a Topps Micro Piniella, completing all the Micros for my player collections, a Gold Medallion Ultra Terry Allen, and a SI for Kids Liut for my casual Capitals collection.  He had a lot of those SI's but this was the only one I could use.  Was glad to get it in such nice condition.  Usually you see those crumpled in dime boxes since they're so flimsy.

A nice group of more Washington football in Pacific Paramount and Collector's Choice Player's Club from Nashino.

And finally, all three Louis Olivers for my co-worker's collection.  Oliver played for the Dolphins most of his career.  My co-worker said Oliver was his favorite Dolphin and off I went.  Messiers Bauman and Moore sent these, including the '94 Select, which is the goofiest photo I think I've seen on a football card.  Has to be pre-game workout.  

So there's another sample mailday from TCDB trades.  

Also shout out to Nachos Grande for a trade on there as well.  Not sure I'll pull off posting about it though...

A Little $2 Surgery

The Chantilly show I attended on Friday was a bit disappointing in that I didn't find a whole lot of set killers or special player collection cards.  So I'm still debating on whether to make a post about my haul.  I got almost as much for a fellow collector who has been holding a stack for me than I did for myself.   What I got was largely the same things I usually come home with - 1950 Bowman, 1957 Topps, and a few miscellaneous more recent things.

I did spot Chris Sewall, of Baseball Card Collector Investor Dealer YouTube fame.  I introduced myself and said I watch his videos often even though I consider myself the anti-collector (or anti-hype collector - don't care about grading, rookies, or shiny).  I fumbled over describing what I collect and we parted ways.  Check out his channel, he's not one of these "influencer" guys.  His Q&A sessions are always informative.

But anyway, part of what I bought included a couple 1957 Topps cards that were only a dollar each.  That's generally a great find, but these had a bit of an issue.

They look fantastic on the front, but when you turn them over....

They both have these paper strips stuck to the back of the card.

This one is shown in progress of removal.  I have actually seen this before and was able to cure it.

What you need is a little bit of water (I used a bottle cap), a scraper (or if you're daring, a razor blade - though I'd recommend using the non-blade edge.), a cotton swab, and if you're old like me, a magnifier - preferable that will stand on it's own.

What I do is dip the swab into the water and tap or roll it off so it's not soaked.  You only want to dampen the strip, not so much of the surface of the card.  Just enough to make the glue let go.  Keep the leading edge of the strip damp, but if you get too much water, let it dry and then reapply to just where you need it.

Then I switch to the scraper.  Not sure where I got this one, but it's perfect for the job.  Keep pushing the paper with a light scraping motion, being careful not to press too hard into the card surface.  Once it stops sliding off easily, apply the water again. 

Continue working it down and dampening the leading edge.  Typically I would get about and eight to a quarter of an inch increments before dampening again.  It's slow work, but it pays off.  The first strip was basically whole and came off in one piece.  Wasn't perfect, but it'll do.

The other one had been partially removed so it came off in fragments.  And there was a little damage already at the end.

But they're both much better than they were.  I guess those strips were how someone catalogued their cards or something.  Well, now I have a couple really decent '57s that were only a dollar each!

Let me know in the comments if you've ever had to do rehab work on a card...

You've Got Mail ~ Just Barely...

Since I began my quest to enter all my trade bait into the Trading Card Database site in February, there have been 18 trades generated along the way.  Eleven of them have been completed just in April alone so far.  As many of you know, PWE (Plain White Envelope) trades are very popular on that site.

Everything has been going swimmingly, except for a couple deliveries that showed up a bit traumatized.  Nothing was lost or stolen, but the envelopes barely survived.  Addresses are obscured for internet security.

This one came in rather shredded, but the sender packaged everything in an inner cardboard sleeve, so no harm done.  I've had PWE's arrive in Post Office bags when they're this beat up, but this one hobbled in on it's own.  I imagine it must have happened in the delivery truck.

This next one was also dual packaged.  The inner sleeve was undamaged, but was exposed to the elements on the way somehow.  The end of the outer envelope was neatly sliced off.

I can't even guess how that happened.  Random inspection?  I know I've been getting a lot of envelopes lately, but is that suspicious?

This last one isn't a damage case, but was interesting to me because of the packaging overkill.  I'll never criticize someone for packing cards to withstand any disaster, but I felt bad that this guy spent so much to ship six cards.

There is an outer clasp envelope sealed with tape at both ends, an inner bubble mailer packet, and inside that, the one team bag of cards.

Again, I'm not saying this is a bad job.  Just this...

It was from the west coast, so it cost over five dollars!  I mean, it's not Canadian prices, but dang!

I've linked these before - These are the semi-rigid photo envelopes I get from Amazon - 400 at a time (17¢ each).  Or 75 for $17 (still less than a quarter each).  They have a strip across the adhesive so you don't have to lick them and they fit two card savers side by side.  I get up to about 8 or 10 cards in one packing them this way.  By that point, it's usually over the weight limit and I'm already using the additional ounce/non-machinable stamps as it is.  You can see them in action in this post.  

What's your preferred method of making someone's mailday?

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....

Blogger Tech Chapter 1: ASCII Me How To Type That

Being a professional computer technician since the mid-90's, I know a lot of keyboard shortcuts and little Windows tricks that the average user may not be aware of.  I threw one out in a recent post about typing custom characters.  Figured I'd give a little lesson to those that didn't know about it already.

There are certain custom characters that you can generate with a keystroke.  They are called ASCII characters.  It is a finite set of letters, numbers, and symbols that are handy in a lot of computing and writing applications.

This is the chart of ASCII characters.  I modified it slightly to fill in a few codes in the first column that Blogger generates instead of the listed Beep codes, carriage return, and a couple other functions.  Save the picture and print it out on a full sheet of paper.  I always keep one of these near my keyboard.

So how do you make them work?  It's simple, but there is a certain technique to it.

Say I want to type about a Ronald Acuña card.  You'll find the accented "n" is number 164 on the chart.

Hold the ALT key, and then type out 1-6-4 but don't use the number keys above the letters, use the number pad over to the right side of most keyboards.  Your NumLock should be ON.  As soon as you are done with the three digits, let go of the ALT key.  Your symbol should appear!  Sometimes adding a leading zero will assure the proper character is output.  Most of the time I just use the three numbers.

Here is a quick video lesson that illustrates this well.

Some notable characters that I use all the time:
╔════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  ¢ - cent symbol  (ALT - 155)  25¢ each                                                               ║
║  ½ - half  (ALT - 171)  2½" x  3½" slices of crack                                              ║
║  ¼ - one quarter (ALT - 172)                                                                                 ║
║  ° - degree symbol (ALT - 248)  Turn the card 90°                                          ║
║  √ - check mark (ALT - 251)  Great for checklist cards on want lists            ║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════╝


Évëñ   ┬╫○ûg╫   │┬$   Ä  ╘│M│┬êD   $é┬,  You can do a lot with these symbols.  They also work in most Office programs and other Windows applications.  Some of the characters might come out different in certain places.  You just have to experiment.

Lines Are Down

My land line (yeah, I know - I'm old school) has been down since Sunday, and hence my internet connection is out too.  I hate even attempting to edit things on my cell phone, so transmissions from the Hive Mind aren't coming through.

Verizon will allegedly arrive between 8AM (at best 9:30 at this point) and 9 PM.  Thanks for being specific.  Hopefully they actually call me first.

I've got show loot, two unopened boxes of Stadium Club, mailday from P-Town Tom, and the rest of my "Favorite Things" posts in the works.  So I hope it's a quick fix.

Stay Tuned!