Trade Pile 001: Dusting Off The Pile With A Bazooka

Trade Pile 001:

Card 6: Dusting Off The Pile With A Bazooka

31 Aug 2026

Here is something I attempted back in 2022. I modeled it after what others bloggers had done. A trading stack/pile/lot. I tried it for a few months, I tended to add a new card at the end of each month. It sort of fizzled out, but then again my blogging fizzled out for a while there. I figured I would try to do this again for a second effort. I realize that it might take a while and possibly create a large stack before getting a bite.

For card number six, well this one is not a standard card, it is more like one of those paper tattoos or "magic" rub offs. They are simply called "comic cards". They are in a similar style of the old Bazooka Joe Comic strips, but with a star player featured. This one I'm adding to the Pile is comic card number 4 Rafael Palmiero Baltimore Orioles.

Top of The Pile:

2006 Bazooka Baseball - Comic Card Insert:

04 Rafael Palmeiro Baltimore Orioles

The rest of the Pile:

2015 Topps Chrome Baseball:

59 Kevin Kiermaier Tampa Bay Rays

1989 Topps Baseball:

373 Tracy Jones Expos

1991 Topps Cracker Jack Mini (Micro) Baseball:

17 Mark Langston Angels

Yes this one is creased some. 

(image obviously not to scale)

2011 Topps Opening Day Baseball:

ODS-3 Alex Rodriguez Yankees

2016 Bowman Draft - Chrome Baseball:

BDC-29 Justin Dunn Mets

The concept is simple I will post a card or cards I have up for trade and the first person to claim the "pile" in this post's comments will receive them all. The golden rule with this is that you must offer at least one card off of my wantlists. See My Master Want List on this blog and My Wantlist at TCDB (Collection -> Main Collection -> scroll to Wantlist, select sport category) If you don't have a card off of my lists I will also accept cards for my Niche collections or Pre 1987 Vintage Baseball or Football (NFL) same years. Please let me know what you intend to send if it is a card not from my lists. If it is a card on my lists you don't have to identify the card, just claim the pile and say you have a card on my list.

After awhile a month, or maybe even just a week, whenever, I will add another card or two to the "Pile" (or "Stack") of unclaimed cards until the pile gets claimed. 

Randomness and Maybe Some Sorting

 

I started on a Herculean task of going through the boxes that make up the bulk of my trading card collection. Including almost a dozen 5 row monster boxes. Some of the monster boxes at least I had just one sport in, but not all of them. Two or three of them are sorted, or were. Many of the other boxes at first were just filled with random cards, unorgainized. A mishmash sometimes a box of all baseball, sometimes baseball and football, sometimes all 4 of the major sports plus Non-Sport and sometimes a full set of something would be in there. Lots of boxes filled with surprises. There were only a few boxes that I had remembered exactly what was what and maybe marked. Very few actually "organized" and "in order".

I have accumulated 1,000s upon 1,000s of trading cards in my life. I started so early as a kid I don't recall when I "first" started collecting. As a kid I was limited to what I could buy mostly due to allowance at the time and other interests. When I was in Jr. High a friend of mine introduced me to an LCS which is still in business, they are at their 4th location over the almost 40 years. Sometime around the late 1990s to early 2000s my collecting stopped a bit then with the internet and discovery of Ebay and online forums it picked up dramatically. 

Not finishing a major reorganization of my baseball collection (pre internet days) from being sorted by player name (with A to S maybe only Ms in binders and the rest of the alphabet neatly in boxes, to going back to the Year/Brand/Set way of things helped make the collection just a heap of a hoard of cardboard. Add to that Ebay auctions and eventually "Buy It Now"s listings, Card  Forums, Card Purchasing sites, group box breaks, and team trading groups, plus a lifelong tendency to procrastinate and you have the organizational mess I am in today. 

Things improved in  late 2023 when I had a mandatory apartment inspection, where I went from probably a level 3 hoard down to level 1.5 my collection went from being almost anywhere in my apartment mostly in boxes but also a few dozen binders on shelves (in the den and dining rooms) to having those now 35 binders in the living room and dining room on shelves and the boxes in the den filling and overflowing two 6 foot tall bookcases. Unfortunately most of the boxes are unmarked and as I mentioned earlier and are unorganized. Plus there were tons of cards that were condensed from boxes and piles of original packages to just the cards in large non-card boxes.

Enough about that messy stuff. I am getting past all that.

Over a recent weekend I made a bit of progress all but one of the monster boxes are just one sport or non-sport now and some other boxes the same. I have a few large boxes that still have mixes of card types to go through and many small card boxes to sort through.

The more I work with the boxes the more I know of what I actually have, or rather where it actually is or could be now. There are a few boxes that I am dreading organizing but I will have to get to them eventually.

Oh I didn't mention the unopened materials I have. There are some blaster boxes, a few of those random pack boxes in various forms by Fairfield and a bunch of packs all over the place. I also have about 1/2 a dozen unopened boxes from the  "Collectible Card Club" I used to get the monthly boxes of 15 packs of cards of both Baseball and Football from them.

I also shipped off 140 football cards to CheckOutMyCards (COMC). Now some people refer to that site as "Com-C". I don't like that name for it and I don't use it I usually say "Check out my cards" or "COMC" (saying each letter like an acronym). My blogging I usually just use COMC and readers will read it the way they like. 

I recently signed up on "BuySportsCards.com" (BSC) as a buyer primarily and then as a seller. I will try my hand at that. I started populating my "store" over there. My seller handle is my usual "captkirk42". So as I am sorting stuff I am putting doubles and very shiny cards aside to go to sale somewhere.

Now part of my Project Hercules effort will be to set up some boxes of the cards I want to sell. Most of these cards I will have to find ways of getting rid of in large batches because trying to sell everything card by card is more than insane and mostly impossible.

A Little Bit of Eye Candy

It has been a long time since I have blogged here a month or so over a year and a half. Feb 2025 was my last post imagine that.  I won't go into details as to why as there are quite a few reasons so lets just ignore my absence and let me do a little dusting of the blog to make things look a little nicer.

While going through some containers of unsorted cards, many of which were still in the envelopes and packages I had gotten them in, I came across these beauties. Literally Beautiful.. Some of the cards from the packages I blogged about years ago when I got them, others I might have had plans to blog about the batch but never got around to it. These are a few that fall under the latter category most likely.

I forget how I acquired these beauts. It might have been from a Sportlots auction or possibly part of a "just because" card gifting from a card forum member. Does it really matter? No not really.

This is a lot of 4 cards from the Bench Warmer series a PG-13 Rated Pin-Up Series of pictures of young women usually clad in bikinis. There have been a few times where I have considered getting rid of any of these type of cards, but then one of the beauties catches my eye and I decide to hold on to them a little while longer. 

2002 Bench Warmer

141 Mercades Minroe

154 Christine Dallaire

2003 Bench Warmer

121 Brooke Long

123 Maureen Hoang

Of these four cards (women) I think I like Mercades the most. Christine looks a little bit like Britney Spears.

2024 Some Sales YAY!

 

This past year for my card sales over at Ebay I only sold one item an Adrien Peterson relic card. In attempts to get things to sell on Ebay a few times I have played with lowering shipping (which I shouldn't do and it bit me on this sale) and lowering the asking price of items. Yeah I did both of those for that card and ended up losing about $1.50. Dems is the breaks over at my Ebay with only 67 items now.

Meanwhile over at COMC (previously "Check Out My Cards") I had a record year in sales. My biggest year in sales over there. My first year 2009 I had 9 sales for $25 ($24.90).  Sold 40 cards in 2024 for a total of $65 ($64.59). My previous biggest year was 10 cards in 2015 for $4.45. Thinking back this surge in sales is mostly in part to adding 364 cards there earlier in the year with them being added to the site in May, which was a month into my medical leave from last year. 

UPDATE: On 31 Dec 2024 two more cards sold for a dollar thirty so my grand total for 2024 is actually $65.89 thirty.

Project Purge: COMC and Other Fun

PROJECT PURGE:

COMC Submission

The Four Major Sports Groups

Updated: 29 FEB 2024

A little background: I've been on COMC (Check Out My Cards) since 2009. Over the years I've sold 67 cards there averaging 4 to 5 cards/year. That first year I sold 9 cards for a total of $24.90, the most I've sold in a year was 10 cards in 2015 for $4.45. Last year I sold 6 cards for a total of $6.55, this year so far I've sold my yearly average of 4 cards for only $1.45 total. One was a flipper card I bought from the site to test flipping (along with another card that I still have listed there). It took a little less than 3 years and I only made about 12 cents or less off of it. 

 I have bought a bunch of cards there as well. Interestingly enough I noticed that when I paid with a credit card vs paying with the site credit, the details of my order including the cards I bought are not included in my purchase/shipping history on the site. 

Now onto the regularly scheduled post content:

I recently shipped 364 cards to COMC to add to the 150 cards I have there for sale already. It is only the second time I've sent stuff there to sell. The estimated processing finish date is in May. This batch of cards covered the four major US sports Baseball, Basketball, Football and Hockey. It included some chrome/refractor type cards a few Hockey relics, maybe an auto card or two. Half of the cards were basketball or at least a third. I used two small card boxes and put them in a larger box that was about the size of a medium USPS flat rate box of old. There were also some Topps Baseball dupes that I had from  the years 1978 to 1980 (50 cards maybe?). Some of the cards I sent were still on my collection page over at TCDB. I tried to delete them from there as I was preparing the lot of cards to send. Soon I will be adding more cards to my trade list over at TCDB. I also plan on semi-regularly submitting cards to COMC, not lots as large as this last one. I don't want to spend a fortune everytime I submit cards. I Just have to keep track of my credit balance over there to cover submission costs.

I checked the population of some CCG cards over at COMC. Specifically from 1995 Cardz Hyborian Gates. Years ago I had bought a large starter deck/box and some packs because I liked the art work. Never played the game, but planned on collecting the card set. I don't play any of those card games. For ages I thought I would save a handful of them that I really liked the art work on and try to sell the rest as a lot via Ebay, in looking at what is already at COMC I noticed there were only 16 of the cards (from 4 sellers). I think that will be the next batch of cards to send to COMC. "Com Cee" as some Youtube vloggers call it. I just call it "checkoutmycards". Com-Cee sounds strange to me, like a communications network company. 

Over at TCDB my trade list there is my collection titled "Traders and/or For Sale".

Check Out My Cards (COMC)        Trading Card DataBase (TCDB)

Project Purge

Project Purge: Football (NFL) Team Lots

PROJECT PURGE:

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Football (NFL) Team Lots

Published: 17 FEB 2024 Updated: 04  MAR 2024

Marx Brothers from "Horse Feathers" football scene from internet.

I am currently in the early stages of a huge collection purge or partial purge at least. I kicked things off on 16 Jan (2024) with a post for some Basketball Team Lots that I had prepared and put into a monster box. I put a post up at TCDB.com and then was going to post the offer up here on my blog near the end of the month, however, the response was so intense I rushed to make an updated blog post. Most of the claims came from the database no surprise there. I was a bit surprised that team sets of mostly 1990s base cards with doubles and multiples would be claimed so fast. A little more than a day and a half after the original posting time and ALL the lots were claimed. A TCDB member claimed the last 5 teams and some of the random type card lots. Needless to say his was the biggest package BOX I had to send out. About the size of a USPS med sized flat rate box.

As I did with the Basketball lots I am only shipping to USA addresses. Sorry international postage is just too expensive and there is no practicle package tracking systems.

 

It is time for some Football. Like the Basketball lots they are mostly base cards and some inserts. For the Basketball I didn't specify the cards were almost exclusively just common base (some of the teams have an insert or two but no "hits"), By saying most of the cards were 1990s (the "Junk Wax") years I was sort of implying the lots were all common base cards. I'm sorry if some people thought there might be more precious gems in the lots.

I had been in a Football team traders group for a long time. To get trade fodder for the group I ripped open some packs and boxes of newer product and often purchased team lots from Ebay. These Football lots may contain some autos or relic cards. No guarantees though as most teams will have neither. The year ranges are also a little larger than the 1989 to 2007 range the Basketball lots had. Some of these team lots go up to 2019 or 2020, with many teams, but not all, including 2014-2017 cards.

Not all teams in the league will be available at this time. I will try to ship things out in a timely manner but with the lessons learned from the Basketball Lots I will not try rushing everything all at once. Some people will have to wait for a little while. I also plan on shipping most lots in the small flat rate boxes. I had tried avoiding those but many of the basketball lot packages ended up costing over $10 to ship (I had only asked $6 for shipping costs) and small flat rate boxes ship for around $10.50 now.

Some team lots will include an auto card or relic card but there is no guarantee of getting either. Most team lots will just contain common base cards with maybe some inserts, but no "hits".

Most cards will be in EX condition, but not all. Spome cards may have creases and maybe some dings or ware on the corners or edges. Not as badly as many vintage cards but they still maybe noticable.

Shipping for team lots will be $11 per lot. You can request more than one team but be advised that shipping might be delayed as I search for a larger box to ship. Teams with fewer cards I might be able to ship for cheaper but that isn't guaranteed, and if requesting multiple teams it will most likely be $11 to ship anyway.

NFL FOOTBALL TEAM LOTS

49ers 79 cards 1990-2016 - CLAIMED

Bears 30 cards 1989-2016

Bengals 168 cards 1990-2019

Bills 81 cards 1991-2016

Broncos 17 cards 1991-2016 

Browns 197 cards 1990-2019

Buccaneers 408 cards 1990-2019 - CLAIMED

Cardinals 394 cards 1990-2019 - CLAIMED

Chargers 48 cards 1990-2019

Chiefs 67 cards 1995-2019

Colts 77 cards 1992-2019

Dolphins 242 cards 1990-2019

Eagles 251 cards 1990-2019 - CLAIMED

Falcons 227 cards 1990-2019

Giants 28 cards 1990-2016

Jaguars 297 cards 1995-2019

Jets 11 cards 1992-2016

Lions 53 cards 1990-2019

Packers 53 cards 1990-2019

Panthers 121 cards 1995-2019

Patriots 72 cards 1988-2019 - CLAIMED

Raiders 228 cards 1992-2019 - CLAIMED

Saints 15 cards 1991-2016

Seahawks 266 cards 1990-2016 - CLAIMED

Steelers 17 cards 1990-2019

Texans 17 cards 2003-2016

Titans 84 cards 2000-2019

Project Purge

Purging Project: Basketball Team Lots ALL LOTS CLAIMED

 

UPDATE: 18Jan2024 4:50 PM

ALL TEAM LOTS have now been CLAIMED.

Thank you to all the TCDB members, and my blog readers who made claims for the lots. I am still waiting on a few addresses and shipping payments. A Big thank you to the TCDB member who grabbed the last 5 teams, the checklists and the remainder of the Classic lots.

In a long needed effort to purge excess stuff from my card collection and related paraphernalia. I have thought of purging things before, but times have gotten more desperate. An apartment inspection woke me up to my cluttered housekeeping of over 15 years. I decluttered lots of things and made a small dent but didn't purge any trading cards. I made the panic mistake of purging a ton of comic books (without going through what I had), magazines and even some computer floppy discs that a few weeks later I realized some of the files on some of the discs might have been important for various aspects of my life and maybe some original writings. But OH Well Stuff is Stuff.

I will soon start prepping some of my Trading Cards for purging. Way back when I used to belong to some team trader groups I had a fantasy of having one monster box filled with trade fodder for each of the four major US sports (Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey) even though I only belonged to team trader groups for Baseball and Football. For the football group I did have a monster box filled with trade fodder for each team in the league. As I would make the monthly trades I would replenish the teams that I was out of or low on. As part of the organization I used those worthless "card savers" as divider tabs. I use a simple file folder label w/ the team nickname written on it in sharpie and put that on the top of the card saver and load that team's cards behind the card saver divider. I now have a Basketball monster box set up and ready for the cards to find a new home. I currently have most of the current teams available. I plan on Purging by team lots.

For interested parties I can send you a nice team lot of NBA cards. All I ask for in return is $6 for first 2 teams. Please add $1 for each additional team after that..  Sorry I'm only sending to USA addresses. For Basketball I have team lots of about 90% of the teams in the league. I even have some draft cards of college guys who were "free agents" and never made the NBA, a handful maybe went pro overseas. Unfortunately for me most of the cards are from the decade of the 1990s. Yes like a ton of other card collectors I have a problem with super overstock of "Junk Wax" cards. Year ranges for team lots are from 1989 to around 2007 with most teams having cards from 1990 to 1996 or 97. Not many 1992 or 93. Some brands and years will only have 1 card, some might have a dozen or more. There are duplicates and in some cases multiples some 3 or more copies. Sorry I don't have time to go back over the lots to cherry pick for specific players, brands or years. Some lots may have a super star and some may not. These lots are excellent for trade fodder if you are in a team trading group. 

I have even been toying with the idea of signing up to sell on Sportlots (been buying from there for years), but I am a bit leery about selling there. Mostly due to the high fees they charge especially if you have low sales. Plus I would have to make sure I had close to a 1,000+ cards ready to roll there to start seeing some results. I would also open my sellers account under a different user name. I'm already "captkirk" as a buyer, hmm but not "captkirk42". If I mess up as a seller there I don't want to be banned from buying there. If I were to have a huge selling day of buyers buying more cards than can fit in a PWE or small bubble mailer I don't have many small boxes or larger mailers on hand right now.. That fear is also what keeps me from adding more listings and larger items onto Ebay.

Current status of my Basketball Monster box, the card counts are approximate and for some of the teams might be off by a few cards as I added some rookies and draft cards of guys where the card doesn't mention the team they were drafted to but the player eventually went pro and I had to do a Google search to see if they ever played pro ball. 

BASKETBALL TEAM LOTS

Note: Since I only have 3 Knicks cards available right now I'll waive shipping costs and send in a PWE.

76ers 1989-2006 116 cards CLAIMED

Bucks 1990-1999 141 cards CLAIMED

Bulls 1989-2004 151 cards CLAIMED

Cavaliers 1990-2000 115 cards CLAIMED

Celtics 1989-1999 160 cards CLAIMED

Clippers 1989-2000 152 cards CLAIMED

Grizzlies 1995-2000 50 cards CLAIMED

Hawks 1990-2000 179 cards CLAIMED

Heat 1989-2007 133 cards CLAIMED

Hornets 1990-2000 106 cards CLAIMED

Jazz 1990-2006 109 cards CLAIMED

Kings 1990-2000 133 cards CLAIMED

Knicks 1991 & 1994 3 cards PWE SPECIAL CLAIMED

Lakers 1990-1999 132 cards CLAIMED

Magic 1990-1999 93 cards CLAIMED

Mavericks 1990-1999 127 cards CLAIMED

Nets 1989-2007 135 cards CLAIMED

Nuggets 1990-1999 165 cards CLAIMED

Pacers 1989-1999 126 cards CLAIMED

Pistons 1990-1998 78 cards CLAIMED

Raptors 1995-2003 51 cards CLAIMED

Rockets 1990-2007 147 cards CLAIMED

Spurs 1990-2007 161 cards CLAIMED

Suns 1989-2007 165 cards CLAIMED

Supersonics 1990-1999 133 cards CLAIMED

Timberwolves 1990-2006 163 cards CLAIMED

Trailblazers 1990-2000 72 cards CLAIMED

Warriors 1990-1999 124 cards CLAIMED

Checklists, Ads and Filler Cards 36 cards CLAIMED

College and Undrafted Players with a few college coaches 31 cards CLAIMED

1991 Classic Basketball Draft Picks 26 cards multiples CLAIMED

1992 Wild Card Basketball 1st Edition Lot of approx 233 cards with multiples not complete set. CLAIMED

1993 Classic Basketball Draft Picks Full Set 110 cards (2 sets) both sets CLAIMED. Plus I have multiples of most cards in the set but no more complete sets.  I could make about 3 or 4 partial sets and still have a few individual cards. CLAIMED

First come first serve. If interested in one of the team lots please email me klandersen at yahoo.

I am updating this post as I get requests for team lots in an effort to have it as current as possible.

Project Purge

Last Update: 31 Jan 2024

A Bit of A Rant And An A&G Comedian With My Name

 Wow I should do Blogiversary posts every other month. My Blogiversary post got over 400 views (414) in the first week. I olny have 116 followers so that is a lot of either new people or people who unofficially follow. Amazing!. Actually some of my numbers are helped a little bit by being on the blog roll at TCDB that tracks whenever I make a new post on my card blogs.

Now onto whatever this post is going to be about.

Lately more pressing things in life have forced my blogging to take a back seat. At times I'm not even sure if I'll get around to doing any blogging from now on out. I used to bust my butt trying to make sure I had a monthly post for all 3 of my blogs. Now I can't even guarantee that for myself let alone even one of the blogs. Life goes on and now maybe sometimes the blog.

Enough about that here is a card I got from a group box break. I wonder if it was a legit random card or if the host remembered that I collect cards of people with my name (and similar names) either way I like this card.

2023 Topps Allen & Ginter - 221 Daniel Van Kirk Comedian

One thing I don't like about this card is the pattern of the shirt Daniel is wearing. I didn't notice it at first, it was only when I looked at the scanned image that I noticed how the shirt design looked like the scan was bad. This time it wasn't the scan image doing crazy things. It is probably time to get a new scanner I forget how many decades I've had my current Epson flatbed scanner. But it continues to work well enough and I hate having to get new electronic and computer equipment. 

COTW: 1936 Carreras Film Stars Fred Astaire

It is time for another "Card of the Whenever" this episode we soft shoe our way back almost 90 years to 1936. We meet the King of dance Mr. Fred Astaire. OK enough of the tacky description that sounds like AI or a travel agent wrote it here is the card I decided to show this post.

1936 Carreras Film Stars 3 (in a series of 50) Fred Astaire

 

Happy Blogiversary To Whatever I Call This Blog With The Long Title

 

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY!

Today marks the 14th Blogiversary of "CaptKirk42's Trading Card Blog"  I am composing, drafting this post a few months early, late April, to make sure I get this posted and don't miss the Blogiversary.

As is my tradition I am timing this post to be published at the same time of day that my very first post on this blog was posted.