Mascot Monday: Slapshot

SLAPSHOT

Washington Capitals 1995 - Present

This Monday's Mascot is the Proud American Eagle Slapshot official mascot of the NHL
Hockey Team Washington Capitals. Slapshot was born on 20 June 1782, and made his mascot debut for the Caps 11 November 1995. Before being a sports mascot he was the model and original star for the Great Seal of the United States.

The card I am showing was one I recently got from David a reader of my blog, I'm not sure if he has his own blog or website but he is a fellow collector of Mascot stuff. He emailed me asking if I wanted some Mascot stuff for FREE (with nothing needed in return) he was thinning out his fat Mascots binder of duplicates and offered to send them. I accepted and got a great stack of Mascot stuff, mostly cards, postcards and larger pictures and flyers with a few team schedules. Some of the things were team issued exclusive fan club stuff others like this card were more generic and more widely distributed. Another Cool Random Act of Cardness from a collector in the blogiverse.

Here is this week's Mascot Card:

 2010 Upper Deck Dasani SS-1 Slapshot Washington Capitals

(Front and Back)

 

I am always on the lookout for Mascot cards. I also accept Mascot Postcards and team issued promo cards/photos of mascots.

To see previous Mascot Monday posts click here.  

Washington Wednesday: Wistia Win Two

Second Listia Auction Win

Recently, about a week ago, I won my second auction at Listia. This one "cost" a bit more from the credits standpoint 100 as opposed just 1 from the last one, but from the shipping $ standpoint was FREE.

I wasn't sure if I already had it or not so I went ahead and got it. You see for many years during the 1980s and early 1990s I would get at least the Topps flagship base team set of the Redskins from my LCS for whatever the going rate was. Of course since they are in Silver Spring, MD (The MD City north of the border to DC) they tend to use the "Hometown Inflation" scale for Skins cards that Blogger Dime Box Nick talked about a week or so ago. OK so sometimes I would pay $5 - $10 for about a dozen hand sorted cards instead of maybe $2 but at the time there was no internet to shop for deals on my Homie Team. Anyway I don't think I ever got all the skins from 1980, maybe I did maybe not I'm not sure as my Football card collection is atrocious it is more disorganized than my Baseball is currently and I am actually improving the Baseball organization some (in part thanks to four MONSTER Boxes I had gotten from my LCS one of the last times I had gone there very early this year. My big goal is to go back to mostly binders, but My unorganized hoard collection is a discussion for some other time some other place)

So here it is my second Listia Auction Win:

 1980 Topps Football 475 Joe Theismann Redskins

(Front and Back)

Then from Ebay more recently (like today Tuesday 18 DEC 2012) I got another of my Homie QBs my main HQB Sonny J. (Other than current QBs RGIII and Kirk Cousins (My "Kirk Cousin"*)) It was $1.78 + FREE Shipping This card is from this year, I prefer Sonny J. cards from his playing years but I love the Classic Skins Arrow Helmet from the '60s. This one is from the 2012 Topps Football: Quarterback Immortals 19 card subset.

 2012 Topps Football: Quarterback Immortals

QI-SJ Sonny Jurgensen Redskins

(Front and Back)

*NO I am not related to Mr. Cousins I just share the same first name so we are cousins in the first name sense.

Blog Box Break Deadline approaching.

Just another reminder that I am hosting a Group Box Break for my blog the DEADLINE to Sign-UP is This Saturday 22 December. Here is what I will be opening for the break:

• 2007 Bowman
• 2007 Topps Heritage
• 2007 Topps Turkey Red
• 2007 Upper Deck Artifacts
• 2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces

To Sign-up and get details check out my Box Break Number 1 Post. Plenty of teams available need at least 8 more folks to "Fill" it. Boxes are IN HAND and ready to be opened. Need 3 more people to insure it will happen as a true Group Box Break and not just a team fire sale.

Blog Group Box Break 1 Plug

A little plug here for my FIRST BLOG Group Box Break. For details and to sign up see my Original Box Break Number 1: Baseball 2007 Post. $20 gets you 1 Chosen team and 1 possibly 2 random teams (dependent on number of people in break). I'd love to see this thing fill up to 10-15 people including myself. The bare minimum I need to get this thing going is 5 (I'll be taking a loss with less than 10 but I don't really care about that now).

Sign-up is OPEN until Saturday 22 December.

Products to be busted:

• 2007 Bowman
• 2007 Topps Heritage
• 2007 Topps Turkey Red
• 2007 Upper Deck Artifacts
• 2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces

Most of the great teams are still available. These would be guys from the 2006 Season so teams like the AL Champs Tigers, and playoff teams Mets, Athletics, Padres, Dodgers, Twins and Yankees are still open.

Blog Group Box Break Interested?

Well I didn't do a Mascot Monday today. I was lazy over this past weekend and I didn't have any made up in my posting queue. So onto something else for today.

Blog Group Box Break # 1

Lets see if anyone is interested now, I tried this 2 weeks ago with no sign-ups and then had a plug last week to try to drum up business. I was planing on hosting a Group Box Break for my blog. For details see this link. So far no takers. I think this is suffering from too much competition, too small a following, bad timing (Year End Holidays) and not enough publicity . I'm going to try one more time before switching to an alternate plan.

The Original plan is to have a Group Box Break with the following 2007 Baseball products which I have in hand right now and am itching to get open:

• 2007 Bowman
• 2007 Topps Heritage
• 2007 Topps Turkey Red
• 2007 Upper Deck Artifacts
• 2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces
  

Can I get a minimum of 9 people? (plus myself is 10)
$20 gets you one team. If 9 people or less sign up everyone gets 2 random teams. If 10-14 people just 1 random team.

Sign up will be open from now until Saturday December 22.

Sorry Nats and Os fans I've taken the Blog Host's Prerogative by claiming those two teams. The Nats are non-negotiable but if it helps get interest I might release the Os.

Blogging and picture storage and backup

I've been thinking about this for a while. I want some opinions on what fellow card bloggers do. After one has scanned a card and blogged about it, or posted it to some online photo storage/sharing site do you delete the scan from your hard-drive to help free up space? Do you keep a copy of it? Do you copy it to a flash-drive, data disc (floppy for those with older systems), CD-ROM or DVD?

I've been keeping most of the stuff still on my hard-drive partly due to laziness and partly to have a back-up in case something happens online, or I have a brainfart and forget the image is already on the blog somewhere or online somewhere else. But lately I've been thinking of deleting most of what is on my hard-drive and if I have to re-scan something if I need it again.

So what do you all do?

1993 Upper Deck Fun Pack Mascot Madness Subset

In 1993 (and again in 1994) Upper Deck released an odd brightly colored baseball set they called "Baseball Fun Pack" they look like someone was on spring break in the late 1980s. One of the insert sets they randomly placed in the packs are this set called "Mascot Madness". The set consists of five cards of those fun loving foam heads the mascots. The "players" of this set are: Phillie Phanatic - Phillies, Pirate Parrot - Pirates, Fredbird - Cardinals, BJ Birdy - Blue Jays (who I featured in a "Mascot Mondays" Post) and Youppi - Expos. The backs of these cards give a brief bio of the mascot and the front has a full color picture next to a holographic picture of the mascot in front of a "field of stars" I guess to give a far out spacy feel to the set. Like many 1980s - 1990s holographic cards the hologram isn't that much of a big deal now. Back then it was but now-days it is eh. So here is the full set enjoy.

 1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

1 Phillie Phanatic - Phillies

(Front and Back)

  1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

2 Pirate Parrot - Pirates

(Front and Back)

  1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

3 Fredbird - Cardinals

(Front and Back)

  1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

4 BJ Birdy - Blue Jays

(Front and Back)

  1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

5 Youppi - Expos

(Front and Back)

I am always on the lookout for Mascot cards. I also accept Mascot Postcards and team issued promo cards/photos of mascots.

My First Listia Win

I got my first Listia.com auction win about a week ago. It was only 1 credit but I had to pay $2.99 for shipping. I wasn't sure if I already had this card or not as my Football card collection is an absolute mess, at least my Baseball card collection is a little more organized.

I heard about listia from some card bloggers probably first from Christopher of Nachos Grande blog fame when he mentioned some real good free haul he had gotten from there. It took me a couple of visits and browsing to decide if I want to try it or not and to understand it. I'm getting the hang of it, I wish some of the categories had more sub-categories and that the search function was a little better. If it can't find what you are looking for it indicates that "0 items found" of whatever you were looking for, but still shows a bunch of things that are unrelated to what you were looking for making it look like it made a sucessful search.

Anyway the card that represents my first win/purchase with Listia is:

2000 Topps Football

321 Season Highlights Kurt Warner Rams

2000 Topps Football 321 Season Highlights Kurt Warner Rams

(Front and Back)

Washington Wednesday Won

Starting with this post I've decided to have a specific name for when I post about my Homie Washington teams only, and try to limit it to Wednesdays. I was going to limit it just to when I did Redskins stuff I thought of calling it "Wednesday Wedskins" or "Wedskins Wednesday" but thought that was too much of a punt. Then I thought "What if I mention Capitals cards or one of the other Washington teams?" I already have a Nationals specific blog Curly W Cards so I will rarely mention them here. Then the title "Washington Wednesday" hit me. I like it, I'll use it until I tire of it. Not sure if I'll make it as weekly as my Mascot Mondays but we will see. So for the first installment I will show this six pack of 62 Skins. They were a few years before my time so I don't know much about them. I suppose I could look them up but for this blog I just like to show the cards not talk about all the stats.

 1962 Topps Football 165 Dick James Redskins

(Front and Back)

 1962 Topps Football 167 Sam Horner Redskins

(Front and Back)

 1962 Topps Football 168 Bill Barnes Redskins

(Front and Back)

 1962 Topps Football 169 Bill Anderson Redskins

(Front and Back)

 1962 Topps Football 170 Fred Dugan Redskins

(Front and Back)

 1962 Topps Football 172 Bob Toneff Redskins

(Front and Back)

Redskins Mentioned in this Post:
Bill Anderson
Bill Barnes
Fred Dugan
Sam Horner
Dick James
Bob Toneff

Box Break 1: Any Takers?

Its been one week since I announced this box break and so far no sign-ups, of course I didn't plug it too much either. For the details see my original "Official" Blog Group Box Break 1: 2007 Baseball post. If this break actually happens I will update that post as people sign up for it.

I think the reasons I haven't had any sign-ups are:

• Too close to Winter Holiday Shopping
• Not enough blog followers so no extra publicity
• No interest in 2007 Baseball products
• Team not available? Only for my fellow Nationals and Orioles collectors
• Don't trust a rookie group break host? 
• Already involved with another group break

I could probably wait till sometime later to do this break, but I don't want to do that I've had these boxes sitting since around July/August. I was fortunate when I got them from CharmCityCards that I was actually home when UPS had shipped them, even though I had asked when I ordered for it to be shipped USPS. But the order had gotten snagged on a few things. Part of it was my being limited to having to pay via check as I don't have credit cards anymore (another story another time maybe). If I hadn't had contacted them I probably would have never gotten the dang order, but that is another story that is past its time and I won't tell it. Plus I can't remember all the details of it so there.

If I get only 9 people to sign-up then each person in the break will get 2 random teams in addition to their picked team. 14 sign ups will give everyone 1 random team. Due to my current member base I don't foresee any more than 14 people signing up, but that would be great if more do. More than 14 people means no random teams assigned any unclaimed teams will have there hits and inserts randomized.

I'll see if this fills up in the next couple of weeks. If it doesn't I'll have to go to plan B.

Mascot Monday: D. Baxter Bobcat

D. Baxter The Bobcat 

 Arizona Diamondbacks 2000 - Present

This Monday we feature the mascot of the Arizona Diamondbacks D. Baxter The Bobcat. Baxter became the mascot on 23 June, 2000. The explanation of his name is a bit corny but it is a fun story. Besides having a bobcat as a mascot is more fun than having a snake as a mascot. There is a minor league team that has a mascot named "fangs" which is a typical mascot with a funny head his funny head happens to be a snake head. Anyway the story goes something like this. Baxter got his name from Brantley Bell the son of original D-Backs player Jay Bell who played on the Diamondbacks from their inaugural season 1998 to 2002. The team's nickname is the "D-Backs" (D. Baxter) and before the team's stadium was called "Chase Field" it was "Bank One Ballpark" nicknamed "Bob" (Bob as in Bobcat). OK a ballpark nicknamed Bob lets just show Baxter's card.

 2010 Topps Opening Day Baseball Mascots M1 Baxter The Bobcat Diamondbacks

(Front and Back)

I am always on the lookout for Mascot cards. I also accept Mascot Postcards and team issued promo cards/photos of mascots.

To see previous Mascot Monday posts click here. 

Box Break Number 1: Baseball 2007

 BLOG GROUP BOX BREAK NUMBER 1:

2007 BASEBALL

Welcome to my first BASEBALL Group Box Break of this blog, heck its the first break I've ever hosted. I've participated in plenty of group breaks for all 4 of the major sports (Football, Baseball, Hockey and yes even a break or two of Basketball). First please read my Group Breaks Rules if you wish to participate. They are more guidelines than "rules". I have tried to make things as fair as possible for all involved. Since this is my first hosting attempt I do not expect things to go completely smoothly without any hiccups. I will do my best to solve any problems that arise along the way.

For this break I have decided to do ALL 2007 Products They are: Bowman, Topps Heritage, Topps Turkey Red, Upper Deck Artifacts and Upper Deck Masterpieces. See my post Notice: Blog Group Box Break Coming post for brief details of the products and a link to my preview video where I show the boxes.

All these products I got from Charm City Cards.

I found out about from ads on sportlots.com.

Boxes are already in hand so once the break fills (or gets as filled as possible) and all payments are in the box ripping will start shortly there after.

Each slot for this break is $20 $15 and you will get 1 chosen team. You may chose from any of the available teams. You may purchase more than one team if you wish. For this break I am using my "Host's Prerogative" by taking the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles that leaves 28 slots/teams available. If this break is slow in filling I might offer up a discount for additional teams to fill things up. Hits and inserts from any unclaimed teams for the break will be randomized.

This box break will take place over several evenings due to the number of boxes, my schedule and posting the results (for those who can't view the video or if the video has technical problems). Most likely only one box will be opened per night. All cards from the break will be shipped out the Saturday following the conclusion of the break.

If the break fills before the Winter "end of year" Holidays then that would be great. If not this might end up as a New Years break. It all depends on the interest and the speed at which it fills, and also how much it conflicts with Holiday spending.

To Sign Up:
Post a comment with your team(s) then email me (klandersen at Yahoo) with your real name, mailing address and method of payment you will be using. Paypal is preferred but I will also accept checks, money orders and cash. If paying by check, money order or cash please give me an estimated payment arrival date. Please make checks and money orders out to Kirk Andersen.

Cost: $15 $20 = 1 team

Payment Due: Payments via Paypal  (to klandersen@aol.com) are expected within 48 hours of break filling up. All other forms of payment should be paid within 7 days of break filling.

Boxes:
2007 Bowman
2007 Topps Heritage
2007 Topps Turkey Red
2007 Upper Deck Artifacts
2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces

Teams - Members:
Arizona Diamondbacks
Atlanta Braves
Baltimore Orioles - CaptKirk42
Boston Red Sox
Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox
Cincinnati Reds
Cleveland Indians
Colorado Rockies
Detroit Tigers
Houston Astros - The Dimwit
Kansas City Royals
Los Angeles Angels - Anthony Hughes
Los Angeles Dodgers - Wilson
Miami Marlins
Milwaukee Brewers - cynicalbuddha
Minnesota Twins
New York Mets
New York Yankees
Oakland Athletics
Philadelphia Phillies - Fred Kerner
Pittsburgh Pirates
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
Seattle Mariners
St. Louis Cardinals - Wilson
Tampa Bay Rays
Texas Rangers
Toronto Blue Jays - Buckstorecards
Washington Nationals - CaptKirk42

If you have any questions I haven't covered please contact me via email (klandersen@yahoo.com).

Mascot Monday: Billy The Marlin

BILLY THE MARLIN

Florida/Miami Marlins 1993 - Present

Originally portrayed by John Routh

Billy The Marlin made his MLB debut on 25 February 1993. For details of his history see his Wikipedia page. I have chosen his 2007 Topps Opening Day card to highlight. This particular set was the first time I know about Topps showcasing most of the current MLB Mascots. For many of the loveable foam headed creatures it is their Rookie Card outside of any team issued sets the mascots may have been a part of. The Mascot cards were part of the regular set near the end of the set but not grouped all together. In fact I think a few cards that were originally listed were never made and replaced by a player. In later years Topps would include the Mascots in the Opening Day set as a sub-set if they included the mascots at all.

Billy Marlin's card was the second Mascot card I got from this set, my Homie Mascot Screech (Nationals) was my first card. It took me a while to get the rest of the Mascots from 2007 because they are spread out so toward the end of the set, not grouped together.

 2007 Topps Opening Day Baseball 197 Billy The Marlin - Mascot Marlins

(Front and Back)

I am always on the lookout for Mascot cards. I also accept Mascot Postcards and team issued promo cards/photos of mascots.

To see previous Mascot Monday posts click here.