Some Ranting And An Autograph

 Not sure what this post will be about just yet.

As usual when it comes to blogs and blogging I have been doing that barely post one post per month per each of my blogs. Another thing about blogs I have been doing lately well something I haven't been doing lately is reading other people's blogs. Years ago I would easily read 20 to 30 mostly card blogs to keep up with the goings on in the blogiverse, but now days I read very few if any. For about a year or so I have still gone through the daily ritual of seeing what the new posts are, but rarely bothering to read any posts in their entirety. I used to have a laundry list of blogs that I HAD to read each and every time they made a new post, now I don't HAVE to read any blogs anymore. Many days I don't read any blogs. My interest in reading blogs daily has dropped down to almost nothing. Now when I check for new posts I scan the initial preview and only if something interests me either in the title, the thumbnail image or the first couple of sentences showing will I read the post. I usually try reading the special Blogiversary posts or the highlighted special achievements.

That being said the few people following and reading my blog will probably drop from only a handful to next to nothing. Oh well that doesn't bother me - much. 

Anyway the card I decided to show was one that I have had for sometime. I scanned it last month with the batch of cards I ended up blogging about then. I have been planning on waiting to blog about it until I had gotten a similar card, since it is an autograph card I was waiting until I had purchased and received one of the other autographs from the same series and actor and then would post about both cards. But since I had scanned it and I don't know when (or if) I'll get the other card I present it here and now.

2001 Inkworks Andromeda Season 1: A1 Autograph Kevin Sorbo as Captian Dylan Hunt

Autos From Hercules & Xena

 

Here is a nice little batch of some autograph cards from The Hercules & Xena Universe that I have had for sometime. It is four autographs all in Blue Sharpie. Two cards are inserts from the 2005 Rittenhouse "Hercules & Xena: The Animated Movie: The Battle For Mount Olympus" and the other 2 are from the 2001 Rittenhouse "Xena: Warrior Princess" Season 6 autograph list.

The bonus card that is the header for this post is 2001 Rittenhouse Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Promo Card NNO

2005 Rittenhouse Hercules & Xena:

The Animated Movie: The Battle For Mount Olympus

2005 H&X: Battle For Mount Olympus NNO

Hudson Leick as Animated Callisto

2005 H&X: Battle For Mount Olympus NNO

Robert Trebor as Animated Salmoneus (Album Bonus)

2001 Rittenhouse Xena: Warrior Princess:

Season 6 Autograph

2001 Rittenhouse Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 6 Autograph

A7 Hudson Leick as Callisto

2001 Rittenhouse Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 6 Autograph

A17 Meighan Desmond as Discord

Almost Forgot To Mention (Missed it last year UGH)

Well I almost missed something this year that I missed last year. Good thing I didn't miss it in 2019. What am I talking about? I am talking about the Anniversary or BLOGIVERSARY of this here Trading Card Blog. It has now been 12 years since I started this 2nd blog of mine, the first one to be mostly trading card oriented.

So what? What is so special about 12 years? Ye Got Me.

HMM? Maybe I should have waited before showing this Namath Gem? 

(from last post)

All Righty Then.

Golden Flying Hall Of Fame Ram

 OK so the title of this post is a little vague but hints somewhat about the player. This is a case of a very well known player who played 99% of his career on one team and then in his final season played for another team before calling it quits. As a result there are no trading cards from his playing days showing him in the second team uniform. It doesn't help that he only started 4 games his final season.

So Who is this mystery player? It is none other than "Broadway" Joe Namath. Who finished off his NFL career playing for the Los Angeles Rams with a wimper. So "Hollywood" Joe wasn't as successful as "Broadway" Joe.

Here is one of the rare cards that shows "Hollywood" Joe in his Rams uniform. It is from the 2011 Panini Gold Standard Football set. The "Black Gold" variant that is serial numbered to only 10. I wish the picture on the front was in color instead of the black and white. I think Panini did that for all the cards in this set. The whole showing "Legends" in glorious Black and White to make them seem more vintage I guess. I probably should try to get the other variants of this card sometime.

ENJOY.

2011 Panini Gold Standard Football 127 Joe Namath Los Angeles Rams

Black Gold Variant sn# 8/10

WWE Eve Sportlots Quarter Card

 I don't normally collect wrestling cards, WWE or Mixed Martial Arts MMA, MME cards but I do like beautiful women and scantily clad and leather clad lady wrestlers. So there is that I guess. Anyway while checking the 1, 2, 3 auctions at Sportlots I saw this card and bid on it and won it for the quarter starting price. I liked the photo for some reason That is all there is no special reason. I don't follow wrestling. This card is 11 years old and the wrestler on it retired back in 2013 two years after this card was released. OH Well.

2010 Topps WWE RAW 63 Eve

1993 Upper Deck Football Team Checklists Sub-Set

 

As part of my recent Sportlots shopping spree back in May or June whenever it was I concentrated on some sub-sets to complete one of them was this set of team checklists from 1993 Upper Deck Football. The backgrounds suggest they are paintings but I think they are photographs altered to look like paintings. Anyway there are 28 cards in this sub-set as there were 28 teams in the NFL in 1993.

The Team Checklist subset are card numbers 63 to 90 and are in alphabetical order by team nickname

The team checklists have a big star from the team on the front The Redskins card has Earnest Byner on the front and the team checklist is as shown below:

Here are the other 27 team cards fronts only 

Steven Jackson Rookie Gum Card

 For this post I was going to talk about a sub-set of Team Checklists that I had gotten fairly recently from my May Sportlots Spending Spree from their Seller's Stores (no Auctions). I used to have a huge list of cards that I was "watching" for several months and ended up purchasing 100+ cards (120 some or 140 some?) from 15-20 different sellers, averaging at roughly the 18¢ starting price. I ended up completing a few little sub-sets or making a dent in some others, plus I got a few cards for my Strive for '65 Set Build. I have enough to make a few posts on this blog and on my Curly W Cards blog. I have tons of other cards in my collection/hoard so don't worry about me not having any post content. It is more a matter of wanting to post about it and how easy it will be to do the scanning, or when I can do the scanning in relation to how close the end of the month is. Anyway I didn't feel like scanning the 20 some almost 30 cards for the post I was planning. Fortunately for my usual cutting it close to the deadline for the month I had this card available to yack about.

So here is the card I decided to talk about a 2004 Bazooka Football Rookie Card for Steven Jackson. Well one of the 100zillion Rookie Cards of his. Now days a single player has more dang RCs from just one of the dozens of sets from just one of the dozens of brands ironically made by only a handful of manufacturers than most players had total cards for their lifetime of cards back just a few decades ago.

Enough of the Yakety Yak here is the young super running back.

2004 Bazooka Football: 215 Steven Jackson RC St. Louis Rams

Strive For '65 Saturday: From Mom & Pop At Ebay

STRIVE FOR '65 STATUS:

29 May 2021 Strive for '65 | 1965 Set Build | Master Want List Current card count: 300/598 (302/600) 50.2%

Here is the link to my last update from March of 2019. WOW. Somewhere I have a card I got between then and this batch, but I didn't record it here. I'm pretty sure it was in one of my COMC orders. That single card itself didn't get me past the half-way point, and it isn't in the official tally yet. However these six cards from Mom & Pop Cards on Ebay did put my percentage collected over the half-way mark. Yes that is the name of their Ebay store "Mom & Pop Card Shop". Some of their prices are a bit steep but man do they have a great selection of stuff. I also got some football cards from them, but I will only discuss the 1965 Topps Baseball I got from them in this post of course. The prices ranged from $3 to $6 and averaged at $3.83 per card. Not bad and the shipping was FREE.

Friday 23 Apr 2021:

Got a small Priority Mail box filled with some goodies including these 6 cards for my Strive For '65 Set build. As I mentioned above.

Here are the cards:

117 Wes Stock Athletics

126 Los Angeles Dodgers Team Card

271 Don Wert Tigers

299 Jerry Zimmermann Twins

352 Jerry Lumpe Tigers

378 Chuck Estrada Orioles

To the best of my knowledge Chuck Estrada is not related to actor Erik Estrada in any way. When I first saw the back of the card I thought there was some paper loss on the comic image, but it was part of the flames coming off of the fast ball.

The Latest Additions:
Friday 23 Apr 2021:

117 Wes Stock Athletics

126 Los Angeles Dodgers Team Card

271 Don Wert Tigers

299 Jerry Zimmerman Twins

352 Jerry Lumpe Tigers

378 Chuck Estrada Orioles

Since getting this lot I have gotten a few other cards for this build through a Sportlots stores splurge. They will be in my next update sometime soon. Not all those next batch of cards are in yet.

Buccaneer Brothers O' 1954

 Here is a vintage card that has had a rough life upon the high seas of cardboard collecting. Before I show it here is a brief bit of it's story. I got it at auction from Sportlots for $1.75 plus $2.80 shipping. If the overall poor to good condition wasn't bad enough there was one annoyance that I managed to take care of. It took some patience lots of determination and accepting that there would be a little more damage in the end, but I think I kept the additional damage to a minimum. 

I should have taken a "before" scan to show what it was but I didn't. There is still a bit of debris marks in the final scan that shows where it was. For some reason a previous owner of the card, could have been the seller, or an owner before them, had attached some black Velcro, photo album sticker attachment or fuzzy padded non-skid "foot" felt-like thing to the back of the card covering the card number. It was about 1/2" by 3/4" rectangular with rounded corners. Using a hair dryer and tweezers, lots of patience and a whole heck of a lot of determination I managed to get the thing off the card. It wasn't easy and took many short hair dryer sessions and a little minor non-scar finger burning. I also tried using the microwave with short 10 seconds or less sessions but that didn't seem to do anything. With older cards such as this one since there is no foil, or plastic coating that "nuking" the card won't melt or burn or short out your microwave. The idea to get the glue or "gum" hot enough to loosen via a microwave isn't too crazy, but it takes a lot of heat. You need to make sure the card won't get burned or materials in it melt or explode. I was dealing with some paper loss to begin with and trying to pull that sucker off w/out heating the "glue" would have created much more paper loss. Like I said lots and lots of determination and patience. 

It was uglier than "Butt-Ugly" and really annoyed me because there had been no mention that any sort of "sticker" was attached to the back of the card in the auction description. As with a majority of  Sportlots listings there we no real mention of the condition of the back. I often just have to take it on faith, that there is little to no paper loss on low conditioned cards. There was no photo of the back either, yes I know that probably should have kept me from bidding on it, but I didn't have a copy of this card and I wanted it because it was a two player card and those can be hard to find sometimes.

1954 Topps Baseball 139 Ed & John O'Brian Pittsburgh Pirates

Those black marks on the back just under and partly over the card number on the left is where that "pad" sticker was. Some of the paper there just under the card number and where the baseball "stitching" is is the location of some just hanging on there paper. I could have lost a good portion of the card number and the "Home" and "Born" info if I had tried removing the thing just buy pulling straight off with no attempt at melting the adhesive from the sticker pad.

NCIS Rittenhouse Promo Cards

OK this is another very last minute day of the month type posts. I scanned the images of the cards in this post last night 30 March 2021 and  then did the drafting, writing of this post later today Wednesday 31 March 2021. An odd note: when I first started scanning the 4 promo cards (Oops Spoiler of what the post is about. LOL) for some reason my scanner was set for "automatic" scanning and I saw the rarely seen (by me) automatic scanning screens. I first was alerted when I saw the scanner's beginning prep screen was different than normal and was saying it was scanning image 1/3. UGH. It also had a note saying the scanner was in automatic mode and if you wanted to operate in manual mode hit "cancel". I probably should have kept the first scan image to show but I didn't. The scanner made 3 scans of the 4 cards laid out on my scanner's glass bed 2x2. The first image was of 2 cards one from the top row and one the bottom row since the cards were not properly squared on the bed they were at an odd angle and the scan only had partial images of the two skewed  cards. The other two scans were just of one card each and were well cropped and sized images of those cards that I could have used if I wished. Anyway I then started the scanner up again and switched to manual mode which I am used to and where I can make adjustments to how the scanner is scanning the images.

As you may have guessed from the title of this post and the top image this post is about the promo cards from the television show NCIS. The cards are from 2012 made by Rittenhouse. I do not have the set nor any of the star's autograph cards. I do have the Gibbs and Abby box topper cards that I blogged about ages upon ages ago. I don't have any other inserts other than these promo cards that I will now show. The second promo card P2 was from the trade magazine Non-Sport Update which I got from my copy of the magazine and was at one time the only promo card I had from this series. I then hit Ebay to acquire the other 3 cards and a dupe. Since I have the dupe I either got a full 4 card promo set or I got a couple of lots of one or two cards to get all 4. On a side note I do have the JAG set, a promo card from that set, and some auto cards from that set. I plan on someday blogging about those, but trying to decide how much of the set to scan and show.

Anyway lets see these cards: I have also noted how the promos were distributed according to Cardboard Connection. 

2012 Rittenhouse NCIS Premiere Edition Promo Cards

P1: General Distribution

P2: Non-Sport Update Magazine

P3: Binder Exclusive

P4: Philly NonSport Show Spring 2012

That is it for now guys and gals.