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.

Happy Anniversary The Wrapper Magazine

 I was going to make this post my September post, but I decided on the afternoon of the last day of the month (yesterday 30 Sep) to do something else because I wanted to show some cards. This post doesn't show any cards because it talks about a card magazine. So...

October 2023 marks the 45th Anniversary of the non-sport trading card magazine The Wrapper and their current issue #350. The magazine is published quarterly and still has the feel of the late 1970s, early 1980s when it first started. With the exception of the outer covers that usually have 3 colors the magazine is black & white. Very simple format and low budget as it has been self published by the same guy Les Davis.

Each issue starts with a feedback section/news section "Non Sport Talk". Then there are three or four (I haven't actually counted for each issue) nice articles on some non-sport set from the past usually vintage and often sort of rare and sometimes all but forgotten.

Each issue also has a giveaway/contest called "Wrapper Drawing" that I usually forget about a couple of days after skimming through the issue. Some of the prizes I had been interested in, but never got around to entering or sometimes even checking on the entry details.

Most of the content of magazine is ads and sales lists, maybe some of them are want lists of the dealers. There is also a cartoon, comic on the last page that sneaks an advertisement for some monster related thing or the magazine itself. I didn't scan that. The size is usually 70-some pages.

As I said the overall feel of the magazine is the late 1970s low budget homemade newsletter style. It is informative and the writers of the articles for the sets featured are usually quite enjoyable. I forget when I first found the magazine, but I do think some years back I had to look for it again because I had let my original subscription end, forgot about it and thought like many hobby related sources from the 1970s it had ended.

Again HAPPY ANNIVERSARY (Cardiversary, Wrapperversary) to THE WRAPPER Magazine.

1966 Lyons Maid Famous People Cards

I think I got these 5 cards from sportlots in an auction lot, maybe as individual cards because I seem to recall individually picking the Danny Kaye and Gilbert & Sulivan cards maybe even the Walt Disney.  I forget exactly when I got them. Any way this group of cards is from a 1966  set of "Famous People" by Lyons Maid an ice cream maker from England. There are 48 cards in the set I got these 5:

Cards # 19 William Shakespeare, #23 Danny Kaye, #33 Gilbert and Sullivan, #42 Walt Disney and #46 Pablo Picasso.

Card Of The Whenever: The Return?

 Yes you guessed it I started this post on the 30th of the month with absolutely NO idea on what card(s) I was going to blab er BLOG about. This is always fun at the end of the month.

Hey I have a wacky idea. I'll revisit an old feature I just remembered I used to do on this blog... "The Card of the Whenever". Hmm lets see where did I put that logo?

This card is appropriate in many ways a childhood hero on a card from my childhood showing the hero in his childhood. How cool am I now?

The card is from 1972 Topps Baseball "Boyhood Photos Of The Stars" subset, card number 498 Brooks Robinson Baltimore Orioles. I got it for a whopping 25¢ from a Sportlots auction a few months back. I should hunker down on this subset, heck even the full set.

1972 Topps Baseball #498 Boyhood Photos of the Stars Brooks Robinson Baltimore Orioles

The card has offcentering problems most noticeable on the back.

A Canadian Canvas Legend Cutie

 Time for a quickie. This card came from sportlots from a quarter auction. It is an Upper Deck Tim Horton's card. Now I don't normally pursue Tim Horton cards mostly because they are Canadian imports and hard to find here in the US. Anyway here it is.

2023 Upper Deck Tim Horton's Hockey - UD Canvas Legends CL-15 Manon Rheaume Team Canada

TCDB Trade With A Canuck

 Hello and welcome to my standard "I don't know what I'm going to post about" post, until I come up with something that is fairly easy to scan and yack about.

Since I only have about a dozen regular readers and one or two regular commenters , no one but me would notice if I skipped a month in posting. I have made several posts about my self-regulating posting quota of at least one post per month, per blog.

Long story short this post might end up being one of my worst posts with very very minimal views. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm not sure but I might have to sometime soon think about reevaluating my collection and draw a line somewhere about acquiring "new" cards. There are just too many things currently in the industry that take away the fun of collecting. One of the many things is the endless and pointless parallels. It seems every card now needs to have at least a dozen parallels. Now sometimes it is fun to collect the variants and go for the "rainbow" but usually it is just another gimmick to fall for. Cheap in the sense that it is low quality or literally no brainer as in it takes no brain to come up with the idea. However it is expensive in the fact that it adds to the overall cost of the cards and sometimes adds in the materials used to make the cards.

Well that didn't solve a damned thing.

Alright so I had a recent trade with a member over at TCDB from Canada. The trader supposedly originally sent the cards within a day or two of the trade being confirmed, but a week or two later he sent me a message saying the cards had been returned because the stamp fell off, so he resent. I didn't complain because Canada. About a week or two later the cards finally arrive. Sent  of course via PWE with a stamp. There was thin cardboard from a "Coors Light" box nicely painter's taped around a 3 pocket section from a 9 card sheet. I noticed the stamp cancellation was 3 days before arrival, so his sending time honesty wasn't entirely accurate. Again no complaints everything was safe. I sent five Topps 1978 Battlestar Galactica cards, the last of my original dupes from that set for 6 hockey cards (I might already have some of the Caps cards but didn't have them marked in my collection online) and a 1978 Topps Superman: The Movie card I needed for my set (a card I thought I had, maybe I have the sticker with the same photo). My ship out day was a week after the trade confirmation because the trade was confirmed on a Saturday afternoon.

Here are the cards I got.

1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey 41 Ken Hodge Boston Bruins

1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey 402 Ken Baumgartner New York Islanders

1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey 585 Donald Audette Buffalo Sabres

1994-95 Parkhurst Hockey 254 Dale Hunter Washington Capitals

1992-93 Pro Set Platinum Hockey 242 Dimitri Khristich Washington Capitals

1990-91 Upper Deck Hockey 109 Kevin Hatcher Washington Capitals

1978 Topps Superman: The Movie 10 Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen with puzzle back

Three Freebies From The Wrapper

 One of the Trading Card Trade magazines I subscribe to is called "The Wrapper" a low-budget publication that comes out every six weeks or so (7 times a year) and is Non-Sport specific. Often they dive deep into vintage Non-Sport sets as well as the occasional newer set, some super popular and well known and others that are rare and very obscure. I forget how many years I have been subscribed. Anyway when it comes to renewing your subscription along with the notice that your subscription is about to expire they will often send a few freebies to sweeten the deal. Here are three cards I received in my subscription renewal envelope; 1 I am pretty sure I already have, 1 I know I already have and the 3rd is "new" to me:

2004 Inkworks Charmed Connections Promo CC-3

1978 Donruss Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -

58 Preston, the weathervane, sings "Get Back".

1997 Fleer/Skybox Star Trek Original Series 1 - 47 EP16.2 The Menagerie

Why Don't You Show Some Cards Already?

First off Hmm it looks like Trading Card Central (TCC) is down for the count. I first noticed, oh geez I think maybe the weekend of April 8th? That card site has had it's ups and downs many times over the years. In part due to the original owner skipping out years ago. He would occasionally pop up on the site and had some kind of arrangement for website renewals to avoid having the site go down every year, five years, or however long website registrations last. I forget what the time periods are as it has been over 10 or 12 years since I last attempted to maintain my own website. I'm pretty sure that TCC was the first trading card forum that I got involved with. I have always liked the way people there were friendly and most were in the hobby for the hobby not to just flip cards and make money as most people seem to want to do now. Some of my Facebook friends I met through TCC and I still keep loose contact with them even though many of them no longer use TCC and in some cases no longer collect trading cards. TCC has never been super high-tech but it used to be an old stand by. For several years I had used the "blog" area of the website for my trading card transactions and mail days before I started up my blogging and continued to blog there even though I eventually was the only one updating their blog there. I stopped detailing my mail days and trades and trading card stuff some years back about 10+ At one time I had started to copy my blog entries there onto a simple word document but stopped doing that after only having copied the first couple of years worth of stuff. I am not sure how many years worth of posts were left to copy over. I also used to make posts about purchases and favorite cards and whatever in the regular forums. I even had a "my collection" thread at one time. That reminds me I often had to repost images that had been on photobucket but I transferred to some other online photo gallery when photobucket started going corporate and having it's own problems and got greedy requiring paid subscriptions for access to actually do anything with the site. 

UPDATE: 20 April. Hey TCC is Back UP! I looked at the blog section over there. My last TCC blog was in early 2019 and the last blog by anyone was near the end of 2019. When I clicked on the link to add an entry I got a "this page isn't working" error. I probably should try to finish that "transfer" of my blogging from there to my word documents. I probably should have started backing up my archives here at blogspot back when I first signed up to blog here. OH Well.

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: 26 April 2023. BIG SIGH! Site is down again. not sure why... Still down as of time of this post's publishing on 30 April 2023.

In other card news over at COMC I have sold 4 cards this year, 2 in Mar and 2 in Apr. Granted 2 were under a buck one just a little over a buck and one a little over 2.5 bucks. The last few years I have sold 1 maybe 2 cards a year over there if that. Been years upon years since I submitted any cards to sell over there. I currently have 156 cards in my inventory over there.

OK so what cards to show?

This duo of cards I have had in a mixed box that has some cards that have been in my "to be blogged about" pile for years. Anyway, they are two copies of the same card. The difference is one of them missed the foil printing phase.

The Card 1993 Topps Stadium Club Baseball 515 Thomas Howard Cleveland Indians.

First the card as it should be:

Next the card that missed the foil lettering printing. 

It can't be seen in the scan but there is the slight indent of what was to be foil printing on the card.

Here they are side-by-side.

Terry Bradshaw 1974 Topps Slightly Miscut

 In a recent Sportlots auction purchase I got a miscut 1974 Topps Football Terry Bradshaw 470 Pittsburgh Steelers card for $2.25 + shipping. I thought I already had this card but it wasn't in my TCDB collection. It is now.

1974 Topps Football 470 Terry Bradshaw Pittsburgh Steelers miscut