Sending Out?

Right now I have lots of cards on the table (figuratively and literally), doing all sorts of things, including thinking of putting together some card care packages for a few folks in the blogiverse. I've got to double check some addresses and recheck some blogs, or contests, or past trade agreements to make sure I'm sending some of the type of stuff folks like. If they don't like the stuff well then it isn't my problem anymore then is it? I'm not making any promises to anyone right now, this isn't a card forum where those rules are strict. That is one of the things I need to stop doing, trades on forums. I'm still involved in a few group breaks on a few of them which does pose a little bit of a problem there. Lately group breaks are the only way for me to get some of the very new stuff for my teams, especially the high-end stuff. Plus I'm a bit addicted to watching some (not all) of the breaks on video.

Anyway I really should get rid of more stuff than the little I'm planning on sending out. Some of it I need to see what it is before I know what to do with it. My football stuff is really a gridiron monster that I try not to feed too often. I really want to get rid of a bunch of team lots of almost all the sports. I am starting with the Basketball I am currently going through. So hey if you don't mind random cards from random years, brands, players etc... some in great shape some in, well not so great shape. You might want to send me an email to my Yahoo addy klandersen and tell me which sport/teams you are really into. If you send me your mailing address you might get something in the next few weeks, or in the fall, or maybe never. You can also check my small  Trade Stuff page to see if there is anything you like there. Who knows?


OK so now here is where I post something totally random just to finish this post off and make everybody wonder what I am really up to.

I was going to post only this, but when I saw the picture that follows still in my pics folder on my hard-drive I thought why not? So you get a bonus pic, lucky you.

Sports Card Album Website

I recently discovered a collection tracking, maintaining website (via one of the card forums I frequent TCZ) called appropriately enough Sports Card Album. Actually now that I'm using it and when I saw the logo, I seem to recall a few months back seeing announcements of its coming and being in beta status. It has officially launched now, I joined up a few days after the big start-up apparently.

It's main purpose to be a way to add your cards simply and quickly online via your mobile device so it has a vertical scrolling format, which can sometimes be a bit bothersome on PC. Since it has barely been a day since I've signed up and started working with it I am still getting familiar with most of the functions. The search or limited ability to search is a little irksome, that and it appears that you can't really organized your cards the way you want to. They appear to be only in the order that you entered them, newest on top.

If you follow friends or other members on the site the default searching just shows their collections and yours, not any others. You have to go back to "all cards" to see other peoples stuff. Searching seems to be limited to player, I haven't really tried any other ways of searching.

They do have some links to some of the social media things like Twitter (they seem to be big on that, I'm not real big on Twitter), Facebook, You-Tube and Ebay but they don't have a link to Zistle yet.

A Collection Acquisition

Recently I acquired a collection of cards from some friends. The cards were the collection of their son, who is about 20 years younger than I am (somewhere between 18-22 years younger. He is late 20s). I understand that it might be just some of the collection, but it seems like they found most or all of the collection. If there were, there wouldn't be much more. I feel a little bad about it because the son doesn't know his old card collection is now gone from their basement unless they have since told him about it. He moved out from their home a few years back didn't take it then and is now married. I think the wife wouldn't allow the collection in their home if she even knew about it. She is a strange one.

As expected the collection is mostly early 1990s mixed card companies/sets. The height of the "Junk Wax" years. It is pretty much from 1992 to 1995 maybe a 1996 card or two. The bulk of the collection is in a card sorting/storage box that has two rows of five sections for cards (like this one, or rather exactly this one), the bottom of the box has finger holes at each section so you can push the cards from underneath to take the stack out of the box.

There were also three binders/albums. One was baseball cards sorted by team mostly (if not all) just 1993 Topps, the order seems random maybe it is by favorite team at the time, or standings order. Another binder is football then baseball cards sorted by player, apparently in some sort of favorites order. The last binder is Mostly football sorted by team, again maybe in favorite team order, and then a page or two of multi-sport.

In the box it is mostly cards I don't collect much of - Basketball. Then there is some football and baseball plus about a dozen Sports Illustrated For Kids multi-sport cards, which of curse come from the magazine (some were separated well, others, not so well). There are some non-sport cards which include: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Marvel Comics/X-Men, Pacific Desert Shield (looks like he had gotten a couple of packs and those packs were exact duplicates), and some cards I NEVER EVER NEVER in a Zillion years wanted to ever own New Kids On The Block (only about 5 so maybe he just got a pack to see what they were like). Gee maybe I should chase that set? /sarcasm.

Water damaged cards and TMNT stickers/puzzles (sticker removed)

Some of the Ninja Turtle cards were the puzzle backs from the stickers with the stickers removed. Unfortunately there were also a few water damaged cards in the bunch. The dad admitted he one time spilled water on the box or the box was exposed to a washing machine flood or some such accident involving liquid. More likely he spilled some beer. Some of them will be OK for filler cards. There were some I tried to save that were stuck together but of course when separated they ripped and tore, so I might just recycle those few. OH why couldn't it have been the NKOTB cards?

I've only done some minor sorting by sport and a basic overview and orienting them the same way. Some of them I will add to my PC, others I might try to sell or trade, maybe give away. The Non-sport cards are still mixed up, not separated. I am in the process of sorting the Basketball eventually into team lots. Right now I have them somewhat sorted by card maker then year. I will put what I have up for trade on my Trade Stuff page.

I am surprised by the basketball ones I plan on keeping, because other than the Bullets, I will be keeping some Team Logo cards from 1994/95 Hoops. That year they made team cards for all the teams with the Team Logo on the front in front of a colorful background with a team related trivia question on back, they also made an NBA Logo card that had the answers to the trivia questions on its back.

These are the Team Logo Cards I need from 1994/95 Hoops Basketball:

395 Cleveland Cavaliers
403 LA Lakers
404 Miami Heat
405 Milwaukee Bucks
407 New Jersey Nets
414 San Antonio Spurs
417 Washington Bullets

Man it is fun going through this stuff. I don't mind going through medium sized collections like this and would like to get more of this type of thing from time to time, preferably ones that are older and mostly baseball with little or no basketball. Maybe some older non-sport collections that have NO NKOTB, or Magic The Gathering/Pokemon type games.

Dualing Hall Of Famers

This is one of these just because posts. I really need to start doing this sort of post more often especially on my other blog Curly W Cards since that one I have made fewer posts on than on here.

In 2008 Upper Deck made a very cool set of cards Baseball Heroes. It is a nice set and I like it but there are a zillion and one parallel cards. What else is new in card collecting pains?

Anyway here is a card from that set of one of my fave all-time players Cal Ripken Jr. Orioles with his Hall of Fame Classmate Tony Gwynn Padres. Both players are now oddities in the sports world for playing solely on one team their entire careers. I think I have a few duplicates of this card. I forget if I have any of the different color parallels to it.

 2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes 180 Call Ripken Jr. Orioles and Tony Gwynn Padres

(Front And Back)

Deacon Jones Passes On

DEACON JONES 1938-2013

As we grow older the icons of our youth die off. One of the icons of my childhood passed away on Monday 03 June 2013. Deacon Jones who played in the NFL from 1961 - 1974 Mostly for the Los Angeles Rams, he also spent a while with the San Diego Chargers and finished his football career with the Washington Redskins has joined fellow Fearsome Foursome teammates Merlin Olsen and Lamar Lundy on the immortal gridiron in the great beyond. I'm not good at writing these type of things so I'll just show some cards and pics.

 1970 Topps Super Football 7 Deacon Jones Rams

(Front and Back)

2007 Donruss Classics Football Classic Single 71 Deacon Jones Rams

#d/1000

RAC2: The Finale

HEY I woke up on this! Sorry I had this on hold for so long. In case you might have forgotten I was going to giveaway some cards. Lets see where is that list of entrants? Ah! Here it is.

RAC2 Entries in no special order:

1. gcrl
2. spiege183
3. Mike M
4. Nick
5. irondequoit36
6. The Dimwit
7. Richard Nebe Jr.
8. Chunter
9. Commishbob

Now we plug the names into the old random.org machine and grind them up real good.

Randomized once:

There were 9 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. gcrl
2. Chunter
3. spiege183
4. Mike M
5. Commishbob
6. Richard Nebe Jr.
7. Nick
8. irondequoit36
9. The Dimwit

Timestamp: 2013-05-30 16:54:05 UTC

Twice:
There were 9 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. irondequoit36
2. Nick
3. Chunter
4. Richard Nebe Jr.
5. Commishbob
6. Mike M
7. gcrl
8. The Dimwit
9. spiege183

Timestamp: 2013-05-30 16:55:46 UTC
You have randomized this list 2 times.

And Thrice:
There were 9 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. Commishbob
2. Chunter
3. Nick
4. The Dimwit
5. spiege183
6. gcrl
7. Richard Nebe Jr.
8. irondequoit36
9. Mike M

Timestamp: 2013-05-30 16:57:34 UTC
You have randomized this list 3 times.

The WINNER of the brand new car (OOPS sorry no car) is COMMISHBOB!
Congratulations Bob. Please contact me soon with your mailing address and a list of wants, stuff you collect  and I'll start looking for some stuff to send you. No guarantees of how many cards/memorabilia will be included or how big or small the package will be. I know you are a vintage guy so I'll see what creased old water damaged stuff I can send you. Just kidding about the water damage, I'll try to find some decent conditioned stuff to send. OH and don't forget I will be including this:

So be sure to have an envelope nearby to shove it into to Pay It Forward to someone.

Thank you to all who entered this contest and thank you for your patience in my lamebrain  delay.

Puzzling Wacky Packages Ape For Grapes

If I post this on a Wednesday, which looks very likely*, I should call it Wacky Wednesday. The subject of course is the parody stickers that Topps originally produced in the early 1970s that they called Wacky Packages. The WPs are off-the wall sometimes very very off-the wall and often leaning toward gross-out parodies of actual products. Topps was not opposed to parodying themselves which they did with this rare semi-hard to find Sticker:

1974 Topps Wacky Packages: Series 11: Planet of the Grapes

(Front and Back)

(pardon the thread/hair on the back scan image)

Topps Produced a set of cards for the Television series of Planet of the Apes the wrapper image of which this WP Parodies.

 1974 (75?) Topps Planet of The Apes cards Wrapper

 

Even though the TV show cards have a copyright of 1967 on them they were produced around the time of the show 1974/75. Oddly enough the Apes cards have puzzle piece backs.

Getting back to the WP stickers the sticker backs were blank. The brown/tan back is most common. If I recall correctly sometimes there were white backs with a slightly thicker paper/card stock. I got that sticker by its lonesome from Ebay in February of this year for five bucks ($4.99 + $2.22 shipping). Due to its rarity it often goes for much more. Since getting it I've shown it off on a couple of the card trading forums but never got around to officially blogging it. That is one of my problems not blogging something I've posted on a card board (ugh Pun not totally intended). I don't really care if it is the other way around not everything I blog about I need to post on a trading card board, but if I've mentioned a card elsewhere I like to mention it here. Preferably before mentioning it elsewhere.

For each series of  Wacky Packages stickers they would choose one of the mock products to use as a 9 card puzzle with the series checklist on the flip-side. For Series 11 Planet of the Grapes was the chosen for the series puzzle.

1974 Topps Wacky Packages Series 11 Puzzle: Planet of The Grapes 
(9 card complete puzzle)

Some of the puzzles are hard to find while others are super easy. For some reason this one is one of the rarer and very often overinflated overpriced on Ebay starting at $50 or $60 but more often starting for $100 or more for the full puzzle, individual pieces usually start between $5 - $10 and very often beyond. Plus they charge outrageous amounts for shipping. Back in late April this year I manged to get this sweet NM practically perfectly aligned full puzzle for only $29.49 + $2.50 shipping ($31.99 Total). Notice that is aprox. only $3.50 per card and each piece is in excellent to near mint condition with NO marks on the backside checklist. Often you find lesser quality conditioned cards with checks and marks on the checklist going for many times that.

The puzzle backs are the checklists for the series. Each puzzle piece has the same checklist back:

1974 Topps Wacky Packages: Series 11: Checklist Unmarked

 [I saw a checklist online of the UK checklist and the backs are green, not orange and it actually shows the Planet of the Grapes sticker in the image. The fronts with the pieces should be very similar if not the exact same. I'd like to get that puzzle sometime but not for the overinflated price of an arm and a leg.]

When I was a kid I had a ton of Wacky Packages, unfortunately many of them were lost to time. Some of them were attached to notebooks and scrap books through the ages. Some just plain lost. I do recall one time a classmate (while I was in 3rd grade) had purchased a full box of whatever series was the current one. The box yielded 2 or 3 full sets of the stickers he sold me one of his sets for five bucks, ten maybe twenty I don't recall. I forget if the puzzle was included or not. Unfortunately by the end of that day I have very few of the stickers left because the rest of the class had learned I had them and regrettably one by one I sold most of them for a quarter or 50 cents or maybe some I might have just given away. I was an easy to persuade kid. At the time it was the only full Wacky Packages Set I had although for a very brief period of time.

I often would get several packs and of course get duplicates of the puzzle piece which was one per pack (I forget how many stickers came in the pack). Of course being a kid I would also mark up the checklists often in ink, ball point pen or magic marker with the cards I had. Also with the cards I needed, sometimes I would just mark up all the check boxes on a checklist. I don't know why other than I was just a kid that didn't realize that later in life I would prefer to have them unmarked.

*OK so I barely made the posting on Wednesday thing.

Washington Wednesday: A Bullet in Triplicate

A Bullet in Triplicate

It has been quite a while since I've done one of these (somehow that sentence seems to be used a lot around this blog and for semi-regular segments like this one). OK so I had to check the old TCC blog archives for the details on this catch. In one of my insane Sportlots auction splurges I came across this 1990 Fleer Basketball Update U-97 Pervis Ellison Bullets card.

As you can see from the image under the WW Masthead I got not just one copy, not just two but THREE copies of Mr. Ellison's 1990 Fleer Basketball Update card. I wish I could say that each was a slight variation but no they are all standard base cards. I debated a little bit as to whether or not I should pull the trigger and get this trio and finally decided what the hay, even though I am not concentrating on Basketball cards much. ON that note I did just recently get a huge package of some mostly 1990s Bullets/Wizards cards from the blogiverse. That could be the next installment of WW, I'm not sure yet these things usually end up being random.

So the sordid details of this purchase I received it on Tuesday 19 Feb 2013 from Sportlots.com as I mentioned earlier. It was one auction for the three cards so there wasn't much of a choice, unless I had searched for the card individually and for Basketball I do that very rarely. I got them for the opening 1-2-3 bid of .25¢ + $2.50 shipping. I don't recall what type of package they came in as it was over two months ago and I have since received many many card packages and some card PWEs.

Anyway here is the card in all it's single glory:

1990 Fleer Basketball Update U-97 Pervis Ellison Bullets

(Front and Back) 

Mascot Monday: Bubba Grape

BUBBA GRAPE

Jamestown Jammers 2006 - Present

This month for Mascot Monday since I've been in a bit of a funk and need a little bit of a rally monkey, we will get our Grapes on with Bubba Grape "The Baseball Ape" of the Class A Minor League Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate The Jamestown Jammers. Reminds be a little of Grape Ape the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Ape, but not exactly and that is a different purple banana. Bubba was born on 19 June 2006. He was named as part of a fan naming contest and the winner charmed the judges with a poem. Visit the team's official page jamestownjammers.com for info on them and go to the page about Bubba to read the poem.

On to the Card:

 2007 Falcon Printing and Design Jamestown Jammers - 06 Bubba Grape Mascot

(Front and Back)

Not sure if this is Bubba's Rookie Card or not, might be, who really knows with Minor League Teams?

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.  

 

Update: State of the Blog (Sort of)

Just a quickie update to let folks know I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth (yet). No I have not forgotten about the RAC Card contest I am holding (held?). I haven't randomized the names of those who entered yet. I'm in a trading card funk, a pretty big one. I have had many other things on my plate of life and I really haven't cared that much about trading cards these last few weeks. Well maybe "not caring" is not really the right phraseology, but yeah a funk is a funk. I still have some cards coming in (I just paid for some Sportlots auction wins) and I am still active on several of the forums I'm involved with but I haven't been keeping up with the administrative portion of collecting lately. That means I haven't updated my blogs lately, I haven't forum blogged about my 3 most recent maildays, I haven't checked my collection vs. wantlists on offers of trades. I haven't scanned stuff (that isn't much of a difference anyway). I have only partly added some of those cards from my recent maildays into zistle. I'm still thinking about some of the future posts I'll write, or want to write eventually.

I don't know when I will actually do some of the stuff I need to do. Recent car problems have sort of sidetracked me knowing when I'll next get to the Post Office on a Saturday to mail anything out.

I'm not sure why I decided to post this or even write it up in the first place. I guess I just wanted to let people know that even though I have been a bit inactive I am still thinking about and am concerned about a few of my card commitments (or perceived commitments)