Scott Crawford On Cards!

Hey, a Ringside!

2012-06-02T08:08:00.002-04:00

Been a while!

Thanks to Stubby for sending this one my way, he had it in his spare Ringsides. It's a weird world, when both I and a regular trading partner end up with "spare" 1951 Topps Ringsides from time to time.

Not a lot out there on our pal Eddie Compo here. It looks like most of the information Wikipedia has on him came straight from the back of this card, and they even link to the card in his entry. Retired at 28, had one especially noteworthy fight against Willie Pep in '49, lived a relatively long life post-boxing.

Kelly wanted to see a back scan (which I'm frequently too lazy to make/post), so here, Kelly!

MOAR ARCHIVES

2012-06-02T08:02:00.001-04:00

Got some singles the other day. We'll go through them, because you couldn't possibly be sick of looking at this product yet, could you?

We'll start with the man of the hour! I became aware that he hadn't given up a hit somewhere around the 7th inning last night, and enjoyed the hell out of listening to the rest of the game. One less thing for Mets fans to bitch about, even if they're going to mention "hometown scoring" and the need for replay every time this one comes up. Congrats, Johan! Congrats, Mets!

Another mullet to add to The Many Mullets Of Mitch.

I'm gonna end up collecting just the '80 design Archives, aren't I?

To quote Lana Kane, "YEEEUPPP!" Really love this Joe D card.

We'll wrap this one up with another '77 cloth, this one of good ol' Josh.

Here, look at some cards you've already been looking at for a week!

2012-05-30T20:09:00.002-04:00

Sucker for the '71 design, even with inaccurate fonts, and especially if the team didn't exist in '70-'71.

This scanned mighty well for a cloth sticker. Can't say the same for the 3D card I got, but that spared you all the indignity of Dustin Pedroia.

Yay, another card featuring a team that didn't exist in the first run of the design! Sucker for '80, too. Also: is it me, or does "Ben Zobrist" sound like an expert at doing something dirty?

MOAR '80

Yeah, be nice if they nailed the player name font, but '84s are pretty cool too.

Awwww, The Kid.

This Giants uniform variant looks awfully appropriate on an '84 design.

OK, you've seen some pretty pictures. What do I actually think of Archives? Well, the card stock's weak, which is what everyone thinks, but it's a fun little diversion. Need to give the checklist a look and see what I'm after (I know I want the Strawberry '80 base card, I obviously want the Harper since I have a Harper problem, and there are a ton of awesome, hopefully cheap autos), since I don't think I'd build a set of this.

I am alive!

2012-05-28T18:33:00.000-04:00

Back from the West Coast, slowly updating my want list, and ideally, I'll start cranking out posts this week! In the meantime, here's a few pictures from my trip!

It was short-lived ("Bruce" overtook me today as Mayor), but for a brief moment in time, I was the Mayor of Sick's Stadium (home of the Seattle Pilots) on Foursquare!

Proof! (I'd love to accost the hooligans who left graffiti on the sign and ganked the Seattle Pilots logo from it, though!)

The view from my seat at Safeco Field.

The view from my seat at Oakland Coliseum.

The outside of Raley Field, home of the Sacramento River Cats. Didn't make it to a game, but I did drive by...

The Willie Mays statue at AT&T Park.

One angle of the view from my seat at AT&T Park.

The other angle, later in the evening.

The view from my seat at Angel Stadium.

Me "enjoying" a Dodger Dog from my seat at Dodger Stadium.

Me looking VERY SRS with Dan "Big Hair & Plastic Grass" Epstein at Dodger Stadium.

Yes, that is my name tag from The Price Is Right. No, I didn't make Contestant's Row, though I did get this solid green screen shot of myself playing Cliff Hanger...

(Don't tell the Price Is Right people I screenshotted the proof.)

Mariano

2012-05-04T03:15:00.000-04:00

Even being a Yankee fan in exile as I am, this is one of the sadder nights I can remember in my time watching baseball. Mo might make it back, but this was never part of the plan for him, obviously. Most people had him figured for retiring at the end of this season. If he plays again, unless it's this season by some cosmic accident, that's not happening. He wanted to go home to his family and enjoy life, not prop up the Yanks for another year after this one, by most accounts. While I (and all of baseball, frankly) will miss him, and while I hope he makes a full and successful recovery from his injury, I strongly hope that he does stick to what were apparently his guns, doesn't get roped in by guilt that he's apparently feeling for letting his teammates down, and has a long and happy life after baseball. He's more than earned it, and even on the days where other teams got to him, he's never let any of us down, be it his team, his team's fans or anyone who watches baseball. As I said earlier tonight on Twitter, "Thank you, Mariano."

I've been kinda sitting on these for a while, as I got them during a period of time when I was posting very much, and I was holding off for the right moment to post, too. (I didn't want him getting any more inundated with TTM requests in camp than usual, as people have had years to hit him up, and there was a lot of talk of this being their last shot already.) I wish I had a happier occasion to post 'em on, but we'll play the hand we were dealt.

Anyway, I wrote to Mo right before he got to camp, thanking him for everything he's done on and off the field and asking for an autograph. One autograph. I sent 2 cards down to him, and expressly asked him to sign the 2nd card and give it to a kid in camp, but he might've just had the clubby take the cards out of the letters so he could sign and return 'em without looking at 'em too closely, or he might've wanted me to give the 2nd card to a kid myself. Either way, a guy who gets something like $300 for an autograph via Steiner signed 2 cards for a schlub like me without getting anything in return, and almost immediately upon arriving in camp, judging by the postmark.

So, I'd say it's on me to get that 2nd autograph (the grey one's the one I'm giving away) out to a kid somewhere. Least I could do for a guy who hooked me up like this, not to mention how much joy he gave me as a baseball fan.

Here's how we're going to do it (yep, it's contest time again): during the 2012 baseball regular season, post a comment here, ideally with a picture of the kid who you want to get the card, and an honest story about how much the kid likes Mariano Rivera. Hell, if you want to make it even better, have the kid hand-write a story about how he likes Mariano Rivera, scan it and post it here. If they wanna draw Mo, that's cool too. The more honest and thorough information we have on what a Rivera fan the youngster is, the better. If you can't figure out how to post images to comments, email me with the picture(s) and I'll help you out.

Let's have the cutoff age on the kid be roughly 12 (so, any kid with a birthdate in or after 2000 is eligible). Any older, and they're essentially an adult in baseball card collector years. We're going on the honor system for all of this, by the way, but if you cheat or make something up, it's gonna look really scummy on you, so don't. Also: please don't force your kids to do all this stuff in order to get an auto, as it'll be really obvious if you do, especially to a crowd of people who've seen all manner of shenanigans like a bunch of card collectors.

At the end of the regular season (last Yankee game is October 3rd, 2012), we'll take all the entries, make a big ol' poll, and my followers (best way to keep the ballot-stuffing to a minimum) will decide which one they think should get the card, purely on merit.

Sound good? Cool.

Jeez, I haven't posted in almost a month?

2012-04-07T11:08:00.000-04:00

Been a weird month. Busy life + depression + sleep issues + migraines=no scanny teh cardy.

I have gotten some cards, though.

This is #58/61. Got it yesterday in with some inserts. Only my 2nd from this set. Still, as I did when I got the Panda (which I can't believe I haven't posted here, gotta check into that), I thought "I wonder how hard it'd be to put together the set...".

Speaking of "can't believe I haven't posted it yet"...

Yeah, this card's kinda ridiculous. It was pretty cheap, too, if I'm remembering correctly.

I've been dabbling in my other hobbies this month, too.

Yep, this is a quickie headshot sketch of The Huntress (Helena Wayne) by the great George Pérez. Got this at a comic con in NYC last weekend. Here's George and I, after he drew it...

While I was at said comic show, I also snagged an autograph from Neal Adams...

(Check the bumper.)

Oh, and I met this guy. Yep, that's The Fonz. He and I talk on Twitter sometimes, so it was cool to meet him face to face. Great guy.

One more example of me hobnobbing with folks I talk to on Twitter before we get back to cards. On Wednesday, Kristin Hersh was up at Fairleigh Dickinson University for WAMFEST, doin' a talk and a few songs along with Tom Sleigh and Wesley Stace (a.k.a. John Wesley Harding, though I couldn't place him as his alter ego until after the talk was over, damn it!). Kristin's perhaps best known for her band Throwing Muses, though she's done a ton of other stuff, including her solo records, records with her band 50 Foot Wave, being a board member at CASH Music and her books. I got her to sign a copy of her book "Rat Girl" (pictured above) while we were talking, as you can see below...

Kristin's an awesome, awesome lady, a true artist in every sense of the word (and I can say this with confidence, even as a guy who's waaaaay behind on her back catalog), and her Twitter account is pretty dynamite, too. Thanks, Kristin!

So yeah, been busy. If you saw me mention "depression" above, yes, despite all of this, it is entirely possible to continue to suffer from it. Don't wanna spend too much time talking about it here when I'm supposed to talk about the bubble gum cards, but we'll just say that in between all of these moments of awesome, it was a constant struggle to stay out of bed really over the past 2 months, still kind of one now, and a lot of these awesome things didn't happen because of the kinda crushing inertia that depression brings to the table. It sucks, because it probably seems like I'm ungrateful for all the cool things that do happen (unfortunately, illnesses can be neither grateful nor ungrateful), and sometimes I do feel ungrateful when I'm physiologically unable to totally enjoy awesome things, which makes the struggle a little worse, but I try not to do that to myself as much as I develop a greater understanding of the mechanics of things. Not throwin' a pity party here by any means, just explaining why I get so damn quiet sometimes.

OK, back to the bubble gum cards!

Yep, I did. I got my first-ever proper, intended-as-such Bipping this past month from dayf. I won't bore you with the '97 Toppses (which were really borderline Bip material as I needed most of 'em, but we won't split hairs). Ready to see the front of the sketch card? I know you are.

(Amazingly, I don't have the card this wonderful sketch was based on yet. That really belongs in my Top 25. Gotta make a note of that.)

dayf also keeps rather perversely sending me '56 Topps Kansas City A's. Again, like the '97 Toppses, not unwelcome, but...odd.

Imma finish off with 2 base cards from Topps sets I won't be collecting this year...

The base cards on these really don't look so bad, but I keep seeing people post the "hits" on Twitter, and...no, not so much. ZOMG ON-CARD AUTOGRAPHS doesn't make me like the designs. Even this design kinda looks like a knockoff of UD Masterpieces, but the picture's decent enough and it's of one of my guys, so I snagged the card.

Holy Sacrilege, Batman! I'm not collecting Heritage this year? Nope. Seeing the '63 design on Heritage reminded me that I'm not much of a fan of the '63 design. Just gettin' the players I collect, then calling it a day. It'll save me some money and hassle. Series 2 and Update, Ginter, Gypsy Queen, etc. are more than enough to keep me busy.

That's all for now, but I still have a pretty big backlog of stuff to cover. I will try to do this soon!

The post in which I work blue (parental discretion required)

2012-03-09T17:06:00.001-05:00

ARKY FUCKING VAUGHAN

There. I worked blue.

In all seriousness, I loved this card from the moment I saw it (maybe it's Arky's early demise or the photograph or something, dunno, but it's haunting), and spent a fair amount of time trying to nail it down before I nailed this off-center but still pretty specimen a little ways back. I've also been completely incapable of referring to this card as anything but the dirty name I gave it above, usually out loud, whenever I've looked at it online or in-person.

Ever see the back of a '60 Fleer card? If not, here:

Really crisp little design. Dig it.

'79 Topps: PWN3D

2012-03-09T17:01:00.000-05:00

O HAY THAR PETE

This happy lookin' but ultimately doomed to disgrace feller was the last card I needed to complete my '79 set. First set (and, undoubtedly, the easiest to complete in general) of the '70s that I've completed!

I'm very, VERY close to finishing '75 and '78, though.

Here's how close:

1975 Topps (Have 657/660): 126, 280, 308

1978 Topps (Have 724/726): 424, 652

Get in touch with me if you've got any of these 5 cards. We shall trade a glorious trade!

RIP Don Mincher

2012-03-05T15:49:00.000-05:00

I got this in the mail late last week (finishing my '70 Kellogg's Pilots team, all 2 cards of it), and was getting ready to post it today for reasons having little to do with Don's passing. Couldn't we have just stuck with "Hey, awesome! Seattle Pilots cards!"? Rats.

Don Mincher was a baseball lifer, though I mostly know him as a Seattle Pilot, and as part of the cast of characters of Ball Four. Here's a brief obit that seems like it hardly scratches the surface of the things he accomplished. Rest in peace, big guy.

Definition Of Hunger Found In Card Show 50 Cent Box

2012-03-04T15:24:00.000-05:00

To quote Frank Zappa, "Shit, you musta been hungry."

Gotcha, you sonuva...

2012-03-02T12:16:00.000-05:00

Took me 20 packs (sorry, I didn't bust a box, so I didn't record the box break), but I got 'em. I've opened 23 packs in total, 5 this morning after my 18 on Wednesday.

Now, to finish off the base set (I'm about halfway; anyone else bust this stuff and have doubles?). The cards are pretty good, more or less Score-quality base cards, not a ton of inserts in the packs I opened, and I got Antawn Jamison and Ishmael Smith autos in the first half a box I opened.

On the flipside, how cool must it be to be one of these people in the crowd?

Contest Winner!

2012-03-02T01:12:00.001-05:00

Hey, remember this?

Yep, I did too, just had something of a distracting day, so I just got around to the drawing. Alas, I had one late entrant who, in the interest of fairness (rules are rules and all), I could not include in the drawing, but an apology email to them later, I set things up, and our winner is...

Dan!

Verifiable Results Here!

Congrats to Dan, and I'll be in touch to get your mailing address from you!

Thanks for participating, everyone, and for reading this here site!

The Round-Up for 02/29/12

2012-02-29T11:34:00.000-05:00

2 months in a row of record traffic, with this month up 10% from last month! Thanks for spending part of your internets time with my somewhat disorganized site!

(From the "This post needs a picture, and this isn't a bad one" dept: Hank here finished my Aaron-in-the-'70s base card run about a week ago. I got the '70 in a trade with reader and fellow fantasy leaguer Stubby a while back, but I'm like 2 or 3 trade posts behind on the Stubmeister. I will catch up on trade posts, and all the stuff I've scanned recently...someday.)

A reminder: all entries for my current contest need to be in by Midnight Eastern Time. If you wanna win a copy of this...

...simply make sure you're following this site via Google Friend Connect (the link's in the sidebar below my "short" want list), and drop a comment on the original contest post (not this post) letting me know that you're following! I'll be choosing a winner at random tomorrow! Good luck!

In some other news, the next White Plains card show is March 23rd-March 25th, and while it's a crazy busy weekend for me (2 shows and 2 fantasy baseball drafts), I may try to make it on Saturday the 24th before rushing home to the D.R.I./Cro-Mags show at Starland. Good free autograph guests (and 2 of 'em: Roy White, who I got recently, and the great Bobby Shantz!) on Saturday, Wade Boggs (!!!) signing (not for free, but 'ey), and a ton of other autograph guests (Dawson, Robbie Alomar, Ron Davis, Dick Groat) will be there. Plus, all the New York football Giants are signing on Sunday, so we'll be avoiding that mob scene! (I drove past a bank in Montclair, NJ where JPP was signing a few weekends ago, and it was a madhouse; paramedics on scene, the whole nine...) If anyone's up for meeting up there, that'd be awesome, just let me know so we can plan.

I finished '92 and '93 Topps yesterday, and I'm within a scant few cards of finishing '75, '78 and '79 Topps now, too! If any of you have the following...

1975 Topps: 126, 193, 280, 308, 450

1978 Topps: 424, 652

1979 Topps: 650

...give a yell, and let's trade! I've got good trade stuff.

I'll be picking up a box of Hoops in a little while, for the heck of it. What can I say? Strikes (and fantasy sports) are great for rekindling one's interest in a sport, despite what conventional wisdom suggests. Anyway, should I bust it on-camera later? I probably will, if I can wait that long.

That's it over here for now. What's going on with you folks? Let me know in the comments!

The wall I see the most of...

2012-02-25T15:45:00.000-05:00

...is the one directly to the right of my computer.

Here's a guided tour done clockwise. Mind the glare.

Top right: Pennzoni Display Company 30 capacity wall display case, freshly refilled after I took my '56 Topps Dodgers (save for one) out to put them in a binder. Top row: 56 Topps Sandy Koufax PSA 4, 54 Red Man Gil Hodges, 40 Play Ball Cookie Lavagetto, Sweet Spot Classic Roy Campanella pants relic, 48 Bowman Pete Reiser PSA 2. Second row: 95 Bowman Vladimir Guerrero Beckett 9 (totally obscured by the glare), Legendary Cuts Dale Murphy bat relic, 81 Fleer Mark Fidrych, 94 Yoohoo Jim Kaat, Pro Line Portraits Don Mattingly, 80 Topps Tom Veryzer (the last card I needed for my '80 set; interestingly, I finally found the duplicate of it that I wasn't sure existed when I put the '80 set in a binder). Third row: 12 Topps Retired Rings Mike Schmidt, 61 Post Hank Aaron, Fleer Legacy Vladimir Guerrero bat relic, 83 Topps Olympians Cassius Clay. Fourth row: dayf original "Derp" sketch card, 09 Obak Steve Dalkowski, 78 Boston Globe Tony Horton, 09 Goodwin Champions Rick Cerone autograph, 88 Salt Lake Trappers Bill Murray, 04 Brockton Rox Bill Murray PSA 10. Fifth row: 01 Sweet Spot Albert Belle, 05 Sweet Spot Classics Johnny Podres, 05 Sweet Spot Classics David Cone, 04 Sweet Spot Dontrelle Willis.

I like the case, but I might not keep it forever, as I have concerns about subjecting my cards to the elements and such. (Haven't had any problems with fading yet, but I don't want to tempt fate too much, so I rotate the cards in this regularly.) Thinking of replacing it with my signed "Casey At The Bat" poster once I get that framed. I need more wall space.

Bottom right: Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle Louisville Slugger youth bats.

Bottom left: My overpiled desk. In view are my Apple wireless keyboard and trackpad, a 400 count box that currently houses 2012 Topps Series 1, with the '87 mini set and my other inserts on top of it. You can barely see a big stack of '92-present Topps that need filing to the left of it. My keys are in front of it. Behind it to the left is a coin bank I got as a door prize at a local bank, and a big stack of stuff to read that I've been mostly neglecting for the past few months: the last 2 issues of 2600 Magazine, "Rubber Balls and Liquor" by Gilbert Gottfried, "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud, the Rolling Stone and Time Steve Jobs cover issues, the first 5 issues of Dodgem Logic and a Computer Music Beginners' Guide (I've been away from programming music for long enough that this isn't entirely false; also, there's a bunch of cool software included with these magazines).

Center left: framed Daily News cover, Monday, October 2nd, 1961. "MARIS' 61ST IN 163D Game", purchased 50 years to the day from the 61st HR in question. Yeah, I know it's off-kilter in the picture.

Top left: framed cover of No Cover magazine, Slayer cover story (my first and, to date, only cover story ever as a writer), 2003, signed by Tom Araya, Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman (Dave Lombardo snuck out of the afterparty early).

What the hell, it was cheap.

2012-02-25T09:09:00.000-05:00

Postcard-sized, cool casino memorabilia piece too, a few bucks on a Buy It Now.

Contest Time!

2012-02-25T02:31:00.000-05:00

I haven't run a contest around here in a dog's age, and circumstances (weird Amazon ordering quirk, actually) put me in the position of having an extra of something, so let's do this!

If you would like to win one of these...

...simply make sure you have me followed, and leave a comment saying that you do! A winner will be picked at random on Thursday, March 1st.

The book's in pretty close to like new condition, though there's a little bit of wear/damage at the top of the spine.

Get to it!

A Player Collection Grows In Brockton

2012-02-24T04:40:00.000-05:00

While we look at this awesome sketch card...

2012-02-23T04:27:00.000-05:00

...received as part of a trade from card collecting's best-loved Brony, let's talk a little about how I've been pluggin' along on my collection, my trades with y'all and so forth way too fast to keep up with posting about it.

I end up scanning a lot more than you folks see me posting about. I'd love to write about it all, but between living a life or some semblance of it and my well-documented sleep issues, I don't get to everything. Working on that some, but it's still tough. I also still have a very uneasy relationship with "Looka whut I got!" posts (even when what I have is sometimes so awesome that it's impossible not to want to share it with people) when so many people are having such a hard time making ends meet. It shouldn't shock any of you to hear that I also do have a hard time, and that a lot of my card buying is part of a greater compulsion that I do struggle with from time to time, much as dayf has his own well-documented struggles...

...anyway, yeah, as you've seen just by the small sample size that I post, I do struggle at balancing a healthy, sane, responsible, fiscally sound existence with ZOMG CARDS. Workin' on it, though.

Back to the stuff we don't get to here. I could just bomb y'all out with unexplained scans of cards, as I've done at times, kinda Tumblr-style, and I probably will do that at times just to catch up on things a little. I started this site to write about cards, though, not just be a content farm for Google Images.

So, I'll probably just continue as I am, writing and posting when the muse strikes me. I don't want this to be "work", obviously, and it wouldn't be fun to read if it became "work".

This "mostly thinking out loud, but with ponies" post was brought to you by the large pile of cards in front of my computer.

So yesterday was one of the best mail days in the history of the Postal Service.

2012-02-22T06:39:00.000-05:00

First there was this. It took a while to get here, eBay seller was slow mailing it I guess (though they threw in a '72 Topps Sandy Alomar and an '81 Fleer Star Stickers Rod Carew, I think to make up for the delay), but it's a '71 Topps Frank Robinson (from the 2nd to last series, which I think is a good deal harder to complete than the highest one) and it was $3.63 shipped. Yeah, I dunno either. There'll be more of that "Was anyone on eBay paying attention?" later in the post.

Next up, we have my first playing era Gordie Howe card, another from the '68-'69 set that my kickass Tim Horton card is from. I'm not planning on starting a big Gordie collection (I'd kind of like things like a house, a savings account, my vital organs, etc. a little more), but this is one of three of his that I wanted (the others being '71-'72 and '79-'80; all of these choices are because I love the designs of the cards), and I got it for about $15 shipped. Rough corners, well loved and with a couple of creases, but not ugly by any means. Might've gone a little high on it given the condition, but these don't come up in an affordable condition too often.

Then there's this guy. Remember him? Blurry shot, in an oooooold non-recessed screwdown, so he was a gamble at $17 and change, but holy goddamn, this card is NICE for the price. Low book on it's something like $50, so I'm totally happy with it.

Then there's this, from the same post where you first saw the Maris...

Yes, this is indeed a '53 Bowman friggin' Color Gil Hodges. If you're not familiar, cards from this set are murder to get in any condition. Low book on this is about $175. Yes, there's a faint crease across the center of the card that you didn't even notice until I mentioned it, and it's pretty damned off-center, but this cost a grand total of 36 cents more than the Maris did.

$18 shipped. Right around what the Fair to Good price should be for something like this if we're being logical, but people are not logical when it comes to '53 Bowman Color.

$18 for this beautiful bastard of a card.

Not only that, but I won the thing in the middle of Ernest Borgnine Night!

Was anyone paying attention on eBay last Wednesday?

To keep you folks from killing me in my sleep, I won't talk about the pile of '67 Topps commons I got in a set-filler lot.

Yeah, the mail was kind of awesome yesterday.

And, on a less serious note...

2012-02-19T05:18:00.000-05:00

Forgive me if I've posted this before, but I don't think I have...

2012-02-19T05:12:00.000-05:00

...and that's a damned shame.

I paid a dollar for this back in October at White Plains.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, "You paid a buck for a severely damaged, heavily burned baseball card of a guy you don't even actively collect?" If you did, stop reading this and go collect Krugerrands or something. I know my readers, and y'all get it.

This baseball card made it through a fire, almost 50 years ago.

Really think about that.

Was it a house fire?

Did this card outlive the kid who owned it?

If the kid did survive, did he save this card from the rubble and hang onto it because he loved it, or did someone else find it and snag it?

Those are just the questions surrounding the fire.

From there, it survived the next 5 decades who knows where (at least two of those decades were pretty abusive toward baseball cards), and eventually made it into a card dealer's hands, where I found it, bought it, and have scanned and documented it for you all to see, and ideally it'll remain on the Internet for as long as there's an Internet.

Now, if you think too deeply about anything, you can come up with astronomical odds against it happening, but in this case, it's not that much of a stretch to say that there were huge odds against this card surviving for this long and eventually being documented for posterity. Hell, because the end of last year was such a crazy time, it even took me 4 1/2 months to document something this spectacular. Thankfully it didn't happen (fires and natural disasters are things I really don't like to think about too much for obvious reasons), but what if there was another fire between the time I purchased it and now? Would I have saved the card? Would someone else have? Would they have thought to document it if they did?

Yesterday's mail...

2012-02-18T07:32:00.000-05:00

Spent a couple of bucks on this at the beginning of the week. Now, I know Rick's actually a pretty good TTM signer, but I really love the look of this card. Has there been a relic card of Rick? I'm running into some of that with guys I collect, very limited relic cards out there or none at all (I don't think Mike Norris has any, and the Topps Twitter person's probably tired of me asking them to put Mike in Archives).

Oh, and I got this.

It took MONTHS for one to show up on eBay after Chris Olds mentioned him being in this set and got my attention focused on getting a Bill Murray baseball card, but one finally did and I spent too much money (relatively speaking) on it. This is the "trade this card in and get a free card of someone who isn't Bill Murray" coupon card, one of three Murray cards in the '88 Salt Lake Trappers set (the other two are the one Chris featured in Beckett Monthly and one with Bill and Brian Doyle-Murray; I don't think there are any others besides those). Love the expression on his face on this card.

!!!!!!!!!!

2012-02-16T07:05:00.001-05:00

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Best Dodgers Card Of The 1960s...

2012-02-15T16:35:00.000-05:00

...showed up in my mailbox today.

Yeah, it's pretty much the antithesis of a Brooklyn Dodgers card (where a lot of my focus is these days), despite two guys who were on the last team taking up residency on it.

It's still awesome.

Some Non-Card Stuff I Collect: Set Lists

2012-02-11T16:54:00.001-05:00

I had these in the scanning pile, and figured I'd post them here, too. These are set lists from live shows I went to last year. I have a bunch more that I'll probably get to scanning eventually, but these were in front of me, so I figured I'd share...

This one's from The Bangles, if you couldn't guess from the song titles. Friend of mine by the name of John won a radio contest and I was his +1, so I got to see them and meet them after the show. Happily, one of the roadies also hooked me up with this set list for them to sign. Sweet ladies, funny, and they still put on a terrific show.

This one isn't signed, but it's still really cool. It's from Ace Frehley's solo tour of a few months ago. My friend Peter was doing sound for Ace (yes, I have really cool friends), so he hooked me up with the soundboard copy of the set list when I saw Ace in Allentown, PA. Didn't get to meet Ace or anything, but it was a great show (though Ace got the set list scrambled a bit, so I didn't get to hear "Rip It Out", sadly).

If you guys and gals want to see me post more stuff like this along with the card stuff, let me know. Also: thanks again to both John and Peter for hooking me up on these shows!