Happy Thanksgiving

Been meaning to thank GCA for this PWE he sent me recently.

A few appreciated vintage needs, plus a Sheena Easton card to make a cardart version for him.

Thanks, Greg! I'll get a return your way soon.

- -o

Checking Fergie off my '75 Topps needs reminded me I'm not too far off with that set. After snagging the few remaining commons on Sportlots and COMC, I'm now down to just a few big names:

#1 Aaron (Highlight)

80 Fisk

280 Yaz

320 Pete Rose

500 Nolan Ryan

510 Vida Blue

531 Reds (Sparky)

616 (Jim Rice RC)

If anybody has any of those for trade, let me know. I'm thinking it'd be cool to complete the set within its Heritage Year, but I'll have to get serious about it to score all those in the next month.

- -o

Video gaming update.

After playing it regularly for the past year and a half, I've finished Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and have gone backwards to the previous game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the first time. It's really frustrating starting over with a weak Link getting my ass handed to me by basic bitch monsters. The sequel really improved gameplay with handy ways to do things, and it's like this first game is a rough draft. But hey, that's on me for playing them out of order, I guess. lol. It's still fun enough to play and I'll try to keep at it. But like, the sequel has rockets to help you quickly blast up into the air when you need to get some elevation, but the first game makes you slowly climb around a lot more instead. There's probably a better way, but I haven't discovered it. I started playing it on Halloween and I'm giving myself a month before I search for help online, but once we hit December, I'm going to have to spend some time watching YouTube tips videos and shrine walkthroughs.

- -o

Excuse the brag, but I had my best financial day as a "cardartist" yesterday, with sales topping $250 on Thanksgiving Eve. Sure would be great if that was a common payday for me, but it was really just a coincidence of a couple outlier big sales (and the Ozzie Smith '90 Donruss tree ornament). The '88 Topps Barry Bonds "Super Rainbow" was made by request after I had made a similar display using Randy Johnson's 1989 Topps rookie. Barry's '87 Topps rookie is a bit too pricey for this concept, but the '88 worked well. I'm not excited about the prospect of making more of these, though, as I kinda get burnt out working on the same card that many times. But it's a cool end result with them all together.

The other big sale was a lot of 36 of my "white border" '91 Fleer mods to a guy who took a liking to the remix of a much maligned baseball card design that dared to lean hard into the color yellow. I think it's the first time I've parted with these things other than as singles. I gave him a good bulk deal. I spent a lot of time of these, but I think it's kinda like a gardener tending to a garden. Caring for them is often a relaxing process, then hopefully your flowers eventually bloom and you can visibly enjoy the fruits of your labor. But yeah, I'll probably try to build up my inventory again with a new crop next summer.

Anyways, I'm glad I had at least that one nice payday. Really it probably just got me out of the red for all the supplies and stuff I've spent money on to see if I could use them to do neat things to cards with. But I feel like I'm in a good place. Don't tell my wife but I'm basically retired from the rat race.. at least for now, but hopefully forever. My top goal in life is to not have to go back to the grind. Sometimes I stress myself out too much just working on my dumb art stuff. Like, I have to have sometime in my life to stress over even when I can basically just play Zelda all day. No but really, let's be honest, my real job these days is "stay at home doggie dad" to an attention-demanding 4.5-year old pit-lab-husky-wolf mutt mix who still acts very much like a crazy puppy. (She even excitedly peed in the house last week for the first time in a long time! I really thought we were over than unfortunate phase. Glad we still have the cleaning enzyme stuff to get rid of the odor.) 

I like when I make cardart sales because then I can walk Ruby to the post office, which makes me feel like I'm actually doing something productive for me and my family, not just aimlessly walking around the neighborhood with my dog so she'll eventually chill for a while afterwards.

I took a picture of her this morning just after midnight in low before-bed lighting. I thought it was funny she saved a little bit of kibble from dinner to ring in Thanksgiving by eating just after the stroke of midnight. Like, she goes hard for Thanksgiving. But no, she does have a blast with the whole local family together in one place.

- -o

Speaking of taking photos in the dark.. 

I found a nicely glowing sheet and had some fun with translucent cards, as you can see from the shadows they left behind. Can you identify which 4 cards were there? One's a Nine Pockets custom.

I'll call the post good here. Thanks for reading and hope you all have/had a great holiday!

Catching up

Lots to blog about but I just haven't gotten the urge to type much lately. However, my guilt won't let me go too long without acknowledging cards received from a fellow cardblogger, so let's check out what John Miller surprised me with recently.

Photo came out blurry, but here are a bunch of Gavins. Mr. Williams has the biggest start of his life tonight for Cleveland. Good luck to him, but it's looking like it will be a Yankees vs. Dodgers World Series where I'm not sure who I'd root against hardest. The curse of rooting for the underdog is all the pain of defeat you have to deal with. By the way, did you notice my Padres bowed out of the playoffs in embarrassing fashion? Sad fact: I have never in my life seen a championship by a sports team I actively followed and rooted for. Granted I've really only followed the Padres (and Chargers for a while in the 90s-00s). I'm not saying it's gonna eat me up on my deathbed to have been a Lifelong Loser as a sports fan, but man, it sucks. I hate sports!

Here we go, some nonsport ladies. Sorry again for the blurry picture. I took these at night and my phone's camera needs natural light, I guess.

Lastly from John is a nice bunch of Dick Allen cards (and a tiny Ken Caminiti, too). I already had most of these, but there were enough needs to help push me back to being the #1 ranked Dick Allen collector on TCDB for the moment (Woo!). And that encouraged me to snag a few cheap refractor parallels of that Chome Anniversary card in the lower right.. so that should help pad my lead a little when they show up.

Thanks, Johnny! I'll be getting a return your way soon hopefully.

Now for some recent photographs to fill out the post.

I complain about my camera, but happy to see it capture the supermoon halo or whatever you call it from last night. That's a lense flare below it.

My dog Ruby wants nothing more than to get a catfriend, but the local felines want nothing to do with her. Excitedly lunging at them to play/chase probably isn't the best strategy, but she doesn't get that. There's one Siamese that isn't afraid to get close, but it's more of a "bully" situation, and I'm wary of the claws coming out, so I've got to keep some space between them. I snapped this pic when the cat was following behind us but Ruby didn't seem to notice.

And here's a selfie from a recent walk with a nice view.

Ok, let's hope this post helped "break the seal" and I get more frequent blogs posted to close out the year. Gotta hit the annual Vintage Frankenset post soon, plus a major setbuild of mine is coming to a close with the final card currently out-for-delivery. Oh, and I've got a bunch of new cardart stuff I want to show off. So yeah, lots to talk about soon. Thanks as always for stopping by.

Gavins from Dennis

My buddy Dennis of the blog Too Many Verlanders surprised me with a nice mailer of cards this past week. The majority were guys named Gavin, so this post will also function as an abbreviated "pro athletes named Gavin" annual update for 2024, though last year I said I wouldn't continue doing it since there are a lot of Gavins out there now compared to when I started paying attention to the 2 or 3 there were ten years ago.

Gavin Williams' stats this season haven't been that great following his strong debut last year, though injuries have played a part. Cleveland secured a playoff spot, so hopefully Gavin gets a chance to shine in October. Cool bunch of cards here with a 1st Bowman refractor, insert Topps RC, and a couple Panini relic RCs.

Gavin Lux has set his career high for games played this season, and I think he had a hot streak going for a while, though overall his numbers are still around replacement level. Suiting up for the juggernaut Dodgers, he's likely to play plenty of postseason baseball. While I of course hope my Padres pull it out, Ohtani is having a season for the ages and it wouldn't surprise anyone if they just kept rolling.

Dennis didn't send me any Gavin Stone cards, but he's another Gavin on the Dodgers to mention. He pitched well this year, highlighted by a complete game shutout, though manager Dave Roberts recently said he's very unlikely to pitch again this year due to shoulder discomfort. Bummer.

Like with Lux, Gavin Sheets has gotten a lot of playing time this year and hasn't quite had the breakout his team had been hoping for. The sad-sack White Sox and their lame owner are having an historically bad season, so there's no 2024 postseason experience awaiting this Gavin. 

Always love a "cracked ice" parallel or whatever they're calling them these days.

Gavin Cross had a strong year for KC's AA team, knocking 15 dingers with 30 stolen bases in 101 games. Wishing him the best of luck cracking the bigs in the next year or two.

There are several other Gavins in the minors today, too many for me to want to cover here, but best of luck to all of them making the show. Turns out my local-ish minor league team, the Hillsboro Hops, had a pair of Gavins on their roster this season. I should have maybe tried to see a game and perhaps gotten autoGavs of those guys, but alas. I didn't see any in-person baseball this year, sad to say, not even the local collegiate summer league Portland Pickles. Oh well, maybe next year.

My biggest football PC gets a couple cards larger thanks to this pair. Since the late Gavin Escobar, there haven't been any NFL Gavin cards released, as far as I can tell. There was one Gavin (Gavin Heslop) who played 3 games for the Seahawks in 2021 but didn't seem to get any cards out of it.

And here's a Gavin Cecchini auto, plus cards from his brother Garin, who I sorta also passively collect. lol

And some non-Gavin content from Dennis to round things out. There was actually a little stack of '92 Leaf black gold, but only Brady Anderson was a need. Believe it or not, I'm only a dozen cards short of the finish line there.

Thanks a lot, Dennis! Cool stuff. I'll do my best to scrape together a decent return for you soon.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

more moldy oldies

Geena Davis here is taken out of context from an old SNL skit I saw the other day, but I figured it'd make for a quirky intro to another post documenting my quest to build a run of Topps flagship from the 70s.

GCA kindly thought of me while at a recent card show and sent more help with the back end of 1972 Topps, still considered my top priority as far as trading goes. Now that's the kind of PWE I like to see. Much appreciated, my friend! I was already in his debt before this, but I've got a solid return shaping up to square things shortly.

-   -  - --o

Next up is a package from another long-time blogger bud, Bo from Baseball Cards Come to Life. He's one of the most solid traders I've had the pleasure to deal with, and it's so refreshing that condition means nothing to him. Sadly after so many swaps with him over the years, since I don't rip product or hit the card show anymore, I really have to scrape around my collection a while to find anything else to trade him. But luckily this time I was able to sort out some dupes for him from my old Kellogg's setbuilds, plus I had a few vintage Japanese cards in my Mike Reinbach PC that I ended up with dupes of, so that all added up to a respectable return for a healthy stack of vintage needs Bo was anxious to pull for me, with the understanding that my standards for condition have lowered considerably. Yeah, really at this point in my life, I'm just looking for the satisfying closure of completing some sets. I'm not concerned about their value and I don't plan to ever sell them, and honestly I'm at the age where I could drop dead of a heart attack or whatever any day, so time's a-waistin'! That Johnny Bench card seems like it spent at least one recess period in some kid's pocket, but yeah, if that's the Johnny Bench card in my '77 Topps set, so be it. My set was at 46% complete, but thanks to this fat stack from Bo (with some of the bigger names on top), I'm now up to 65%. Not bad. Thanks again, Bo!

-  - - --o

Just got in my latest COMC order yesterday in that I placed near the end of January, so I'm excited to finally get that stuff in. Really shows you how I rely mostly on trades for setbuilding because there were zero vintage setbuilders in the order. I probably should start shopping around more to get serious about finishing off more sets, but seems I'm always busy searching for other cards online. I'll try to post about more from that order soon, but here's a couple vintage PC needs I picked up..

A couple more mid-70s Mike Reinbach cards from Japan, both featuring a powerful swing. I still need a bunch his Calbee cards, but they seem to pop up a lot more often these days. Back when I first started collecting him, they were few and far between, but now there's always an assortment on COMC. I've been known to upgrade cards I already own if the price is right (and that's how I ended up with the dupes to send Bo). These were needs, not upgrades, though, and this pair is in really nice condition. Like, I thought these cards were originally distributed in bags of chips? Somebody took good care of them.

Anyways, that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.

The card show comes to me

Saturday was a first for me, having not one but two fellow cardbloggers hand-deliver boxes of cards to my door. How great is that?! First was Kevin from The Diamond King who was down in my neck of the woods Saturday morning for the local card show. Then in the afternoon, Rod from Padrographs dropped off another box while I was out walking Ruby. Plus I received one eBay pick up in Saturday's mail, one that happens to be a triple-bullseye for my collection: Christmas Card of a PC guy in my #1 set, 2004 Topps Retired refractors (and it was cheap). Oh, happy day!

Starting off the recap with a royal visit from The Diamond King. This came about because I had been working up a few neat Mark McGwire cardart things with the intention of putting them on eBay for my continuing side-hustle trying to generate enough income to where my wife won't hound me to find another real job quite yet, and generate enough walks to the post office to keep my crazy dog tired. Since Kevin is a big McGwire collector, I figured I'd check if he was interested in trading me for any of them. I know cardart ain't for everybody, so I try not to force it on folks if they don't want it, but I feel guilty if I don't at least offer my buddies dibs on anything they might like of their top PC guys.

Anyways, he was agreeable to trade and a few days later brought me over some great stuff. I think the only other time Kevin and I met in person was when he dropped off cards back at my old house, and we moved in 2020, so it's been a few years. Nice to see him again and have a little chat over cards.

The bulk of what he had for me was a nice lot of Kellogg's for my long-term collecting goal of putting together a run of those classic cereal cards. Excited to check these off my wants.

He also had a bunch of supervintage he offered me since he knows I'm into old stuff like that, with the caveat that who knows if this stuff is legit or perhaps reprints or even counterfeits. Sometimes you just find random stuff digging through cards at a card show and you roll the dice on card that might be something or might not. But yeah, regardless, these are neat additions to the pre-war randomness in my collection, hopefully working a few of them into my Vintage Frankenset project.

I've never been hunting and only went fishing a couple times in my youth, but I can still appreciate the interesting artwork on this series. The last card is "Ratting" and features a young lady swinging a stick at a rat.

Nice minicollection hits for me here.. The top cards are both 12/25 and the bottom lucky lady is 1/3. Love the green ink! Ryan Shamrock is a ring name for Alicia Webb, a.k.a. Symphony, who had a brief pro wrestling career around the turn of the millennium.

Some modern cards of my Padres.

I hope Trout has a good comeback season. The first card seems to be an oddball from 2021.

Some favorites of the past. The '75 Thurman was a need for my setbuild Kevin had just picked up for me at the card show. What a guy! I also needed the Reggie image variation for my 2011 Topps parallel frankenset.

Kevin had a big stack of serial numbered cards for a future giveaway and was kind enough to let me go through and cherry-pick out some PC guys of mine, heavy on the Kris Bryant.

Thanks again, Kevin! Great to swing the in-person exchange with you. Hope we can do it again before too long.

-  - --o

While Ruby and I were out on a nice little hike around the local golf course, Rod was popping by with a box of cards to leave at my doorstep. Sorry I missed him, but excited to thumb through the stack of cards he had available for me.

Love to score cards of the various hot young players that don't make it into my collection much these days since I don't rip new stuff or hit the card show anymore.

There were a few hundred cards in the box, mostly from Rod's recent box busting extravaganza probably, with a big chunk of them fitting into my collection like the PC additions above.

Oh buddy.. glow-in-the-dark dinosaur sticker. Rod is a champ always looking out for glowing stuff for me!

Big thanks, Rod! Always a blast getting cards from you. I hope I catch you next time.

-   - - --o

And then here's that sweet eBay win that came in to really round out the day...

Vida Blue! It's a weird photo choice, but still!

This is an "upgrade" to the 22/25 refractor I already had. Lucky for me the seller botched the listing a bit and I ended up getting this one cheaper than I expected.

There are a total of 76 cards in the 2004 Topps Retired autographs. Of those 12/25 "Christmas Cards" in existence, I've now got 11 of them. That's over 14% of the Christmas Cards in 2004 Retired (which is "the set" my collection is built around, basically). So that's kinda cool!

Thanks for reading and have a great week.

70s progression

I think it was around 2017 when I decided I'd make a run at completing all the Topps flagship sets from the decade of the 70s. Part of my motivation for this was to really open up my wantlist and facilitate trading back when the blogs were boppin'. But then that all slowed down plus the covid boom bumped up vintage prices, and so the "last updated" dates on my setbuild spreadsheets haven't been getting updated as frequently in recent years. But I keep up with them in a "slow and steady wins the race" outlook.

It had been years since I traded with Scott Crawford, and it took us a few months of rounding up cards and dealing with distractions, but we were finally able to swap some cards. Scott stuck to the 70s and helped me sweep the cobwebs from many of those wantlists of mine.

Some popular dudes in the mix here. My 1970 Topps setbuild is up past 55% complete now, though it'd be foolish of me to consider myself over halfway done, as I don't have much out of the biggest cards and high numbers. But yeah, I love to get whatever I can via trades in sort of putting in me a good position for when I'm eventually ready to start targeting a Ryan and Bench down the line. But yeah, I have no doubt that 1970 will be the last Topps set of the decade I finish (if I even ever do), since I've already completed '71 and '73, my '72 set is entering the high number home stretch, and '74-up aren't too tough thanks to being all one series.

My 1975 Topps is tantalizingly close to 90% complete now (89.24%), with 71 cards missing. Some fuzzy corners here, but still happy to add them-- especially stoked to see the Mantle/Aaron when thumbing through the stack. Maybe they'll get upgraded someday, maybe not. Seems the older I get, the less concerned about condition I become. Not like I'm planning on ever selling the set when I finish it, I just want to be able to say I've got a complete set of 1975 Topps. Maybe I'll make a push here in 2024, since it'd be kinda cool to complete it during its "Topps Heritage tribute" year.

Even with this robust lot from Scott, I'm still under halfway with 1976 Topps. Not long ago I nearly tried to negotiate for a complete set from another trader dude who broached its availability to me, though that didn't make it into our finalized deal. But yeah, '76 Topps seems like a set that would make sense to get at once as a set since there aren't much in the way of "big money" cards in there jacking up the price. But for now, I'll keep chipping away at it the classic way.

Similar to '76, my '77 Topps setbuild hasn't quite hit the midway point, but keeps chugging along.

Here we go! 1978 Topps is rounding the corner now, with just 18 cards left (97.52% complete). I should try to scoop up those last few cards sometime soon. Already got the big ones.

Thanks so much, Scott! I really appreciate the cards!

- -o

Tacking onto this trade post a combined shipping eBay order I got in this week that also contained a couple 70s needs.

Here are some old cards of white guys looking off to their right. Roger Craig is the first '57 I've added in a while. Just 79 cards remaining there, but I've been at it for about a decade now. Hey, I might complete it someday.

The Yaz refractor was the card that spurred the purchase. I'm ga-ga about All-Time Fan Favorites refractors (/299) and will snatch them up at the right price-- even if I already have them! A lot of sellers ask a lot for them, even commons, but once in a while a nice star pops up cheap. I don't often blog about them as they come in, but going after the full run of all 442 ATFF refractors is a hobby priority of mine these days and I expect that project to be completed before 1970 Topps, for what it's worth. I also love the shiny Killebrew I found while looking through the seller's other items. It's from 2004 Upper Deck Diamond Collection.

A couple serial-numbered cards of future Hall of Famers. I don't really PC Verlander, but the purple sonar refractor called to me, not having seen that style of shiny card in-hand. Not that I want to encourage the endless amount of parallels these days, but it looks pretty cool. My wife has mentioned having a mild celebrity crush on Justin, so I might display it on the fridge in a magnetic-backed top-loader for her to also enjoy. For the record, I've never been into the swinger scene (despite having a buddy into that during my 20s), but Mrs. Verlander could probably convince me to at least consider it. lol

Finally, I don't go after basketball cards often, but this 1995-96 Finest refractor wasn't listed (priced) as being a refractor, so I grabbed it for just a buck while amassing 8 cards to get the seller's promo special shipping deal. (Basically felt like I was buying the Yaz and getting a few bonus cards thrown in.) Gheorghe Mureșan is a player I recognize because he did that movie with Billy Crystal. I like how the protector film text isn't covering any skin, otherwise I'd be more inclined to peel it.

That'll do it for today. Thanks for reading.

Cards I've Been Sent Recently

Time for me to get around to thanking folks who've sent me cards over the past month or so.

Kicking off with this pair of heavy hitters from a recent trade with a guy who goes by OP. We hammered out a deal that netted me some nice vintage needs, most notably a '64 McCovey and a Thurman Munson rookie. Still crawling along with both these sets, hoping to eventually make it to the finish line, tortoise-style.

- - --o

GCA was nice enough to keep me in mind at a big recent card show he attended and picked up 3 vintage needs from my sidebar wantlist. My 1972 Topps setbuild is down to an even 100 cards remaining.. Ed Brinkman #535 here was the lowest number I still needed (not counting variations), so it's all uphill from here, but there's starting to be a speck of light at the end of the tunnel, at least.

Rod Carew was the biggest name (base card) missing in my '78 Topps setbuild. Now down to a few commons plus Record Breakers for Rose and Reggie. Maybe I'll round up the final 28 cards sometime in 2024.

The '74 WS card was the last of my "gremlin" losses-- Last year I thought I had completed a basic 1974 set, but then realized a few cards had gone missing-- so now I have once again sorta completed 1974 Topps. I still have variations to go after.

Thanks, Greg! I need to find something to return the favor to you.

- - - -o

Daniel Wilson had some Gavins to send my way in a PWE. Thanks for thinking of me, buddy!

He didn't ask me to mention it or anything, but if you're active with YouTube hobby stuff, check him out at his new Cases Loaded account.

- - --o

Padrographs Rod swung by my doorstep recently with a stack of cards for me, mostly Padres and ladies. I hope Juan Soto sticks around in San Diego, but won't be surprised if he doesn't. Love adding a new Manon Rheaume card. The real star of the lot was the Chris Young cardart "mod by Rod" that gave a nice colorblast to a Ginter common. I like it, Rod; keep it up!

- - --o

Crafty use of cards continues with this incredible Card Belt. Bob at Best Bubble arranged for these to be made for a few of his hobby buds and I was lucky enough to get one. 

Great selection of cards with some iconic favorites in there.

I do want to "take 'er out for a spin" as a real belt, but it likely won't be until next summer when it's shorts weather again, as I'd be worried heavy jeans might gnarl it up.

Big thanks, Bob! I'm working on an overdue return for you.

-- - - -o

Finally for today, highlights from a bittersweet mailing of custom minis from Chris at Nachos Grande. I've dug these Munnatawket "2008 Ginter" style custom minis since first being surprised with some way back in 2014 not long after they first started popping up. I was just getting into making customs myself at the time, and they really impressed me and inspired me along my own path of custom card creation. They were expertly crafted by Chris' friend Ryan Rodd, who sadly passed away recently. Chris wanted to honor Ryan's memory by spreading them around and I'm thankful for that, ending up with these eclectic six keepers for my PC and a few others to further scatter about the hobby.

Hey, I scored a numbered parallel! I thought you all might like getting a closer look at the backside. Super cool stuff.

Thank you again, Chris. I don't recall ever personally interacting with Ryan, unfortunately, but I would have loved to compliment him on his work and maybe "talk shop" a bit. Sounds like he was a great guy. Be sure to read Chris' big "Saying Goodbye to an Amazing Human" post if you missed it.