Sunday, February 17, 2013

I've almost made it to the 21st century

To those of you team collectors out there who have updated want lists and organized binders/boxes, I'm just going to say this.

You have my respect. 

I've sorted so many damn cards, and typed out so many damn wants over the past couple weeks, that my eyes just might go blind. 

In the year and a half that I've been blogging, I have been blessed with a more than generous group of traders who have sent me every Blue Jays card imaginable, and some that I could have never imagined existed.  My problem all along has been that I've just lumped everything together, and never bothered to keep them in any sort of order.   What a mistake.

Lately I've been trying to fix that mistake, and have realized that I face a truly monumental task.  One of the blog pages that I've been working on consistently has been the Blue Jays wantlist.  I've been typing out the entire team set year by year, and then slowly removing all the cards that I already own, in order to give potential traders an idea of what I really need.  I finished 3 more years of cards today, and I'm now up to 1999.

I've almost made it to the 21st century.  After typing out 1997-1999 today, I'm not looking forward to it. 

What the hell went on at the end of the 90's?  I couldn't believe the staggering amount of sets that I had to enter.  I can only imagine the hell that I'm going to go through during the early 2000s as well.  Even the last few years should be crazy, even though Topps has had a monopoly on the MLB license. 

Oh well, what can you do but enjoy some more cards that a fellow blogger has sent you.  There's a newer blog out there that has hit the ground running, none other than Zach from the Underdog Card Collector.  Zach has set me a steady diet of Leafs and Jays, which are always welcome here.

Let's countdown the best of what Zach sent, 5-4-3-2-1 style.   Let's begin with 5 vintage Leafs:


The Gary Roberts was actually needed for the 2001-02 Upper Deck Vintage set I'm putting together.  The other 4 go straight into the Maple Leafs box.

Next up, 4 great goalie cards...


Love the over head shot of Potvin from the 94-95 Score Select set on the bottom.  Only a die hard Leaf fan will remember Marcel Cousineau on the upper right.  That's because he only appeared in 15 games for the Leafs in the mid 90's. 

How about 3 cards of one of the greatest Leafs of the past 20 years...Mats Sundin


One of these days I'm going to get some more of those Beehive cards (far right).  Definitely something different, and something I wish that Upper Deck would bring back.

Next up, 2 minis of a pitcher that I still have high hopes for when he comes back from Tommy John surgery, Kyle Drabek.

Even though they are minis, cards that I notoriously have a hard time handling, they still look great.

Finally, 1 serial numbered Blue Jay, one of the members of the Ring of Honor...Roberto Alomar


I've really grown fond of the Triple Threads set, largely because of the serial numbering.  I do like the brown borders on this card however, and even though this card number has already been spoken for, there are 36 other Triple Threads cards that are part of the SNI set. 

Zach, thank you again for the great cards, some more great stuff to add to my two main team collections!!

thanks for reading, Robert

6 comments:

  1. Awesome post, Robert, thank you. The cards look great here, 5-4-3-2-1 style being super stylish.

    You'd mentioned to me, all those weeks ago now, to get organized before fully into the world of blogging. I took your advice seriously. But, not seriously enough! Look, that was at the end of January, the new year hadn't yet come in, and I was still young and dumb. Oh how right you were...!

    Again, thanks for the cool write up.

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  2. Robert, I did that last year with my Rangers, 1972-2011 for most brands. Here's what I did. I went to teamsets4u.com and went year by year for Topps and then Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck and so on and copied and pasted the lists. Now, it's not 100% accurate, but I've found it to be pretty darn close. Every once in awhile I'll get a card from a set that they don't list and that can be frustrating, but it's also like finding a lost treasure. You should check it out at least. If I had to type every set for every year...I might just quit. Let me know what you think of it.

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  3. I'm standing tall on my team collecting stance. There's too much filler, especially in those 1990s sets.

    Plus, I'll be honest, I really dislike some Blue Jays from the late 90s/early 00s.

    Roger Clemens' big dumb frosted tip head comes to mind. Of course, now that I lvoe the current Blue Jays, it gets more difficult - such as my rainbows for 2013 Topps, I am leaving Happster and Lyon off. I just don't want them.

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  4. The early 2000s were a nightmare to get through when I was making my wantlists. Actually the last few years (10-present) isn't that bad, though I have been just keeping up as new products are released!

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  5. Since I collect sets and not teams (I guess I collect teams, just all of them), I probably should have been more organized before I started blogging. But on the other hand, it's forced more to spend more time getting it all together.

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  6. Congratulations. I can only imagine the amount of time that you've put into this project. Every vacation break, I plan on sorting out my collection. And every vacation break I find a reason to avoid sorting the collection. It doesn't help that half of my stuff is sitting at my parents house... 500 miles away. Guess what... I'm on break right now, but instead of sorting... I'm catching up on reading everyone's blogs.

    P.S. Zach is one cool guy!

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