Spring has sprung

I got lucky today.   No, not that way, get your minds out of the gutter.

I had a few bucks left on the weekly budget, and on my trip to Wal Mart today, I picked up a rack pack of Heritage.

I didn't realize what I had on the first trip through the pack, but when checking the card backs to see if I had pulled any SPs, I came across a card #'d ROA-JSP.

Yep, I pulled an auto!!  It also might be the smallest certified auto I've ever seen on a card...

What is cool is that the card back, aside from the card number, is exactly the same as the original 1964 Topps card.  The original was card #71 in case you were wondering.

Any Angels fans wishing to trade for this, I'd be more than happy to hear your offers.

thanks for reading, Robert

Blue Jay Monday: Staying within my limits

Part of the "re-born" vigor I have with the blog is the fact that I'm striving to stay within the budget.

When I first started the blog, I was anal in keeping track of the dollars and cents, probably a little too anal.  The past couple of weeks has been an exercise in maintaining the $30 budget, which for the past 15 months has been pretty "soft".  Card shows like the National, and the Hockey Expos in Toronto found me spending several times the weekly budget, and not giving it a second thought.

Attending big shows like that were good for the collection, and while I budgeted for the extra expenditures that those shows bring, I still was left with a bit of guilt for going above and beyond the stated parameters.

By focusing the past couple of weeks on keeping spending below the $30 limit, I have kept my eBay purchases to zero, while adding cards to the sets I'm working on for 2013, flagship and Heritage.

Thankfully, recent envelopes of goodness from a couple of bloggers have allowed my Blue Jay collection to increase.   First off, everyone's favorite Owl sent me about a dozen Jays, 4 of which I'll show off for you...

A lot of you may recognize the John Mayberry name from the Phillies roster this season, on the left here is his dad, John Mayberry Sr., the first real slugger that I can remember the Jays ever having.  Another jr. appears here, as Joe Coleman Jr played for the Jays in '78 before finishing his 15 year career the next season pitching in SF and Pittsburgh.  Bob Bailor has the distinction of being the first Blue Jay to hit .300 in a season by hitting .310 in 1977.

To go along with the 3 '79 Topps cards, I really enjoyed seeing this card:

Numbered 36/250, this Bowman Chrome blue parallel of Adam Lind is a welcome addition to the Blue Jays collection.

Not to be outdone, Josh from the Royals and Randoms blog sent me a handful of Jays out of the blue as well.  Speaking of serial numbered cards, Josh included a couple for me as well...

Again, neither of these were needed for the SNI set, but still they'll fit well into the Jays collection, which continues to grow.  This next card that Josh sent threw me off a little...

Designed very similar to the 2013 Topps die cut cards, this 2012 Bowman Chrome Legends in the Making die cut is a very cool looking, and confusing card.  No matter, it's still welcome here. 

Gents, thank you both very much for the cards!!  They are really appreciated.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sakic Sunday: Slowly getting my mojo back

It's been about two months for me, but I have the itch again.   The itch to write.   It feels good to have the drive to sit at the keyboard, and get involved in the blog world again.

A big part of that drive is getting my own shit in order.  That's right, you read it correctly.  My shit was out of place...

Part of it was starting to get cleaned up around what we call "the computer room" at my house.  It's still not 100% where I'd like it to be, but it's a helluva lot better than what it was. 

Another part of what's turned me around was starting to get myself back in tune with how I collected in the past.  Putting sets together is the main focus, yes, but also getting back to focusing on my player collection of Joe Sakic.

I started typing the list of Sakic cards I have on a spreadsheet months ago, and got 45 cards deep when the typing stopped.  When I say months, I mean last hockey season months, meaning almost a year went by before I bothered to get that part of my collection organized again.

The procrastination is another thing that I'm striving to get away from, and listing the 200+ Sakic's that I own will definitely be a big part of that.  Another reason I need to do this is to prevent buying cards that I already own during eBay spending sprees. 

Cards such as these three serial #'d favorites of mine:

2003-04 SP Authentic 10th anniversary #SP6.  SP Authentic is likely the one set that I regret not collecting more of over the years, and this card is a good reason why.  The design has always been clean and easy on the eyes, and the short printed rookies are always a great find if you can land one.

The next 2 cards are a little more limited, both have print runs less than 100...

The 2007-08 SP authentic SP notables card on the left is numbered 55/100 was part of a series of Sakic pickups from the Fall Expo last year in Toronto, as was the 2002-03 Atomic Die Cut on the right. 

The serial numbered versions of Sakic cards are one part of my PC that I would like to beef up a bit, looking through the collection I notice that there aren't a whole of these in there.

You may or may not have noticed that there's a tab on the top of the blog now for the Jim Thome PC.  That one was quite easy, only 28 cards total was an easy exercise in typing.  The Sakic PC tab I hope to have up by the end of Tuesday night, it will be a little more difficult what with almost 10x the 28 Thome cards I have to type up.  

It will be done sooner rather than later....

Thanks for reading, Robert

Desperate times bring blasters of Series 1

And the blaster brings mixed feelings to the table.  It was good to open a 10 pack box, largely because I've been sticking to my budget the past 3 weeks (more on that in tomorrow's post), and pack busting before that was pretty dry for a few weeks.

I've read a lot of mixed reviews on the manupatches that come in the series 1 blaster boxes, so I finally decided what the hell, I'll get a blaster for myself and see how lucky/unlucky I am.  Naturally, I wasn't lucky enough to pull a Jays patch, but I do like the look of the one that I pulled.

Come on Matt, smile!!!

I don't know what it is about Matt Holliday, but he just does nothing for me as a baseball fan.  I'm sure that a card of oh, let's say Yadier Molina or Adam Wainwright would have been a better pull (in my opinion), but I'm sure that there's a St. Louis Cardinals fan out there that would enjoy the 2011 WS Champions patch a lot more than I. 

Give me a '92 or '93 WS Champions patch with a Joe Carter or Robbie Alomar on it, and I'd be quite happy myself....

Another reason I chose the blaster is that the baseball card aisle at my local Wal Mart is dry.   Bone dry.  No looseys or racks of Series 1, no Heritage at all (save for the empty box), and the only other cards on the racks were GQ, which I'm doing my best to avoid this year.

Now, I know that I'm out of the norm and prefer to build base sets as the rule rather than the exception to my baseball card experience, but managing to only pull 49 base cards out of 10 packs, well that's just a little hard to swallow.  That for me is the down side of this blaster.

The up side, at least from what I can see, is there are cards that I feel are tradeable.  And trading, or the lack thereof, is maybe why I'm in a bit of a funk.  I've really had no connection to anyone out there.  If I've sent 20 packages/PWE's out to the blogosphere so far in 2013, I'll be shocked. 

The '72 minis aren't something that I'm collecting, but I'm sure that there's someone out there that's interested in them...

There's that Matt Holliday character again...

I know, a bunch of stiffs....

the emeralds still look great, but none of these fit here, so I'm hoping somebody will give them a home...

I'm going to try and get a temporary 2013 traders page up on the blog sometime after the Pirates game this afternoon, so hopefully somebody out there will give me a reason to get to the post office during the next two days (which I have off!!).

Thanks for reading, Robert

The Red, White, Blue, Green, Pink, Slate and Camo that is 2013 Topps

I'm sure that I have probably missed a color or two, but the rainbow that is the 2013 Topps parallel universe is a wide one.

The sad thing is, I like them all.  I've owned a copy of each color save for the pinks, and I think that they work well with the design.

Now, the work begins on obtaining the Jays team sets for some of the colors.  I doubt that obtaining full team sets for the pink, slate and camo parallels are going to be within reach of my wallet, so maybe owning one or two of each of those colors is probably a more realistic target.

On the other hand, Wal Mart blue, Target red, base set white and emerald green are all in my sights.  They are going to be added to the want list today.

I have all but 2 of the base set white cards, and have exactly half of the blue and red parallels.  As far as the greens go, I only have the Colby Rasmus (what is it with me and Colby this year, he seems to be following me around...) so I need 11 more of those.

Here are the blues that I have so far:

Here are the reds:

The only other parallels that I own are the green & slate of Colby Rasmus. 

I'm probably going to pick up some more packs of Series 1 before it's all said and done, so hopefully I'll be able to get a few more cards that will help out with trades as well.

Keeping the want list for Jays cards down to more modern releases seems to be the way to go for me now.  It's just a lot easier to manage, and whenever I want to start looking for older team sets, I can just post my want list for those one by one.

Got any that I need?  Email, comment, both are good....

Thanks for reading, Robert

I had titles aplenty

It's funny how the mind works sometimes.  I try to come up with catchy or creative titles for my blog posts, something that may catch the eye or make people think for a moment. 

Today, I received a simple PWE from Zach over at the Underdog Card Collector blog with a handful of Blue Jays goodness.  Five cards that I enjoyed looking at, and for some strange reason the contents had my mind stirring with post titles immediately.

First, there was the jersey card that made me think of the title "I drive a VW bus", but then everyone might have thought that I'm a hippie stoner trapped in the 60's...

I believe that this is the first Leaf jersey card that I own of a Blue Jay player, and the scan doesn't do the shininess of the card justice.   Love it.

The 2nd title I came up with is regarding the 3 Heritage cards that he sent, including a R.A. Dickey SP.  If you saw the post earlier this week, I showed off another R.A. SP card, so I was going to title this post
 "2 Dickey's are better than one", but then people might think I'm a pervert, or worse yet I may swing for the other side (trust me, I don't).

Finally, the fifth card was a great surprise, it's a Blue Jay that I already own the emerald green parallel of.  I'll let you look at the card first..

I believe that this is the slate (help me out here) parallel that you receive when you send wrappers in to Topps??  I immediately thought of the title "a different colored Colby", but I thought better of it because people may perceive me as racially insensitive, which of course is not the case. 

Now, I also had a title that referenced an acronym for Zach's blog.  I could have called the post "I'm down with the UCC (not the OPP)", but then I looked up the lyrics for the song "O.P.P." and thought I better not go down that road as well.

So you can see, I had titles aplenty for this post, but being sure to be careful and not offend anyone, I just made up a generic, bland, non-eye catching title. 

Zach, thank you for the PWE, it was greatly appreciated!!  Or you could say I was down with it....

thanks for reading, Robert

Hollow

I admit it, I got myself all hyped up for the 2013 Heritage set.  After buying 2 rack packs and 4 looseys on the weekend, I wound up feeling a little more hollow about collecting anything from this year, especially Heritage. 

First off, to give you all a chuckle, those who remember when I first opened some Heritage packs back in March may remember that I found duplicates in each of the first three.  Well, no duplicates in the same pack this time, but the red Target parallels I found in a couple of packs have a lot of familiarity to them....

I'm chuckling to myself while writing this post just looking at these two cards.

I am cursed right now it seems.  Oh well, how about I give you a wrap up of how my Blue Jays team set is coming so far from 2013 Heritage.

11 out of 18 so far, here are the 9 base cards I have so far:

I do have 2 of the 3 SPs, thanks to a couple of generous bloggers, first here is R.A. Dickey, courtesy of Pat from Hot Corner Cards

thanks for the PWE Pat!!

Next up is EE, Edwin Encarnacion, with much thanks to Greg at Night Owl Cards...

Thanks for saving this for me Greg!!

I have posted 2 want lists for 2013 Heritage, first up is the base set, which as you may notice only goes up to #425.  I've decided to not try and complete the insanity that is 75 SPs, and limit my set building to numbers 1-425.  Love the set, just not feeling the $$ chase for all the SPs. 

I've also posted a Blue Jay want list for this years Heritage.  Of the 7 cards I need, there is only one SP left, Jose Reyes.  If you have one that you can spare, let me know and I'll do my best to dig up something for you.


I'm going to be hunting for some want lists around the blogs, I have about 75-100 dupes that I'm sure I can find a good home for. 

I am also going to go for the flagship Topps set as well, but there's no hurry to finish that set this year.  Unlike the past 2 years, I've learned that there will always be cards out there for me to chase from the base set, and rushing to get a want list up isn't necessary. 

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sakic Sunday: Purple = American

I'm not sure exactly what prompted our friends at Score to publish three hockey sets back in 1991-92.  For those of you who may not be in the know, if you had the red version of a Score hockey card back then, it was one of two Canadian versions of the card, and if you had the purple version, you had this:

The purple American card backs were written and English, and had an American flag on the bottom.  One Canadian version was written in French and English, and had both flags on the bottom of the reverse. Upon doing a little more research I learned that there is also a Canadian version written in English only, with just the Canadian flag on the reverse.   I couldn't tell you the last time I remembered seeing a purple Score '91-92 card, and was even more surprised when I realized I didn't have it for my Sakic collection until Trevor from Supporting the Minnow sent it my way. 

Now looking over my collection of Sakic's from back then, it appears that the bilingual version is missing from my collection.  Certainly an affordable one to look for...

Allons-y!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

The last time....

Yes, I'm a little excited this morning, so pardon me if this post is wildly Leaf-centric.  But there's a reason for it....

The last time the Leafs made the playoffs, this guy was a rookie playing on a team known as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (does anyone out there remember when they were called that?)

The last time the Leafs made the playoffs, this guy was 15 years old and playing for a team called the Interlake Lightning.

The last time the Leafs made the playoffs, this guy had 5 more years to wait before he was signed to his first contract by Toronto.

The last time the Leafs made the playoffs this guy was playing Tier 2 hockey in Sweden for HC Orebro 90

The last time that the Leafs played a playoff game, it was this guys 15th birthday...

And this guy knocked them out of the playoffs on that day...

Damn you Roenick....

For those of you who don't know but are curious, the date of the last Leafs playoff game was May 4, 2004.

Damn, 9 years and 2 lockouts later, they're back in.

Leafs Nation is behind you guys!!  Yes, I'm excited dammit, I haven't had anything to cheer for in the last 9 years.

thanks for reading, Robert

I was too quick on the draw

Last week, for those who actually read the blog and not just look at the pictures (harsh, yes I know), you saw that I was able to pick up a pretty nice Mark Fidrych 1977 Topps RC for a decent price.

Well, I was too quick on the draw, because unbeknownst to me, DBN sent me another one this very week!

Not a dime box find, I'm sure!!

I went from having no Fidrych RCs to having two in less than a week.  Great stuff.

In case you were wondering, DBN is what I'm going to call Nick from the Dime Boxes blog from now on.  We are a society of acronyms, and DBN is a heckuva lot easier to type than Dime Box Nick. 

So it shall be written...so it shall be done...

Mind you, that wasn't the only card in the package.  There were several Blue Jays in there, 3 of which got me closer to completing my Blue Jays team set from 2013 Heritage (that is a project that I will be looking into this weekend for sure).  But there were 2 cards that really hit home for me.

Now the 1992 Donruss Triple Play card on the left is a duplicate for me, but still it's a beautiful card.  The card on the right, a 1992 UD checklist featuring Dave Stieb, is a new one for my collection.  I have always enjoyed the checklist cards that UD produced during the early 90's, and the card that shows the fire in Stieb's eyes is no exception. 

What made the 2 cards extra special is what they feature in them, the Skydome in Toronto with the CN Tower in the background. 

Home. 

The 2 World Series Championships in the early 90's.  The dome selling out regularly for the first few years and parading over 4 million fans in there a couple of times (that I know of anyhow). Now I feel like I have to get up to T.O. for a game this year...

Nick, as always, thank you very much!  The package was great.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Craving some pack ripping

In addition to the singles you saw last night on the blog, the weekly budget was also spent on a couple rack packs of 2013 Topps.  The pack ripping junkie in me hadn't opened anything in a few weeks, so on a trip to Wal Mart last weekend, a couple of the big packs came home with me.

As you might well expect, inserts were the story. 

Let's start with what are perennially my favorites, the colored parallels:

No golds, camos or pinks to show off, but at least there's a half dozen blues and a couple of emerald parallels that are up for trade bait.  I would have been really happy to add a couple of the emeralds to the SNI set had they been numbered, alas I am not so lucky this time around.  I will say this, I like how the colors of the "sea turtle" mix with the Wal Mart blue, especially the gold of the Kevin Correia card.  If I was more inclined, I might have chased the blues a bit more this year, but I have too much going on to try and partake of collecting a parallel set right now.   These 8 are up for trade...

These next 3 cards are easily my favorites of the 2 rack packs:

Two more sets that I will not choose to collect, but I still think they look cool none the less.  The Willie Mays die cut was a nice pickup out of the packs, along with the '72 mini of Ted Williams.   I'm sure that there's someone out there that would be interested in these for their collections...

The chasing history inserts are OK, nice and shiny looking.  But they are not my cup of tea...

But I'm sure someone out there may be interested in any or all of these.  Speak now, or forever hold your tongue.

I even got my usual assortment of current and former Blue Jays from the 2 packs as well...

Dickey won his 2nd game for the Jays on Thursday, and seems to be picking up some momentum.  I would like to see if Drabek makes a strong comeback from his 2nd Tommy John surgery and rejoin the rotation sometime this season.

I'm sure you're probably wondering why I bothered with the flagship when buying packs this week.  2 reasons:

1.  Heritage---GONE!!  Empty box of looseys is the only remnant of Heritage on the Wal Mart shelves in town.
2.  Gypsy Queen---I'm cheap!  I just didn't feel like shelling out the $10 for a rack pack of GQ.  I'm just not feeling it for the vintage wanna be this year.  I haven't even had the urge to splurge for one pack of it, and I have a feeling that will stay the same way for the rest of the year.

So for the week, $28 spent on 2 rack packs that netted me some trade bait, and 53 cards to complete the 2001 Fleer Tradition set. 

See anything you want here?  Drop me a line.  I bought a box of 100 PWE's a couple of weeks ago, and still have 97 to use...hint hint

Thanks for reading, Robert

53 cards later, another of the Fab Five goes by the wayside

Torture.  That is what you're going to endure over the next several scans.

Sorry if it helps.

There they are, the final 53 cards of the 2001 Fleer Tradition set.  Why I waited this long to go on Sportlots and purchase them, I'll never know.  It's funny after all these years to look at the "prospects' subset and see which ones they got right and the ones, well....   Rollins, Pierre, Patterson and Eaton all have had varying degrees of success in the majors, while the others not so much.

It was nice to get this set off of the Fab Five list, it had been on there way too long!!  This is also the 24th set I've completed since I started the blog.  I've already added another set to the list, and yes it is another hockey set, this time the 2008-09 OPC set, which is 68 cards (59 of them being SPs) away from completion. 

Hopefully by the time you've read this, I'll have found out that I don't have to serve on a jury. 

Fingers crossed.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Out of touch

29 years ago, for those you that are at or near my age, you may remember a duo that was very popular at the time.  Daryl Hall and John Oates were nearing the end of a decade long run that saw the duo at the top of the pop charts with several hits, including the title of this post Out of Touch.

A brief conversation I had on twitter today with Greg over at the Plaschke, thy Sweater is Argyle blog made me think of the song.  I hadn't taken the time to post the last couple of days, let alone sit in front of a computer at all. 

Greg had inquired about a card that he had sent me, just wanting to make sure it had arrived safely.  I replied that the card did indeed arrive at the old homestead, and this is my apology for not letting him know timely.  My last tweet was of course my usual self-deprecating humor, which contained the following...

"I tend to forget that twitter is a means of communication..LOL"

I use twitter for so much information gathering (sports, sports cards, etc.), that I forget sometimes that I can actually use it to communicate directly with someone, even if it is for something as simple as confirming that I received a package.  Out of touch would be appropriate here as well.

In case you were wondering what Greg graciously sent my way, wait no further.

2012 Blue Jays 1st round draft pick Marcus Stroman is featured on this card from the Leaf Valiant set.  A very nice card, and naturally it made me do a little research.  What popped at me right away?  The fact that there are no 2013 stats.  Why you ask?  Marcus is serving a 50 game suspension for taking a banned substance. 

I have kind of felt out of touch with the blog lately, trying to figure out what I want to do, and how I want to do it.  Missing all of last week, and then the past two evenings, didn't bother me as much as it would have in the past, and that has me a bit worried.  I would say that it's not collecting that has me puzzled (tomorrow's post is evidence of that), it's writing about collecting that hasn't excited me over the past couple of weeks (or maybe months). 

It may be that I'm in an extended funk, which I'm sure one or two people out there may know something about.  Maybe the life span of the blog is winding down, which would coincide with the life span of other interests that I've had over the past 10-15 years.  I'm hoping that the former is true rather than the latter.

Whatever it is, Out of Touch is a very appropriate sentiment for how I've felt lately, and hopefully I'll be able to snap out of it and return to my self-deprecating hobby loving ways.  Believe me, I'm going to try...

Greg, thank you for the card, it is very much appreciated. I hope you're enjoying the Getzlaf!!

So you all don't have to go running off to find the Out of Touch video, I included it for you here, just in case.  Sorry about the leopard suit and cowboy boots....hey, it was the 80's!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

Ten

I've done pretty well with picking up cards here and there towards my '64 Topps set.  At the card show last weekend, outside of the Frank Robinson card I showed you last weekend, I was able to purchase 10 other '64s, including some decent cards of names you'll know as well.

Let's start with the 4 commons

The only name of the 4 that I knew was Chuck Hiller, and that's only because I pulled a '62 buyback card of his from Heritage two years ago.  The others?  Well I needed them...

Next up, a checklist and a short printed high number card.

It's kind of fascinating to see which numbers people actually color in when they did use the checklists for their intended purpose.  After looking at that, I saw some of the names on the front of the card that I still need to acquire.   Roberto Clemente.   Bob Gibson.  Yikes.

Cap Peterson wound up having a very short career, and unfortunately a very short life, dying at the age of 37 in 1980.  Phil Gagliano was the definition of utility player, his 12 seasons in the majors were spent appearing at a minimum of 3 positions each year, with a lot of the seasons showing him playing 4 or 5 positions.  These gents probably should not have been classified as "stars", at least in the baseball sense of the word, in my opinion.  

OK, now let's move on to the names most of you should know....

Both of these cards have some flaws, which is the reason I got them on the cheap.  Don't care though, they are both in the collection now, and are great additions to my set.  Billy Williams only faced 2 pitchers more than he faced Juan Marichal during his HOF career (Gibson, Drysdale), and his numbers vs Marichal were OK.  A .266 average in 124 career ABs with 6 HR and 20 RBI's isn't too shabby, although Marichal has the distinction of being the pitcher that struck out Williams more than any other (22 times)

Finally, we have two more star players, one with a French nickname, and another who has become an announcer that people seem to love to hate.

Rusty Staub (Le Grand Orange) still ranks 13th on the all time games played list with 2951.  Rusty was the model of consistency over his career, never having a really amazing season offensively, but his stats were very steady, finishing his career with 499 doubles and a .279 average with 2716 hits. 

Tim McCarver also had a long career, actually making his major league debut at the age of 17(!) in 1959.  Tim's 21 seasons were spent mostly in the NL (2 very brief seasons in Boston during the mid 70's  being the only break), and his one interesting statistic is that in 1966 as a catcher, he led the senior circuit in triples with 13. 

I'm currently at 48% completion of the 1964 set, and need another 70 cards to reach my goal of 60% complete by the end of the year.  If I can keep finding commons 10 at a time on the cheap, I'm sure I'll be able to accomplish that.

Thanks for reading, Robert

eBay flipped me a bird today

It finally came in, and now I'm down to 5 cards left to complete the 1977 Topps set.

The bird in question?  Mark "the bird" Fidrych:

 

Great card in great condition, a nice addition to the set.  Here are the 5 cards remaining that I need to finish the set:

53     Paul Mitchell

120   Rod Carew

285   Brooks Robinson

478   Rookie Pitchers quad card

656   Ron Guidry

I can smell the set completion post already...

thanks for reading, Robert

Keeping up with the Joneses was not the right idea

You may have noticed that I haven't posted all week.   You may not have noticed.  To be honest, my mood this week wasn't the greatest, and posting on the blog was the last thing that was on my mind.

I've decided to make a few changes on the blog, moving a bit more back to my roots.

Set collecting will be the prime focus of this blog.  I've let myself be too influenced by what I see on other blogs, and have tried to emulate them as best as possible.  "Keeping up with the Joneses" you might call it.

For me, that was not a smart idea.  Trying to be a team collector, for me, is just way too difficult.  I have Blue Jays everywhere, with no hope of ever catching up.  It's not that I don't appreciate what people have sent me, it's just that I've received so much of it (a lot of doubles as well) that the cards are out of control. The time I need to keep up with them all, well it's just not there.

Trying to catch up with a 35 year span of cards all at once was not the brightest idea.  Therefore, the Blue Jays want list has been taken down.  Life will be easier (for me) that way.  Still have Blue Jays you want to send my way?  Let me know what you have before you send them.  I don't want FEMA coming into my house and declaring it a disaster area (although I'm sure that my wife has declared our computer room as such...).

At least there is one thing that I've noticed with all the cards people have sent me over the past while is that there are a lot of great sets out there that I would like to build.   Modern sets, vintage sets, you name it, there is a whole lot of great stuff to collect that will occupy my time. 

Of course, serial numbered insanity will remain a staple of the blog, I still love the idea, and have had cards trickle in constantly, which is always great to see.  However, time has become kind of scarce to keep two blogs going, so I'm toying with the idea of moving everything to this blog and shutting the other down.  I'll let you know how I decide on that one.

Also, the player collections of Joe Sakic and Jim Thome will continue.  I like the fact that I don't have any pressure to add to these parts of my collection, and when I do add pieces like the Sakic below, I enjoy them that much more.

I'm pretty sure that this is the first Sakic card that I own that features him in a Team Canada uniform.  What I didn't know about the serial numbered cards (if not all of them from this set), is that they are as thick as the Cup cards.  A very nice surprise indeed when it arrived at my house this week. 

The set builder in me, however, appreciates cards like this when they arrive in the mail:

thank you Greg!

My '75 Topps set is less than 40 cards from completion, with some big names like Ryan, Aaron (x2) and Rose still to go.  I also have the RCs of Rice and Carter to pick up as well, so I'm sure that the next few card shows I'm able to attend will be spent searching for these. 

Yes, this post kind of rambles and many of you probably tuned out after the 2nd paragraph, but for me it was something that needed to be written. 

I'm still here, but things are going to change in this one horse town.   Hopefully for the better.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Common card of the day: Bill Goldsworthy

1970-71 Topps # 46.  Poor Bill looks as if he's seen a ghost.  Another great addition to my collection from the weekend card show.

thanks for looking, Robert

Sometimes good things come in threes

I had a plan heading into the weekend show.  The one main goal was to complete the 1977 Topps set, you know the one which I only required 9 cards to finish. 

I only managed to pickup 3 of them.  These 3 were cards that could have taken chunks out of my wallet, but thankfully didn't do too much damage.

A couple of solo cards of Hall of Famers, and a team photo with a few Hall of Famers in it as well.  These 3 cards cost me less than 5 bucks total, which is good enough for me.  Only six to go to complete the '77 set, including the Fidrych RC.

Now these next three cards would have been normally well down any card show list, but for some reason they caught my eye, and for $2 they made their way home with me.

Three Leafs cards from the 70-71 Topps set.  I rarely come across anything like this when I hit the monthly card show, but when I saw these I knew I had to have them.  The Gamble is creased quite a bit, and in essence was really a throw in.  The other two are in decent shape and all 3 will add to my Maple Leafs collection quite nicely.

Still a lot more to show off, I'll keep posting them over the next few days for you.

Thanks for reading, Robert