It's been so long I didn't even bother to title the post.

I could being this post with a long preamble about how I haven't posted for the last week and I've been too busy, but we've been there done that.

I could admonish myself for being too busy, too tired or just plain apathetic, but we've been there, done that as well.

So, in order to get a post online, I found one page from the baseball serial numbered set that I scanned weeks ago, and had yet to post.  Page 30 it is!

Card 262:  Andy Laroche,  2007 Topps '52,  #'d 262/552.  Los Angeles Dodgers card #10
Card 263:  Alexei Ramirez, 2009 Topps Triple Threads #'d 263/1350.  Chicago White Sox card #6
Card 264:  Vladimir Guerrero, 2008 Topps Heritage Chrome #264/1959. Los Angeles Angels card #14

Card 265:  Bobby Cramer, 2011 Topps Heritage Chrome #265/1962.  Oakland card #14
Card 266:  Tony Wolters, 2011 Bowman Green #266/450.  Cleveland card #12
Card 267:  Lenny DiNardo, 2007 Topps gold #267/2007.  Oakland card #15

Card 268:  Edinson Volquez, 2007 Topps gold #268/2007.  Texas card #9
Card 269:  Asdrubal Cabrera, 2011 Topps Heritage Chrome #269/1962.  Cleveland card #13
Card 270:  Cole Hamels, 2011 Topps Gypsy Queen #270/999.  Philadelphia card #11 

Favorite card on the page:  Vlad Guerrero.  Love the orange background, that's something you really don't see often on cards.
I also like the Edinson Volquez card.  He's turned himself into a pretty decent journeyman pitcher; it'll be interesting to see how he fares with the Marlins this year.

Thanks to Max from Starting Nine, Johnny from Cards from the Quarry, and Dennis from Too Many Verlanders for helping contribute to this page.  A couple of cards also came from Roger from the long dormant Cool Breeze Baseball Buzz blog. 

That's how long this has been going on....

Thanks for reading, Robert

Inbound and Down #2: Night Owl

There's nothing better than receiving an envelope full of cards out of the blue.  It's great to come in the house look on the dining table and see a big brown mailer that you didn't expect, especially when it comes from the Night Owl, because you know you're getting something good.

Greg hit quite a few want lists, and also added some cards that weren't on a list but were needed none the less.

Can't say that I've ever seen one of the Sportflics style discs, so the recently resigned Jose Bautista was a welcome sight.  I wondered when Greg showed off the snowflake style cards from '16 Topps on his blog a few weeks back if he had pulled any Jays.  Sure enough Russell Martin ends up on my doorstep.  The Jimy (one M) Williams card in the center of the first scan is an OPC from '89, still need lots of those from the 80's!  The Blue Jays Boppers card is another that I hadn't seen previously, from this year's Heritage set.   Nice...

I do remember Greg mentioning on his blog about receiving Shawn Green cards and considering them Jays because when the card on the left came out, Green was a Jays draft pick.  Lucky me, I scored a trio of Green cards, including the jersey on the right, which is the first update to the Jays hits page on my blog since the end of October.  Great stuff....

From the endless Dodgers dupe box, maybe?  No matter, the Charlie Neal card you see here becomes the 333rd card I have for the '59 set.  Still a long way to go for sure, and a lot of big names (and $$) still to purchase, but it's been a labor of love so far.

One of the things I mentioned on my first video blog is that I wanted to complete the 2016 A&G set without buying any more packs.  Well, I'm 44 cards closer now thanks to the great lot of cards you see above.  I wonder if Maria Sharapova or Hannah Storm will end up being the babe of the year for 2016. 
I was kind of disappointed to see Roberto Alomar in a Cleveland Indians uniform, would have been great to have him appear in his Jays #12...

Where Greg finds some of this stuff just amazes me.  This Jays schedule from 1991 was an instant hit for me.  I know I have the '92 schedule he sent me quite a while back somewhere in my collection, so this will complement that nicely.  Do they even make pocket schedules like this anymore?

Greg, what a great envelope, thank you very much!  Everything inside is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Trying to do what I said I was going to do

My New Year's posts in the past have always been heartfelt.  We all want to do what we set out to do at the beginning of the year, right?  I'm not sure what it is about 2017 though, as I seem to be more in tune with my goals than ever before.

This post is my 10th in January, and considering that I was sick and kind of useless for 10 days at the beginning of the month, I'm happy that double digits is coming early. 

Last night I also got a start on putting together a box of cards to send to COMC.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this little clean up is going to work out, and you can be sure that I'll let everyone know how it's going...

The $2K "goal"/"project"/whatever you want to call it is in full swing.  I've posted twice about purchases so far in January, and I'm using the post title to keep track of how much money I have left for the year.   Easy, right?

The contest that I mentioned on my New Year's post didn't get as many entries as I thought (only 10 so far), so I figured that I'd give people one more shot at some cards.  I'm looking to grab some cards for everyone the first part of February, so if you want some cards, leave a comment on the post that I've linked at the beginning of this paragraph.   Otherwise, I'll just give more cards to the people that are already in...

I didn't mention the SNIH project in my New Years goals, but tonight's post will be the leftover cards from my personal collection that I hadn't posted as of now.  There's 4 of them, 3 of them goalies and the 4th a goalie killer (for lack of a better description).

Serial # 269

Loved the Topps Heritage sets that were released back in the early 2000's, I wish Topps had kept up with them...

Serial #408

Their homage to the 66-67 set was right on the money, and maybe someday I'll get around to putting a want list up for it.

Serial #517

The '54-'55 version of Topps was redone in 2000-01, and is another set that I want to complete.  I was lucky enough to pull a Gump Worsley auto from a pack many years back.  What might hold me back from completing the set is that there's several RC's that list for $10 or more.  Maybe sometime down the road I'll shoot for this set, but not just yet.

Serial #531

Everyone say it together now...."his foot was in the crease!!!"  To me, that rule was pretty sketchy at best, although one of my former bosses would disagree as he was a diehard Sabres/Dominik Hasek fan.  Did you know that Brett made a mockery of the BCJHL in the 83-84 season by scoring 105 goals in just 56 games?  Brett also finished 2 spots behind Darren Pang in Calder Trophy voting, which was won in 87-88 by his Calgary teammate Joe Nieuwendyk.

OK, that's all the serial #'d cards from my collection, I just have a few more from Doug I have to post and I'll be caught up!   Now all I have to do is find a couple of binders and start getting these cards into some pages....

thanks for reading, Robert

Inbound & Down: The collector pt. 2

The better part of today so far has been spent:

• Mowing the lawns (Still weird having to mow in January, but such is life)
• Hanging the new curtains in the living room (Had to get rid of those 70's style blinds...yuk)
• Working on cleaning my computer/card room!!

The last bullet point will be my domain exclusively, and I've started by removing an unnecessary shelf in the closet, which will allow me to put a 4 shelf storage rack in the closet to get a lot of clutter out of sight (and probably out of mind).

I decided to take a break by finishing off the trade post I started yesterday.  Chris from The Collector sent me a nice stack of Blue Jays cards to go along with the hockey that I showed off yesterday. 

The best part about these cards is that they hit my want lists.  Each and every one has been marked off.  I'm curious to see how much longer R.A. Dickey lasts.  Phil Niekro pitched until he was 48, Charlie Hough was 46 when he hung them up; Dickey is now 42 and has a lot fewer innings pitched than the others did at 42, so we'll see how it goes.  I'm sure getting out of the homer dome in Toronto will help his cause.

The two lists that Chris put a nice dent into was the 2000 Topps Chrome & Chrome Traded.  A lot of shiny goodness came my way.

All I have to say after collecting the Blue Jays over the past several years is heaven help the person who PC's Carlos Delgado.  I'm sure that I have over 200 different Jays cards of him (at least), and playing all those years for the Mets and Marlins I'm sure that there are quite a lot of cards that feature that swing of his.  There's 4 more on this scan alone!!

The top 6 cards on the final scan take us back to the mid 90's with Olerud, Sprague, Green and Hentgen.  I just added the horizontal cards of the Jays Team picture and Homer Bush so that they wouldn't be left out.

43 more cards off the want list is a great hit, and really appreciated.   Thank you Chris!!

thanks for reading, Robert

Inbound & Down: The collector

A few weeks back I received an email from Chris at the blog The Collector letting me know he had a few cards that were on my want lists.  I sent him a few vintage baseball and hockey cards, and in return I received a super envelope full of cards that hit all kinds of needs.

John Ogrodnick's Detroit Red Wings team leaders card from the 1983-84 OPC set was the sole card from the set, but it reminded me just how much I miss cards such as this.  Companies are so focused on inserts/parallels today that they forget what really worked back in the old days.  Hey Upper Deck, instead of pumping out the same short printed cards of veterans each year in your OPC set, how about team leaders and league leader cards?  Would be fine by me....

A handful of 84-85 OPC cards also came my way, and seeing them reminds me just how big a mistake it was to see my completed set in the past.  It was a different time for me then, and I did need the $$ that it brought, but in hindsight I'm sure I could have found a way out of my difficulties without getting rid of one of the best 1980's hockey sets. 

A Hurricane sighting!!  Eric Staal's Hot Commodities card in the upper right corner finally breaks the ice (bad pun) for Carolina in the SNIH set, as all 30 teams are now represented.  The old and the new titanium cards are also welcome additions, as I have never really bought any of that product over the years.  However, the next scan is indicative of the cards I really like for the SNIH set...

Serial #'s and die cuts = another weakness for me

I love the die cut cards!  Pacific did come up with some good gimmick cards back in the day, especially the Titanium all-star card of Fedorov on the left.  I hope that Doug Weight knows what he's got himself into as coach of the Islanders, because in my opinion they made a mistake in the off-season not resigning their free agents.  To me it destroyed a bit of the chemistry they had, and now they're paying the price as they're going to have to come from the back of the pack to make the playoffs again this year. 

This is the smaller half of the envelope, as tomorrow I'll show off the stack of Blue Jays cards that came in the envelope.  A healthy stack...

Thank you the cards Chris, they really are appreciated!!  Hopefully we'll see some posts from you soon.

Thanks for reading, Robert

I guess they call it Contours for a reason

I've had these 5 cards sitting on my desk for quite a while now.  I received them before the start of the New Year from Doug who keeps churning out posts at the Sportscards from the Dollar Store blog on a daily basis. 

Don't get me wrong here.  I love the look of these cards.  Something a bit different, with the rounded sides and arch at the top of the card.   But boy, was it a bit of an adventure trying to get them to stay straight on the scanner bed...

In the end, I don't think I fared too badly with the final scan.  But boy oh boy, was it tough to settle these down, especially the upper row since I use the top edge of the scanner to line up the cards when I scan.

I love the blue serial numbers and borders (top and bottom).  The word "Contours" is almost impossible to see however, and the Upper Deck logo scanned quite dark.   No matter, as my favorite part of these 5 cards is....I've heard of everyone of these guys! 

The Serial Numbered Insanity set, hockey version, is coming along quite nicely.  I'm up to about 10% now (I've almost got everything scanned and displayed), and all but one of the teams has been represented so far. (Hurricanes, where art thou?)

It's progressing a lot quicker than I thought it would, but that's what is great about the blogosphere.  Just when you think you have it figured out, people start firing stuff at you that you don't expect.

Maybe expect the unexpected should be my thought process going forward.

Thanks for reading, Robert

1904

I had a pretty good time at the monthly card show this past weekend.   I spent a total of $80, 20 of which was on the Brett Hull RC I showed yesterday (which my be counterfeit now, I'll have to do some research and follow up with that--thanks to Coast to Posts for the info).

The other 60 was spent on a lot of other goodies, which I'm going to cram about 90% of them into this post.

A few more Leafs for the collection, including a couple of my favorites past and present, Darryl Sittler and Morgan Rielly.  I'm hoping that Rielly's injury that he suffered tonight isn't serious and he'll be able to come back soon.

I grabbed a couple of star cards from a pair of mid 80's OPC sets on the cheap.  I still have a very long way to go for both of these sets, maybe later this year I'll hunt for some cheap lots on eBay to try and knock the want lists down for both the 84-85 (Francis) and 85-86 (Coffey) sets.

I found a trio of star cards for the 1990 Leaf set that I'm trying to put together.  It seems that the last couple of shows I've attended I managed to snag a Nolan Ryan card or two each time. 

For $4 I was able to snag a '71-72 OPC John Bucyk all star card for that set.  Each of the past couple of shows I've also found a card from this set.  The border is definitely off center, but it's still a nice card with no other flaws, so I just had to pick it up

This was a very happy accident.   I was down to just 3 cards to finish the '73 set, and really didn't go to the show looking for any of them.  While sorting through a box of star cards from the early to mid 70's, I came across this card, and had to stop and look at my phone to see if this was something I needed.  Sure enough, it was, and I now need only 2 cards to finish the '73 set. 

I was able to grab these 6 cards for the '59 set I'm working on, the highlight being the Enos Slaughter card on the lower right which cost me $9. 

Finally, at a table that had a dollar box, I grabbed 11 serial #'d cards for the SNIH set.  If you bought 15 cards out of the box, he charged only $10, so I got these for 66 cents apiece, right around what I normally like to pay for serial #'d cards.  I was excited to get another Tony Esposito card for the set, the classic Butch Goring helmet that he wore for his entire career was also another cool pickup for me.

Let's do the math.  $1984- $80 spent at the show leaves the budget for 2017 down to $1904.  If I did an average spent per day so far, the $2K right now would last me until the 354th day of the year, December 20th.

Let's see how that plays out...

Thanks for reading, Robert

1 down, 2 to go

I mentioned in my New Year's post that the 88-89 O-Pee-Chee set was one of the 3 sets that I wanted to finish in the first quarter of 2017.  I even had it precisely down to picking up the one card I needed, the Brett Hull RC you see above, at the monthly card show.

I did just that on the weekend, and now you're about to see the finished product.  All 264 cards from the "push pin" set, 1988-89 OPC, here for your viewing pleasure.

My favorite card?  Mike Krushelnyski, page 25, dead center.  The airbrush job that OPC did makes him look like he's glowing in the dark. 

Worst spelling mistake?  Page 26.  Mario Marois, bottom center.  OPC spelled his last name "Marios" on the front and back.   Homage to Mr. Lemieux maybe?

I'd forgotten that:

• Charlie Simmer was a Penguin
• Mark Hunter was traded to the Blues and became a 40 goal scorer there before moving to Calgary.
• The Calgary Flames were as great a team as they were on their run to the  '89 Stanley Cup.  There were also Flames players that didn't even have a card in this set (Gary Roberts, Brad McCrimmon and Jiri Hrdina to mention 3)
•  Darren Pang even has a card in this set!

OK, now I've just got to finish the '64 and '73 sets and the first item on my New Year's checklist will be complete.

Anyone have a spare Mike Schmidt RC floating around?

Thanks for reading, Robert