Knocking down the want list a bit

In my quest during the first 90 days of the year to stay away from new product, my goal is to try and win some lots on ebay to put a dent in the larger want lists from the early 80's that I now possess.

I found a couple of 100 card lots from a seller who combined shipping (getting 200 cards shipped for $3.99 these days is good), and I had some fun going through a bunch of cards from the '81 and '85 Topps sets.

Gary Woods had been traded to the Astros by the Jays in December of '78, and had played in 19 games for Houston in 1980, but it appears that Topps still needed to airbrush a helmet onto his head. 

I would not be upset in the least to see the Padres bring back the yellow and brown uniforms that they wore back then.   I had forgotten about the 'locked' SD version of the yellow jersey, but no matter.  They still look great, bring them back San Diego!

The photo might be blurry, but you get the idea.  "Who needs a hat to pitch?" says John Pacella of the Mets. 

Seeing this Glenn Borgmann card made me wonder about the uniforms with the collar that the White Sox sported.  I had thought that they had already made the move to these....

by the time that the '81 season had rolled around.  While the black and white uniforms had that quaint old school feel, I preferred the brighter and more colorful version that Julio Cruz is sporting here on his '85 Topps card.

I had forgotten that the '85 Topps set contained the US Olympic Baseball team members.  It was a surprise to see a half dozen of them in the lot.  The only one of these 6 that I remember is Scott Bankhead, who had a 10 year big league career with 5 teams.  Of course seeing these sent me the reminder that I will eventually have to look for the Mark McGwire USA baseball card, and hopefully not pay too much for it.

I did fairly well with the lots overall, with a little over 20 doubles from the 200 cards.  Not a big deal, as I can use them for traders later on. 

Thanks for reading, Robert

Inbound and Down #33: Torren Up Cards

I recently completed a twitter trade with Kenny (better known as Zippy Zappy) of Torren' Up Cards fame.  I had some cards he needed for his Series 1 UD Hockey build he's working on, and in return he sent me a couple of "packs" of cards (a great idea BTW, thank you Kenny).

Both of the packs had hits, which never happens to me, so I may have to buy some more product from Kenny in the future...

Let's look at the packs, shall we?

Pack 1:

Keeping true to form with real life packs, these are doubles.  Nothing wrong with Blue Jays doubles though, especially when one of them features John Buck's cool Jays mask.

Some early 90's hockey featuring a couple of Leafs defensemen.  I know that I have the Ellett, but I'm not sure about the Pro Set Iafrate AS card.  Will have to hunt to see if I had it already ( I really don't think I do).

One of my favorite hockey sets to rip, MVP is always welcome here.  The Tyler Bozak is the silver signature version, and I'm pretty sure I needed all 3 of these.  Nice!

Some more Jays to round out the pack, including an auto of Jays 2014 draft pick Sean Reid-Foley!  Love getting autos, especially when it's a player that I need to research.   Foley pitched in AA New Hampshire for the Jays last year, winning 10 games with an ERA just above 5.   He's still only 22, so there's still time for him to develop.

What I also loved, and purposely scanned, is the penny sleeve with the price of the card in Japanese Yen (I'm assuming that was the price).  I did the conversion, 150 Japanese Yen is $1.35.  Give it a few years, that may be a steal!!

Pack 2:

More true to life form....doubles

More Leaf needs, including 3 cards from this year's Series 1 UD.  Blue and white never gets old....

I had not seen this card until I pulled it out of the pack.   Love it, one of Bill Barilko's classic photos from the early 50's.  Sadly, a life taken way too young....

Finally, a couple of Auston Matthews cards rounded out pack #2

The UD series 1 Shining Stars insert, and its red parallel brother!!!   I am sadly lacking in Matthews cards, so seeing these brought an instant smile to my face.  I don't plan on moving these anytime soon.

Fantastic envelope Kenny, thank you very much!!  Love the packs idea as well, it was fun getting to open a couple of "packs" while I'm on my 90 day hiatus.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Serial Saturday #17: Pacific? I'm an east coast guy...

Finally getting around to the 2nd part of the great envelope that Dennis from Too Many Verlanders sent my way a week or 2 ago.  With all the serial #'d cards in the envelope to feature, I figured it was a good time to revive the Serial Saturday concept after a 6 month hiatus.

How about a little 2000-01 Crown Royale to start off.  It was pretty difficult to find, and then see the serial #'s on these cards.  If you look very closely, you'll see the serial numbers just above the name plate on the far right side.  The Scott Fankhouser card will count for the Jets as they were originally the Atlanta Thrashers. 

Dennis sent two copies of the Matt Stajan card in the middle, so 1 went to the serial #'d set, and the other goes in the Leafs collection. I think the last time I saw as many players on a card was back in the early 70's, but the Todd Marchant card on the bottom featuring some high traffic in front of the net is a beauty.  It's also hard to see, but the card is a retail ltd. parallel, limited to just 149 copies, and the Marchant version knocks #3 off of the list.

Goalies!!  If anyone asks you at a party what goalie holds the NHL record for the longest shutout streak in history, you can tell them that one of these 4 goalies holds the record.  It's the goalie wearing the winged P, as Brian Boucher holds the modern record at 332 minutes and 1 second (just over 5.5 games for you non-hockey readers). 

Dennis cornered the market on Holo-Gold parallels from the 1999-00 Pacific Paramount set, sending 7 of them my way.  Valery Kamensky is probably the biggest name of the forwards, and it was good to see Sergei Gonchar get a Stanley Cup ring with the Penguins in 08-09, and I don't know about anyone else out there that follows hockey, but I think he merits some consideration for the Hall of Fame.

Finally, a bunch of Pacific Revolution cards from back in 2000-01, featuring one player that is still playing in the NHL 17 years later, that would be Patrick Marleau who is now in Toronto.  I don't know about you, but those Revolution cards are LOUD! 

I counted 32 cards gone from the checklist, which is fantastic.   Thank you very much Dennis, I need to send some Red Wings your way!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

90 days to a slimmer, trimmer want list

2016 Ginter is done!! 

You see all the ads on TV for weight loss.  Almost everyday there's something stating "lose weight with such and such product".

It gets monotonous.  "30 days to a slimmer, trimmer waist line."  Leave me alone and let me get back to my program!!

Recently, I saw a couple of fellow bloggers/twitterers (is that the term for someone who uses twitter?) display their disdain for newer products.  It got me to thinking...

"Do I really need to be starting any new sets when I have a boatload of sets from the past that I want to finish?"

Of course, the answer is no.   But to emphasize my point, I went through all my want lists and decided to add up the number of cards that I have on said want lists just to see how big the number is.

The number??

12,172

Wow, that's an eye opener to say the least.  Twelve thousand, one hundred and seventy two.  Try writing that on a check once or twice (for those of you younger readers, checks are what we used to pay for cards on ebay before PayPal came along).

It's tough to fathom really needing that many cards, isn't it?  Yet, with all the sets I have on my want lists, that's what the total is.  So, like any person that needs to trim a few pounds off their frame, I have decided to try and trim a few cards off of the want list. 

How do I do this you ask?  Go on a diet.   A pack diet.

2 copies, one for set and one for PC.  36 cents.  Thank you Sportlots!

That's one of my overdue resolutions this year, which I'm about to present now:

1.  90 days without buying one new product, or one pack of cards.  What I like about the first 3 months of the year (in non-leap years) is that there is a total of 90 days.  Very easy to remember.  Therefore, until March 31st, I will try to buy no new packs of cards.  Anything I buy has to knock cards off of my want list, or someone else's want list. I started this on January 1st, so by the end of March the goal is to have knocked the want list down by going cold turkey.  I'm sure I'll have the shakes by Valentine's Day.

2.  Clean up the Blue Jays/Maple Leafs collection for good.  I've got the Jays started, which will be the bigger project of the two.  Need to get the bulk of the collection sorted by year for easier entry into the Trading Card Database.  Once I get that done, it's only a matter of time.  The only date I'll set for myself is having it done by the 31st of December at 1159 PM. 

3.  Keep the PC blog rolling.  For those of you who do read my Player PC's blog, don't laugh, but I love doing it.  Yes, it's pretty easy when you think about it, writing 3 or 4 bullet points about a card and the player associated with it.  But, it's done a couple of things for me over the past 2 years.
A)  I've really enjoyed adding cards to my original PCs (Sakic and Thome) and B) I'm actually looking at the cards I've bought in the past, not leaving them sitting collecting dust in binders.

My goal is 400 posts on the PC blog this year.  I've come close each of the first two years.

4.  Five and dime contest.  I plan on running a contest during the 1st quarter of 2018, and I promise I will not punish you by making you write posts consisting of less than 100 words (although some of you did quite well with that!!).  I'll probably shoot for February once I get some credit card debt paid off and have a little bit more $$ to spend on your want lists, so be ready to do some hunting...

5.  The National.  It's in Cleveland this year, and I'm itching to go.  So much so that I thought about booking my vacation today at work.  Sadly, August is in our next fiscal year, so I can't do it yet.  But I plan to be there.  I would really enjoy meeting a blogger or two there as well.  I've not met any of you yet, but would love to do so.  More to come on this as it gets closer.

That's it, only 5 resolutions this year instead of my normal 7.  Less pressure....

Thanks for reading, and have a fabulous 2018!  Robert

2017 in review

OK, there's a lot I want to say in this post, so let's get to it.

2017.  Not a bad year collecting wise.  I made a few decisions on how I want to go forward with my collection.  I also made 7 resolutions at the beginning of last year.  It's funny how things change as the year goes on.

A quick review:

1.  Set completion:  64 Topps, done.  88-89 OPC hockey.  Done.  73 Topps, 2 cards away.  I also mentioned the remainder of the 80's OPC hockey sets, getting them started and want lists on the blog.  That got started, somewhat.  Well, overall this is a B- for me.

2. Video posts.  Have to get back to these....F

3. COMC.  No longer want to sell on there, just don't see the upside in all that maintenance.

4. Jays and Leafs collections, sorted and catalogued.   As the year progressed, I figured out that maintaining a spreadsheet for both of these is both a lot of work and very tedious.  The TCDB is the way to go, and I've got the Jays collection started on there (just over 1000 cards entered).  Looking forward to getting the collection together, finally.  Grade:  Incomplete

5.  100 words, 100 cards contest.   Success!!  Grade:  A

6.  2016 Allen & Ginter completion:  Close, last card is in the mail on its way to me.   A-

7.  $2k.  I did pretty good up until September keeping track of what I spent.  At the end, just like a lot of things that you start at the beginning of the year, it became a bit tedious.  I know that I didn't even spend an average of $30/week, but I did get a good idea of what it will take to go to $40 a week like I thought I would last year.

I also wrote 160 posts, which I am happy with.  My days as an everyday blogger on this blog are gone, but double digit post totals each month is a very attainable goal. 

I'll write my goal post tomorrow, still have to think of how I want to get myself more organized and focused in 2018.

One card rule:

Waiting for the Mattingly card from A&G to arrive (hopefully tomorrow) and this set will be done.  That will be the first set of the year (and maybe the only, more to come on that) for me to list my top 10 cards...

Thanks for reading, and have a great 2018 everyone!!

Robert