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.

Some photographs I've been meaning to post

I've given the reusable grocery bag full of cards from Rod a first pass, but still have another round or two of sorting before I snap pics of some highlights (lots of good stuff!), but in the meantime, here's a post of photos from the past couple months or so.

I know it's been a long time since Rod last dropped off cards on me.. because back in May he asked if I was going to be around one weekend to receive some cards, but sadly that was the weekend I was out at the coast for a family getaway. And it wasn't until just recently that Rod was finally able to swing by again, and so it was a glorious card-show-comes-to-me type extravaganza several months in the making. But anyways, back in May, I was a little upset with myself that I forgot to take my customary beach photo of my wallet card being dipped into the Pacific Ocean, but at least I grabbed this shot with the water in the background as we were starting the drive home.

Now here's some cute wildlife photography, mostly bunnies and my dog..

This bird spent a few minutes in my Mark Fidrych Memorial Bird Feeder recently, and seemed to really be giving a thoughtful look to the faded '77 Fidrych rookie that graces the feeder, and I had to try grabbing a photo.

I wore my Card Belt the other day, not to brag. :) They're all the rage, with a player wearing one during All-Star Game festivities or something. (Thanks again, Bob!)

The annual free concert in our neighborhood park was a good one this year, with local cover band Covered Structure performing for a solid turnout. I only caught a few songs during a dog walk, but they sounded great. Highlights included "elderly woman behind the counter in a small town" by Pearl Jam and the Fleetwood Mac favorite "Dreams".

Our neighbors across from our backyard aren't coming back, and so an estate sale was held at their house. I didn't go the first 2 days, but I stopped in on the last day. The final-day deal was $20 for whatever you could fit into a paper grocery bag. I got a nice bag full of stuff I can use. No cards/sports stuff, but some crafty stuff that I have cardart plans for. Also some other household stuff and yard stuff and a hanging shelf thing. I grabbed some tea and kitchen stuff, too, along with snapping this above pic. It was cool to see the inside of a house I see the outside of everyday (and to see my house from a new perspective). What's odd is we rarely saw the elderly couple who lived there. They seemed nice enough the rare times we noticed them about, but it must've been a seldom-used second home for them or something. I gotta admit it was nice having a mostly-empty neighboring house. Hopefully whoever moves in there next is cool and quiet. 

Speaking of old people dying, let's squeeze in at least one card photo before ending the post. Sad about Bob Newhart passing, but like I said recently about Willie Mays, I think he got the most out of life that one can get. Score the man a 10/10 in life fullness, right? A few years back (back at the old house) I was hankering a certified autograph of Bob the comedy legend, and ended up settling for this reasonably priced check cut-auto from Leaf with the intention of making a custom overlay for it, though I haven't gotten around to that yet, so here it is with a sparkly background to help it out instead for now. RIP, Mr. Newhart.

Welp, back to sorting the cards from Rod. Thanks for reading!

Zapped by the ghosts of a few hundred Forever stamps

Zippy Zappy is a guy who hit the cardblog scene around the same time as me so I kinda feel like I have a bond with him like we were in the same graduating class or something. I've always loved reading his blog, learning stuff and getting his unique perspective on the hobby. He's been super generous with me, shipping several packages of cards across the country from New York to Portland over the past decade. I try to hit him back so I don't feel too guilty about it, but he's got a narrow focus and makes a priority of keeping a tight collection, limiting my potential for return fire. Thankfully he seems cool with the imbalance.

In a recent post, Kenny was lamenting his lack of storage space and joked about trashing the impressive collection of TTM/IP autographs he built up and logged on his blog over the years. I wasn't sure how serious the threat was, but I let him know I'd be happy to be caretaker of the cards if they need it. I'm fortunate to have a "cardroom" to fill with my collection. And while that room is always very full/messy, things eased ever since I found a secret additional room in my house a couple years ago. (That's a whimsical way of saying I realized I had accessible attic space I could use to store my Junk Wax Era complete sets.) So sure, if a buddy of mine has meaningful cards they reluctantly feel they must part with, I'm happy to help. And from a less noble standpoint, hell yeah I'm always down for free cards, baby!! LOL

A big box arrived yesterday with Zippy's trademark return address shenanigans. Included was the above box with a hefty portion of his through-the-mail-or-in-person autograph collection that I'll be happy to look after, though his accompanying note said I could do whatever with the cards. I'll likely keep them intact for a little while, if not a long while, in case he decides he's ready for them back at some point. The personalized cards were taken out (except one "To Kenny" from Eric Young, Jr.), so hopefully those stayed with him, or will maybe end up with another collectors who goes by the name Kenny.

In the interest of getting this post out ASAP, I'm just showing a few highlights. The majority of the cards are 2012-2016 minor leaguers, so many never went on to become stars, but it's still a kick thumbing through them. Lots of "Oh, I remember that guy!" and "Who?" And sometimes you get a guy who beat the odds like Trea Turner or Aaron Nola. A few big names like Adrian Beltre and Joe Carter in there too.

I remember when Kenny took a go at building a signed set of 1979 Topps, though he didn't dig his heels in with that project for too long. Cool to see the occasional old Topps card of solid players of the past along with the modern cards in the box.

Certified autographs were in there too, some on redeemed redemptions. I don't follow basketball much, but JJ Redick is a pretty nice player to have an autograph of fall in my lap. Michael King just came to the Padres in the Juan Soto trade, so I'll be rooting for him to pitch well for my hometown team.

Star Wars Legos! Looks like a couple complete fighters here with instructions for me to piece together sometime. While I haven't gone hard with Lego as an adult, I loved playing with them as a kid and still have most of them. Lego Masters is a fun show, too.

Wall art and more toys. It was like a second Christmas going through this box. Fun stuff!

Let's close with some non-sport. That's a lot of that purple one! With the addition of these two Stranger Things commemorative patches, I've now got 4 of them. Man, that Megan Fox auto deserves a better photo.. hang on..

There we go! That's a very nice add for my minicollection of women on cardboard.

Thanks again so much, Zippy! If/when you get rooted somewhere with more storage space and start getting a sentimental longing for anything you've given me, please don't be shy to mention it and I'll be more than happy to return the kindness if I'm able.

Random Ruby. To Kenny.

Thanks for reading!

Vottograph

Quick post to show off this Joey Votto auto I scored the other day.

I think it took over a year, but I eventually found a "Christmas (on)Card (auto)" in the price range I was looking for. Now my Joey Votto PC is in a place of "good enough" for my mind, which is always a happy feeling. With some rookies and relics already acquired, the all-important "trifecta" has been achieved.

A Trifecta Pyramid! lol

And it's his 40th birthday today! He celebrated in style with a home run fresh of the IL. Great dude and fun ballplayer.

Here's a partial rainbow of his 2015 Bowman's Best card, just to squeeze a little more refraction into the post.

Thanks for reading and have a great week. 

I'll throw in a couple cute Ruby pics from the other day, as I think Mr. Votto would want it that way.

Vacation Hold Mailday

My #walletcard for 2023-- an '87 Fleer Gwynn-- joined us for our latest family vacation to the Oregon coast for a long weekend. Weather in recent years for the near-annual trip has been mostly overcast and rainy, but not this year, as sunny skies got temps got up into the 90s. That made it nicer down on the beach, but overall it was a bit hotter weekend than ideal.

Anyways, I'm gonna make you scroll through a few of my best photos from the trip, then we'll check out some cool cards and stuff that was waiting for me back home in my held mail.

So yeah, it was a nice vacation overall, though our loveable asshole Ruby gave us a moment of panic when she ran off into town and was briefly "lost" before we tracked her down in a local shop with the help of folks pointing us in the right direction.

Onto the cool stuff that was building up for me at the post office back home while all that was going on.

A Puckett collector proposed a purchase on TCDB for a 2003 Retired base Kirby I had available. I don't like selling, though, and was able to instead work it into a small trade, throwing in 3 more '03 Retired base Twins for the guy netting me this beautiful OPC RC in return. That'll power-up the ol' Kirby PC!

I've been keeping an eye out for 2005 Pristine Legends more lately, slowly kinda thinking about building the refractor set (as if I don't already have enough tough refractor projects in-progress between ATFF, 2004 Chrome black, and Topps Retired autos!). I used to think these "The Legendary Years" cards were inserts in 2005 Topps Pristine until learning 2005 Topps Pristine Legends was a separate product. Scored this sweet Bo Jackson on eBay and the seller kindly tossed in a bonus Bo insert.

Bought my first Beckett magazine since the 90s. Couldn't resist the combo of Mr. Padre on the cover and blog bud Night Owl featured inside. Looking forward to reading through this soon.

Speaking of good dudes named Greg, I swung a trade with Gregory at Nine Pockets and landed some of his incredible exclusives. Quirky customs like this are right up my alley. Love shoehorning my favorite movies and TV shows into my card collection!

The WRIPP (Warhol Rose Infinite Parallels Project) has been a wonderful outlet for my creativity this year, whipping up a bunch of "1/1 parallels" for myself (and also to slowly send off into the world), and it warms my heart to get my first "outsider" additions to the project, with Gregory coming up with a Victorian wallpaper parallel, plus a clever "reverse negative" variation. I'm very happy he hopped on the WRIPP train and I hope more folks follow suit. He says to expect him to cover this WRIPP stuff in an upcoming Nine Pockets post, a blog with new posts published each Sunday like clockwork.

Gotta love the Sadaharu Oh stained glass card Gregory created! I had bought one from him on eBay, but it got some minor damage in transit that sadly detracted from its splendor. But I no longer have to slum it with a less-than-perfect specimen thanks to this replacement upgrade. Such a beautiful card! It's inspired me to add another collecting project to my docket: accumulate a bunch of stained glass type acetate cards, with the goal to end up with a whole "stained glass window" display of various cards. Wouldn't that be cool?!

Ok, that's all I got for now. Thanks for reading.