Rod keeping me current

A couple weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to get another box of cards from Padrographs Rod on his way home from the monthly card show. From the sounds of it, the show has a drastically different look and feel these days, and not for the better. That's a bummer. Maybe by this time next year it'll be back to its old self?

Anyways, let's rundown some highlights from the box.

Finally got an in-hand look at 2021 Topps. I have no interest in spending money on the stuff, but appreciate the sampling. Cool to score some of my main active PC guys and a few of the hot RCs going into the season.

And some late-calendar 2020 releases that I haven't seen much of.

Padres fan favorites. [Ha, yes, Fernando Tatís, Sr never played for San Diego but he's still become a fan favorite thanks to his genes and fathering.]

Off the beaten path here.

Rod told me he got a few of these 2007 Upper Deck Holiday Inn packs at the show, and was kind enough to throw in a couple unopened for me. Sounds like a good time for a pack rip fix!

Each pack contained a Padres HOF pitcher for me and a goofy Ripken.. awesome!

Thanks again, Rod! Loved going through all the cards and found a bunch of keepers.

Tom Seaver 2003 Retired refractor auto

Here's a big card I recently pulled the trigger on to celebrate my little raise & bonus last month.

Tom Seaver 2003 Topps Retired refractor!

Quality shot of The Franchise smiling with a bat on his shoulder at spring camp in front of some trees and a chain-link fence.

I had a base version of this auto a few years back, but ended up selling it (with the hopes of eventually scoring a refractor to fill the void).

And it's the Christmas Card! So to me this is the equivalent of a superfractor. lol

Always love picking up a new refractor for my Topps Retired collection, especially a legend like Tom Seaver.

cardboard bites

Sometimes when I haven't posted in a few days and want to get a quick post out, I just kinda repeat stuff I've recently tweeted. So here's one of those.

Check out this "cardart" magnet I made using a Vida Blue dupe and remnants of an Upper Deck hologram sticker.

My collection suffered a spill recently when a couple PC boxes got away from me. You hate to see it! Thankfully the only significant damage seemed to be dinged corners of 3 common Jeters that won't haunt me much.

Dick Allen would have celebrated a birthday the other day, but sadly he was called away. The latest pickup for my collection of his is the 1971 O-Pee-Chee card which I've owned a piece of for a while.

I've got like 50 copies of 1989 Upper Deck Tony Gwynn and am sacrificing one for an experiment by putting it up in a sunny spot and seeing how long till there's visible fading. I hope to get it nice and washed out!

I just learned I'm kinda related to a guy who played 84 games in the NFL. That's pretty cool! Yep, my mom's brother's wife's cousin was an offensive lineman for the Packers, '80-86. I'll have to write more about this once I round up a couple of his cards.

Obligatory dog pic. Ruby's chewing on a bone-toy-thing here. She's a big chewer. Loves tearing up cardboard boxes. 10 months old today and still zero cards lost to her.. a stat I'm very proud of! Let's hope for a Ripkenian streak there.

Thanks for stopping by.

Buying Cards I Already Owned [a handwritten post]

 

my "thank you" notes

I usually try to include a little "thanks for the trade" note when I send out return cards to my trader buds. Sometimes it's just on a little piece of blank scratch paper, but sometimes I use custom misprints or the like if I've got something interesting in grabbing distance when I'm packing up the cards.

So just a heads up that if you trade with me and my "thank you" note is a "card" that has writing on back, I don't consider it a "real" custom of mine.. just scratch paper that you won't hurt my feelings if you throw away. But sure, keep it if you wanna. And feel free to request a "real" version of the custom, and once my desktop computer gets fixed (looks like I need to buy a copy of Windows 10 because my Windows 7 on that computer that I use for making customs went kaput), feel free to ask and I'll likely hook you up on our next trade.

Too Many Verlanders recently got such a note on the back of a Frank Drebin. I figured I'd get a post out of a little backstory there.

I recently celebrated the 5-year anniversary at my current place of employment. The slacker that I am, this is easily the longest I've worked at any one company. I recently got a bonus and a raise, and if eBay will do another "eBay Bucks" promo one of these days, I might pull the trigger on some celebratory cardboard. Feels good to be appreciated, yada yada yada

I only mention it because it was at my previous job where I printed out a few "cards" on standard printer paper with the intention of using them for notes, but then I lost interest in that plan and they were cast aside until recently revisiting them when I moved last year.

At first I thought it was cool, but then I started worrying that people might think I was trying to counterfeit cards. But again, these are on regular ol' paper and no one would think they were real in-hand, but still.

I'd feel bad about these going to waste, so I recently started cutting them into card-sized pieces. So if you trade with me sometime in 2021, heads up you might get a bonus "card" printout along for the ride.. with a little note on the back.

Again, just a fun bonus, don't feel like you need to hang onto them.

The worst is when I use a rejected custom where my printer crapped out and the blogger is like "look at this bonus custom Gavin sent me!" and I'm thinking like... "No! That's a reject! Just a note! My customs are usually better looking than that!" LOL

So yeah, just for the record my thank you notes shouldn't be treated like real cards, but I guess that's up to everyone to decide what's worth keeping.

Me? I appreciate thank you notes with trades, but I'm not one of those traders who keeps them. (though I do save [collect] "blogger cards" and more recently also "blogger business cards".) I admit I have a hard time throwing away greeting cards from loved ones. Like when my mom sends me a birthday card, I wrestle with hanging onto it or not. 

Hey, I cherish this card I got from my Aunt Karen around the time I moved up to Portland. I digitalized a bunch of old family photos (so I wouldn't have to move them) and sent DVD copies to the family, and this was a thank-you she sent me.

She's currently battling pancreatic cancer, so it'd be nice if you could send her your prayers / good thoughts. Despite the name "Karen" becoming a bad word in recent years, she's a wonderful person!

Howabout you guys, do you save all greeting cards you get? Maybe just a few special ones? Or do they all end up in the trash?

Card show adjacent

I got covid-19 vaccinated today (1 of 2) with a leftover dose that might've gotten thrown out otherwise. The story there is my mother-in-law is a recently retired medical professional who has been volunteering at vaccinating events. My wife and I were totally fine waiting till whenever, but her mom was really pushing to get us on the stand-by list for any leftover doses. We got a call in the late afternoon letting us know that there were some spots open if we could get our butts down to the place ASAP, and knowing that her mother wouldn't let it go until we finally got it, we hopped in the car and headed down. Everything was winding down for the day by the time we got there. I'm not great with needles, but the whole process was completely painless and I thought the guy was joking when he said he was done, as I was expecting a nasty pinch that never came. (My arm might be sore tomorrow, but it's fine at the moment.) We heard them say they still had like 9 doses left after us, and I only saw like 2 or 3 other people bringing up the rear behind us, so I'm glad we didn't take a dose away from any more deserving folks, rather we just took doses that would've been wasted otherwise because the stuff doesn't have a very long shelf life and wouldn't be usable tomorrow.

Now we just gotta wait a month to get the 2nd shot and we should be good. After that, I think I'll be confident enough to venture back to the card show for the first time in a year. From what I hear, Portland's monthly card show has been as packed as ever lately and great bargains are getting harder to find thanks to the sportscard bubble pumped so big these days. So I might have to be a bit more restrained with my purchases, but the lure of thumbing through fresh cards again is strong. My wife is more excited about returning to the gym again.

Oh, anyways, when I came home, I opened a package of cards from fellow Portland-based card collector Kenneth of the blog Cardboard Hogs (which is active again after being dormant for a while and you should be sure to check it out if you haven't recently).

Ken attended the little blogger meet-up I helped organize a few years back and it's cool bumping into him at the card show once in a while. I feel bad that he had to pay postage to mail this recent package rather than a free hand-off at a show, but hopefully we're running into each other again in person soon.

Stamps and stickers?! Impressive.

Nice bunch of Gavins here, especially the bottom two, both new to me. I have a ton of pre-rookie Gavin Lux cards but almost no rookie cards of his, probably because I didn't buy much 2020 cards (or trade that much last year either)... so this one is extra appreciated.

An assortment of Padres plus a Hoyt.

And finally, some '75s for my setbuild. Nice! J.R. Richard was a need and the others are upgrades. I've become a bit disheartened about vintage setbuilding recently (think I'm gonna have to pull the plug on my short-lived run at 1959 Topps, for example, as unless there's a big bubble burst coming up, the likes of the Mantle and Bob Gibson's RC might be too much of a financial commitment for me to sign up for under current prices).. but at least '74 and '75 Topps shouldn't be too hard to wrap up one of these days. Ninety-six 1975 cards remaining for me, and I've got both big rookies already.

Thanks again, Ken! Much appreciated. I'll try to round up a return for you soon.

Snow Day

 
Ruby's first snow day! This is probably the best out of the many photos I snapped of her today.

I wanted to get another post out after last posting in a bad mood. I'm doing ok now.. was just having a bit of the ol' "baseball card breakdown" that gives this blog its name. lol. (and also stress from work and the other dumb stuff weighing on me.) Thanks for all the well wishes.. You all are the best!

Let's pull a couple cards off the "To be posted" stack to take a look at. I've got a lot of stuff in that stack, but most of it is just waiting for me to muster up the drive to tackle the stuff that'll be time-consuming to write about. A lot of these cards I feel so strongly about that I don't want to half-ass a post for them, but then I just keep putting it off because lately it's hard for me to find the energy needed to put into a big post like that. But here are some cards that I don't have too much to say about!

But first, a baseball trivia question for ya... 

Only two outfielders have won a Gold Glove in their final season. One is Roberto Clemente. Who is the other?

this guy...

Maybe you remember a few months back when I posted my Alex Gordon PC and lamented the fact that the only auto I had of his was an unlicensed stickergraph and that I wanted to score a better one someday? Well, I did! I got this early Bowman Chrome refractor auto. Love it! This is his first Bowman auto, even if it doesn't carry the 1st Bowman designation (I guess he had a base card in 2006 Bowman, but this auto is from 2006 Bowman Chrome?)

21/500. Nice cherry on top of my little Gordon collection.

Wally Joyner doesn't have many autographs featuring him from his Padres days. I liked him well enough during his stint in San Diego and figured I'd score a cool card to commemorate it. Don't mind an excuse to add another framed Ginter mini to my collection. They're adorable.

I bought this Ted Simmons 2013 Panini Golden Age auto way back in the carefree days of January 2020 but just never got around to posting about it. I suppose I don't have to post about every card I add to my collection, but there's something procedural about doing so that I appreciate. Simmons has surprisingly few certified autographs on the market for a guy of his stature (fan favorite, recent HOF veterans committee inductee). I thought this was the best looking of his couple autos available. The catchers gear picture mitigates it being unlicensed. Was it Jon (Penny Sleeves) who was working on this auto checklist? I think it's a great design. Great to get Simba representing in my collection with a sharp auto.

Let's close out the post with my first wallet card photo of the year. Looks like I'll be spending my 3-day weekend relaxing at home. Stay warm, guys!