women and children

I haven't really gotten into the blog-posting groove yet here in the first half of 2026, but hey, just finally got the "we're packing your order" email from COMC, so I should have plenty of blog fodder on the way soon.

But for today, here are 3 various eBay pickups to show off.

I've probably got a couple thousand cards in my Guys From Granite minicollection, but this is my first Gal from Granite card. Also pretty sure it's my first MMA autograph. Juliana "Killer" Miller blipped on my radar earlier this year as a pro athlete who attended the same high school as me, and I was happy to discover she had some Leaf cards out there.

This one is #'d 4/6, but of course Leaf does the shtick where they put out a ton of parallels, most of which are low-numbered, so not even a 1/1 is all that big of a deal considering there are a bunch of 1/1s. But yeah, I'm happy with this purple refractor I ended up landing for a good price. Looks like Juliana's record is currently 4-4-0. Wishing her the best of luck with her career of hitting and kicking.

Ladies Night continues with the lovely Ms. Sign Here. Whoops, no, that's model/actress/artist Wrenna Monet and this card was sacrificed as an example to show her where to sign her stack of cards, and somehow it didn't end up in the trash, but rather in my card collection.

And the backside. From a quick googling, she's got a lot more tattoos now. I'm still tentatively planning to build my "Sign Here" minicollection to 9 cards, then I'll stick a fork in it and call it good at a page's worth. This is my 8th such card, so the hunt continues, but the conclusion could come any day now.

Speaking of penultimate cards...

Baby Bo here nearly finishes off my 2005 Topps Pristine Legends frankenset. Funny that Bo originally suited up as catcher in his youth. The Yankees drafted him in the second round of the 1982 draft before he accepted a football scholarship to Auburn instead. Think about that alternate reality where Bo Jackson skipped college football and instead became famous as the Yankees backstop. LOL

I'm building the 140-card set in non-base form.. which means the bulk of my set is refractors, plus several Gold refractors, which are all /65 with a "die cut" deckle edge. Reminiscent of vintage OPC, I could do without the rough edges of the Golds, but whatever. This one has some extra wear at the top, but I'm just happy to be done chasing this card. (The regular refractors of The Early Years subset are numbered to a scant /25, so the Golds are nearly three times as obtainable there, whereas for the rest of the set, the Golds are the tougher parallel.) Now I'm down to one pricey hurdle at the finish line, another Early Years card. That last need also happens to be the last card in the set's checklist, so maybe I'll start a blog series where I slowly feature my Pristine Legends frankenset a few cards at a time, and hopefully I'll have landed that final card by the time I get to the end.

Thanks for stopping by.

Peeling Protective Film (a handwritten post)

 

plain white envel-NOPE

Heads up for users of the online card marketplace Sportlots that "Loot" (seller-specific store credit) now expires after 90 days, and in case you haven't noticed, it's been about 85 days since that policy went into effect. So if you've ever used Sportlots much, you might want to log in and check out your loot account. Click "My Loot" under the "My Account" menu option in the upper left, and you get a list of sellers with whom you've got loot.

I've got a bunch of sellers listed there where I've only got a few cents of credit with them.. not a big deal to lose out on those few cents, but I've also got a couple sellers with over a buck in credit where it might make sense to at least make a small order from them to apply a discount towards so the loot doesn't go to waste.

Oh wait. They don't want you making small orders anymore:

"...Sportlots has implemented a Minimum Value Fee. Orders under $5.00 will incur a $1.50 fee. The $5.00 minimum is calculated by adding the card values, shipping, sales tax (if applicable), and subtracting any applied loot." 

So after adjusting for the Min Value Fee, my loot discount that should have been $1.68 comes to just 18¢. If I added a 5th card, hoping to get out of "under five bucks" territory, the shipping rate from this seller jumps from $1.50 to $4. So yeah, I'm screwed in this scenario. THANKS, Sportlots. Guess I'll just let all that loot disappear. Lame.

Sure, I make big orders on the site sometimes, but I like to place a small Sportlots order every once in a while, in part because it's nice receiving cards in the mail on the regular, you know? A day without cards in the mail is a downer. PWEs trickling in helps keep the non-card-getting days from piling up. 

Sellers can adjust their minimum shipping rates to deal with their transaction fees, so I don't think a minimum value fee is necessary. Hell, some sellers let you know they don't like doing small orders by having their minimum shipping rate be like $6 or more, even for just 1 card. But other sellers like making sales, the more the better, and don't want to just hold out for the occasional large order.

So yeah, just another instance of greed making things worse than they used to be. I know I've been saying it here for a long time, but this year FOR REALS i'm gonna get my for-trade cards logged into TCDB and try to focus more on trading, especially now that COMC and Sportlots have gotten crappier. Let's hope TCDB remains usable for the foreseeable future. I know they've been adding more annoying ads lately as the site owner looks to generate additional revenue, causing some users to grimace, but fingers crossed the site will last a long time before things really go tits up there. (With my luck, the site will be sold to PSA/Fanatics and get gutted the day after I finish logging all the stuff I'm planning on logging, LOL.)

Anyways. on that general topic, my latest TCDB swap netted 3 needs for my Dick Allen PC.

User herkojerko is a prominent Phillies collector on the site who proposed a 3-for-3 card swap, all Phillies, with my return being the above trio of Dick Allen needs. I showed off the Blue Ice parallel of that 2025 Prizm a few posts back, and so now I've got the base card to go with it, plus the 2025 Ginter SP #350 with child. Must've been Phillies dupes for herkojerko. One of the cards I sent his way was one of my Dick Allen dupes, fittingly, and helps him keep place as the #2 (tie) ranked DA collector on the site.

There's your current top 10 leader board. Absolutely fascinating stuff, right? :P

Thanks for the trade, herkojerko.. Good luck with your collection, just don't overtake me on Dick Allen cards, please. ha 

Before wrapping up, I've got another small piece of mail to show, a 1-card (plus a sticker) envelope imported from Japan.

Fun Maggie Simpson sticker along with a signed Royce Lewis card, courtesy of blogger bud Zippy Zappy. Royce seems to be a pretty good ballplayer who'd likely blossom into a star if only he could stay healthy for a while. Cool to add an early autograph of his. And as I said a moment ago, always brightens my day to receive cards in the mail, no matter the quantity. Thanks, Kenny!

TGI Mailday

Got cards in the mail from a few different sources today, helping it shape up into a pretty nice Friday afternoon. Let's whip up a quick post out of 'em.

As mentioned a couple weeks ago in the Tony Clark post, I'm working on a set of 1998 Bowman refractor reprints. Here we see a couple young sluggers from 1990 Bowman, secured from different ebay sellers coincidentally showing up at the same time.

On the topic of refractin' reprints, I've also been working on my ARMS.. Yep, my quest for an Archives Reverse Master Set is still slowly chugging away. I only have 109 cards left to go, which doesn't seem like such a huge number, but it's all autos and relics left, which leads to financial complexity, as I don't need to tell you readers. I'll likely not complete the football portion in my lifetime at current rate of acquisition, but maybe if I focus on the 2 baseball releases...?

TOP PRIORITY alert! 1972 Topps high numbers. I've been racing Crocodile to see who can finish our '72 Topps sets first. I'm down to 22 needs remaining, but I think he's gonna pass me. One of these was from a tcdb trade and the other was a Greg Morris ebay win (the only one of many '72s I bid on from that particular setbreak that I actually ended up with, grrr).

Here's the rest of the TCDb trade. I reached out to user ejholmes76 because I was after the '72 Traded Cardenal he had available, and our trade matching shook out nicely to a PWE swap of cards changing hands, to which he agreed, and that also netted me a '64 need (108 cards left, 81.66% complete on 1964 Topps). The '75s I already had in my set (surprisingly still down to only needing only a Reds team card [Sparky Anderson] but out of spite I haven't bought one yet, choosing to hold my breath until I get one by sheer luck), but I needed this pair of '75 dupes for PCs. (Thanks for the trade, Eric, if you're reading.)

And finally, here's the rest of the Greg Morris spoils: a double blast of Hoyt! I realized the other day that I should make a point of completing his Topps run. Well, the '52 Topps high number rookie card is unlikely to ever grace my collection in non-reprint form, but otherwise this goal is within reach, especially after landing this '62 Topps. Now really just need 1958 Topps and 1960 Topps (An extra '72 Topps for the PC would be nice, but it's a dang high number, so I might be content to "share" with the setbuild because who cares at the end of the day as long as I got one in the greater collectionscape.)

Oh, and the other card is my first 1953 Red Man. Looks good! I don't normally go after oversized pieces such as this, but ya gotta stretch outside your comfort zone for your top PC guys sometimes. And hey, does anyone have a running list of baseball cards where they put eyeliner on the player? You can put this one on it along with Dave Winfield's 1980 Topps plus several of the 3-player prospects at the end of 1979 Topps. Seriously, have you taken a close look at them? It's kinda weird, right? But yeah, whatever. Neat card and nice addition to the Wilhelm PC.

Enjoy the weekend, all!

Johnny two times

I received a PWE from Johnny's Trading Spot the other day, followed up shortly by a second PWE, so let's take a look.

The first envelope was mostly Gavins, highlighted by this shiny Gavin Grahovac "So Money!" auto numbered 1/7 on the back. Looks like Grahovac is still in college, off to a solid start to the 2026 NCAA baseball season at Texas A&M.

Here we've got more Gavins plus a Caminiti. Good stuff. Gavin Lux apparently grew out his beard after leaving Los Angeles. He's with Tampa now.

The second envelope was all Greg Maddux cards. I nearly got surprised by the winnings, but I was reading John's blog where he mentioned I had won the premiere edition of Maddux Monday (the ongoing giveaway of John's plentiful Greg Maddux duplicates), and before I had even finished reading the post, the envelope flopped through my mail slot, right on cue.

I thought it'd be redundant to show all 18 cards since they were all up on Johnny's blog recently, but here are four I picked out to feature. I collected Maddux since my original stint as a young collector, with his Rated Rookie being a highlight of my early collection. His career really blossomed with the Braves, and he'd go on to pitch for my Padres for a couple years as he was winding down his HOF career. A random personal connection is that he reminds me of one of my cousins-- well, my cousin is older and balder now, but back in the day he looked sorta like him, and has a similar sounding voice too.

But anyways, I'm always happy to add to my Greg Maddux PC, and any common dupes can be useful for cardart, so Maddux Mondays are right up my alley.

This contest win comes on the heels of scoring the Hunter Renfroe SSP featured last post, and while it's tempting to try riding that hot streak-- like, how hilarious would it be if I ran the table on Maddux Mondays?! lol-- I should probably give it a week or two before trying to claim more free cards from the cardsphere, and maybe think about running another contest/giveaway of my own one of these days.

Thanks for the cards, John!

Renfroe, Hunted

 
After being the lucky winner of the Diamond King's big serial-numbered lot giveaway last December, I got greedy and spoke up for the Golden Mirror variation he generously put up for grabs the other day. But it had been up for a few hours with no one yoinking it, so I figured it'd be ok for me to raise my hand. Royals fans probably don't think much of Renfroe after he struggled with the team in 2025, getting released in May. 

But I have a big Hunter Renfroe PC, accumulated mostly passively by virtue of him being a hot rookie on my favorite team back during the height of my pack-ripping and blogger-trading days, and he was one of those rookies that Topps went nuts over, with tons of rookie-year cards produced. But yeah, he's a guy I collect and I fondly remember him cranking some big home runs for my Padres back in the late 2010s.

As a nod to Kevin, I thumbed through my Renfroe PC with the intention of picking out 5 highlights to feature on the blog, and well...

 
Over a decade on, I still have a boner soft spot for 2015 Bowman/Bowman Chrome parallels, and had to gather these half dozen together.

A couple solid Panini cards here, with a Draft Picks autograph and a Rated Rookie /10 artist proof.

The last card I picked to show off is a Clearly Authentic rookie auto, obtained in trade with Coffee Matt a few years back, if I recall correctly. 

I've been doing lots of organizing and straightening up in the cardroom lately, and was excited to find the fabric sample book I had misplaced, so don't be surprised to see more funky background in my card photos this year, occasionally spicing up the plain white backdrops. In fact, here are a couple alternate shots of the clear card: 

Doesn't look like Hunter has latched on with another team since Kansas City cut him last season, so that might be all she wrote for his playing career, but here's wishing him the best. Thanks again to Kevin for the giveaway and to you all for stopping by.

a couple cheap cards

I received this Tony Clark card in the mail yesterday, coincidentally the same day he shockingly resigned as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. My understanding is that he was being investigated for financial curiosities, and that investigation revealed naughty emails with his wife's sister, whom he had given a job with the MLBPA. These days, it seems powerful people just "ignore/lie/power-thru" after they get caught doing something they really shouldn't have (*cough* Epstein files *cough*), so good for Tony Clark for showing himself out, I guess.

I don't PC the guy, but rather I'm trying to complete the full set of Bowman refractor reprints from 1998. The insert set is 50 cards, featuring highlights from the original run of vintage Bowman, plus the Topps' revival from '89 through '96 (Bowman Chrome began in 1997, so these inserts are like a greatest hits of their pre-Chrome years.. "Refractors that never were (of base cards that were)" if you will, so to speak). Tony Clark is an odd choice to reprint with the hindsight that he was never a big star, though at that point he had just followed up a third-place ROY campaign in '96 with a solid 1997 that saw him garner some down-ballot MVP votes. He was an All-Star in 2001 and also had an impressive 2005 season, but he only accrued a dozen wins above replacement in his career, all said and done.

Anyways, I've still got a ways to go with this set, but will be bumped past the 50% threshold once my latest COMC order arrives later this spring. But yeah, I've still been hunting down refractor reprints from the late 90s and early 00s, actively building various runs that I'm excited to post about after completion.

I'm reluctant to say this is the final COMC order I'm waiting on, but I've definitely been trying to avoid buying from them since this batch. You'd figured after tripling their shipping rates that they would use that extra money to hire an additional order picker or two, but nope, they seem to be backed up again maybe even worse than they got during the pandemic, with shipping estimates pushed out for several months. The vibe I'm getting isn't "wow, COMC is doing lots of business" but rather "wow, COMC is struggling and folks are rushing to get their cards out before the site owners pull the plug and complete the transition to eBay-consignment account only". But I don't really know. Times are bad everywhere, it seems, as society is sapped of humanity and herded into an AI curated existence whether we like it or not. But back to bitching about online card shops, Sportlots keep updating their site to make it harder to use. That Canadian online card shop folded (I never got around to ordering from them, but they seemed to get positive marks from the bloggers who did). I've tried to get more active trading at TCDb but it's been an uphill slog and my successful transactions there seem to be few and far between. (I've recently finished sorting a monster box with my available Archives/Ginter/Heritage that I plan to enter in my "For Trade" list soon and hope that helps improve my trade-matching.)

Oh, and the USPS has been sucking lately, too. I had a Nolan Ryan reprint refractor show up in the tracking as delivered that I never got. :( And that Tony Clark card that arrived yesterday took 2 whole weeks to get to me from Florida.

And back to that. the eBay seller had a promotional discount offer to entice you to buy more than one card from him, so I took a quick browse of his inventory and found another card that caught my eye at a good price:

This is the 102nd Dick Allen card of mine to be logged at TCDb, and forgive the language but I'm still downright tickled pink to be his #1 ranked collector there, even now a ways into his HOF inclusion, causing him to default into being a guy that Hall of Fame collectors now collect. I figured a more focused supercollector would have knocked me off the top spot by now. But nope, second-place is currently a 3-way tie with 84.

Back to the card, this is a Blue Ice Prizm parallel of Dick Allen's 2025 Panini Prizm card. It's my first of the 33-card rainbow, though I also have a Red Pulsar Prizm and Ruby Wave Prizm pending in that eventual COMC shipment. I didn't remind myself of that fact until after snagging the Blue Ice one, so I got lucky not to double up. I like that the card shows Dick in his later Phillies stint, something you don't see on many of his cards, especially an action shot. On the downside, lawyers have instructed the cardmakers to remove logos and wordmarks from the photo due to the fact that another cardmaker paid a lot of money to have lawyers say that only they can make cards that have those special logos and words. Man, everything bad in this world always boils down to greed. Humans be greedy, put that on our headstone.

LOL, I'm sorry this quick post showing off a 2-card mailday turned into a lot of negative ranting! I just thought it was a crazy coincidence the random Tony Clark card showed up in my mailbox the very day his career took a sudden tumble. 

For a more positive coincidence, I'll mention that this past Monday I was out walking the dog making our way home and I saw what I first figured might be a crow with a big piece of bread in its beak (lots of crows around here), but as it flew closer, it became clear that, no, it was a bald eagle! Came in kinda low but it was quick and I didn't want to take my eyes off it to fiddle with my phone, so no photos. Don't see those very often in my neighborhood, and so to get a bald eagle flyover, on Presidents' Day no less, was a neat experience.

Oh, and another happy thing to mention.. I was supposed to have jury duty today, but thankfully I got an email yesterday saying nevermind I'm not needed. I wouldn't mind being on a jury, but what had me stressed is waking up early enough to get downtown by 8am. I'm a night owl like Night Owl and don't usually get to bed until around/after midnight. But instead of being sleep-deprived waiting to see if I get called in, I got to sleep in and then ramble out a blog post with my morning. So that's cool! :)