tossing junk dupes (my Julio Franco, Bip Roberts, and Benito Santiago PCs)

My wife recently started her final term of grad school, taking night classes after work twice a week. I've been taking advantage the evenings alone to sprawl cardboard across the living room, specifically doing some long-time-coming sorting of my larger PCs, trying to weed out dupes and tighten up my collection a little. Plus I was home sick today with a case of snot overload and scream sneezes, so I did some more sorting.

Here's my Julio Franco PC:

Part 1: 1983-1990. Sorry this pic is too small to really appreciate the cards, but the purpose is so that I (and potential trading partners) can look at it to see what I've got and what I need.
Notable needs: 1983 Topps Traded, 1985 Fleer, 1986 Topps, 1987 Fleer, 1988 Fleer, 1988 Topps, 1989 Topps. (I shudder to type that I need boring base cards from 1988 and 1989 Topps!)

Part 2: 1991-up. Have I cracked 100 different cards? No!! :( After sorting out a ton of dupes, my count comes to 90 cards. Ten more to go. I'm missing a lot of his later-career cards.. Dude was in the majors till 2007 yet my PC petters out a decade before that. I'm sure most of these base needs can be had for the site-minimum price at places like Just Commons and Sportlots, so maybe next time I place an order at a site like that, I'll pick up a few cards to get me to my goal. But I'll give it some time in case valiant traders out there can send any needs my way.

Dupes destined to be traded/given/thrown away. More on this in a minute.

Next let's do Padres fan favorite Bip Roberts.

Part 1: 1986-1992. Some neat stuff amidst the junk here, like a couple minor league cards, 1987 Fleer Glossy and 1987 Topps Tiffany, also 1991 Topps Desert Shield. Bip's often my go-to guy when I want to go after a relatively-scare type of card from the junk era, as his cards are a lot cheaper than, say, Tony Gwynn or a big star like that.

Part 2: 1993-1995. A 1993 Topps Finest Refractor is the highlight here. I included two 1993 Topps Black Gold cards because one has a noticeably bigger "glow" or whatever you call it around the player.. not sure if it's an actual variation, but I'm hanging onto both to play it safe.

Part 3: 1996-up. Have I reached the magic number? YES!! By my count I'm around 108. My Bip collection is complete. Don't send me no more Bips! Or if you do, please make sure they're not already included in the above photos.

Oh, speaking of junk wax, also today I made a hardcopy custom of this Cal Ripken "fuck face" what-if card I originally posted (digital only at the time) on the blog back in January 2014. It's always been a personal favorite of the silly cards I whipped up, so I figured I'd make a physical copy to spread around. Let me know if you want to buy or trade for one. You may recall I also made a magnet card of this a while back, but this one is a regular card, with a back copying Cal's original 1989 Fleer.

Back to sorting junk, here's my Benito Santiago collection:

Yeah, I didn't bother to photograph this one all spread out. But you can tell I've amassed a pretty huge stack of Benitos. A lot of traders consider me a Padres team collector (though I'm really not!) and well, a Padre semi-star from the junk wax era? You bet the quantity of Benito cards out there is immense, and a good chuck of them find their way to me.
After the dust settled, I had about 130 different cards, and a stack of dupes nearly three times that size. My Benito Santiago collection is complete! Don't send me no more Benitos! Or if you do, don't send me any Padres cards of his.. I mainly only need later-career cards from once he started bouncing around team to team.

Fat stacks of Bip and Benito dupes.

Now, I'm typically not one to throw away cards. Even damaged junk commons give me pause before tossing. If nothing else, I use unwanted/untradable cards for outer layer protection when shipping out cards. But even my stock of those such cards is getting unwieldy and rather than expand to accommodate more junk storage, I've given in and started dumping some (not all!) junk dupes into the recycling bin. I suppose there are options such as trying to find a place to donate them to kids, or putting together a big lot for someone to haul away via Craigslist, maybe they'd even pay you a couple bucks for a big enough lot, but nah, I'm going the easy route by just tossing them, sorry to say. I guess you could look at it from the half-full perspective that throwing away overproduced cards is actually beneficial to the hobby.. somehow.. maybe.

Since this is already a disjointed post (hey, I'm home sick, I get a pass for not being completely coherent or cohesive), here's another card...

I went digging into my Rockies tradables looking to find any Trevor Story cards. The kid is off to a smoking start this season. While I didn't find any autos or parallels or anything cool like that, at least I didn't strike out, coming across this 2014 Topps Pro Debut card.

That's it for me. Take it easy, everybody!