Bo Jackson PC

I saw "Bo Jackson" trending on Twitter this morning and I'm like, "Oh no, please tell me Bo hasn't been accused of sexual harassment!" And thankfully no, he was just trending because it's his birthday. Whew!

I didn't have a post planned for today, so I whipped out my Bo cards for a quick photoshoot, and will celebrate Bo's 55th by showing off my little PC of his cards.

The clear king of this PC is the 5/5 auto I pulled from a box of Archives Signature last year. I probably should have quit while I was ahead, but I just picked up a box of 2017 Archives Signature among my Black Friday box order (I think it was the "Active Player Edition"). Hopefully my luck with this product continues, though I'm fully expecting to be let down and am kinda regretting that purchase before it even arrives.

Here are some rookie cards. I've also got the complete set of 1986 Donruss The Rookies (featuring Bo) that I've had since I was a kid. I should probably break that up for my PCs at some point.

Here are my football cards of the man. Concerning to me is I know I have another one (an orange Upper Deck college football card). I bet I threw that in with my miscellaneous football cards instead of the player collection. I really only re-opened my Bo PC like a year or two ago. For some reason I didn't collect him when I first returned to the hobby. What a fool I was!

My PC still has a ton of holes, as evidenced by the only 3 cards I have from '88 and '89. I'm sure I had more from the overproduction era in my childhood collection, but lost the bulk of them in the purge when I moved out of state. (Bo showing bunt?!)

Here's '90 through '92. Again, lots of "junk" needs, so if you've got some to dump— yes, even redheaded stepchildren sets such as '90 Donruss, '90 Topps, and '91 Fleer— go ahead and shoot them my way. Turns out I've got a dupe of the iconic FB/BB card, so if any of my trader buds need it, let me know and I'll set it aside for you.

Mid 90s stuff.

Oddballs.

Modern Panini.

And finally, modern Topps.

Still a long way to my standard goal of 100 unique cards of the guy, but no rush, I suppose.
Happy Birthday, Bo!

cards for the meantime

I'm in that anxious waiting period where I have a bunch of posts I want to write, but they're held up waiting on cards, mostly from my big COMC order that's currently being filled.

But for now, here are a few other cards I've gotten in recently. First off is a consolation prize PWE from John Miller. I'm admittedly a bit of a sore loser when I miss out on contests, especially when I give my all and still fall short. So a thoughtful little bonus like this goes a long way to help me quit crying like a baby.

This makes two posts in a row leading off with a vintage Yaz card. Well hey, he is kind of the mascot/poster boy for my blog, or at least his 1966 Topps card is, so it's fine. I recently semi-sorted my Yaz PC, as I mentioned last post, and so I know that this beauty from 1972 Topps is a need for me.

Here are a couple more Yastrzemskis, but I already had these. In fact, I had several of those 1978 cards. I wonder if it was double printed or something, since it seems to be so common. The only Yaz I had more copies of was his 1990 Donruss "here's what the completed puzzle looks like" Diamond King card.

Johnny dropped some more "guys I collect" vintage on me. I just saw that Rose featured on Night Owl's Best Cards of the 70s countdown, so very cool to add it to my collection now.

Big thanks, John! Much appreciated.

- ---o

We've still got some time, so let's also take a quick look at a recent Sportlots PWE.

Snagged a couple SP needs for my 2016 Ginter X quest which is nearly complete thanks mostly to a big trade that I'll be posting about soon. The penny sleeve reflection gave Starlin Castro a funky aura here in my pic.

Since I had room for a couple more cards before the shipping cost would go up, I took a quick look at the seller's other stuff and ended up adding a pair of 18¢ cards for the heck of it: 2011 Finest Adrian Beltre and 2011 Bowman Finest Futures Mike Stanton. I wonder if Giancarlo's cardboard will see a little bump in interest once he gets out of Miami.

That's it for today. Thanks for visiting.

Various vintage variations? Yaz, please.

I was sorting my Yaz PC yesterday, pulling out dupes, and was just about to take out one of these 1969 deckle edge inserts when I noticed one didn't have the facsimile signature. Ooh.. Not a dupe! On closer inspection, the signature is there, just grey and very faint. I was a little perplexed by this and turned to COMC to see if they had variations of this one on there. Looks like the OPC versions have a grey signature instead of blue, but it's not this faint. Plus, the OPC deckles have blank backs, whereas these two...

...both have the standard Topps back. Is this is a "real" variation? Probably just a printing flaw, like the cyan coloring didn't make it onto this particular pressing. Regardless, I'll consider them different in my PC. If Mark Hoyle or anybody else has any info to share on these, please let me know.

As long as I'm turning this discovery into a blog post, I figured I'd add a couple other vintage variations I've stumbled upon recently. And hey, coincidentally, Yaz's Sox are also involved with these other two.

These 1973 Topps team checklists are the same on the front, but feature a minor difference on the back:

The left card has one asterisk at the bottom, while the right card has two. These are a known variation, but they somehow slipped by me when I was compiling my 1973 Topps checklist. I tried to be really "master set" thorough with it, getting all the known variations. So, damn it, I may have to reopen my "completed" 1973 Topps setbuild to hunt down the asterisk variations I'm missing. It won't be a high priority, but just something to try to eventually take care of. Anybody know if all teams have this variation, or just some of them?

I should hopefully be posting a "Joy of a Completed Set" post for 1965 Topps shortly after my latest COMC order arrives. There are only a couple '65 variations that I'm aware of, both checklists, the "Cannizzaro/C.Cannizzaro" variation, and one which has slightly bolder text than its counterpart. But I think I found another "bold text" variation. Take a look and see if you agree:

Seems to me like the one on the bottom has bolder text. I think it's most obvious at "182":

There's some white space between the "2" and the blue border on one, while the other "2" actually crosses the plane into the blue. Not a big deal or anything, just something card collectors like us might find interesting. I'll include it in my set as like an unofficial variation / notable printing variance since I already have it, but I probably wouldn't bother tracking it down if I didn't.

Thanks for stopping by.

Let's add two! 2004 Topps Retired auto additions

Ernie Banks was among the first certified autographs in my card collection thanks to the Nabisco mail-in offer from 1993. But now 24 years later, I've added a nice licensed autograph card, too.

With this gorgous Ernie Banks auto, my top collecting goal of finishing the 2004 Topps Retired Signature Edition autograph set is now just one card away (Hank Aaron). Wow, hard to believe.

My ultimate collecting goal is to complete the set with all refractors (my current setbuild is a mishmash of base autos and refractor autos). While I'd eventually like to pick up a refractor Banks, this one had a reasonable enough buy-it-now to where I'm confident I'd be able to turn a little profit on it if/when I upgrade to a refractor parallel down the line. So no harm picking it up, even if it's ultimately just a placeholder.

And speaking of upgrading to a refractor...

I've had the base version of this Darrell Evans auto for a few years. Very happy to see a refractor pop up recently, and jumped on it even if it was a bit more expensive that I would have liked.

Evans is a guy I kinda collect, to boot. A member of the 400 HR club, he's got a legitimate case for the HOF (and is a Hall of Stats inductee), though never got much respect from voters.

With this, I'm just 19 refractors away from that lofty goal of mine.

After splurging this month with these and some other stuff, including Black Friday shopping and a COMC order, gonna have to reel in the cardboard spending for the rest of the year, but still plenty to blog about.
Thanks for visiting.

bountiful trades for which to be thankful

Here's a Thanksgiving Day trade roundup with some cards friendly folks on the cardsphere have sent my way over the past week or so— and one that was actually sent several months ago but just finally made its way to me recently.

First up is a nice package from Paul from Scribbled Ink, a brand new trade partner for me. My latest trade bait post lured him into getting in touch, and we quickly had our first trade completed. The package took a detour to Honolulu for some reason, but it eventually arrived safely.

Those shiny Topps Fire cards look great, even if overall the product doesn't do much for me. The Hercules mini gets me to halfway complete with the glow-in-the-dark Constellations insert set from 2017 Ginter; 5 down, 5 to go.

Nice Donaldson lot here. As the writing on the penny sleeve indicates, the Bowman card is #'d /499, though you'd never suspect it was a parallel by the looks of it. Guess they ran out of colors for the border, so they just greyed it down a bit. Silly Bowman!

A couple Pucketts, a couple 1980 Topps (wantlist coming soon), plus a footballer and a hockeyer. (huh, apparently "hockeyer" is a real word according to my spellcheck! Gretzky is hockeyer than thou.)

It's a Vladvalanche! I'll bet this lot finally gets me over the 100-card hump with this PC.

Shiny Lindor highlights this trio of hot, young infielders.

Marquis! I've been saying, "I should probably do an update post for my Marquis Mania project one of these days" for the past few years now, but hey, good news! I actually started drafting up such a post the other day. Expect that soon.

And the highlights of Paul's generous package wrap up with a random auto (P-town Tim?!?) and a stack of 2017 Update. I'm not going after that set, but was able to pull out a bunch of keepers.

Big thanks, Paul! Hopefully that was the first of many trades for us. I feel like my return didn't quite measure up to your end, so I'll do my best to balance the scales next time.

-   - - ----o

Next up is my prize from the BFG: Basement Fun Game, run by Matt at Summer of '74.

I lucked out by ending up with a prize of a guy I actually collect, Junior Seau. Sweet! It's an extravagant promo thing that was originally sent by the card manufacturer to a card shop, with an acetate President's Reserve Seau card as the focal point.

Matt threw in a bunch of bonus cards of guys I collect, too. Thanks a lot, man! I should send you a little thank-you soon.

-  - - ---o

And now here's a nice little "just because" PWE from Sport Card Collectors. I was crushed when I lost his big season-long pick-em contest last month after surprisingly making it into the finals. It'll take me a while to recover from that, if I ever truly do. I think it's better to do a few smaller contests rather than one big-ass one— you know, to help spread around the goodies—but I get that that means more money on postage, which sucks.

Lots of shiny here, with 3 Hunter Renfroe cards. Very nice. Thanks, man! I sent you a return PWE; hopefully you need some of them. Do you still have that Clearly Authentic Renfroe? If so, I might have to scrape up something together to swap with you for that.

-  - - ---o

Next up is The Lost Collector hitting me back for a Ty Hensley refractor I ended up with that he needed for his supercollection a while ago.

It'd be great if these 2 guys could return to San Diego someday (Strasburg an SDSU alum, and Trea a Padres draftee). But hey, best of luck to them over in the undrained swamp that is Washington DC.

Some more dudes I collect.

Nothing wrong with a little overproduction-era stuff to bulk up a package. I think I needed some of these, too. The Hojo is a "Rediscover Topps" buyback. While I'm happy to get this, I'm really hoping Topps lays off the buybacks in 2018. Wouldn't that be refreshing?

TLC's package wraps up with a couple autos. Andy Benes seems to be a great TTM signer, though I haven't tried him. This Collector's Choice card looks great. Slap hands!

And of course look at that, a Ty Hensley auto! Fingers crossed that Ty gets healthy and back on his career path to the bigs soon. If/when he does, having this auto will easy the regret of trading that parallel to the Lost Collector. Big thanks!

-     -   - - ---o

Last one. Strap in for this! This one is a wayward PWE that was originally sent way back on April 7th, 2017... but to the wrong person. See Matt from Summer of '74 posted about an item and offered it up for grabs in trade. I was lucky enough to be the first one to comment on the post, calling dibs. But then a couple days later, Matt posted saying he would be soon sending it out to Dayf of Cardboard Junkie fame. I didn't think much of it, just assuming Dave offered a specific/better trade offer to best my vague offer. But it turns out, no, it was just a mixup. Matt can be forgiven, since he was a relatively new cardblogger at the time, and Dayf and Defgav are somewhat similar usernames. Matt eventually realized his mistake after a couple months and made it known. I then contacted Dayf over the summer about it, explaining the situation, and he graciously offered to forward the cards my way. A few months went by with nothing, then I nudged him about it again, and it seems he was under the impression he sent them out, but alas they had hidden themselves in a laptop bag or something. So like 7 months later, the PWE finally made it to its intended recipient!

Another '90 UD Marquis! Always appreciated. Also a Gavin, Stewart Gavin.
But the real highlight...

Prepare to have your mind blow. What you see above is an authentic Warren Spahn autograph. And yes, that's a 2015 Topps Archives card. And yes, Spahn passed away November 24, 2003.

Buuut... h'howww?

Did you figured it out?

Young Matt sent a TTM request to Warren back in the day. Warren went ahead and signed the penny sleeve instead of the card within it. And so, an autographed Warren Spahn penny sleeve was created. And all you have to do to have an "autographed" Warren Spahn card is slip any card into the penny sleeve, as I've done here with the 2015 Archives card. Perhaps one of these days I'll whip up a special custom to reside in the sleeve. But for now, this'll do.

Huge thanks to Matt (and also to Dayf [@CardJunk] for the kind assist). I'll round up some good Brewers or whatnot soon to finally complete this extended trade.

That's it for today. Thanks for reading, everybody. Hope you have/had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Good Morning, Miss Bliss

While I'd rather watch something like Saved By The Bell, I've got a vague familiarity with wrestling thanks to seeing stuff pop up on card blogs and Twitter. Sometimes it sneaks into my card collection, usually in the form of pretty girls. With AJ Lee, for example, I was smitten when I saw a few photos online, and went on to build a decent little PC of her cards without ever seeing her wrestle. AJ retired from action 2 or 3 years back— and not exactly on the best of terms with WWE, as is my understanding— so she hasn't been appearing in new card products. But I think I've found a new active diva to lust after: Alexa Bliss.

Wowsers! I dig the Harley Quinn look.

A few weeks back, I watched a little behind-the-scenes YouTube thing on her life. She was a cheerleader in high school, developed an eating disorder, and then to help battle that, went into competitive bodybuilding, which lead to pro wrestling. Seems like an impressive young woman in addition to her good looks.

With my AJ Lee collection, I had gathered a dozen or so cards before landing an auto. This time, I scoped out an auto first to kick off the PC right off the bat.

I'm really happy with this one. It's on-card (something that seems especially uncommon for WWE cards) and I love the blue border on the classic 1987 Topps design, with the unfamiliar color helping keep it fresh despite Topps' massive overuse of the ol' woodgrain design lately. And the rookie cup is a nice touch.

After landing this card, I checked out a couple of her recent wrestling clips on YouTube. Looks like her character these days is a smack-talking sassy miss thang. That's kind of a bummer. But I guess all stories need a villain. Not everyone can be a cool sweetheart who loves hugging. But I hope Alexa can morph into a good guy at some point and drop the bitch persona. But again, I don't watch wrestling, so what the fuck do I care? As long as she keeps on looking good on her cards, I'll collect them. But hopefully there are more cards with genuine smiles than smirks.

Anyways, if anyone has any Alexa Bliss cards available for trade, I'd likely be interested, so let me know. Thanks for reading and have a great Thanksgiving.