I opened an Etsy shop for my quirky cards

I haven't really sold cards (or anything really) for the past few years but after getting laid off last month, I've decided to start up a side hustle selling my fun/weird cards on Etsy.

Debut drop of (15) 1991 Fleer mods available now. Use promo code GRANDOPENING by the end of March for 15% off.

etsy.com/shop/BreakdownCards

I'm trying to figure out the market for these things, so if a price seem high, keep an eye on it because I plan to run good sales on the cards that don't sell after a while. (I got cute with some "uniform-number pricing" among this first batch.) And all purchases include free US shipping plus a surprise bonus custom, so there's that!

Please consider yourself invited to help out your ol' pal Gav and spread the word. Do you have a buddy who is a bigtime player-collector of anyone who appears in 1991 Fleer (or 1991 Fleer Update)? Hey, they might jump at scoring themselves a lightened border of that player from me! Send 'em over my way, why not! :)

In addition to the '91 Fleer mods, I've got lots of cardart/etc ideas to work on and offer in the shop soon.. ranging from "ok, that's a weird idea" to "HOTDAMN,NOWTHAT'SCOOL!" (if I'm able to pull it off, which is always a big if) and everywhere in between. (NOTE: Customs that I print out are still trade-only.. mostly because I don't want to worry about potential legal entanglements. Mods and "cardart" are much less sticky in that regard seeing as those involved in creating the cards have already been paid when the cards were originally brought to market.) Apparently you can sell regular cards on Etsy too, not just the "crafty" ones, so maybe someday I'll start selling normal cards on there too, though I think "feeBay" is still the best option for selling sports cards. I mean, I for one have never searched for baseball cards on Etsy, but I see a lot of creative card/sports folks on Twitter who use Etsy as their online shop for their art cards or coasters made from junkwax wrappers or whatever.

Anyway, thanks as always for reading my cardblog. I promise I won't pimp the shop too much (--always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when a blog gets a little to heavy on the self-promotion or trying to make a buck, and I know I'm not alone on that--), but expect a link in the sidebar and for me to probably mention when I get a new drop of cards added to the shop, which I'm currently shooting to do once a month. When(/if?!) I get another "real job working for the man", my Etsy may likely dry up as I just don't have enough hours in my day for too much stuff thanks in part to owning a high-energy dog.

Anyway..

That link again...

etsy.com/shop/BreakdownCards

Again, use promo code (or this link->) GRANDOPENING for 15% off until end of March 2023.

Thanks for your support!

Cards from Rickey collectors

I received a couple maildays this week that both came from big Rickey Henderson collectors, funny enough, and that's good enough motivation to whip up a post.

I got this shiny relic card from supercollector @rickey939, A.K.A. the Man-cave of Steal Twitter account that shows off sweet Rickeys on the daily. He was one of the few to reach out to me regarding the 1991 Fleer lightened border mods that made the rounds back around Rickey's birthday. I agreed to give him a heads up once I had another Rickey mod available, and when I did, it was a quick turnaround.

He also threw in a few later-career cards which are appreciated to help pump up the PC, as late 90s to early 00s is often underrepresented in my PCs.

Thanks, Kent! Pleasure dealing with you.

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My first Rickey '91F mod from back in December was for friend-to-all-cardbloggers, Fuji. He was nice enough to return the favor and include me in a recent round of mailings to some of his trader buds.

Just what I hope to see whenever opening up a blind batch of cards: vintage needs! Some Cubs-heavy help with my 1976 Topps setbuild plus a sole '75.

Garry Templeton (one of my oldest PCs) and Dave Stieb (one of my newest PCs) are presented in cutting-edge 3-D, while the Brian Giles relic has a bit of mystery staining to spice up the white swatch.

Thanks, Fuji! Great stuff.

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Kind of a short post so far, so maybe some random photos and checking in.

I think this is my first attempt at a jigsaw puzzle since childhood. It's tiny, probably tinier than ideal (phone charger cord for scale). It was fun for a while, working on the tower and the boats.. even the rippling water. But now that I'm down to only sky and trees, it's gotten harder and not much fun so I'll likely give up here. So there's a photograph for posterity before I crumble it back into the box and get rid of it.

We had a dead tree in the backyard that I took out but it turned out it had a little sapling next to it, and I've been kinda trying to look after it these past few months in the hopes it grows into a respectable tree. Glad to see it apparently survived the winter ok-- through the most snow Portland has gotten since I've lived here-- and has some buds popping up.

My attempts at getting a good photo failed, but a couple weeks ago while walking the dog, there were a pair of bald eagles soaring overhead for a few minutes. That was cool. Crazy that I live in a big city like Portland yet I get wild rabbits in my backyard (which are a bit of a nuisance because Ruby seems to think bunny poops are nature's dog treats) and probably not coincidentally, occasional birds of prey in the neighborhood.

In one of my more popular tweets in a while, I pointed out the big shirtless guy lurking in the lower left of the Dwight Evans cards Topps put out in 1988. Just wanted to mention it here so you non-Twitter folks can have it haunt your nightmares as well. lol

A big DIY project I've been spending time on lately is fixing up my attic. The height isn't tall enough to make it into a full-on 2nd story, but still plenty of wasted space that I could take advantage of. The plan is for it to become a little "reading nook" area with some bookshelves and a beanbag chair, as well as a "Cardroom Annex" where I can move stuff to free up space in my cardroom. It's not climate controlled up there, meaning it'll get very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter, so cards from the UV gloss era (prone to bricking) as well as vintage or anything valuable shouldn't be stored there. But my boxed complete sets from the 80s and early 90s should do fine up there (right?). And in the slim chance something bad happens to the cards, oh well, for the most part they're not worth much and I'll still be glad to have the extra space freed up in the cardroom. I bought some big plastic tubs from IKEA to put the cards in to help against moisture and other attic threats (don't want no spider eggs in there, or critters gnawing on the cardboard!). If anyone has experience with storing cards in their attic (or tips for converting an unfinished attic into usable space), feel free to let me know.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Baseball Cards Come from Bo!

He was already probably the cardsphere's most prolific trader these days, but after Bo added his dupes to TCDB, it became even easier for him to identify cards his trade partners could use. He was thinking about putting together a good-sized package for me-- in contrast to our typical PWE swaps-- and emailed lists for guys high atop my priority PCs. I was able to add a few hundred needs thanks to it.

I've gotten more into collecting Harmon Killebrew over the years, with my mindset going from "sure, I'll take his cards" to "yes, give me his cards!" Just a good dude. While I don't stray from standard cardboard too often, I spoke up when Bo said he had some extra bottle caps available from a big lot he acquired.

Here's a closer look "in hand". Not in perfect shape, but still pretty cool. They are different on the reverse, with one being Coke and the other Tab.

I put 'em in a thick top-loader for storing in my PC boxes.

More HOFers here, including a fat stack of George Brett cards I needed. The Hank Aaron record breaker is in rough shape, but hey, a playing-days Hank Aaron that I don't have will always be welcomed in this house. I need it for my '76 Topps setbuild, too, meaning it's still a keeper even if/when I upgrade.

Thanks to this trade, I'll need to update my wantlist because the PCs of guys like Brett, Thome, and Larry Walker have all been pushed well over the 100-card threshold and I suppose I'm still hanging on to my "Hundred Card Club" method of player collecting where I try to convince myself that I'm "done" collecting a player after I get a representative sample of >100 cards, and then I can focus my hobby energy elsewhere, though it can be hard fighting the mindset of "gotta get 'em all!"

This above selection of guys includes some of who I consider my top tier PC priorities, so it's a little embarrassing to realize I'm missing basic "junk" cards like Rod Beck's 1992 Donruss.. not talking about some dumb "missing a period on the back" variation, but just any copy. And Vince Coleman was one of my early biggest PCs circa 1990-91, and so cards like his '90 Topps Record Breaker are a very familiar card to me despite needing it. But I jettisoned that PC during my long hiatus from the hobby, and he was one guy that I was slow to return to collecting as an adult, probably due to the unbecoming stuff near the end of his career. But still gotta be impressed by his freewheelin' Cardinals prime.

Snuck in some active players too, specifically small stacks of Judge and Votto, plus early cards I was missing from current Padre standouts Musgrove, Snell, and Cronenworth. 

I helped Bo thin out some of his many '88 Topps dupes by requesting any popular All-Stars he had available. The plan for these is to make some more "yellow background removed" mods similar to the Gwynn I showed off at the start of the year. So that'll be fun once some of those eventually complete the long process.

Closing out the post with what I was probably most stoked about, the infamous "Hunter S. Thompson" Bruce Bochy minor league card! Had been wanting to add that to the PC for a while, his 2nd earliest card. I've reached the melancholy point where I'm now older than every player in MLB, but at least there are still lifers like Boch and Dusty who have been suiting up since before I was born.

Big thanks, Bo! I'm working on a return that will hopefully hold a candle to this great bunch of cards you kindly rounded up for me.

Have a great weekend, everybody.