Vacation Hold Mailday

My #walletcard for 2023-- an '87 Fleer Gwynn-- joined us for our latest family vacation to the Oregon coast for a long weekend. Weather in recent years for the near-annual trip has been mostly overcast and rainy, but not this year, as sunny skies got temps got up into the 90s. That made it nicer down on the beach, but overall it was a bit hotter weekend than ideal.

Anyways, I'm gonna make you scroll through a few of my best photos from the trip, then we'll check out some cool cards and stuff that was waiting for me back home in my held mail.

So yeah, it was a nice vacation overall, though our loveable asshole Ruby gave us a moment of panic when she ran off into town and was briefly "lost" before we tracked her down in a local shop with the help of folks pointing us in the right direction.

Onto the cool stuff that was building up for me at the post office back home while all that was going on.

A Puckett collector proposed a purchase on TCDB for a 2003 Retired base Kirby I had available. I don't like selling, though, and was able to instead work it into a small trade, throwing in 3 more '03 Retired base Twins for the guy netting me this beautiful OPC RC in return. That'll power-up the ol' Kirby PC!

I've been keeping an eye out for 2005 Pristine Legends more lately, slowly kinda thinking about building the refractor set (as if I don't already have enough tough refractor projects in-progress between ATFF, 2004 Chrome black, and Topps Retired autos!). I used to think these "The Legendary Years" cards were inserts in 2005 Topps Pristine until learning 2005 Topps Pristine Legends was a separate product. Scored this sweet Bo Jackson on eBay and the seller kindly tossed in a bonus Bo insert.

Bought my first Beckett magazine since the 90s. Couldn't resist the combo of Mr. Padre on the cover and blog bud Night Owl featured inside. Looking forward to reading through this soon.

Speaking of good dudes named Greg, I swung a trade with Gregory at Nine Pockets and landed some of his incredible exclusives. Quirky customs like this are right up my alley. Love shoehorning my favorite movies and TV shows into my card collection!

The WRIPP (Warhol Rose Infinite Parallels Project) has been a wonderful outlet for my creativity this year, whipping up a bunch of "1/1 parallels" for myself (and also to slowly send off into the world), and it warms my heart to get my first "outsider" additions to the project, with Gregory coming up with a Victorian wallpaper parallel, plus a clever "reverse negative" variation. I'm very happy he hopped on the WRIPP train and I hope more folks follow suit. He says to expect him to cover this WRIPP stuff in an upcoming Nine Pockets post, a blog with new posts published each Sunday like clockwork.

Gotta love the Sadaharu Oh stained glass card Gregory created! I had bought one from him on eBay, but it got some minor damage in transit that sadly detracted from its splendor. But I no longer have to slum it with a less-than-perfect specimen thanks to this replacement upgrade. Such a beautiful card! It's inspired me to add another collecting project to my docket: accumulate a bunch of stained glass type acetate cards, with the goal to end up with a whole "stained glass window" display of various cards. Wouldn't that be cool?!

Ok, that's all I got for now. Thanks for reading.