Sunday, January 21, 2024

Iced Cards

We're still thawing out from an ice storm here in Portland. Other than 24 hours without internet and a few days without mail delivery, we've gotten by just fine... just cold and a little stir-crazy stuck with a high-energy dog. There are a lot of fallen trees and branches in the neighborhood from the high winds. A house just a block over ended up with a tree sticking out of their roof, apparently getting a little national attention via Reddit.

But yeah, once mail service resumed, I got some cool cards in the mail and so let's make a blog post.


Boom! Here's my first "big card" landed in 2024. Happy to check Albert Pujols off my 2004 Chrome black refractor chase.


Also recently acquired the Ivan Rodriguez. I've only got about 30 of these cards left to go. That'll be nice if I'm able to finish that project, hopefully in the next couple years or so.


The other refractor setbuilding I focus on these days: Topps All-Time Fan Favorite refractors. I finally scored my first of Ripken's three such cards.


Great looking Rod Carew card. The photo was used on the cover of Time magazine's July 18, 1977 issue.

image from Google


I'm not set-collecting ATFF autographs (thankfully for my wallet, the autos are not refractors in those sets), but coincidentally picked up this Garry Templeton auto from 2003 ATFF. He was one of my very first "PC guys" as a kid growing up in San Diego, and while I don't collect him that hard these days, I had been wanting to snag one of these Archives autographs for a while, and finally did so recently. Now I've got both of the Garry Templeton certified autographs Topps has released to date.

-  - - o

A couple posts ago, I talked about Zippy Zappy bequeathing me much of his non-personalized TTM returns from over the years. One personalized card had slipped through in that lot, and I was happy to return it. The generous guy he is, Kenny wanted to send over a PWE for my trouble.


A couple certified autos and a forever stamp, not bad. But the stars of the party were the lovely ladies.


Thanks again, Zippy!

Some wintery pics to close out the post. Thanks for stopping by. Stay warm, everybody.


Here's that house I mentioned at the top of the post. I hope everybody was ok.

Ruby loves walking in this weather even more than she normally loves walks, and she really loves walks. I guess it's the husky in her. She just loves being out in the cold.

10 comments:

  1. Ice storms are no bueno. Good looking dog though.

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  2. I always love seeing leaves/three branches that are still green frozen/almost glazed like in your 3rd to last picture.

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  3. We had our own storm a couple of weeks ago -- all wind tho, but with no power for too long. There were several cases of trees landing on/going through houses, one poor college kid woke up to a giant tree branch coming through the roof of his apt. and landing right on his bed next to him (he was OK).

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  4. Hope things warm up for you guys this week. It's been a little wet here in the Bay Area, but I'm waiting for winter to kick into gear. I'm not asking for any ice storms though... just some rain so we can avoid a drought.

    P.S. That Templeton autograph is really cool. He doesn't have a lot of pack pulled autographs.

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  5. Ice storms are the worst. I love snow and I love going for walks in the snow even more, but I don't like being an inch away from breaking a limb if you dare to venture outside. I was super glad that we didn't lose power like so many other people, although that did mean that I had to work all week.

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  6. Ice storms suck but I do like the post-storm photos.

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  7. Glad you've managed ok. I would take a big snow storm over an ice storm any day. My driveway is currently a layer of an ice from a snow storm followed by rain.

    I love the black refractors. That set all together is going to look amazing.

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  8. Getting to my car after work tonight was less walking and more ice-skating. I can't remember an ice storm ever doing that around here before.

    (I wish those Fan Favorites refractors were just a little cheaper, because boy are they beautiful!)

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  9. Great pickups once you thawed out!

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  10. I've never been on the Reddit before, but if a tree falling through a house is all it takes to get those people worked up, I guess I haven't been missing much.

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