untitled p0st for Oct 10, 2020

Here's a peek at my card room today. I'm not proud of this cluster-kerfuffle. And the other walls in the room aren't really any better. 

I'm moving in a few days. 

Oh man, it's gonna sucks transporting all this stuff. At least the new place is less than 5 minutes away. I'll just take a lot of trips, I guess.

I was thinking my new card room was gonna be a little smaller, though my wife said she thinks the new one is bigger. I don't remember it much. I've only been inside the new house once so far, over a month ago back when we first looked at it. The market is so competitive here right now that you can't pussyfoot around if you want to buy a house. Excited to get the keys soon and finally start moving in.

Anyways, I hope the new room won't get so messy. When we first moved into this current house, I hadn't quite gone so hard back into card collecting yet. There was the thought when we moved in that the room would be like my "music room" where I'd get Fiberoctopus going again and work on some tunes. But I just found myself turning to cards in my spare time, not picking up my instruments. But yeah, that room has really gotten away from me with all the cards n' crap over the past 7 years. A semi-fresh start should be good.

Tradeathon cards from Wes! I'm not a big football collector, but I've got some favorites like Walter Payton, so I pounced when Wes offered that PSA'd '78. I don't really know of the player David Grayson, but jumped at that one because of my recent infatuation with old Kellogg's cards. I've got a bunch of Kellogg's baseball cards, but this is my first football one, not to mention my first graded Kellogg's card. Pretty neat. Also called dibs on the yellow Soto rookie cup, Gwynn pinstripe, and Padres triple relic with a trio of past Padres pitching greats (wish we could have had some guys like that in 2020 on the mound against the Dodgers in that last series. Oh well, waitin' till next year. Go Braves.) Great package all around thanks to the Pancake King.

Big thanks, Wes! I hope I don't make you wait too long for the return your way.

Back to old house stuff, here's my glow-in-the-dark shelf as it stands before the inevitable clear-out. Everything here glows in the dark at least in part. I hope I find a good shelf to fill up with glowing stuff somewhere in the new house to keep that project alive and growing.

Happy Halloween-time.

Speaking of different glowing colors, check out this new card I got recently.....

This is an 1997 Oddbodz from Australia.. it's actually a "Combo Glo" parallel that includes two glowing colors.

Cool!

In my previous post I mentioned I loved cards with "hidden" glowing parts, and the cards that Farley's distributed with their pouches of Dinosaurs fruit snacks in 1993 are an excellent example of that. 

Skeleton! 

I recently tracked down 3 of the 4 cards. Just need the Brontosaurus.

Today my dog Ruby turned the big "Five Mo.".. 5 months old, that is. Here's a video of her getting a bellyrub out in the backyard the other day. There wasn't any sound because my phone's broken, so I put a short song over it that I made back in 2007 that happened to be about the same length. (I ran that "big five mo" joke by my wife and she said it wasn't as funny as I thought it was, but I'm using it anyways, lol) 

Turning cards into songs + CONTEST!

Two of my favorite free-time activities are card collecting and music making. In recent years, I've been gravitating more towards cards, and neglecting my instruments. So I got this idea to combine my two main hobbies and rekindle some creativity for me on the musical side.

Basically the idea is taking a baseball card and putting it to music.

I'm a very amateur musician, so don't be expecting any awesome, epic rock operas or anything along those lines. In fact, most of these will be simple 1- or 2-minute ditties with me reading the little write-up on the back of the card. I'll do my best to make them sound different from song to song, so even if one isn't to your musical taste, you might still like a different one.

Let's kick out the jams starting with one of my favorite cards ever, one that I'm attempting to collect an entire binderful of: Marquis Grissom 1990 Upper Deck.

Here it is, "Marquis Grissom 1990 Upper Deck (The Song)"

Sure, it's rough and sloppy, but in my defense I'm playing every instrument and doing all the vocals.

So there you go, baseball cards turned into songs. A fun songwriting/recording exercise, melding two of my hobbies into one. Every once in a while I'll post up a song on the blog for you guys to listen to if you want. It would also be greatly appreciated if you could show some social media support (Fiberoctopus is the name I record under) by following on Twitter, liking on Facebook, and/or subscribing on YouTube. I know it's not great, but be a pal and throw me a bone!

[UPDATE: the contest is now closed.]

In fact, screw it, I'm not above resorting to contest! bribery to give a helping hand in expanding my "fanbase" a little. Hey, I understand your time is valuable so I'm giving you some extra motivation to take the few seconds to click a link then click on "Follow", "Like", and/or "Subscribe".

So yeah, let's have ourselves a contest. I've restocked my prize pool with a few available autos.

Mike Cuellar, Bobby Richardson, Maury Wills, Rob Dibble, Tony Armas, Luis Tiant, Jesse Orosco, Al Hrabosky, Bruce Sutter, Bobby Grich, Greg Luzinski, Tony Fernandez.

HOW TO ENTER

For a shot at winning your choice of any two (2) of the above lots of your choice, just help out Fiberoctopus by following on Twitter, liking on Facebook, and/or subscribing on YouTube, then leave a comment on this post. You don't have to follow on all three places, but at least one, please. If you are not registered on any of those sites, I will also accept if you carve "Fiberoctopus Rocks!" on your cave wall using primitive tools you've crafted from stone and mammoth bone.

And don't worry, I only post as Fiberoctopus like once a week (I usually share a new song every Friday, and that's it), so I won't be clogging up your feed.

Bonus magnet cards! The other day I showed off some cool custom magnet cards. I'll be offering a few of these as bonus prizes.

First of all, the Grand Prize winner can pick two (2) bonus magnets to be included along with his or her two selected auto cards.

The winner can also earn additional magnets thrown in by accomplishing any of these goals prior to winning:
1 bonus magnet card = "The Trifecta" of following on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
1 bonus magnet card = Pimp the contest on your blog (It doesn't have to be it's own post; just a little "P.S. check out this contest" link is fine.)
1 bonus magnet card = Tweet or retweet to pimp the contest

If you go "all in" and complete the 3 goals above, let me know in the comments and after the Grand Prize winner is crowned, I'll do a separate side drawing for these determined individuals wherein the winner will be able to chose two (2) magnet cards.

If the person who happens to win the Grand Prize went "all in" and did all the above, they will win a complete set of magnet cards along with the 2 autos they select.

Possible "stretch goals" bonus contest. If Fiberoctopus hits the magic number 100 at either of the three sites (so, 100 followers, 100 likes, or 100 subscribers) by the end of this contest, that'll trigger a "second chance" drawing wherein the winner will get to select a remaining auto from the pool and win a complete set of magnet cards.

Some small print: 
- Due to the heavy weight, the encased autographs and magnet card offers are only good for US residents. Sorry, non-US folks!
- Limit one (1) of each magnet card per winner. I don't want any one person cleaning out all the Canseco magnets, for example.
- Yes, if you don't have a blog or an account on some of these social media sites, you're at a disadvantage for bonus magnets. Well, let it be your motivation to start a blog and sign up for those sites!

Hopefully this isn't too convoluted!
Simply put, you can win some stuff from me if you comment on this post and show some love to my crappy musical alter ego Fiberoctopus. 
Sorry for the blatantly self-serving contest that has very little to do with baseball cards.

Wait, I suppose I should probably plug Fiberoctopus a little more here, so here're a few more songs to check out:
"Into the Moonlit Waves" is a decent instrumental. "all my dreams are dead and gone" is an old favorite (Oh, I should warn you my songs sometimes have bad words). Here's a recent acoustic Ramones medley.

And now some videos. Here's a fun song from a rehearsal when Fiberoctopus was a real band for a while a few years ago (w/Karie on vocals, John on drums):

Here's a recent Smiths cover:

This one is a dumb little animated short I made a few years back:

And if you like any of that, I've got a bunch more mp3s available for free at fiberoctopus.com

Anyways, back to the contest(s)..

I'll give it a week or so for people to enter, then I'll randomize to assign numbers and randomize again via an upcoming sporting event to pick a winner, like I like to do. And for retention purposes, I'll probably do a second-chance (third chance?) contest a little ways down the line where entries from this contest might be carried over.

So there you have it! Follow on Twitter, Like on Facebook, and/or Subscribe on YouTube, then comment to enter.

If you win, which autos and magnet cards do you think you'd probably pick?