Quick incoming catch-up

Time to acknowledge a few more non-purchased additions to my collection.

 
I did a Time Traveling Trade PWE with Matt over at Diamond Jesters netting me a few setbuilding needs from the 70s plus an OPC Blyleven for the PC. Thanks, Matt!

-   -  --o

 
Surprise PWE of ladies from Johnny's Trading Spot. Gotta admit I didn't notice the theme when I originally thumbed through them, but displaying them together makes it clear these were originally for John's "Stars and Stripes" minicollection. USA! USA! 

Thanks, John! Always appreciated.

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Since it's a light post, I'll throw in a little TCDb trade I did with a user deadhead11. Finally got around to entering my Rod Beck PC into the site. Didn't quite make the Top 10 in the rankings, but there's plenty of low-hanging fruit I need, such as this trio of commons, so it shouldn't be too hard to at least claw my way into the top 5. Gonna be tough to catch the top dog, though, that old sumbitch RollingThunder88 who currently has about twice as many Rod Beck cards as me. Ah well.

Thanks for swingin' by and have a great weekend, everybody.

halfways to the holidays

It's my half-birthday today (assuming this shows up for you on Wednesday) and the celebratory packages have been rolling in over the past few weeks.

Welp, ok, maybe the senders weren't aware of the timing-- hell, I barely remembered myself-- but let's just pretend for the sake of spicing up a standard "incoming non-purchases roundup" post that these are all half-birthday presents.

First, here's a fun little envelope from overseas. No question as to who sent these cards, but in case there's a newbie reading: they came from Zippy Zappy. It's my understanding that the dude is Munetaka Murakami (Nick also got one of these. [update: Fuji, too!]). The new White Sock got off to a terrific start in MLB this year before an IL stint. Hope he's back at it soon. Akagi Kuro, the lady, is featured on a pretty neat signed photo out of Zippy's cosplayer collection. Love it! (Nick got the more tame ladies, but I don't have any kids in the house to worry about, so I get the naughty getup.)

 

A pair of Star Wars cards also made the journey from Japan. Always welcome in my collection. Thanks, Kenny!

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The spoils from a pair of Maddux Monday victories thanks to the generous Johnny Miller. Hopefully I'll add a couple more W's before he wraps up that extended giveaway series. Then maybe I'll sort out my Greg Maddux PC and figure out which of these I actually need, lol. I try to not enter the drawing if the cards look too familiar.

Thanks, John!

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This was a TCDb trade of Ginter minis going both ways with user mookdaruch back in mid April. I was stressing out when he still hadn't updated "received" after a week and a half, but he was cool and said he sometimes has long lags with his mail. Thankfully the pair of Ginter minis I sent him just finally arrived a month and half later. "Looks like it got ran over by a truck--but miracles do happen! The cards are both fine." Whew, glad that worked out or it would've surely cast a dark cloud over my half-birthday. 

Not to brag, but I've still got the biggest Dick Allen PC on the site. (Hey-oh!)

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Last "half birthday gift" for today are some cards from Bob at Best Bubble. 

Gavs representing.

Padres shiny or signed. Very nice.

Closing out with notable Portland Beaver Darren Daulton, a glow-in-the-dark card from inside a 1989 cereal box, and a couple lovely swimsuit models posing for the camera.

Thanks, Bob! Did you get the new "Bubble Gum Baseball" customs I sent you a bit ago? I know Johnny got the set I sent him, but haven't gotten confirmation that yours arrived. If not, I'll print you up a replacement so let me know.

Anyways, thanks for reading, all. Until next time.

women and children

I haven't really gotten into the blog-posting groove yet here in the first half of 2026, but hey, just finally got the "we're packing your order" email from COMC, so I should have plenty of blog fodder on the way soon.

But for today, here are 3 various eBay pickups to show off.

I've probably got a couple thousand cards in my Guys From Granite minicollection, but this is my first Gal from Granite card. Also pretty sure it's my first MMA autograph. Juliana "Killer" Miller blipped on my radar earlier this year as a pro athlete who attended the same high school as me, and I was happy to discover she had some Leaf cards out there.

This one is #'d 4/6, but of course Leaf does the shtick where they put out a ton of parallels, most of which are low-numbered, so not even a 1/1 is all that big of a deal considering there are a bunch of 1/1s. But yeah, I'm happy with this purple refractor I ended up landing for a good price. Looks like Juliana's record is currently 4-4-0. Wishing her the best of luck with her career of hitting and kicking.

Ladies Night continues with the lovely Ms. Sign Here. Whoops, no, that's model/actress/artist Wrenna Monet and this card was sacrificed as an example to show her where to sign her stack of cards, and somehow it didn't end up in the trash, but rather in my card collection.

And the backside. From a quick googling, she's got a lot more tattoos now. I'm still tentatively planning to build my "Sign Here" minicollection to 9 cards, then I'll stick a fork in it and call it good at a page's worth. This is my 8th such card, so the hunt continues, but the conclusion could come any day now.

Speaking of penultimate cards...

Baby Bo here nearly finishes off my 2005 Topps Pristine Legends frankenset. Funny that Bo originally suited up as catcher in his youth. The Yankees drafted him in the second round of the 1982 draft before he accepted a football scholarship to Auburn instead. Think about that alternate reality where Bo Jackson skipped college football and instead became famous as the Yankees backstop. LOL

I'm building the 140-card set in non-base form.. which means the bulk of my set is refractors, plus several Gold refractors, which are all /65 with a "die cut" deckle edge. Reminiscent of vintage OPC, I could do without the rough edges of the Golds, but whatever. This one has some extra wear at the top, but I'm just happy to be done chasing this card. (The regular refractors of The Early Years subset are numbered to a scant /25, so the Golds are nearly three times as obtainable there, whereas for the rest of the set, the Golds are the tougher parallel.) Now I'm down to one pricey hurdle at the finish line, another Early Years card. That last need also happens to be the last card in the set's checklist, so maybe I'll start a blog series where I slowly feature my Pristine Legends frankenset a few cards at a time, and hopefully I'll have landed that final card by the time I get to the end.

Thanks for stopping by.

Incoming birthday/holiday cards

Merry Christmas Eve, everybody! Yep, it's also my b-day, too. 

A while back, there was a Blog Bat-Around about cards numbered with your birthday. With mine so late in the year, it takes an extra large set to include a number 1224 in the checklist. But yeah, I've rounded up 3 of them so far...

A couple minor league sets from the 80s and one from the Conlon Collection.

Gotta love old TCMA, and I do kinda collect this Brian Giles as like quirky side-PC to my big PC of the better-known Brian Giles.

And I ripped a lot of those blue '89 ProCards packs back in the day. I started collecting in 1990, so they were "older" and I was looking for the hot '90 rookies, and yeah, even Mark Gardner had some hype, and went on to a respectable MLB career, sticking around through the 2001 season. 

I don't have much to say about Joe Bowman, but he was probably cool too. I think I threw these cards into my Sportlots cart months ago, and eventually placed orders with the respective sellers. Has anybody ordered from Sportlots lately? The past week or so, it's taken me to new "improved" shopping cart which doesn't let you separate between sellers. Not cool! Is it just me, like maybe I have too many cards in my cart, or did they really F up their cart interface? That'd be a bummer if they took a dump so soon after COMC also took a turn for the worse too. Running out of good, big online card shops to use! :(

The backs. The number on the Giles is in small text after the copyright.

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Now for some incoming cards that some blogger buds sent to brighten up my holidays.

First up is a nice package from Dennis at TMV. Sorry these, photos are dark, by the way. I took them last night, knowing the 24th and 25th would be busy, but I could sneak in some blogging time hanging out with the fam. (Keeping it tight for time.) But yeah, one thing I asked for this year is a light box, so I'm hopeful that I'll kick up my card-photographing game soon. But yeah, here's a sweet quad relic of Marcus Lattimore #'d 12/25 with a Gavin Sheets relic sporting a pinstripe.

Gavins!

More Gavins!

Good stuff. Thanks, Dennis! Very nice of you to keep up the string of holiday mailings that I've been lucky enough to be included in. I'll hit you back with a thank-you soon.

-  --o

Next up are some signed cards from Japan. 2011 Topps is a fav modern design for me, and Neshek is a PC guy.

And some Bowman cards, including a couple former Padres I remember rooting for in years past.

Thank you, Zippy! Merry Christmas, even if this wasn't specifically meant as a holiday surprise. 

-  - -o

Last is Bob from Best Bubble surprising me with a yuletide-timed card package.

Gotta pay the Gavin Tax when you send me cards, lol. Nice variety here.

This trio of neat Tony Gwynns off the beaten path might've been the highlight for me.

More Padres, including some autos.

Attractive ladies!

The backs.

More lovely gals.

Big thanks, Bob! I've been working on a package for you, and hope to get that sent out soon.

Thanks again to these folks for the cards, and happy holidays to everybody reading. I'll be trying to get a Christmas post out tomorrow if I can find the time to type it up.

Some cards I've been meaning to post

With this pair of notable former Dodgers, my 2004 Chrome Black setbuild is down to just 20 cards remaining.

My longterm dream of putting together a run of Topps playing days Mantles sorta faded away with the covid boom, so now I'm pivoting to a frankenset of vintage and refractor reprints filling in the gaps where I don't have the original. Hopefully I finish that someday and get a blog post out of it. After these shiny revisions from '96, my current needs are 1952, 1953, 1956, 1960, 1961, 1962, and 1967.

Baby Dave Winfield. The '73 is a WTHB custom.

1970 Topps is probably the vintage design that benefits the most from refractorification.

Turns out Mr. Show is in my baseball card collection.

My ARMS is on the cusp of 75% complete, with 122 cards remaining.

A couple recent Topps Retired auto pickups.

I also got a Parker Posey autograph.

I know I just showed that Jim Abbott, but turns out it completed the 2-card Angels team set for me, meaning I've got an excuse to show off the Nolan Ryan I bought in Hawaii years ago.

Bob at Best Bubble has been generous with me lately, first was a package with a couple Gavins and a couple girls..

..and a bunch of 1992 Leaf black gold. Some big name, too! And then more recently, a ton more of these showed up from him in a pair of flat-rate boxes.. and when the dust settled, I'm left with just 21 missing cards to finish the parallel set. Nice!

Also a new Gavin for my collection-- I believe the first basketballing Gavin I've got-- plus some PC guys and many duplicate "bubble" cards from Bob's collection, some of which I plan to do crafty cardart stuff to and then send back to Bob.

Plus a stack of Glow Stars and several more gals.

Big thanks, Bob! Much appreciated.

That'll do it for today. Thanks for reading. Sorry I haven't posted for about a month, but I should be back with more cards to show off soon. (Padrographs Rod dropped off a few hundred various cards this past weekend that I'm excited to check out.)

Zapped by the ghosts of a few hundred Forever stamps

Zippy Zappy is a guy who hit the cardblog scene around the same time as me so I kinda feel like I have a bond with him like we were in the same graduating class or something. I've always loved reading his blog, learning stuff and getting his unique perspective on the hobby. He's been super generous with me, shipping several packages of cards across the country from New York to Portland over the past decade. I try to hit him back so I don't feel too guilty about it, but he's got a narrow focus and makes a priority of keeping a tight collection, limiting my potential for return fire. Thankfully he seems cool with the imbalance.

In a recent post, Kenny was lamenting his lack of storage space and joked about trashing the impressive collection of TTM/IP autographs he built up and logged on his blog over the years. I wasn't sure how serious the threat was, but I let him know I'd be happy to be caretaker of the cards if they need it. I'm fortunate to have a "cardroom" to fill with my collection. And while that room is always very full/messy, things eased ever since I found a secret additional room in my house a couple years ago. (That's a whimsical way of saying I realized I had accessible attic space I could use to store my Junk Wax Era complete sets.) So sure, if a buddy of mine has meaningful cards they reluctantly feel they must part with, I'm happy to help. And from a less noble standpoint, hell yeah I'm always down for free cards, baby!! LOL

A big box arrived yesterday with Zippy's trademark return address shenanigans. Included was the above box with a hefty portion of his through-the-mail-or-in-person autograph collection that I'll be happy to look after, though his accompanying note said I could do whatever with the cards. I'll likely keep them intact for a little while, if not a long while, in case he decides he's ready for them back at some point. The personalized cards were taken out (except one "To Kenny" from Eric Young, Jr.), so hopefully those stayed with him, or will maybe end up with another collectors who goes by the name Kenny.

In the interest of getting this post out ASAP, I'm just showing a few highlights. The majority of the cards are 2012-2016 minor leaguers, so many never went on to become stars, but it's still a kick thumbing through them. Lots of "Oh, I remember that guy!" and "Who?" And sometimes you get a guy who beat the odds like Trea Turner or Aaron Nola. A few big names like Adrian Beltre and Joe Carter in there too.

I remember when Kenny took a go at building a signed set of 1979 Topps, though he didn't dig his heels in with that project for too long. Cool to see the occasional old Topps card of solid players of the past along with the modern cards in the box.

Certified autographs were in there too, some on redeemed redemptions. I don't follow basketball much, but JJ Redick is a pretty nice player to have an autograph of fall in my lap. Michael King just came to the Padres in the Juan Soto trade, so I'll be rooting for him to pitch well for my hometown team.

Star Wars Legos! Looks like a couple complete fighters here with instructions for me to piece together sometime. While I haven't gone hard with Lego as an adult, I loved playing with them as a kid and still have most of them. Lego Masters is a fun show, too.

Wall art and more toys. It was like a second Christmas going through this box. Fun stuff!

Let's close with some non-sport. That's a lot of that purple one! With the addition of these two Stranger Things commemorative patches, I've now got 4 of them. Man, that Megan Fox auto deserves a better photo.. hang on..

There we go! That's a very nice add for my minicollection of women on cardboard.

Thanks again so much, Zippy! If/when you get rooted somewhere with more storage space and start getting a sentimental longing for anything you've given me, please don't be shy to mention it and I'll be more than happy to return the kindness if I'm able.

Random Ruby. To Kenny.

Thanks for reading!