The Bird bird feeder (Mark Fidrych PC)

My live-in marital partner surprised me with a bird feeder last Christmas, knowing how I've enjoyed having an active hummingbird feeder for a couple years running. Took me a while to get around to putting it up, waiting for the rainy season to be over, but I've had it up for a week now and it's pretty cool. 

It's made of clear plastic and meant to be hung in a window so you can get a close look at the birdies on display. At first the clear side walls were confusing them-- often fluttering against them trying in vain to get in-- so I stuck on some Fleer team logo stickers on the sides. But I soon upgraded that idea to slotting in a pair of Mark Fidrych cards, thereby dedicating it as a Mark Fidrych Memorial Bird Feeder... or The Bird Birdfeeder.

It's designed to be hung with suction cups to a window, but the best viewing spot I could identify was over a screen, so I rigged up a hanger instead.

I'm a little worried about a squirrel raid, (and/or maybe the crows/ravens who run the neighborhood will come by for their "protection" fee?), but no trouble yet.

I didn't take the decision to "sacrifice" good baseball cards lightly. But I already have these cards. I've got one of the '77 Toppses in my setbuild, and two more in the PC in addition to the lesser-conditioned triplicate selected for the birds. As for the '78, also got one in the 78T build, plus one in the PC, plus another one that's autographed (for/from former blog buddy "Tony L." who pops up to talk about soccer on twitter once in a while but sadly seems like Off Hiatus Cards is in fact never returning from the hiatus it's currently on). 

Ruby does some birdwatching.

But yeah, the cards in there are packaged with water-resistance in mind, and it's on the north side of the house, so not a ton of direct sunlight, so we'll see how the cards are looking after a few months, assuming they don't go missing or anything. I bet it won't take long for these cards to be imprinted on my brain more than they already are due to looking over at them many times in an average day. I suppose I could pop in any old trading cards to do the job-- perhaps favoring teams named after birds.. yeah, maybe I'll swap in some Orioles/Cardinals/Jays commons once the rainy days return-- but at least for now it will continue to serve a dual purpose, acting as a safespace for li'l tweet-tweets to find an assortment of small seeds and nuts available to eat.. while also paying tribute to a fascinating former ballplayer who happened to be similarly nicknamed due to his appearance calling to mind the character Big Bird.

A guest to the Bird feeder checks out Fidrych's early stats.

The feeder isn't super busy, but has flurries of activity at least a couple times a day so far, which is perfect. Mostly common sparrows, as far as I can tell, which are cute, though hopefully I'll be lucky enough to eventually spot some "fancier" birds stopping by.

On the topic of Mark Fidrych, I just went ahead and logged my PC into TCDB today. My 23 unique cards were good enough to crack the Top 20 there, so that's cool. I did the "add all missing cards to wantlist" thing, too, so hopefully that'll spark some trades and help me move up the list... though he only has 214 total cards listed, and most of those are either oddballs from the late 70s or low-numbered stuff from the aughts when the card companies started going nuts with cards of retired favorites. But yeah, it'd be cool to build up the PC to where I could "hang with the big boys" of Fidrych collectors.

Here's the PC, more or less (turning this post into an update of my previous Fidrych PC post from 2018)...

Some of Gio's customs infiltrated this group of cards I've got of Bird's early days.

You can see I've got dupes of his '80 and '81 Topps cards (No OPC in the mix here, sadly), though they are less fun to look at than '77 and to a lesser extent '78.. but could be called into active bird feeder duty if needed.

Love the minor league cards, even if that must've been a frustrating time for Mark.

Some post-playing days cards, including a 2003 Fan Favorites auto I scored not too long ago. I believe it's my second certified auto of his, following the (not pictured) 2003 Retired base auto I got back in 2018. 

Speaking of Fan Favorites, the "1977" (2004) refractor from a few pics above didn't really catch the light there, so here are some bonus shots of it to close us out for today: 

Refraction. Simple, yet elegant refraction.

I like how the rookie cup has gone supernova in this one.

"Get out of there, Mark! The field's on fire!!"

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.

Puttin' in the Gwynn

I don't expect to ever get around to fully logging my card collection into the Trading Card Database, but I'm adding a little here and there, and my current focus is entering the biggest player collection I've got: Tony Gwynn. My hobby interests pull me in too many directions to ever truly vie for the spot of his #1 collector, but I've got a pretty solid PC, and as I log it, I'm also sorting in the very many Gwynn cards I've gotten in the past year or so from Rod at Padrographs as he narrowed his collection.

Data entry can be tedious-- and often a pain figuring out unfamiliar cards/parallels-- so I came up with some goals to help keep me motivated:

- rank among the top 19 (jersey number) Tony Gwynn collectors at TCDB
- 1000+ unique cards
- get in the top 10
- in the top 5 maybe?

Well, here's the current leaderboard:

Yep, Tony Gwynn is a popular guy to collect! 1500 cards won't even get you into the top 10. I'm not likely to crack the top 5 anytime soon, if ever. As I type this, I've already added roughly 2/3 of the PC and currently rank #30 with 687 unique Gwynns. I'm guessing I'll ultimately settle in around numbers 12-14, but cracking the top 10 could be something to shoot for. For the record, I'm not going to blanketly "add all missing cards to wantlist." But occasionally I've been adding neat Gwynns to my TCDB wantlist, like certain refractors or cool-looking inserts or whatnot, and could see myself going after some cheap low-hanging fruit on Sportlots or something if I really wanted to get my total up.

It's not just healthy competition motivating me, of course, because it'll be great to have a solid idea of what I have and don't have when it comes to Mr. Padre. My memory ain't always great, so it'll be nice to be able to easily check what I've got.

Anyways, I thought I'd feature a few "non-TCDB cards" in this post.. that is, cards that I consider unique in the PC, though for the most part I agree they're not different cards, and were it not a main PC of mine, I likely wouldn't bother treating them differently. Regardless, I think these unofficial variations are more interesting than "real" variations where there's a period missing in the copyright line on the back or something else you likely need a magnifying glass to even notice.

The above HoloGrFX cards seem to be different shades of blue, though that's not an official parallel. Probably just a printing variant or maybe one was displayed in a sunny spot for a while by a previous owner.

Here's another example of the same card looking different. Technically a dupe, but they're both staying in my PC as "dark version" and "light version", respectively. Could be noted there is a "black gold (/499)" parallel to this 2001 Fleer Futures card that I don't have.

These 1998 Skybox Dugout Axcess "Double Header" game cards only come in one flavor, according to the menu, but look at the player name and tell me these are identical cards; You can't do it! The foil-printing machine seems to have been on the fritz for the card on the right-- I don't think Skybox did it on purpose-- but yeah, I'm hanging on to them both, considering one an "inverted foil" printing flaw variation or whatever.

Well, those are what I've taken pictures of so far, and I've got more examples I'd like to document on the blog, but I think I'll call it good for today and then probably do a follow-up post or two once I've finished logging the Gwynn PC. Thanks for stopping by and have a pleasant weekend, everybody.

Steven Universe box finally busted

Back around 2017, some of my co-workers were really into a Cartoon Network show called Steven Universe. Ben, a guy I'd affectionately describe as a "cool nerd", would talk about what happened on the most recent episode, and it was such mind-bending craziness that it was hard for me to wrap my head around the words coming out of his mouth. 

 

But yeah, they all seemed to love it, and I eventually checked it out and got into it too. It's a weird kids' show at its core-- some good conflict/action parts and silly/cute parts-- entertaining for all ages and with a lot of positive messages regarding gender and race not hidden too deep below the surface. Not sure I should even bother trying to give a synopsis, but basically the characters are sorta like superhero aliens who can combine with each other into other characters (called "fusions") and have adventures while living in a quaint beach town that frequently attracts space monsters that need to be dealt with. There's a big wikipedia entry if you're curious to learn more. It's currently streaming on HBO Max (and Hulu?), I believe.

Back in summer of 2020, inspired by a baseball-themed episode I had just watched, I whipped up a few Steven Universe customs in Photoshop. After teasing them in a tweet, Shawn (aka Corky on the cardsphere) let me know the show had real cards released in 2019. Not long after, I pulled the trigger on a box from Dave & Adams via eBay for $60. Summer '00 was a crazy time and so when the box arrived, I set it aside for a rainy day.. and eventually decided to wait until I finished watching through the show to bust it. (I even started drafting this here post back in 2020 where it sat basically blank until now.)

And hey, guess what, I finally finished watching the show just this month! Well, there's the main show (5 seasons), then a movie, then a final/epilogue season (under the name "Steven Universe Future") to kinda wrap things up. Full disclosure, I'm still watching through the Future show, but the cards only cover seasons 1-5, so I didn't see the point of holding off the box break any longer.

This box was the only "unopened product" I've been sitting on for the past few years (ie, the covid-induced hobby bubble era), pre-dating my big move to the new house 2.5 years ago. (That's the big milestone for me keeping track of my recent past: life back at the old house vs. new house.) Kinda sad to open it... especially seeing that the cheapest box on eBay now has an asking price of $375. lol. I should have stocked up back when they were $59.95!

But no, if I buy a box to bust, I will bust that box, my friend. #collect

Cryptozoic did a great job with collation. I got a full complete base set (featuring a gold foil star in the corner), a few base parallels (pink foil star), and 3 complete insert sets. I actually ripped several packs while watching the Steven Universe Movie, and it was serendipitous for me to be able to look at the cards to help figure out what's going on (I was wondering about a fusion on screen, and bam, I pulled the card that explained on the back how that particular fusion was made).

The die-cut vinyl record theme cards don't have parallels, but the other 2 insert sets also do the pink foil parallels gimmick ("pink deco"), netting me one each.

I wasn't aware of the whole pink deco parallel thing at first, and when I first pulled the Rose Quartz, I was like "oh, that was cool of them to do Rose's card in pink," but no, that was just a coincidental lucky pull, evidenced by the base gold pulled later.

My sketchcard was a solid one. Looks to be pen & colored pencils with a fair amount of work put into it. Taking a quick look at the 200+ sketch cards from this set on eBay, I'd say this is among the more desirable. And check it out, this character is named Ruby. Ruby isn't exactly a main character, but is one of two gems who combine into Garnet (who is a main character.. yeah, it's confusing if you don't know the show. [There are actually several different Rubies in the show, adding to the confusion.]).

My dog is named Ruby, so the sketch is right up my alley, but it's a coincidence-- Steven Universe didn't contribute to her naming, at least not consciously. But funny enough, another former co-worker of mine (who joined later but had independently been a fan of the show already) has a cat named Peridot after a character on the show.

Irma "Aimo" Ahmed seems to be a popular, respected sketch card artist, with lots of cards featured in products for Star Wars, Marvel, and DC. So yeah, nice pull there.

Sketch cards and autographs are seeded about 1 per box, but not guaranteed. As I picked up the final pack having not yet pulled an auto, I was feeling bummed about my box lacking any ink. But thankfully the last pack delivered the goods.

The Rutile Twins aren't main characters either-- I'm only vaguely familiar with them-- but hey, still a nice card. Gotta love a heart doodle. Ashly Burch has done a lot of cool stuff in her career, mostly video game voice acting, such as The Last of Us Part II and the Borderlands series.

Wikipedia tells me the Rutile Twins-- a Gem with two conjoined bodies from the waist up-- are a part of a group called the Off-Colors consisting of "fugitive Gems from Homeworld, first appearing in season 5, who lived in hiding underground because they are regarded as defective or do not conform to Homeworld's expectations."

A crazy thing is I couldn't find any copies of this card on eBay while taking a curious look at market value. Not in completed listings either. Despite being numbered to 225, it's evidently a tough pull. Compare it to the similar auto in the set of Kate Flannery (who was Meredith on The Office, so not exactly a nobody), also numbered /225, and that card has several examples available to buy online. Weird.

There are a bunch of autos from the set that I'd love to add to my collection-- keep in mind I have completed the autograph set from the only other Cryptozoic product I ever busted (Ghostbusters)--, but other than that Kate Flannery, they don't seem to be very plentiful/affordable, so I probably won't hit that mission too hard, but may keep an eye out for cheap outliers that might pop up.

There's one specific voice actor of a recurring character that sadly doesn't have an autograph in the set which would otherwise be a no-brainer for my collection. Joel Hodgson, best known for Mystery Science Theater 3000, plays Bill Dewey, Beach City's mayor for most of the show's run. Guess what, I made a custom for the card-that-should-have-been.

I purposefully made the signature look "off" in case anyone missed the "Inauthentic" edit. Not trying to trick anyone, just making a fun card. I grabbed the signature image off the internet.. off one of my own old blog posts actually-- it's from a signed DVD from Joel to me personally (I didn't meet him, but had an acquaintance facilitate). So that's a little easter egg for me. (Speaking of dusty drafts I'm [still] working on, chances are I finally finish my big MST3K post sometime this year too, by the way, where I'll show off all my [real] MST autos and stuff.)

Now here are the customs that I originally designed in 2020, but only finished and printed the other day.

It's a simple original design using screenshots from that one baseball-themed episode. Welp, technically Garnet didn't actually play in the game but rather it was her component characters Ruby and Sapphire (note Ruby behind the dish), so I fudged it to get her a standard card. Backs are kept simple but with an additional screenshot. I'm happy with how these turned out and think they complement the Cryptozoic cards nicely.. would have made a fun insert set! (FYI to anyone at Cryptozoic, Fanatics, or whoever.. I'm freshly on the job market and would love to find a creative role of employment in the hobby. Hit me up!)

As with all my customs, they're not for sale, but feel free to talk me into a trade if you want.

That about wraps up the post. Any of you readers into Steven Universe? I'm considering doing a rewatch after I finish it up since I feel like I didn't really "get" the show sufficiently till the latter seasons. Now that I know what's going on better, I think I'd pick up on more stuff happening in the earlier seasons. But yeah, fun show.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, everyone!

A random blog post

First I gotta do some catching up with incoming cards from the past week or two. 

My previous post was kinda weird and deliberately tricky to read, but the gist of it was that I've been whipping up a bunch of nutty customs inspired by Andy Warhol's famous Pete Rose card art, and as mentioned in that post-- if you zoom in enough to read it-- I was able to swing a trade with a big Pete Rose fan named Tom that netted me this beautiful Charlie Hustle specimen. At #559, it's a tough semi-high number, and was one of the biggest needs remaining on my wantlist as I continue crawling towards the finish line with this challenging set.

Thanks, Tom!

- - --o

Sticking with '72 and then into '73, these are highlights from the latest pack of WTHB customs. Nice work from Gio as always but his printshop might want to mind the centering. Hank is fine but most of the other cards in the pack lean left. One reason I print my own customs at home is better control over stuff like that, but a professionally printed card does have a nice look & feel to it that you can't quite get with photo paper in a standard home printer.

- - --o

Another seasoned custom card maker, Jeremy at Topps Cards That Never Were kindly surprised me by sending a PWE of Gavin Sheets cards.

Four sheets to the wind? More like four Sheets to my PC. Thanks, Jeremy!

- - --o

And I swung a little trade with Jon that netted me a page worth of glow-in-the-dark Beanie Babies sticker cards.

Apparently there are 25 total in the checklist, so there are still plenty more left for me to track down for my GITD minicollection. I had previously only had Bronty, but when it comes to glowing cards, even dupes are keepers for me.

Here they are in the dark (looks like Beak missed out on the direct light when I charged these up).

Thanks for the easy swap, Jon!

- - --o

Not really trading related, but let's squeeze this into the post. I've really been hitting the All-Time Fan Favorites refractors hard over the past year or two-- it accounts for most of my card-buying activity these days-- and I hit a nice milestone this week.

Halfway point! And that's not factoring in several cards sitting in my COMC inventory waiting to ship. Also have 5 more en route via TCDB trade.

- - --o

The Sandlot was released 30 years ago, and I took that as an excuse to bust out my Sandlot PC and take a photo.

A closer look at most of these can be found at this post from 2019. Classic flick!

- - --o

Ending the post with a Ruby appearance.

Have a great Easter weekend, everybody.

Peace out!

Introducing The WRIPP: Warhol Rose Infinite Parallels Project

TLDR: These Warhol Rose customs are fun to make and share. (Not for sale.)