Resolute.

       I am not a man who makes New Year's resolutions.  I am the type who is reflective and then active.  Those "resolutions" people throw around - lose 10 pounds, call their mother more, hike the Appalachian trail, etc. etc. - are just a set up for failure.  I say, if you look at your life and see some thing wrong, fix it; if you see something right, keep doing it.  It's not brain surgery.  I have been blogging now for 10 months and I like my blog.  I think I am doing it right and I hope you enjoy it.  I am resolute in this matter.

Oh, and because I should probably post something, here is a scan from the "unused file":

This is a page of Starting Line Up cards featuring Kirby Puckett and Don Mattingly.  I have no idea where the little plastic statues are.  I have no idea why I scanned this page.  But dammit if it isn't pretty cool: two of the best hitters from the 80's on some righteously ugly cards.

Happy 2013 Everyone.

I'm Not Dead Yet.

       Alternate subject: Vacation, all I ever wanted.

       I have been traveling up and down the eastern seaboard the last five weeks or so.  I spent some time in Boston, some in Philly, some down the shore; some of it was work, some of it (well, most of it) was play but the all encompassing thread of this past month plus or so was I spent most of it unplugged from civilization.  I find it best to spend some time away from the online world during the summer.  Oh, I checked my email from time to time and even answered a few of them but for the most part, instead of the usual 10+ hours around the computer a day, I have spent maybe 10 minutes or so a week.  Besides, sitting on a beach with an ipad or laptop is just plain wrong; a book or a newspaper is far more preferable.

       So I have been away from home and the internet for a while and with that, my blogging obviously dropped down to zero.  And that after I had gotten a pretty good momentum going in July too.  What also got lost amongst my prolonged absence are a few trades.  Fear not!  All of them are still on my radar and I will fulfill and complete them soon.  Of course, if we had corresponded about a swap and you haven't heard from me, feel free to drop me a line.  I promise it won't take me a month to get back to you.

       One thing about being away from home for a week or two is that the mail piles up something awful.  Most of it is junk mail, or worse, bills (why do they still send paper bills when I pay most things online?) but one of the exciting things is the little manilla Jiffy packs that intersperse those unwanted pieces of mail.  A few of them were forgotten ebay purchases, but the best ones were overzealous traders who sent me stuff first. 

First off is a first, a reader and fellow Mets fan named Steve without a blog who sent me some stuff from my wantlist:

He had some doubles to fill my brand pages.  Very much appreciated, Steve.  I have a package of Mets for you that will hopefully find the mail by the end of the week.  Plus, time and my scanner willing, I will have those completed pages up on the site soon as well.

Next is Brian from 30 Year Old Cardboard who had some of this year's Allen and Ginter up for trade: 

He completed my "What's in a Name" page and I sent him, um, I think a Jim Palmer card?  My memory is fuzzy, but I am pretty sure I actually sent it out to him. *UPDATE* I checked, it is. 

Up next is my favorite part of this blog: altruism and reciprocation.  I recently sent Thorzul some random shiny Brewers cards I had laying around.  Sometime in the last month or so, he returned the favor:

I love that Franchise Favorites card, the blue goes well with the Mets.  Even better is the orange refractor from 2010.  I like those so much, I might see if I can drum up seven more to make a Mets orange refractor page from that year (I have the David Wright too).  Plus, Piazza cards I don't have are always well received.  Last is that Brian Harper card, proving Thorzul really reads my wantlists closely.  I noticed I still haven't posted my big post about this.  I will have to get around to that.

Lastly, in this pile were these three mystery cards:

I am pretty sure the Jason Bay came in with the What's in a Name cards from Brian.  I think maybe I meant to put that Orioles card in a package for Kevin from O's Card of the Day, but that package already went out.  And the Mike Trout?  I am slowly becoming a Mike Trout devotee but I am not sure where this card came from.  Did I get it from someone?  Did I promise it to someone?  Did I just put it aside for me and it wondered into this pile?  I dunno.  I am also aware that I owe both Robert from $30 a Week Habit and Shane from Off the Wall trade packages.  They will go out soon.  If there is anyone I missed, please let me know.  Getting back into the swing of the real world takes all the help you can get.  Plus, now that I am back, there is so much to cover, both coming up and that I missed: the Mets collapse, the beginning of football, etc. etc.  So rest assured, I am back and will be here and blogging again...you know, as soon as I figure out how to pay all those aforementioned bills.

Completed Pages, Complete With Joy.

     While my blogging may have slowed down some recently, my collecting never stops.  Today I have some completed pages, one quite recent and a few more than a decade in the making.

I haven't bought much Bowman the last few years.  In fact, I haven't bought any Bowman the last two years.  I used to be quite the Bowman backer, especially Chrome.  I liked the shiny and the speculation, and I also liked the vague rookies who you'd never hear from again (there is a reason my collection is eclectic and devoid of great value, after all).  This year, my interest in Bowman was renewed, well, my interest in one specific kind of card was piqued.  A while ago, Night Owl sent me an R.A. Dickey from the silver ice parallels and I was immediately struck by it.  I am such a sucker for the shiny and in this case it was a different shiny than I had ever seen before on a card.  I went to eBay with the task of finding myself a lot of them.  The cards themselves were only popping up one or two a box, I believe, so the prices were a little high.  I waited out a nice lot of 12 and snagged it at a price I could live with.  From those, I made this page:

The scan does not do these cards justice.  They are really really really shiny (no, really!).  They remind me of the 1998 Bowman's Best Atomic Refractors, my all time favorite shiny (and a page I have yet to complete).  I got a nice mix of players and colors in this lot; even the Yankee player is a tolerable one.  I am quite pleased with this page.

While recently rummaging through a pile of cards, I found a 1998 SP Authentic Jeff Conine.  I had forgotten all about this set but I remembered that I really liked it when it came out.  Back then, SP Authentic was very high end stuff and (I believe) this was their first baseball offering.  I liked the foil-like pictures and the use of negative space.  I looked around in a few boxes, but alas, that Jeff Conine was the only one I had.  So, in my quest to make a page, I went first to eBay, but eBay did not have any lots of the base cards (nor had they in a while - hint: always check completed auctions when looking for something vague to see how easy/hard it will be to find).  So, I went to COMC.com for these instead. 

I was able to pick off these cards for 20-25 cents apiece.  I went with a few beloved subjects (NOMAHHHH!! and a catcher pose) and a few reviled subjects as well (Clemens, Palmeiro).  Overall, I think I captured a good mix of players and poses and it only took me 14 years to get around to it. 

I also read a blog piece recently (the blog itself escapes my memory, lemme know if you recognize your dilemma) that was very puzzled with the 2001 Donruss baseball set and what they did for parallels.

This page here is of the 2001 Donruss base cards.  This page has been in my binders for quite a while.  See, 2001 Donruss was their first baseball set since 1998 - I am not sure if their exile was self imposed or contractual - and it celebrated their 20th anniversary.  For the parallels, they decided to fill in those two missing years by making "2000 Donruss" and "1999 Donruss" cards.  I always found this odd and I can certainly understand some collector's confusion over the cards, especially 10 years after the fact.

I had, along with that 2001 Donruss page a 1999 Donruss page. 

A pretty sharp (and Indians heavy) page.  What I did not have was a 2000 Donruss page to go along with the other two.  Since I decided my Donruss pages would not be complete without it, I went to eBay again, but only found a large (and way overpriced) lot for sale.  Back to COMC.com again for me!

Since I still had the 1998 SP Authentics cards still unsent, it made sense to grab the cards I needed for the 2000 Donruss page as well.  This is what I came up with.

Once again, a nice mix of players and colors, and, as an accidental aesthetic choice, a lot of batting follow thru pictures.  I snagged these at 20-35 cents apiece with the Tony Gwynn costing me that big 35 cents.  I had never actually seen the 2000 Donruss baseball cards and I immediately recognized them...they copied the 2000 Donruss football set.  I have had this page forever:

Now, Topps used to, and in fact still, uses their baseball set as a tablet for their football design, and some card makers use the same design for each name plate brand for each sport (like Prestige or SP etc.).  But this is the first time I can think of that a unique and singular football set was the basis for a baseball set and not the other way around.  Can anyone else think of one?  You know, if you can even understand what the heck I am talking about.

Anyway, COMC has had a nice cheap bulk shipping option for the last couple months, so I might load up on some more neglected or ignored pages in the future. 

***
And as one final update, I recently showed the spoils of a recent new product buying binge.  Some specific cards were put aside and dropped in the mail this week.  Some of you know they are coming and some of you don't.  Anyway, rest assured, they are out there and on their way...

Right now, if anyone wants to reciprocate, I am desperately trying to get my hands on the two SP rookie cup cards from this years Topps - #158 Josh Reddick and #207 J.P. Arencibia.  I am also looking for the Dwight Gooden Mound Dominance insert from this year's Topps and the 1977 Gary Carter reprint and cloth sticker from the Archives set (plus his Gold Foil parallel). I am always dubious of people actually looking at my wantlist, so if anyone has any of these, please please email me post haste. Thanks!

Quick Postgame.

Here was my pregame view from the upper deck of Citizens Bank Park.

The game was a slog of Big Pelf putting guys on and getting out of it - at one point the Phillies had 12 hits and 6 walks and only three runs  - and the Mets not being able to hit Cole Hamels after putting up two quick runs.  It looked like those two runs might hold up, but then human gas can Manny Acosta decided throwing strikes was optional and walked in a bunch of runs.  The Mets eventually bowed meekly 8-2.  At least the post-game meal of Pat's Cheesesteaks was good...and by good I mean life-alteringly delicious.

As one other quick aside, I have an issue with the march of time and technology.  For years and years, my ticket stubs have mostly looked like this:

...and yes, I am the kind of nerd who saves all his ticket stubs...
 
If I wanted to dig into a deeper, more hidden box, I could find ticket stubs going all the way back to 1985, my first major league game - which was actually games, because it was a doubleheader (imagine that).  Now, I am not even going to lament the passing of the scheduled twin bill, I am going to lament that unless I buy tickets at the box office or from a season ticket holder, my ticket stub looks like this:

Or, if you have a color printer and the willingness to waste all that color ink (like my brother does), like this:

A folded up 8x11 piece of paper is not a ticket stub.  It ruins the whole tactile joy I get when I periodically find my pile of ticket stubs and go through them.  I wonder if Stub Hub would consider allowing you to print your online tickets like a ticket rather than an office memo?

Update and Trade.

       This post is not about Topps' 3rd series of recent vintage, this is simply about a trade and some blog updates...my witty titling skills know no bounds.  First off, let's cover my recent swap with someone who's becoming my new favorite trade target, Robert from $30 a week habit.  I have become semi-obsessed with his side blog, the serial number insanity set.  It might just be my natural love of all things equally brilliant and insane, but I now put it as priority one to comb my card piles and local dime boxes for numbered Topps cards for his massive undertaking.  This replaces my first bloggly love, The Great 1965 Topps Project, not because of lesser adoration, but because Kevin is almost done with that one.  Anyway, my rambling aside, last week I sent Robert some of his beloved Blue Jays and about half a dozen cards for his insane side project and he was kind enough to come up with some 2011 Topps Chrome needs for me:

On top of that, he sent a kick ass Martin Brodeur insert, some shiny liquorfractor redheaded Met action, and a pretty sweet David Wright striped jersey card.  Those last three were from the generosity of his heart, as they weren't part of our original deal, which makes him a damn fine humanitarian.  Thanks Robert!

So, that pile of 2011 Chrome has become this page in my Topps binder:

I really enjoy the aesthetics of this page.  Plus, that Elvis Andrus card has an epic photo.  He has some great fielding shots on his cards and he seems to have gotten the center square of my pages a lot the last few years.  I might have to start referring to him as Paul Lynde.  Also, I wonder if we will look at "Mike Stanton" cards the same way we look at "Joey Belle" cards in a decade or so? 

Since no one stepped up offering some, I had noticed recently that my local K-Mart had some 2010 Topps Chrome blasters on sale, so in a fit of nostalgia, I bought one so I could complete my run of Topps Chrome pages in my binders:

Night Owl was right, that year's Chrome cards have the worst curling ever.  I had this badboy squished under the weight of two binders for two weeks and it did very little to help.  You will have to take my word for it that it looks far better in person.  Ya gotta love all of the jumpy fielders on that page, though.

       So, with all that chrome business down, what else do I have to cover?  Well, I like to tie up loose ends and I have two flapping in the breeze a bit.  First, yesterday I offered a 1982 Topps K-Mart MVP box set to anyone who wanted it.  Well, dawgbones snapped it up within an hour and it will be in the mail for him shortly.  Looking at my pile of unsorted things, the "Who Wants It" bit will probably become a regular thing, so look out for more freebies soon.

       Second, I ran a charity auction on eBay last week and posted about it hoping to drum up some support and maybe get that shirt in the hands of a Devils fan who will enjoy it (and fit into it).  Well, it sold for $16 to a gal in New Hampshire and that money will go to the Red Cross.  Thank you to any and all who looked and helped and if it inspired even one of you to donate either money or blood, then it was a success.