Pollard Throws No-Hitter May 11, 1978.

    There are a few of you raising your eyebrows right now trying to remember a major league pitcher named Pollard who threw a no-no 42 years ago today.  Well, that's not quite the headline I am angling toward here.  The Pollard in question here is Robert, the ultimate lo-fi pioneer, lead singer of Guided By Voices (along with a couple dozen other off-shoots), Uncle Bob to a bunch of us music nerds. One of the things that made me want to start blogging again is that Goodwin Champions included him in their set last year and I went a little crazy...

I have a 1/1 printing plate waiting for me in COMC to join these colorful wonders.

Okay, how do I explain Robert Pollard and GBV in baseball terms?  Well, if the Beatles are Mickey Mantle (or Willie Mays?) and Nirvana is Bo Jackson (or Sandy Koufax?), then Bob would be Rocky Colavito (or Eddie Yost?) - the under the radar, out of the ordinary but similarly brilliant superstar for which there is a small but intensely devoted following.  Maybe Tim Raines would also work here or perhaps Tony Mullane (or even Ichiro?).  You get the idea.  His music is classic rock but somewhat alien.  It is timeless yet also fixed permanently in the British Invasion vibe and the DIY punk ethic of the early 80s.  Bob once defined his vision for the band as if the Beatles never stopped making music and what it would sound like.  He knocks out dense melodic songs by the score and most of them are under 2 minutes (though they have gotten a little longer as he's gotten older).  He puts out 2-3 albums a year with GbV and half a dozen EPs and side efforts and it is dizzying to keep up with but ultimately very rewarding.  The fans are also insanely devoted and encyclopedic in their knowledge.   Baseball fans and music fans are a mostly round Venn diagram that way when you think about it.  To me, these cards are the wonderful overlap of those two classic obsessions of mine. 

Last year I bought a huge lot of the base card, made a page, and then sent the rest to the fans.

Bob Pollard is a fascinating dude with an outrageous story.  He was a regular guy who went to college, played baseball and basketball, became a teacher, and seemed like your normal law-abiding citizen from Dayton OH.  But he always loved music and one day in the early 80s he just decided he was going to be in a band and make rock music and he didn't care what anyone thought of him. So he and his buddies started recording songs in his garage on a boombox and they just kept doing it.  They would play local shows and they became this eclectic local oddity but when people listened to the songs, they realized this guy was actually pretty good.  They were the underest of underground the indiest of indie. But word spread and legends grew and by the mid-90s when this dude was going to college, he discovered their music through a friend who saw I loved the Beatles and thought I should give them a listen.  I have been a fanatic ever since.  And even with a retirement 15 years ago (like most premature sports retirements, it didn't stick), they have come back and are still going very strong. I was looking forward to seeing them  for the seventh time this year, but, well, you know. GbV usually does epic 3 hour shows with a 40+ song set list (they do 100 songs on New Years) but mind you, Bob also comes out with a cooler of beer and drinks and sings until he can't the lyrics so it's usually a glorious train wreck.

My favorite legend of the man, though, is the no-hitter he threw in college - 42 years ago today.  It is just a strange wrench thrown in the machine of a quirky rock and roll story.  If you go to one of their shows, you will see plenty of t-shirts that commemorate this perfectly non-historic but wonderfully odd phenomenon. 

Did Bono or Sting ever throw a no hitter (or the UK equivalent?) I doubt it. Jon Bon Jovi never scored four touchdowns in a game and I am certain Bob Dylan never scored 100 points in a basketball game.  But my ultimate rock hero once pitched a no-hitter in college.

So here are not the five "best" songs but the most indicative.  If you like any or all of these, you have a fighting chance to join the club and be a Guided By Voices covert.  One of these songs is even responsible for my eBay screen name.  Give them a shot, go on, I'll wait. Or don't, I'm not a cop.

If any of you took the time to listen, let me know what you think. And even if you didn't, I know the crazed nature we all collect cards with and for me it definitely is similar with music and I figure if anyone can understand the excitement when two of those worlds collide, it's you guys. Seeing trading cards of the front man of your favorite band (when 98% of folks have never even heard of your your favorite band) was the absolute highlight of my 2019 collecting. Plus the man is a sports legend, he threw a no-hitter!

Little Big.

       I often wonder what I would do if I were rich.  I live a comfortable middle class lifestyle with very few complaints: I get to go on vacation, work on my terms (mostly), want for very little, and, hey, I even get to indulge in my hobbies.  I also collect baseball cards on my own terms with my own little group of rules - but much like my lifestyle, I can't help but imagine what would change in my piles if instead of $100 of disposable income a month, you suddenly injected millions of dollars. 

I adore old tobacco cards.  I love the look of them, I love the feel of them, and I even love the smell of them.  I really hate graded cards mostly because all you can touch is the little plastic prison and you don't get the tactile joy of colorful pieces of century-old cardboard.

I like to think that if I were suddenly flush with cash that the page you are looking at would be full of real cards rather than knockoffs.  Fourteen of these cards sit in a sort of limbo of unofficial reprint and unscrupulous counterfeit.  You'd know this if you look at the backs. 

The one in the middle is a Hygrade reprint from the 1980s.  It announces with great pride that this card, if real, would be worth $700! I have one of the t206 Honus Wagner that tells us it would be worth north of $8000.  Eight grand for a Wagner?!?! Sign me up with or without a lottery win, I'll take out a loan for that price. Today's hobby puts that card in a six-figure number and you can easily go into millions for it.  If I were rich, would I invest in Hans rather than stocks?  You're damn right I would.  Alas, they would all be in graded slabs but I would be willing to forgive that this one time.  I have even seen one of these in person at the Cooperstown hall of fame.  I am pretty sure that is as close as I will ever get to one, much less owning one.

Here in the top row, you see more beautiful legitimate reprints of t206s, this time by Capital - courtesy of our friends at Renata Galasso - also from the 1980s.  But then they take a turn, as now sadly, our narrative will as well. Let's get back to those backs for a moment. 

You will see that they reproduced the backs nicely and also, wisely, put the line 'Capital Reprint' at the bottom.  In that lower corner, you will see what looks like legitimate looking aged cards and yet when you look at the backs, you see that there is some paper loss, right at the bottom. Hmmm.... What that means is some low-life imbecile tried to make these look and feel real, and to the non-collector they might have gotten away with it.  I picked these up at a show in a dime box years ago and the seller and I had a giggle over them.  He forgot where he got them from but I am certain he was not the perpetrator of the awful attempt at fraud.  But see, in the end this is why we can't have nice things.  This is one of the main reasons we have graded cards in the first place and have to hide cardboard away forever behind plastic.  Sure, any good collector would know these are garbage, but they were made to fool the layman into thinking they had vintage treasure.  They make me sad and I am glad they are now in my collection, free to be ridiculed for the trash that they are.  But they still look neat in and of themselves and I like to think the other reprints make fun of them when I close the binder, like some weird outtake from Toy Story.

Let's cleanse the palate with the opposite in size and stature.  These are 1971 Topps Supers and they are firmly ensconced in the oddball section of the hobby.  And they are some of my favorite things ever.

Once again, it is definitely a touch thing.  They are the size of a postcard and they feel heavy in your hand.  They are made of a thick cardboard that almost seems like they'd make moving boxes out of them otherwise.  They even make a neat sound when they smack together (though I don't recommend doing that if you care about future value).  Plus the colors and faces on these really pop.  Topps did similar supers in 1969 and 1970 too, but I think they perfected them in 1971.  Of course, sigh, they never made them again after that.  They've made plenty of big cards, sure, but these were not just parallels or fancy inserty box toppers or anything, these were their own set and a completely different thing. These eight will have a place of honor in my book of weird things.

I added these recently in a Facebook marketplace purchase, in fact it was 10 cards for $10 (a bargain at twice the price) so if anyone needs a Rico Carty or a Larry Dierker from this set, let me know and we can work something out.  If I were rich, I could just altruistically send them to you but instead, we'll have to trade like the unwashed masses do.

***

Post script: the title of this post refers to a very odd band, if you know them you know what I am talking about, if you don't you can click here (so so NSFW) and feel your brain melt for a few minutes.  Give it a chance, it is catchy, though, seriously.

COMC Badge and Pages.

       Pitchers and catchers report today! Simply one of the best days of the year and not a moment too soon.  The weather has been rainy and dreary and football is over so the dead of winter is at hand.  But nothing combats and destroys the wintry blues like pitchers and catchers reporting.  A close second is going to the mailbox and seeing a big ass box from COMC.com full of all the weird shit that site has to offer. Sticking with the sorting theme from last post, here you see the layout of the grid of goodness that going through a box of 206 cards that were all chosen for their specific nature to my collecting needs.  Each pile is a player collection or a photo collection or a theme collection or a sport collection.  I cannot think of a better way to spend my afternoon where my clothes stay on (not that I am above sorting cards in the nude).

The packing list covers up my nephew's blocks, which I was too lazy to remove from the coffee table.

There is far too much here to highlight each card so let's stay on message and look at the pages that were created and/or completed from this batch. 

Here is a page of 2002 Topps Ten that was completed with the acquisition of a Rangers-clad A-Rod card.  I found a small vein of these cards in an old shoebox and a moment of weakness made me find a few others and when I got to 8 I dejectedly decided it needed a ninth for a page.

Not this is a terrible set in and of itself, mind you.  It's just, well, boring.  It's like one big league leaders subset and the design is underwhelming. It is also an orphan set in that they only did it one year, though I think they did basketball the same way in 2002 as well.  Sports card companies just couldn't help themselves at the turn of the century and just cranked out whatever they felt like it.  Not every page is a winner.

Oh, but then there's this one, the diametric opposite of that Topps Ten page.  These are the 2016 Topps Bunt Program cards. 

I can't say I quite understand the Bunt online cards but I do like their physical manifestation.  They are everything a kid-centric set should be: bright, bold, colorful, and imaginative. These inserts have big logos, a fun baseball theme, faux wear, and good backs (which I neglected to scan ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).   I got the Papi in a lot I got on Listia and decided to find him 8 buddies to make a page.  This was a joyous one to put together. These Bunt cards are everything Opening Day isn't (and that's a good thing).

And to complete a bizarre trio, here is a page of the 1991 Pepsi Flavor of Baseball Superstar cards. 

I am not a big Pepsi drinker in the first place but I never knew these cards existed until one day recently I was looking for Dwight Gooden cards and found his (gloriously bad) version from this set (click on that, it looks like he's pitching in a rec league).  They are everything you want in an oddball food issue.  They have a gaudy product logo, a dense and inexplicable title, no official MLB logos, poor photos, poorer cropping, and a derivative design reminiscent of one of the most terrible over-produced sets of all time.  And as a topper, due to what I can only imagine was crappy cutting, they are all a little wider than 2.5 inches so they barely fit in a standard page (I had to look for one that was a tad bigger, owing to Ultra Pro's sometimes awful quality control).   This page is like good camp, it couldn't be planned for, it just had to exist. 

***

And as a total non-sequitur, I recently earned my red founders badge on COMC.com doing their infamous challenge. 

I doubt many of you are impressed but if there is anyone anywhere that I could brag to and get a positive response from this information, it would be on a baseball card blog.  Most people given this fact would tilt their head at me and stare like a confused dog.  All it really means is I need to sleep better and/or leave the house more.

Complete Set Sunday: 1919 Chicago Black Sox Team Reprint Set.

       One of the many things I missed posting about during my long hiatus was the Chicago Cubs finally getting over the hump and winning the World Series after 108 years. Personally, I could not care less about the Cubs or so-called curses but I do have a good friend from college who is a big Cubs fan, so I was ecstatic for him when they won (I also mocked him as best I could from a hospital bed in 2015 when the Mets swept the Cubs in the LCS, but I digress). All you heard from the media during that 2016 run was how much Cubs fans were tortured and how Chicago hadn't seen a championship since 1908.  This always made me irrationally angry. Chicago has two teams last time I checked.  The White Sox once went 88 years without winning a championship and broke that schneid only a few years ago in 2005.  I have always felt a strong kinship to White Sox fans because it must suck to live in a vacuum like that where you are barely an afterthought in your own city, much less on the national stage. Being surrounded by the Evil Empire on all sides, I think Mets fans can sympathize.


This year marks the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest teams every assembled, the 1917 White Sox.  That team steamrolled the American League, winning 100 games and then taking the World Series from the Giants in six games.  Alas, no one remembers that team at all because of what happened two years after that. I present to you the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, in "reprint" form.



This 25-card set (with one bonus Shoeless Joe card in color) is not so much a reprint as a retrospective set, done in faux-vintage form by a company called TNTL in Toms River NJ.  I have never heard of them before and they haven't done anything since, so I imagine this was a vanity or personal set specifically done by a Black Sox nut.  I think they were going for the look of the old E121 Caramel cards and they came pretty close.  The cards aren't standard size but closer to the size of those old ones.  This is a true oddball set and right in my wheelhouse. I think I picked this set up on Listia a few years ago and I scanned it right away and now comes its time to shine.



The backs have a little write up rather than a candy advertisement, and while not poetry, they certainly capture the feeling of the team and the scandal.  As you also may have noticed, since the cards aren't numbered, I put the infamous Eight Men Out together on the same page.  The stats they quote certainly paint the picture of a great team having a bad week.  The book (and I recommend both the book and the movie if you haven't indulged yourself) isn't quite a perfect history as much as it is a JFK-esque what-if group of scenarios.  I personally believe in the grey area story that the team threw the first couple games but never got paid past the first game, but by then it was too late for them to mount a comeback.  We'll probably never know the whole story since everyone involved in the scandal is long dead and the incident makes for a great and sad piece of baseball lore.



The Black Sox are one of those issues that brings out many passions in people.  Did Joe Jackson really understand what was going on?  Did Buck Weaver deserve the treatment he got since he didn't take any money?  Was the tight-fisted ways of Charles Comiskey as much to blame for the scandal as the players themselves?  I see wonderful parallels right now in the whole Steroid Era kerfuffle that has been going on for the last decade or so.  The hall of fame just elected Bud Selig, who pretty much stood by as the owners profited from the players at the time and then decided to "get tough" when the winds of opinion changed.  Those players made the owners countless millions and made fans happy but then got vilified after the fact, a post hoc nightmare if ever there was one.  So now that Selig has been enshrined, I would like to see the Bondses and Clemenses and McGwires get their chance to go in too.  And with that said, you can then deduce that I also think that if Charles Comiskey is in the Hall of Fame as an owner, then Shoeless Joe Jackson should finally be allowed in as a player, warts and all.

Trade with Dime Boxes.

This month has been declared the one where I settle all draft folder business.  This week I am focusing upon the trade posts that I scanned and set up, but for some reason, did not complete. 

Last July, I had a card overload, full of show trips, dog sitting, and sorting through a lot of new product that I had ripped but not collated properly. I had a great time doing nothing and as I read through blogs, I could go through want lists and help out.  Enter Nick and his blog Dime Boxes - The Low-End Baseball Card Collector's Journey (sort of the blog equivalent of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). I am a huge fan of this frugal and eclectic approach to collecting.  When I posted Topps series two, Nick let me know he was building the set and would like to swap to get my cards since I was not.  I checked out his wantlists and saw he needed a bunch of other 2014 stuff as well and I sent him an email and after the usual back and forth, I sent off a metric fuckton* of cards from his lists.

In return, a few weeks later, I found a fat and heavy jiffy pack full of Mets cards. 

That John Maine covers not only my love of Mets cards but one of my favorite collecting quirks. It is also impressive to find a Mike Piazza card I do not have.

This pack was loaded with oddballs and oddities.  I mean, when was the last time you got a package with two pitchers batting cards?  Not to mention a player taking photos card?

Plus there was two vague shiny Mets I didn't have, that 3D Bonilla and that dufex Murray.  The early 90s were a black hole for the Mets, but the cards were pretty sweet.

And the oddballs keep coming fast and furious here.  Food issues, box sets, Ted Williams faux-vintage and...

...SSPC cards.  How great is it when an Archives reprint is the least oddball of any card in a scan?

Speaking of faux-vintage, there was some Tom Terrific cards too.  And some Nolan Ryan on the Mets cards. I need to make a Nolan Ryan Mets page now that I finally have more cards of him in blue and orange than cowboy hats.

And low and behold, it's one of my all time favorite card sets from the 1990s, that hot pink Classic update set.  I have the whole set somewhere - I recall buying a bunch of those on clearance at Bradlees back in the day - I just didn't have a single of that Julio Machado card. Machado was a pretty terrible pitcher but he is famous for eating iguana and randomly killing a woman after a car accident.  Seriously, I couldn't make that up if I tried.

Not only were there great Mets cards in the package, there were some cards straight off my want lists too.  He sent cards for my Mike Trout collection and my Jim Bunning and Jim Kaat pages.  I am still torn if I should start a Trout collection but I am accumulating his cards anyway.

Also from my player collections were a couple of Jeff Bagwells and Reggie Jacksons, two of my faves.  That center Bagwell hologram is so beautiful yet so vague, I'd never even seen it before. 

There was so much in that package, I obviously ran out of patience for it and just did a Gilligan's Island "and the rest" on it.  Just from here, I see Diamond Kings, more food issues, more Classic, some 1985 All Star cards, 1990 Score Traded, a couple more Reggie Jacksons, and I wisely emphasized the 1966 Topps Dan Napoleon. That is a super card.

Nick put a friendly little note in with the trade pack and yes, I can assure you these cards found me well.  I am just sorry it took me so long to post this awesome trade.  Thanks, Nick!

*it's an industry term

Christmas In July.

       When we last left off, I was about to open about 7000 pieces of mail that accumulated over my dog sitting staycation.  Of course to do so, I needed a staycation from my staycation (how's that for pealing out the watchword?)  Anyway, I finally got to give The Stack the attention it rightfully deserved.  Let's just hit the ground running...

I bought a very random lot of oddball 90's food issues from an ebay seller and he mailed the cards in 9-pocket pages.  With a few changes for aesthetics, this page of 1993 Jimmy Dean cards is one of the rare ready-made pages in my collection.  We'll get into the rest of the cards in this lot in a moment.

I had to reorganize the pile of mail into something I could handle.  It went from this to this:

I am going to need a second cup of coffee...I mean, there are 35 PWEs alone here:

Included amongst the Jiffy packs were some trades and contest entry winners and they will get their own write ups soon.  In fact, Night Owl already got his. 

Okay, that is enough Postal Porn, let's get back to the cards.

Also included in that madcap food issue lot were some 1992 Jimmy Dean cards, and...

...a 1992 Score P&G All Star Set.  I already have this set broken up into a page and players, so if anyone wants this one, just shout.  It has a wonderful early 90's look and checklist. 

The reason I bought this lot was it had some of the 1992 Mr. Turkey cards and I couldn't tell you why, but I find this to be one of the great all time oddball sets: the name, the design, the airbrushing, this set has it all.   I still need three more to make a page but I am working on that.

The other set in here was a 1992 French's set, something I had never seen before.  Even though this is an 18 card set, I am going to go against my best instincts and break this badboy up into a 9-pocket page and for player collections.  A few of the leftovers might even find their way to you in trades. 

I was on a real Mr. Turkey binge and also bought the 5-card 1993 Baseball Greats set. 

I nabbed this particular one, over all the others on eBay, because it came with an official Mr. Turkey Baseball Greats notepad.  All of my correspondence will be done on its pages from now on. 

I got a little carried away with my 527 eBay purchases:

The top three all came from the same seller, you know, to save on shipping.  The others all came in a combination of low price or short impulse.  I have four binders full of low price and short impulse buys on that front.  Where else can nameless/faceless rookies hang out with the likes of Mario Lemieux and Brett Favre?

Going back to early 90's oddballs, here is another set I only recently found out existed, the 1992 Upper Deck Heroes Highlights.  It is ten cards of early retro vintage goodness:

I immediately put nine of the cards into its own page courtesy of the other oddball seller.  This set is wonderful in its Upper Deck-ness: the player selection, the terrible computer color adjustment on otherwise awesome photos.  Given my love of the Upper Deck Heroes series and faux-vintage, it had to be mine.    What happened to the other card in the set, you wonder?

It is none other than Reggie Jackson and that card will go into my player collection.  It was a hard choice between his and Ted Williams but the Splinter's card just looked better on the page. 

The other cards on this scan all come from those PWEs and Listia.  I have decided to jump on the Yasiel Puig bandwagon.  I figure anyone who makes traditional sportswriters that uptight must be doing something right.  I will need six more; please check the player page want lists for further information.  Also there are two Mike Piazzas I needed and one that I didn't.  Also some nifty Goudy reprints and a 1963 Topps Dal Maxvill.  I am not 100% sure why I bought these, but hey, the price was right. 

Here are some more puzzling cards from Listia:

The top three cards were all bid upon at the very last minute for 200 credits or less.  My motivations were nothing more than "oh, look, card!"  I figure, any OPC card with a trade line is fun and the blue parallel of a Kansas City Royal is quite good looking.  I also got lots of 2010 Topps and 2014 Opening Day with the similar thoughts and theories.  I love that photo of Big Papi and not only is that EY card have a fine photo, it is his "rookie card."  Sold and sold.  While looking for a few Roberto Clemente cards, I found one Listian with a bunch of small faux-vintage lots of different players.  I won the Clemente, Al Simmons, Tony Gwynn, and Buck Leonard lots.  I am willing to bet that is the first time those four players have ever been in the same sentence together, much less the same envelope.  A simple search of Google proves my suspicions on that front to be correct, at least in the online world.

Sorry folks, we aren't even close to being done.  Did you see that pile?  I mean, this scan is just the "bonus" cards I got in all those envelopes:

I find that a lot of Listia sellers throw in random bonus cards or use non-baseball cards in as toppers.  None of these cards remotely goes with anything I bought but they are appreciated nonetheless.  The Rickey and Buster Keaton cards are especially appreciated. 

I didn't get a lot of other sports cards, but there was just enough to make up a single scan:

Those hockey cards were all nabbed last minute while I was browsing.  I bet you'll never guess why I got that first one?  That 1992 Dave Krieg finishes my Topps page for that year.  Would you believe I finished my 1960's pages before I finished the 90's?  I really didn't buy any football cards back then.  Those bottom two Prizm cards are very very shiny and those scans do them not justice. 

Speaking of shiny blue Prizm cards:

I picked up a lot of seven baseball cards and now I have to decide whether to get two more of that year or make a Frankenstein page of those shiny wonders.  I lean towards the hate side of Prizm, but shiny is shiny and those blue cards are good looking.  Of course, they don't hold a candle to the Topps Blue Refractors.  Maybe I should just send them all to Chris at View From the Skybox and be done with them.  I also picked up a huge lot of 2013 Allen and Ginter dirt cheap.  The big cards are not shown here, the minis are.  While I don't want all cards to be mini, there is something just so enjoyable about those little devils. 

Wait, where are all the Mets cards?  Don't worry, they're coming...

All these 2014 cards come from Listia, including that camo parallel Jon Niese.  I might have to do his rainbow now that I have one of his low numbered parallels.  While I usually like Mets parallels to be in blue or orange, there is something organic and baseball-appropriate about the green parallels.  Topps has used a lot of white for the base the last decade or so, but I think a light green color like this might also do nicely.  I was always a fan of the 2001 Topps set for this reason, though the color on that border leans a little too teal for what I am talking about.

This Matt Harvey comes from that Opening Day lot from earlier, but he migrated down here.

The other cards on this page are random and diverse.  The second card is a rare shown-as-a-Met Richard Hildago card.  The Orosco, Kingman, and the bottom three were all in a couple of random Mets lots I got on Listia for nothing more than I like to tear open envelopes and pull out Mets cards.  The two Tom Seaver cards are the oddest of oddballs.  The middle one is a Sportsflics-esque card from Kellogg's back in the early 90's.  I remember actually pulling this card out of a cereal box.  I couldn't remember if I still had it or not, so I picked it up for nothing on Listia.  The other card comes from eBay.   It is from 1995 and not only have I never seen it before, I can barely find any information about it.  It's a cool looking card, so my $2 was well spent.

Last but certainly not least, let's look at the non-card items:

I got a couple of 1987 Mets schedules on Listia, which actually document the fact that the Mets once won a World Series.  Stop laughing, it's true!   I also got a free Saints car air freshener on Listia because hey, free air freshener.  The other thing here that I picked up is a Mets 101 board book for my niece's 1st birthday.  Even though I am aware that indoctrinating your children as a Mets fan could be considered child abuse, please do not report me to the authorities.

Mail Call: Weekend Wives and Dives.

      Some weekends lend themselves to heavy blogging and some don't.  This weekend's unbelievably beautiful weather obviously was not one of them.  I spent time outside and even spent enjoyable time with my family. *gasp!*  On Saturday, though, a pile of envelopes with some eclectic contents was sitting on the table:

Inside you have a bevy of football cards from all over the map, from commons to cards for my 527's to nifty manu-patch cards of Drew Brees.  Also there is a wonderful oddball, a 1971 Bazooka card, a set that has slipped through my fingers for some time.  Best part of that card?  I picked it up for nothing on Listia.  The last two cards are wonderful in their own personal way.  Penny Hardaway is one of the all time "what if" players in NBA history, sure, but why did I pick up this particular card?  Well, while surfing the aforementioned Listia, I ran into this card and it reminded me of a girl I dated from Memphis and her father's soul food restaurant.  Turns out, back when Penny was in college, after games they would all go to this joint.  Her father, who was quite a character, had all sorts of memorabilia on the walls and would ramble on and on about that team and how good Penny was. He'd also feed us just the most amazing food you have ever imagined: fried pork tenderloin, mac & cheese, collard greens.  Simply amazing.  Now, I hadn't thought of that particular little anecdote in years, decades even.  But that one card brought it all back...the smells, the stories, the hero worship, and the food (oh the food).  If that isn't why we collect these silly cards, what is?  The other card there is one from one of the terrible Batman movies featuring Drew Barrymore.  I have been in love with her since I was 6 years old and saw her in E.T.  Needless to say, I think of her all the time and don't need reminding, but it's nice to have her in cardboard form too. 

****

If you kids get bored with the same old cards, head over to View From the Skybox and get your filthy mitts on some new ones via his latest contest which is pretty nifty if you ask me.

May The Fourth Be With You.

        I am a geek and a nerd, I make no apologies for either.  I long ago gave up the idea that I would ever sit with the cool kids at lunch and talk about cool kid things.  Chances are as a kid, if I was sitting with anyone at lunch, we would sit there and talk about Star Wars.  After lunch, we would probably go outside and play Star Wars (I always wanted to be Han, I usually ended up being Chewie).  When I got home, I would probably turn on the TV, pop in a tape, and watch Star Wars.  If there was anything in this world that I was as obsessed with as baseball, it would have to be well, you know...

These cards are from my original childhood collection.  I am pretty sure these original Star Wars cards were mine, but they may have been my brother's.  He tended to hand me down things like this - whether he wanted to or not.  And I never did collect any of the whole series so a while ago, I pared them down to these single nine-pocket pages. 

The red ones are series 2, somehow, we all missed series 3 so I have none of those orange beauties.  Either that or none of them survived.  The green page is from series 4 and it includes the "corrected" version of the "naughty" C-3PO card.  Some parents have way too much time on their hands to be looking for android dong.

I was born in 1975, so I was just a tad too young to remember going to see Star Wars when it debuted in 1977.  I have been told I did see it as a toddler, but I'll be damned if my little brain can squeeze out the memory of that.  I do, however, remember going to see The Empire Strikes Back when I was five. 
 
I am a huge movie geek in general and if I am feeling frisky with the right kind of audience, I will make the argument that not only is The Empire Strikes Back the best Star Wars movie but it is the best movie of all time.  Around certain geeks, this rant is met with joy and wonder.  Around other film nerds, this line of thinking can make people's heads explode.  I will spare you the details, besides, what are we going to talk about if we ever meet for a beer?

I know I collected these Empire cards back in the day yet somehow, all the Return of The Jedi cards I had are long gone.   Perhaps they were traded for some Garbage Pail Kids at lunch or maybe they were stolen by one of my more nefarious 3rd grade friends.  As a grown up I have never replenished them and I am not sure why considering my most vivid memories of both movie and trading card involve the third installment.  I remember the guy who owned the convenience store at the end of the block telling all the kids that he would be the first to have "Revenge of the Jed-ee" cards.  Yes, he pronounced it with a long "e" at the end.  Lord, we all hated that dude, square old adult that he was. 

On this page of vintage odds and ends, you can see the old Wonder Bread cards from 1978.  I think my grandparents gave those to my brother because we were too poor to even afford Wonder Bread, it was store brand all the way in our house.  Those cards are delightfully mangled, I am not sure if it was from being in loaves of bread or from the overzealous love of an 8 year old.

Believe me, old age has not stopped me from buying Star Wars cards.

I bought these Star Wars Illustrated cards at Target last year and I made a page of them.  There is some pretty nifty artwork going on here.  I especially like the one in the middle since I often use the line "I find your lack of faith disturbing..."

Like most people of a certain age with any sort of taste, I am not a big fan of the prequels.  Oh yes, I waited outside for tickets to Episode 1 for 10 hours (not 10 weeks like some, I am not that big a geek...besides, I had a job then).  But after watching that piece of shit twice, I came to realize that no one could ever trust George Lucas again.  The one thing that came out of that time that was pretty good was one of the few things that Lucas didn't produce, the animated Clone Wars series.

If only such thought and attention had gone into the first two prequels that went into this show, they wouldn't be thought of as the steaming piles of childhood rape that they are now.  If you have never seen them, I recommend them highly.

Topps has put out a few different Star Wars Heritage sets over the years, these are from 2004:

Here you see the only Return of The Jedi cards I have.  Jeez, I am gonna have to make a page of those just so I will shut up about it, huh?

Oh, and look, they did some cards for the prequels too.  I have exactly three of them.  This should tell you everything you need to know. 

The bottom six here are the shiny inserts from this set.  I am always a sucker for shiny. 

Topps also did a Chrome set back in 1999.  I am almost certain I should have the whole set of this somewhere since I bought a bunch of this stuff.  For some reason, I also have this page. 

That Vader card is from the Topps Star Wars 30 set from 2007.  I bought a bunch of that stuff too and I have no idea what happened to it.  This page is a big mystery to me.

This page is a hodge-podge of different cards from all kinds of sets.  The one with Leia running away from the At-At is amusing to me since she never even saw them outside.  Yes, this kind of minutiae is important.

There are a few random prequel cards too. I should get more of these only if Natalie Portman is involved.  Maybe Ewen McGregor as well, his rendition of Obi-Wan deserved better scripts than he got.

Speaking of the lovely Ms Portman, there she is again.  The second prequel was worth it if only for that outfit.

These cards are actually stickers and they come from Germany.  I picked them up from a Listia auction and I have never seen them before or since.  That last card is a homemade card I cut out from the box of the original Star Wars Lego video game.  Man, if they had Star Wars Legos when I was 8 years old, my childhood would have been exponentially better.

This page was made from the Star Wars Galactic Files set from last year.

This set delved into the expanded universe as well as the six films.  I have never gotten too too deep into the comics, though I did read the Timothy Zahn Thrawn trilogy and the Heir to the Empire series of books.  I was very upset when I found out that the sequels will not take much from these stories.  I have my fingers crossed that these movies will be better than the prequels.  Let's face it, they have no where to go but up. 

As usual with these big all-encompassing anthology posts of mine, I start rambling as the pages tick by and never really get to a point.  I guess there isn't much of one other than I love Star Wars and trading cards, so if you put them together, I will eat that shit up.  Even if the cards are oddly sized like these:

These six cover the original three films, though the one with Han and Jabba comes from the Special Edition version.  If the prequels are underwhelming than the Special Editions are blasphemy.  Han Shot First.

I didn't scan the backs of these and maybe I should have, because little gems like these are hiding:

On the right is a price tag from a t-shirt (I believe it was a black on black rendition of Darth Vader with the caption "Sith Happens").  I couldn't bear to throw something that cool away so it somehow made its way into my card collection.  On the left is a coupon for the breakfast cereal C-3PO's.  I found this amazing thing in a coupon drawer while I cleaned out my grandfather's house.  You will notice it is dated 1984.  He died in 2010.  The man was not quite a hoarder but let's just say he never threw anything of value away.  This is obviously a genetic trait in my bloodline