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.

Progress? Eventually.

       There is a room in my house, as I assume there is in many of your houses, that has become "The Slash Room."  In this case, it is the guest/closet/junk/spare/hobby room.  It is a room that seems to draw all the extra crap that doesn't have a place.  It is the room where out-of-towners too cheap to spring for a hotel sleep.  It also is where childish things get banished, things like say, baseball cards.  This is where I spend a great deal of my spare time, in this spare room.  My mission?  To whittle down all my excess cardboard into a manageable and enjoyable collection.  The "small collection" idea has been a work in progress 2+ years running.  Once you could barely walk into this room without nearly killing yourself on a crate full of 800-count boxes, now there has been a lot of headway made. 

There was once about 20 huge boxes and crates, there are now only eight:

I consider this progress.  Those three postal crates have mostly junk wax era complete sets in them, so those will (eventually) be easy to either put into binders, sell, or give away.  The others are full of boxes and shoe boxes.  They are the tougher ones to get through.

See the boxes in the crates here:

Those are the better cards I like organized into teams.  When I trade with you, that is usually where your favorite team's cards come from.  Some of them are packed (Yankees, Red Sox) some of them are pretty skint (Dodgers, Pirates). I am not attached to those cards in the least; they will all leave the roost (once again, eventually). Those three boxes on the right?  That is a bunch of memorabilia I haven't gone through in ages.  Balls, Photos, etc.  I used to have about a dozen of those paper boxes full, so again, I consider this progress.

OK, that is what the stuff I am trying to get rid of looks like, what about the stuff that is staying?  Isn't that more important?  Why, yes it is:

This is one 6-foot tall bookcase from Target full of binders.  Next to it are six shoe boxes full of cards in top loaders.  Eventually, this is all that my collection will consist of.  This amount seems manageable to me.  The black binders are sets.  The old timey binders are mostly labeled by team, sport, or maker.  The bottom shelf was cut off, but that consists of newer binders and just a little empty space to add more.  And why six shoe boxes?  Because eight is too many and four is too few.  They will eventually reside on top of this bookcase.  What's on top of it now?  Don't ask.  And you gotta dig my collection of sports jerseys there.  Yes, I am eternally 10 years old.

I was looking for my Piazza boxes, which are two of my favorites.  One of them was given to me about 25 years ago by my Gramma for Christmas:

It was one of those terrible boxes was full of junk wax stuff and somehow it never got thrown out.  Now, I still have this awful, cheesy, beat-to-hell box...but it reminds me of my grandmother every time I open it.  I wouldn't get rid of it for the world.

As you can see, I keep some very random things in there.  My beloved Rookie All Stars, some smaller sets (some of which are even finished) that may or may not find a binder, and my Mike Piazza game used cards...yes, I have a boatload of them.  No, I am not looking to get rid of any them.  Yet.

The real problem with my organization is...I keep finding more stuff.  Stuff I didn't know I had.  Stuff I thought I already dealt with.


So this box was on top, easy enough to spot.  And I can always pick out my three-row monster box full of Piazza cards, since it is the only three row monster box I own.  But what were these boxes under them?  I took them all down. 

What mysteries await me?  First of all, that red box is a 1989 Fleer Factory set.  No, really.  I love that box because it has Gary Carter on the front.  I might ditch the set and just keep the box.  It somehow made it to the back of this pile.

Let's look inside the Piazza box...

...wow, it is a mess, I have neglected my Piazza collection for a while. I have a whole cigar box full of cards to integrate into this box AND now these cards I just tossed inside.  Ugh.  Gonna be a long night of sorting.

But what of those other boxes?  You must understand, for a few years there I would go to a show, buy a bunch of cards - both dime box type and high end stuff - and it would just be thrown in a larger box waiting to be sorted.  Needless to say, these boxes built up a lot faster than my sorting could get rid of them.

And now I keep finding them!

This thing is full of new stuff, vintage, autographs, ten cent cards, ten dollar cards, hundred dollar cards. I thought I was done finding these...but nope, here's more.

And the 800-count boxes?

Even more unsorted stuff.  If you look, you can already see a 3x5 Darryl Strawberry card.  And team sets. And lord knows what else.

How much is this like archeology?  These boxes were on top of a dresser (see the upper right corner of the first picture), take a good look the layer of dust that was under those boxes:

Just call me the Indiana Jones of sports cards. *whip crack*

LuniTek.

       This post is about my furthest journey out into the collecting wilderness, Topps Tek.  In the late '90s, it seems card companies could not draw the line on what wacky crap they would put out.  Cards escalated with gold, shiny, gold and shiny, then thick, then plastic, then 1998 brought us the first set of Topps Tek.  It was plastic, thick, AND shiny; a set that had 90 players, 90 patterns, which means a master set of these badboys would be 8,100 cards. Eight Thousand One Hundred Cards.  And I know collectors who attempted this.  I sold them boxes and boxes of this stuff. I watched them trade and use a website called eBay to augment their collections.  It was a major obsession for some and I thought they were nuts.  1999 brought a second round of Tek - 45 players, this time with home and away variations, making 90 cards total and 30 patterns each.  This is a more manageable 2,700 cards for the master set ("manageable" being a very loose term here).  Having watched the insanity the year before, I anticipated a similar crazy push and bought a lot of it for the store.  Turns out, people had come to their senses and I way over-ordered this product from Topps and ended up having 3-4 cases of this stuff laying around for months.  During a late season lull in product, I got the bright idea "hey, why don't I buy all this Tek stuff and try to put together a set myself?"  As usual, I was way ahead or (in this case) way behind the curve.  I bought it all, busted it and was, um, not even close.  At only 80 cards per box, 6 boxes per case, and less than perfect collation, I wasn't even half done.  Oh, I went the eBay route and sold the gold cards (numbered to 10! - they actually still bring good money) and inserts (FantasTEK Phenoms and TEKnicians - oh those punsters at Topps) and bought some other lots and everything, but after a year, I was still only about 2,000 cards in. 

      The cards sat in a jumbo shoebox for a few years, nearly forgotten as I focused most of my energy in those years to vintage sets.  Then in 2003, the madness returned and I was like "hey, why don't I finish that Topps Tek set?"  Yes, in retrospect, it was a poor decision.  I went back to eBay and after 6 months only got another 300 cards.  2,300 out of 2,700 would seem like way too much to turn your back on.  But I did.  My girlfriend at the time was a very kind and understanding woman, but she never understood my love of baseball cards and really REALLY did not understand my obsession with finding the same card over and over and over again (yes, I made the mistake of explaining it to her one day when she asked me "whatcha doin'?"  Let that be a lesson to all the boys and girls out there - never ask that question and never answer it).  So when we decided to move in together, one thing I did was pare down my card collection and one big casualty was the '99 Tek near set.  I don't regret dumping the set - even though, later on, the girl dumped me - and I cannot imagine what people who tried to put together the '98 set are like.  I suppose there is a wing in asylums everywhere for the 1998 Topps Tek set builders.  I mean, the 2,700 cards beat me, a devout (if recovering) completist...I cannot imagine what 8,100 cards has done to the psyche of some men.

In my binders lies a few reminders of my insanity tango with Tek.  Enjoy.
 
As a post script, Tek went out with a whimper in 2000 with a set I don't think anyone remembers.

If anyone knows of anyone who has completed a master set of Topps Tek, please let me see the link.  And the phone number of their psychiatrist.