Happy Birthday To Me.

      So Friday was my 47th birthday, a most nondescript age to turn to say the least.  I took the day off to have myself a nice four-day weekend. Of course, as much as having 96 hours to do nothing would be ideal, one has to use at least some downtime for the errands one must attend to.  Being a grown up is lame. But I decided while I was going to be out and about to at least also attend to some of my childish amusement which means baseball cards, of course. 

Having recently finished my 1975 Topps set, I've taken on the challenge of the 1972 set next.  I know this one will take years (it took me years to build it the first time). I've gathered all the stars I have and bought myself a nice starter set at a decent price. But while I now have a good 80% of the first 653 cards, after that - the dreaded high numbers - I only had 4 of them. So I know it is a long term task ahead of me. 

 

 

Ah, but this is where some serendipity comes in, even more than my '75 set had.  I was around a comic store I know has card supplies and some boxes of random sports card stuff. I have spoken of this place before. It is always a fun visit to a joint that has been good to me before but I doubt it will ever be better than this. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to start my '72 set officially two weeks ago and aside from my initial gathering hadn't done anything more. Heck, I haven't even put together a want list yet. (UPDATE: Yes, I have, in my brands and sets wantlist tab) But as I dove into the dark vintage old school cardboard section of that quarter box, it was like some kind of wild daydream. It was loaded with 1972 Topps. And not just any kind of 1972 Topps, I immediately recognized these cards as high numbers. And there was not just three or four of them, there was dozens of them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously, it is clear that a comic shop might not be well versed in what they had in this vein of cards and I didn't feel it was my place to tell them. I mean, it's not like there was the Nolan Ryan or Frank Robinson traded card in here. But the Rick Wise traded card was in there. And about 60 other high numbers. I asked and made sure the unsleeved vintage was a quarter and I was told yes so I just went with it. All in all, I nabbed 90 or so total that I needed for my new set. And I got those high numbers for a quarter a piece; I couldn't have done that the first time I built this set in the late 90s. I should feel guilty but I don't. I also got a huge lot of series 5 original Star Wars cards too at the same price, but that is a different post (and they should have known better about those). There was also a bunch of other vintage stuff in there, some 1968 commons that I couldn't resist and some '70s team cards. Along with a shiny new binder and a big monster box, it was quite the trip and turned out to be a glorious, unexpected birthday present for me. I'll have a new list up soon for the '72 set soon and I even have a few high number doubles to trade. Try not to take horrible advantage of me.

Sorting things out.

       A few leftover notions from my 2018 Topps post from Sunday.

I spoke of the look of the new flagship set and while I don't hate it as much as I have 2017 or 2016 since Topps has gone to a borderless design, they have started to take on the vibe of late era Donruss base cards and this is not necessarily a good thing.  I think one thing that always made Topps special is that they had a specific feel and natural progression and the border is one of those things that now seems is lost. I feel this year's design, unlike the last 2 years, would look great with a border.  My awesome, utterly professional and in no way amateurish photoshop skills came up with this:

You can add a border and they look much more like classic Topps cards (think 1996 perhaps) and if you need to have things extend out a bit, you can see I took the ribbon to the edge of the card and continued the disintegrating name plate into the border as well as the team logo (where applicable).  I am sure somehow Topps thinks borderless cards are all "futuristic" but they have been around since 1990-91 and used on regular base cards since 1994 Donruss and Upper Deck.  I am not sure those are touchstones to be aspiring to. Flagship Topps always had a classic look and they seem to love to celebrate their history, so why have they turned their back on it the last few years in the name of "the future?"

***

We all recognize what this is:

I have collated cards for as long as I can remember yet I have never given it much thought.  I don't know if it is like scoring a baseball game but I suspect a lot of people have quirks to the way they do it, as I have seen folks in card shops and at shows do it their own way.  If I have a few dozen cards, I just do it in my hand like shuffling a poker deck.  If I have a few hundred, I sort them as you see above, into blocks of numbers of 50, e.g. 1-49, 50-99, 100-149 etc.  Then I sort them further.  If there is a few thousand to do, I so the same thing, then break them down into the 10s as I do it and then hand sort.  It is a monotonous activity but I have always found something relaxing and a little zen about it.  When I was a kid, my mom referred to it as me "playing solitaire" (which I supposed when you are 10 has a whole different meaning than when you are 15, but I digress).  And this is just numerically.  Anyway, does anyone have any different way they do things?  Let me know since I am momentarily obsessed with whether there's a whole different system I have never been privy to.  Not to mention there is also the classic 8x4 grid of sorting things by team, another issue all together.  I always do the teams alphabetically but maybe you do them by league and/or division?  I must know!  

***

And finally, a wonderful bit of card serendipity that I am sure we've all had or hoped to have at one time or another.  As I was searching for the new Topps on Friday, I was also meeting a friend for coffee at a Dunkin Donuts I don't normally go to.  I was a little early and there was a comic book shop next door, so I ducked inside there to kill the 10 minutes I had to wait.  Now, I am not comics guy but I can always enjoy a comic book shop just for the nerdy vibe, the toys, and there's always a chance they have some sports stuff stuck in among their wares.  They had a few long 5000 count boxes full of MTG and Pokemon cards and the like but then my eye caught the unmistakable dull gray cardboard color that can only be vintage Topps cards.  There was only a couple hundred of them, but what a vein of joy it was.  They weren't in sleeves or priced but going through them, there were some I just had to have...

How often does a coffee date turn into 1975 Topps?  More than that, was some of these...

I love the 1973-74 hockey design and there are a couple of wonderfully miscut ones as well.  So I only had a few minutes with these cards and I had no time to go through them all.  These are the few I nabbed while I was there initially.  When I went to check out, the n̶e̶r̶d̶ dude behind the counter said, "oh, anything in there without a sleeve is 10 cents"  I had lucked into a 10 cent vintage box in the middle of Wayne NJ on a Friday afternoon!  I had my coffee and caught up with my friend, and then you better believe I marched back into that shop and bought just about every one of those cards that even remotely interested me.

All because of my efficiency in finding the new Topps and over-promptness in meeting my friend, I now have a few hours of bliss ahead of me this week.  Oh, and I also have this:

If you need an explanation, I don't think we can be friends.