January Vintage Show Top 20 - #1 Feat of Clay

Yay! I finished something I started! Well, I skipped a few cards, but you guys don't remember which ones are missing so who cares! Now I have filler posts for the future when I don't know what to write about! Like now! I just wanna drink a beer, watch some ponies and go to sleep! Screw you, I had to work all day while you just sat around and melted in the heat! Here's the best card I bought in January! LOUD NOISES!

OH MY GOD CLAY CARROLL ROOKIE CARD WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Phil Niekro what? Oh nononononono. That's not his rookie card. Phil made his debut in 1964 and has a card in that set too. I'll have to pick that one up one of these days.

Here's the complete list of Top 20 posts. See if you can guess which ones I skipped so you can yell at me to finish them already!

#20 - Wantlist Fail Part 1
#19 - Dollar Box Gem
#18 - At Least He's a Hall of Famer Now
#17 - Thurman Inaction
#16 - Cocktail Hour
#15 - Kid Stuff
#14 - Clubbed Cub
#13 - Cheapest High Number I Could Find
#12 - '59, Dude!
#11 - Look at the Whistler
#10 - Heartbreaking Taunt
#9 - '54 Ford With a Beat Up Chassis
#8 - King of the Bums
#7 - Joy of a Completed Page
#6 - HOW THE HELL IS THIS NOT IN THE TOP FIVE?!?!
#5 - Oh, because this one is...
#4 - Awwww, come ON.
#3 - Admit It, You Knew This Was Coming
#2 - Wantlist Fail Part 2
#1 - Feat of Clay

Greg Olson and Dan Gladden

I have 14 different art projects in various states of completion going on right now, tonight I actually finished one.

As iconic a picture this is to a Braves fan I can't actually remember if Dan was safe or not...

Last chance to vote for the All Star Game

You can vote if you want to, but none of you will ever be able to top my perfect ballot.

You also just missed the EURO 2012 semi-final match between Italy and Germany.

Man, it's just not Boehner's day....

January Vintage Show Top 20 - #2 Wantlist Fail Part 2

Yes I realize it's barely still June. I'm going at my own pace and no one can stop me. Except me and my laziness, I guess.

 Ok WAY the hell back here about 6 months ago I told you all about how I misplaced my wantlists and scribbled 'em out hastily a half hour before the show started and ended up messing up things royally and that's how I paid five bucks for a 1960 Frank Torre card in crappy condition that I already had in probably EX. That was not the only wantlist cock-up of the day. When I frantically wrote out my wantlists, I used my Braves binder as a guide and wrote down the numbers of all the ones I was missing. How do I write down missing numbers, you ask? Well, in this binder every open pocket is filled with something. usually either a slip of paper or a black & white printout of an image of the card I ganked off eBay with the card number written on it. Makes it easier when I fill a slot and I'm trying to figure out where it goes. The printed out cards make the page look nice too. Check out this page from 1964 Topps:

See how good that looks when you can see what all the cards look like? And the missing Tops In NL and Tommie Aaron cards still stick out for reference of which cards I still need. Nice, huh? I've done this in my Vintage Braves and 1953 Topps binder so far. I might do it for my '56 Topps binder too once I hit  60-70% complete. Don't wanna waste too much ink. Keen-eyed readers probably noticed one other odd thing about that page. If you didn't get it yet, I'll give you a couple minutes.

See it? How one of the cards looks a little too minty fresh? And the green is just a touch off? Or maybe you're a font geek like me and are writhing in agony at how incredibly wrong the Braves font is on the Hank Aaron card? Yep, that's not a real '64 Aaron. That's one of the reprints from 199? Topps. Don't remember the year, not gonna figure out the year. Look it up on BaseballCardPedia if you care so much. And don't tell anyone in the comments! Let 'em work for it! So yeah, that's not a real 1964 Topps Hank Aaron. This is:

That's the stuff. Right color green. Right font. Just a little beat up. Just like a real 1964 Topps Hank Aaron should look. So I needed three cards from that particular page in my binder.

I only wrote down two.

Aaron was not one of them.

Well, actually, Aaron was both of the cards I wrote down. Just not Hank Aaron all by his lonesome #300. That one I didn't write down because that 199X card was just so lifelike.

Wantlist fail! Again!

So then I saw this card in the bargain box. I saw two of 'em actually. I don't remember the exact price but it was a single digit odd number greater than 5. I don't know why I remember that when I can't just remember the damn price, but my brain is weird so deal. I looked in my wantlist, to my surprise did not see that I needed #300, looked at the card again, looked at my wantlist, looked at the card, and decided, fuck it, I need it for my 1964 Topps set that I am not technically building right now but oh well I NEED HANK. Turns out I did need Hank after all!

Moral of the story:
Not all failures are fail.
If you see a vintage Aaron for under a tenner buy the damn thing.
GET YOUR WANTLISTS TOGETHER YOU LAZY OAF

And actually I have gotten my wantlists together! I rewrote most of the major sets and series into a small easy to carry notebook that I used at the May show. I also found my red folder full of wantlists. Too late for the May show. I'm freaking loaded for the August show though!

One more card left! Actually more like five because I skipped a bit! But I don't care! I need to put this coutdown to bed already!

#20 - Wantlist Fail Part 1
#19 - Dollar Box Gem
#18 - At Least He's a Hall of Famer Now
#17 - Thurman Inaction
#16 - Cocktail Hour
#15 - Kid Stuff
#14 - Clubbed Cub
#13 - Cheapest High Number I Could Find
#12 - '59, Dude!
#11 - Look at the Whistler
#10 - Heartbreaking Taunt
#9 - '54 Ford With a Beat Up Chassis
#8 - King of the Bums
#7 - Joy of a Completed Page
#6 - HOW THE HELL IS THIS NOT IN THE TOP FIVE?!?!
#5 - Oh, because this one is...
#4 - Awwww, come ON.
#3 - Admit It, You Knew This Was Coming
#2 - Wantlist Fail Part 2
#1 - Feat of Clay

I have no time for a real post today

So here's Martin Prado and Kris Medlen dancing.

Knucksie Autograph

Quickie post for Fuji, he might take my extra credit point away for this one. I got a splitting headache tonight though and I can't stay up all night writing. He wants to know what my favorite player was when I was a kid. As a Braves fan I had two: Bob Horner for hitting and Phil Niekro for pitching. I honestly liked Horner best. He was a home run hitter (when healthy) and had curly hair and glasses like me. Everyone else could like pretty boy Murphy, Horner was my guy. Then collusion happened and he want to Japan and then to the Cardinals (blecch) and then the knees gave up. I still collect Horner today, but there just ain't that much out there for him. There's a couple of jersey cards (I think I have a patch card), there's a bat card (got that too), I think I have his Fan Favorites autograph and I have a couple of on card autos. I have most of his cards already including the oddball 1978 Coca-Cola card that pre-dated his 1979 Topps rookie. It actually might be a good project to go through my stuff and see how close I am to having every single Bob Horner card ever. A quick look on COMC shows I got most of that stuff already.So nothing really stands out. Sorry Bob, gotta go with Knucksie.

Niekro became a favorite basically due to his 1981 Topps card. I mean, he was a Brave, and our best pitcher and all, but that 1981 card sealed it for me. I probably posted it a half dozen times but I literally have 15 minutes to write this so you'll have to Google it. It shows Knucksie winding up ready to pitch and to a 9 year old who knew nothing of the strange faces pitchers make while in the process of hurling a spheroid at maximum velocity it looked like Phil had a big 'ol smile on his face. Plus the back of the card had a gigantic amount of stats! Phil had more stats than a whole pack full of my other cards! Had I not pulled that Niekro out of a random pack of '81 Topps my favorite Braves pitcher may have ended up being Tony Brizzolara, who knows?

Oh yeah, favorite piece of memorabilia. That's what this post is supposed to be about. Ok, it's right up above. No, that's not a card, although you may recognize the design. More about that in a minute. I got this card about 10 years ago. I don't remember if it was right before or just after my grandfather passed away, but either way my grandmother was moving out of her house to go live with my uncle and she was having a garage sale. Long story short (and because I don't need to be airing dirty laundry on this blog) I was stressed out of my mind, had worked very late the night before and when I arrived early that Saturday morning to help with the garage sale I ended up getting in a huge fight with a family member and stomped off. I drove around for a while trying to cool off (it was easier to do that back when the price of gas started with 1) and I heard on one of the sports talk radio stations that Phil was doing a signing up in Flowery Branch for charity. Hey, why not? My afternoon was clear. I drove from Marietta to Flowery Branch (not a small trip)((I need to cut down on the parentheses)for real) somehow managed to find the place and got two autographs from Knucksie. One on this card and one on a baseball. From what I remember I didn't pay more than about $30 for both.  I got this card here which is about 4"x6" in size, larger than a regular card. The design is based on the 2000 Upper Deck Legends autograph design that he had tweaked a bit and reprinted for his signings. The autograph is fantastic, blue sharpie, strong and readable. Phil also signed a baseball with the sharpie which didn't go quite as well. Who cares? I got to meet Knucksie! A rotten day turned great thanks to a promo on a radio station. Thanks Phil!

Five cards I found while sorting my Braves box

I have no idea what these were doing in a Braves box. I also have no idea why I'm so unorganized. I also have no idea what to write about today so here ya go.

Here's a Wall Climbers card of Ichiro from 2011 Gypsy Queen. This set may have been the beginning into my descent into Cardboard Ennui. I had been wanting a proper Gypsy Queen/Old Judge set for years (although I originally thought Upper Deck would be the one to do it) (No, 2005 Origins was NOT what I wanted) but when it came out I didn't go quite as crazy for it as I thought I would. Don't get me wrong, I still bought up a bunch of rack packs and blasters, I just didn't go completely overboard like I usually did. I didn't even put the set into a binder. That reminds me, my 2011 Allen & Ginter set is STILL not bindered. What the hell happened to me?

Of note - The stealth Best Buy ad up in the corner. I wonder if Topps is getting kickbacks for that?

Blast Blew Ribbon Beer! The beer that made Milwaukee burp! Considering I practically learned to read on Mad Magazine it's somewhat surprising I don't have a gigantic pile of Wacky Packages cards in my collection. It was just a matter of timing for me. I was too young to collect cards in the '70s and when I was in full cardboard hoarding mode in the '80s, Garbage Pail Kids were the ones to have. The one time I came across some old Wacky Packages cards when I was a kid, the dealer wanted a quarter a pop for them, which was way too much for me back then. Now they just sort of pop up in random trade packages here and there. I could use a case of BBR right now to guzzle while I listen to In My G4 Over Da Sea to earn my screwball hipster badge.

Here's a 1990 Classic card of Slammin' Sammy Sosa. This set is in the running for most early '90sish card design ever. I'm not sure if this is an 'official' rookie or not. There's a 1989 Donruss Baseball's Best card of Sammy which is just as legitimate a set as Classic is. Remember, Classic is a trivia game, not a baseball card set somehow. Yes, shenanigans also abounded in the trading card industry 20 years ago. To a much greater extent than today if you can believe it. It doesn't really matter because this card got creased all to hell in an *ahem* cleaning accident of which I shall not speak of in this forum. I'm going to make the best of it by turning it into an art card. I just need to figure out how to turn Sammy into a pony.

I have no idea how this card got into my collection I SWEAR. Actually I do, it was inside one of the weirder grab bags I've ever seen. A mixture of junk, vintage, promos and bootleg cards. This was one of the promos. Apparently there was a 1993 Portfolio set featuring purdy gurls in bikinis. Is there an online collecting community for these types of cards like with baseball cards? Actually I don't even wanna know. I've been around the interwebs long enough to know it can't possibly be a good idea to go looking for that.

Yep, random 1987 Donruss Opening Day Barry Bonds rookie in the middle of a Braves box for no discernible reason. I don't know what that is on his cap, must have been a toenail on the scanner or something. This one got put into a toploader or else it would have suffered the same fate as the Sammy. Which is almost a shame, because I can actually think of a couple ways to deface this one and turn it into an art card. It's only like a three dollar card now anyway, maybe I should just go for it.

Joy of a complete set

Because collecting should be FUN.

I hope all you guys chasing bat knobs at $100+ a pack are having as much fun as I am...

Set completed with assistance from McCann Can Triple and Mark A. with another offer from Adam E.

Favorite '90s Insert

Editor's note - I have absolutely no interest in writing about baseball cards right now. NONE WHATSOEVER. I just want to drink, listen to bleep bloop music, watch Angry Video Game Nerd, play Pokemon and draw ponies. That's it. I have no interest in anything else. I especially and specifically have no interest in writing about baseball cards. HOWEVER. I want one of Fuji's Kitteh Cards desperately, so he will be the de facto driver of this Blog's content until I get mah Kitteh. If you enjoy any of this writing, thank Fuji because otherwise I'd be asleep right now instead of staying up late writing this silly stuff.  

I have a lot of cards from the '90s. I mean I have a LOT of freaking cards from the '90s. More cards from the '90s than I know what to do with. I probably flat out lost more cards from the '90s than you have in your entire collection. To this day I do not know where the hell my 1995 Topps set is. All sports too, baseball, football, basketball and hockey dominate, but there's soccer and racing and WNBA and olympics and golf and Canadian football and rugby and even cricket in there somewhere. I have TOO MANY goldang cards from the '90s. I wish most of them would go away quite frankly. If all my '90s cards were just to evaporate or spontaneously combust or be eaten by centipedes I wouldn't mind too much. I'd miss a few of 'em, but the extra space would be nice. The one card I would be truly be upset about would be this one right here.

This is a 1992 Donruss diamond Kings card of David Justice. Everyone remembers how awful 1991 Donruss was. Most people remember how awful 1992 Donruss was too. But they're wrong! 1992 Donruss was one of the most beautiful card set to ever be printed! At least in December 1991 it was. It hasn't aged very well quite frankly. But Christmas 1991, that sucker dropped on us like a Sonic Rainnuke and blew us all away. If you just can't wrap your mind around the fact that '92 Donruss was beloved, just put a '91 and '92 card side by side and look at them carefully. It's like putting an '85 Yugo next to an '00 Chevy Impala. That Chevy looks DAMN good doesn't it? Forget the base cards, the Diamond Kings are what gave us collectors raging card boners back in the day.

I remember the frenzy at the card shop when '92 Donruss dropped. People just kept opening pack after pack of Donruss until the hit a Diamond King. After oohing over the base cards in the first pack and commenting on how much better these were than anything Donruss ever put out, the base cards got completely ignored after that unless the John Vander Wal with its inexplicable use of lower case in the name on the front got pulled. Everyone who pulled that card had to comment on it, even if two other guys had already made the comment before them. The most sought after Diamond King was Jeff Bagwell by far. Everyone wanted that Bagwell. Any Diamond King would do, but pulling a Bags was something otherworldly 20 years ago. I never actually saw one getting pulled until I pulled one myself a few years later out of a deeply discounted box of '92 Donruss I picked up from K-Mart. The Bagwell wasn't the one I wanted though, I coveted the David Justice Diamond King.

Actually, I coveted them all and spent a couple years building a set. I'm sure you can get a half dozen sets for a buck now, but they were serious business back then. I found four cards I needed at a flea market once. When I asked how much they were, the dealer quoted a dollar fifty a card for the likes of Tony Phillips among others. I agreed and when I pulled out my money to pay, he told me eight bucks total. When I asked how the cards went from $1.50 to $2.00 a pop in the space of a couple minutes he had the nerve to say the fifty cents covered the toploaders they cards were in. That was the first time I ever set cards down at a table and walked away without saying a word. That nonsense was over Tony Phillips. Dave Justice? In Atlanta? In 1992? Hoo boy. That's something else entirely.

The Justice was expensive if you could find it. These were the days when I thought long and hard about buying a card for five bucks. I could buy 10 whole packs for that! Justice DK was more than five bucks. I remember seeing it for $25 at one place, never less than $15. The summer after my freshman year in college I worked at a grocery store and across the street was a mom & pop butcher shop. The owner was a card fan and had a table full of wax boxes and a small case of cards in the front of the store. He had the Justice. Ten bucks! That was over a couple hours of work for me at the time stocking shelves but I wanted that card. I also wanted to party on the weekends and I had to save a little money for the new school year so I passed on the Justice many times.

Here's something you may not know about me. I got big time into born-again Christian stuff my freshman year in college. Like, Campus Crusade and bible studies and actually going to church on days that wasn't even Sunday big time. Don't worry, I snapped out of it. Don't get me wrong, I still believe in Jesus and God and all that ridiculous stuff, I just stopped buying into a lot of the.. *ahem* let's call it marketing that's so prevalent in that crowd. When you're a Christian you need a bible. Sure I had one of those little green Gideon Bibles that were passed out like candy on campus, but I didn't have a fancy proper hardcover ones like the cool kids had. And in high school I was a rotten little bastard who bought Black Sabbath and Motley Crue and Metallica albums to prove to my friends that I was more eviler than them. One guy won the evil crown when he suddenly decided to stop saying "Jesus" when something surprised or annoyed him and instead said "Satan". But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that I was suddenly a Christian who had previously had absolutely no use for a bible.

To rectify this situation I scrounged around my grandparents' house until I found a bible. It was some updated version with modern language or some such thing. It came from one of my grandmother's Lutheran relatives if I remember correctly. The scripture snobs in my bible studies sneered at it for not having the proper NIV language in it but at least it wasn't a Gideon. I got my NIV from my grandmother for my birthday later that year so I eventually became acceptable to the snobs. Man, the look on my ex-hippie mother's face that day was priceless. I'm digressing again. So I now had my bible and it it worked well enough, the thing practically looked new other than being a little dusty from sitting untouched on a bookshelf for over a decade. I snagged it and actually read most of it.

That summer I had been drooling over the cards in the case at the butcher shop but still didn't pull the trigger on the Justice. I was dejected that I couldn't afford the Diamond King but not quite bright enough to comprehend that I had spent enough money that summer on packs, music and late night shenanigans to buy a dozen Justices easily. As was my practice at the time, I read some of that bible daily. I had gotten completely through the New Testament and was trying to slog though the Old Testament. Leviticus is tedious, folks. At some point I got bored reading about which king begat which other king and idly flipped through the pages. I'm not making this up - right in the middle of some obscure book that no one ever reads, a ten dollar bill fell out right into my lap. For serious! Ten bucks! It's miracle! Had to be a miracle, I was reading the bloody bible at the time. Ok, all you skeptics, let's look at this rationally. The possibilities of what could have happened that day are:

1) it was a miracle.
2) it was a FREAKIN' miracle.
3) That relative of my grandmother gave a bible to my uncle back in 1980 and slipped him a ten dollar bill right in the middle of it which he never saw because 12 years of Catholic School turned him into an atheist and I just happened to find the thing years later because I was the only person to ever open the thing up to actually read it.
4) I'm not sayin' it was a miracle... BUT MIRACLE

Ok, fine, so there was an inscription to my uncle in the front of the bible. At the bare minimum it was a miracle my uncle never found the dough. Now, miracles from The Lord are not things to trifle with. That money was placed in my lap for a reason. There are many useful things that can be done with ten bucks. Donate it to charity. Give it to the Church. Buy a book by Josh McDowell. So many wonderful spiritual things could be done!

Nah, I bought the Justice. C'mon, it was ten bucks... ten bucks fell in my lap... There's a reason I call myself a cardboard junkie. what else was I going to do?

I will buy this card all day long

Last Friday I got in a nice groove of finishing sketch cards and putting together packages when the unthinkable happened. I RAN OUT OF BUBBLE MAILERS. Well, not completely out. I still have some larger sized ones and I've got tons of used mailers lying around cluttering up the joint, but new, fresh, virgin, unused 4"x8" mailers were all used up. All work and progress on catching up on my mailing queue obviously screeched to an immediate halt. I was able to hit the local card shop and pick up a fresh batch on Saturday. So now I have no excuse for not mailing out that stuff I promised you 6 months ago.

I was not able to scrounge for cards too much as I arrived at the shop right before it closed at 5:00pm. I did pick up a few cards out of the $.50 bin and one pack just so I could buy something other than mailers. I don't want the only decent card shop within 30 miles of me going out of business just because I only ever bought packing materials from there. This was one of the fifty cent cards.

Jason Heyward 2011 Allen & Ginter short print. For fifty cents! I already have this card as I pulled it out of my lone A&G Hobby box last year. It was the hit of the box, to be honest. I also may have bought one or two more of them out of dollar boxes along with the Glossy version off of COMC. But I had to get this one too. FIFTY CENTS! If there is one advantage to having my new-favorite-player-as-soon-as-Chipper-retires not meeting the ridiculously high expectations thrust upon him, it is that his cards are cheap as hell right now. He ain't but 22 years old folks... All you Braves 'fans' out there who are pissed off because Jason isn't Willie Mays yet just need to wait five or six years before he gets there. In a Yankee uniform most likely, but dammit, he'll be there.

I know what the set builders (the last remaining of a dwindling breed) out there are thinking... Dude! I need that to finish my set! Trade it to me! NO. MY HAYWOOD. HANDS OFF. Before you scold me for treating my fellow set-builders so shabbily, let me pass on some important information you may not have heard. Apparently short printed cards are no longer part of the base set so we collecting anachronisms don't need to chase them for our set-building needs. They're not part of the base set even though they are numbered along with the rest of the base set checklist because they are printed in lesser quantities than the actual base set and as we all know if a card is printed in lesser quantities it's an insert card and not a base card. Pay no attention to the insert cards from '90s Fleer sets that were printed in quantities that rival 1988 Donruss. At least this is what a certain Editor of the Hobby's most reliable and relied-upon source explained to me a couple of weekends ago. And by "no longer" I actually mean "never were" part of the base set because the definition never changed, it's just that us collectors had it wrong all this time. We had it wrong since the days of tobacco cards, but wrong we were. My October 2007 price guide says differently, but Winston hasn't gotten to that issue yet I guess. Short prints are not part of the base set and they have always not been part of the base set! To which I say....

THANK GOD. 

No more chasing after goddamn Heritage SPs. Allen & Ginter is now a hell of a lot easier to complete! Those weird skip numbered sets like Turkey Red and '06 A&G, well I don't even have to collect those abominations any more! and 2012 Archives? Well, that's a 241 card set. It's got Bryce Harper's rookie card in it and as we all know inserts cannot be rookie cards and if short prints are inserts and not base cards well then Bryce Harper's card CANNOT be an insert because it's a rookie card and if it's not a real rookie card then well that might hurt sales so it's a gorram rookie card because the industry needs this! Dammit, you selfish oaf, think of the hobby. It's not really short printed per se, just printed in slightly lesser quantities than base cards because it was added late in the print run and that's ok because Bryce Harper. I don't really care because I'm only collecting the 1-200 short set of Archives without SPs anyway.

I know what you're thinking now. "But if the definition of an insert card is that it is one that is printed in lesser quantities than the base set cards and the 2012 Bryce Harper Archives card was printed in lesser quantities due to being added late in the print run doesn't that mean the Harper card is really a short printed insert and not a legitimate rookie card per these new always been here base card rules?"

Dude.

That's a clown question, bro.

Every Baseball Card Collector Should Have This Card In Their Collections

All of you should have this card.

ALL OF YOU.

No Exceptions.

1987 Topps Bip Roberts Rookie Card

IT DON'T COST BUT FOUR CENTS, FOLKS.

Ten cents if it's totally mint.

Super Advanced Collectors can opt for the 1986 Topps Traded XRC.

Some of us, however, require a card with just a little bit extra.

Do any of you have an Official 1/1 Scott Crawford Bip Roberts Rookie Art Card?

Didn't think so.

The only Braves insert in 2012 Archives

Not counting short prints, relics or autographs at least. Out of the seven insert sets in Archives: Reprints, Classic Combos, In Action, '67 Stickers, '68 3D, '69 Deckle Edge and '77 Cloth Stickers, this Deckle Edge card of Orlando Cepeda is the only Brave. I pulled this one out of a blaster today.

Now, there are three short printed Braves along with five relics and six autographs in the set, but only a fool would think they could pull those from wax. I've also got 71% of the base set.

Guess who's done ripping Archives?

(wantlist will be posted... eventually)

Euro 2012

Euro 2012 is underway and while I am not going to pretend that I know what the hell is going on, I enjoy watching football played at a high level and this is about as high as you can get without being a World Cup. Being a filthy heathen Yank meself, I don't have a direct tie to any of these teams in the tourney, BUT I am an American Euro-mutt so I have a host of teams I can pledge allegiance to. I have ancestors from four nations in Euro '12, here's my teams in order of preference: ITALIA!!!! Ireland! Deutschland, England. Scotland and the Cherokee Nation sadly did not make the tournament.

Even though I don't know much at all about football and I can't even watch the games unless I go to a sports bar or a friend's house since I don't have cable and I'm American for Christ's sake why the hell am I watching soccer like some kinda dirty communiss I like it dammit and I'm going to commemorate it with some packets of football cards/stickers over the next few days/weeks. Packets I got from a dude in England because we sure as hell don't have any over here. First up is a Packet of Panini Euro 2012 Adrenalyn XL.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know who most of these guys are. So sue me.

Eduardo - Hrvatska

I don't even know what country Hrvatska is and I'm not going to Google it to give the appearance that I are smart. I do know who Eduardo is though. I'm not completely ignorant. He's an imaginary friend who loves potatoes.

Erik Pieters - Nederland

Oh, here's something I know about Euro football. The Netherlands' kits are orange. See? I'm not completely dim, am I?

...

WELL I KNEW ENOUGH TO CALL IT A KIT DIDN'T I.

Christian Maggio - ITALIA!!!!!!!

Yes, it is necessary to spell ITALIA!!!!! in all caps and with multiple exclamation points every time. It is also necessary to post Frank Zappa right now.



(only one vowel off - close enough to post Zappa)

Oleksandr Shovkovskiy - Ukrajina

Ukraine is one of the Euro Cup hosts along with Poland. I was very surprised to learn that the actual Ukraine is much smaller than the Ukraine territory on a Risk board. I've attacked that damn territory enough times that I see it in my sleep. Dammit! You already have Australia and most of Asia, quit taking Ukraine and screwing up my Europe, you jerk! What I'm trying to say here is that goalkeeper football cards are not as interesting as goalie hockey cards.

Aleksandr Anyukov - Rossija

I wonder if Oleksandr and Aleksander and fundamentally different names or if it's just a regional spelling thing. You laugh, but there's a difference between Bob and Rob or Rick and Dick or Bill and Will isn't there? Aleksandr looks like he's missing the tip of his left index finger. I'm guessing it's either bent and not visible, is a victim of a bad cropping job or was lost in a terrible threshing accident back on the family farm. I guess if you did actually lose fingers in an accident, soccer would be a good sport to go into as long as you're not a keeper. I could think of worse things to do, Jerry Garcia lost a finger when he was four and ended up becoming a great guitar player. Can you imagine playing guitar with a finger missing? Well, it was his right middle finger so it didn't affect him with holding the frets or anything but still. I got all my fingers and I can't get the frets right for nothin'. Then again I only try to play guitar when I'm really drunk and I've never really practiced or even taken a lesson or anything. Honestly, I'm more of a horn player. I wish I could find a tuba to play, I still have my mouthpiece from high school. I should have joined the marching band at the University of Georgia. Man, that would have been fun. Probably too fun, I had enough problems passing my classes freshman year, I might have flunked out altogether. That's assuming I was accepted to the marching band at all, I wasn't all that great a tuba player and I was completely out of shape when I started college my freshman year. I lost 75 pounds my first year at Georgia just because I didn't have a car and had to walk everywhere! I miss those days of being able to walk everywhere you needed to go. Now I live out in the boonies and I have to drive all over the goddamn place just to get anywhere. How's this for stupid: the closest park to me with a track where I can safely walk without having to worry about some kid in a ricer or drunk redneck in a pickemup truck running me down on the side of the road is 20 minutes away. I have to drive 40 minutes roundtrip just to walk! Not that I ever get the chance, what with work and kids. Don't have time to walk at work due to carpool and team lunch outings. Can't walk with the kids because if I left them at the playground at the park while I walked around the track I'd be arrested for child neglect and I'd be thrown in prison and they'd be thrown in foster homes and we'd all get molested. Just because I wanted to get some goddamn exercise. Oh but if I'm fat I should just put down the fork! Oh ho ho! Screw you, it's all about exercise. I ate like a college student in college and still lost weight because I got exercise. And had a better metabolism because I was a kid. Now I'm old and I'm sitting on my ass right now in front of a computer so what can I say. It's hard writing about a Russian football defenseman.

Gianluigi Buffon - ITALIA!!!!!!!!!!!

Two ITALIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ns in the same packet! And this one is all shiny! Even though it's impossible to tell from the scan! And it's an excuse to post this!



More Football packets soon. Soon meaning before Euro 2016 at least.

A Trading Card Rarity

What? You expected something different from this blog?

I honestly have nothing better to post right now

Mainly because I'm spending all my time making masterworks of art like this:

And, you know, working, familying, sleeping (not so much of that one), drinking etc. instead of writing posts for the blog. So let us take this time to pimp a contest over at

FUJI'S HOUSE OF WHOOPASS

Or something like that. He's having a contest and by advertising it I get more points which are immediately made less valuable by the fact that more entrants are diluting them. Still, I want a dang kitteh card so it's worth the risk.

No really, it's gonna be a while before I get my writing mojo back... might as well go win something.

I'm doomed.

My Little Pony trading cards.

Coming out in July from EnterPlay.



Yep, I'm doomed.

#29

I am useless at writing right now so here's a bunch of pictures of Smoltz cards to commemorate his number being retired tonight.

The Rookies

1990 Donruss MVP oops

1988 CMC Richmond Braves

1999 UD Legends

1998 Flair Showdown

1990 Fleer All Stars box set

1999 Topps Gallery

1999 Upper Deck

1996 Fleer Smoke N Heat

2003 Topps Gallery

2000 Starting Lineup

2005 Upper Deck 

2005 Donruss Polo Grounds

1997 EX2000

2007 Goudey

1996 Collector's Choice

2002 Topps Heritage

1993 Pinnacle Idols

1992 Bowman

1993 Ultra Strikeout King

1990 Donruss Diamond King

2003 Bryan's

1997 Sports Illustrated

1995 Pinnacle

1992 Confex Baseball Enquirer

1997 Pinnacle Museum Collection

2009 Topps Heritage

1997 Leaf Limited Limited Exposure

1997 Pinnacle Zenith