The state of the blog in one sentence

I spent more money at Hot Topic this year than I did on 2012 Topps Baseball cards.

ok I feel better now

I think I have to threaten to quit the blog every few months in order to feel good about posting stuff to it. Psyching myself out, so to speak. Maybe I'm just deranged. Have some Ponies!

There's a reason for the juxtaposition of these two cards but I'll keep quiet because [spoilers]. In other news, the Star Series Blindbags finally got stocked at Wal-Mart. yay.

Six Years

...I've been doing this. I don't know if I'll make seven. I don't know if I'll get out of bed tomorrow. Honestly this has been a wasted year and I've been some combination of wiped out, sick and depressed for the past four months now. I got a whole big box of cards to scan and post and I JUST DON WANNA DO IT. Maybe the new year will rejuvenate me, maybe it won't. Whatever the case I want to finish just one friggin thing this year if at all possible. Here's the last five cards I got from the May vintage show and never posted. Maybe the last cards from the last show I go to. Pissiness aside, here ya go.

Have a 1949 Bowman Jeff Heath card. Anything before 1950 is relatively difficult to find and this fills out one of the many holes in my vintage Braves team binder. I love the red and blue colors on this card but what is up with the smirk on this dude's face? It looks like he's getting a beej while posing for the photo or something.

1962 Topps Gaylord (snicker) Perry rookie card. While everyone's all in a tizzy about how every single born after this card was printed was a bunch of juiced up cheaters, Mr. Lord took used some different juice to get into the hall. *ptui* This HOF rookie cost me all of five bucks.

First draft of this was deleted for being over the top. The card speaks for itself. There's a reason this is my second-favorite card from the Mars Attacks set.

1971 Thurman Munson! One of the most iconic cards of all time! A card that intimidated me for years and prevented me from collecting the '71 Topps set! Got it for less than a blaster. Haven't bought much vintage since. Still afraid of iconic cards I can get for like, ten bucks online if I just put some effort into it. This is how far I've fallen collecting wise.

The big mamma jamma. Phil Niekro Rookie. And Phil Roof. Fun story: one of the first cards I ever owned was a 1971 Phil Roof that was way miscut that I got out of a junk box when I was about 8 or 9 for a penny. This is the last card I picked out from my last card show. Might be some symmetry there. Maybe not. It's the rookie card of my favorite player when I was a kid so if I do end up riding off into the sunset I'm at least ending on a high note.

Here's to 2013, it can't possibly suck as bad as 2012!

Boo!

I'VE BEEN SLIMED

Best card by far from the Instant Non-Sports Collection Awesome Box. Even though it's a sticker. Hell, ESPECIALLY because it's a sticker. Anyone know what set this sticker is from? Hint: there was no original Ghostbusters trading card set.

Joy of a Complete Set: 2006 Topps Lord of the Rings Masterpieces

HOBBITS! I've seen The Hobbit twice already and I'm going to go see it a third time with my son soon and then I want to see it a fourth time and then maybe I'll skip right over the fifth and sixth times seeing it and go straight to the seventh. Not sure how I'll actually do that but it'll probably involve magic. I haven't seen any Hobbit cards floating around yet but I'm sure they'll turn up sooner or later. In the meantime there's a whole slopton of Lord of the Rings cards floating around out there and here's one set I managed to pick up a few years ago. Wal-Mart sold plastic 200-card cases filled with packs for $9.99 a while back and there were a few non-sports issues in some of the cases. I managed to find one with LOTR cards in them, probably a retail box worth of packs. There were several different sets offered but the only other one I remember is a Topps 9/11 set that I considered but passed on. Had to get me a cheap box of Hobbits though. Here's the complete set of 90 paged out for your card gawking enjoyment.

One thing that impressed me about this set apart from the artwork is how well it was designed. most of the subsets such as portraits, costume design and cartoons were checklisted out so they would all be on the same page. Very thoughtful of the product designer on that one, I've seen a lot of sets that look really awkward in pages. This one looks great. I don't have complete sets of the inserts, but here's a page worth:

The etched foil set comes together to make a puzzle of the one ring. I'm still missing three but you can kind of see where it's going. The ghostly foil cards ended up scanning much better than expected.

I've got enough complete non-sports set to post one a week for a couple months at least. Any requests for next week? Monsters, movies, ponies?

Your regularly scheduled card post has been cancelled due to Hobbits

HOBBBBBBBIIIITTTTTTTSSSSSSS

I'd forgotten how much I loved this series. Plus I have an irrational man-crush on Martin Freeman so I'm kinda agog about the whole Hobbit trilogy right now. I have my ticket in hand and will be heading to the theater shortly.

Three things I'm looking forward to seeing in this series:

1: Dent, Arthur Dent as Bilbo Baggins. I'm not kidding about my man-crush. I'm the only person I know who loves and will passionately defend the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

2: Magneto as Gandalf. Ok so it's Gandalf as Gandalf as Richard the 3rd as Magneto as Gandalf. I'll pretty much watch anything with Sir Ian in it.

3: DWARF MADNESS OVERLOAD. I'm sure Peter Jackson will do a good job with the dwarf antics, but this is my personal vision for the trilogy in sketchy cartoon format:

This post isn't completely devoid of cards, here's a complete 2006 Topps Lord of the Rings Masterpieces set that you'll be seeing more of soon.

I haven't seen any Hobbit cards out yet. I'm sure they'll show up eventually. In the meantime here's my one and only bit of official Hobbit merchandise in my collection: a HeroClix figure of Gandalf.

With his trusty steed, Rarifax, of course.

(you thought you would get a short Hobbit break from ponies, didn't ya. LOLNOPE)

Twelve 12s for 12/12/12 part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Here's the numbers, now here's the cards.

 Did you guess all of them? (ok so I cheated on Heyward)

Twelve 12s for 12/12/12

This is the last time I'll ever be able to do a post like this so obviously I'm going to half-ass it and not do uniform numbers like I did in the past. Instead here are twelve card number 12s. First the numbers tonight, then the actual cards tomorrow afternoon. Can you guess what card belongs to each number?