Cardboard Junkie

I am a bad blogger

2012-02-01T08:52:00.001-05:00

I have absolutely no interesting content ready to post right now and I really don't want squirrel balls as my top post anymore so here is a picture of vicious bloodthirsty attack ponies guarding my Jason Heyward autographed baseball.

(If I was a good blogger I'd have the post about how I got the ball in the first place done)

2012 Topps is Live

2012-01-31T08:36:00.001-05:00

And ain't no one has a shortprint as good as mine!

(important safety tip - pastels don't work worth a darn on decoy cards)

Joy of a Completed Page - Ludicrous Edition

2012-01-30T23:00:00.000-05:00

I haven't done one of these in a while and I'm hopelessly behind on my self-imposed posting schedule, so let's do this. Submitted for your approval: A complete page of 1986-1987 Fleer Basketball.

HEY YOU SLEAZE. THAT'S NOT A COMPLETE PAGE.

Ooooooooooh yes it is.

holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-

Not keeping that particular card in a 9 pocket sheet for obvious reasons. Here's the back for gits and shiggles.

This is in celebration of making a trade for my first additions to this set in nearly 20 years. I got so giddy I made a wantlist.

34 Sleepy Floyd
35 Lloyd Free
36 George Gervin
37 Artis Gilmore
92 Alvin Robertson
93 Cliff Robinson
94 Tree Rollins
95 Dan Roundfield
96 Jeff Ruland
98 Dan Schayes
99 Byron Scott
100 Purvis Short
101 Jerry Sichting
102 Jack Sikma
103 Derek Smith

Sticker #2 Larry Bird

Ya, I need 15 cards to complete the '86-87 Fleer set and the biggest name is George Gervin. I've got over 90 doubles from this set so if there is anyone out there who happens to have any of these I'll be happy to trade you at least two-for-one for any of these suckers. I got all the ones I have from about half a box at 35 cents a pack from McCrory's at Northlake mall in 1987. While I didn't score all the rookies, I traded my surplus of Barkleys and Ewings to knock out the biggies that I didn't have. I think it's about time to put this sucka to bed. If you have no '87s to trade, I'd also appreciate a link to someplace online I could pick 'em up cheap.

Aww what the heck, let's put up the '87-88 Wantlist too while I'm at it.

this is as close to a complete page as I've got from this set

1 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
5 John Bagley
6 Thurl Bailey
9 Charles Barkley
10 Benoit Benjamin
11 Larry Bird
14 Tony Brown
16 Joe Barry Carroll
17 Bill Cartwright
18 Terry Catledge
20 Maurice Cheeks
23 Terry Cummings
25 Brad Daugherty
27 Johnny Dawkins
30 Clyde Drexler
31 Joe Dumars
35 Julius Erving
36 Mike Evans
37 Patrick Ewing
38 Vern Fleming
39 Sleepy Floyd
40 Artis Gilmore
42 A.C.Green
49 Ron Harper
51 Roy Hinson
52 Craig Hodges
56 Magic Johnson
58 Vinnie Johnson
59 Michael Jordan
60 Jerome Kersey
66 John Lucas
67 Jeff Malone
68 Karl Malone
72 Rodney McCray
73 Xavier McDaniel
74 Kevin McHale
75 Nate McMillan
76 Sidney Moncrief
77 Chris Mullin
79 Charles Oakley
80 Hakeem Olajuwon
81 Robert Parish
83 John Paxson
84 Sam Perkins
85 Chuck Person
87 Ricky Pierce
89 Terry Porter
91 Robert Reid
92 Doc Rivers
96 Mike Sanders
97 Detlef Schrempf
103 Steve Stipanovich
106 Isiah Thomas
111 Wayman Tisdale
118 Dominique Wilkins
119 Gerald Wilkins
122 John Williams
123 Hot Rod Williams
130 James Worthy
132 Checklist 1-132

Got a few more stars to pick up in this one... I love commons too though.

Surprise!

2012-01-28T23:37:00.000-05:00

Tim Hudson pranks the Braves' next manager.

Half a set of Game cards

2012-01-27T20:38:00.000-05:00

This week in posting has gone disastrously, so I'm going to write it off and finish up with a post I should have had up last year. At least I'll have caught up a little! I don't remember exactly what I traded to The Cardboard Don for these things. I'm pretty sure a relic was in there somewhere. I do remember the sketch card though, but I'm behind on posting that one too...

Ah well. one thing at a time. Here's half a set of 1970-71 Topps Baseball Scratch Off Game cards.

UGGGGH. Tim McCarver would have to be the first one out of the package. These cards were inserts inside packs of 1970 and 1971 Topps. There were 24 cards, one "Team Captain" per team. I have no idea which team gets the privilege of boasting Tim as their team captain because he's such a team player he didn't bother to wear a cap on this card. I suppose I could look it up, but with Google's new policy on combining history among all Google accounts, I'm afraid to have "Tim McCarver" in my search history. My demographics are fairly well calibrated at Male, 25-34 (YESSSSSS) Interests: Sports Memorabilia, Cartoons, Art & Design, Stupid My Little Pony crap on YouTube (the stupider the better!), Armchair SOPA Activism and Showtunes. I can't risk messing that up and getting targeted ads for Tim's latest book.

MUCH BETTER. Mack Jones, team captain of the Expos. I miss the Expos. They didn't have as much money as the Nationals do.

Sal Bando, captain of the A's. People get all caught up in Reggie and forget Sal was a helluva player.

Here's two Tony Perez cards, but they are not doubles. How can this be? While Topps completely recycled this insert in 1971 right down to the players they put on the cards, they did make one change to the set:

The centers for 1970 inserts had a white background.

The centers for 1970 inserts had a red background. I got one of each for Tony. Not that I'm going to try to collect all 48 varieties of this set, hell no. I'm not even picky if the suckers have backs to them, which some of them do not.

Like this Boog Powell card here. The back half is completely ripped off. I ain't even mad. If you've seen one back to these things you've seen 'em all. Like this one here:

The Reds stole one from the A's in the 8th inning according to the back of this '71 Tony Perez card. Every single card has this exact back (minus the added scoring of course) so who cares if you only have half the card. This isn't exactly a condition sensitive set. A game card that came out of a fresh 1970 pack opened in a clean room would still only grade a PSA 4, tops. These things were never mint, ever.

Here's an awesome '70 Yastrzemski with bonus Killebrew!

Well speak of the devil... Here's full Harmon, with a little schmutz on the front. I can't tell exactly what that is. Might be a printing flaw or the card might have gotten run over by a bicycle that just rolled through hot tar. It's hard to tell.

Mel Stottlemyre was team captain of the Yankees? Wow, did their fortunes fall in the early '70s.

Nate Colbert joined Boog as a member of the 50% off club. Nate's missing back is a little more obvious on this scan.

Future Brave Jimmy Wynn is the captain of the 'stros. WHO BETTER REMAIN THE 'STROS. I can handle the Houston Astros in the American League, but not the Houston Oilers or the Houston Gamblers or the Houston Swamp Rats or whatever polls well in focus group testing. The only DECENT name they could possible change to is the Houston Colt '45s which would be promptly kiboshed because omg gun violence. Dammit Bud! Quit screwing up the game!

Dick Bosman got to be captain of the Senators as well as a coaster for an 8 oz. coke bottle.

Last but not least is Lou Piniella, who is also not wearing a cap, but as anyone who has read Ball Four a couple dozen times knows, he was dumped from the Seattle Pilots and went on to win Rookie of the Year for the Royals. Lou is also one of the cards I got with pristine innards:

Damn, that's purdy. Maybe I should reconsider my position on Tiptons just for this set. Thanks be to the Don for this trade, I hope the return was deeemed acceptable. I'd hate to wake up to find a pony head in my bed.

Jason Heyward signing tomorrow for realz

2012-01-27T10:11:00.000-05:00

BP Sports in Marietta has J-Hey signing tomorrow from noon-3:00. $39 for flats and balls. Not that I'd want Jason to sign my balls. (you'd think they'd charge extra for that)

Solidarity

2012-01-27T00:02:00.000-05:00

Here's a video of the people of Poland flipping out over their country's signing of ACTA. Good for you, Poland!

What the hell is ACTA? It's an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (see, right there in the name) that has a bunch of internet-killing provisions tacked on for no good reason. Here's a video by a smart dude who knows way more about this that explains it.

I'm not even going to play like I know a goddamn thing about this other than it's yet another attempt to completely screw up the internets. But if it's important enough to cause an entire freaking country to lose their minds over it, then it's important enough for me to MSPaint an old trading card in solidarity. If you want to know more about ACTA, Google it while you can.

Not so original after all

2012-01-25T23:22:00.001-05:00

I thought I was being clever by painting ponies on random trading cards...

But this dude is painting pop culture stuff on original cabinet cards!

The artist bit of me is all squee but the collector in me is all nope nope nope nope NOPE. This guy does these paintings so well that I just might need to hide the really old vintage binder for a couple weeks lest I become inspired.

Here's one for Night Owl: The Art of Alex Gross - Mixed Media

Lots more painting awesome things on other things in this post what I ganked this from.

Sketch Card #13 - GODZILLA

2012-01-25T10:34:00.001-05:00

I am now over two months behind in posting sketch cards. I'm also blowing off posting the Top 20 Card Show #17 with this post. Procrastination leads to procrastination! In my defense, I couldn't post this one earlier because most of the images were stuck on my phone. I have no excuse for the Top 20 post. This card went to Edgar. Far as I know, Edgar doesn't have a blog, and he traded me a bunch of Sparkly parallels for... uh, I don't even remember anymore it's been so long. As you can see from the back, I was a bit bewildered as to what I should draw for him . So I went with Godzilla. Good choice, no?

After playing around with the colored pencils for Twilight Starlin, Maddux Pie and Cartoon Dirk, I just went balls out with this one. I also decided to record the process of making the thing. Here's how Gojira came to be:

First I sketched out the basic shape of Godzilla and the menacing helicopter. Once that was in place I started layering on the color, starting with some purple for a foreboding sky.

Godzilla is attacking at night, so lots of dark blue joins the fun.

Tokyo is on FIRE, so let's add some red, orange and brown.

Darkness falls. Let's add some black to finish up the sky. And over here is where a happy little helicopter lives. At least until Godzilla swats it to oblivion.

Time to grab every green pencil in the box. I started out by coloring in the outline of Godzilla and filling in with the lightest shade of green and then working progressively darker. I have no idea if this is how it should normally be done, I was pretty much winging it the whole time.

A tiny bit of darker green was added and I colored in the mouth and radioactive funk breath at this point. I think I futzed with the sky a little bit too.

A couple more layers of green were added. The big guy is filling in nicely.

Finally I added the darkest green, touched up with a few of the other colors of green, added some brown highlights here and there and did the eye. Godzilla is ready for action.

Here's the reference photo I used to make this thing. A good chunk of the stuff I've been drawing is random crap I found on the interwebs and Edgar just got lucky I stumbled across a cool monster that day. Considering some of the horrible disgusting sites I frequent, he got DAMN lucky. He could have gotten a sketch of Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid!

(why oh why can't I get away from politics???)

The Official Trade With Scott

2012-01-24T10:16:00.004-05:00

A little while back I offered up all these cards in exchange for three things:

1 Braves Card
1 Card What Is Cool
1 Drawing Of A Subject Of My Choice.

Scott Sawyer stepped up to the plate and took my offer.

And sent 13 cards instead of 3, but I'll let him slide this time simply due to these three cards.

The Brave

There were Braves all over that package, including some Dover Reprints, minor league cards from the '80s and a Jermaine Dye autograph that almost ended up in this post. Instead, I chose this Chipper Jones bat relic from 2001 Fleer Platinum RC Edition. Fleer Platinum was Fleer's "Heritage Set" using designs from the '80s including '81, '84 and '87 Fleer. In '01 they used the 1981 design and added a "RC" Update set towards the end of the year. I think it was merely an excuse to get a Mark Prior card on the market. Well, in the Aughts a card set wasn't a card set without truckloads of relic cards. Here's one of Chipper in the Lumberjacks set. Anyone recognize the photo in the background? It looks familiar but at 1:30am I can't place it. I chose the Chippah - well, because Chippah - but also because I looked through my Chippah box and didn't find this one. That's right, I got over a thousand different Chipper Jones cards and Scott found one I didn't have already. Good show!

The Cool

1991 Pro Set Scottsh Football card of Tommy Turner of St. Johnstone. Any man who can pull off shorts like that whose name is not John Stockton is automatically cool. Take into account the 'stache and Tommy is reaching dangerous levels of coolness. Oh how I regret not buying a box of this stuff at the dollar store when I had a chance...

The Sketch

Not even going to make jokes about this one, because I have never been quite as happy to see a card in my life as I was to see this one. I think I was a teensy bit happier to see my kids being born, but it was close. Holy crap did this one throw me for a loop.

My instructions to Scott were thusly:

Your artist's commission:1) a monster or2) a pony (for all values of pony) or3) a scene or actor from a favorite movie
Choose any one of those three that you wish. Or any of those three asor with a pony. (Pony pony?) Do not worry about artistic ability, I'ma fan of outsider art and the more DIY the better I like it.

Here is the result:

Humphrey Bogart & Ilsa Pie. On a Topps "You Sketch It" card. I have no words. But my initial reaction was this.

Oh yass, there will be a repeat of this experiment, and soon.

2012 Phungo Pack Rip Video

2012-01-23T23:12:00.000-05:00

No scans yet because I got sidetracked by tonight's short print kerfuffle and I have to get back online for work in a few minutes. If the video doesn't say it all, then I really don't know what will.

1976 Topps Ron Paul

2012-01-23T15:15:00.001-05:00

Once I saw this I couldn't not do this:

I even used Cesar Cedeno's card for the template since they look so much alike.

(my pledge to avoid politics this year has really gone all to crap, hasn't it??)

RUDY RUETTIGER IS NOW PONY

2012-01-22T23:53:00.001-05:00

POST PONIES

Jeez, I really need to cut it out with all the poniez.

C-C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

Thank goodness for ska.

Here's a message Rudy, you're now a pony! BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA

(I swear to Celestia that things will be back to normal on the blog this week)

I can't think of any more clever ways to troll you with ponies

2012-01-22T22:51:00.002-05:00

Guess I'll just have to...

(you know)

Wait, he's not a pony! Wizard, maybe. But not pony. Let's fix this.

Aaah, that's better.

POST, PONIES

2012-01-22T20:00:00.001-05:00

Can't ask for a more accurate blog title than that.

(gee I hope I didn't include a Jello card accidentally)

Joy of a Completed Team Set - 1954 Topps

2012-01-22T16:00:00.001-05:00

I finally finished it!

What's that? The Aaron? It's uhhhh... supposed to look like that. I had to get one in really bad condition. So bad it's smaller than normal and is printed on Chrome stock. I think it got hit by radiation or something. You know, all those nuclear tests in the '50s? Eeyup, this team set is totally legit. Nope, didn't cheat at all. Why are you looking at me like that? Hey look guys, over there!

PONIES!

(runs)

I swear no ponies this time

2012-01-22T15:26:00.001-05:00

See, I'm trustworthy!

2012 Phungo Cards are LIVE

2012-01-22T13:39:00.002-05:00

First pack of the new year! Although I'm still not buying packs this year. I got no problem with people sending them to me out of the blue. Too bad I haven't had time to video the pack rip yet. Guess I'll just have to

POST PONIES

Package from Scott

2012-01-22T11:54:00.000-05:00

I promised I'd show off the sketch that Scott sent and I'mma do it. But I asked for three cards and he sent thirteen so I have to figure out what to do with the other ten. I know, I'll show 'em off here! Check out my cards.

A couple off the '76 wantlist.

Topps205 of Hall of Famer Larkin. I don't need this one for the set, but I have plans for it.

Three Braves reprints from the classic Dover reprint books by Burt Sugar. I already have these in book form and in separated form, but Lopez is going to be a filler in my Braves binder.

Three minor league cards from the '80s including long time trainer Sam Ayoub.

Jermaine Dye minor league auto. I swear I have this already but I can't find it. I'm completely disorganized right now because I've been too busy

POSTING PONIES

(this one was a dirty trick)

Book readin' update

2012-01-22T09:56:00.000-05:00

Just checked this book out of the library the other day. I stopped by the library looking for a copy of The Catcher Was A Spy, a biography about Moe Berg. Unfortunately, that book hadn't been seen since 2002, but it was still in the computer system for some reason. I was able to find another Vonnegut book I haven't read and it has my bro Kilgore Trout in there so I snagged it. I haven't actually started reading it yet though because I'm too busy

POSTIN' PONIES

A bright and shiny Sunday morning

2012-01-22T08:12:00.001-05:00

Time for breakfast.

WITH PONIES

Dayf is asleep

2012-01-22T04:10:00.003-05:00

POST PONIES

(thank goodness for the 'schedule post' function)

GO TO SLEEP

2012-01-22T01:10:00.000-05:00

It's too late for little fillies to be awake!

(not too late to post ponies)

No one pays attention on the weekends

2012-01-22T00:03:00.000-05:00

POST PONIES

January Vintage Show Top 20 - #18 At Least He's a Hall of Famer Now

2012-01-21T10:12:00.001-05:00

FYI for everypony: If you're in the Houston area this weekend, Sports Memories of Oklahoma (the dude I bought these cards from) is going to be at the TriStar card show at Reliant Stadium this weekend. If you end up going, say hi to Roger for me.

Yes, I used the word everypony. It's Applejack episode day! Errrrrr... make that Derpy episode day!

I've set myself up for failure with this series of posts by writing the first two too well. I'm not sure exactly what is the reason behind this. Perhaps I got really geeked up over the vintage show. Maybe it's all the caffeine I've ingested this week. The recent internet unpleasantness (I don't even want to say the name) got me riled up, maybe that got the juices flowing. It might be that I've got a bunch of sketching projects to complete and I'm procrastinating by writing a lot. Who knows, maybe all the ponies have recharged my batteries. This post - I can tell you right now - is not going to be good.

The problem is this card is one I had to get, but I'm not really jumping up yelling and screaming about it either. Come February when I start hitting the top ten I'm going to be bouncing off the walls like Pinkie Pie visiting the Hershey's chocolate factory, but today (and honestly for the next few posts in this series) I'm just not going to be all that excited. I'm happy, but a quiet, reserved sort of happy. The happiness of doing a job that needed to be done, and doing it well enough. A solid workman-like happiness. Those things are all kinda boring though and so also this post shall be. Here's #18.

OMIGOSH

HOW CAN I CALL THIS CARD BORING

FRIGGIN HALL OF FAMER

1972 TOPPS!

THE HECK IS WRONG WITH ME

PONIES HAVE RUINED MY MIND IF I THINK THIS IS BORING

Hear me out, people. I admit, this is not a boring card by any means. '72 Topps with the blue psychedelic tombstone border. Posed shot with the ubiquitous facade in the background. Not really a semi-high number, but it's got a card number in the 500s which is kinda impressive for a '72 card. And it's of HALL OF FAMER Bert Blyleven! I was griping and beeyotching about his Hall snub for years! Not quite as loud as I screamed about Santo, O'Neil, Minoso and Miller, but he was definitely in the Top 5 of players I whined about not being in the Hall of Fame. And now I have his '72 Topps card for the set? What gives?

There are several factors keeping me from acting like a squeeing fangirl all over this post. First of all is the price. If I had found this sucker in a quarter box I would have been dancing in the streets. (brief aside: I did a search for that link and Google told me that I had already shared it in a blogger post last year. I'm starting to think SOPA isn't the thing I should be worrying about. Oh well [insert last line of Orwell's 1984 here]) The fact of the matter is I got this for 4 bucks which is probably a pretty fair price for it. It's in good shape, coupla dings, slightly off center. I needed the card for my set and I acquired it fairly from a reputable dealer in a grand example of how Capitalism is supposed to work. Booooooring!

While I needed this card for my set, I haven't actually placed my '72 Topps series 4 cards into a binder yet. I probably should go ahead and do that, but I've been trying to finish each series one at a time and I haven't done it. Honestly, after I knock out series 3 and 4, I ain't completing no '72 series for a loooooooooooong time. Series 5 is tough and the high numbers are just stupid. I have about 3 times the number of high series cards from 1953 Topps than I have for the '72 set. That's just not right. So while I have knocked out a hole in my collection, I never got the tactile sensation of actually placing the card in the binder. Things like that are important. Sure, I'll do it soon. Whenever I get arsed to stick the rest of series 4 into pages, but it just won't quite be the same. The card for Tuesday's post (like how I've got all this stuff scheduled out in my mind?) suffers from the same issue as Bert, but I at least have a clue on where I'm going to go with writing that one.

The big thing that leaves me sort of flat about this card ( heh - card, flat) is the simple fact that Bert now is a bona-fide Hall of Famer. Two years ago, this card probably jumps at least a half dozen spots on the countdown and I would have written a flaming rant full of piss and vinegar about how the BBWAA is a bunch of Morans and the Hall of Fame voting is a joke and they should really just nuke Cooperstown from orbit and blah blah blah blah. TIPS FOR ASPIRING WRITERS: Wanna find something easy to write about? Find a topic that pisses you off. You can ~~write~~ rant all the live long day about injustice and stupidity. You'll have a great time writing and your readers will rally around the flag. A great time is had by all! Writing about something that is exactly the way it should be? That's harder.

Bert Blyleven is a Hall of Famer. WELL DUH. Dude's got 3700 strikeouts! He was an All Star! And he pitched amazingly well for a bunch of shitty horrible teams! And he won two World Series Championships when he finally got on good teams! OF COURSE he's a Hall of Famer! And now he is. And I bought his card. For a fair price. And I can can now check off one more Hall of Famer on my '72 Topps checklist. Oh goody.

No, really, I'm happy about this. I'm smiling on the inside. This is a really great card. Out of thousands of cards at that show and hundreds upon hundreds of cards in my price range, this was one of only 26 I deemed worthy enough to come home with me. I enjoy having this card, really I do. I just can't bring myself to jump up and down about it. Sorry about the boring post. I promise the next one will be more action packed.

Here's the complete list of Top 20 posts. See if you can guess what cards are coming up!

#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

1969 Topps Braves Team Set

2012-01-20T09:03:00.000-05:00

When I was updating my Braves Vintage want list the other day I realized that I apparently have never shown off my completed 1969 Topps braves team set. I am not entirely certain how this has not been posted before, but I can't seem to find it in my post archive. I suppose I could have labeled it poorly. If anyone wants to go through my 3000+ posts to check, feel free. In the meantime, I scanned it again for your Friday viewing pleasure.

In other news, even though I will never have time to play it, I really, really, reaaaally want to buy Skyrim now. Yay!

Via.

January Vintage Show Top 20 - #19 Dollar Box Gem

2012-01-19T21:45:00.000-05:00

According to my self-imposed schedule, this card should have been posted yesterday, but the blog was blacked out in a stand to try to keep freedoms on the internetz. Fat lot of good that did, as the very next day the Feds shut down MegaUpload to teach all us geeks a lesson. Noone said the birth of the Information Age wasn't going to have labor pains. So now servers have been confiscated, over 9000 file share sites are still in operation and everyone who bought a subscription to MegaUpload for perfectly legitimate uses just lost their data forever and not a goddamn thing was accomplished just so the politicians running for reelection can woo back the Hollywood donors for the 2012 campaign. At least there is a Presidential campaign going on so real issues that affect every American's life will be discussed.

Ah well, fuck it. I've seen this kind of movie before (legally, not pirated) and I know all the possible endings, and every single one of them is dreadfully entertaining. Why sweat it? I'mma write a blog post about cards instead.

Once I was done with my orgy of bargain box scrounging I had nineteen cards total. BUT... I specifically had a request to do a top twenty card show series. Well, there was no choice! TO THE DOLLAR BOX!

Actually, there was no specific dollar box. The entire bargain box was littered here and there with dollar cards and there was a separate box filled with some old crummy Bowmans that were a buck a pop (2 for Yankees and Dodgers, grumble). Roger uses a system of dots on the sleeves to make it easier for him to sort through the bargain cards. A yellow dot means the card is a buck. I was being a high roller this time and only picked up one dollar card out of the non-sports pile in my initial card grubbing. There was also a little stack of cards from the '50s for a dollar each. That's where this one came from.

Ain't it purdy?? it's a 1953 Bowman card. You can tell by the design. Or rather, lack thereof. 1953 Bowman is a helluva set that I should really respect more than I do. I'm far too blinded by 1953 Topps though to really appreciate the set the way it deserves. What a kick in the ass for Bowman. They take the time, effort and expense to produce the first card set with really fantastic quality photography, and their competitor puts out a set that is worthy of hanging in the Louvre. Ok, maybe not the Louvre. It could certainly hand in MOMA though. It's like meeting a beautiful, funny, smart girl who likes the same music you do and then she introduces you to her sister Natalie. (might want to hover over that link before you click on it so you know what you're getting into) Just ain't fair, I say.

This card is well loved, but you can still make the picture out from behind all the wrinkles. And what a picture! The batter kneels, bat in hand. Two more bats at the ready, resting on his knee. He glares to his left at an unwelcome intruder into his photo shoot. Ten minutes after this picture was taken that interloper would be dead, his lifeless corpse dumped behind some trashcans in a nameless alley in the Bronx. He would later be found by a junkie who boosted his wallet to buy some smack. That junkie would get busted for puking on a cop, get sent to Rikers for a stint, find Jesus while in the joint and turn his life around. He worked as a dishwasher for a small pizza joint in Brooklyn run by an immigrant who came to America in 1932 after leaving his family an Napoli. He was eventually promoted to the kitchen and did so well, he took over as manager when the old man retired. He married a widower from Queens whose husband was killed in a tragic ferry accident and the used the money to buy the pizza place, where they worked together, the husband cooking, the wife doing the books, until his death in 1975 from a stroke. Widowed for a second time, she cashed out the parlor, moved to Jamaica and smoked grass with local reggae musicians until passing away peacefully in her sleep at the age of 92 naked on the beach with a bottle of rum in one hand and a half smoked blunt the size of Pittsburgh in the other. Yankee Stadium is also visible in the background just like 97.4% of all Vintage Bowman cards ever. Moral of the story: don't mess with people with Boston when they are getting their picture taken. They get tetchy. So who is this alleged vicious killer?

HOOT

How'd you like to be bludgeoned to death by a long ball hitting fly chaser named Hoot? Muck up his photo shoot and find out! While everyone oohs and ahs over the front, the backs of 1953 Bowman is where the true genius of this set lies. A blogger recently asked what would be on a perfect card back, and this right here comes pretty close to the mark. Text is readable. Card number is on the top left and big enough to see without your glasses. Player name large and bold in a font that could be Comic Sans' great grandpappy. Bographical stats and a nice paragraph on the player. Career and 1952 year stats including fielding stats. And the true kicker: a blank line for 1953 stats! Anyone ever seen one of these with the stats written in?

I picked up two '53 Bowman cards at the show, the other was Herman Wehmeier. That card looked a lot better and I'm kind of fond of people named Herman right now, but I couldn't leave a dude name HOOT off the top 20 list, could I? Nah. Not when he's got that bat in his hand.

Now that the gov'mint is bound and determined to destroy the internet over a severely broken copyright system, the question remains: just who the hell owns the copyright on this picture? It's a 59 year old photo from a defunct company. Topps gobbled up their competition in '56, so do they own it? Does the original photographer own it? Since I scanned this particular image with this particular pattern of scuffs and creases and wrinkles, do I own it? Does no one own it? Well if by some freak legal accident I happen to own it (not bloody likely as I don't have a team of lawyers at my beck and call) I say copyleft the sucka! Go little assemblage of 0s and 1s! Fly, be free! Go out into the interwebs to find your fortune! Stay away from that area labeled 2 Girls, 1 Cup, though. You don't wanna go there. I believe in you little .JPG! Be all you can be! It's not like they can take stuff in the public domain and drag it back into copyright, can they?

Oh Goddamnit. Et tu, Supreme Court?

Here's the complete list of Top 20 posts. See if you can guess what cards are coming up!

#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

Trying to get back to normal

2012-01-18T22:59:00.001-05:00

SOPA ain't dead yet, but hopefully a whole bunch of people who didn't know anything about it got some knowledge today. Thanks to everyone out there who did their part today to raise awareness of one of the many bits of underhanded shenanigans our government keeps trying to pull on us. From the sites who shut everything down completely to the people who just put a mention in their normal site activity that they were against SOPA, everyone who did even the smallest thing to raise awareness today has my gratitude. As do everyone else out there who just learned a little bit about the world today. SOPA ain't dead, PIPA ain't dead, the people who want to fuck up the interwebs are still out there, and they're already regrouping as I type this. Don't be surprised if the bill is repackaged, renamed, and snuck into a budgetary defense appropriation bill that has to be passed right now or the government will shut down (if only), the world economy will collapse and all our troops in the field will be left to die. But at least at this particular moment things look a tiny bit better than they did last week. Don't think I'm going to let up though, I can be obnoxious when riled.

IN THE MEANTIME: the blog (or at least the background and header) will remain black until I can find the images on my hard drive and upload 'em again. Maybe a little MSPainting is in order?

I also wanted to acknowledge a package received from Scott Sawyer. He took the bait when I tried to pawn off some doubles. Here is the play by play of my reaction when opening the package.

Oh hey, a package!
It's from Scott!
(opens)
Awww jeez, I only asked for three cards! There's a dozen in here! I have too many cards as it is!
These are pretty cool though, even if I got 'em already.
Let's open this up- D'OH dinged the crap out of that corner there...
Ooh, this IS a cool card
Braves errywhere - do I have that already?
Couple off a want list, sweet
Wow, that's a nice one
Heh! I remember those! nifty!
Still, this is too many cards. I just wanted three! Let's check out the sketch card.
...
!!!
O_O

(yeah I'm gonna make you wait for the post)

Stop SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-18T08:57:00.000-05:00

Why?

Thus far, the card companies have been very forward-thinking on intellectual property issues, realizing that we're actually promoting their product rather than "stealing" it, and I'm really thankful for this, but it's entirely possible that they could actually be legally compelled to change their policies on our use of their images as part of the fallout of this bill being signed into law, if it ever does pass (and enough of Congress seems to be in the thrall of the entertainment industry's lobbyists for this to be more likely than you'd think, no matter what their constituents actually want).

SOPA will not do a damn thing to prevent piracy, counterfeiting or protect the children. But it will destroy the internet as it exists today, and that's not an exaggeration.

Learn more here. Also here.

See what you can do here.

Contact your representative here.

No jokes, no funny, no ponies today. Internets is serious bizniss. Let's all take a few minutes to try to keep from getting locked up over posting an image or linking to a YouTube video.

Brace Yourselves

2012-01-17T17:03:00.004-05:00

Oh God... They're HERE

(not here though, you know what I'll be up to)

January Vintage Show Top 20 - #20 Wantlist Fail Part 1

2012-01-16T23:50:00.000-05:00

And the countdown begins...

It's my firm belief that if you're going to a card show, you have to have a plan of attack. If you run in there willy nilly you'll get overwhelmed by the cardness and lose your grip. You could end up leaving with a pile of bad relics and a 1990 Fleer factory set. Even if you have a plan, strange things can happen, but it's best to be prepared. My plan for this show was predicated upon my wantlist. Or rather, the lack of one.

I have a bright red folder with about 50 pages worth of printed wantlists. All my Heritage up to 2009, all of my A&G up to 2010, 2002-2003 Topps206, Topps 1951-1956, about 8 other Topps vintage sets, All my Braves Team sets and about a half a dozen other odds and ends. All in one place, sorted, cards crossed out as I acquire them. I haven't seen the bloody thing in months. Luckily, I have my wantlists backed up here on the blog. Ok, some of them haven't been updated in three years, but they're there. And I can print them out whenever I like! Well, at least when my printer is working, that is.

So here's what happened. I was procrastinatory as usual and didn't take a half bloody hour to write out my wantlists or put them in a text document so I could print them elsewhere. It's the morning of the card show. Due to an enormous cock-up on my part I thought the Jason Heyward signing was at BP Sports in Marietta on the same day as the card show. Was an honest mistake, the e-mail BP sent me had "Jan. 14" and "Jason Heyward signing" on it and that's all my mind registered. It didn't occur to actually read the thing and see that the Jan. 14th referred to the card show I was already going to. So that morning I got up bright and early (9:57am) and watched My Little Pony.

WHAT.

WAS PINKIE PIE EPISODE!

WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!

So after I watched the episode (twice) I got to scribbling down my wantlists on scratch paper real quick like. It was 11:00 and I wanted to be out the door by 11:30 to get to the signing. I was forced by time restraints to narrow down the stuff I was going to look for immensely. Like the Carlin routine A Place For My Stuff, I was forced to create a smaller version of my wantlist, just the stuff that was really important.The things that made the cut:

1953 Topps. I wrote out the whole thing and reality checked it against my binder. Out of EVERYTHING I collect, this is the main really really main for reals main focus.

1979 Topps. I only need two bloody cards for this damn set. Don Sutton and the Pedro Guerrero rookie. Can't find the gorram things anywhere.

1972 Topps Series 3 and 4. At the last card show, I completed my 1972 series 2 set but due to poor planning I left several cards I needed from series 3 on the table. I wrote out both series 3 and 4 this time! Series 5 would take a half hour to write out. Series 6 isn't even worth writing out. If you find a cheap '72 high number, just buy the damn thing.

Braves team sets 1933-1967. I should really just print out 100 copies of this and leave a pile by the door so I can pick up one on the way out every time I leave the house. This is when time really started to crunch and the writing got scribbly.

1956 Topps cards 1-107. I started writing this out and decided "screw this" If I find something epic or dirt cheap I'll think about it.

I then jotted down a half a dozen cards I vowed to buy instantly if I found them in my price range:
1940 Play Ball Casey Stengel
1958 Mantle/Aaron
1962 Topps Bob Uecker
1964 Topps Phil Niekro
and a couple others I forget.

So due to my lack of planning, this became the plan:

If there's a high dollar card like that '53 Yogi Berra I passed up last time that I can afford get it.
If not, attack the cheap '53 high numbers.
Then, attack the '72 want list.
Then cross your fingers for '79 completers.
If money left, then browse bargain box for Braves.
Get at least one cool non-sport card just because.
After that, if money left, free for all.

I'll go ahead and spoil it for you, here are the results of that hastily cobbled together plan.

EPIC SATCHEL FAIL
Win
Win
Fail
Win
Win
Epic Win

Pretty goot success ratio, even if I shall see C-Note Satchel looking at me sadly on my deathbed, a tear in his eye lamenting the life we could have had together. Oh well. I got 26 cards instead and left with over 30 bucks in my pocket. But this post is about Fail! Wantlist Fail! Here is my fail, coming in at #20 on the countdown.

1960 Topps Frank Torre. In dreadful condition. Normally I like Tiptons, but there's a feel to this one that depresses me. I love 1960 Topps for the bright, shiny colors (is it any wonder I'm obsessed with poniez?) and this one is kind of scuffed and faded. It looks like Frank is sadly looking out his front window, bat in hand, ready to play some ball, but it's pouring down raining. Raindrops streak the window, obscuring Torre's sad face, disappointed that there will be no ball played today. This would make a hell of a 1957 Topps card. Half that set looks like Silent Hill anyway, this would just add to the ambiance. Too sad for '60 Topps though.

Add to the sadness the fact that this card was pricey. Five bucks! For a 1960 Topps common in rainy condition! Oh, but it's a high number, you say. No, no it isn't. High numbers don't kick in until card 507. My guess it was priced so high due to the name Torre. Torre is a popular name among Yankee fans and Damn Yankees drive up the price of everything. That's my theory anyway. A better one than it was in the wrong sleeve at least. I didn't really want to buy the card. I almost put it back twice. At the end of the day, I looked at that card, and back at my wantlist, and said to myself, "Self, this overpriced crummy looking card is on your wantlist and even though it is too bloody expensive, you need to get this damn card for your team set instead of a bunch of dollar cards out of the bargain box you big dummy."

So I bought the Torre.

I got home that evening. Scanned all the cards. Updated the wantlists on the blog. Opened up the Braves binder to put things in their proper place... and there's Frank staring at me in my binder. 1960 Topps. #478. Frank Torre. In friggin great condition too! Good corners, bright colors, a few print streaks on the bottom, but who cares. I had the bloody thing already! So what happened?

My Braves wantlist on the blog was out of date. Badly. I did a reality check after I discovered the Frank error and found about 20 cards I never knocked off the list. Since I pulled the list I took to the show from the blog list, there were problems. The really really dumb thing is I tried to do a reality check when writing it down, but rushed due to time constraints. So I could leave at 11:30 (ended up being 11:45 anyway) and be two weeks early for a Jason Heyward signing. Derp.

So, because I was lazy and unorganized, I ended up buying a 1960 Topps common for my main set for a fiver. LESSON LEARNED. Organize yo stuff! I'm going to get my wantlists together in a new folder. One I won't lose because I chucked it in the trunk of my car after a show. I'll do this right now! Well, it's late, maybe tomorrow. Actually tomorrow is bad. Later this week. Next card show isn't 'till April anyway. I got time. I wonder if the new pony episode is on YouTube yet?

Here's the complete list of upcoming posts. See if you can guess what cards are coming up!

#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

Obligatory Hockey post

2012-01-15T23:44:00.003-05:00

Got to see some Hockey in Atlanta last night with a couple of buddies even though Gary doesn't feel we are worthy, unlike Arizona. Eff the NHL, I spent less on last night's ticket in Row G for a minor league game than I've spent on parking for the big boys and had just as good a time. I took some pictures, but I've spent the past half hour fighting with my crappy BlueTooth gizmo trying to get the pics off my phone and I give up. I really really need to join the 21st century and get one of these newfangled smartphones. Vintage is great in baseball cards but sucks ass with electronics. You'll have to imagine the pics of a hockey crease through the glass and of a minor league goalie picking up teddy bears off the ice. Thoughts/highlights from last night's game.

The game was between the Gwinnett Gladiators and the Greenville Road Warriors. Russell Crowe vs. Mel Gibson.

Before the game we went to get dinner at a joint in Tucker. Not going to mention the name, because foreshadowing. Got a couple of beers and shared a plate of fried pickles/jalapenos. I was told the jalapenos were ruthlessly hot because they kept the seeds in when they sliced and battered them. When I scoffed at the heat or lack thereof, I was told to try the red ones because those were really hot. After querying on how exactly to find out which ones are red when they are covered batter, it was determined that my buddies ate all the red ones. I wanted a burger (with tots! woooooo!) but their house burgers were all weird. Ham on a burger? Pulled pork on a burger?? WTF? I was told a while back by the owner of one of the local card shops (not going to mention the name, because foreshadowing) that one of the best culinary experiences ever is to have a burger with a fried egg on top. I was dubious of this claim, but the advice stuck. One of the burgers at the joint did indeed have a fried egg on top and even though that sounds odd to me, it sounded a helluva lot better than pulled pork. So, I got EggBurger. It was... ok. Barely. Honestly, the bacon probably saved it. Breakfast should probably be kept separate from burgers. We left the restaurant and I felt mostly all right because of the two beers. (FORESHADOWING)

Got to the arena, drove right in, no traffic, free parking, 2 minute walk from the box office. God I love minor league sports.

Walked right into the box office, up to a counter - no waiting in line - and bought three tickets within spitting distance of the glass for 15 bucks less than one ticket for average seat at Phillips for the Atlantipeg Threats. God I love minor league sports.

To make things less complicated, one guy bought the tickets and we paid for his grub all night. I got him a beer and a bag of peanuts. One 12 oz. Yuengling on draft - $7.50. I can get a 24 oz. can of the stuff at the Ted for $8!! Oh well, two out of three ain't bad.

I got the seat in the middle. First thing I did was put my arms around both of them and asked who gets the smooch if we get on KissCam. I have no shame.

For some reason the Canadian National Anthem was played. I guess it's just a hockey thing.

For some reason one of my friends started singing along with the Canadian National Anthem. I apologize to all Canadians, past, present and future. Even if you are a fan of maple syrup, beavers (animal or otherwise), or even just really like snow and at one point in your life felt some sort of kinship to the people of Canada for even a moment, I apologize. I am so, so sorry for what happened last night.

Before the American National Anthem, there was a stern warning not to yell out during the anthem because it is horribly disrespectful and Jesus will cry and Everyone Should Support Our Troops. At the proper time I whispered very softly and respectfully KNIGHTS!!!

No one will understand what that means, but trust me, it is essential for any Hockey game in Atlanta.

The first fight in the game came three seconds in. Seriously, the clock read 19:57 and there were already two roughing penalties. I don't even think the ref dropped the puck before the gloves were off. Great Googley Moogely I LOVE Minor League Hockey.

Somewhere in the middle of the first period I had the epiphany that I had reached the point in my life where I don't necessarily give a crap about the game, I just want to go so I can hang out and bullshit with some friends.

I am happy I have reached this point in my life.

The Road Warriors (whose logo looks like the result of Ghengis Khan knocking up a Viking) got the first goal. Boooooooo.

Right about then my colon most definitely decided it did not like the EggBurger. I had cold sweats for about 10 minutes while the teams skated out the period.

I was able to pass the time watching the end of the Saints/Niners game on one buddy's IPhone. There was about 5 touchdowns in a minute and a half or something? Seemed like it at least.

I don't particularly want to give Steve Jobs' ghost any of my money, but those things are nice.

First intermission: I announce I am going to the bathroom. Singing friend decided to go with me. We go in the bathroom, both stalls are occupied. I have to wait for buddy to finish his business before I can go find a place to do mine. Halfway around the arena I find an open stall. With no lock. Anyone who opens that door deserves what they get. My colon has no shame.

Now with a small measure of relief, I get myself a souvenir cup soda. Pepsi products! Egads! I reluctantly get a diet Pepsi simply because I need a caffeine boost of any kind. The cups are awesome this year though, full schedule and one of the players printed on decent plastic.

There's this one lady who comes to every game wearing a hockey sweater and sexy boots AND PRETTY MUCH NOTHING ELSE. She showed up at the snack bar and we gawked, as is the custom. It is my experience after attending hockey games for over 30 years that there is at least one of these ladies at every single game. This stuff doesn't happen in baseball, folks.

We go back to the seats and get stopped by the "No going down the ice while the puck is in play lady. We get back to our sets just in time to see the Gladiators score. Yay!

Apparently this was Stuffed Animal Donation night. Everyone gets to bring stuffed toys and throw them on the ice after the Glads score their first goal. BEDLAM ENSUES. The ice looks like a tornado hit a Toys 'R Us. Play stops for about 20 minutes while friggin CARS are driven on the ice so the toys can be loaded into the back of them and taken away. The Gladiator goalie helped load toys pretty much the whole time and a few other players pitched in. One car was blocking the exit off of the ice and did not have enough room to turn around and exit, so they tried to push it out backwards. It banged into the glass and got a dent on the bumper. Once everything was off the ice some workers were trying to gather up as much errant fluff as they could off the ice.

One teddy bear got stuck in the net above the glass and stayed there the whole game.

The Warriors soon took the lead. At one point The Glads had 29 shots to the Warriors' 9 and were down 2-1.

Second intermission comes and we all go up to the concourse to chill out and talk about The Good Old Days. We made the mistake of trying to leave during the "Throw the foam puck on the ice into a target and win a prize!" contest and got trapped in the aisle and pelted with foam pucks.

While we were talking my colon once again got antsy and I had to run to the loo. This one was worse because the jalapenos talked to the EggBurger, found out I was mocking their heat and decided to take their Revenge. Victory was ultimately mine as my colon was finally appeased and the Glads tied up the game while I was on the can. My ass is good luck!

We continue talking about the Good Ol' Days in college while the game plods on. Highlights of the conversation:

The time when Football buddy's ex-girlfriend showed up at our apartment wearing only a tiny tank top and Daisy Dukes. I had forgotten all about that but I'm glad I remembered.
The time when Singing buddy got hammered at a party, complemented some girl for having pretty eyes, got essentially a lap dance from this girl AND MANAGED TO NOT EVEN KISS HER. facepalm.jpg
The time when Football buddy got hammered downtown and called me for over an hour trying to get a ride home. When asked what the hell I was doing instead of picking him up, I replied "probably banging my girlfriend". We all agreed this was likely and a totally acceptable excuse.
One of our old roommates wrote a book!
This reminded us of every terrible roommate we ever had. We mocked them accordingly.
I'M SORRY WE THREW YOUR COUCH HALFWAY DOWN THE RAVINE BEHIND OUR OLD APARTMENT AND LOST OUR SECURITY DEPOSIT. If we hadn't stepped into that fire ant nest we could have gotten the couch all the way down the ravine.

At this point we had to choose between bailing and going to get some coffee or watching the rest of the game. Since the game was tied, we chose to stick it out. We also decided that the view is better from the top of the stairs so we hang out in the handicapped row to watch the game.

Football buddy took his turn in the can. While he was gone I went back to our seats to rescue my nice Gladiators cup. When I got to my row, the Glads took the lead on a sweet slap shot from the corner. My friends' ass is lucky too!

When I rescued my cup I went in the row on one side and exited the other so I could inconvenience everyone in the row equally. I'm thoughtful like that.

Souvenir cups get free refills. I got a free refill of Diet Pepsi even though I hate it. WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO. IT'S FREE.

We worked out that The Glads scored every time someone went to the bathroom. We hectored Singing buddy until he went to the john in hopes that the Glads would score again and get a two goal lead. Nope. The Hockey Gods were so offended by his butchery of O Canada they revoked his ass luck.

The Warriors pulled their goalie with about a minute and a half left. The Glads immediately got a penalty so they had a 6 on 4 penalty kill to win the game. I pointed out that there was an empty net and my friends looked at me like I had announced that I was a 39 year old man who loved My Little Pony or something. "Hey look, empty net. The net... it's empty. Empty! Net! They pulled their goalie! So the net is empty! AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO KNOWS HOCKEY STRATEGY?!"

Of course I had announced that I was a 39 year old man who loved My Little Pony earlier at the restaurant. Football buddy was dubious, but Singing buddy had seen Pony references on Phineas and Ferb and is now Pony-Positive.

The Glads killed the power play and gained Victory, propelling them into first place in whatever division they are in. On the way out we got free magnetic schedules! Yay!

We passed on coffee and all went our separate ways. I drove home and listened to too-loud techno with a splitting headache. I didn't mind because in one single day I got:

Pinkie Pie Pony Episode
Roger Vintage Card Show
Football at the Sports Bar
Minor League Hockey
Quality Time With the College Buds

No way a headache and EggBurger gastric distress can spoil all that! Best Day Ever!

Ze Card Show, It Has Been Hit

2012-01-14T15:32:00.000-05:00

Went to Roger's show today. The card I will forever regret passing up for today: 1953 Topps Satchel Paige for $100. I had it in my hands. I had the money in my pocket. I bought 26 other cards instead for well under a C-Note. I am a bloody FOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

My loss is your gain! I now have another "Top Twenty From the Card Show" series to post (by request). Here are the 6 cards that did not make the top 20 cut:

Not surprisingly, they are all from the dollar box and half of them will probably be in packages to be sent out by the end of the month.

Top 20 startes tomorrow night, Right now I'm going to go drink at a Hockey game. Toodles!

AAAAAAAHHHH PONIEZ

2012-01-14T10:13:00.000-05:00

PINKIE PIE EPISODE IS BEST EPISODE

Sketch card 12 - Lazy Pinkie

2012-01-13T22:36:00.001-05:00

I haven't posted a sketch card in almost a MONTH. Jeez, I'm falling behind. Better catch up quick because I ain't getting any younger. Case in point:

GUESS WHAT I REALIZED TODAY?

If the gestation period of the human female is 9 months, and life begins at conception, then technically I'm 40 years old.

Eff everything about that. Screw it, for the next nine months I'm a secular humanist. No dogma is gonna make ME old as dirt any sooner than I have to be! Jesus will understand, He knows He's my bro. After nine months from today I'mma have to bluff like a mickeyfickey though. Go full Jack Benny on y'all. Because OF COURSE my wonderful and understanding family won't rub my ancientness in my face or anything. NAAAAAAH.*

Speaking of my panicky freakout over my ever impending mortality, my resolution to exercise every day is going well! I haven't missed a day yet! Unfortunately, I haven't quite hit the 30 minutes a day mark and I'm already 65 minutes behind. This is not entirely my fault as it has been freaking thunderstorming in Atlanta all week before turning colder than a witch's mammary protuberance the past couple of days. At least I'm tryin'.

Ok, I've dawdled long enough. Here's the sketch card I sent to Jack Plumstead over at The Pursuit of Red Sox. You know, the guy who's crazy about Jacoby Ellsbury? Obviously, I drew a sketch card of Jacoby. Right?

Not as such...

PINKIE'D

(c'mon, I had to post Pinkie Pie the night before her episode airs!)

Ok, so I got a bit lazy and drew a Sharpie version of Pinkamina Diane Pie looking a bit miffed that I would risk an international incident over a sketch card. Jack has a sense of humour (note the superfluous 'U' as a gesture of goodwill!) and took it well enough. We still have a baseball for football hostage release program active so he'll get Jacoby eventually. By the time I draw it I might even know what I'm doing!

At the time of this drawing, I had three colors of Sharpies. Black, Blue and Magenta. I actually had a Red too, but I didn't know where it was. Those three Sharpies were just enough to draw Pinkie, so I did. I liked it so much I snagged a few more colors so now I have enough to draw all six of the Main (I refuse to use the word Mane in this context) Ponies In Sharpie. Well, almost. I neglected to buy a Yellow Sharpie so I had to use a Highlighter and now Fluttershy looks a bit radioactive. I swear I had a Yellow Sharpie in the house somewhere because I specifically thought to myself "What the hell could anybody use a Yellow Sharpie for?!?" Now I know. I recently drew another Sharpie Pony Sketch card for someone who will remain nameless. All I'm gonna say is while my sketching has improved the past couple of months, my Sharpieing has not. Gonna have to practice some more. By the way, two more sketch cards were posted in the mail today and two more will go out tomorrow if I can get the packages together tonight. Thanks to everyone who has sent me some blanks, they are going to *ahem* good use. Mostly.

*Actually I am pretty certain that my family has already reserved the hearse that will drive me to my special birthday dinner. At Piccadilly cafeteria. At 3:00 PM.

Vintage Show and Jason Heyward signing in the ATL this weekend

2012-01-12T13:24:00.002-05:00

Little Green Postcard is in the house.

The Sports Memories of Oklahoma show will be back in Atlanta this weekend, at the Courtyard Hotel on Delk Road in Marietta. This is the guy I'm always raving about with the travelling card museum. I'll be there sometime on Saturday afternoon. I flaked on last September's show and forgot which weekend it was so I've got bargain box withdrawal.

This is actually a pretty epic weekend for Memorabilia, as Jason Heyward is signing at BP Sports in Marietta on Saturday from noon-1. ON JANUARY 28. I misread the e-mail, sorry if I caused you to go down to Marietta today. I can get my baseball signed by J-Hey for $39? Yes, please.

All this and a new Pinkie Pie episode this Saturday? Best. Day. Ever.

And your little dog too

2012-01-11T23:06:00.000-05:00

I'm with Jeph on this one, mock this song and I'll slug your ass.

I got a package from Andy today, it included some cards chosen from one of the Card Drafts that have been happening lately. He picked up some cards for me in the draft and in return I'm doing a little project for him. The package also included something wonderfully rude which I'll have to pay back in return, but that's all I'll say about that. In the package were a few extra bonus cards along with the ones I requested in the draft.

Problem is, some of the cards I already have/don't need. The Toto I already had. The Castle I thought I needed, but didn't. Castro, Papelbon and Lee either didn't make the cut for my FrankenSet or were bounced from the set by other cards I received in the package. Gio and Snider replaced a couple cards I didn't need, but decided to keep. The A&G Chipper below is my fourth, and I didn't buy all that much A&G last year. I'd like to keep my resolution of clearing out stuff I don't need, so here's my offer.

In exchange for these (and probably some other junk I don't need) I request just three things in return:

One Braves card to replace Chipper. Any one will do.
A card that is cool. You know what's cool, I don't have to explain it.
You must draw a picture for me. I will provide you with a list of acceptable subjects.

That's it. If you accept this challenge, post a comment here and e-mail me. E-mail is in profile. I'll be up for another hour or two so I hope to have an address to send these things to before I go to bed. I am going to hit the post office tomorrow if it kills me and I'll send these to a random address in the phone book if I have to. Everything you send will be posted here, so keep that in mind. Thanks for looking and if you see this post Friday morning, don't feel bad, if this works out I may make this a regular thing.

Dammit, no politics!

2012-01-10T22:30:00.002-05:00

Ever been completely off your game? I'm like that today. Slept in too late. Didn't oversleep, I just didn't feel like getting up. Got blindsided at work by an annoyance which messed up my plan for attacking my schedule. After work, I planned to take a walk for some exercise, but it's raining. Now I'm avoiding the leg-killing rowing machine thingy we have that makes you look like you're humping the air. I'm in one of those moods where I'm afraid of pencils so the drawing doesn't look good for tonight. I thought it would be good to organize my scans for posts and I can't find anything. Stuff I know I scanned just ain't there. The stuff that is there is loading slowly because I have 47 tabs open in Chrome like a moron. I opened up a beer. It's imported. Did you know that "NaturtruB" is German for 'cloudy with dead yeast sediment'? I do now. Now I'm afraid of beer. Oy Gevalt. I am so off my game right now. It's so bad I'm posting a package I received in the mail. I know! What's wrong with me??

Recently Padrographs was cleaning out the closet and giving stuff away. I snagged this!

Nixon-Lodge in 1960!

That might make a good ticket for 2012, actually. Sure they're dead, but the Republicans are running a bunch of stiffs anyway. Just check out Woody McCarSalesman celebrating a victory and tell me that Zombie Nixon wouldn't mop up the floor with him. Of course, Tricky Dick would be running to the left of Hopey McChangerson so he might not be able to count on the Tea Party vote. But the robot vote...

Futurama

Nixon's Back

www.comedycentral.com

Comedy Central

Funny Videos

Funny TV Shows

See how far off my game I am? I'm posting about politics. The hell is wrong with me. Here's some Chipper to make amends:

Rod included this joisey cahd of Chippah along with three cards of players I love from sets I loathe. Which is good, since I would never buy them anyway. Lineage? blech. As you can see, it's a Feel the Game Joisey from Ultra. I can't remember what year Ultra because I am totally off my game. It's aping the 1987 Fleer design, which I find cool. Having gold borders instead of baby blue unnerves me in some unexplainable way however. I don't mind too much because I like the look of the card, the swatch has stitch marks and a little bit of red fluff, and I'm not 100% sure but I don't think I have this one yet. When you have over a thousand Chipper cards you kinda lose track but I think I would remember this one. Who can tell, I am off my - well - you know.

I've taken a sip of the schmutzy beer and it's not bad. Very smooth. Not hoppy at all. Slightly sweet actually. Ain't that goop at the bottom basically Vegemite anyway? A few shots of bourbon and I'll be ready to finish off this beer. Then I'll have the courage to exercise on the hump machine! Still afraid of pencils though - no Barry Larkin sketch card tonight I'm afraid.

Congrats Barry

2012-01-10T01:05:00.001-05:00

I remember Barry Larkin fondly. Mainly because my Braves walloped him in the playoffs in his MVP year on their way to a Championship. The only one we'll ever get. Now he's in the Hall of Fame and I can show off this card which is relevant tonight and tonight only.

Also congrats to Jack Morris who hit inevitable status today with 68%. He might not go in next year (next year's ballot is gonna be CARAAAAAYZEEEE!!!!) but you can't get 68% of the vote and not get in eventually. The Vets committee will be cleaning up a LOT of the BBWAA's messes in the next 20 years so rest easy, Jack.

I have resolved not to kvetch about the Hall of Fame Voting this year, so I'd like to go the opposite route and post a link to the greatest Hall of Fame Ballot "this is who I voted for, chumps" circlejerk article of all time. Words simply cannot describe the sheer beauty of this piece, even though it is in fact completely made up of words itself. The powerful emotions this scribe stirred in my heart compelled me to commit a shocking act of copyright infringement and quote for you this tenderly sweet passage about Dale Murphy's candidacy.

My favorite team growing up in the 1920s was the Kentucky Bourbons, and no player better exemplifies the spirit of the Bourbons than ol’ DALE MURPHY. Murphy loved his bourbon, and his crack. Always willing to share, always a great teammate, and hardly ever getting hit by a pitch. It’s too bad he was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald. I don’t know who I’m talking about anymore, but when I hear Dale Murphy, I think of a walrus being eaten by a wolf, on the roof of the Baseball Hall of Fame. So I can’t deny a vote to this one. Eight down, one more makes ten, I am on a roll. And also eating a roll, because I’m hungry.

Never before has the true Dale Murphy been adequately described in print. Not like this. These kind words inspired me to take pencil in hand and draw this man's vision to the best of my ability.

Don't feel bad for the walrus, he's going up to Heaven to eat oysters with Jesus

I raise a glass of Kentucky Bourbon to you, oh Strawman Sportswriter. As well as a crack pipe to ol' Murph. The Veteran's Committee will put you in eventually.

Only took about three years

2012-01-08T01:14:00.001-05:00

Back in 2009 I bought a pad of canvas paper and some paintbrushes. I got an idea in my head to paint a picture of Al Hrabosky based on his 1981 Topps card. I only spent about 10 bucks total, but considering my financial situation at the time I didn't really need to spend it. I procrastinated for a while, then the paints I was counting on using got used up or disappeared somewhere, more procrastination, economic indices suddenly went up and I became real busy and my dream of Artsy Fartsy Hungarians was deferred. Tonight it was realized. I used a standard card sized decoy card instead of a full size canvas sheet so it's 2 1/2" by 3 1/2" but it's a painting and I did it and a huge mental block has been lifted. Al has been immortalized in acrylic.

Things learned from this exercise:

Paint is friggin cheap. Especially the stuff I pick up in little bottles from Michael's and Wally World.
It is much much less painful to wash away a few unused drops of paint off the palette than it is to spend a half hour and three times the paint to try to remix that color you used on half the painting and just ran out of.
Interesting things happen when you mix paints right on the canvas (or card in this case), especially when you keep tinkering around trying to get part of the painting juuuuuuuust right.
It's more important to capture the feel of the subject than to recreate it exactly.
I don't think I did either one perfectly in this case.
Eh, I still like how it came out. Perfection is overrated.
Music Has The Right To Children is damn good painting music.
I really need to stop being intimidated by blank canvases, especially when I've got ideas in my head.
I will never, ever make fun of Topps Airbrushers who butchered team logos on cards in the '60's '70s and '80s ever again. EVER. Logos are damn hard.

One of these days I'll do this sucka full sized. It took me at least 6 months to go from the sketch card to the painted card though so it might take a while.

My first card of 2012

2012-01-06T22:59:00.001-05:00

Ok, a quick note on the New York Times autism My Little Pony screw up that's gone viral. You see, what... what had happen... is the author of the piece was interviewing the girl in the story on her way to school. The girl was listening to Pony electronic dance music on her iPod on the way and one of the songs included Fluttershy going 'yay'. This could describe about 63.7% of all Pony remixes, but here's a possible candidate for the song in question. In the interview that morning, Winter Wrap Up was discussed including Twilight Sparkle's role in the episode. THE PROBLEM: the author wrote down Fluttershy's name but not Twilight Sparkle's in her notes. So when The article was written and it was time to name the nerdy pony trying to fit in, Fluttershy's name was in the notes so Fluttershy's name was used. Tiny mistake. Could have happened to anyone. Kinda like when the Times left out the "don't" in the Iraq WMDs story that one time. I find it interesting that a Pony remix song is the cause of the whole mess since I've got well over five gigs of this shit on my hard drive and MP3 player right now. Kottke.org links to some Pony music in their article on the story but if you want good MLP dubstep forget Skrillex, Alex S. is the real thing.

Dubstep is nice and all, but I prefer Pony trance, techno and weird glitchy stuff.

Ok, enough ponies. You want cards! Have I shown off a single baseball card all year? A real one from a licensed company? Or even unlicensed! One that wasn't completely defaced that is? No! I haven't! THIS CHANGES NOW. Here's my first card acquired in 2012.

Topps206 Mini card of Casey Kotchman. Kotchman has become one of those players that cause fans of a certain team to turn pale and twitch involuntarily when hearing his name. Like Ernie Broglio. Or Larry Andersen. Or Ivan DeJesus. Maybe even Doyle Alexander but I have a different feeling when I hear his name. Casey's the dude the Braves got in return for Mark Teixeira because they were too chicken to risk offering him arbitration in the offseason so they could get draft picks when Tex inevitably signed with the Yankees for 70 bazillion dollars. Picks the Angels were able to turn into Mike Trout. Oh yeah, the other dude we got in the trade, Steven Marek, just signed with the Blue Jays. Guuuuuuuuh. Did I mention that the slew of prospects we gave up to get Tex from Texas were a big reason they were in the World Series the past two years? Ok, I winced slightly when I saw this card come out of an envelope from Adam this afternoon. There is a happy ending though....

CYCLE! Me likey Cycle backs. Me No Likey that Topps always short prints the crap out of them. Numbered to 99! What's the point of a Casey Kotchman card numbered to 99? The number 29 is significant though... It's the number of games Casey played for Boston in 2009. After the Braves traded him for Adam LaRoche. Who if we kept as our first baseman instead of trading him away to the Pirates for Mike Gonzalez in 2007, we never would have needed Teixeira in the first place. GUUUUUUUUUUUUH. Mike Gonzalez is another one of those names. I've had a few Red Sox cards set aside for Adam for a few weeks but I haven't mailed them off because I haven't gotten around to creating his sketch card yet. The Holidays threw my procrastination schedule all off. I'm sure to get to it this weekend, as long as the Pony Madness of a new episode tomorrow doesn't derail me again.

To cap off this post here's some Boards of Canada, who along with Ponies and Baseball is my other big Obsession right now. Happy Cycling!

Ok, let's try this again. The best card I got in 2011

2012-01-05T21:58:00.002-05:00

This was supposed to be posted last night - and it was - but due to a scheduling screwup it posted with a date of late December so let's try this again with some extra content.

This one came from Jeremy over at No One's Going to Read this Blog. This card probably impacted the eventual course of my life more than anything else last year other than actual important things like family and work and such. Emothions went a little haywire over this card, which I received in the middle of my 'not posting' period early last year. I went from amazed by the card, to impressed by the talent to create it, to jealous of that talent, to depressed because I couldn't do something like this, to defiant against the idea that I couldn't do something like this, to inspired to draw Al Hrabosky, then some doodles, then Woody Allen and Larry David looking at badly drawn naked women (don't ask) then... ponies. Not sure what (if anything) I traded for this, but Jeremy is on the sketch card list, just as soon as I figure out something to draw that comes close to this.

Jeremy saw the post and commented. In it he said " I still can't draw Larry David and I've spent hours trying to get him right." Well Jeremy, don't feel bad, I can't draw him either! Since it was mentioned (I told you not to ask) I scanned my first ever sketch page drawn in the wee hours of the morning after having imbibed in several brewed beverages. Basically I was wasting some time in the interwebs and found some interesting pictures on (NSFW!) ffffound! (I just told you there were pictures of naked girls on that site so be careful clicking it!) and decided it would be neat to try to draw copies of a few of them. This was sometime after the Al Hrabosky sketch card but before I started watching ponies so Juney-Julyish I guess. I MSPainted some bikinis on the girls so now it's no worse than some of the stuff you'll see on some of the more disreputable blogs out there. Look if you dare.

I drew this stuff in this order: Creepy Woody Allen, nekkid girl on the right, topless girl on the left, Horrified Larry David. Now what can we learn from this picture?

I can't draw hands for crap
I love pretty girls and cranky Jewish comedians
~~Six months ago~~ I ~~had~~ have no idea what I ~~was~~ am doing
I cannot draw hands
I like drawing men's faces and girl's bodies
This makes me a sexist pig and Dinged Corners, A Cardboard Problem, Things are Funner Here and McCann Can Triple probably just totally stopped following me and I don't blame them
SALAD FINGERS!
I don't know what the hell happened to those shoulders
JESUS CRHIST DEM HANDS

Since this picture I've drawn a hell of a lot more ponies than girls and gotten marginally better at both. Ponies are way easier to draw than girls. Not as lumpy for one thing. I don't feel creepy drawing cartoons either, even though the big joke right now is that Bronies are a bunch of gay autistic loser rule 34 loving manchildren*. Which is just ridiculous, because EVERYONE on the internet is a bunch of gay autistic loser rule 34 loving manchildren. It's no big thing. But wait... HERE COMES THE IRONY. Now that I inexplicably feel kinda squicky about drawing nekkid wimmen (which probably is the sole reason about 90% of artists even get in to this business) my wife has actually found a local museum with a program where artists can come and sketch live models. Live nude models. Live nude female models. Live nude female models what are not my wife. And my wife - specifically the one I'm married to right now - suggested I go to this. She's practically encouraging it. God as my witness I have no idea what to do. I think I'mma go draw Larry David as a pony.

*yes, I've seen the New York Times thing over 9000 times.

Obligatory New Year's Resolution Post

2012-01-03T22:34:00.002-05:00

Come at me, bro

It's 2012. Bring it on, Mayans. New Year means you make resolutions. This way you can get fed up and break them by MLK day and still feel like you've accomplished something. And sometimes... by complete accident... a freak trick of the light... weather anomalies... nepotism and intrigue... you actually stick to one and better yourself! Hey, it's bound to happen one of these eons. One of my own resolutions is to stop being such a cynical bastard (yeah, right) so I've got a few resolutions of my own. Time to jump into the middle of the storm of 2012 COLLECTING GOALS posts that have littered the sidebar in the past few days. Where to start? Ok, cards. Let's start there.

2012 Collecting Resolution:

NO BUYING WAX.

Come at me, bro

I've given up Wax for Lent. I know that's a couple months away but I'm starting early. One of my Collecting Laws has always been "Wax is for suckers". Time to start living by my own rules. And wax is for suckers. It's no different from going to Vegas. Even if you search packs or count cards the house always wins. The fact that you are even in Vegas at all means the house has already won. Same with packs. You can have the hit of your life... it just makes you want to rip more packs right away. Ripping packs and throwing craps is fun as hell. Until you end up in the gutter surrounded by empty wrappers with a pit boss wearing brass knuckles looming over you. Have I mixed these metaphors thoroughly enough?

What I'm saying is I'm going cold turkey. No buying wax for me. I'd join Waxaholics Anonymous but I really like reading Canuck's blog. I know my weakness though and I'm not being unrealistic about this. I have unopened Bowman Heritage and O-Pee-Chee blasters as well as almost a full box of 1988 Score in reserve for when I get the junk sickness. I'll actually even get to buy a few packs here and there too since I've got a hostage exchange probram with Jack Plumstead in the UK trading hardball packs for football (real football, not handegg) packets. That'll be tough and will likely cause a relapse. Especially when 2012 Flagship comes out. I'll tough it out though, I don't want our deprived collecting bretheren overseas to suffer just because I'm trying to better myself. Expect a desperate post in March begging to trade off vintage and relics for retail packs of 2012 Topps.

2012 Collecting Goals:

Let's keep this simple, stupid.

#1 - Keep building those Vintage sets

Especially 1953, 1960, 1965 and 1972. Completing 1979 Topps should also be done by the end of the month. I'm pretty close to 1976 now too. If I spent a tenth on vintage that I blew on Wax I'd have more sets done by now.

#2 - Work on them Braves Team Sets

Not just the pre-1980 ones, although that's going to be a focus. My entire Braves collection is a disaster and I need to at the bare minimum get all my 1981-2012 Topps team sets in pages. I know I pretty much have all of them, sometimes 2 or 3 times over, I just need to get organized.

#3 - ORGANIZE YO SHIT

I honestly don't know where 90% of my collection even is. Oh, I see the friggin boxes everywhere, I just don't know that the hell is in 'em. Put a gun to my head and order me to find me 2008 Topps box, and I'll just pull the trigger myself in despair. I don't need to accumulate piles of 2012 product when I've got all this stuff to be sorted out first. I finally got the shelves and tables and places to put the crap set up last year, time to organize.

#4 - Start getting rid of some of this crap!

Seriously, anyone who has provided me their address in the past 5 years is in real danger of getting a random package of stuff this year. I have GOT to get rid of stuff.

#5 - STOP BUYING JUNK!

Dime boxes are fun as hell. Bargain hunting is a rush. But see goal #4. I GOT TOO MUCH CRAP. Time to stop buying cheap crap and start going for the high dollar cards. The Sports Memories of Oklahoma show is going to be in the ATL in a couple of weeks and I may end up spending as much money as I normally do at the show, but walking out with 4 or 5 cards instead of 40 or 50. this goes for sets too. If I want a set of Topps, just buy the friggin set. If I like an insert set, just buy the damn thing. Casebreakers on eBay got some good deals.

LIFE GOALS/RESOLUTIONS:

Keep drawing every day.

Come at me, bro

Keep learning new techniques - I've never painted with oils, watercolors or gouache. Try it out, worst thing that can happen is that it will suck like oil pastels. Those things are just stinky crayons. blech. But now I know they're stinky crayons...

NO MORE FRETTING ABOUT DOING STUFF. If I wanna try something just do it for fuck's sake. I sweat over painting a goddamn technicolor pony for months and it was easy and fun and I enjoyed it. The hell is wrong with me. Quit worrying you bastard!

Exercise 30 minutes a day. I have a job and a commute and kids and carpool lines and etc, so 30 minutes a day ain't gonna happen. 210 minutes a week might. Surely I can handle 900 minutes a month. What's that, 15 hours a month of just wandering around? I can do that. Ok, fine. By May I'll probably be at least three days behind but I'll run in the red if I have to. If I can do it with my finances, I can do it with my exercise. It's January third and I'm only 20 minutes behind so far! I'm doing pretty good!

Come at me, bro

Quit worrying about politics. Everyone hates congress but they'll vote in all the incumbents during the primaries. Screw the presidential race. It's gonna be Obama vs. Romney. That shit was decided in 2008. All this stuff going on now is just a miniseries for the cable news channels. It's all just bullshit ratings at this point. STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT YOU IDIOT. I'M YELLING AT ME NOT YOU. IF YOU HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM AND NEED ME TO YELL AT YOU THEN BY ALL MEANS CO-OPT MY YELLING IF IT HELPS.

Quit worrying about the Hall of Fame. It's been fucked forever and the writers will will never vote everyone who deserves it into the Hall. Dale Murphy's off the ballot forever this year and next year all the moralists didn't vote for him will scream about steroids and not vote for Barry. Then the Veteran's committee will put 'em both in the same year just to make the induction ceremony after party reaaaaaaaly awkward. Screw it, it's worthless to argue about it. Joe Posnanski sums it up nicely.

Try something new that I never thought I'd like in a million years. Keep doing this until I find something I do like using this method. For Pete's sake, I just watched My Little Pony in order to tune out Glee on the television. Never thought I'd do that in 2010.

Come at me, bro

Become a perfect SuperBeing, a rising pinnacle of human evolution and use my powers to eradicate all corruption, poverty and hatred in the world and bring about a new era of humanity based on love, tolerance and using Science! to dominate and subjugate all who oppose me.

Ok, ok. There always has to be one unrealistic resolution on the list so you can blow it off when you get frustrated instead of sacrificing a more realistic goal. I mean seriously... no wax at all? All year?? Like that'll happen.

Oh yeah. Also: Booze and ponies. That resolution I can probably keep.

It's a Major Award!

2012-01-02T20:01:00.000-05:00

All this sketching with pencils and paper and such has caused me to neglect my true talent for MSPainting complete garbage crap.

No more! I'm almost finished reading In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and I am Inspired!

FRA-GEE-LEE!

Oh, 2011 American Pie... You are the Plan 9 From Outer Space of trading card sets...

Chris Harris, you are my muse. More Pie.

Daily Sketch

2012-01-02T15:27:00.001-05:00

I discovered Reddit's Sketch Daily subreddit last night and decided to join in the fun. I won't be subjecting you to this every day and I promise I'll post some actual un-ponified baseball cards around here eventually but I figured you all would appreciate the subject matter. Subject was free draw or tropical island. Here's what I came up with:

New York Tropical Islander. I am rendered helpless when confronted with the opportunity to make a pun.

This will hopefully help me with my warm up draw before I start knocking out the sketch cards I plan to send out to my blank card donaters. I really need the guidance especially since this hot mess was my actual daily sketch page from last night.

Starting the year off right

2012-01-01T21:18:00.000-05:00

I don't know why I turned Mark Teixeira into a pony...

I just knew it had to be done.

2011 in Review

2011-12-31T14:02:00.000-05:00

My face when 2011

The year's over. How the hell is the year over? Witchcraft is afoot, I know it. I think it's really still February, but the mind control rays from the Tee-Vee got us thinking it's New Years Eve. Gotta boost that economy with extra Christmas shopping when it's really a week after Valentine's Day. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Mainly because I'm going out with my wife this evening and I have great expectations of frivolity tonight so I'll play along with the ruse.

I'm gonna say something now that I haven't said in years. This was a good year. You heard me, 2011 was a good year. Not for baseball cards, heavens no. Cards sucked absolute donkey balls in 2011. Sure, the Flagship was solid as usual and I did enjoy the shinies and Transmogrifier. I'll readily admit that. HOWEVER..... Heritage was drab (I'm beginning to think Ben Henry was right when he proposed dropping the Heritage line after 2009). Bowman ALWAYS sucks and there was no Stressbork to cause hysteria amongst the collecting community. Allen & Ginter was disappointing as hell save a couple of insert sets. Lineage almost broke me. Then there's Chrome and Finest and some other junk that no one even remembers anymore and out of all that you got what? A flagship that was ok, some shinies and a few insert sets I guess. And no Upper Deck for the first time since Reagan was President. And Maybe an unlicensed set from Donruss (which is now Panini) and Leaf (Which is no longer Donruss) but I can't even remember if those came out this year or if they are scheduled for 2012. 2011 sucked for cards. If you'd like to make a counter argument, feel free. I'll be happy to listen but I don't think you'll change my opinion.

No, 2011 was just a good year in general. The economy sucked, riots broke out all over the world, the United States Government has decided its mission statement is to actively destroy the nation using any means at their disposal and between pollution, climate change, methane deposits melting in the Arctic, peak oil and nuclear plants melting down we and all our descendants are all pretty much screwed forever. AND I LOST MY FAVORITE HOCKEY TEAM. AGAIN. But other than that, 2011 wasn't all that bad! It didn't seem that bad to me anyway.

A lotta good music came out this year. I made some new friends. I got to share Pokemon with my son and Ponies with my daughter. I finally read a book by Hunter S. Thompson (not that one, but I have it on hold at the library now). I saw the last Harry Potter film and I can now put that whole series behind me forever (I will not forgive JK for killing off Fred). I have come to terms with the fact that I am a gigantic 14 year old boy and will always be so and I don't care who the hell knows it anymore. I've gotten over the massive funk I've been in for several years and am currently working on a whole new set of neuroses to overcome. I've started a hobby that is about creation, not consumerism and accumulation. I'm slowly but surely getting my crap together. I'm enjoying my work. (More importantly, I have a job. way too many people can't say that). Family is doing well. The Braves were really, really good for five months. See? Not a bad year, at least in my neck of the woods. Most importantly I can see this and freely admit it for once. The world isn't terrible, everything doesn't suck.

A lot of blogs are posting the successes for failures of their collecting goals right now. I guess I did ok. I've stopped buying a lot of crap, I've gotten slightly more organized (slightly) and I think I've finally given up on Football, Basketball and especially Hockey. Thanks, Gary. One stated goal was to get wantlists up for every Topps set from '52-'07. I got up to 1980 and that's good enough. I've actually got a few other lists together but I haven't posted them because I don't need people sending me stuff right now. The ones I have up are enough. I also wanted to complete some team sets and some series from older sets and I was able to get that dome. Pretty good year I guess, collecting wise. My goals for 2012 are also ambitious, but I think I can do it if I try. That's for another post though.

One other goal I set for myself. Back on September 1st I decided I was going to do some drawing every day. the drawing eventually came to include sketching with pastels and painting. I have managed to keep this up and do ze Art every single day since then whether I wanted to or not. And trust me, there were days I had no interest in doing anything, especially art. But, I kept it up and I can definitely see marked improvement from when I started 4 months ago. Plus, I'm enjoying myself which is really the point, ya know? I had a couple of other goals in mind when I started drawing. I wanted to do drawings/paintings for the family for Christmas. That didn't happen. I'm getting better, but I'm not quite there yet. I also wanted to do a full size painting for the first time since 1990. I had bought the paper and brushes two years ago and never got around to it. Truth be told, even though I've been painting smaller things this month I still had a mental block on doing a big one. Last night I said hell with it, paint something, dammit. I had a few beers, watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to jazz myself up, splooched some paint on the palette and Got 'er Done. Behold: The Great and Powerful Trixie.

What, you expected the Mona Lisa? Fine. Just for you, since you've put up with my insanity all year.

I think she looks nice with a stache, goatee and boob job. Enjoy your New Years, everyone. Go out and buy a ticket and take that ride. See you next year...

1980 Topps Bob Horner Sketch

2011-12-28T23:43:00.000-05:00

My absolute favorite player when I was a kid on what I considered to be my very first card ever until someone in my class swiped it twenty-something years ago. I started this one back in October and just now finished it up tonight. I think I'm going to break out the pastels to color it so I've left out the logos and most of the details for now.

I have three sketch cards and some paintings to work on though, so this one is going to be on the back burner for a while.

Best card I got in 2011

2011-12-27T22:49:00.029-05:00

Five Years

2011-12-27T05:41:00.008-05:00

Wooo it's the blog's birthday! Let's see how I feel about the state of the card industry!

Not necessarily saying that there won't be a 6th birthday for the blog, but there's definitely going to be some drastic changes around here. Assuming the whole thing doesn't just go poof into the aether when SOPA passes, of course.

This was my Christmas present to myself do don't expect regular posting for a couple weeks...

Never played Majora's Mask, looking forward to that one.

UPDATE: Ponies were demanded and ponies thou shalt have.

The Joy of Five Completed Pages

2011-12-26T18:30:00.000-05:00

The '76 Binder got bulked out a bit with the Secret Santa package. there were more pages completed but I lost track of 'em.

Yes, for vintage sets I pack 'em in two to a pocket. Old school style.

Chico Marx and The Damned lied to me

2011-12-25T00:40:00.000-05:00

There IS a Sanity Clause!!!

That 70's Card dude (does s/he have a name?) to be specific. He drew my name in Bad Wax's Secret Santa and here's the swag:

12% of the 1976 Topps set (85 cards off the wantlist!)

3 1974 Topps cards, 2 of which I bought a couple weeks ago (oops)

J-Hey Rookie Refractor

And a Freddie Freeman USA Baseball auto.

That's a helluva Christmas right there! Thanks bro!

Merry Christmas and/or The holiday of your choice (especially if it's Festivus)!

All you impatient people out there...

2011-12-24T16:16:00.000-05:00

NO PEEKING.

It ain't but a few more hours, you can make it.

Also:

Transmogrified into being: 1968 Joe Satriani

2011-12-23T22:07:00.000-05:00

BURLAP IS BEAUTIFUL GOD DAMMIT

how the frelling frak is it two hours from christmas eve i haven't bought anything for anyone i've probably got tonsillitis or at least strep and I still have a bunch of work to do even though i'm technically off the rest of the year OH SHIIIIIII- two family dinners tomorrow maybe i'll die in my sleep and won't have to go dear god what has happened to my life

Seriously folks, I got nothin' right now. I don't even know why I'm posting. Here's an Alien playing Vonnegut on the gee-taur.

What? it's like three letters difference.

Transmogrified into being: Jackie Brown

2011-12-22T09:56:00.001-05:00

Here's a '75 card I didn't have.

Even if I already had it I might have redeemed it anyway. Why?

Just because.

Reading Queue

2011-12-21T16:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I said you could force me to read the Great Gatsby and you done it. 21 votes out of 45 (and I voted twice) led the pack by a wide margin. So, I'm reading the thing. I'm up to chapter 5 and so far it's like being at a party where I don't know anyone and the people I meet I don't particularly like and that's ok because most of the guests there are looking down on me and avoiding me at all costs so I'm just downing as much free booze as possible and hanging out in the library checking out all the other books I could be reading. Oh, and every once in a while I see a cockroach on the buffet table or a dead mouse behind the bar. I'm contemplating just ripping out page 73/74 for the squicky racial references. Oh, and there's a few Gatsby cartoons in Hark, A Vagrant! which I've also been reading so I kinda spoiled the ending a bit. Oh, but it's good though. Images... Images everywhere. Doc Ecklebergs' eyeballs will be staring me in the back of the head until I finish the damn thing so once I get this posted I'll get back to reading. Here's the rest of the reading queue.

This one didn't technically end up in the top three, but I'm reading it on Christmas anyway. While watching A Christmas Story. And if anyone bothers me I'm pounding them like Scott Farkus.

Ah, here we go... the perfect counter to Gatsby. F. Scott may have had Zelda, but Bruce had Ossie Davis as Jack Kennedy. I think we all know who wins there!I have no idea what to expect from this one. I flipped through the pages and there's pictures and graphs and stuff in there. I hope I didn't make a terrible mistake by thinking this is a novel and not an actual self-help book explaining how to make love the Bruce Campbell way because there's a picture of Bruce and Jack Nicholson in there and I don't really want to know how to make love like that.

NOT looking forward to this one. Especially in my current morbidly depressed state of mind. (Did I mention I inexplicably and irrationally hate Christmas this year for some reason?) The peeps have spoken though, and I can't very well be a comics hipster without reading this even once no matter how often I hang out on /co/.

Finish up with a baseball book. I drew the dude, I may as well read him. If I knock these suckers out before January I might jump into The Illuminatus! Trilogy. I have a week off next week and got today off because I got a sore throat last night which made me nauseous when I brushed my teeth and I puked this morning right as my carpool got here so I'm sick and embarrassed. That information probably wasn't really necessary. The point is I will have some down time and a horrible case of drawer's block and I'm almost done with my Arrested Development DVDs so I'll have a lot of time to read. What's that you say? Why don't I just blog about cards? What a ridiculous question.

Transmogrified into being: 1967 Jim Hannan

2011-12-21T08:20:00.000-05:00

I got nothin' funny today. Here's the vintagiest vintage I managed to pull from the Transmogrifier.

BLUH. Senators. Don't talk to me about congressmen right now. Stupid mumble grrrrrr. My anger is somewhat mitigated by my confusion over this photo. How exactly did this shot become "Topps Generic Pitcher Pose #24"? I've seen pitchers doing this plenty of times on cards, not so much during an actual follow through on a pitch. As far as I can tell he's making a gang symbol with his right hand. Or perhaps he's signaling to a girl in the crowd that, yes, he is willing to go two in the pink, but no further. A man has to draw the line somewhere. Whatever the hell he's doing Jim looks just as perplexed about the whole thing as I am. Perhaps these poses are an elaborate troll by the Topps photographer.

told ya I got nothin' today

Transmogrified into being: 1973-1980

2011-12-20T11:52:00.000-05:00

Here comes another one...

At one of the very first Braves games I ever went to, Claudell was patrolling the outfield. Up on the scoreboard/jumbotron/buncha lights/whatever they had back in the early '80s was an animation of Claudell as George Washington on a dollar bill with the caption "In Claudell We Trust". Big Mike remembers it too so I'm not crazy.

Transmogrified into being: 1978 Dick Tidrow

2011-12-20T00:39:00.000-05:00

Here's another redemption from the Topps Diamond thingy.

This one came in a 4-for-1 deal for a 1990 Nolan Ryan Highlight card. there was a '74 Dave LaRoche, a '76 Tony Taylor, a '80 Larry Christenson and Tidrow. That seems like a slick deal, but Dick is the only one I actually had shipped. The other three were dumped. I can't remember if I redeemed Tidrow because I needed this card for the set or just for the epic moostache. I shaved my goatee once to give myself a mustache like that one time and my wife scolded me until I shaved it completely. Then she told me to grow the beard back because I looked weird with no facial hair (and she's right - I look like Peter Griffin, but dorky) and that made me sad. Dangit, I'm being a downer again. HEY LOOK - BASEBALL GAME

Fly out. DOWNER.

Transmogrified into being: 1977 Juan Beniquez

2011-12-19T21:44:00.001-05:00

Here's something happy since I'm a downer. Enjoy it, after Wednesday it'll be a felony.

Ok folks, there's less than a week 'till Christmas, I'm completely burned out, I hate cards right now, I hate Christmas even worse, you all are sick of me posting ponies and I just don't give a crap anymore. I'm mailing it in. Besides, once SOPA is shoved up our asses we'll all get legally shut down anyway the moment we criticize any of the major players in the industry so what's the point of making any effort. And anyone complaining too loudly about SOPA will be permanently taken care of with the NDAA. So fuck it. I'm a powerless serf and I'll keep posting stupid shit to the interwebs to amuse myself for as long as my masters allow it. Throughout the holidays you're getting Transmogrified cards.

1977 Topps Juan Beniquez. I'm meh about '77 Topps and I love 1978 Topps but I've somehow managed to accumulate way more of the '77s. This one was traded for a 1977 Richie Zisk that I already had. Like most of the '70s cards I redeemed this was in decent shape. Corners are a bit soft and it you stare at it long enough you can see the slightest hint of a wrinkle going through the RANGERS on top. It will fit in with the other '77 detritus in my collection.

FREE THE DIE CUTS!

2011-12-17T17:52:00.000-05:00

Unfreed Die-Cuts since you can't see them worth crap in the viddy:

My favorite related video to this one:

Nomnomnom!

Apparently Topps Brought Back American Pie

2011-12-16T10:46:00.001-05:00

There was a mild kerfuffle on the bloggerwebs yesterday as there were at least a half a dozen posts about 2011 Topps American Pie being an actual thing. Knowing that I have not been paying attention to new products at all lately The Dean of Card Bloggery was kind enough to inform me of this fact.

Chris Harris said...: BUY A BLASTER OF AMERICAN PIE! DO IT NOW!!! FRANK ZAPPA AND THE RAMONES ARE IN IT!!!
December 15, 2011 8:06 PM

Wow, this has totally broken my formatting. Lemme, um, hold up a sec.

Ah, here we go. With all due respect to the Dean, my answer is:

You see, while American Pie May have a Frank Zappa card and a Ramones card and maybe even a Frank Black card it doesn't have the best Frank Zappa card ever in it. I've got that one.

Now if there's a Don Van Vliet card in there, I'm on it.

Sketch Card #11 - Basketball time

2011-12-15T22:07:00.000-05:00

Nope, I didn't draw this card of Sir Charles. This was an actual card in an actual licensed product, 1999 Upper deck MVP Basketball. I found this thing looking for some Mavs cards for Big D over at Hey, That's Mine! Jason James Kline drew this masterpiece and it was selected as a winner for Upper Deck's Draw Your Own Card contest. How fabulous is this card? Let us count the ways.

Louis XVI Chair - Check.
Butler - Check.
Basketball on a Silver Platter - Check.
Monocle - Check.
Ruffled Cuffs - Check.
With no sleeves - Check.
Legs crossed English style - Check.
Might be a walking stick, might be a Wizard's wand - Check.
Daintily sipping tea - Check.
PINKIE MOTHAF@$%#ING EXTENDED - Now that's class right there.

Now this is how a sketch card is done.

Since Big D is a Mavs fan and they just won a Championship, I figured a basketball subject might be a good one for his sketch card. I don't remember any of these trades anymore, I think he sent me some stickers. Who's the face of the Mavs? Why, Dirk Nowitzki of course. Here was my attempt:

Not bad, but it ain't no Sir Charles. I was thinking of these old Topps inserts when I originally came up with the idea. I regret now not doing this one on sketch paper and pasting it on card stock to copy the original dimensions. I think this would have worked better if Dirk was a little more lanky and noodley. Dirk is a little short on the standard sized card. The final sketch looks more like the the Dallas Mavs made a guest appearance on A Pup Named Scooby Doo after the Harlem Globetrotters cancelled. Dirk could be Shaggy's long-lost older brother. Which could work because...

Just look at that face. That's an awesome face! I didn't just dive into this one, I did a little planning beforehand.

Let's block everything out, figure out a pose...

Let's take that pose on a test run. Uh oh! Watch those hands, Dirk! The face isn't quite right. Time to experiment.

Hey, art isn't always pretty. This is kinda horrifying actually. Once I decided I couldn't draw another eye without gouging my own out I figured out the color pallette and dove right in. I shoulda practiced some more.

Ways Dirk is not as fabulous as Charles:

Dirk is 12.
With a full goatee.
Soft, gentle eyes instead of crazy caveman eyes like I wanted.
Still can't draw hands.
Totally ran out of room for the legs and it shows.
KNEES DO NOT GO THERE.

I am however, proud of that hair. Sir Charles wishes he had hair like that.

Dangit, I coulda had a blaster - part 2

2011-12-15T00:37:00.000-05:00

After squandering my chance to get a Lineage blaster with that pile of vintage stuff I posted yesterday I had the audacity to do it again with a few trips to the CD Warehouse for some cheep tunes. I could be ripping open a blaster of Bowman Platinum right now, but I'm typing out this post and listening to some music instead. How foolish I am. Here's three 'gently used' discs that I actually paid money for instead of just torrenting like a normal person because sometimes you just want to hold the goddamn album in your hands. Yes, I'm old. Absolutely none of these I walked into the shop hoping or expecting to find, but I was pleasantly surprised nonetheless.

Not gonna lie. I discovered this band through ponies. I've discovered a shitload of bands through ponies, including Boards of Canada which is one of the bands I have been desperately searching for in my music shopping. I've actually found two CDs by them in my travels: a 3 song EP of a John Peel session, and a live album (bootleg?) I forget the name of that I just couldn't pull the trigger on because you can hear people talking during the show. Actually I had heard Boards of Canada before someone improved/ruined one of their songs with pony giggles, I just didn't start listening to them for hours on end until ponies. MGMT I had never heard of before. Well, I had probably heard of them, but I certainly didn't pay attention to them and I never would have stopped dead in my tracks when I saw their album up on the shelf. I suck at describing music, so I'll just say there's a lot of guitars and electronic stuff in their music, something I'm really into right now. There's also a good remix of Electric Feel by Justice, another band I've been looking for in my music hunts lately. Here's the non-pony version of Time to Pretend.

The sketchy cover sold me on A Sunny Day In Glasgow's debut album. No, really, drawing is relevant to my interests, so I picked up the album when I saw sketches on the cover. Basic marketing, folks. Of course if there were nekkid wimmin on the cover it probably would have sold more copies, but that's neither here notr there. The cover worked at least this one time. I got Autumn, Again by these guys last year when it was free on Amazon and enjoyed it so I figured I'd check it out. More electronic, more guitars and female vocals to boot. This sucker's right in my wheelhouse. It's a bit... eclectic. And not as chill as Boards of Canada. But I like 'em dammit, even if no one else has ever heard of them. Here's Things Only I Can See. Well, click on it and you can see it too.

Ok, I'm gonna catch hell for the next one but I DON'T CARE.

Yes, I bought an album from a band called The Unicorns.

Twilight is apparently a fan

FINE, I HAVE A PROBLEM. I KNOW THIS. I'm a tad magical horse crazy at the moment, but seriously this album is really, really good. Oddly enough, I did not find this band through ponies. I think it was through Erasure, actually. Which has kind of formed a theory in my head that [adult swim] helped pave the road for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic's popularity with slacker male cartoon addicts with their game Robot Unicorn Attack as a favor to Lauren Faust. A twitchy, silly unicorn game as a sort of John the Baptist heralding the upcoming pony cult. But I digress. This album is really really really good. They only did one full-length CD (and a couple of EPs) before breaking up, but this shit is goooooood. I really suck at writing about music (I can dance like a mother%ucker about architecture though) but I'll give it a shot by comparing it to other stuff I like. It's kinda got the energy of Franz Ferdinand with the loose goofiness of Dead Milkmen with just a touch of Modest Mouse depression for flavor. Does that make any sense? Of course it doesn't. Just listen to the actual music.

Yes, yes, yes. The song is about Unicorns. BUT IT'S GOOD. I don't care, I'll like it if I want to.

So there's my musical purchases for the past couple of months. All three were just under twenny bux. So waddya think? I should have just gotten a Value Box and one of those 100 card junk wax racks, shouldn't I?

(nah)

Dangit, I coulda had a blaster

2011-12-13T11:40:00.001-05:00

I went to the local card shop this weekend to pick up the finishing touches on my Secret Santa gift. While I was there I raided the early-'70s box and knocked some stuff off of the wantlists. All told, the damage came to just a tad under twenty bucks. Check out the swag and let me know how I did.

I dunno man, you think I shoulda got the Bowman Chrome blaster instead?

The best trade I have ever made

2011-12-12T22:14:00.001-05:00

This weekend I pulled off a masterful trade on the Transmogrifier Mark 2. Words cannot describe the brilliance of this deal so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. I traded this:

Waddya mean it's too small? Ok, fine, here's my part of the trade in bite sized chunks.

1967 Jim Pagmiaroni
1969 Johnny Edwards
1973 Paul Splittorff

1973 Danny Walton
1974 Dave LaRoche
1975 Tommy Davis

1976 Tony Taylor
1978 Earl Weaver
1978 Larry Barlow

1979 Rick Langford, Eduardo Rodriguez and Larry Milbourne

1979 Paul Thormodsgard
1979 All Time ERA Leaders
1980 Derrel Thomas

1980 Larry Christenson, Roger Freed and Mike Heath

1983 Joe Nolan, Greg Luzinski and Ron Hodges

1985 Billy Gardner
1985 Steve Carlton
1986 Enos Cabell

1987 Charlie Hough
1992 Edgar Martinez
1994 Pedro Martinez

1994 Ken Hill
1994 Orel Hershiser
1997 Derek Bell

2001 Manny Ramirez
2009 Kenji Johjima

I trade all this crap for this... this beauteous thing...

BEHOLD:

MAH COOKIE

PART TWO

ELECTRIC COOKIELOO

Proof for the doubtful:

Who the hell is Jim Pagmiaroni

If you wanted any of these cards I traded off, sorry. this was a last ditch effort to get a cookie. And a Cookie I did got. Cookie Rojas isn't the reason I'm so happy with this trade though. It's because

I'M FREE

No more Transmogrifier.

Ever.

No more offers of a 1987 George Brett for my Brian McCann Die-Cut. Ever.

I'm done. Shipping has been requested and I am out of cards and codes. I do have 45 rings left to trade. There's a perverse part of my soul that wants to try to collect 45 Braves rings, but I shall resist.

I am free. FOREVER.

Who wants to trade Junk for Junk?

2011-12-09T23:46:00.000-05:00

Anyone got a pile of these cluttering up the joint?

Stupid security tags out of retail packs. These things accumulate like crazy, don't they? Well, they do when you are a packrat like myself. Even worse are the thick ones they use as relic card decoys that just make the dumber variety of pack searchers bend up the pack that much more. They are all kinda useless too, unless you use them as dividers or packing material for trades.

Or for sketch cards....

If you are one of the weird people like me who just can't throw away trash just because it is shaped like a baseball card and want to get rid of all these things, send 'em my way. They are great for quick & dirty sketches when I don't have time to do something nice and complicated. You may even get one of 'em back as well, slightly altered.

Let's Make a Deal!

A package of 20 artist sketch cards costs me about $2.50. A small bubble mailer with postage packed with cards costs me about $2.50. Here's my offer:

You send me around 20 or so of these blank filler cards and I'll send you a small bubble mailer full of cards.

You send me around 50 or so of these blank filler cards and I'll send you a Priority Mail Small Flat Rate box full of cards.

You send me, like, 100 of these blank filler cards (how many friggin retail packs do you buy, anyway??) and I'll send you a Priority Mail Small Flat Rate box full of cards.

If you only have a handful, you can drop them in a Plain White Envelope and I'll send you a PWE back with a couple of surprises.

GROUND RULES:

To get in on this action, comment here, then e-mail me (dayf13 at gmail) about how many cards you will be sending.

I'm cutting this off at the first 10 responders even if everyone only pledges one card. I am not going to allow myself to get overwhelmed by trades for trash. Once I've completed those trades and I have a need for more cards I'll reopen the offer.

If you live in Canada or England or Australia or Bangladesh or the planet Skyron or anywhere I need a customs form, I'll need to check on shipping prices and adjust the amount of cards you get accordingly. I'm not paying out the nose for shipping for trash.

The stuff I will be sending you will be junk I want out of my house. There might be stuff from your wantlists in there, there might be a box full of 1987 Topps commons. Depends on how I feel. I will NOT be spending more than about 20 minutes putting together a package in trade for trash.

If you send a bunch of Braves or stuff from my wantlists along with the blanks, I will not take this into consideration and send you better stuff. You'll get the same junk as everyone else and like it. If you get really fancy and send me Heywards or Vintage or something I might get offended by your attempted bribe and send all Pro Set Football or Hoops Basketball. Which is actually worse than trash because it doesn't hurt to throw away trash.

Better yet, just don't send other stuff unless absolutely necessary. I don't care if you're one of the dozen or so collectors who randomly sends me stuff every few months and just decided to throw in my usual pile along with the blanks, I will Pro Set with extreme prejudice. Half the reason for this exercise is to help me get rid of a lot of junk. If the need is dire and your wife threatens to go all Lysistrata on you until you get that damn pile of cards off the desk then go ahead and release the Kraken. Just warn me and don't expect any favors.

You may request teams/sets/players/send wantlists if you wish. I would actually prefer it as it would make my job easier. Just remember that you are at my complete whim as to what you will get in return. If I am having a good day where the Braves trade for a power hitting left fielder and I get to have nookie with the wife and there's a new episode of My Little Pony on, you might get some really good stuff. If I am having a bad day where the kids are screaming and my knee is sore as hell for no goddamn reason and my MP3 player runs out of juice and I have to listen to shitty Atlanta radio on my commute, you could get utter garbage. In a trade for trash. You are all completely at my mercy.

Everyone who sends even one blank card will get one non-blank card back. If you catch my drift.

All righty then, that's about it. Get a commentin' and e-mailin' and thank you for your support.

Also: I have decided that since no one ever reads this thing on the weekend anyway, this is now a Monday-Friday blog for the forseeable future. I'm worn out, folks. I need a break every once in a while.

October Card Show - Evolution

2011-12-08T22:17:00.001-05:00

One goal I have at any card show: Find one interesting non-sports card. I usually find more than one, but one of them takes the crown as most interesting. This one killed two birds with one stone as well.

Everyone loves Allen & Ginter. Well, most everyone. I usually love Allen & Ginter, but since it looks more like a Fleer product than something from the 1880's this year my passion has run a little cold. Metaphorically speaking, sure, I'll sleep with 2011 A&G -I'll even call her the next day - but no way in hell am I spending Christmas at her parents' house. I don't give a crap if it might be Nana's last Christmas, I got things to do. The one thing in that set that keeps drawing me back is the Ascent of Man insert set. Dang, that is a fiiiiine looking set. All them organisms... breeding and breeding and breeding some more... Natural Selection working it's sexy magic... ultimately ending up with over-evolved neurotic slobs obsessing over expensive images on flimsy card stock... Awww YEAH baby! That's the stuff right there. Maybe I can come over for coffee and dessert on Christmas Eve, baby... knock down some spiked egg nogs with Nana. Party a little bit. Does Nana swing?

The set is beautiful, the artwork is fantastic, the subject matter irritates my local school board, there is only one thing wrong with the 2011 Allen & Ginter Ascent of man set.

It's only 26 cards.

For the Math-impaired out there, that's one card short of filling up three pages. ONE STINKING CARD. It amazes and bewilders me that in an industry catering to collectors that there is not one soul in the entire company who ever thinks about these things. The entire reason there IS a collectible card industry is because collectors are obsessive-compulsive about their collections! We like things neat and orderly! Give us an insert set that fits neatly in pages! All we needed was one. more. card! Throw us a bone, people!

So I got my Ascent of Man cards in pages. A little too late actually, because all the cards I had for that set were unfortunately involved in a rather disastrous tea-related incident. I was able to contain the damage, some stickers ended up kinda warped and half of my 2011 Update Braves team set was lost. The Ascent of Man cards - while soaked - somehow ended up looking better in my eyes for some reason. While there was definite water - um - tea damage and there were slight stains on the back and the edges were all gnarled up, they still looked really good to me. That's true love right there. Even if I've de-friended 2011 A&G from Facebook, I've still got that old fossil Ascent of Man on my speed dial.

Now I have my freshly antiqued Ascent of Man set in pages, but I need something to stick in that 27th pocket. Why not a vintage card? See for yourself:

The perfect cap for a set about Evolution: a 1952 Topps Look N See card of Charles Darwin. I especially like the look on Charles' face. He seems to be thinking: "How did we end up evolving into douchebags in just 100 years?" (I've got an idea). Here's Charles all by his lonesome for your gawking pleasure:

Here's Chuck in all his creasy, scuffed, scribbled, beardy, gorilla goodness. Coincidentally, Thorzul just posted another specimen from this set recently. It's less scuffed and more screamy, but it's not as good as - well, no. It's way more awesome than this one. But it doesn't fill up my Ascent of Man set as well does it!

Ok, technical stuff. This is one of Topps' earliest Non-Sport sets and features a mish-mosh of famous people from Presidents to artists to military leaders to daredevils to scientists. There's even a Babe Ruth card in there for all you baseball nuts. The Rembrandt card is short printed for some reason. Artists always get short shrift. This mess on the back is the gimmick for the set, if you put some red 'paper' over the card you get to see what Chucky Evo was famous for. I haven't actually looked at it through some 3-D glasses (or just used a filter in Photoshop) but I'm certain that Charles was famous for that epic beard. He also inspired a Vonnegut novel too! So, bonus. Of course now I have to figure out what to do with the card from Collective Troll expressing wonder about our origins that used to be holding down the 27th spot in the pages. I still need 10 more cards for the set and it's gonna be hard to find 'em in pristine tea-soaked condition so I think it should be ok for a while.

Sketch Card #10 - Angel Bunny

2011-12-08T11:11:00.001-05:00

Whelp, no better time to post this one... Nope, this is the perfect time.

This here is Fluttershy's pet, Angel Bunny. I made a trade with Laurens over at Card Buzz and sent a bunch of Angels cards in exchange for a Julio Teheran Liquorfractor. Since Laurens is an Angels fan, Angel Bunny seemed like a perfect fit for a sketch card. I just cannot resist the puns. I boogered the sketch a bit, as Angel's head is way too small. Nothing worse than an off-model parody sketch card. Ok, there are worse things. Let's just play this off like it's Angel's older brother, the sports nut.

Fluttershy is unavailable for comment as she is out trying to cheer up all her Cardinal friends. Poor little birdies...

DEAD TO ME

2011-12-07T12:25:00.001-05:00

The Hall of Fame is.

October Card Show - J-Hey

2011-12-06T23:05:00.000-05:00

One of my goals during the card show was to pick up a J-Hey card I didn't already have. Maybe not an auto or something, just something I didn't already have. However, I got tunnel vision on Vintage cards during the show. Pretty much everything I looked at was older than Heyward. It was getting time to leave, and I still didn't have anything Jasony in my possession. Then I found this:

Well, it was something I didn't already have. Cost me fifteen bucks too, which is probably less than I would have paid in gas driving to every toy retailer in the state trying to look for one of these. Yeah, it was a dumb purchase, but I like it. It got me out of the card show a half hour sooner than I would have if I had started scrounging around for an affordable J-Hey card. Jason is now tacked up on the wall next to a line of Braves Starting Line figures and my lone other McFarlane figure, a Hank Aaron with the label peeled off the front because they used crappy glue. Yes I have Starting Lineups tacked to the wall of my office. If you're gonna be a nerd, you really gotta go all out. No, I don't have pony toys tacked up to the wall. Starting Lineups are for looking at, toys are for playing with. Of course now I have a vision of Pinkie Pie yelling at me in Spike Lee's voice "HOW COME THERE AIN'T NO PONIES ON THE WALL?" in my head. Oh Lawd, this purchase was a mistake.

brb buying ponies

Choose my book - December

2011-12-05T22:11:00.000-05:00

Time to let you all decide what I should read next. Basically I not only have too many cards, but too many books as well and am paralyzed by making such a momentous decision. I was able to whittle the choice down to 12 books: 10 new ones, one holdover from last month and one new suggestion. Every single one of them I have in my possession except for the reader suggestion, so there will be no epic chase like there is for Fear and Loathing because I'm too stubborn to to just buy the damn thing online. I'm still working on Still Life with Woodpecker because I was lazy and didn't read on Saturday and I didn't read any yesterday because I was convinced by an interested party that there were much better things to do in bed than read Tom Robbins.

I am so glad I sprung for the wireless video game controllers now.

The poll is up in the corner, vote for as many or as few as you like. Or don't vote at all, see if I care. Here's a rundown on the choices for this month.

Small Beer - Ludwig Bemelmans

I had never heard of Ludwig in my life when I encountered this book at a Goodwill book sale and snapped it up. It looked kinda funny and had lots of cartoony illustrations inside. Plus there was a tuba on the cover. Turns out it's a book by the guy who wrote the Madeline series. It's apparently a collection of short stories. There is virtually nothing about this book online other than a review in Time that you need a subscription to read so I'm going into this one cold. I'm guessing this one will get virtually no votes but might end up being one I pick up anyway after reading a couple of the top picks.

Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way - Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell is a bad mickey-fickey. He was Elvis fighting a mummy in one film! Plus my wife bought me this book. Maybe she's trying to tell me something. Oh, also my catechism sponsor was named Bruce Campbell. Not the same one, but a cool guy nonetheless.

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is my mother's favorite book. I've never bothered to read it. Now you can force me to read it.

Cakes & Ale - W. Somerset Maugham

This one's on the list mainly because I liked the cover of the edition I have. I think it makes fun of Thomas Hardy which is always a good thing. That depressing gawdawful man was the bane of my high school and college career. Seriously, I was forced to read Tess of the ScoobyDoos four times. Four times! It kept getting stupider and stupider every single time! To this day I root for Alec out of spite. Oh yeah, this book. It's a satire. And it's short. I could probably knock this out in a lunch hour or two.

A Canticle for Liebowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr.

Gotta have some sci-fi on the list. Science! And Nukes! And pastrami, kraut and bagels!

The Cyberiad - Stanislaw Lem

Another collection of short stories, this time sci-fi. Stanislaw is the dude who wrote Solaris, for all you vintage foreign sci-fi film fans and/or George Clooney fans. Yes, you can be both... I tried reading this in high school and was utterly bewildered. Time to try again, maybe?

In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash - Jean Shepherd

I misspelled poor Jean's name in the poll. Too late to fix it. More short stories, more humor, more satire. Between this list and last month's list you probably have a good handle on the types of books I like. You may not recognize this book or the author but EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU has seen a film based on it and will likely watch it in this calendar month. You might watch it ALL DAY LONG. Ever heard of A Christmas Story? Yep, based on stories from this book. The narrator in that film is Jean himself. You can also see him telling Ralphie to get the hell to the back of the line to see Santa.

Maus - Art Spiegelman

I've had this for a long time and haven't been able to bring myself to read it yet. Art Spiegelman is a brilliant underground comic artist. He's also depressing as fuck. The subject matter in this book is really depressing. It doesn't help that I have family members who lived (and some who didn't) through that mess. Gotta have some serious in the middle of all this comedy. In a list of top graphic novels of all time, this is right up there.

Men At Work - George Will

After I drew this, it occurred to me that I might actually have George's book lying around. Indeed I did! Gotta have at least one baseball book in the list.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe

Hunter was last month's journalist, Tom is this month's. This book is actually my dad's favorite, I think, and I had his copy for a long time when I was a kid. Ken Kesey, The Merry Pranksters, the Grateful Dead and a bus. Hippies... Hippies EVERYWHERE. Maybe I need to read this one and Gatsby back to back. Or at the same time. Alternate pages, perhaps.

We Could've Finished Last Without You - Bob Hope

Here's the holdover from last month. Gotta have ~~one~~ two baseball books on the list. A memoir of the Atlanta Braves by their promotions director back when they were the worst team in baseball.

The Big Short - Michael Lewis

Here's the reader suggestion for this month. The Moneyball guy exposes some of the absolute horseshit going on in Wall Street that has brought about the current bullshitty state of our economy. Not one financial ratfucker has spent one nanosecond in the clink for trainwrecking the world, but there's plenty of resources available to prevent people from exercising their right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. This might not be the best book for me to read as my blood pressure has already jumped pretty drastically just from typing this.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy - Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea

And after that fnord, this is probably a good book to end the list upon. I'm a closet Discordian anyway so why the hell not?

Too Little Too Late

2011-12-05T19:44:00.000-05:00

Hall voters' message to Jim Kaat, Minnie Minoso, Tony Oliva and especially Marvin Miller:

Drop dead and you're in.

Sketch Card #9 - Maddux Pie

2011-12-04T23:03:00.000-05:00

This one went to Jon over at Community Gum. Jon had a couple of stickers I needed and I had a few to send over his way. Jon is the first person I asked if they wanted a specific subject on their sketch card. This was the response:

Would you be able to do Greg Maddux riding on a pony of your choice?

Riding ponies? In My Little Pony? Whaaaaaaaa???? Filthy humans riding Equestrian ponies?!?! Blasphemy! Jon could get sent to the Moon for a thousand years for such insolence! I quickly devised a way to get him off the hook though:

WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!

(everypone out there should already know the joke that's coming so let's just get it over with)

So here's Pinkie Pie getting a piggyback ride from Greg Maddux (Cubs edition). Greg looks a little surprised and maybe dismayed at his situation. Honestly I don't get it, Pinkie Pie is the best pony, and giving her a piggyback ride should be a great honor. Maybe Greg is just a little worn out because Pinkie ate too much fudge and got a pudge and couldn't budge. It would explain why she's riding instead of prancing around like she usually does. She sure is having fun at any rate!

This one was a bit of a challenge as I rely heavily on reference photos when drawing and there isn't really a single photo of Greg Maddux giving a piggyback ride to anyone out there on the web, let alone giving one to a horse. So I found one of some random dude on a beach giving a piggyback to some chick and went from there. I made Greg a little more knock-kneed and the girl switched species, but it's about the same pose as in the picture. Greg's face I based on that grimace he makes when he pitches that can be seen on about 50% of his cards. I experimented with a multi-colored crosshatch background and ended up liking how it turned out enough to use it again. The only reason I did it in the first place was to cover up a mistake. Can you tell what it was?

Ok, I have at least three or four more cards I still need to draw so I better get a-drawin'. Ride 'em cowgirl! (oh wait, that's Applejack, not Pinkie Pie)

SEC Championship Game

2011-12-03T15:44:00.001-05:00

How the hell is Georgia in this thing? It's because I gave up on football after they got beat by South Carolina, isn't it? I'm gonna watch the game today (well, half watch the game/half read a book/half listen to music/half clean up the house/seven-eights drink beer/half fall asleep and take a nap) and the Bulldogs are going to get massacred. It will be God Himself telling me that my favorite teams will only be successful if I'm not really paying attention to them. Maybe I'll drink bourbon instead of beer and take that nap in the first quarter. Since it'll take a miracle for anything good to happen for the woofwoofs today, I'm going to post this Herschel Walker Guideposts magazine I got from Stats on the Back a long time ago and never posted because I didn't quite know what to do with it. Desperately needing Divine Intervention sounds like a good time to post to me.

Aw what the heck. Article too!

Yeah, I know Divine Intervention doesn't work that way. Besides, God is an SEC fan and wants to see an LSU - Alabama rematch in the BCS Championship game so I should really not invoke Him at all right now. Anyone got an article on Herschel from Reason or Skeptic magazine?

Maybe I should start drinking now... Beer or bourbon? Oh I know!

GoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DAWGS!

SIC 'EM!

WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOF~hic~WOOF

MLP:FIM Season 2 Ep 9

2011-12-03T09:30:00.032-05:00

RARITY EPISODE

WOOOOOOO

Streams here. Reddit's stream fills up by 2AM so I've given up on them.Yootubes is all goobered too so otherwise I mighta slept in this morning. Not that anyone ever reads these posts in time to watch the show.

I'm frazzled at the moment and have no decent ponies drawn for the occasion. In lieu of actual content, here is a Rarity Meme dump to assault your senses. Maybe discussion after the show, maybe not. I never crowed about how Pinkie Pie was Batman last week and that was a defining moment in my life. Dude, it's the holiday season, I'm tired.

MEME DUMP COMMENCING

Be back later, maybe. Or perhaps I'll lie down and read a nice book. Vote for my book plz.

SPOILERS:

Yay! Happy episode! With a song!

Pinkie ain't sung yet, but she has HEAVY ARTILLERY!

Salvador Dali ponies!

New background pony everyone will obsess over: The sexy supermodel pony that hangs out with Fancy Pants. Speaking of background ponies with 5 seconds of screen time everyone's in love with, Octavia made another appearance. So now she has 10 seconds.

~~This weeks's meme I'm really not looking forward to:~~ Nevermind, Not even the-site-that-must-not-be-named has jumped on this. Everyone's too obsessed with Rarity in a beret.

Hayseed McTurniptruck (or whatever his name was) is now best pony. Tied with Snails' older brother the bellhop.

The girls all act like complete dorks in Canterlot. Again. While Princess Celestia watches from the balcony of her castle and laughs her flank off. At least the birds all love Fluttershy now.

"My friends are the most important ponies I know" OF COURSE THEY ARE. YOU SIX SAVED ALL OF EQUESTRIA. TWICE.

Seriously, they have stained glass windows of their feats of heroism in the friggin' royal palace. AND they completely ruined the most important social event in Canterlot very recently. How does no one ever recognize them?

And Rarity comes through at the end! Although the lesson of the episode seems to be if you slack off, over commit yourself and lie to your friends to get what you want but you're clever enough to improvise on the fly when things go south, everything will turn out ok. Oh, and also always stick by your true friends. They know you're an asshole and like you anyway. Which is probably not bad advice actually. My Little Pony: Cynical Pragmatism is Magic!

It's time to Stick the Stickers - Tigers and Birds and Monks, oh my!

2011-12-02T09:40:00.000-05:00

Before you do anything, read this comic. I can't stop laughing at that. I wish I had ponies for the soundtrack today, but another wave of fake copyright takedowns hit and I've been scrambling to find a safe episode playlist for my daughter and had no time to find silly pony stuff. Here's Noel Gallagher doing a Smiths song instead.

Noel Gallagher is best pony.

I haven't gotten any stickers in a while so the sticker posts have gone by the wayside. I need to catch up. Here's 4 pages that were filled by a package from Baseball Dad.

The champs! I messed up when naming the images so the completed page showed up before the empty one and I'mm too lazy to fix it. You all know who is on the Cardinals' page anyway.

What, you were expecting Yadier Molina?

YAY. I love it when the player name is visible on these things. Of course do the Blue Jays have anyone else playing for them besides Jose Bautista?

Filled page. I had 6 of those damn Rajai Davis stickers. I trade 'em off and they still keep showing up on my desk.

No clue on this one. I wanna say Heath Bell but he doesn't even have a sticker.

Anthony Rizzo's got a sticker though. Why only one pitcher per team?

And we all know who this guy is. MVP.

Aaaaand filled. If you have any book suggestions, get 'em in before 9:00pm tonight.