ONLINE MEGA BOX - PART 26

 WE'RE BACK TO THE GOOFY SHIT. WHILE I HAVE BEEN VERY GOOD ABOUT FOCUSING ON WANTLIST STUFF AND THINGS I ACTUALLY COLLECT LATELY SOMETIMES I GO OFF THE RAILS AND THAT'S OK

2021 UPPER DECK SPACE JAM LEBRON JAMES PROFILE

CATEGORY - SUPERSTAR

LEBRON JAMES IS THE BEST BASKETBALL PLAYER OF THIS CENTURY AND IF YOU GET A CHANCE TO PICK UP A CARD CHEAP YOU DO IT. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THERE ARE RABBITS ON THE CARD YOU GET THE CARD. THIS CARD DESIGN - LIKE THE MOVIE ITSELF - SEEMS A BIT OVERWORKED

2021 UPPER DECK SPACE JAM GOSSAMER

CATEGORY - NON-SPORT

GOSSAMER FITS ON THIS DESIGN MUCH BETTER. I REALLY LIKE THE BUGS BUNNY CARTOONS WITH BUFF, GINGER COUSIN ITT SO THIS WAS AN EASY GET FOR MY MONSTER BINDER. I NEED TO FIND A WITCH HAZEL CARD FROM THE ORIGINAL SPACE JAM SET TO PAIR WITH HIM

2022-23 HOOPS GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO

CATEGORY - SUPERSTAR

I THINK THESE WERE THE FIRST 2022-23 HOOPS I GOT AND GIANNIS IS A PRETTY DANG GOOD FIRST CARD. I LIKE WHEN HOOPS BRINGS BACK THE KEY ELEMENT TO THE DESIGN THAT THEY USED BACK IN THE EARLY DAYS. IT'S UPSIDE DOWN HERE BUT I STILL GET IT 

2022-23 HOOPS JALEN JOHNSON, DEJOUNTE MURRAY

CATEGORY - HAWKS

THIS HAWKS SEASON HAS BEEN A COMPLETE TRAINWRECK BUT AT LEAST THEY MADE THE PLAY-IN TOURNEY AGAIN. AT LKEAST JALEN JOHNSON HAS BROKEN OUT THIS SEASON AND BECOME THE PLAYER JOHN COLLINS ALREADY WAS BEFORE THEY SCREWED UP HIS ROLE WITH CRAPPY ROSTER CONSTRUCTION. DEJOUNTE LOOKS GREAT, AT LEAST WHEN TRAE ISN'T PLAYING, AND I'M SOMEWHAT SURPRISED HE WAS ALREADY TRADED AT THE DEADLINE. PROBABLY A GOOD THING, AS WE'D MOST LIKELY BE IN THE LOTTERY IF HE WAS SHIPPED OFF. HAWKS ARE A DAMN MESS BUT THEY KEEP ENDING UP IN THE (EXPANDED) PLAYOFFS AND THEY HAVE SOME REALLY GOOD YOUNG PLAYERS SO MY ABANDONING THEM FOR THE SPURS WILL BE DELAYED AT LEAST ONE MORE SEASON*

2022 PANINI LEGACY DRAKE LONDON

CATEGORY - ROOKIE

WHY DID I BUY THIS?? I DON'T REALLY COLLECT FALCONS PLAYERS ANYMORE, AT LEAST NOT ONES FROM THIS DECADE, AND I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY COLLEGE PLAYER EXCEPT GEORGIA BULLDOGS. BUT A WHOLE CRAPLOAD OF LEGACY CARDS GOT POSTED ALL AT ONCE AND I DIG THE WHOLE RETRO VIBE AND I ENDED UP PICKING UP A FEW CARDS. NOW THAT THE HEAD COACH IS LESS OBNOXIOUS (AND MY ALTERNATE TEAM JUST HIRED THE OLD ONE) MAYBE I'LL LISTEN TO A FEW FALCONS GAME THIS FALL AND MAYBE DRAKE WILL DO SOMETHING WITH A COMPETENT QB

2022 PANINI LEGACY MICHAEL VICK LEGENDS

CATEGORY - LEGEND

THIS I KNOW WHY I BOUGHT. I HAVE A BOX SOMEWHERE WITH A BIG PILE OF COOL VICK CARDS I GOT BEFORE *WAVES HANDS AT EVERYTHING* AND I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT ABOUT ADDING TO THAT COLLECTION NOW THAT HIS CARDS ARE NO LONGER PRICEY. I HAVE NOT DONE SO BUT IF I SEE A NICE ONE IN A FALCONS UNI IN A DIME BOX I PICK IT UP. AS LONG AS THERE'S NOTHING BETTER IN THE BOX

1998 METAL UNIVERSE DAMION EASLEY

CATEGORY - WANTLIST

IN 1998 SKYBOX DITCHED THE FANTASY BACKGROUNDS WITH INTRICATE FOIL ETCHING AND SWITCHED TO BACKGROUNDS REPRESENTING THE CITY OF THE PLAYER'S TEAM. DETROIT GOT A TRAINYARD. EVEN IF IT WASN'T ON THE WANTLIST ALREADY I MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN IT JUST BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY

1991 LEAF ROGER SALKELD GOLD LEAF ROOKIES

CATEGORY - INSERT

I'M SLOWLY CHIP-CHIP-CHIPPING AWAY AT THESE GOLD LEAF ROOKIES CARDS AND I THINK I ONLY NEED ABOUT TEN FOR THE ENTIRE 1991 TO 1995 RUN. IN 1996 LEAF RELEGATED THE GOLD LEAF ROOKIES TO THE BASE SET AND THEY WERE DITCHED COMPLETELY IN 1997. THERE'S NOT MANY  MULTI-YEAR RUNS OF INSERTS LIKE THIS FROM THE 80S TO 90S SINCE THINGS GOT WACKY AFTER THE STRIKE. GOLD LEAF ROOKIES, DONRUSS DIAMOND KINGS, TOPPS ALL-STARS, FLEER ALL-STARS, UPPER DECK HEROES... AND? NOT MUCH ELSE? I SHOULD DO SOME RESEARCH ON THIS STUFF NOW THAT I'M ON A MAJOR 90S INSERT KICK

1997 TOPPS FINEST JASON GIAMBI EMBOSSED

 

CATEGORY - SHINY

I'VE BEEN PICKING UP RANDOM NEATO FINEST CARDS HERE AND THERE DESPITE STILL PROCRASTINATING ON GETTING A  HANDLE ON EXACTLY WHAT FINEST CARDS I ALREADY HAVE. THIS ONE WAS AN EASY PICKUP SINCE IT'S 1) AN UNCOMMON SILVER BACKGROUND CARD AND 2) AN EMBOSSED CARD. CRAZY FRACTURED BASE SETS WITH DIFFERENT RARITIES FOR RANDOM CARDS IS A BIG REASON WHY I'VE NEVER BOTHERED TO BUILD ANY OF THESE SETS DESPITE THEM BEING REALLY COOL LOOKING. THE EMBOSSED BIT IS A LITTLE DIFFICULT TO STORE TOO. YOU CAN'T SEE IT FROM THE FRONT IN THIS PICTURE SO I TOOK ONE OF THE BACK TO TRY TO SHOW IT OFF  

I'M NOT SURE HOW SUCCESSFUL I WAS BUT YOU CAN KINDA SEE HIS ARM AND MEATY THIGH. THEY'RE REALLY COOL LOOKING AND ALSO NOT TOO EASY TO FIND. GIAMBI AIN'T MY FAVORITE BUT IT'S STILL SHINY COOL

UP NEXT: I REALLY HAVE NO IDEA, THE DRAFT POSTS HAVE RUN OUT AND IT'S TIME TO DECIDE WHERE TO GO FROM HERE. MAAAYBE MORE OF THIS, MAAAAYBE SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. THE FUTURE IS UNKNOWN

*UNLESS TRAE GETS TRADED, THEN ALL BETS ARE OFF

Too Many Hobbies

Fuji's homework assignment for this week is to show off your other non-sport related hobbies. Asking me this to do this is kinda like asking Shawn Kemp to show off all his children. Over the past 40 years I've managed to get interested in a whole lot of things. A lot were sports related, especially gaming so I'll skip the video and board games and magazines and fantasy sports and et cetera and keep it to just the stuff that impacted my life that had nothing to do with sports. I literally have 15 minutes to write this up after scanning and photoing all this stuff today so I'm just gonna jump to it and pray that the formatting doesn't break again. 

I pretty much learned to read from Peanuts Fawcett Paperbacks. I've accumulated a bookshelf full in my travels. This one here is one I had when I was a wee lad. It was chewed by my asshole dog who is probably responsible for my current racism toward canines. I also went through a period where I would circle my favorite letter in my books. This book was brought to you by the letter 'R'.

At some point I got my hands on my uncle's old Mad Magazines from the early '70s and started reading them too. I must admit that my political views were heavily influenced by Mad Magazine. Sadly, most of those magazines were lost in a Great Purge of my bedroom, but I still have this one that I picked up in the '80s. This is one of my all time favorite MAD covers. 

I was INSANE over Star Wars when I was about 8 or 9. I forced my parents to let me watch BattleStar Galactica because it kinda looked like Star Wars. My favorite cartoon for a while was G-Force because 7-Zark-7 looked a bit like R2D2. Again, many figures were lost, but I still have Han and a bounty hunter to go along with my new(er) Han and a bounty hunter. 

In 1983 I went berzerk over baseball cards. To try to steer me into something more sensible, my mother gave me her old coin collection. It worked for a few years, but by '86 I was lost to cardboard again. I still  really love old coins though. My cat was actually named after this coin here. 

Stamps. For a brief and crazy period I became obsessed with stamps. I am generally ashamed of and regret this wild behavior today. There is one quirky habit I still have today thanks to stamps. When I get a letter with an actual stamp on it, I instinctively rip off the stamp and save it. You know, because it's so valuable. Here's a stamp of a guava that looks vaguely filthy.

Here is a book cover that is genuinely filthy. This book cover is pretty par for the course for the '70s though. I love love loved to read as a kid and picked up all sorts of crazy sci-fi and horror stuff. I picked this one out to show off on this post not for the cover but because this is genuinely a really good dystopian type sci-fi novel that no one has probably ever heard of. It's about the future (natch) where people get their brains put in jars and then they work out all their problems while existing only as a brain and then they reach Enlightenment and their brain gets put into an actual person and they live out their days in a peaceful utopia but the everyone feels sorry for the first person who was ever jarbrained because he is still a fucking mess after all these years so they let him have a body anyway and HIJINKS ENSUE! Lotta great old crappy books out there if you look!

I also love space, especially the space shuttle. I snagged this shuttle mission token on one of my many trips to the Kennedy Center or the Space Museum in Huntsville. The combo of coins + space was too much to resist.

Comics! I love comics. Not the spandex superhero type though. I liked the House of Mystery type horror comics and space comics and funny comics when I was a kid. When I hit High School I picked up a ton of cheap independent comics at the local comic shop. Most were oddball stuff but I managed to pick up quite a lot of Fantagraphics comics cheap including Love and Rockets, Peter Bagge's Hate and this #1 Lloyd Llewellyn by Daniel Clowes. This may very well be the greatest comic book cover of all time. There is probably a 50-50 shot I break down and do a comics Tumbler in the next calendar year. 

Can't forget the music! Ever since I got an Eddy Grant and a Men At Work cassette tape at K-Mart in 1982 I've been in love with music. I have boxes of cassettes, piles of CDs, folders full of MP3s and a couple of crates of LPs. Here is the most ridiculous and offensive album I own: a Bootleg of the Beatles in Hamburg entitled The Beatles vs the Third Reich. According to the back the audience responses to the Beatles' songs include "Seig Heil" "Your Papers, Please" and my favorite, "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Penis". 

In the '90s, Magic: the Gathering hit and I eventually got caught up in all the CCG stuff thanks to Decipher's Star Wars game. This was probably the first CCG guide I ever got, mainly just for the free Star Wars cards. I now have a pile of them I have no idea what to do with. 

Fast forward to present day and now I like ponies. Lord knows what the hell my basement is going to look like if I live another 40 years....

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

THIS IS

THE COOLEST STAMPS

EVER!!!!!!!!

I Believe in Space

I luuuuuurve this insert set. This Apollo 11 card is fantastic.

Bonus: the best use of autotune ever:



Ok, so it's the only good use of autotune ever. If you go to the YouTube page you can download the track.



Did I mention I like these cards?

2009 Allen & Ginter Box Break: Pack 6

More fireworks in this pack despite the coolest card getting dinged a point. This has been a pretty kick ass box to this point!


256 Jose Lopez
89 Elvis Andrus RC
65 Dexter Fowler RC
289 Milky Way -1 point despite utter coolness
34 Ryan Dempster
223 Scott Rolen Code Card +2 points

HHB6 Enron Hoaxes, Hoodwinks, Bamboozles And Shockingly Brazen Corporate Corruption That Screwed Up The Energy Industry, Completely Destroyed The Lives Of Thousands Of Stockholders, Employees And Grandmas, Damn Near Shut Down California And Cheated People Out Of Their Hard Earned Cash In The Name Of Unbridled Greed While The Federal Government Who Was Supposed To Be Regulating This Shit In The First Place Turned A Blind Eye To The Whole Fucking Thing While The Man Behind The Entire Sordid Affair Was Buddy Pals With Two Presidents Of The United States Who Also Just Happened To Have Deep Ties To The Oil Industry Funny How That Works Eh Hey Look American Gladiators Is On Go Back To Bed America The Government Is In Control You Are Free To Do As We Tell You +5 Points
NP50 Jair Jurrjens NP +2 points
Ginter Code Ad

Ok, some of you people don't like the Milky Way card. You actually really like, it, you just don't know it yet. Want me to prove it to you? Take a good look at the card. A really good look. Now look at the bottom left corner. Now check out the lower part of the galaxy, underneath the galactic core. Now you know that Topps left the light years map legend and several star labels in the picture when they 'shopped it from whatever middle school textbook image they ganked it from.

Now you have been Enlightened.

In other news, I really like the Elvis Andrus card. I'm kind of sorry he never got the chance to become a Brave, but I'm happy with Yunel Escobar so I can deal with it. I don't get these sports talk yobbos who keep trying to trade Yunel because supposedly Bobby doesn't like him blowing his top every so often. The dude can play and we got him cheap for the next few years. So what if he flakes every once in a while, the dude's Cuban, they actually get excited about playing baseball unlike a lot of the guys in the majors just cashing a paycheck. Dexter Fowler messed the Braves up last night so no scan for him. Dempster looks demented as always. The Jurrjens card is nice, too bad he didn't get the chance to play with the surprising Netherland WBC club. Then again he's kicking ass for the Braves this year so maybe that's a good thing. Jair would be an All-Star if the bats could have gotten him any runs.

As for that abomination of an insert, the only reason it's not confetti now is that conceivably there is a die hard Astros fan out there who might want it for their collection. There's one more of those things in this box, you have one chance to redeem yourselves, Topps.

Space (I Believe In)