June Vintage Show Top Ten #1

I had hoped to get the June card show list done by June, but I didn't. Oh well. It doesn't matter a bit because I have this card and this card is awesome.

1962 Topps #320 Hank Aaron

Ok, if you don't appreciate crummy looking cards the way I do just scroll up so the top of the curl in the corner is at the bottom of your screen and you have an awesome looking Hank Aaron card. If you do that, the card loses all its character, but you may do so if you wish. Go ahead, break my heart. Don't look upon this noble, battle proven warrior who survived a flood of biblical proportions and wears his scars with pride. Go look at some pristine mollycoddled card that was forgotten in someone's closet for 50 years and bought by some unscrupulous dealer for pennies on the dollar when uncle Jimmy croaked and subsequently entombed in a plastic prison for all eternity never to know the life experiences of cards like this.

You have to love people who abuse their cards. They not only make everyone else's cards more valuable through attrition, but they also allow scrounging bottom feeders like me to get awesome old cards for dirt cheap. I mean, look at this card! It's a Hank Aaron! From 1962! Back when I first started collecting, 1962 was OLD. Like, ancient history old. 1963 cards I could find. 1962 cards were just too old. They may as well have been authentic copies of the Declaration of Independence. In the original Klingon, no less! The thing just looks old, they're made out of wood. Antiqued wood. Not like the wood laminate 1987 cards. Those aren't old, those are cheap. They are a particleboard bookshelf compared to a solid hardwood Chippendale. The furniture kind. 1962 Topps is the Mona Lisa, 1987 Topps is Gary Larson parodying Frank Zappa's homage to Salvador Dali ripping off Marcel Duchamp doing a piss take on the Mona Lisa. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but what I'm trying to say is 1962 Topps is freaking OLD. And I got a HANK AARON. For like, SEVEN FIDDY. With the decimal point in between the SEVEN and the FIDDY. Just because the thing got a little wet and decided to take some bits of another '62 card along with it at some point.

Ok so you don't feel sorry for this card. It's ugly and spoiled and worthless and what the hell, man. Why do I buy this crap when there's some super cool mojo out there to get instead. Shiny stuff with bits of things embedded in them and actual authenticated scribbles right on the card.  This is a bad card and I should feel bad. You have no sympathy for this crummy card.

Well then, how about the other water damaged 1962 Hank Aaron card in the same bargain box as this one? The one I didn't get? The one that was left behind? The one that remained abandoned and neglected while this lucky card got to come home with me and be loved and get scanned and posted on the internet and go into a special binder in a place of honor with all its friends from the 1962 set. How about that card? That poor, Forever Alone card? Feel bad about that card? Yes, there were two of them in there. Two water damaged '62 Hanks. Dangit, why couldn't someone have screwed up a 1960 Aaron too. Heck, that other Aaron might still be in that bargain box. Don't feel bad... You may one day have a chance to get a crummy awesome card your very own!