my new obsession

In case you haven't noticed it yet, my new obsession these days is trying to get caught up on all my trade posts. Hopefully I can give everyone their day in the sun because I really do like the cards they send over. Plus, having them out on my desk gives me a chance to pour over them a few more times before they are relegated to the binder.

I still go through my binders semi regularly, but it still isn't the same as when they are new.

Having said that, I really feel like I need to devote some time and obsess over how I can properly memorialize the cool cards that people sent over.

Kelly, from My Baseball Obsession-itis sent over some cool cards that will fill many little holes in my want lists.

One insert from 2009 that I originally had little interest in last year was the Legends of the Game subset. I liked some of them, others not so much. I guess it was hard for me to wrap my pea brain around the different numbering systems depending on where you bought the cards from. Having a desire to complete every little set and subset out there makes me think that it would be too difficult to get all these cards especially considering that I would never know if I had all of them or not.

I've traded many of them away, but when I see a player come around that I want to start collecting I can't help but try to put out a request for these cards.


One such card is this Johnny Bench card. It's a photo taken from a game, but obviously not an action shot. Still, it's a nice card. I really need to do more research and find out what kind of lenses where used in those days. I have seen quite a few cards that feature this type of "double circle" bokeh in the background and it's bothering me that I don't know what equipment produced this effect. Bokeh is the type of background blur that occurs in the unfocused part of the photo. It's the out of focus circular orbs that you can sometimes see in photos.

I finally did some research and figured out that the reason that the Bokeh looks like a "donut" is that the lens is a catadioptric lens. It's a mirror lens that photographers sometimes use because of it's light weight and I guess at one point they were less expensive than normal lenses. One problem is the fact that the aperture was usually fixed at f8 or f11. That would make it harder to photograph night time subjects or at least night time subjects in action. I've seen so many cards recently that have had subjects from the '70's that have this sort of donut bokeh. It looks a little distracting to me sometimes. If I ever get around to it, I'll try to do a real post on the cards that I'm talking about.

I guess it should go without saying, but I really like the card. I won't put this with my other LOTG cards, it will go in the fledgling Oklahoma binder with my other two Johnny Bench cards.

Next up is another player that I'm sort of collecting, but not really going heavy after. I like Pujols. Especially this year as they played lots of ST. Louis games on cable in Norman/OKC. I like to watch Matt Holiday too. There is another Okie on the team Ryan Franklin, but I only have one of his cards that I know of.

This Pujols card pulls me within three cards of finishing the 2009 U&H Propaganda set!! Yay!

This Dostoevsky brings me that much closer to finishing off the Words Greatest Wordsmiths mini card set.

only 5 more cards now!!

These two National Animals get me within 15 cards of finishing off the 50 card set. Not too bad.

These two cards also represent two places that I would like to visit. Machu Pichu in Peru and the Philippines in general.

Thanks again Kelly. If ya'll haven't had a chance to check out her blog you should. She's a big Red Sox fan who takes really cool photos of her trips to Fenway Park.