Thanksgiving

I have a lot of things to be thankful for this year. Actually most years I have a lot of stuff to be thankful for. In my personal life I try to be relatively positive no matter what.

In terms of my card collecting hobby I sometimes wish I had the resources to buy up a little bit or a lot of everything. Mostly I need to collect what I really like and worry too much about my hobbies.

One thing I have to be thankful for is all of the cool packages that I've received in the past year. Unfortunately I haven't gotten around to writing about these package. I have and continue to enjoy the cards, but I haven't done a good job of getting those trade posts.

It's always cool to get a package in the mail when you expect them, but a nice surprise package in the mail is really awesome too. It really shows how thoughtful all of my trade partners are and how thoughtful the blogsphere can be.

A few months ago (I'm really, really late with some of these posts!) Joe from ...the Sandlot

Takahashi doesn't currently play for the Mets, he's in Anaheim these days, but I have always liked this card.

First of all it's chrome, it's a Met and even though I usually prefer action shots that show a player's face sometimes it's nice to see a shot from the back that shows off the name and number of the player. I have a lot of Asian friends and so I have an interest in players from that area.

I think this is one of only a few Dykstra cards that I own. This may have even been the first Dykstra card that I had in my collection. (I have a couple of more now.) '89 Topps has a nice design.

This cool shot of Jose Reyes is not one of his best cards, It's still a nice card though. It's another post I have for later.



Even though this is a Met, the Pagan card is already in the 2011 Topps Baseball binder. (not the official one, just a generic binder) I'm paring down my collection; if I'm collecting the set I'm not going to do a separate team set, just keeping a few players for their respective pages. If I'm not collecting the set then I'll just do the team set.



That's the case with the Ray Searage card. Currently it's in the Mets binder, but whenever I get around to seriously collecting the 1982(if I ever do) then it will be donated to that binder.

I find that when I either don't have the money or interest in buying new stuff reorganizing binders and boxes can be pretty fun in a way.

If you're still reading this: Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It was a pretty short post, but at least it will be a break from arguing with your family about sports, religion and politics.

One track mind

Growing up my family used to always complain about me "havin' a one track mind". I guess once I get something on my mind I can't jump over to another subject without finishing what I've started. I thought I had outgrown that habit, but apparently not. One of the reasons I haven't been posting lately is that I feel like I should finish up my trade posts before blogging on other subjects.

If I were a little bit more creative in my writing, I could somehow combine the two together. Maybe I should take a creative writing course to get my head right. And it's not just that I want to get to the trade posts, it's that I want to do them in order that I received the packages. Even though it's been months, I still have all of the folders in some sort of order with the cards that were sent to me. So I've got this stubborn idea that everything should be linear, but I don't really think in a linear way anymore, but I'm forcing myself to behave that way. So in the spirit of trying to shake things up I'm going to jump ahead and focus on a package that came my way a few days ago.

I hope you'll forgive me past trading partners, I promise I'll get to all the cool packages that I've received from you guys when I get over this procrastinating hurdle.

Kyle from the Juust a bit outside blog contacted me about having some Allen and Ginter cards off of my want list. My want list for this years A&G is extensive. That's another thing that I've procrastinated on as well. It's hard to get excited to collect a set that doesn't really grab you. Add a bunch of inserts on top of a somewhat weird base card design and it makes collecting the whole set a little daunting. Of course there's no law that says I have to collect any of it, but I'd like to have every A&G set from 2006 on in my collection.

I'm doing pretty good in that regard. I'm only needing one short print for 2009, a couple of base for 2010 to have most of 2007-2010 locked. (If you've been following this blog for a while you'll notice I've conveniently left off the black bordered minis from those collecting goals. For now I'm pretending those don't exist. Sort of like how I'm pretending that Kimball Champions 101-150 don't exist. Because if they exist and they look cool, I'll have to collect all of them.) Also, I haven't really gotten around to the 2006 version of Allen and Ginter yet either. That's for another day.

One of the nice things that I do like about this years set is that they put team logos on the bottom border of the card.


The Brewers color scheme looks really good with this card design.


Verlanders' follow through motion is made for a horizontal card.

If it's a non-baseball subject they put the groovy looking A&G logo in the bottom right of the card.


I already pulled a Hope Solo out of a rack pack, so this is my ohh la la! moment. You guys are all probably sick of these cards already. I'm a little behind schedule when it comes to this set.


The amount of subsets is crazy big this year. And I mean that literally.
You've got your Floating Fortresses cards in a full size card, unlike a few years ago when they were represented in mini form in the Topps Mayo line.

I like the rope border around the nameplate and card. I think bigger cards work better for this subject. Maybe my eyes are just getting tired and old, but I like that they can show the art work better on a bigger card. I mean how could you have a Floating Fortress on a mini card?

You've got your standby sketch highlight cards. The few of these that I've pulled look pretty good this year.


I still love the minis though. I still think that one of these days I'm going to have to invest in a lighted magnifying glass to enjoy them fully.

I thought the "Poe Toaster" was a piece of toast with the image of a raven burned into the bread. Turns out its a dude that will use any excuse to drink in a cemetery. Or maybe he's just pouring one out for his homie.




The borders on all these A&G cards look really nice. I especially like the Topps logo stuff on the bottom of the PP card.

This is the first Portraits of Penultimacy and World's Most Mysterious figures cards that I've seen in person.


These cards are all from Kyle(obviously) and he's got a group break going on right now. I haven't done a group break in a while, so maybe it's time to try my luck at getting some cool cards that I need. He's still looking for some takers so check it out.

Thanks for the cards Kyle. I really do enjoy them and it gets me a lot closer to feeling like I'm accomplishing something.

my 26 cent summer

The Summer of 1987 I became a huge fan of Gun's and Roses. Their single Sweet Child of Mine was all over the airwaves and on MTV. I didn't have MTV in my home town, but my cousins did and I was staying with them for a week so needless to say, every waking minute I was glued to the TV waiting for that iconic shot of Slash plugging in his guitar and playing the opening chords to the song.

At that time i could care less about sports, sports cards or even comic books. I was entranced by this guitar thing and I swore I would be the next Slash.


Well, obviously that never happened. Actually I would spend the next 4 years or so (high school) trying to be Slash but it never worked out. I could manage a half-assed version of some of G n' R's songs, but I was a poor imitator of Slash's guitar work.

I was hoping the follow up to Appetite would be cool. Lies wasn't much of an album. A half live/half acoustic album it was an abbreviated stop gap filler before the "real" album was supposed to be released.

Then came the Spaghetti Incident (more cover songs).

The grunge movement came and went and still no follow up. Seventeen years later Chinese Democracy was released and in true weirdo Axl Rose fashion it was only released online or Best Buy. I'm sort of boycotting Best Buy so that wasn't an option. Honestly by this time I didn't even really care that much. Seventeen years is a long time to wait for anything.

Going 3 months in between posting seems like 17 years in the blogsphere.

I hope my next series of posts aren't like "Lies"(abbreviated and thrown together) or the two Use Your Illusion albums. (self-indulgent and aimless)

The people that I've traded with months ago deserve better. They deserve an Appetite for Destruction, not an acoustic version of "You're Crazy". They definitely don't need a Chinese Democracy type of effort.

Speaking of crazy. I shouldn't have been so careless with opening the package that I received from Matt B. from the blog 26 Cent Summer. It was filled to the brim with a bunch of hard core guys from the past. Matt's blog title comes from his own summer spent collecting cards. The 26 cents refer to the price of packs in 1980. In the time it's taken me to finish this trade post he's already finished his 1980 Topps set. (I'm still working on mine)

Let's see what sort of doubles he had to send over:


I recalled that Fergie had an Oklahoma connection when I was bored and digging up info on him. I found this touching article in an old SI article: Glory Amid Grief




This is probably the most angriest player photo card that I own. At least George isn't staring us down, he's looking at someone off camera. I've never been more scared to look at a thin piece of cardboard in my life. I can see now why he's a part of the badass and you're not club.


Even though this is the only Rollie Fingers card that I own, it's still a little weird that he's in a Padres uniform instead of an A's uniform.


Ladies and Gentlemen I bring you the 1980 Mets!! The last place finishers in 1979 would be in rebuilding mode with new owners Doubleday and Wilpon. Due to a last place finish they would have the first pick and would use it to draft Darryl Strawberry. Six years later they would win it all with a little help from the guy below:



Here we see a youthful Keith Hernandez in the batting cage. The mustache looks smaller and more youthful too. He said that combined with his high cheekbones and large mustache he didn't have to use eye black while playing baseball.

He has an Oklahoma connection in that he played with the Tulsa Drillers before being called up to play for the Cards. He would also split the 1975 season between St. Louis and Tulsa.

Keith was in his 7th year with the Cardinals in 1980. He tied Willie Stargell for MVP in 1979.


I'm still needing about 18 left to finish the set, but I'm gettin' there.

Obviously a good trade. It's always nice to find some one with the same collecting goals as you so that you can help each other out.

Thanks very much for the cards Matt. I enjoyed reading your blog.

apologies everyone..

I have been a pretty bad trade partner these days. Last month you'll remember I did a huge trade bait post and got a lot of responses. For a moment I almost felt like Oprah when she gives away a new car or something.



I've been to busy to post them up with work issues, family and friend issues. Not necessarily bad issues, but just.... stuff. Unavoidable stuff that I needed to take care of. I don't want to do a long trade post including all the cards in one post as I want to give each blogger their own trade post.

I've been pretty busy, but I'm almost certain that you other bloggers with jobs, family and wives are more busier and yet you guys (and girls) all find time to blog more frequently than I.

Compounding the problem is that most of the packages had a combination of 1980 Topps, 2010 Topps and a bunch of 2011 Topps. So I'm sorry to report that I might have gotten some of the packages mixed up.

It's really hard being Oprah. On that note I'll leave you with a little video I did of last years Colombian Night Cultural show held at OU. I usually do the video and photos for these guys as I'm friends with some of the members. This clip is only 26 seconds long as has a little piece of some of the performances.



I'm currently working on this years video so maybe when I get a chance to take a real break I'll get those trade posts together and hopefully show off some cool photos/videos that I'm working on.

On a brighter note, my scanner suddenly stopped making that clacking sound when it scans an image. I don't know if it's because I haven't used it that much, or if it's because it has a mind of it's own. It's not really that far-fetched; it actually is a sentient being with it's own mind so maybe it repaired itself.

'Till next time.

Xerces Blue

Let's go back in the time machine or as I like to call it the Clock Defier and take a look at my Allen and Ginter collection.

That's right boys and girls, I've got another wonderful A&G post for everybody to enjoy.

I have slowly been putting together a huge part of the 2009 Allen and Ginter World Champions set.

Recently I have been focusing on the Extinct Creatures and the Future Inventions mini sets.


I was most excited about the Extinct Creatures set mainly for this one card.

The Xerces Blue Butterfly.

This would be the one card from the non-advertised subsets that I was really hoping to one day find. It took a while but I finally found one in my price range. I really love that these cards in the 2009 set have the same basic look as the base set.


The one problem I have with these two subsets is that they don't have an explanation of the subject on the card backs. Just a checklist. A nice looking back, but I need more than a nice looking card so I went to google.

Here's what I found out:

The Xerces Blue became extinct around 1941-43 and was mostly found in the San Francisco bay area. Scientists speculate that the butterfly's symbiotic relationship with ants was the cause of it's demise. Apparently as more people moved into the bay area they brought with them different types of ants and these ants replaced the ones that were common to the area.

Botanists are trying to re- inhabit a close cousin of the butterfly known as the Palos Verde Blue which is considered the LA equivalent to the Xerces Blue. Pretty exciting stuff.

I went through a butterfly period a few years ago in which I would try to paint little butterfly paintings. It's a little lame, but here is one of my attempts at painting a butterfly.
The reason for the interest in butterflies aside from the obvious reason of the colorfulness of their wings was also because of a Indonesian legend. I had a lot of friends at that time from Indonesia and they invited me over to watch the movie The Sixth Sense. That will tell you how long ago it was. After walking in to the house they pointed out a butterfly on the wall.

Apparently in Indonesia if you see a butterfly in your house it's an omen that you will have visitors soon. I haven't checked around to see if this is true or if maybe I misunderstood what she was saying. Her English wasn't the best and some of what she was saying may have been lost in the translation. Maybe she was just making a joke or something and I didn't catch it. Anyway, it always stuck with me and I started painting butterflies that summer. Seeing the entomology cards in Goodwin and also this Xerces Blue card reminds me of those days when I was enamored with painting butterflies. Kind of weird.

Thanks for reading. I hope you guys enjoy the cards.

Trade bait post

I haven't done one of these in a while so I thought I'd scan the inserts from the new baseball set that I have available for trade. I need to do another one of these for the stuff from 2009 and 2010 that I want to get rid of.










If you see anything you want or if you need to know the exact numbers of any of these cards let me know.


I also have a decent amount of base cards available for trade as well.



This is my 2011 Want List. I wouldn't mind trading for anything on my wantlists though.

Thanks for reading.

My Mel Ott cards are procreating...

I've only bought about 7 retail packs and a rack pack and already I've got3 Mel Ott reprints. I was really happy to pull the first one, but now I'm pulling dups and triples of inserts rather than base cards.


The only good thing about all these inserts is that I've been lucky enough to pull about 7 Kimball Minis so far with only two dups.



I pulled this nice Gehrig reprint. Actually the Delong cards are nice, but the card itself is a little sketchy. It's not a high quality card in the representation of Mr. Gehrig, but I still like it nonetheless. I'm a big fan of reprints.

These stupid things are horrible.

So is this History of Topps thing. Nobody cares about this. I sort of halfheartedly tried to collect Tales of the Game and History of the Game last year, but this is going to far. Really not even worth the time to write about it. Having said that if anybody is looking for these cards let me know. Actually any of these cards are up for grabs except for the Gehrig and one of the Ott cards. I don't know why I'm saving these cards as I'll probably just pull more of them tomorrow.

Later on I'm going to get all my inserts together and do a big trade bait post so that I can hopefully turn all these cards into something that I might want for my collection.

Go Join Now!! Crinkly Wrappers Contest!

Crinkly Wrappers is a having a very generous contest where he's giving one card each from 1952-2011. Waaaaay better than any Topps corporate lam-0 free (but not really free) giveaway.

Discount pack hit

A few days ago I mentioned the cool sketch card I pulled out of one random pack of Star Wars. I shouldn't have been that surprised because I have had pretty good luck in pulling nice relics and autos from this one store that I shop at. I still didn't think I could ever pull something like this.

In addition to getting the pack of Star Wars and I also got a few packs of 2008 Topps Mayo as well as a few packs of Looney Tunes Comic Ball cards.

The comic ball cards are reserved for a Pack to be Named Later. The first of my two Mayo packs produced a pretty good selection of cards.


First card out of the pack was Paul Gauguin.


I love to pull artists and other non-sports people out of cards. Some people hate them, but I think it's cool.


I pulled an Archie Manning.

An Adrian Peterson base card that I still needed.

A Mark Bradley base card that I still needed. He's a former OU wide out.

A nice mini of Steven Jackson. A running back for the Rams.

a couple of lame base cards.

and lastly a really nice white jersey relic of Archie's son:


Peyton Manning. These relic cards are nice. The other relic I pulled was also from this same box at the store. I wonder if their is one more hit left? I almost don't want to buy any more packs from the box as it would be a let down from these two packs.

The other pack yielded a nice Bradshaw base card.

And a Darren McFadden mini.

Yale back. I guess the Yale and Harvard backs weren't serial numbered in 2008 like they were in 2009.

I mainly took a chance on all these random packs because Topps Baseball wasn't in stock and I sometimes like to buy random stuff to see if they will have something cool. This is one of the best outings that I have had finding base cards and hits for my collection. I believe every one of these packs was discounted in some way. The Mayo was buy one get one free.

Thanks for reading. I hope you all will have as good as I have had recently in pulling awesome hits from your packs.

Trade with "e rayhahn, rayhahn"

The great thing about trades is that you get cards that you have had your eye on for a while or at least have a general idea of how they will look. Sometimes though you will get a card or two in the trade that you have never seen before. An insert set that you didn't know existed or a complete product that you didn't know existed.

In my first ever trade with David over at "e rayhahn, rayhahn" I managed to get both cards that I have had my eye on for a while as well as cards that I didn't really know existed.

First up is a card that I have wanted since I saw it on one of the blogs a few years back.


This is one of the nicest David Wright cards that I have received in a trade and that's saying a lot. I've received a bunch of nice Wright cards over the past few years.

The first thing that caught my eye and the main reason why I needed this card was of course the dirt on the pants. I think that's the coolest thing to see in this card because of the implied "Joe Hustle" type of effort he was putting in on this particular game.


Up next is a card of Dwight Gooden in a repo of a 1975 card. Gooden would have been 11 in 1975, but still it makes for a good card.

The next section of cards is from Topps Archives. I don't know if this was an actual set or just an insert set within a much larger set.


Either way, I really like the 1973 card set as I'm trying to work on collecting this set. I've put most of that off for the past few months, but at some point I need to get back on track collecting this nice set.

Another set that I really want to get into is the 1965 set.

Spahn has a statue outside of the OKC Redhawks stadium and is listed on the back as residing in Hartshorne, Oklahoma. I still don't know why he lived here. Oh well. Interesting fact is that he gave up the first home run to Willie Mays.


This looks like one half of a 1967 Rookie Stars card of Tom Seaver. Missing from this card is Bill Denehy.


Here is one half of a 1968 Rookie Stars card of Nolan Ryan. Missing is Jerry Koosman.

These Topps Archive cards are pretty nice. Reprints are cool, especially when the originals are too expensive, rare or in these two cases don't really exist.

Thanks for the cool cards David. Thanks for reading

My first sketch card pull!!

Still no hobby packs of 2011 topps baseball at one of the hobby shops. So I decided to pick up some random packs of goodness.

I haven't bought any non-sports cards in a while so I bought a pack of Star Wars the Clone Wars which is apparently based on an animated TV show. I didn't realize that as I picked up the pack.


The base cards are a little lame, but the sketch card is pretty nice.



I'm guessing it might be a reproduction of a sketch card and not a true 1/1 sketch card. I tried looking at the texture of the card to see, but I couldn't tell.


The back wasn't much help either,but at least it has a real on card auto. I did a little sleuthing and came to the conclusion that it was a Brian Rood auto.

The only problem I have is that I have no idea who the character depicted on the card is supposed to be. I don't watch the show so I'm at a loss as to who this could be. If anybody out there has a clue please let me know.

The odds for these sketch cards fall 1 in every hobby box, so I guess I did pretty well for my one and only pack that I purchased. If I liked the base cards more I would go back and grab some more packs.