New technology in the collecting game

As mentioned on my previous post, I haven't bought much in the way of trading cards in quite some time. Everything seems a little different now in the collecting word.  I don't seem to see a lot of card packs in the Targets and WalMarts like I used to. Also, place like Vintage Stock don't seem to stock much in the way of cards unless it's Pokeman or Magic the Gathering. 

The one new development that might only be new to me is the invention of the horizontal binder page.

Yep. I'm so starved for hobby related material that I genuinely got excited when I saw these at the Vintage Stock. 

I really didn't want to leave totally empty handed as I couldn't even find a good graphic novel or comic to buy. No packs of non-sports OR sports to be had. No singles, nothing really at the closest Vintage Stock, so I got 4 of these pages for now, and one of those Funko blind boxes. This particular set is from Marvel's What If...? animated show. 

I haven't seen the show, but I do like Marvel related stuff.  I was looking for a cool Zombie Captain America, but pulled an Ice Loki ? 

 

I remember the old "What if... ?" comic books. It was a pretty good premise for an anthology like book back in the day. I'll have to check out this show sometime and see if it's like the old comics, or maybe it's a new "alternate universe" type of concept.

About those binder pages... I really should have bought more. I can totally see using these for my little '74 set that I'm putting together. Honestly they would work good for my favorite horizontal cards too. 

 My '74 "set" that I'm going for is pretty much just the 12 or so cards depicting the World Series from 1973. I found a couple of these at a local card shop years ago, and I forget where the other ones came from. I just remember thinking that having the Met's from the '73 season would be cool as I'm sort of trying to complete that set, and I felt like this would be a nice companion to that. 

The possibilities are somewhat endless.  It wouldn't make sense to use these on a set that has both vertical and horizontal cards, but sometimes those little insert sets would be all horizontal. Of course, the 55 and 56 sets were horizontal, so they make good candidates for the new pages.

I kind of forgot how many of these vintage cards that I had in the vintage box.  These are all from different sets, but it's a lot easier to look at them in pages.

 

Eventually I'm going to use these for my random "Cool Action Shot" set that I'm making out of whatever cards I think looks cool. Since it's been several years since I totally went through my collection it might take a minute to actually find which binder/box. 

10 Years Gone

 Almost 10 years have gone by since I last posted. 10 YEARS!!! How does time fly by so fast? 

So many things that happened. Good and bad. Nothing different from anybody else's life, but still....10 years!!!??? I still can't believe it. I put most of my collecting on hold. Life happens and most of that was more important than my collecting hobby. I have like 5 hobbies going at once, so this one took a back seat for a while.

I would go to the hobby store and grab some singles from the sets I'm collecting, but I pretty much decided I wasn't interested in buying and building new sets anymore. I did grab a few Garbage Pail Kids and a random pack or two of "new stuff", but mostly just a bunch of randomness.

 

Saw these Chrome GPK's online, but they didn't really grab me, but seeing them in person changes my mind a little bit. I do like shiny chrome. Who doesn't? I still haven't seen any A&G in chrome and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like it as it just doesn't make sense to me. The appeal of A&G is that it is a retro set and as such, probably looks better without all the 21st century snazziness. If I ever see a chrome pack of A&G these days I'd probably buy a pack as I can't seem to find much at the Walmarts and Targets like in the past.

GPK is one of my all time favorites, but they be a little hit or miss on the concept of their new sets. This was from the 35th anniversary set and it was really right up my alley as it more of a homage(I won't say re-hash) of the older sets that I remember from my childhood.

This was from 2017 I think. It was a music based set. It makes me feel old sometimes. Before this post I heard a song by Sting's band and for the life of me I couldn't think of the name of his old band. Took me hours to remember "The Police". I'm getting old.

I don't even remember buying this. I consider myself a Star Wars fan. Actually it was the first ever movie that I watched. I don't see anything of note in this pack.

I got a few cheap boxes from Facebook marketplace. Some Stadium Club, 90's era Football Pro Set, and this really cool box of Series One Mad Magazine. 

 

 

 

Really weird checklist numbering system. I guess keeping up with the concept of "Mad". I was able to build a couple of sets of this stuff and have a few packs left over.  Someday I really need to do a random box break/pack break thing with my random unopened packs. Not that I have a lot of unopened packs. Really hard to resist ripping packs when I have them.

 

 

Having not been a collector in the early nineties, I didn't really realize how big these pro sets were. I thought for sure I could get close to finishing up a set with 36 packs, but I didn't. I still got the painted Super Bowl MVP subset finished though. Or at least, I think I did. I need to check again. I have a LOT of dupes from these sets. 

I don't know what to think of the design of this set. I sort of like it, but it doesn't really elicit any excitement for me. Fun to rip open though.  I need to search out more older boxes like this.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully I'll be more proactive in the future with some more posts.