Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

It's been over thirty years, but I can still picture my father telling me "I don't want to hear any excuses".  He hated them and I can't blame him.  Most of the time my excuses were lame.

But I'm pretty sure my father doesn't actively read my blog, so I'm going to give you guys three excuses in regards to my recent delay in opening up a bunch of generous blogger care packages.

#1:  This school year has been crazy hectic.

As most of you know, I'm teaching two new classes in addition to the elective I've taught for the past eight years.  What does that mean?  It means I'm constantly writing lesson plans, creating Power Point presentations, developing new curriculum, making quizzes, and correcting projects.

That's why it took me almost a month before I got around to opening a package from The Lost Collector.

He sent me two new autographs for my Oakland Athletics PC.  Both cards are from the 1996 Leaf Signature Extended set, which is one of the best looking on-card autograph sets around.  The color photo on the black and white background, along with the simple design is truly a classic combo.

Thanks AJ!

#2:  There aren't enough minutes in a day.

It might be hard to believe... but I do have a life outside of work and cards.  And between going out to eat, hanging with friends, dog sitting, reading blogs, watching Netflix, going on hikes, following A's and Padres games, walking around flea markets, writing blog posts, and everything else that goes on in an average day... there's only so much time I'm able to dedicate to baseball cards.

Last month, I received my order from COMC that included forty-one cards and I still haven't scanned all of them or updated my website.  Plus I'm still sorting a 3200ct. box of cards that I purchased off of Craigslist.  In fact, I just realized that I never even blogged about that purchase.

The good news is that purchase involved almost 1,000 inserts and parallels, which will allow me to put together a nice care package for The Underdog Collector, who recently sent me some A's, Sharks, and Japanese players for my collection:

It's hard to tell, but these are refractor looking parallels from this year's Heritage.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think these are the retail foil parallels.  Both of these guys are gone, but I'll still be silently pulling for them this year.

How in the world does Panini and Leaf have Ichiro under contract and Topps doesn't?  I miss seeing him on MLB licensed products.  Both of these cards are from 2012... the last year Topps produced pieces of cardboard with Ichiro's face on them.  Insert sad, frowning face here.

Thanks Zach!


#3:  My scanner is on its last legs.

A few weeks ago, my scanner decided it needed to calibrate itself once or twice a day.  Today... it calibrated itself at least seven times in a two hour period.  Not only that.  What once took me around a minute to scan a card... now takes me at least twice as long.  Sometimes longer.

That poses a huge problem when I receive larger packages like the one The Junior Junkie sent me:

There were a bunch of cards in these two large stacks that I wanted to scan.  But a junkie scanner and time constraints held me to showing off these four cards:

T.J. sent me a nice stack of old school Steve Carltons.  I absolutely love this 1975 Topps card of Carlton.  Not only is this one of my personal favorites in terms of card design and action shots... it's also in beautiful condition.

And this year's Gallery of Greats inserts are one of my favorite insert sets.  The framed borders and refractor photos are awesome.  I can definitely see myself either buying or building this set in the future.

Last month... Zach sent me a beautiful Stadium Club card of Ron Darling from the 90's.  Now I have this amazing 1995 Pinnacle Museum Collection parallel to go with it.  Anyone else a huge fan of Dufex technology?

The final card I scanned is this Hisashi Iwakuma rookie card.  I'm a closet fan of this guy.  It's hard to cheer for him out loud, since the Mariners are projected to take the division away from the Athletics.  But Iwakuma is one of the best Japanese pitchers in the MLB and I'd love to see him succeed (just not when he's pitching against the A's or Padres)... especially since Darvish is on the DL and Tanaka has that partially torn ligament in his right elbow.

Thanks T.J.!

Well there you have it.  Three awesome packages from AJ, Zach, and T.J.!  And three lame excuses for my package opening tardiness.

I actually have two more packages I need to write about... both of which are huge and intimidating.  One of them is from Ryan over at This Card is Cool... and the other is from Johnny from Johnny's Trading Spot.  Hopefully I'll pop at least one of them open this week, but they might have to wait until I can find some time to go out and buy a new scanner.

In the meantime... I'll have a new Flea Market Find post later in the week.  Plus I have a post scheduled for tomorrow that involves me meeting a famous actor from the 80's.  Stay tuned.

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable weekend.  Today is the final day of Spring Break and as soon as I can publish this post... I need to sit down and get my lesson plans in order for the upcoming week.

Thanks again AJ, Zach, and T.J.!

Happy Sunday and sayonara!