Blowing Out The Candles

Did your parents brainwash you into believing it's taboo to celebrate your birthday early?  Mine did.  I guess it's a good thing that I don't really celebrate my birthday anymore.  I mean... yes... I'll be going out to dinner tomorrow with my best friend and I'm sure I'll receive a few scattered birthday cards from family members, friends, co-workers, and students.

But I don't do the whole birthday cake and candles tradition anymore.  I prefer to keep things on the DL... which makes me think that the prophecy is true and I'm actually turning into my father.  Oh well.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  Papa Fuji just happens to be a rock star (figuratively) and my hero.

However one thing that does separate the two of us is my obsession with collecting things.  And even though I don't actively celebrate my birthday anymore, I do enjoy adding new sports cards to my Birthday PC.

First up is my 1973 Topps rookie card of Garry Maddox...

Yup.  This card is taped, trimmed, peeled, stained, and off-centered.  But that's okay... because Garry spells his first name with two R's, was a free swinging batter, and was born on September 1st:

Next up are a pair of guys who terrorized NFL quarterbacks during their careers...

Each of these guys played in six Pro Bowls each and were three-time 1st Team All-Pro selections.  Together they had a combined total of 218.5 quarterback sacks.

My most recent purchase is a guy I knew nothing about until about a month ago.  I was listening to some soccer news when this guy's name popped up.  I recognized his name from a list of September 1st birthdays and ran over to COMC to see if he had any autographs.

They didn't have any at the time, but I was able to snag this memorabilia card for $1.50.  It's a nice place holder until I can pick up an affordable certified autograph.

Wrapping things up is a copy of National Geographic from September 1972... the month that I was born in:

I found this in a stack of magazines that a teacher had donated.  I have two other magazines in this particular PC, but I'm not 100% committed to collecting magazines from my birth month.

See ya in a couple of days.  In the meantime, I want to wish my other best friend a happy 45th birthday.

Happy Monday and sayonara!

Twenty-three Thousand Words

A few years ago, Ryan over at This Card is Cool offered to help me out with my Japanese trading card collection.  It's a fairly simple process.  He picks up items he thinks I'd enjoy over the course of a year or two... and after he has enough stuff worthy of a package... I pay him and he ships them across the Pacific.

I paid $125 for the most recent package and it was worth every penny.  To put things into perspective... I spent almost three hours sifting through all of these goodies and scanning the images in this post.  That's three hours of pure entertainment.

You know the old adage... a picture is worth a thousand words... so tonight I'll keep the writing to a minimum... and let the pictures do the talking.

1991 BBM Baseball

Three down.  One card to go.

Hideki Matsui Sticker Sheet

Godzilla has landed in San Jose.

2002 Japan National Team Set

2001 Kirin Cup Pin Set

Two huge additions to my Samurai Blue PC.

2011 and 2014 Real Venus Sets

Japanese women and sports.  Two of my favorite things in life.

More Japanese women.  Newscasters?  Love 'em!

1997 Bandai Mr. C.B. Set

Mr. Ed has nothin' on Mr. C.B.

Hello kitty.

Round one of unopened packs.  More ladies.  Yes!

Round two of unopened packs.  Ryan gets the chips.  I get the cards. 

Round three of unopened packs.  Two of my students' favorite things:  video games and anime.

More anime... although not quite sure if this calendar is classroom appropriate.

1994 The Petty Girl Set

More ladies and definitely not classroom appropriate.

Round four of unopened packs.  Four new additions to my unopened baseball card pack collection.

Smells old.  Looks old.  Feels old.  I'm gonna guess that this huge disc is old.  By the way... in case you forgot... old = awesome.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #15

Speaking of awesome.  Meet the newest addition to my Gwynn binder.

2014 BBM Wings of Gold Set

Another set filled with lovely Japanese ladies... and some guys who like to wear leotards.

Oh my!  That's Sadaharu himself... and five guys I don't recognize.  Oh well.  This piece of cardboard is sweet!

And wrapping things up are a bunch of random cards ranging from vintage soccer to baseball mascots.

Thanks Ryan for helping me out again.  I had a blast going through this package and flipping through all of these awesome pieces of Japanese cardboard.

If you ever need some American cardboard... just say the word and I'll start gathering up some stuff for you.  But I wouldn't blame you if you prefer ripping packs of BBM and Calbee instead of Topps and Panini.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

Publish Worthy?

Back in 2010... I started this blog as a way of documenting my hobby experiences and corresponding with others who share a passion for cardboard.  Over those five years, I've built a fair share of friendships online and published over 1,250 posts... which is pretty hard for me to fathom.

It's just crazy.  The amount of time that goes into each post can range from a few minutes to a few hours, with most posts falling in the 15 minute to 75 minute spectrum.  Multiply that by twelve hundred and that's a huge part of my life.

Breaking down this information makes me appreciate everyone else's blogs that much more.  Keep it up guys!

Anyways... over the past year or so, I'm finding myself sitting in front of my laptop with nothing to write about on a more frequent basis.  Combine this factor to a bigger "self-imposed" work load and to be honest...  it's a little scary.  My hopes are that I'll be able to continue writing about cards until I ride off into the sunset of senior citizenship.  However... I've started to wonder if that's actually realistic.

I guess only time will tell.

In the meantime... I'm going to continue to chug along and write posts that I consider "publish" worthy.

Does anyone else have a bunch of "unpublished posts" sitting in their "post depository"?

I'm not talking about the ones that are complete and scheduled to post.  Nor am I talking about the ones waiting for the right moment in time.  I'm talking about the ones you've started... but never completed.  The ones you're still fine-tuning and debating on whether or not you should just push the delete button.

I've slowly been purging my collection of "unpublished posts"... including the one I had scheduled for yesterday.  I'm down to only five.  It actually feels refreshing... almost like coming back to work and sitting down at an uncluttered desk.

Anyways... I've rambled enough.  Here are a pair of updates...

2015 Tier One Acclaimed Autographs #AGA

#1  My COMC order has arrived.  Just need to sort everyone's stuff out and I should have packages in the mail sometime next week.  There were only a handful of cards for myself.  This Galarraga was one of them.  It took awhile, but I've finally added the Big Cat's signature to my Montreal Expos PC.

#2  Tristar still hasn't responded to my public service announcement.  It's been less than two weeks, so I guess there's still hope.  If you collect certified autographs and haven't read this post... you might want to check it out.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!

Who needs the Flippin' National?

When there's the Capitol Flea Market less than 10 miles from my doorstep.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it out to the flea market this weekend.  But that's okay.  I still need to write about last weekend's card purchases.

There's a lot to share, so let's get going...

Purchase #1:  Ten Cent Treasures $20

There were several guys out there with sports cards, but only two had cardboard I was actually interested in.  One of them had some of the best dime boxes I have ever sifted through.  In fact... had it been a little cooler and my legs were a little less wobbly... I might have stood there sifting through his stuff another hour or so.

Let's kick things off with the card that caught my attention...

1962 Post #6

This card is a little larger than your standard trading card and was sitting on top of the gentleman's 5000ct. box.  I've always been a fan of vintage Post trading cards, so I picked it up and asked how much he wanted for it.  He mentioned that everything in the box was 25¢ each.  I turned around and told him I'd take it.  After sifting through about half of a row, I already had a stack of about 20 cards, so I asked if he'd give me a bulk discount.  He responded with "take as much as you want for 10¢ each".

Those were the magic words.  I walked away with over 200.  Fifty to sixty were vintage Topps' cards from the mid 60's to the late 70's.  Most of those were hall of famers and fan favorites.  Obviously none of them were Mickey Mantle rookie cards and most were in pretty poor condition.  But what do you expect?  They're in a guy's quarter bin.

One of my favorite cards is this combo card that features two hall of famers and a World War II veteran who earned two Purple Hearts fighting for our country...

1967 Topps #1

While I'm on the topic of cards featuring multiple players, I picked up a handful of cool league leaders cards.  Here are my two favorites:

And how often do you find a vintage rookie card of a hall of famer for a quarter?  Wait.  I mean a dime:

1966 Topps #254

The oldest card I found was this 1958 Topps Bob Turley:

1958 Topps #255

I recognized his name, but didn't realize he won the Cy Young and World Series MVP Awards that season.  If I'm not mistaken... this card is my very first '58 Topps baseball card.  Well... at the very least... it's the first to be featured in my vintage binder.

Here are a handful of other vintage goodies I added to my binder...

In addition to vintage cards, there were a bunch of cool baseball inserts and oddballs too...

Plus some vintage football...

In fact, there was a little bit of everything.  I found basketball inserts, football rookie cards, baseball parallels, and even this very cool reprint of Wayne Gretzky's 1979/80 OPC rookie card:

However since I went back into the classroom this week... I just didn't have enough time to scan and crop everything.  Hopefully you were able to get the gist of my greatest dime box experience.


Purchase #2:  Fifty Cent Finds $10

The same vendor also had a small shoebox filled with autographs and jersey cards.  He wanted a buck a piece, but told me that I could have anything I wanted for fifty cents since I spent twenty bucks with him.

I probably should have purchased the whole box, but another guy was patiently waiting for me to finish and I didn't want to be rude.

Most of the box was filled with basketball and football, but I did manage to grab these two Molinas...

Like the Turley... I'm pretty sure these are the first Yadi memorabilia cards in my collection.

My favorite card in the box was this rookie card of Larry Fitzgerald that features the signature of Coach Green:

2004 Fleer Authentix #138

For those who don't remember Dennis Green, maybe this will refresh your memory...

Another cool card was this autographed memorabilia card of Vincent Jackson that's numbered out of 10:

2010 Classics Sunday's Best Prime Autographs #11

Here are a few other gems I found in the fifty cent bin...

After I tallied everything up... I pulled twenty-two cards from the box, but he was nice enough to charge me for only twenty.

By the way... this is the same vendor who sold me the 1989 Upper Deck factory set for $10.

Hopefully he sets up again in the near future.  I had a lot of fun digging through his stuff.

After spending over an hour at this guy's booth, I was exhausted and tried to jam through the rest of the market.  But the Flea Market Gods weren't having any of that.  They tossed everything from bobble heads and an autographed football in my path.

Click here to see the rest of my flea market finds from that weekend.

Purchase #3:  Two More Autographs $8

Towards the end of the flea market, I met a vendor who had just purchased a card collection from another vendor.  He had a bunch of really nice high end stuff, but by this juncture, I had already spent way more money than I had intended and wasn't really interested.

However, there were two lower end cards I was interested in...

2004 Topps Originals #JA3

I have been looking for an affordable on-card autograph of Jim Abbott for my collection and 2004 Topps Originals are one of my favorite buy back autographs issues of all-time.  Five bucks seemed like a fair price.

2003 Studio Private Signings #179

You know I'm not a fan of sticker 'graphs... but my San Diego Padres PC didn't have an autograph of The Flyin' Hawaiian, so I set it aside.  The vendor wanted five bucks for this card too, so I offered him eight bucks for the pair and he accepted.

That weekend, I almost dropped $75.  Can't remember the last time that happened.  It was a great way to wrap up my summer vacation.

I'll still be heading out to Capitol every now and then, but now that I'm back in school... my priorities have shifted.

One priority that hasn't wavered is building everyone's packages.  I bet you thought I forgot about them.  Don't worry... I haven't.  I just had my final COMC package shipped last week.  As soon as it arrives, I can stuff them into envelopes and ship them on out.

Have a great week everyone.  Happy Monday and sayonara!