Category: comics

A Re-Intro Intro Post

It’s been nearly a decade since this site launched, and my intro post both is and isn’t an accurate description of what this site is (and isn’t). This post is a little better and clearer (I have a few adjustments to make to the policies here), but good luck finding it in my archives if I don’t point it out like I just did, so in the interest of letting people, both old and new, where I’m at…

Hi! I’m Scott. I run this website that’s very 20th century in that it’s mostly, but not entirely about my collecting hobbies. That’s a weird place to be in 2025, but it’s my life. What else do you really want to know about me, truthfully?

What I usually do here: I procrastinate about posting.

What I’d like to be doing here: I’d like to post a little bit about all of my hobbies, and while they’re hobbies and it’s not mandatory or anything, I’d like to make them make sense within the context of my life in the present day. I’d also like to occasionally list some of my belongings for sale or trade here, but I’ve got some work to do on that (see below).

My approach to this, I’ve come to understand, is bass-ackwards. I’m writing dry, overly long stuff about relatively esoteric subjects, in an age when people either want short videos or long podcasts. What I’m starting to do again somewhat publicly gives me joy and helps me to make sense of and remember my life, at a time in my life when it’s harder to do both than it used to be. It’s its own form of therapy for me. If you’re along for the ride on that, fantastic. If not, I’m sure I’ll be doing it anyway.

A thing I should also mention again about my collecting hobbies: I’ve been looking to wind them down, and have, for the most part, since my 50th birthday a little over a year ago. Will this impact my ability to run a website that’s largely about collecting hobbies? I doubt it. I may have something of a backlog of things to talk about.

What I’m doing toward my goals here: right now, I’m starting a few different projects, and will be fleshing out some others in the near future, ideally.

First up is Personal Comics Chronology, a project inspired and heavily fueled by the legendary generosity of information sharing that is Mike’s Amazing World of Comics (rest easy, Mike). In it, I’m reading all of my comic books in chronological order, by release date, taking notes about what the books make me think and feel, and also contextualizing them by talking about what happened in the world on the day that they were released. I am in the early stages of this project, but the posts have begun.

Next up is The Player Collection Project. (No fancy category link for it yet.) I’m gonna write more about this than I did the comics project, because there’s already an explainer page for the comics project, and at least one example of what I’m doing is up already (the second installment is about half done). After four and a half decades of primarily being a trading card set collector (which tends to land the cards you collect in a box or binder that rarely, if ever gets looked at, in my world), I am working toward organizing collections for all of the players I like (and being honest with myself about who they are and how many there are), using non-set collection cards I already had aside, and also pulling one duplicate copy of each card of a player I collect from my duplicate card boxes (which are mostly used for trades these days).

I got started on this tangent when I was going through the handful of player collection binders I’ve started to assemble, and realized that they felt incomplete without things like base Topps cards in them. It got started from there, and as these things frequently do, it spiraled into becoming a lot of work. I’m enjoying seeing this start to take shape, but it’s very time consuming and genuinely physically demanding to go through this many cards.

So far, the only evidence of this process that you’ll see, unless you happen to be on a card collector Discord I frequent, is I’ve given Trading Card Player Collections its own section in my not-at-all-mobile-friendly sidebar, consolidated the various types of player collections I have in progress to make them (ideally) less confusing (there are now just two: one for people who play or played baseball, even if they played other sports, and another for the people whose cards I collect who played other sports), and added or re-added a LOT of players to the lists. I’m not quite ready to do any trades for cards of any of these people, as I’m still sorting through my trade boxes, but I will be, eventually.

As for how it will present itself in the future here: I may feature players, show off cards I’m rediscovering, and talk in greater detail about what I love about the cards or the players. Or it could take some other form. Who the hell knows? I’ll figure it out. The Plan is still very much a work in progress.

Another fun to consider goal here is to be able to passively fill card binders with these player collections, for the rest of my life, whenever the mood strikes me. If I never finish, that’s OK. If I do, that’s OK, too. If things continue to trend the way that they have in my lifetime, I probably won’t add a lot of new player collections, even if I continue to follow the sports/other occupations of new people that I could theoretically come to collect cards of, because I ran the numbers, and new additions started trending downward sharply after 1991, with the only upticks being in 1997, 2001, 2007 and 2019. So getting caught up, eventually, is theoretically possible.

The thing that this process has made me hyper-aware of is that my ideal of what the personality of trading cards is supposed to be is framed around 1980 and 1981 Topps cards and especially the 1981 Topps Baseball Stickers set, which makes sense, because these were the years that I discovered baseball, bought my first baseball cards, completed my first set (the 1981 stickers), and saw my first baseball games, including my first in-person baseball game, but it also solidified my somewhat subconscious feelings about liking some specific teams that weren’t my then-favorite Yankees, including the Tigers, Royals, Orioles, but especially the Brewers.

The Brewers are also on my mind lately because of Just a Bit Outside: The Story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers (excellent, recommended documentary; it’s streaming for free on The Roku Channel), and because I talk to a few Brewers fans these days who are enjoying their current success (I dunno if I’m ready to fully embrace another baseball team as a fan, though), but back in the early 1980s, they struck a little kid in New Jersey as being really cool motherfuckers. So, I’ve added or re-added a bunch of them to my player collection list.

Other reasons I added players: they have great names, they look awesome in their photos, they have inspiring, hilarious, or occasionally sad stories that resonate with me in some way; they jammed with Rush in their spare time and had a band with David Rosenthal from Rainbow (fun fact: David once gave me, through an employee of his, his old Casio FZ-10M sampler and his sample disks, but to date, I haven’t been able to get it working, and repairs on synths/samplers are expensive; I also broke a toe by running into this sampler once, when I had it on the floor…heavy bastard…); they’re still playing in independent or non-U.S. baseball leagues well past the point where most people considered their careers to be over, presumably for the love of the game; they were in a Larry Cohen movie, acting, not just playing themselves; or, of course, that they were or are just very good at their jobs.

Anyway, that’s cards.

Other Stuff:

I’m likely to reduce the internal restrictions on reviewing movies, music, books and so forth a bit, to where I can talk about the experience of enjoying the physical media that I’ve acquired over the years. Seems only fair.

I may also talk a little more about playing video games competitively, since I’ve been doing a lot of that of late, relative to what I’ve done in the past. Don’t panic, this isn’t going to turn into some Twin Galaxies-obsessed joint, nor am I likely to become someone who streams games on Twitch (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not really my world, though I do use Twitch) or anywhere else, and takes the Esports scene seriously. I’ve just been playing Street Fighter V competively (if poorly) lately (it’s teaching me a lot about how to achieve success at a goal through wildly unpredictable behavior, even if they’re still relatively difficult lessons within the context of the game itself), and I’ve been playing MobilityWare online multiplayer solitaire for about 14 years (last time I looked, I was ranked #359 worldwide on iOS Game Center, out of about 668,000 players, with close to a .750 winning percentage after around 22,000 lifetime games). I’m not an excessively competitive person in my old age, but these seem like decent outlets for what’s left of my competitive nature.

I haven’t been doing much with toys of late, in part because there’s a great deal of fascism-generated uncertainty in the toy industry right now. I’ve also got some space restrictions that I’ve run up against, and a lot of things to think about with regards to what to display, what to keep, and what to sell. Not to worry, toy weirdos: I will be posting about toys here and there, but for the time being, at least, it’ll probably be about toys I already have.

Stuff you probably shouldn’t expect to see here for the time being:

Travel stories, unless they’re past tense ones: my household is still isolating whenever possible, in the interest of COVID caution, after about 5 and a half years, so no trips to conventions, sporting events, or even record stores are on the horizon anytime soon.

Second Life stuff: I’m barely there, even now that there’s finally a somewhat-functioning mobile app, unfortunately. I’ve sort of lost touch with and track of the community, and it’s an uphill battle to get motivated to find new fun people there, particularly since the company who runs it (in all of its incarnations) have done their level best for decades to dissuade smart, funny, creative users from being there. I still have account(s), and I also still have Heck, but I’m not there often at all, and there are no events planned in the near future. If you want this to change, please give me a reason to change it.

I think that covers things for the moment.

Any questions?

One of the New Things: Personal Comics Chronology!

A few years ago, while I was in the middle of some grief spending (which is all I’m going to say about that), I had an idea.

I was looking at my comic books, realizing that I hadn’t read some of them in a very long time, realizing I’d read most of the series in fragmented fashion because of the nature of back issue shopping, and also realizing that I was getting a bunch that I hadn’t read, and that I probably should do something about this.

I thought about reading the various runs of comics I had straight through, but in some cases, that hovers around or over 20 straight years of books now. So, the other thing I thought about, spurred on by the Newsstand section of Mike’s Amazing World of Comics (RIP Mike, and thank you), was to read (or re-read) all of my comic books in chronological release order, release date by release date.

Also, so this isn’t a completely fruitless exercise (not that there’s a damn thing wrong with fruitless exercises), and so I can have a clearer idea of what I’ve read (and how I felt about it as I was reading it), I want to take at least brief notes on every one of them.

To help further contextualize them, I want to have a quick look at what was happening on each release date, and talk about notable events, releases in other media, births, deaths and so forth that feel meaningful to me, mostly in entertainment and sports, but if there’s a really major world event on any of the dates, it’ll probably get mentioned briefly. The “On This Date” part is still something I’m fleshing out, and as it gets into the 1980s, especially, I’m going to have to take care not to let it overwhelm the comics, but I think it could be fun if I keep it light, and if no one, especially not me, expects it to be all-encompassing.

There’s also a possibility I’ll offer some personal insights on what was going on in my life at the time these comics were released (or acquired, though the focus is going to stay mainly on release dates), depending on what I remember about it.

The likelihood of me ever finishing this project is…well, it’s going to be difficult. My earliest comic book (Master Comics Vol. 1 #35) was released on December 30th, 1942 (don’t get too excited, it’s missing the back cover, and in general, I only have a small handful of books from the 1940s and 1950s), my earliest completed series is The Atom Vol. 1 (#1 was released on April 24th, 1962, though I do also have the three issues of Showcase that introduce Ray Palmer and Jean Loring to us), and I am still buying new single-issue comics, though I’m looking at possibly winding that down (my current rules of thumb are “no more mini-series”, and “if a writer and/or artist leaves an ongoing series I’m reading, that’s very likely it for the title as a monthly book for me”).

I’ve also got a considerable, but not overwhelming recent-issue backlog to get through before this starts, which I will not be writing up on the first pass, just so I’ve got a clear and coherent starting point, and so, if I make it all the way back around to mid-2025, I can revisit the books I was reading when I started this and think about them fondly then, with a lot more comic books in my head (and on a website, for when I forget about them) than I started out with.

There are still a few things to iron out yet, above and beyond the backlog (which currently consists of Birds of Prey Vol. 5, Fantastic Four Vols. 7-8, Moon Knight Vol. 9-forward and a few mini-series, all of which I’ve read at least some of, but I’m not fresh on what I’ve read; Moon Knight’s gonna be a beast, because I’m about four and a half years behind, but the rest, I should be able to knock off pretty quickly).

First, what to do about trade paperback collections, hardcover collections, and single issue reprints, either in standard comic size or treasury edition size? I’m still figuring out collections (and I need to make a list of what I have), but my current inclination is to read the ones I don’t have single issues of along with that release date’s issues. Most of my trades don’t go all the way back to the beginning, so I’ve got a little time to sort this out, and I reserve the right to change my mind on the process here, but will try to keep it consistent once I do start reading.

With treasury editions, they were so much a part of the 1970s comic-reading experience that, even if it’s a Famous First Edition reprint of All-Star Comics #3 or Whiz Comics #2 or something, I want to read those around the time of their original release date in the 1970s. (I have a few recent “facsimile edition” reprints, just because this stuff’s expensive nowadays, but I’ll be going with original 1970s-early 1980s release date on those.)

Another thing to sort out: what happens if I buy a back issue book when I’ve already covered its release date here? Well…the comics section of my want list is only a few pages long at this point, some of which I’ll never get to buying or trading for (though if you’re a person who wants to trade comic books through the mail or via a contactless visit, we should probably talk), but if, just to give you an example, I get House of Secrets Vol. 1 #123, and I’m past June 19th, 1974 in my read-through, it will be dealt with in a bonus episode, and I’ll throw a link to it in the original piece about that release date. (If anyone has a reasonably priced copy of that, by the way, I’m also all ears. The comics speculators got WEIRD about that one a couple of years ago, and I haven’t managed to find it at a price that I don’t consider extortionate.)

The presentation of all of this may not be especially visual, for what is a largely visual medium. If I’m to get any of it done and not get bogged down in the details, it’s going to need to be quick and dirty, for the most part, but hopefully, I can make the process compelling for y’all, and for me.

Also, if anyone’s wondering about how precarious the data on Mike’s Amazing World is with Mike gone, I’m told that its existence is secure for the foreseeable future, but I’ve also got a head start on making my own internal list of release dates, so if something does go blooey, I’ve got some chance of this project surviving it.

Finally, if I read something and find that it’s either not for me, or just not something I need to continue owning, I may be offering some of the books for sale or trade here. (I really don’t wanna futz around with eBay or any of the marketplaces, especially not Facebook.) I definitely need to pare down everything I own, and that project will be One of the Other New Things on this site (and yes, I realize that I’m burying the lede here, but I wanted to get started on this other thing first), but we’ll likely start with the comics.

So, that’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about doing (with a little about an overarching other thing), and I think I’m going to try and get moving on it. I don’t think it’s anywhere near the world’s most original idea. Lots of people do and have done this sort of thing (I link to Comics Archaeology in the sidebar, for one). All I have to offer to it is me, and hopefully that’s enough for everyone, myself included.

Let me know what you think about all of this in the comments, and I’ll keep y’all posted on a rough start date (including updates on how much of the 2021-2025 backlog is finished).

…and then I disappeared for 4 months.

Sorry about that.

I did not abandon my mission or anything like that, and as you know if you follow me elsewhere, I am still alive and as well as I was before the pandemic started, from what my doctors and I can tell, anyway.

It’s just been something of a weird time to put aside the world’s troubles and think solely of hobbies, even if I am still engaging with mine. I will say that I’m doing so tentatively, for a variety of reasons. I’ve made a handful of card deals (thanks to Madding, Night Owl, AJ, Vossbrink and Gavin, and I hope I got everyone there), but haven’t quite managed to get all the scans done that I want to.

To talk a little bit more of cards, I also picked up something really awesome that I want to feature here, but again, for a variety of reasons, I haven’t had the time or energy to do it justice yet. Until 5 minutes ago, I hadn’t even opened it, even though I got it in late June, and that’s a damned shame, because it’s amazing, it’s something I think a lot of you are going to want to get for yourselves, and I’m glad that writing this post got me off my ass to look through it. I know that not even telling y’all what I got is a big tease, but I wanted to let everyone know I was alive here, before I started scanning and writing at length. It’s gonna be a little while longer on this one, too, because I have a lot of card backs to read, and a lot of card fronts to look at more closely. Stay tuned, and your patience will hopefully be rewarded.

I haven’t just been doing things with cards, though. While I’ve tried to keep the number of transactions I’ve made for frivolous things to a minimum, mostly because I don’t want people to have too much unnecessary contact with one another, here and there, I’ve grabbed some things. A record or two, a few DVDs, a couple video games, some comics, that sort of thing. I’ve not been in a retail store of any “non-essential” kind since March 6th (thankfully, my local comic shop does both curbside pickup and delivery), and my local flea market did the difficult but sensible thing and never opened up this year, but some stuff still found its way to me, and I’ve caught up on some other stuff. I even completed a few comic book series I’ve been working on collecting for a very long time: New Teen Titans Vol. 1 and All-Star Squadron, with the last issue of Son of Satan on its way to me as well, thanks to that eBay coupon (and thanks to Grogg for alerting me to that, as well, because I didn’t get an email notification about it).

A lot of this stuff, I haven’t spent time with yet, though, because again, it can be hard to focus on fun things with a series of looming existential threats around us all. As I’m able to get past all that, in tiny chunks, I’ll be telling you about it.

In the meantime, I hope that you’ve all been well and safe, or recovered fully if that wasn’t the case. I also hope that you’re managing to keep yourself busy with fun things on occasion, too.

A New Feature!

Highest Priority Comic Book Set Want List (Updated 08/25/19)

Yup, finally made one of these. Have a longer, non-card want list that has everything except comics, as well, but I’m looking to get some stuff finished relatively soon here. Will happily trade cards for comics, if anyone’s interested in doing that.

On the subject of trades, though: I’m going to be largely out of commission where any new trades are concerned until the 10th of September, as I’ve got a few short trips in my future, and a trade with Bo to wrap up. Really, I should’ve waited to post this until then, but I have to do things when I have the energy to do them, and when I remember to, or they don’t get done.

2019 Hobby Goals

Yup, we’re gonna do this!

I haven’t written one of these in a few years, and back then, it was on another site, and just about cards. Kinda limiting, but also a lot easier. I’ll manage this, though, and hopefully I won’t put anyone to sleep while I do it, as I do have a lot of ground to cover.

Overall Goals:

  1. Have fun!
  2. Figure out which stuff I really love and enjoy, so I can stick with that, and find good homes for the other stuff.
  3. I was going to move some of the Blogspot stuff here at one point. I need to see if that still makes sense to do.
  4. Keep working on getting my house in a place where it’s set up well to store and display my stuff for years to come.
  5. Ascertain which things I really wish to pursue, and write about, as hobbies.

Now, with this last item, the site has a mission statement in the top right, and here’s how it looked when I started writing this…

“This site is the ongoing story of a man and his hobbies, which he apparently needs more of (or at least different ones), despite already collecting toys, comic books, trading cards, books, video games, t-shirts, music, musical instruments and movies, as well as playing tabletop games, traveling, following some sports and keeping entirely too busy on the Internet, mostly doing nothing there.”

First, the collecting hobbies:

Toys? (Really action figures, for the most part.) Yup. More on this in a bit!

Comic books? Definitely. We’ll go into more detail soon.

Trading cards? Yes, but I think the collection needs to evolve a little. More on that in a bit.

Books? I love books, I love actually reading books, and I need to do a lot more of that, but I have a huge backlog of books right now, not a ton of space to keep adding them, and, again, the more books you own, the less likely it is that you’re going to read them all. A 2019 goal is to finish some books, figure out which ones I haven’t read yet, figure out which ones I don’t need to read, and adjust the collection accordingly.

Video games? I played them for a couple hours tonight, in fact. I am trying to figure out what I wish to actively pursue getting, though, and I’m also going to try to figure out which things I really need to own here, too. (I had a moment in a game store about a month ago where I was looking through my game want list, and wondering why I was still planning on spending money or other resources on certain things, and I’m going to listen to it.) I’m pretty sure I’m close to being sold out of the on-the-fence and don’t-need-it stuff, but it doesn’t hurt to check regularly. I’d like to try to avoid selling off anything else I may regret selling (Panzer Dragoon Saga, anyone?), but that’s a general thing with the various collections.

T-Shirts? I wear t-shirts. I don’t know that I collect them, or really want to, but I have been trying to figure out some practical way to have proof that I’ve owned some of the cool things I’ve worn over the years, without it taking up space that serves no purpose. I haven’t settled on an ideal method yet. T-shirt quilts have been suggested to me, but that’s stuff that takes up even more space than the shirts, and we’ve got a decent amount of blankets in the house, so we’re probably not going there. I’m looking for suggestions on the best ways to clearly photograph old t-shirts and display the pictures (digitally or hard copy), I suppose.

Music? Yup. I’ve stepped up my efforts to get more CDs of artists whose entire catalog I want to own (I’m almost done with Siouxsie and the Banshees, but could really use a copy of “Downside Up”, if anyone’s got it laying around), while CDs are still somewhat widely available. I’m also still buying vinyl, but not in the frenzy that other people are. If something moves me, I’ll grab it. I got a handful of records on my holiday trip to NJ (EZO’s self-titled first record, Alphaville’s “Forever Young”, The Mighty Lemon Drops’ “World Without End”, The Tourists’ “Reality Effect”, and a sealed copy of the self-titled EP by Miracle Room, who are amazing, if you’ve never heard ’em), but way more CDs. Storage (I really hate jewel cases, but don’t wish to go full Case Logic, because it makes them easier to steal and harder to sell; also, I have a little, but not a lot more space for vinyl) is a concern, as it always is.

Musical instruments? Nothing new for a while unless an amazing deal comes up. I finally have a room just about set up to where I can play and record music again, and I even played a musical instrument for fun recently (this is kind of a big deal, because I have music-related anxiety that’s kept me away from making music for over a decade), but I have a lot here, and am not sure how much use I’ll get out of any of it. I could probably use a rack mount case for some of my synth modules and the like, but that’s also money toward storage and display for stuff I might not use. The same mild skepticism applies to any plans of having my instruments and other pro audio gear repaired and reconditioned, because repairs on synthesizers and the like are expensive and above my level of expertise, and so much of this stuff, I could be doing more efficiently on a computer, if I’m going to do it at all, but at the same time, these are museum pieces that hold value (sentimental and financial). So, lots to figure out here. People who do this stuff, talk to me!

Movies? We’re basically between formats right now. We don’t have a 4K TV in the house or a 4K disc player, but as Blu-Rays are already a generation behind, and DVDs are 2 generations behind, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep buying. I’m not ready to start unloading anything I have, but I’ve thrown the brakes on buying anything that isn’t essential.

So, that’s all the collecting stuff. Now, the “doing” stuff.

Playing tabletop games? Have a game I’m attending on Sunday, in fact! I have also been amassing a lot of old RPG stuff (1st edition D&D, Marvel, DC Heroes, etc. kinda stuff), because it shows up here all the time (a lot of colleges and a lot of fellow nerds in the area), so I do have to figure out what I can use, of what’s here. I may have some of this stuff available for sale or trade soon. I would LOVE to start up a TSR Marvel Super-Heroes campaign, locally or online, but I’d need to brush up, find interested people, and make time.

Traveling? I really like traveling, but long-distance traveling is also really hard (it can be tough for people without disabilities, and we’re two people with them) and costs a lot of money. Plans need to be made with my better half to figure out where we’re going next, individually or collectively.  Short-distance travel is plenty of fun, too, and, yes, the flea market stuff falls under this header.

Following some sports? Everyone in every part of this business makes it really hard to keep wanting to, but I’m still here. Baseball’s still my number one, despite some “about as gross as football” practices. Hockey’s my #2 sport, but I rarely watch it on television. I have the Islanders in my Twitter feed, and I see them that way. They’re better than expected this year, but I still feel like conditioning’s a problem there. The sport in general, like most professional sports, has a concussion problem that needs to be addressed. I’ve also spent about the past 2 years watching more professional wrestling than I had in the previous 15 or so, and that’s something I’m very conflicted about, because again, concussions, and again, a lot of terrible people make money off of people paying attention to professional wrestling, but at its best, professional wrestling can be incredible, and it can be pretty hard to give things up that are under your skin. I do it and have done it (I stopped being a present-day Yankee fan as soon as they moved into the mall, and I gave football the bird a good while ago), but it takes more effort and sometimes more disgust with the behavior of human beings than it should. I also do have a non-spectator sport that I’ve been out of for a while, but hope to get back to in the spring: running. I love running, but had some injuries a few years back, and life happened after I was healed. If I do start running again in the spring, you may hear some about it here.

Keeping entirely too busy on the Internet, mostly doing nothing (t)here? I’ve found myself wanting to do less of this, certainly less in front of the general public than I used to, and definitely less in venues run by Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Google, but I’m still here. Trying to figure out the best way to go about having a private message board or social network for my friends that will actually get used by people. That’s a slog, largely because, for people to use anything in 2019, it needs a mobile app. The web browser is an antique at this point. I rarely end up talking about the Internet itself on this site, though, so let’s not mention that as a point of focus for it anymore, or at least not now.

Wow, them’s a lotta words about a short mission statement. Much shorter version: for the time being, I’m not advertising my site as covering t-shirts, books, musical instruments or movies as collecting hobbies, as I rarely talk about them and am back-burnering all of those hobbies, I think. Also changing “toys” to “action figures”. Now, obviously, because I’m a human being with a soul, I’m still going to be buying, collecting and hopefully reading books that are not comics, and if I’m finding that I should talk about them on here, I will again, but yeah, I need to actually read some, and finish some (I have like a half dozen books in progress right now, dating back over a few years).

That brings us to:

Collecting hobbies:

Trading Cards
Comics
Action Figures

Sort-of-in-the-middle hobbies:

Tabletop games (RPGs, and some board games; we got Letters From Whitechapel as a wedding gift, and I’m dyin’ to play our copy of it, as I loved playing it the first time I did)
Video Games
Music (it’s not exactly passive enjoyment)

Doing stuff hobbies:

Travel (long and short distance, with focuses on finding, documenting and sometimes buying old things, seeing museums and landmarks, eating in cool places, and seeing live entertainment)
Sports (baseball, hockey, professional wrestling, running)

There! I’ve covered what the site focuses on! What a long side trip!

Now, for what I’d like to accomplish in these arenas this year:

Trading Cards:

Here are the rough notes I put together for this piece on cards:

1. Come up with plan for current-year Topps cards
2. Decide which side sets you’re gonna keep getting
3. Try, whenever possible, to only trade for current year stuff
4. Get that fucking Bernie Williams auto already
5. Knock out the Fleer/Donruss/Score/UD sets ASAP
6. Finish Garbage Pail Kids 1-3 ASAP
7. Finish Ringside (1…more…card…)
8. Keep plugging on Dodgers
9. Keep plugging on Fleer Ted Williams
10. Start finding fun non-sport sets to pick up
11. Sell off doubles and digital stuff (decide what stays on the latter)

The last few years (basically since the seeds were planted for me to move to my home of coming up on 4 years now), I have had significantly less interest in current-year baseball cards. Really, I think it’s that I’ve had significantly less interest in paying for current-year baseball cards. They’ve never been a great value, but they’re kinda the worst lately. When new Topps blasters hit the shelves in my local big box stores, I check the card count on them, and I’m kind of stunned that it’s orders of magnitude higher than common prices per-card, all for the promise of getting something that I might not even want to keep. On the other hand, blowing them off leads to situations like the one I have right now, where I’m missing a bunch of now-expensive rookie cards, including Mookie Betts’ rookie card, from the past 4 years’ Topps cards, and I kinda want to keep being a sucker and having complete flagship sets. Kinda.

I’m definitely not interested in opening packs of everything that comes out anymore, and I’m trying to break myself of the desire to collect sets based on graphic design (which was, of course, expensive and filled my house with a number of things I wouldn’t own otherwise). I think I’d rather just look at checklists for each set, list each player whose card I’m interested in on this site and my want list, and see if I can trade for ’em, or something like that…buy singles if I can find ’em…that kinda jazz. Will I still with this? Dunno.

I’m not doing much of anything with digital cards lately, but I have no idea if there’s any practical way to unload the ones I don’t want, and I haven’t nailed down which cards I’d like to “keep” in the apps yet. Seems like the bottom fell out of the value of things on the Topps apps when they introduced secondary, cash-only currency, to the surprise of basically no one on Earth. If any of you are still doing Topps Digital stuff, by all means get ahold of me, and we’ll talk.

There’s stuff I have been, and continue to be excited about in cards. My interest in picking up playing era Brooklyn Dodgers cards has been re-invigorated lately…

I bet you thought I was never gonna put a picture in this post, didn’t you? This is a ’53 Bowman Color Billy Loes that I picked up on COMC.

And here’s a ’51 Topps Red Back Gene Hermanski that’s on its way to me, also from COMC (if the watermark didn’t give it away).

In the same shipment, I’ve got another ’59 Fleer Ted Williams coming…

Remember these? I mentioned them here. I’m still working on ’em (I’ve gotten 3 in 4 years, by golly), and I’ve got Yount on the way. There are a few expensive ones (Babe Ruth is in the set), but I’ve got a bunch of the cheap ones yet to grab, as I’m at 7 out of 36 right now.

…and yes, I’m even working on my ’72 set still! 5 down recently, thanks to my old local.

So, yeah, there’s been more focus on old stuff when I’m shopping (when I’m actually really shopping, and not just looking for the biggest lot of things I can actually use for the lowest price at flea markets), which tends to happen to people. I’ve no problem with that.

I’ve also been more excited about non-sports stuff these days than I have in, like, ever, but I’m still trying to work out what I wish to fill my house with. I have a very short list of Garbage Pail Kids series 1-3 cards that I need:

1985 Topps Garbage Pail Kids Series 1a (matte preferred, last update 04/02/18): 5 (regular back), 9, 33, 41

1985 Topps Garbage Pail Kids Series 1b (matte preferred, last update 04/02/18): 2, 8 (checklist back), 29 (checklist back), 41

1985 Topps Garbage Pail Kids Series 2a (last update 04/02/18): 49a, 58a, 63a, 75a

1986 Topps Garbage Pail Kids Series 3b (last update 04/02/18): 96b 99b 104b 106b 107b 108b 112b 116b 120b 122b 123b

…so, I guess we can start there. As for other stuff? I like super-hero cards (though they got totally out of hand after a while), and if you’ve got a bunch of 1991 Impel DC Cosmic Cards, I’m the guy to send them to, as I’m working on finishing that set off. I just finished Series 1 of ProSet Super Star Musicards (and you’ll be seeing a bunch of those here soon), so I need to track down Series 2, and possibly the UK set, as featured by Night Owl here. I have Topps Howard The Duck, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Return of the Jedi sets in progress. Beyond that? I haven’t figured it out yet.

Yes, I want to finish ’81-’98 Donruss, Fleer and Score flagship sets soon. I’m not that far on most of it. I’m not sure beyond that (Fleer and Donruss kept going, sorta), and I’ll keep the wants on my list, but I feel like those were the important years for those companies. I also want to finish Upper Deck flagship from ’94-’10, but in the immortal words of Louis Gossett, Jr., “My grandmomma wants to fly jets!”. I don’t wanna create a feeding frenzy or nothin’ here, as that would make my job harder, but past ’95, y’all have some idea of how hard it is to finish building an Upper Deck set, right? Like, not even the ridiculously huge ones from ’06-’09, I’m talking the smaller ones. If you weren’t there, buying them at the time, you’re gonna have some difficulty, as I’ve been.

And yes, I really need to get off my ass and get that fuckin’ Bernie autograph. They’re available. They’re not hugely expensive. He’s still my favorite player. I need one.

Earlier this year, I did a cool thing to my  card want list, too. I started including dates on each set I’m building, and updating those individual dates when I get something new. It’s gonna take a while for this to really bear fruit, but eventually, I’ll be able to tell if there’s stuff on my want list that I’m just *really* wasting document space on, and taking the focus off of other things with, stuff that’s not urgent for me to buy or trade for, just plain unavailable. It started on April 2nd (right around the beginning of baseball season, somewhat appropriately), so at the moment, I can tell you that there are 159 matches, or “card sets I haven’t done anything with since I started the process”. That’s still a lot, but down the line, it’ll shrink, and I’ll be able to search for “/18”, “/19”, and so forth to see which stuff’s getting neglected or not showing up, and make decisions that’ll help me focus the collection better. I should maybe do this to the non-card want list eventually, too, but it’s formatted a little differently, and the other collections work a little differently than cards, so we’ll see.

Moving on…

Comics:

My notes on the comic collection for this piece weren’t quite as meaty, just reminders to read books (I’ve spent a bunch of this week catching up on recent back issue purchases, and yes, I did read Claws Of The Cat a little while ago; fun book, really interesting early snapshot of Marvel trying to figure out how to approach the idea that women existed as independent beings and wanted things for themselves, and I wish they hadn’t bailed on the original character concept and made Greer Grant Nelson into Tigra quite as quickly as they did), find and make space for what’s here and what will be (I need to get more boxes, and clear off more shelf space), and lists of which titles I’m working on getting back issues of.

Basically with comics, I’ve decided that I’m looking to finish the back issue collection I started as a kid, with a little more focus than that kid had. With a few exceptions, that means that the back issue runs I’m looking to finish right now end with books that started in the early 1990s, but mostly are ’70s and ’80s books, with a few ’60s exceptions. Reading complete runs of books is a lot of fun, so I’m doing it wherever possible, and deciding from there if I’m keeping them. I need to read the last 20 issues or so of Blue Devil next (if you’ve never read it, it’s a lot of fun, sort of an “inside Hollywood” story masquerading as a super-hero book, vaguely similar in that regard to Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle’s Crossfire), then I’ve got Walt Simonson’s writer/artist run on Thor (#337-367) ahead of me, which I’ve wanted to read in a sitting or two for a long, long time, and also finished on the last NJ trip.

I’m also buying new comics, too, but the cycle of constant super-hero relaunches at the big two comic companies (and while I read all kinds of books, I am, and will always be first and foremost a super-hero kinda person), and the habit of “writing for the trade paperback” at the smaller ones definitely makes it harder to stay invested and interested in the ongoing stories. I want to get to know these characters and be a part of their worlds for more than 5-12 issues, and if you don’t like a few core characters that the big two are terrified of messing with long term, you’re going to have a hard time finding that. It’s also tough to figure out which of the smaller books will catch on, because if you miss something or word of mouth gets to you late, you’re looking at Walking Dead/Saga prices for back issues (or buying trades, but with that, it hurts, because I don’t like buying things twice, or waiting 6-18 months between segments of an ongoing story that people around me are discussing when we’re talking about a form that my brain processes as “monthly”), and that’s simply not in my budget.

I do have a question: do any of you reading this ever trade comics with one another, the way us card weirdos trade cards? I figure there’s a chance that the form factor (and its higher base shipping cost) may make that prohibitive, but it’s worth asking, as I do end up with doubles sometimes.

Action Figures:

Along with the “figure out how to store/display them” stuff that you’ll read throughout this, basically, when we’re talking about action figures that I’m collecting right now, we’re talking about Mego (and Mego-like figures) and DC Direct (but not usually DC Collectibles, the new name for the line, as I don’t care as much for the sculpts and designs they’re using these days), with some DC Universe Classics, Justice League Unlimited, and a few Marvel Legends figures here and there. I have legacy collections of a bunch of different types of figures (Star Wars, G.I. Joe, a ton of super-hero stuff from Super Powers to Secret Wars to all the Toy Biz stuff, some McFarlane stuff, etc.), all of which I’ve really got to make some decisions on, but the stuff I named above is really the stuff I showcase and still actually buy on the regular without second-guessing too much.

My plans for ’19 are to keep an eye on what Mego’s doing, pick up a little bit of the Figures Toy Company stuff, get what I can of vintage Mego stuff (and parts to fix what I have left of my old Megos), and if some of the DC Direct and Marvel Legends stuff comes up and is of interest, maybe that, too. I’m not in love with the quality of Legends figures, but the sculpts can be really great at times, and they’re producing figures of characters I’ve wanted figures of for my entire life. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of assessing the other stuff, figuring out if it’s staying, and documenting the fact that I had it before I sell or trade it if it’s going. I really, really need to get better at doing studio-quality photographs of all of the various types of collectibles I own, so I can just run some digital frames of these things.

Music:

I covered a bunch of this up top, but to sum up: find space for things, finish off some CD catalogs of artists I love, get better sounding playback equipment in the rooms my spouse and I use the most, and where vinyl’s concerned, pick off a few of the things I’m actively hunting (originals of Black Sabbath’s 3rd through 5th albums and “We Sold Our Soul For Rock N’ Roll” for posterity, Nina Hagen’s “Fearless”, Jobriath’s first album, all of Klaus Nomi’s albums, and any pressing of Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot” are priorities, but past that, I’m working on the Celebration, Kate Bush, KISS and Toyah catalogs and anything that catches my fancy).

That should put a cap on yet another very long post. Thanks for reading, feel free to ask questions (or answer mine from within the post), and I hope that, within your hobbies and outside of them (as best we can outside of them these days, anyway), you had a great 2018, and have an even better 2019.