…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.

UUUUUUUUUUTZ!!!!!!111111

I finally got in on the Utz action yesterday.

A card I wanted!

Some cards I didn’t!

These and, well, maybe a couple of others, are available for trade. (I do have a trade in progress with Bo though, so he gets first crack; UPDATE: Bo will take what’s left over, so feel free to make offers!)

As far as the rest of the Utz checklist goes, I’m looking for:

10 Adam Jones
39 Mookie Betts
45 Max Scherzer
61 David Price
83 Jose Altuve
86 Charlie Blackmon
89 Marcus Stroman

(06/17/19 Update: Thanks to Mark H. for the 3 I’ve crossed out so far.)

…and dassit. I love food issue card sets as much as the next person, but it’s a 100 card checklist of cards that are apparently indistinguishable from flagship aside from different checklist numbers and another brand logo, so unless I get a lot of, like, 90 of them somewhere, I’m out after I get my player collection guys.

I’m still alive.

I’ve just been busy.

I got married a week ago, we’ve got a honeymoon happening relatively soon, and most of this year’s been eaten by the planning of either those two things or home renovations.

I’ve been out at the markets plenty (Brimfield was fun this year, as was my home market’s season; I actually brought people there the morning after the wedding), I’ve got a bunch of stuff to share from those excursions as soon as I can properly come up for air, I even somehow managed to finish 2000 Topps Football in the middle of all of this chaos, and I’ll be trading again over the winter (Bo and I are trying to sneak one in as I type this, of course).

In the meantime, feel free to talk amongst yourselves, and here’s a Mego party. They’re back in business and making new figures, you know.  As a result, it’s gotten much busier around here since this post.

Three Months

Boy, I’ve been slacking over here.

I will tell you, my readers, that the biggest obstacle to my regular posting is almost always an aversion to scanning things.

Here’s how it goes:

1. I get something new, or come across something old that I haven’t shown off anywhere in a while, if ever.

2. I get excited about it.

3. It goes in a pile.

4. The pile gets bigger.

5. I curse the pile.

6. I eventually scan the pile, but then it takes me forever to write about it or I forget to.

So, in the interest of breaking that trend, let me throw a few things in your general direction from the past 3 months.

Pedro here comes from Bo, which, if you’re familiar, you know that he sent me a lot more than Pedro. Bo is a very frequent contributor to The Pile Of Things I Really Like But Really Don’t Feel Like Scanning Right Now.

I also got a bunch of ’03 Finest from Bo, including this Adam Dunn. They don’t hit it out of the park every year, but there are some gorgeous Finest sets out there.

I should really just bite the bullet and grab and ’89 Score Rookie & Traded set already. I love the cards I have from it so far (especially my PSA 10 Griffey, maybe my favorite of his cards, even including That Card), the photography was really solid for the time, and the card design (border colors, etc.) always seems to pop more than it does on the base ’89 set.

I’m going to limit the view of my Bo trade acquisitions to about 1/1000th of the deal for now (Thanks, though, Bo!), and move onto some other cool pickups, just to spread the love around.

I am up to 7 Eri Yoshida cards, thanks (I believe exclusively) to Ryan, who was super-patient while I took forever to get to his want list.

Ryan also sent me a metric ton of menko, including all of these Tiger Mask cards! If you can’t quite nail down the form factor, they’re slightly larger (and much thicker) than tobacco cards/Allen & Ginter minis. I’ve got doubles of a good number of these, too (lesser condition, but c’mon), so if you’re interested, let me know. Thanks, Ryan!

Another long-in-gestation trade was one I made with Adam from Infield Fly Rule. He threw me a bunch of set fills, largely from his Rockies stash, but the showstopper in the deal was this one…

I love me some Gold Label cards, and I rarely get any ’98s. Thanks, Adam!

Honorable mention at this point goes to Greg at The Collective Mind, who was part of the other trade that had been proposed years ago, and we finally got to when I was cleaning out my inbox this past month. Greg sent me a nice handful of Topps football set fills that, unfortunately, got filed before I could scan highlights of, but they are just as loved and appreciated as the stuff I did scan, I assure you! (Perhaps even more in some regards, because I didn’t have to scan them!) Thanks, Greg!

I also picked up these recently…

I had not noticed, until I scanned them, how oddly cut they were. Still fun cards that I’ve never had any of before. If y’all are interested, and condition doesn’t bother you much (obviously Fleer had some cutting issues, but some also have corners I wouldn’t describe as 100%, and the cards are bowed just a bit from storage, as well…think of them as “not getting submitted to PSA, but MY WORD, MAN, MICHAEL JORDAN FORESHADOWED SPACE JAM BY LIKE 5 YEARS!!!!” cards), I have 8 more complete 6 card sets of these. Let me know if you’re game for a deal.

Even with as much progress as I’ve made on trades of late, it isn’t all I’ve been doing. After a very long stretch of living out of boxes, we’ve just about got the living room done at the not-so-new house now (almost here 2 years already…time flies…). So, I’ve spent a decent chunk of this week reacquainting myself with some old friends…

My (Ninja) golf game still needs some work.

Beat the game yesterday with Chun-Li and Wolverine, without too many continues.

I am so woefully out of practice on this one, but it’s so ridiculously awesome that who the hell cares?

This one, I’m still pretty damned good at. I even started a new Career Mode game just so I’d see how well I played on default stats, and yeah, I still got it.

On the other hand, this one, try as I may, I can’t beat battlefield #6. Halp.

I told y’all I’d be writing about more than cards here, and I meant it. I’ve read a bunch of comics lately, and I’ll eventually go into more detail there, but for now, you can check out my recommended reading in the sidebar of this site.

Oh, and I went on vacation, too.

That’s also probably a story for a longer post, though. In the meantime, enjoy the teaser pics, and I will hopefully see you all back here in less than 3 months!