Collecting This 'n' That

It certainly has been a while since I have been in this space. Too many things keeping me away this winter.  Good stuff has been accumulating on the card table and I have only scratched the surface of the collections I picked up late last year. The plan going forward will be shorter but more frequent posts.  Today's presentation is NOT any of the good stuff, so let's get it out of the way.  New to this town, at least, is a football offering from the folks at MJ Holding Company. It was cheap, but I really should have read the back as they do not mention anything special being inserted into these packs. Here is the inner packaging, This does not bode well.  I will spare you the descriptions, here are the cards, The Bowers was so damaged that it is in the recycle bin. Drew Lock is a "Kickoff" parallel.  Wow, there we have it. It makes me wonder if MJH is now ripping the packs that were in the tins that didn't sell and moving the money cards on eBay and dumping the ...

Happy New Year to all! A quick recap of the holiday season acquisitions is in order.  The news of Non-Sport Update magazine being discontinued by Beckett at first seemed surprising but then the other shoe dropped. Collectors Universe Inc. buying Beckett. All part of their master plan I reckon. The folks at Vintage Non-sports Forum were reminiscing about the magazine and catalog that had been issued in the past and how well put together they were. After some digging I did find the 2006 edition for a decent price as an early present to myself.  The late Roxanne Toser was still the publisher at the time, and with her decades of knowledge, she and Todd Jordan did a great job on this 530 page volume.  The Secret Santa event on the Trading Card Database was a huge hit with over 200 participants this year. My generous Santa, JoesCards, sent 27 nice cards. A good number of ultra-modern Blue Jays, which was great for filling in the voids of the insane amount of parallels out there...

The smaller collection I recently purchased has hit the table and awaits my next move. Backstory - this was a local Facebook purchase from a younger guy (new father) who had been ripping a lot of retail and some hobby boxes. He has a nice framed piece full of recent New York Giants autos and relics. That's all he said he wanted to keep. Everything else was for sale. Something was off though. Where were all the base cards? He tossed them into the recycling, because in his words "they are just pieces of cardboard". I kept my mouth shut - zipped.  Ironically, this collection had some of the obligatory early 90's pieces of cardboard. 1990 and 1991 Upper Deck, Score, and Pro Set hockey and some of the usual baseball suspects as well. I wish he had recycled those instead!! Now I have to re-home these via the donation center. He did try to pawn off two 1991 Fleer baseball factory sets. I left them there.  On to the good stuff. Very preliminary grouping by sport for now.  It...

 I didn't know what to expect from the lone pack of 2025 Topps Disney Wonder that landed in my shopping cart this past Sunday.  Well, I was surprised. These are quite nice! The first thing that struck me was the card stock that these are printed on. They have a high end feel to them. Perhaps a little thicker than your basic entry level cards.  Twenty-five cards per hanger pack yielded 24 base and one insert. That was a little disappointing but it is what it is for retail.  Initially I thought the foil-y cards were parallels, but they are the "high numbers" in the set. I guess these could be considered short prints of sort with 3 per pack, though I am not certain about the breakdown for blasters and hobby boxes. Honestly, I don't feel they add to the set's make-up. I would have preferred the base set to be just plain base cards.  Base card sample and a foil front. My sole insert, The rest of the cards,  I may try a blaster or two if they are still available ...

You may thought I had given up on this little blog. Nope. Life just got in the way this summer and early fall. It started with a nice week long road trip along the shore of Lake Huron. The weather was perfect - full sun everyday without humidity - and things to see and do everywhere. A week is never enough.  This Sea Stack formation on Flower Pot Island is about 50 feet tall. Stunning. Somebody thought these  stairs were a good idea. Deadly!  The Sweepstakes, lays in fairly shallow water of Lake Huron. The schooner sank in 1885.  It was during this vacation that we made the decision that we were going to move to a larger house, and take in the in-laws. Are you crazy?!?! you may ask. Heck no, I have always gotten along very well with them and right now they are still in decent health.  The real estate market here is a little peculiar with it being a military town. All the buying and selling occurs during posting season, in or out. That annual migration happens f...

 A quick blaster break today. I don't remember seeing this in the store earlier in the year so I grabbed the lone box today.  Twelve base cards and twelve insets and parallels in my box. A bronze (/199) , holo (Optic-like), and two greens.  Three holo ice parallels. Base insert and green parallel. Finally a name I recognize.  Blue ice (/299) and a base insert. Green holo autograph, unnumbered.  A fun little break.  ______________________________________________________ When the sale of my hockey card collection was completed I swore that was it, no more! Well, I saw a Facebook Marketplace listing that looked like a good deal so I went and picked it up today. I did a quick comp on these when I got home and it turns out I paid 10% of market asking price. I can live with that margin...even if I don't know what I am going to do with these.  As always, thanks for reading.