Monthly Archives: August 2010

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Last Night’s Work

I’m still struggling to come up with anything useful to say.  Been broke since about the 9th & haven’t picked up any cards since.  Not motivated to finish any of the incomplete drafts, but I do feel like posting something.  So here be the two sketch cards I drew on ustream last night:

They are Power Man & Iron Fist, a '70s-'80s classic.

It’s a little hard to tell (which is a good thing), but these are two separate cards.  It turned out much better than the first time I tried a puzzle card.  This one is actually even!  But anyway, I’ll color this soon.  Maybe even tonight if I get around to it.

Until our next…

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I Have Nothing Interesting to Say…

…Try again later.  Here’s a nice card to look at though:

J-Roll by George Calloway. One of his returns that he ran out of time on. Still good though. He just wanted to get rid of 'em, so I got this and a Jay Bruce for a nice price.

Until our next…

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Cards from Marie and Matt

I got my prize winnins from Cardboard Problem and a fresh trade from Heartbreaking Cards at the same time and scanned them at the same time, so I might as well post them at the same time.  Plus I’m not sure which came which on one of the scans.  I may have mixed them on it, I dunno.  Anyway, pretty pictures ahoy!

These be from Marie. It appears the Cubs drew the better artists in Chicle, judging by these three. All solid, and Ernie is outstanding! Love the scoreboard shot! And the Prince is cool cuz I used to have a small collection of the guy and clever cuz the ticket is against the Cubbies. The terrible, terrible Cubbies. *le sigh*

The *literally* big prize. Johnny Mize cabinet card. Though a Cardinal, it's one of the prettier looking cards in the entire set, in my rarely humble enough opinion. And three mini 206 Cubbies (only one still with the team) for scale and because I couldn't fit normal-sized cards on the scanner bed with giganto Mize. I mentioned something somewhere about this being my first contest win, but I actually won a contest at White Sox Cards awhile before. Slipped my mind due to how quick that one went down (half hour, give or take).

And the rest, maybe. But what nice filler it is. All-Star Classics is one of my absolute favorite sets of the entire past decade. Been wanting a box for eons.

Now it gets confusing, though it’s a perfect segue from Marie to Matt I guess.  I don’t know which one these all came from, though the more I think about it, I’m pretty sure there is some from both in this scan:

If there's a choice between keeping Big Z or Dempster, I'm keeping Big Z. Every. Single. Time. Also, I heart blue refractors. 🙂

Now it’s definitely on to the Heartbreaking part of this post.

The King Felix collection gets some rare lovin' thanks to Matt. Noice.

Even though the D-Lee collection was officially closed almost immediately after this (but well before he was actually traded), that mmiddle row is freakin' sweet. And a new Kosuke (the Documentary one)!

Finally, the two cards that keyed this trade in the first place, the blue Fukudome & Vlad parallels. Also a cool D-Lee segueing into his tenure with the Cubs.

Great awesome cards.  Marie and Matt should both be expecting something in the mail before too long.  And with that, I’m outta here.

Until our next…

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Untitled Poetry

I don’t really know how or why it happens, but from time-to-time, I get in such a way that I can fire off a full and relatively decent (going by feedback anyway) poem or song in well under an hour.  I guess it’s the poetic version of being “in the zone”.  It happened again yesterday morning sort of, though this time I know where the inspiration came from.  I awoke from a hauntingly sad dream, and some of the words were already on my lips.  So I typed them down as accurately as my less than fully awake mind would allow and went from there.  Never was able to come up with a title for it though.  Anyway, fair warning, this isn’t a happy one.  At all.

And now when I stalk these halls

There’s no one here to answer the calls

All hope is gone

There’s no smiles, nothing left to see

With all my heart I defended you for so long

But one slip-up and you’re long gone

My childish eyes, they didn’t realize

That you were having problems too

And I wasn’t there like you needed me, it’s true

Thought it was enough, to stand up for you

But you needed more than I ever knew

More than a child could ever give

More than I could hope to understand

I was too young to be a man

So you left me high & dry

To trudge through my crappy life

Left me with nothing

No hope, no happiness, no reason left to smile

It feels like a bad dream

When I stalk these halls

And you aren’t here to answer my call

It doesn’t feel right, no

Not at all

Not at all…

Until our next…

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WW: The Green Lantern of Sector 2814

Hal Jordan. Inks only, no pencils were involved in the making of this card.

Hadn't planned to color it... wasn't even originally intended to be Hal Jordan. I was just going to do a random super heroic-lookin' dude to slap on the cover of the sketch card binder. But it came out as Hal, so I decided to finish it off.

Until our next…

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2010 Allen & Ginter Mutant Blaster

With my last little bit of cash (at the time), I picked up a blaster of A&G.  I had a little bit more than I thought, and once it was confirmed everything else had already gone through, I made a beeline for card section at Target.  I haven’t been able to spend hardly any money this month on enjoyable stuff, and it had been a really miserable month up to that point, so I needed it.  Fortunately, it turned out nicely I think.  So let’s break it down, shall we?

2010 topps Allen & Ginter Blaster

8 packs; 6 cards per pack

Pack 1

338 Francisco Liriano SP

346 Ryan Theriot SP

325 Brett Gardner SP

331 Huston Street SP

Crack theCode!

NA37 Komodo Dragon National Animals Mini (Indonesia)

TDH17 Joe Mauer This Day in History (April 19th; The American Revolution Begins 1775)

The Komodo Dragon is pretty cool.

Pack 2

326 Aaron Rowand SP

306 Brandon Phillips SP

310 Placido Polanco SP

314 Ivan Rodriguez SP

190 Randy Wolf Black Parallel Mini

TDH14 Justin Verlander This Day in History (February 20th; John Glenn Becomes the First American to Orbit the Earth 1962)

Nothing much to see here...

Pack 3

325 Brett Gardner SP (dupe)

331 Huston Street SP (dupe)

346 Ryan Theriot SP (dupe)

326 Aaron Rowand SP (dupe)

306 Brandon Phillips SP Mini

AGHS2 Mark Buehrle Baseball Sketches (Perfect Game)

Mini SP & a perfect game. There's gonna be lot of no hitter/perfect game commeration sketches in the 2011 set.

Pack 4

322 Gary Matthews SP

319 Austin Jackson Tigers RC SP

350 Alcides Escobar SP

AGHS3 Derek Jeter Baseball Sketches (All-Time Yankees Hits Leader)

MM10 Brachiosaurus Monsters of the Mesozoic

TDH6 Brian Roberts This Day in History (October 9th; Washington Monument Opens to the Public 1888)

Jamie Moyer's pet Brachiosaurus from his youth. Jeter breaking the Yankees hits record. And a good rookie. Solid pack.

Pack 5

308 Adrian Beltre SP

315 Bobby Abreu SP

AGR-RZ Ryan Zimmerman Framed Relic- You can’t really tell in the scan, but there appears to be stitching running across the middle of the swatch.  Isn’t that interesting?

145 Jim Thome Ginter Back Mini Parallel

TDH44 BJ Upton This Day in History (August 21st; The Mona Lisa is Stolen 1911)

Zim relic. I like the red frame better in person than it looked in scans.

Pack 6

338 Francisco Liriano SP (dupe)

332 Ricky Nolasco SP

344 Derek Holland SP

322 Gary Matthews SP (dupe)

64 Josh Beckett Mini

TDH56 Jimmy Rollins This Day in History (November 27th; Baby Face Nelson Dies in a Shoot-Out with the FBI 1934)

Checklist Four of Four

The mini is a plain ol' base. Beat the odds & pulled two of them.

Pack 7

310 Placido Polanco SP (dupe)

313 Ryan Doumit SP

318 Carlos Gonzalez SP

316 Nate McClouth SP

Crack the Code!

LO11 Uranus Lords of Olympus

TDH72 Jay Bruce (April 3; Jesse James is Killed 1882)

lol Uranus...

Pack 8

305 Kelly Johnson SP

308 Adrian Beltre SP (dupe)

315 Bobby Abreu SP (dupe)

350 Alcides Escobar SP (dupe)

138 Javier Vasquez Mini

Crack the Code!

Vasquez was the other base mini. Aaaaand I got no This Day in History in the last pack...

As you can… *Ahem*… I said *Ahem!*  Thank you.  As you can see, all the base cards in the blaster were of the SP variety, and 10 of them show up twice.  Here be the backs.

Dig all those crazy numbers over 300.  Woo…

Everything but the Baseball Sketches, a Theriot, and possibly the Komodo Dragon and/or Brachiosaurus will be available for trade once I unberry myself from all the overdue trades I have to send out already.  All I’m definitely collecting from A&G this year are the Wordsmiths and the Baseball Sketches, though I’m considering half-hearted stabs at the National Animals, Monsters of the Mesozoic, and maybe even the This Day in History sets as well.

Oh and speaking of Ryan Theriot, should I feel as bad about the Dodgers trade as I do?  Because I’m not liking it at all. 😦

Anyway, if you see something you like, lemme know, because only the sketches and one of the Theriots are definitely going into The Lonestarr Personal Collection.  Hm, I like that font for the PC.  Makes it seem grander than it actually is, lol.  Anyway, that’s all for this one!  Seeya.

On the comeback trail…