Another Cards and Poetry Post

Twitter has juuuust enough characters for me to create mediocre-at-best tanka (5-7-5-7-7) and haiku, and there’s a beautiful soul on there that encourages me to do so whenever possible.  I’ve reeled off several since yesterday, so I might as well leave ’em here while I’m at it.  I don’t seem to be showing up on Blogger blogrolls at the moment anyway, so it isn’t like anyone is gonna see these or care.

Still, while there’s no common theme in my head to go with it this time, I will disperse the cards I didn’t end up using in my other recent “cards and poetry” post throughout, just in case. 😉

Just a little bit

out of step with time and space

Reality feels

less real when you can see the

other side of the fourth wall

’58 Milt Pappas RC..

The writing on the

wall; text just blurs together

when you’ve given up

This fight isn’t worthy of

my mind’s main stage anymore…

1970 Topps Ron Santo AS..

Riding the icy

wind through this sad, soulless town

My barren valley…

Only wasted potential

and broken promise remain

1974 Rookie Infielders..

I’m a darker soul

than you’d ever want to keep

But I can still help

light the way through your darkness

My hope glows against the night

Tim Raines RC..

My mind is fractured

inscrutable, unstable

Even when I’m good

I’ll never be quite alright

Stay away, it’s for the best…

BowPlat Javier Barz Cutting Edge Star..

What good is there in

a creator lacking the

focus to create?

I guess the sketchy poetry is technically creating, but it isn’t the thing that’s likely to get me anywhere… Anyway, if you get this, thanks for stopping by.

 Until our next…

Flea Market Finds #12: Ninth Binder page + Mojo

Ugh, mojo is such a dumb word (unless we’re talking super intelligent monkey supervillains or card blogging hands), but I digress.  While the weather is hitting record highs, so to are my blog hits.  And I’m closing in on posting every day for a week straight for maybe the first time ever in the history of this blog.  Things seem to finally coming together in my little corner of the blog netherverse.

Anyway, we’re heading down the final stretch of the flea market posts.  Only a couple more posts after this!  Then I’ll have even more to post, since the flea market comes up again this Saturday.  I’ll try to do this month’s flea market finds up much quicker though.

There are also new sketch card posts in the offing.  I colored seven more last night, and hope to finish the last two Justice Leaguers and three Star Trek captains later tonight.  I also have at least three much-belated trade posts to post, and one fresh one at the moment, with more coming in the not-too-distant future.  So things aren’t going to be slowing for probably the rest of this month anyway.

I will be sending out a few trades this month too, some old (sorry it’s taken so long, guys), some new (I’m trying to be quicker about it).

That all tediously said, let’s get to the action!  Mojo Jojo Hand first!

Three-color patch-jo! Hey wait...

This was the other $1.50 card he gave me for $1 (it was apparently priced $6 at some point).  It’s pretty cool looking, but it’s odd.  The card isn’t #’ed, and the patch itself is making me say “hmm…”, because the colors seem to be reversed.  I can’t figure out where the patch could possibly have come from.  There doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the jersey where a thin strip of white patch meets red jersey with gold on the inside like that.  I is confused and mayby have the eyesight of your average NBA ref, but it was only $1, so whatevs (any information most welcome though).

I also have a regular non-patch version of this, probably pulled from an eBay “hot pack” or retail repack box at some point.  Anyway, if you want either, have at thee!

Now for the fun part of this entirely too long blog post, the next binder page!!

Beckett inserts x2, 1983 topps Traded Don Baylor, 2010 topps Joe Saunders Gold parallel /2010, 1977 topps Graig Nettles, 1983 topps Yaz, Frank Viola rookie!, 1977 topps Willie Randolph (Rookie Cup FTW!) 1983 topps Tom Seaver

Why Purchased: Hall of Famers and stars of their day on the most perfectly designed ever made, 1983 topps, and nearly vintage Yankee greats.

Keepers: Sadly, probably nada.

Notes: Why are topps Traded cards of the era ALWAYS in infinitely better shape than regular cards?

You know how you end up with the name Graig?  When one parent wants to name the kid Greg, and the other wants to name him Craig, and they decide to compromise.  Which is proof that compromise is not always a good thing.

At least they didn’t name him Jermajesty or Caleb or something awful like that.

I didn’t know the Viola was a rookie until I was fooling around looking up late-’70s/mid-’80s rookies by year on Check Out My Cards.

I enjoy Rookie Cups and Rated Rookies entirely too much.

Mind-Blowing Statistic: Yaz had three 40-home run seasons, and no others over 30 (or 28 to be exact).

I was struggling to come up with something, but that’s a pretty good interesting stat right?  All cards except Willie Randolph are available (he’ll be going out in a way overdue trade).  Thanks for stopping by!

I feel like chicken tonight!

Flea Market Finds #7: Singles to Mingle

So, I finally got the singles I picked up at the flea market edited down into bite-sized chunks recently, and after the power going out at some point while I slept the other day, when I started things back up, my keyboard was working again.  So, I’m back in business.

First though, a quick note.  I spent all day (seriously, from around 8am till after 5pm) pouring over a few wantlists, digging through my endless stacks of cards, and firing off emails.  And heads up to Nomo’s Sushi Platter and Fuji, you’re next on the list, though I don’t need to dig as hard for stuff for you guys.

Now then, the loot!  All but the last card were $1 apiece (two were priced at $1.50, but he gave ’em to me for a buck).

Lou Whitaker Rookie!

Let’s check the stats! (via Baseball-Reference)

Garth Iorg: 1978; 1980-1987- 20/238/.258/.292/.347/.639 OPS+ 72  Just your average below average 2B.

Dave Oliver: 1977- 0/3/.318/.444/.409/.854 OPS+ 140  Only 29 career plate appearances, but that was a good start!  Sad he never got much of a chance, especially with how long and mediocre Iorg’s career was.  He never even struck out in short time in the bigs (4 walks).

Sam Perlozzo: 1977; 1979- 0/0/.269/.345/.423/.768 OPS+ 110  Only 30 career plate appearances, but also a pretty promising glimpse of what maybe could have been.  He hit two triples in his short career, and later went on to manage terrible Orioles teams for parts of three seasons earlier this decade.

Lou Whitaker: 1977-1995- 244/1084/.276/.363/.426/.789 OPS+ 116 Career WAR 69.7  Other stats of note: 420 double, more walks than strikeouts (1197-1099).  Awards: 1978 Rookie of the Year, 5x All-Star, 3x Gold Glove, 3x Silver Slugger

Okay, how the hell is Lou Whitaker not in the Hall of Fame?!  Those are STILL elite offensive numbers for 2nd baseman!  He was still playing well and producing even at the very end of his career.  Bah, total BS.  I’m angry now, next card!

Merrick Mint Ichiro Suzuki Laser Line Gold Card

It’s really hard to see.  I dunno how such an insanely shiny card can scan this badly, but trust me, it looks awesome.

'68 Strikeout Leaders

This was one of the $1.50 ones, obviously perhaps.  It’s in surprisingly not bad shape.  653 combined wins, 7824 career combined strikeouts, and 755 total in ’68 (268 Gibson, 260 Fergie, 227 Singer).  ’68 was also Gibson’s impossible 1.12 ERA season, in which he even more impossibly lost 9 games (22 wins)!

1980-81 Bird RC!

Now, each of the three pieces of the legendary Bird RC/Dr. J/Magic RC appears on at least one other trio with a different combination, which are valuable in their own right.  Still though, I hope this came from one of the other combinations, not that it will stop me from trying to track down the legendary trio in this form.  I’ll put ’em up on a list of specific, hard to track down, cards when I get around to it.

The Back

Here’s the back.  That cartoon doesn’t look like Larry at all.

Finally, since I guess I actually only got just over half of the nine singles edited into bite-sized chunks, here is the big one I picked up!

Ryne Sandberg Rookie!

I’ve wanted to get this card for a very, very long time.  And there it was, for $6.  The most perfect card, from the most perfectly designed set ever made.  I’m so happy to have rookies of two of the biggest Chicago sports icons of all time.  Ryno looks good next to Walter Payton. 🙂

The guy actually had all three of the big rookies from 1983 for a similar price, and I’ll be picking up at least Gwynn next time, if it’s still there.

I guess that’s all for this one.  Needless to say, only Sweet Lou is even remotely up for trade.  Now, I’ll just let y’all bask in the glow of a rookie Ryno & go get some more work done, updating this & that.  Seeya later.

Until our next…

Flea Market Finds #1: Overview

Heyas.  Been a long time, huh?  Nothing’s really changed since last we chatted, except for getting a few more of the sketch cards from the previous post finished (and a few new ones drawn up), and a seriously loudass person moving in upstairs pushing me to the end of my rope with this lousy place.  Seriously, if anyone knows of a halfway decent place with no noise problems to speak of that falls within my modest price range, I’m so effing outta here.

Ah, but that’s not why you called.  I happen to have some fun stuff I’m getting prepared to blog about.  For the past several months, they’ve been holding a small monthly flea market at the shell of our once thriving mall.  I asked my dad if they had any cards when the parents made it out there at the beginning of the year, and he said they did, but didn’t elaborate.  So I’ve been wanting to go ever since, to see what was there myself.

On Saturday, I finally made it out there.  I wasn’t expecting much, but I had $23 with me just in case.  And am I ever glad I did.  There was a guy there with cards.  He didn’t bring the whole card shop (of which he apparently owns one nearby, according to the business card), but he had a very nice selection of cards to peruse.  He had cards available ranging from the late ’60s to within the past couple years, in baseball, basketball, and football.

He seemed to be an old school Beckett-adhering type, but his cards were priced to move.  He mentioned to another person there that wandered by that his philosophy was that if a kid saw a cool card they liked, they should be able to afford it, which sounds like an awesome philosophy to me.  As such, the vast majority of his singles were $1, and almost everything on up seemed to be reasonably priced (I think I spotted a Felix Pie auto for $50 in the one little bunch hits behind glass, but that is easily forgivable when pretty much everything else was so reasonable).

He was also willing to deal, as you’ll soon see.  So I picked out a few singles I liked (9 in total, I believe), all but one marked $1 or $1.50 (the two of which he gave me for $1), and two random 25 card grab packs for $1 apiece that had interesting cards showing.  Then I came to the side of the table where he had several binders laid out, each with about a dozen pages full of cards in them.  They were marked $1 per page, or $10 for a whole binder.  As it happened, I managed to find a dozen random pages I like from the various binders.  So he stuck them all in one of the binders, and gave it to me for $7!

So yeah, I spent all $23 I came armed with.  In total, I ended up with about 170 cards, the vast majority of which I very much like.  Needless to say, I completely obliterated the number of cards and enjoyment I would’ve gotten out of your average blaster (+ maybe one $1.59 pack), and will be heading out there again next month.  There were many things I had to leave behind this time.

Anyway, the binder pages will make up the vast majority of the posts to follow in this little series.  I’ll go over them card-by-card, one or two pages at a time, because there is just so much random coolness in each page.

I’ll also be getting a few packages sent out over the course of this month, and a few of the cards from the flea market may even find their way into some of them.

1/3 of of one of the most iconic basketball cards of all time, and a small preview of the craziness to come...

Flea Market > Blaster.  It is a fundamental truth.

The fun has only just begun…