Collection Tweaking

So I’ve decided to somewhat refocus my collection.  If you’ve stopped by the player collection or set pages, you may have noticed a few changes.  So here they are.  First, this means reorganizing my player collections.

Baseball: Tyler Colvin, Geovany Soto, Fred McGriff, Hanley Ramirez, and Ken Griffey Jr. are all most likely permanently deactivated player collections.  The last two weren’t on the list, but I never officially dropped them until now.

Carlos Zambrano and Felix Hernandez are at least temporarily deactivated.

David Ortiz is an active player collection again.  Nomar Garciaparra is now an active player collection as well.

Basketball: Julius Erving, Rashad McCants, Joakim Noah,  Antoine Walker, and Dominique Wilkins are most likely permanently deactivated player collections.

Luol Deng is now an active player collection.

Jason Richardson is under consideration to be be added.

Football: Johnny Knox, Richard Dent, Mike Singletary, Greg Olsen, Rashard Mendenhall, Chad Ochocinco, Randall Cunningham, and Jerry Rice are all most likely permanently deactivated player collections.

Warren Moon and Josh Freeman are temporarily deactivated, though I only have maybe two cards of Freeman anyway.  Several other guys I’m dropping in various sports have less than five cards apiece too.

Hakeem Nicks and Eric Decker are under consideration to be added.

In other player collection news, I think Dustin Byfuglien and Marian Hossa will be my two hockey player collections, and Hope Solo in soccer.  My active pro wrestling collections are Booker T, Eve Torres, and Gail Kim.

All that said, if the opportunity arises to land trifecta pieces for any of my deactivated player collections, I will still make a deal.

Now onto sets.

Baseball: 2009 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects WBC Purple Refractors are no longer being pursued.  I will be keeping the five or six I have though.  I’m still a World Baseball Classic fan.

2011 Gypsy Queen Green Framed Paper Parallels are no longer being pursued.  According to what I had listed before I deleted it, Tris Speaker, Johnny Cueto,  Ian Kinsler Johan Santana, Pee Wee Reese, George Sisler, Rogers Hornsby, Josh Hamilton, David Price, Derek Jeter, and Ozzie Smith should all still be here and available, preferably for any The Great Ones I still need or other Framed Papers of players I collect (either color).

2011 topps Diamond Anniversary Parallels have long been abandoned, but now they will no longer appear on the set wantlists page.  Between regular and Cognac, I’m pretty sure I have over 40 available for trade.

2008 Goudey Sport Royalty, 2009 topps Chrome WBC, and 2011 topps Kimball Champions are under review.

2003 Donruss Estrellas Leyendas del Pasado has been added.

2009 Topps Unique Unique Unis has been added.

Basketball: 2009-10 Upper Deck 3D Stars are no longer being pursued.  As such, Dwight Howard/Kevin Garnett, Kevin Garnett/Paul Pierce, and Dwyane Wade are available for trade.

Why am I doing all this?  Well, my funds are limited as ever, and my tastes are changing.  I’m now actively seeking trifectas, and key rookies in general (super/stars of their day, historically significant players, Hall of Famers), amongst other things.  So I thought it was time to part ways with some sets and players I’m less committed to, and best to do it in some official way.  I’ve also set up a new page specifically to track my themed collections.

So, with several items no longer on my plate and knowing how I want to proceed with the rest, things will hopefully be ever-so-slightly more focused heading into the new year.  Now if I could just get my cards themselves in order so well.  Seriously, if you’ve been waiting for ages on a trade package from me, you can rest assured it’s because I lost an important piece of your trade amongst my endless piles of random cards and it hasn’t turned up yet.

So, that’s it for now.  Hopefully I’ll have something to say about anything again real soon.  Just pray that it isn’t politics related.  That would be… unpleasant, for everyone involved.

Fuck you, Newt/SOPA/NDAA/David Stern/Kardashians/Humanity Err… Bye! 😀

Trade Bait Preview

I finally got some stuff shipped from COMC.  Here are a few scans.  First up some stuff that may be to Shot Not Taken‘s liking, since I’m way overdue on trading with him again.

The Happy Warrior and Mike "Quicksand" Pyle.. I believe the former is already a done deal.

A “scan/picture doesn’t do it justice” Allan Houston & a high end Gallinari #’ed /99..

NBA Legends.. I assume Ray won't want Gervin, but the Frazier may be to his liking.

Amare 2-color (I'm calling patch; the white part is slightly raised) & Nets Brook Lopez/Ryan Anderson/Chris Douglas-Roberts triple jersey..

I didn’t forget the rest of you though.  There’s plenty more good basketball stuff to be had too (especially if you’re a Hawks fan).  Baseball is more most bloggers thing though.  Well, I might be able to hook some of you up too.  Have a looksie:

Shawn Green, Maury Wills, Rick Ankiel..

Not a Cardinals fan, obviously but as Night Owl has eloquently noted a time or two, having something around to trade with your rival team’s fans is never a bad thing, even if neither one of you will ever understand why the other would ever willingly support such a loathsome team, lol.

V-Mart and the Sarge bat cards..

Buchholz & Astro Andy..

And that will do it for now.  Shoebox Legends has dibs on Clay.  Let me know if you see something you like, and remember, this is only a preview.  There are quite a few more where these came from.  And I’m slowly getting drawn back into the trading thing, so there’s a fair chance you will get your cards before the world ends next December, haha.

Until our next..

Cards from the Owl in the Night

Time for a trade post! Hopefully I can get in one more of these and the booty from the Old School Group Break before I have another art-related post, though it’s just a sketch card-centric mail day (been lazy & haven’t done any drawing since HanRam & Markakis).

Anyway, I got some noice cards from Night Owl to show you all today, and hopefully I can quickly get through it without going off on any tangents, which I was shocked to learn I am apparently capable of, if the post before this is any indication.

Though you will see I scanned it upside down in the (chronologically) first scan, the Cey was supposed to be showing the back of the card in this one. Oy, was not on my game that night.

There was almost a massive rant here about getting rid of stupid pointless redundant Bowman Chrome or yet another unnecessary retro set and replacing it with old school-style (as in mid-to-late-’90s) Bowman’s Best.

I want Upper Deck to bring back UD3 too, though their current design team (in baseball at least) probably lacks the touch to pull it off.

Next question.

A little bit of everything on this page. Always like getting early & mid-'80s Fleer & Donruss, because until very recently, not only did I have none, I'm not sure I'd ever even seen some of the sets.

I think I must be over the halfway point on Sandberg cards from 1989-1992 by now, and somehow I’ve managed to not have many duplicates yet.  Maybe I should put up what I have somewhere so I don’t start getting overrun bby dupes.

Need more Billy Williams cards.  I think that’s only about my fifth.More Fergie Jenkins too please.

The one in the middle is the back of a Kerry Wood topps Tek card.

I have no idea why I did the first scan last. Or why two of the Ceys came out looking sorta Co-Signer-ish Hyperplaid. I am tempted to finish cutting the '87 topps box card of Cey to proper size, but I won't unless Night Owl gives me his blessing to do so..

Mmmhmm, lots of Ron Cey as a Cub.  Too much for Night Owl’s liking, according to the note that came along with the cards.

Man there were a lot of bad-to-mediocre third basemen that bridged the gap between Cey and Aramis Ramirez.

Awesome cards, good sir.  I had exactly zero Ron Cey cards before this.  Now I have enough to consider tracking down more; his Cubbie ones at least.  Well, the idea of being a team collector requires it, but now I have some idea of how many there are, and have the option of spinning him off into a player collection if the mood strikes.

Finally, I have two packages completely ready to go out on Monday (Baseball Dad and Roll Out The Barrel), and will hopefully have three or four more sent by the end of the week (Blazer Shane, Baseball Card Stuff, Play at the Plate’s uncirculated contest winnin’s, and maybe just maybe the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame and/or da Rook‘s cards).  And since nobody has seen fit to Bip me yet, I suppose I shall have to fire the first shot myself to get people’s attention.  Mwahahahaha… Yes. >:3

Actually I only have one or two shots worth of Bippin’ material to fire…

Here’s to New Beginnings!

Or, the Obligatory New Year’s Post.  The Obligatory New Year’s Resolution Post?  Whatev.  Anyway, as I begin writing this, there are nine hours and fifty-six minutes left in the year 2009 (where I’m at anyway).  Was it good to you?  Are you ready to move on?  Are you ready to step boldly into the next decade?  Do you have any resolutions for the coming new year and decade?

This is probably about the first year I’ve ever seriously considered making any resolutions for the coming year.  I was chatting with my friend David from Spain, and he asked me if I had any.  And as it turns out, yes, I kinda do.

So here they are:

First is to just be a little more focused in general.  This will help me in all facets of my life, I think.  Just focus, stick to one thing at a time a little more.  I have the attention span of a guppy (which I assume is really short, as is mine).  If I had a little better focus, I may have done something worthwhile in my life already.  It’s not too late, as sad as it makes me because it feels old to me, who’s emotionally stunted in my very early teens, I am only in my mid-20s.  I think I can still learn to focus, maybe even along those lines, learn some organizational skills.

That leads me to my most tangible goal for the new year.  And that is to accomplish something as a writer.  Finally getting close to 1000 words on something, and I want to get much, MUCH further in the new year.  You know I’ll keep y’all posted on how that goes, though it may slow down my posting at times.

Next, I want to continue to push the limits of my artistic ability.  I’ve gone from thinking I couldn’t draw anthropomorphic characters to having no trepidation at all with them in short order.  I’m still nervous when it comes to coloring and inking, but the fear is subsiding there as well.  So I want to keep moving forward.

That brings me to my next resolution.  I mentioned most of my sketch cards taking damage recently, but I’ve done eight more since they got messed up.  It brought me down for about a day, but I came back strong and have drawn eight more so far this week.  I must keep this attitude up, when it comes to responding to adversity… to deal with it, and keep fighting onward.  It is all one can do, right?

The last resolution came to mind as I started writing this post, and pertains to cards.  Virtually everyone I’ve traded with knows how slow I can be in every part of it, so I really need to be quicker in all facets of trading.  I need to email, and reply to emails faster (I’ll email about trading you that Holliday refractor sooner or later, Mojo!).  I need to send out trades faster (Roll Out the Barrel and Sooz and GSNHoF are waiting, though I need the first two’s addresses… oh and Night Owl, I finally have your stuff ready to send!).  I need my cards to be more organized so I can send out trades faster (I have cards EVERYWHERE, and only a few teams have any semblance of order).  So yeah, even though this might actually be the resolution most likely to fail, it’d do me good to get it right like all the rest.

Those are my long-winded resolutions, what are yours, if you have any?

Oh, and here’s the back of that box topper from last time.  As always, thanks for reading!

Happy New Year! 😉

Eight hours and fifty-three minutes…