Birthday loot, part 1

I'm about to reveal the card-related items that I received from my birthday a few days ago. My awards for surviving another year, if you will.

I am splitting it into two posts because there are two distinct sets of goodies to review -- ones that I received as intended gifts and ones that were not necessarily birthday gifts, but because of fortuitous circumstances, magically morphed into birthday gifts.

The intended gifts come first. Fun stuff second. Yes, I was one of those kids that ate the disgusting vegetables first to get it over with -- not that I'm comparing my birthday gifts to disgusting vegetables. ... (*sigh*) Can I start over?

OK, here are the wonderful, glorious items that I received from my ever-loving family members who go to death-defying lengths to find me something that has to do with my hobby.

First, I received some money, which has already been spent on cards. You saw the highlights of the A&G blaster. I also grabbed a couple of those $6 UD Spectrum blasters at Kmart. Nothing to show, but some hits that others will enjoy.

Secondly, since most of my present-buyers are female, I received, shall we say, some beautiful accessories for my hobby.

That usually means binders and pages, and I received both of those sorely needed items.

After months and months, maybe even a year of waiting, I finally have my almost-finished 1988 Score set in a binder. Here is an example of the set secured in its colorful glory:

How I hate scanning full pages. A few are cut off, but you get the idea.

I want to call 1988 Score the "rainbow set" for "Define the Design," but the bottom color isn't exactly orange. It's more of a gold color.

Of course, getting a set in a binder lets you figure out exactly what you need to finish it off. This is what I need:

#118 - Matt Williams

#180 - Bo Jackson
#302 - Jim Lindeman
#322- Jose Guzman
#357 - Matt Young
#640 - Chris Gwynn
#651 - Ripken/Trammell/Fernandez

If you can spare those, I'll take them. I'll even send you something return. I'd say that's being awfully nice for 1988 Score.

I also finally landed a binder for my 2009 UD OPC set. Here is a sample page of that:

Yeeeaaaaaaahhh. A long, long, LONG way to go with that one. My Target isn't even carrying OPC anymore, which seriously puts a stake in my finishing off the set.

It also hurts my vow to always buy a pack of Upper Deck when I'm in the card aisle. I am now resorting to switching off between Documentary, Goodwin, Spectrum, and X, and it's making me hate myself. Bring back OPC!!

After filling the OPC binder, there were enough pages left over to get my unfinished 1981 Donruss set in a binder as well. It was crushing to see that set sitting in a box. It is now grouped with the unfinished '81 Fleer set, and they can marry and have little imperfect card babies with mispelled names.

OK, there's one last thing to show and I'm going to have to explain myself for it.

Do you remember when a Target product under the title of "Room Essentials" got play on the blogs? It looked like this:

It's something you hang on your wall. The cards come already mounted in the frame and then you get to display 1990 Upper Deck and Fleer for god knows what reason.

We all had a good laugh about it and thought it was pretty silly and a waste of 20 bucks.

Well, a few weeks ago my wife and I were wandering through Target. We happened to be in this aisle, and I saw the baseball card frame display. It looked like this:

It made me stop. Those weren't junk wax cards. Those were cards from 10 years ago.

Now, 2001 UD Pros & Prospects and 2002 Fleer Focus alone didn't make me want the thing. But then I looked at it closer:

There were two Dodgers in there that I need!!!!!!!!!

I picked up the frame and sure enough, you could remove the cards, which allows you to put whatever cards you want in the display.

I looked to see if the other frames displayed different cards. They did. One was 1993 Donruss. Yawn. The other was '85 Topps mixed with something else from that era. I don't remember what, because I didn't care.

The whole time, my wife is looking at me, and finally she says, "Is that something you're interested in?"

"No, no, not really," I say in a "don't be silly" tone.

But in my head I'm saying, "there were two Dodgers in there that I need!!!!!!"

So the weeks go by and then: voila, the Target frame with the Pros & Prospects Shawn Green and Kevin Brown cards is sitting in my pile of birthday loot.

The cards are now free:

It took a little doing to get them out, they kind of get stuck in there. The Brown card has a couple of nicks, but I don't care.

I'll be removing the other cards in there, too, and possibly distributing them to those who may be interested.

Sure, it's not the same as spending 20 bucks on a blaster, but at least there were two cards in there that I KNEW I needed. And now I can take out some of those fine-looking dupes that are just wasting away in the giant dupes box and display them in my pseudo card room for all the world to see. Well, if the world was only my family and the dog.

Sure, I could've made something like this just as easy, but I don't have no damn time to be handy.

All in all, a very good day when it came to organizing my card collection, which was in major need of organizing.

And with what arrived on my birthday through the mail -- which will appear in part 2 -- I'd say it was a very well-balanced and enjoyable baseball card birthday.

Me likey.