Card-cation

I've been enjoying the leisurely pace of my vacation immensely. Since the other people in the house are still on their usual busy schedules, there was no opportunity to go anywhere special. And you know what that means.

That means I get to stay home and play with my cards! Yay! Stay-cation! More like CARD-cation, am I riiiighhhtt???

The first few days have involved some cards, but they've mostly been occupied by the World Series and various errands and around-the-house tasks. However, the wife is headed out of town for a couple of days, meaning -- oh, glorious day -- cards take over the house. I plan on planting a giant box of cards in the center of the dining room table and going straight into a sorting binge.

I'll also have the chance to search for cards for various people without being under the gun from this task or that one, or have that enormous work cloud tailing me throughout the live long day. And, of course, I can blissfully show off cards I've received from others with no time constraints.

Tonight's card offerings come from Brian of Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. This is one of those supertrader deals that morphed out of my request for two Allen & Ginter minis that Brian was offering up.

Those are the minis that I thought might find a spot in my franken-mini binder. I have never heard of Jay Oakerson, but what the heck, it's better than a blank spot. Jen Welter, on the other hand, blows my mind for being a female coach in the ultimate man's game, the NFL. Surely she would make the binder.

Well, fooled me. Oakerson is actually a no-number mini. How can you put a no-number in a frankenset that is all about numbers?  Also, Welter ran into another trend-setting woman:

Both Welter and Bonnie Bernstein are No. 179. I was still going to replace Bernstein with Welter because I hate it when A&G shows glamour shots of non-athletes. Show these people in action -- Bonnie on the sidelines with a microphone -- like we know them!

But then The Snorting Bull had to go ahead and share the terribly sad story of Jennifer Frey the other day and now there's no way I can remove Bernstein from the frankenset binder.

OK, moving on to happier card items and stories.

More NFL, but good, old-fashioned '60s NFL, Buffalo-style. I love the 1969 Topps football stoplight set. Meanwhile, the Mercer card is my first in-person look at the 1968 Topps football set. It looks more modern than a lot of '60s sets.

Brian also threw in a 1979 Bills schedule. I believe that's running back Terry Miller carrying the ball. The best part of this is the back -- every game of the regular season starts between 1 and 4 p.m. And club level seats are $15.

OK, you want more modern stuff. I know the 1990s is a lot of your guys' speed. These are three '90s cards that I needed. Brian had to alert me to the Mike Piazza card being a "Showcase Series" parallel. Good thing he did. I have never heard of that.

These are both headed for various set needs. The History of the Game night card heads to the night card binder, of course. The night-bordered '09 OPC Martin goes into the still-not-mentioned-in-my-want-lists black-bordered collection.

I very nearly put this card in the dupes box! Upper Deck and their too similar parallel colors! This '06 Eric Gagne is numbered to /99, silly! It's bluish instead of slightly greenish-bluish! Come on, man!

You want even more modern stuff? OK, here are items from the last five years. You can tell Brian has card shows and card shops on every corner from these items. The orange-bordered numbered Jamey Wright is from who knows what -- maybe an end-of-the-year box set exclusive?

The most modern of modern cards. All of these are needs from this year. It's a tie for what I'm happiest about here. The Kenta Maeda Chrome is pretty in a "taste the rainbow" kind of way. The Andre Ethier A&G card is one of them short-prints. Since I'm not collecting the A&G set this year, for the first time in like eight years, I need only one version of the Dodger SPs. I should have thought of doing this earlier.

OK, I overloaded you with modern cards. I promise nothing but older stuff the rest of the way.

This Welcome Back, Kotter card arrived a little too late to be include in my '70s movie/TV show page. But that doesn't mean I don't want it. You can tell by the buyback stamp that it showed up in that Archives thing Topps did a few years ago.

This card blew my mind a little. I wasn't aware that the 1989 Fleer box-bottoms featured team logos. And I never would have guessed it was a box-bottom anyway because it's the most perfectly cut box bottom I have ever seen. Whoever cut this must have been a professional surgeon.

Let's end this session with a couple of pack breaks, courtesy of Brian. I am probably the last collector in the world who gets a kick out of opening 1988 Donruss, so let's check out the goodies:

Still a hoot. I spared you the Stan Musial puzzle piece. Half a leg or something.

I got a little too excited about this one. I thought I still needed Dodgers from the 1987 Sportflics set. But it's those nefarious 1989 and 1990 sets instead. Still, Magic Motion is Magic Motion.

I couldn't have hand-selected two better team-logos. The three player cards -- Willie (I'm not Guillermo yet) Hernandez, Ozzie Guillen and Ron Darling -- are pretty good, too.

Quite a bit of variety in that supertrader package, huh? Thanks a bunch, Brian.

All right, it's time to park myself in front of the TV for Game 4 and to figure out which cards I'm going to throw on the floor in the big Card-cation sort-a-thon.

You can't do this kind of stuff when you're in a hotel 700 miles away.