Shirking my responsibilities

I feel like I have certain responsibilities with my hobby. One is to try to keep a relatively tidy "work" station. There are other people in the house. They don't need to see my scattered piles of team bags, toploaders, mailers, receipts, etc., never mind that all of it combined gives me endless joy. They can only see what's in front of them.

But when cards stack up, even I get bent out of shape. I keep stacks of cards for the current year (2016 cards), as well as stacks of incoming and outgoing cards. Anything beyond that I try to store as soon as I am able.

There are a bunch of cards that have been sitting out, unattended, for quite a while. They are all non-regulation-size cardboard, the vast majority Ginter mini size or postcard size. I ran out of pages for those cards a long time ago, and I enjoy buying boxes of pages as much as I enjoy buying socks. It's a necessity I put off til I can't puts it off no more.

So I decided to do something about it. I dedicated some money to a couple boxes of pages, scoped out what I needed online and prepared to order some.

Then I got distracted.

I don't know what crossed me up. But I do know it was card-related. Some pretty little card came dancing through my line of vision and I forgot all about pages. My money went straight toward another COMC order.

This order was scattered all over the place. You've seen two of the cards from it in the previous two posts. A Mike Piazza diecut insert from 1998 and a Mork and Mindy TV show base card from 1978. That, I believe, is covering the spectrum.

Let's see what else I accumulated while diligently avoiding my need for oddball-size pages:

I did focus a little on 1976 oddballs. The Dave Kingman at the top was the only Hostess. These two are from the '76 Kellogg's 3-D set. Two of the best, I might add. I just found out today that there is an error and corrected version of the Tanana card. His '75 ERA on the back is listed at 2.62 or 2.63. I have the 2.63 version.

The order had already shipped by the time Yasiel Puig wasted an at-bat last night by trying to BUNT ON AROLDIS CHAPMAN with a man on third and two outs. I probably would have hit "cancel" immediately if I could have.

Both the Puig Ginter X card and this Clayton Kershaw mini were super cheap. I'm guessing the Kershaw mini costs more after last night. P.S.: I still don't have any pages to house this mini.

One more 2015 A&G item. I still don't have a want list up for this set. But it seemed exceedingly ridiculous that I had not named the 2015 A&G Babe of the Year yet. You're looking at her. Surfer and model Kelia Moniz.

This was a late edition. It's a stamp, not a card, from the 1971 Dell Stamps set.

I have a nasty habit of not including non-card items from before I was collecting on my want list. But I saw this stamp of Pete Mikkelsen, a player who never appeared as a Dodger in a Topps set, and that changed everything. (The fact that the last sentence on the back says "Has history of control problems" clinched it).

There is now a team want list for Dell Stamps on the blog.

Upgrade needs. I completed the 1978 Topps set a few years ago. But as far as card condition goes, it's still a bit of a mish-mash. The '78 and '79 sets fall into that time period where I was no longer a kid, but didn't quite have a handle on how cool sharp corners look. The Carter and Sizemore were two of the most boyhandled cards in the set. I'll see if any others set off my OCD.

As a team collector, do you ever just randomly settle on a certain collection of cards that you NEED to have?

I have no connection to 1996 Stadium Club at all. None. I didn't collect then. I'm not particularly interested in any of the cards that came out then. But I find myself gobbling up '96 Stadium Club inserts and Member's Only Dodgers, etc. Cards are OK-looking. But the important thing is I've got these suckers.

I said I wasn't going to start a collection of cards of people who share my birthday, but I couldn't resist with this card. When one owns the best tennis name in history and happens to be born the same day as you were, the card is a no-brainer.

A couple of cards for the eventual 1973 Topps completion quest. They both also could be entrants in the Top 100 cards of the '70s (I will be doing my final research for that countdown next week), particularly the Fuentes card.

This card, meanwhile, I have no doubt will appear in that Top 100 countdown. Just a terrific card.

I didn't catch the crease going through the center of the card when I bought it (now I understand the price). But for my purposes, it works fine. If I ever decide to complete this set (no plans now), I will upgrade.

This is the only card I acquired for my 1972 completion quest, which is now down to nine cards.

You may wonder why I selected a backup infielder if I'm going with just one card, considering I still need Garvey, Rose and Brooks Robinson.

I'll give you the answer by turning over the card:

I am not superstitious, but I do not mess around with 666. I refuse to have this card be the last card I need for the set.

My grand finale.

I picked up 16 buybacks from the 1975 set. It puts me in triple digits now with 101 buybacks from that set.

I'm still able to get a good price on these and should be able to the next few times I track down cards. After that, I may have to decide whether I want to pay $3 and up for a buyback. My stance remains that unless it's a star card none of these things should be more than a buck.

So that's all the randomness that I acquired while avoiding my responsibilities.

That means the oddball size cards will pile up a little more. But I'm pretty certain that I will finally get those pages the next time I have a little money to spend.

Maybe I'll just go ahead and buy those socks I need, too.