Getting odder by the day

 

I'm in one of those periods where life is conspiring against the hobby. Pretty typical for March.

Let's review:

1. Prices on cards are still dumb. Thank goodness I don't care about football or basketball cards or rookies because I'd be out of the hobby and collecting bottle caps by now. But the up-charge on vintage is annoying and it's made me shift my focus (more on that in a bit).

2. I'm in danger of missing my second card show in as many months. The job is fixing to make me work on a usual weekend day off, the exact day of a one-day-only card show. I'm going to have to arrange some sort of bizarre schedule work-around if I want to make that show.

 

3. But the biggest plot against cards for the past week-and-a-half is our bathroom is being remodeled. The bathroom is directly across from the card room. For the past 8 days, workers have been arriving at 7 a.m. and creating a whole lot of noise. Do you know how much that upsets a night owl schedule? Also, they've set up camp in the card room and I can't get to many of my cards. Trading has been stalled because I can't access the cards nor can package them.

 

I have been on no sleep since March 14 ... I think -- what day is this?

 

Pretty good that I've kept blogging, huh? But what else is there to do WHEN I'M UP ANYWAY and it's 8 a.m. and it sounds like a fleet of speed boats upstairs.

 

Fortunately you don't need sleep for cards to come to your house. They just magically show up. Delivered by someone probably more alert than I.

 

I received a small COMC order the other day. I was shocked that it arrived before the sportlots order. It was less than I usually get from there but I was in a yank to get these:

 

Yeah, I know, who is going to sweep a '75 buyback out from under my nose?

I get weird like that. I was just so excited to land the Dick Pole buyback. That card in particular has been sitting on the COMC site for five-plus bucks for years!! Then I saw it for $1.50 and I smugly stuffed it in my cart, along with Padres Dave Roberts -- also priced weirdly for too long -- and Randy Jones to bring my total of '75 buybacks to 453!

Still haven't reached the buyback wall yet, In fact I discovered one I didn't have online just the other day and it is odd how excited I got.

But that's the hobby these days. Find joy in something someone isn't going to slap an unreasonable price on. Most of the time that's an oddball ... and  me and my collection are getting odder by the day.

My obsession with 1981 O-Pee-Chee hasn't stopped yet. Anything that I can find from OPC that displays two teams on the same card is something that needs to be in my collection.

The Dave Palmer is the lone exception here. I have no explanation for this pick-up. I think I thought since it was an Expo card that maybe this was a different photo from 1981 Topps but it's not.

I especially love this card. Like the 1981 Donruss Bruce Sutter, it shows Ken Reitz playing for both sides of a heated rivalry. Fascinating.

 

Still in 1981. Still hooked on the 1981 Topps design. But this time it's Coca-Cola making the card odd.

I chase the '81 Coke cards for one of the same reasons I chase OPC. Often the picture shown is different from the Topps card as is the case here with everything but the Knight card. I am always intrigued by players who didn't change teams and still feature a different photo, like Aurelio Lopez.

This is really where the Coca-Cola slogan "have a Coke and a smile" started.

I did manage to add just a few Dodgers into the shipment. None too odd except for maybe I don't know why I added this one:

The reasons for this perplexing add -- other than "I didn't have it" -- is likely, it was dirt cheap, or I saw someone with a larger haul of Buehler cards recently and got jealous, or I saw unreasonable prices for Buehler cards recently, or all three.

 

 Perhaps Topps Archives Snapshots belongs in the oddball category but probably not. I lose track of them, though, because it's an online product. I need to do a better job of picking these up.

 

This finally completes the 2018 Topps Chrome Dodgers team set, maybe the last Chrome team set I'll complete, given my decreasing interest in the product and everyone else's increasing interest in it.

 

 Also, there's finally proof from Trading Card Database that I've surpassed 900 Clayton Kershaw cards.

OK, there was one vintage card. This high-numbered 1970 Topps need of Moe Drabowsky. I know some people would call Drabowsky an oddball.

Even though I find vintage cards a bit pricey online now, I've vowed to pick up at least one with every online order just to remind myself what I really want.

But it will take me forever to complete sets like that. Which is why I desperately need to get to that card show.