An era is over

 

You may have noticed that almost all of this week's posts have contained card images that are photographs rather than scans.

 

That's because my computer died last weekend. It was the desktop computer and it has been with me for as long as I've written this blog.

 

Yes, I have used the same computer for more than 13 years. I know, that's insane, but I just said goodbye to a car that was 16 years old. I have patience and with a little ingenuity, you can make things last a long time sometimes.

So, now I've closed that era and entered the Laptop Era of the blog. It's mostly the same except I haven't had the chance to introduce the laptop to the scanner/printer and that's why you see the pictures.

I prefer scanning. I think the images look better and you don't have to play with the lighting or angles or worry about sunlight and all that. But sometimes scanning isn't the best. For example, as bloggers have known for a long time, anything shiny or foil-boardy, especially stuff from the late '90s, scans like garbage.

A photo is better for cards like that. Coincidentally, I happen to have some shiny cards to show that will benefit from being in front of a camera.

It's another envelope from Max of Starting Nine. He sent me a few shiny Dodgers from 2021. There is no way this purple-paralleled Walker Buehler would look as nice if I were to scan it.

 

For the last couple of years, Max has been my supplier for Finest Dodgers. I love Finest, I've said this many times before. Max understands because he seems to order up some every year and I get his extras. Good for him! Good for me!

Finest is extremely shiny, right up there with Chrome (it is chrome, duh). That means it's better photographed than scanned. However, shiny cards and picture-taking takes a lot of effort that I haven't mastered ... because I've been scanning for 13 years!

 

Get too close and you get your fingers in the shot!

 

Move too far away so the card isn't reflecting you and you just get a blurry image! Man, whose idea was it to make shiny cards anyway?

Here are some slightly better images of both:

All right, I don't know how much better that is, you can still see the phone in the Bellinger card. Obviously I need to look into finally getting a scanning app for the phone.

 

Here is something non-shiny (and non-2021) from Max. It's a Jackie Robinson Day "patch" card (again, these aren't patches). By the time this post publishes, we may or may not know how injured Kershaw is. And I would like anyone who complained over the offseason that the Dodgers were hoarding pitchers to apologize right now.

Finally, something completely different, it's a Sabres card from my favorite early '90s hockey set, 1991-92 Pro Set. Although this is from the Puck set, which I don't know anything about.

So, there's a few kinks to work out with this new set-up, but I'll get there. Just excuse the mess for a little bit.

Because I'm still blogging.

(Farewell, faithful desktop computer).