Be good to your card desk

 

I realize that I am fortunate to have a card room. Not every collector has one, in fact I didn't have one until three years ago, and I've been at this collecting thing for a long, long time. (My first packs weren't in '97 or in '87 or even in '77. Try 1975).

 

Inside that card room I have a card table and a card desk. I'm fortunate to have those, too. I have two binder shelves and a separate shelf cabinet for some card boxes. All very fortunate developments.

 

That's why I've been a bit concerned about my treatment of my room recently. Sure, some of the resulting mess was because I was upgrading some shelving (see photo above) and also launched a time-consuming giveaway.

 

 

But there's really no excuse for the clutter-fest on my card desk. I need to treat it better.  

I know it doesn't look that messy. But that's deceptive. I'm losing cards, you guys, because of the way it looks.

The bottom left third of the card desk is reserved for incoming card packages. Maybe I should devote more space to it (the middle is this year's current card stacks -- plus a giant stack of '82 Donruss as a reminder to chase down the rest of the set. The right third is envelope reminders for future outgoing packages).

I will be reconfiguring this arrangement soon but for now I had to take drastic action. The incoming packages had traveled out of the left third of the desk and over onto the table at the left. That's not good. I need that table for placing binders when I'm looking for a cards -- I'm too old to be sitting on the floor for everything.

So I've gathered up a bunch of new arrivals, which I'll show here. It's a great mix. And I'll try to go quick.

Most recent first, and, yes, it's a hated Giant. This arrived today. It's for the '79 Kellogg's piece-meal pursuit. This card was snatched away from me by a sniper a few weeks ago. That's Jack Clark fans for you. Snatching away victory. So I had to grab another.

 

This arrived Monday from Doc's Sports Card Sales. It's for my 1985 Fleer chase/slog. Just about every card left for this set is some star like Ripken. Mid '80s stars should not be this difficult.

 

 

 

This mid-'80s Fleer chase is going a little more smoothly. In fact, I should really just buy the whole set. This is one of the cards that arrived from Casey, who is a TCDB member. He reached out with a bunch of Dodgers needs plus this one set need.

A couple of snazzy '90s Dodgers from Casey.

 

A couple from the '97 Donruss Team set. Donruss' designs in the late '90s were ... odd.

A whole bunch of '90s parallel needs, from parallels I have no use for -- looking at you, random foil-stamped Martinez and Mondesi -- to the merely OK (silver signatures), to ones I can't stop loving, like the color parallel Pacific stuff and Ultra gold medallions.

Casey even through in a few modern needs. I had an accident with the Leaf Koufax card, dropping it on the stairs and dinging up a corner. Fortunately, someone else sent me the same card on the same day! No, you're not seeing that package today. This post will be long enough.

Three key parallel lands from KellysKards on Twitter.

 

Kelly is one of those great card-selling sites where a portion of sales goes to worthy causes. These arrived for much more cheaply than I would get them on another card-selling site.

 

In line with what I said about the '90s parallels, I only have tolerance for foil-stamped uselessness, like the top card, for someone like Kershaw. I've realized while updating my binders that when I get to the foil-stamped parallel team sets (example: the Marlins/Rockies things of the early '90s), my brain shuts off except to think "why did I get these?" They are sooooooooo boring. So I'm just not getting them anymore, except for guys like Kershaw.

 

 

How about that Albert Pujols?

It's very on-brand that Pujols was basically a one-trick pony for the Dodgers last year and is now hitting home runs like every at-bat for the suddenly alive Cardinals. (That DH slot helps). I'm glad I grabbed this Stadium Club Chrome card when I did. Everything Pujols has probably rocketed in the last three days.

Hey! A vintage card! Finally!!!

Were you worried? It won't be the only vintage card to appear on this post. But it's a good one and also so unlike me.

I grabbed it when The Diamond King offered it up as a freebie with another selection of dupes. I normally don't jump at 1968 Topps cards -- all that burlap -- but it's growing on me, as all '60s cards are, and it's someone I interviewed so, yeah, it should be in the collection.

The DK was nice enough to throw in some Dodgers, which he never has to do. The above three are definite needs and there's that needless stamped parallel again.

 

I am the latest to feature one of Nine Pockets' fantastic card creations.

As others have told you, Gregory offered up some custom cards after his battle of the bands fantasy series of posts. I was rooting for Van Halen to win. They didn't. But I got a Van Halen card out of it, so night owl wins!

In extremely time-appropriate fashion, the Nine Pockets back uses the 1984 Topps color scheme, a tribute to Van Halen's 1984 album! You can see how staid the pop charts were in the early '80s as Van Halen managed just six songs on the Billboard list. That's a crime.

I'm also thinking about adding the other Battle of the Bands cards to my collection.

 

These three cards are from my latest Time Travel Trade at Diamond Jesters. I seem to be one of only three or four bloggers who takes part in these things. I don't understand why there aren't more, there are so many good cards available. But I'm glad I have mostly free reign of selections.

 

I picked some more current oddballs this time. I normally don't go for oddballs that aren't from the '70s or '80s, but the McCovey is too good to pass up and I've always liked the 1994 Post set with the green borders. Must be like my '93 Select fixation.

OK, big finish in my desk clearing saga.

This may not look like much of a start, but Joe knows how well-rounded collectors behave. We need our current and our legends, our never-weres and always-beens. Joe has sent me some good stuff over the years and he never wants much in return. He's a great collector, looking out for others and satisfied with what he has.

This was an insert need from last year's Topps set.

And speaking of last year, two more of the 2021 Chrome Platinum Dodger cards! I believe this brings me to four whole cards from the team set. I'm not exactly Johnny in tracking these things down. But I'll get this done -- in a couple of years.

That does it for the modern stuff. Because that's not why Joe contacted me. This is why:

Those are some classic cards!

Most of them have condition issues, but as I've said many times about '50s cards, they wouldn't look right if they didn't have issues. The three cards in the middle, the '53 Bowman Erskine and the '54 Bowman Hodges and Erskine are brand new to my collection. The others are not. But I wanted the '56s because there's this completely unreasonable side of me that needs those for the Dodgers collection even though they're already in my 1956 complete set.

So I'm very happy with those. And Joe probably didn't know this, but that Erskine and Newcombe from '56 were the first two '56 Dodgers I ever owned.

So, there, my desk is much clearer than it once was, even though there still are like 5 packages to show off.

But that will come later. And hopefully I'll have a more organized card desk later, too.

It deserves it.

And I'm sick of panicking over missing cards.