Fifty-five hundred posts of showing what most consider mindless accumulation

 

 

This is post No. 5500 on the blog. Not that the number means all that much, unless you tell someone outside the hobby that you've written 5,500 blog posts about accumulating cards. That will probably draw some sort of reaction.

 

To them -- most of them anyway -- it's all just mindless accumulation. It's all stuff for the throw-out man eventually. But to me, and the people who read this -- this blog isn't FOR YOU, people who think cards are dumb -- every card added has meaning. It fits into a specific category that pays tribute to whatever thing -- baseball, player, year, hobby -- that means something to that collector.

 

There's probably no more appropriate time than to go through some recent pickups -- wildly unconnected -- that have been occupying space on my card desk for too long. Yeah it's another show-off post. I'm 5500 posts in now, I can't change.

 

This will illustrate exactly how many kinds of cards I think are important and also that I can't focus on, or commit, to any one thing.

 

You remember that I'm collecting Ron Cey 1976/1977 MSA discs, right? (Non-collector currently shaking her/his head). This is my10th back variation, Towne Club Pop Centers. So much greatness in one simple 1970s advertisement.

I've got my eye on an 11th, but you'll see I've got to mix things up to stay sharp.

 

 

Also another parallel pursuit that I've mentioned recently. I'm now chasing down the 2009 gold parallel Dodgers after finishing the 2008 set. The Mark Loretta is just the most recent, I've added a couple others in recent weeks and I think I'm down to the final two or three -- which I'll get to as soon as I can brush aside 14 other card wants.

Going back even few more months more, to my plan to chase down the O-Pee-Chee Dodgers from the 1970s sets I need, specifically 1975. This has been stagnating for awhile -- not because I've forgotten but because a lot of these cards come from Canadian sellers and shipping prices are outrageous. I'm 30 minutes from the border! Drive it over! (OK, never mind that, it'll probably cost more in gas mileage).

But I did spring for one of the cheaper ones, featuring a list of Firefighters.

More dereliction of duty. While I'm chasing down all the Swell cards, and not doing a great job at it -- thinking sets are complete when they're not -- I've completely ignored getting the rest of the 1989 Swell Dodgers I need.

Claude Osteen completes the Los Angeles portion of the Dodgers but there are still three Brooklyns out there.

 

 

 

Almost forgot these. Yet another category and a set I want to complete. These are the latest 1970 Laughlin Fleer World Series cards for my collection. I go in stages on these. And as soon as I see one I don't have, I remind myself I need to get back to chasing them.
 

Finally got ahold of the Clayton Kershaw card from last year's Big League. It's one the rare-tier cards, not the easy rare or the super-hard rare, but the pretty-hard rare (really hate this set). The card had been selling in double figures for like a year, which is nuts for a base card. But I finally found one at one-third of the price of most of them. Cooooool!!!!

The seller not only sweetly discounted the Kershaw card but he threw in 10 cards from this year's set! No slouches either. It was my first look at 2024 Big League.

 

The cards are all right, but probably nothing I would have collected even when Big League was a normal set.

Since getting those, I've ordered the Will Smith card from this year's set (up at the top) and the Clayton Kershaw -- both are in the slightly rare category -- and I've ordered the rest of the 2024 Dodger team cards that aren't in special tiers. As usual, the special-tier cards can sit on online selling sites for the rest of time and I'll only touch them when someone comes to their senses.

Finally, a TCDB trade featuring a couple of 1969 Topps prospect cards from the high-number portion of the set.

I haven't made a TCDB trade in a long time, mostly because I still don't have the time to make offers over there. But Steffan reached out again and made things nice and easy.

He even threw in an extra Cubs prospects card that wasn't part of the deal (gee, I wonder why the Cubs weren't good in the '70s?).

The 1969 Topps set hasn't received very much of my attention the last six months or so, thanks to trying to slam the door shut on the 1970 set (still working on the final three cards). But once 1970 is done, this will probably get my full focus.

Or I'll veer off into some sort of OPC/gold parallel/1970s oddball/Dodgers team set/glossy '80s thing/set I totally forgot about but always wanted.

Each of these have meaning and are totally, totally not mindless.

I hope I've established that in the past fifty-five four hundred and ninety-nine posts.