We're getting our first snow of the season today. The good news is November is almost over before we saw snow, which is pretty unusual. The bad news is it's lake-effect snow, on the holiday, and why couldn't it have snowed on Nov. 15th when no one was visiting anything?
But we'll get over it, we always do. It's nice to be inside with no responsibilities and cards to pass the time.
Today I've been sorting the bunches of cards I received from Johnny's Trading Spot a couple of weeks ago. That always demands some open time in my schedule so I can squint at the copyrights on the back for the cards I don't know. He's always unearthing something I've never heard of.
The box arrival was actually signaled a few days earlier with a thank you note and three cards for playing one of Johnny's guessing games recently. I was mystified by the envelope because I didn't remember participating, but it turns out I had, just poorly and wanted to forget about it.
I need two of these three cards, so that's very nice for leaving a dumb comment!
But let's get to the big ol' box of cards. There were plenty of ones that I had, but I've already been able to package those up for another collector. And then there was a nice stack of Dodgers that I needed!
I have a feeling that I was a lucky benefactor of Johnny's alphabetical sorting, because there were a good amount of "B" Dodgers.
Just a handful of Buehler needs but it's always nice to see these come in. I'll still be collecting his Dodgers cards even if he heads somewhere else 😞
A lot more Bellingers that were new to the collection! Notice that only the top two on the left are Topps cards. There's one Bowman and then everything else is Panini, proving that Panini contributes to card glut (and discount boxes) at a mind-boggling rate. I'm willing to bet there is more Panini cards in landfills than any other card product aside from 1990/1991 Donruss. (Oops, a Keibert Ruiz card slipped in with the Bellingers).
Best of all, a Bunch of Betts!! Very happy about these. It took Mookie Betts just four years to climb to 12th in terms of players with the most cards in my collection. He's six cards out of the top 10, so he'll be there in record time.
The Triple B's were a nice change of pace from the stacks of Gavin Luxes and Andre Jacksons that usually show up. There was just a smattering of those -- or maybe it's because I have them all already thanks to John!
Just a handful (plus Miguel Vargas, who is now a Dodger outcast).
But there were some Keibert Ruizes, who still grows in my collection even long after he's been forgotten as a Dodger.
Let's get to some brighter goodies, less about individual players and more about 2024 set needs and colorfulness!
The Will Smith is a parallel from the logofractor set that I had no idea was out this year. Who keeps track of this stuff?
This is nice. It's an insert in Finest this year. I wouldn't mind collecting it, but it's a 10-card set and that doesn't fit in a binder page.
Some good Update stuff, including those always difficult All-Star inserts and the 1989 inserts. Wonderful.
Other cool ones. That card on the bottom right is something called Leaf "Electrux". It's a Steve Sax card and it's weird-looking. Had no idea what I was staring at when I pulled it out.
Johnny asked about my 1987 Fleer glossy wants in an email so I knew these were coming. I've always had trouble distinguishing '87 glossies from the regular Fleer set, they all seem glossy half the time. But this will get me to almost all the glossy cards, just a couple missing now.
That's about it for the baseball, but there was more than just baseball in the box. Otherwise why would the blog title say "TWO sports that you can't play outside now"?
Yes, Johnny graced me with a good amount of the 2024 Topps Chrome Tennis set. I loved the 2021 set and Johnny helped me complete that one very nicely.
And here's the thing: before I knew all these 2024 tennis cards were coming my way, I might have bought a blaster or two or three of the product at Target. There was a period there where there were no baseball cards for sale and the only thing I was interested in were these tennis blasters. Then it got to be a thing: since they were so unwanted by the general public and so interesting to me, I felt like I had my own little product just for me. How nice of Target to set that out for little ol' me!
So, yeah, with Johnny's send there were lots of dupes. But two good things about that:
1. A lot of the "rookie cards" were missing from what Johnny sent. I had no idea there were rookie cards in the set -- they're not marked and who cares about tennis rookies anyway? But since I had bought cards of my own, I had landed some of those cards already. So now I'm just 12 cards away from finishing the set.
2. I've already offloaded almost all my dupes in a TCDB trade! I was surprised someone wanted tennis cards and so soon. But COOL!
Johnny also sent several inserts from the 2021 set. The inserts look very nice (though the 2024 ones look even better).
I've dedicated a binder for the 2021 set already so now I need to find one for the 2024 set and get those 12 more cards!
All right, I've gone out and shoveled out the cars and the neighborhood snow blowers have done their work. There's a bunch more coming Saturday supposedly so it appears we're officially in the winter season.
Seems like we just got done with that.
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