Less than satisfactory results

 

I have been snapping pictures of the cards that Johnny's Trading Spot sent me a week or so ago just about all afternoon without suitable results.

 

I'm not sure what's going on but none of the pictures look right. Some of this may be because it's summer and there is so much light streaming into the house, but also I think it's because I never want to deal with whatever I need to get "the perfect picture." I really miss my scanner during times like these. But I can't be bothered to figure out why the heck it won't work or get yet another new one.

 

So I guess that's my problem, huh, if I don't want to do what it takes?

 

(And yours, I guess, since I'm going to show less than satisfactory pictures right now).

 

Johnny has been clearing house again in that alphabetical way he has. Lucky me, he's now at the K's, which means a whole bunch of Clayton Kershaw cards came my way. Sure, I have a lot of Kershaw cards already but he was able to find 18 that I didn't already own.

 

All of these were new to me. A couple of them I have ignored in the past -- stuff like those dumb Gary V. cards -- but, yeah, I'll take them for free! The card in the second picture, bottom right corner (in a too-dark photo), is not a 2008 Stadium Club rookie card, it's some sort of insert.

 

The addition of these cards puts me at either 1,258 or 1,275 Kershaw cards, it depends on where you're looking on TCDB, and I don't know why that matters. I'm still in sixth place among Kershaw collectors on TCDB, but I'm losing ground to the Kershaw freaks ahead of me and I'm sure I'll be caught by a couple more in the months to come.

 

I still like collecting his cards, but if it means grabbing a bunch of ugly Panini things, I'm going to accept being 12th or 15th. I still have way too many of his cards regardless.

 

 

A few other K's arrived with the Kershaws. These few Matt Kemp cards put Kemp solidly into fourth place overall in my collection, finally shedding Shawn Green (for now). Eric Karros is also in the top 10 (seventh overall).

 

 

A few other Dodger needs but only one "K" guy. The Kopech is one of the green-border cards that appeared in 2024 Heritage High Numbers but Topps weirdly calls them "white border" parallels.

 

You don't want to know how many times I took this particular picture -- and it still turned out like this. Maybe I need a new phone.

 

 

Some of the 2024 "Topps Japan" cards. I don't know why they don't feature the Japanese flag on the front anymore. Seems like an easy thing to do to make the card stand out at least a little. But Fanatics' policy seems to be to make cards as pointless-and-expensive as possible.

 

 

A trifecta of Miguel Vargas cards. Nobody wants his cards now that he's banished to the White Sox. He's got a lifetime batting average below the Mendoza line.

 

 

Some remaining Dodgers that will wedge their way into my collection, but I'd rather not talk about a couple of them.

 

 

 

John also sent me some more tennis cards. I didn't know what the heck these were and I had to look them up. Turns out Topps put out multiple tennis sets in 2024 for who knows why. I'm one of the only tennis cards fans I know and there's no way I'm going to try to collect more than one per year. I haven't even tried to finish off the Chrome set from 2024.

 

 

 Finally a couple of vintage cards unlike anything else I just showed (not a coincidence that these photographed better than all the other cards).

 

The Ruben Amaro is a nice upgrade for my 1969 Topps set and so I'm down to the final five needed cards to complete it. I'm kind of waiting for some magazine money to devote to those cards so it may be a few months.

 

So that's everything from John's latest dispersal. I hope the photos are OK.

 

Any card blogger will tell you that it's sometimes not easy blogging all the time. Often it's time constraints that are the problem, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff, like photo-taking problems or computer issues or google issues or writer's block or realizing you've already written that post halfway into writing the current one, and on and on and on.

 

You'd think a post like this where I'm just showing some cards that I received would be easy -- I mean a lot easier than yesterday's post, which took me more than a few minutes and received fewer comments than any previous One-Card Wonder post -- but they all take some work.

 

That's why I appreciate the casual "Thank you for your blog" notes that I still get after all these years. To me it's recognition that someone knows this isn't as simple as switching on the computer and typing some words.

 

Sometimes it's about wanting to throw your phone as far as humanely possible.