It's my blog dammit

  

One thing I still haven't been able to get into my head with this blog, even decades in, is that it's my blog.

 

You'd think I'd know that by now. I can post whatever the hell I want on here. I can post about happy little trees or rank rust-removal products or list my favorite Pure Prairie League songs. I can write about anything.

 

But instead I do dumb stuff like avoid showing individual cards that have come into my home recently because only 5 people might care. I make exceptions for cards that somebody has gifted or trade me or a large online order that I can wrap up into a theme, but the scatter-shot purchasing of a card here and there that I always do -- that we always do -- nah, that's not good enough.

 

I think that's because of my work job. As sports editor, and I've been doing this for a long time, my job is to find stories that are interesting and newsworthy to our readers. That sometimes bleeds over into my blog as I'm creating content here like I do at work. I feel like nothing is worthwhile here unless it speaks to a large number of collectors.

 

That's silly. Other card bloggers don't operate like that. They post what they want. They post their brand new individual cards that they like, others' interests be damned.

 

So that blog title up there is for me ... for the 500th time ... post whatever the hell you want.

 

Therefore, I shall:

 

 

The two most-recent 1975 Topps buybacks in my collection. The Lopes card gets me to only Garvey-centric cards needed to finish the Dodgers buybacks. The Gossage card is one of the relatively few Hall of Famers in my buyback collection.

 

The Gossage wasn't cheap. None of these buybacks I'm getting now are. Gone are the days when I refused to pay more than 2 bucks for a '75 buyback. But with a little planning, I can justify shelling out double figures.

 

The two cards give me 547 buybacks in the 660-card set or 82.9% complete. But more importantly ...

 

 ... each card filled a page. They are the 19th and 20th complete pages in the collection.

 

The cards trickle in a lot slower now so who knows when I'll officially declare this done. It's years in the future.

 

All right, what else did I get recently that interests me and like 3 other people?

 

 

Yes, I finished the 1990 O-Pee-Chee Dodgers team set.

 

This wasn't tough to do, although one portion did take a month to show up at my door (shame on me who used to patiently wait 6-to-8 weeks for something off a cereal box when I knew of no other speed).

 

As often is with the case with OPC, I'm not 100 percent sure I have everything I need. Online team checklists usually don't take into account cards like the Alejandro Pena, in which he left the Dodgers for a new team. The Pena card is in the Mets checklist on TCDB, and I'd have to consult every team checklist to really know (there's probably an easier way).

 

I'm trying to delay going back to the 1970s OPC Dodger cards and looking for more low-hanging fruit. I believe I still have some 1987 OPC work to do, which is actually pathetic. But I'll try to do it so quickly I don't even notice.

 

 

 Wow, did that make your head spin?

 

My latest sportlots order has started to come in, this was the first arrival. It's a small order this time, just a few cards, so no grand sportlots post -- but I know there will be one other future post based off of a couple of the cards I purchased.

 

This was the last 1967 Topps leaders card that I needed. I will have to get a second Koufax leaders card (at least two of them) because of team interests, which is distressing. So I'll focus on this:

 

This card means I have every card from No. 1-429 in the set with the exception of No. 150 (Mantle) and No. 250 (Aaron). Yeah, big exceptions. But that's still an achievement for a collector with somewhat limited means.

 

I no longer think I'll finish the 1967 set -- not that I ever did actually -- but I still peck away at it because I like the cards and weird things happen sometimes.

 

Like me posting whatever I want to post.

 

Up next on the blog: the best time to eat 12 different kinds of fruits.

 

OK, not really.