Since I don't prioritize autographs in my collection, I don't have a lot of them that aren't Dodgers. The ones I do have sit in the back of my autograph binder, filled with 99 percent Dodger scribbles. There are a handful of Bills and Sabres scribbles, too. But those autographs have meaning, too, and every once in awhile I will come across one that I need to include in my collection. One of those times happened yesterday. I went to the monthly card show -- I'll have a post all about it tomorrow. The last card I picked up there was an autograph card. I saw it at the first table I was at -- and I told myself that if I still had money left and the card was still there -- I'd add it on my way out the door. And that's what I did. I had to -- it's The Mad Hungarian! This is one of the exceptions. Al Hrabosky is from my early days as a fan. I remember seeing him when the Cardinals played the Mets in the mid-to-late 1970s. Hrabosky, as you may know or h...
As you know, I completed the 1956 Topps set five years ago. It happened in April. Wonderful day. Two months later, I bought a car. Not much to connect the two events at the time, except I had some extra cash floating around that allowed me to do both things. But on Thursday -- five years later -- the end of a long, winding journey arrived for both. Here's how: Yesterday afternoon, finally, FINALLY, I picked up that same vehicle from the body shop. This is the one that was attacked by ice three months ago, rendering it undriveable. Through a combination of factors -- overloaded and understaffed body shops, the backwoods in which I live, way more damage than originally anticipated, incredible wait times for shipment of parts -- I was without that vehicle for three months and six days. Because of various other issues, some of which I mentioned earlier, the only traveling I did for a month was to and from work and to and from the grocery store down t...