Sunday, September 20, 2020

Three Brians and a baby

Apologies. Recent life situations had me disappear for a bit, and I'll get to those later. However, it's important I get back to the blog for many reasons, including the large number of people emailing and texting saying "Jeff, we miss your elegant prose and your strong words of wisdom - please come back".

"There is no life I know, to compare with....."

So a quick rundown: lost my job, found a new job, pandemic crap (no one here got sick)finances, and other things.

Wow - that wasn't really much of an impressive rundown. There will be more later. But enough of my witty prose - on to the cardboard!

Being out of work for a couple month, you would have thought my desk is so clean I can perform surgery between my mouse and keyboard. Yeah, that's not true, but I have done some sorting, scanning and organizing with past mailers that should have been sorted, scanned and organized far earlier than they were. First up is Brian from NY, who I don't think has a blog. Correct me if I am wrong. According to the postmark, I received this PWE in March of 2019 (insert Picard face palm here). 

A fine smattering of Buehrles were found. Mark has an auto in this year's Archives, to which I say "About fricking time". Not sure if it was a Mark thing or a Topps thing, but certified autographs from Mark are VERY few and far between. I will pick one up someday.

Yeah - you can tell this is a 2019 mailer as there is a Luis Robert sighting. I Twitter ranted about all the high end releases and costs of cards recently, with Roberts being one of those guys that price me out of the hobby. I am not sure how many Robert cards I have in my Sox box, but if it's 5 I would be shocked. Anyway, thanks for the cards, Brian.

Next up is another Brian, this one running the awesome HSCA. I misplaced the mailer, but I am sure this is another 2019 package. Let's go to the images.

Look at the colors! While they are pretty to look at, let's be honest - colored parallels are dumb. No matter how amazing that Anderson card looks with black borders (or say any Dodger card looks with blue borders), they are gimmicky and have no place in the hobby. Teams sets are more than complete without color variation, pattern variation, etc.

Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust a bit outside. A find stack of miscuts. Even the superstars can't avoid being miscentered under the blade.

Autographs and a relic. Gio seems to be the Billy Martin of our pitching staff, leaving and then coming back. Stumm has a sniff of Double A, leaving the same in 2005. And Sale. You know.

The highlights were these beauties. Yoan is the ONLY TOpps Living Set card I have, cuz I won't buy any of the others. I should, but at this point they will all need to be second market, and I have zero clue how many White Sox are out there. (According to a search of the Google, the Sox currently have 14 cards in the set.) And that Al is not a damaged or poorly printed card....

...but the 1st Venezuelan card in my collection!!!! I know Brian has been working on building a Venezuelan set, so I hope this is an extra and not him abandoning hope. Thanks a ton for all the paper rectangles, Brian.

The final Brian on this post doesn't collect cards. He's my son in-law, and besides collecting my daughter's heart, he also created this:

That is my semi decent shot at her first Bowman card because yes - she is a Bowman. Scout Piper Bowman. She has a "3B" designation as she is the third grand daughter for the Bowman side of the family. She's the first on the Wilk side. She's cute, funny, growing SO fast and turned 6 months old a week ago. 

I wasn't happy with the first Bowman card I made for Scout, and I think the 2nd is far better, mainly because of photo selection. I get a real Rivera rookie card feel from it. 

So yeah - been busy, and bit down for a while when I was laid off from my job in July (I had seen it coming for months and months), but hopefully things will be better with my new job and I can get back to a good flow. I'm going to make no guarantees, because life is life and who knows what tomorrow will be. I do know I have been making dents in organization and mailing are starting to go out. 

Yes - watch your mailbox. At the very least, watch your inbox cuz I am confirming addresses before I ship.