Women In Music

This post contains a handful of music videos and zero sports cards. If you're not a fan of video clips in a blog post feel free to skip it. Thanks.

I'm grateful to have an "alternative" rock radio station that I can listen to on my way to and from work, or for long drives to Connecticut. However Alt 92.3 is highly flawed. 

I'm also grateful for my job. It's easy, to the point of boredom, but my bosses are friendly and my co-workers are like family. My manager G is the best. The only complaint I have is that she loves country music. Her Spotify playlist is loaded with Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood, and the like. Some of you may like that sort of thing, but it gets repetitive after a while. I've heard it eight hours a day, five days a week, for the past year. My ears need a vacation.

Because of this I rely on Alt 92.3 to wake me up and give me two songs to enjoy before the inevitable assault on my senses begins. Far too often my station fails me.

Last Monday I was particularly frustrated with their selection. After starting far too many mornings with Billie Eilish I heard this track on my morning drive. I was already in a salty mood and complained about the "sleepy girl music" this station seems to love.

My wife took me to task. With two girls in the car, she wanted to make it very clear that girls don't exclusively make sleepy music (hello, Coldplay?)

Of course I knew that. But I didn't have the time or energy for a nuanced discussion.

Once I was at work and had some time to think, I started to realize that I've actually liked a lot more female singers than my wife has.

I'm the one that rocked out to "Barracuda" on Guitar Hero. I'm the one that can name the late singer of the Cranberries (she asked me this three days ago after Alt played "Zombie" for the 865th time - after work, of course.) I'm the one that went to a Jewel concert and wore a Garbage t-shirt to school and owned not one but two Veruca Salt albums.

Andso I complied a list of my favorite female singers while at work (to distract myself from the unpleasantness emanating from G's playlist) Since I couldn't listen to these great tracks at the time, I thought I'd post them today. And then I'll take my blogging break. Maybe ;)

Honorable Mentions/One Hit Wonders/etc.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, pretty much all of my favorite female celebs can sing - and some have even reached #1 on the Billboard charts (is there anything Anna Kendrick can't do?) I'm excluding them for this exercise.  

is it me, or is she giving off strong Tina Fey vibes here?

My personal playlists are often peppered with single tracks from female-fronted acts. Not all of them are one hit wonders. Sometimes I only like one of their songs, or I haven't downloaded more than one. That said, I highly recommend any/all of these tunes:

• Best Coast - "California Nights" an awesome summer chill track 
• Mazzy Star - "Fade Into You" sleepy girl music ain't always bad, lol
• The Sounds - "No One Sleeps When I'm Awake" hat tip to Night Owl
• The Faders - "No Sleep Tonight" hat tip to Veronica Mars
• Lacuna Coil - "Enjoy The Silence" killer cover of Depeche Mode's classic
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Maps"

 

 Not really a lead singer, but..

When I was a young lad, Smashing Pumpkins were my favorite band. I thought it was cool that the bass player was a girl. There didn't seem to be too many girls in rock bands at the time. My fellow Pumpkinheads and I really wanted to like D'arcy. But she always looked so disinterested. She didn't contribute all that much (although Billy Corgan's massive ego could be to blame) and didn't join the fairly recently reunited Pumpkins lineup. 

Nikki Monninger of Silversun Pickups is the bass player I always wished D'arcy would have been. She's a lot more fun to watch than D'Arcy ever was, contributes a lot more to her band, and she's just plain better at playing bass. Also, Nikki can sing quite well when called upon. Here's their brand-new cover of Martika's "Toy Soldiers":

A couple of years ago I bought a big box of CDs (and cards) from Gavin at a great price. There was so much music included that I might never get to it all, but I gave Metric a spin. Until then I'd only heard "Youth Without Youth." I'm now familiar with about a dozen more tracks, and I'm not quite all-in on all of it but I am sold on Emily Haines for sure. 

There was a time when I was into Paramore about as much (if not more) than I liked Fall Out Boy. Then Hayley Williams started doing solo projects, the Farro brothers left, and the band had to convince skeptics that they were still a band. The last Paramore single I liked was "The Only Exception" but everything up to that point was amazing. 

Three summers ago I was at a wedding for one of my wife's best friends and I heard a song that sounded like classic Paramore. But it wasn't anything I'd heard before and the vocal packed more punch. As I soon found out, this wasn't Paramore - it was Pvris.

 

Pvris was the opening act for 30 Seconds To Mars/Muse when we saw them at Jones Beach in New York. The Mrs. and I became fans almost immediately. I've never enjoyed an opening act as much as I did that day. Some of their songs are dark and depressing, and I'm not quite sure what they're going for on their new album, but Lynn Gunn is a force of nature.

After months of being beaten down by my manger's playlist I sought out cover versions of certain songs, to distract myself when I dislike the original artist. Lynn and Pvris covered Sia's "Chandelier"and absolutely crushed it:

Who are some of your favorite female musicians? Have you heard any of the tracks on my playlist? I'd love to hear your thoughts on these artists, or your own recommendations, in the comments.


Thanks for reading!!



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Finale

I have sent out all of the PWEs and received all of my purchases from the sale of the Mike Trout Bowman Chrome RC. I've also taken down my blog tabs until those pages are up to date. After that I'm going to update my TCDB tradelist and get some more trades going over there. I'm also going to take a break from blogging and buying cards in order to catch up on other non-sports things around the house. 

After the $50 COMC spending spree I headed over to the Beckett Marketplace for their Independence Day sale. All orders from participating sellers were 20% off + free shipping with a minimum purchase. I balanced my purchases between three sellers, including Rich 'N Deals, where I found this Ichiro insert from 2017 Topps Heritage high numbers.

Also grabbed a few All-Time Teams players including the elusive Wilbur Cooper, who has just four cards produced in the past 90 years!

The rest of this order was mostly set fillers, including some 1996-97 Flair hockey for my wife's set build (should I tell her this is her anniversary gift? lol)

 

For some reason the last card she needs (Jaroslav Svejkovsky) was more than 50 cents so I passed on it. If I'd known it would have finished the set I might have just spent the extra pocket change. The other two cards are from sets I thought were complete, but when I hand-checked each set I couldn't find Jay Harrison or Shayne Corson anywhere. Also I once dated a girl from Brampton back in the day andso Battalion cards bring back memories.

I'm chipping away at the 1993-94 Fleer Ultra basketball set. The Topps white-bordered rookies were the last two I needed to complete that 14-card set. David Robinson completes my 1989-90 Hoops set (finally) though I'm still searching for the alternate Pistons championship card at the end of the set.

I don't know what to do about 2016 Donruss football. I'm almost done with the veterans main set (cards #1-300) but I need half of the 100 rookies in the set (cards #301-400) It's probably not worth completing or breaking up at this point.
 

Low-end set fillers. Each card was 50 cents (40 cents with the discount) so I stuck with stars. An updated wantlist is forthcoming, though I might place an order at Cardbarrel first.

I'd been planning to upgrade my Johnny Damon 1993 SP RC since it's all scratched up. Then I noticed that most of my foil RCs are looking like they've been in my collection since I was 13 years old (because they have), so I upgraded ten more. This also helped me reach the $40 minimum to qualify for the discount.

Here's another one of my all-time favorite sets, 2002 Topps Pristine. Armando Benitez will go in my All-Time Teams binder. This Joey Harrington RC intrigued me since it was way out of my price range at the time. I didn't need to spend 60 cents on it, but I didn't see a reason not to, so I eventually decided to take it home. No complaints about the Carlos Delgado (card #2 in the set) but I actually ordered Jason Kendall (card #4). 

Also, this 4 Sport card of Beast of New Haven alum Mike Fountain was supposed to be a Printer's Proof parallel. As you can see, it's a regular base card. Which means it's a dupe :/

I searched all three sellers for Panini Immaculate collection relics and autos. Rich N Deals had this Tommy Henrich for just over $2.50 so I added it to my order. The fact that I actually got it is noteworthy.

Columbia Sportscards had two of my favorite running backs in one of my favorite relic sets - 2015 Panini Immaculate Collection. These Acetate swatches are numbered to the player's jersey number. COMC has a Brett Favre #d to 4 for $120; eBay has a Barry Sanders #d to 20 listed at $60.

I placed an order for four cards - two Panini Prizm singles for my 2014-15 set build...

 

..and two Immaculate low-numbered relics: Adrian Peterson (#d/28) and LaDanian Tomlinson (#d/21):

Two days after receiving a tracking number I was issued a refund for the Tomlinson. They didn't have it. I was so annoyed because, of the three I ordered, LT was the one I really wanted. And why did the seller take two days to issue a refund? 

Well, when I got the cards in the mail there was a note written on the receipt - apparently an ex-employee had helped himself to some stock, and the shop owner looked for LaDanain all weekend. When his search came up empty, he sent me a pair of replacements:

These don't really fit my collection, but it was a nice gesture and unnecessary since he did issue a full refund. I'll probably add them to my TCDB tradelist. 

The third seller I bought from was Three Stars. The highlights here are the Johnny Damon upgrade and Wally Joyner 2012 Topps Archives SP:

Stadium Club set fillers:

Aw crap, I had Tomas Nido and Tyler Wade in my Rich 'N Deals order.

 

And I didn't need this O-Pee-Chee Camden Yards card, either :/ I'm now one Giancarlo Stanton card away from completing the 2018 Stadium Club set.

 

More basketball rookies.  I'm down to five needs for 2015-16 Donruss.

I tried upgrading the Dale Ellis sticker but this one is diamond cut, too. So is the Malone. And the Mullin. Btw, I found a copy of the Chris Mullin card in my crawl space - but the sticker had been peeled.

The coolest card in the Three Stars order is this Larry Walker uncirculated refractor:

Because I had ordered a Brian Urlacher Immaculate Acetate relic and apparently it was out of stock. I didn't get an apology or a replacement for that one. 

I was very disappointed because Immaculate Acetate relics were near the top of my shopping list for spending that Mike Trout money. Going 2 for 4 left a bitter taste in my mouth, but that's unfortunately par for the course with the Beckett Marketplace. The prices for commons are high, it takes forever to place an order, and you never know what you're going to get. At least I crossed off a lot of set needs.

With the discount and the refunds I only ended up spending $78, though the only significant card I received was the Peterson relic. I'd already spent $53 at COMC, on ten cards I won't see for another three months, minimum. This was not going according to plan. I was supposed to get a big piece. I headed to eBay and picked up this:

I've wanted a Bob Gibson on-card auto for a while, and the Heritage red ink variations were out of my price range. 2000 Fleer Greats is one of my all-time favorite autograph sets, and the price was right at $40. Plus, the seller offered free shipping if you buy 2 or more cards. All I had to do was pick any other card he had for sale and I'd save four bucks.

Problem was, his cheapest cards were three bucks. And I couldn't decide between this Blue refractor parallel of Red Sox prospect Jeter Downs:

Or this In The Game parallel (#d/100 on the back) depicting the Whalers' second-worst trade ever:

As you may have guessed, I bought 'em both. Another $51 spent, after tax. Over $180 of my Mike Trout money was gone - and I still didn't have my Big Piece. 

For two weeks I checked the sales of three cards in particular: 1956 Topps Willie Mays, 1956 Topps Hank Aaron, and 1975 Topps Robin Yount. My goal was to come out of this spending spree with any one of those cards. But the Younts were overpriced (one sold for $201 before I had money, and $280 after I sold my Trout) and the Aarons were either flawed or out of my price range. 

I almost pulled the trigger on a 1956 Topps Mays. That would have been a few dollars over budget, but well worth it. And then I found another card that was cheaper, and in better condition. 


Ladies and gentlemen, the pièce de résistance:

'68 Willie Mays and I go way back. When this set was just 21 years old my mom took me to the nearby card shop, a little shack of a place four blocks away. My first LCS had a '68 Mays stored in an acrylic holder with the price written across the plastic in black sharpie: $50.

Until cleaning out my crawl space I was unsure of the exact date that my mom purchased the '68 Mays. Now I know - August 12, 1989. My ninth birthday. It was my first vintage card, my first high-value card, and probably my first card of a player who was in the Hall of Fame. I treasured it for four years. And then I traded it to a local dealer I knew, along with a 1989 Score Barry Sanders RC, for a 1962 Topps Willie Mays.

I sold that Mays and some other stuff (can't remember what) to buy a 1955 Bowman Mays.

This Trout sale, my 40th birthday, and the quest for my 100,000th card didn't match up exactly - but it got me thinking about specific cards that mean something to me. A 1956 Topps Mays would be a great building block for my set, but a 1968 Mays would always bring back a great memory from my childhood. (Also, It was $80 less than the '56 - which was a PSA 6, btw.)

I'm still 650 cards away from 100k but few of them, if any, have as much personal meaning to me as this Mays. All of the cards you see in this post - plus the $50 I spent at COMC - represented roughly half of the proceeds from the sale of a card I pulled out of a blaster. If this is the last card I buy all year, I would be very happy with that. Or perhaps I should try to buy something special this August 12. ;)



Thanks for reading!




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The Ultimate All-Sport Checklist

Now that I'm officially a four-sport card collector again, I've been wondering which legendary players are missing from my collection. The All-Time Teams series and its frankenset companion created a checklist of baseball greats whose cards were (and were not) in my binder. That got me curious about the other major sports - and all sports in general.

Let's start with The Greatest:

I do not have a Muhammad Ali card. I've never really seen boxing cards nor known anyone who collects them, so I was surprised to learn that Ali has 1,567 different cards. Based on his status as an icon, an activist, and arguably the greatest athlete ever, I should probably try to add one of his cards to my collection at some point.

There are a handful of soccer/futbol cards in my collection, though none of the players depicted would be considered all-time legends of the "beautiful game." That means I'm missing the greatest athlete of the 20th century, at least according to Natalie:

 

I did search for Pele cards on COMC a couple years back, but didn't see anything I liked for the meager amount of money I was willing to spend. (btw, I do have a Jim Thorpe card.)

Olympic sports have produced scores of legendary athletes, and I have a handful of Olympic cards in my collection. However none of them are all-time legends like Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, Michael Phelps, and Usain Bolt. Bolt would be the toughest to track down; he has just nine cards.

Tennis, anyone? I have a Serena Williams Sports Illustrated For Kids card, and an Arthur Ashe Flashbacks insert from the 2017 Topps Heritage baseball set. Someday I might endeavor to add Roger Federer, Martina Navratilova, or Chris Evert cards (I'm almost certain I had this one as a kid.) Pete Sampras is perhaps the greatest modern athlete with an August 12 birthday so I'd put him at the top of my tennis wantlist.

Golf, auto racing, and fight sports do not interest me at all. Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, and Jeff Gordon are not represented in my collection but I wouldn't say they're "missing". I have no idea who the big MMA stars are - other than Connor McGregor and I think he's more of a showman than a superstar. Does Bruce Lee have any cards?

Obviously the "big four" North American team sports rule the roost 'round here, and since Topps, Panini, and Upper Deck often include Hall of Famers in their current sets there shouldn't be a long list of all-time greats missing from my baseball, football, or hockey card collection. There are probably a few basketball legends I'm missing since I wasn't buying NBA cards for about 20 years. 

To find out which Hall of Famers I need to add to my wantlist I consulted each sports reference page and cross-checked it with TCDB. Here are the top five NBA players I'm missing, listed with their ranking on the all-time Win Shares list:

28. Dolph Schayes
31. Bob Pettit
37. Walt Bellamy
49. Chet Walker
52. Bailey Howell

I'm not sure how well this works (I've never even heard of Bailey Howell) so I consulted ESPN's recent ranking of the top 74 players of all-time. The players I'm missing are:

38. Bob Pettit
60. Willis Reed (181st in WS)
64. Earl Monroe (164th in WS)

That doesn't help much, but it tells me I need to add a Bob Pettit card to my collection.

Football-reference uses Approximate Value to determine the greatest players across all positions - which comes in handy since it's tough for me to assess the impact of offensive linemen. Based on this metric, the top five NFL players missing from my collection are:

15. Paul Krause
21. Jim Otto
27. Mick Tingelhoff
28. Gene Upshaw
31. Carl Eller

Again, I don't know how reliable this is. Phillip Rivers is 13th all-time in AV; Lawrence Taylor is tied for 26th. Let's just go with this list published by USA Today in February.

22. Sammy Baugh (NR)
29. Jack Lambert (t-116th in AV)
31. Bob Lilly (76th in AV)
35. Gino Marchetti (NR)
39. Mel Blount (46th in AV)

Btw, LT is ranked third on this list. I've been kicking the tires on his rookie card lately, which is a bargain compared to other players in the NFL's all-time top ten. Probably because of his off-the-field troubles (one reason why I haven't yet bought his RC.) 

I'll have to dig deeper into the NFL's all-time greats at some point. 

My hockey card collection is nearly twice the size of any other sport (though much of it belongs to my wife) and thanks in no small part to the 2004-05 In The Game Franchises set I've got at least one card of just about every significant NHL great - including the league's first scoring champ, Joe Malone.

Which brings us to baseball. The All-Time Teams project helped me identify Hall of Famers that were missing from my boxes and binders, such as Hank Greenberg and Billy Williams. They've since been added to my collection, leaving a few pre-war HOFers left to acquire. 

My baseball bias led me to believe that WAR was more accurate than the catch-all stats used for other sports. Now that I've found oddities in the football and basketball lists I'm looking at WAR a little differently. For example, the top five players missing from my collection are:

13. Eddie Collins
17. Kid Nichols
44. Eddie Plank
52. George Davis
53. Roger Connor

A casual baseball fan would see this list of pre-war players and wonder how Kid Nichols could rank higher than Lou Gehrig (18th), Mickey Mantle (21st), and Greg Maddux (27th.) The 19th-century ace of the Boston Beaneaters is now the highest-ranked player missing from my collection - because my Beckett Marketplace order contained an Eddie Collins card:

Technically I already had a Collins card, but this Perez-Steele Great Moments issue is the size of about four standard singles. This Conlon Collection card, along with the Urban Shocker underneath, are the latest additions to my All-Time Teams binder.



Which great athletes are missing from your collection? Do you have cards of transcendent sports stars even though they play sports that you don't follow?



Thanks for reading!



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The first $50

I'm ten days out from my 15th anniversary with the Mrs. and nearly all of the "play money" I set aside from the sale of my Mike Trout RC has been emptied out of my PayPal account. It did not go the way I expected at all. Shoebox Shane advised me to focus on one or two high-value cards and I really did try...but I ended up with a lot more than two cards.

Most of my purchases will arrive at the end of this week, and I'll likely recap them all sometime around the 17th. However I decided to spend $50 (plus tax) at COMC, knocking a few cards off of my watch list. I don't plan to request shipping until I've got 200 cards in my inventory (I'm at about 150 now) and I don't want to wait that long to discuss these cards. 

Initially I'd planned to pick up an Immaculate on-card auto of a Hall of Famer for $24.99. One of the 49 copies sold on eBay for over $32 and I was afraid that the COMC copy would have sold out as a result. It hasn't, but I got my Panini Immaculate Collection fix in other places (or tried to, anyway - that's a story for another post.)

Instead I spent my COMC cash on PC and set needs. A quick search for graded 1960s cards turned up this Al Simmons for my mid-grade 1961 Golden Press set build:

$8 down, $42 to go. Once this is in hand I'll have 12 of the 33 cards in the set. I'm still missing all of the big names (Cobb, DiMaggio, Gehrig) and there's a slight chance I'll add a couple more high-grade HOFers to my collection by the end of the week.

I've had my eye on these Conlon Collection color masters for quite a while. One COMC seller has a bunch and I finally made an offer on Frank "Home Run" Baker here. I added it to my inventory for $8.20, about 10% off the asking price of $9.

This Dustin Pedroia manupatch wasn't on my watch list for 100 years but it sure felt that way at times. I've kept an eye on it since 2018 and it just wouldn't budge below $5 - until last week when I snagged it for $4.65.

Thanks to CrazieJoe (and an assist from baseballcardstore.ca) I finished the 2003-04 Topps Pristine base set. I'm not bold enough to tackle the serial-numbered rookie portion, but I didn't hesitate to add a Devil #d/699 to my collection for $1.11. 

My Brett Favre box is running out of room and I planned to prioritize other player collections - until I came across this 2002 Topps Pristine refractor #d/349. The seller was asking $9.99 and I might have picked it up at that price. When it went on sale for $6.10 I threw it in my cart faster than one of Brett's bullet passes to Antonio Freeman. 

This Tremont Waters Panini Prizm green parallel was a bit of an impulse buy at $1.19. The G-League Rookie of the Year went to high school in my home town and, tragically, his father was found dead in a hotel that's about 20 feet from my mom's house (we used to play Wiffle Ball in this parking lot.) I was actually browsing Tacko Fall cards when I saw this color-matching gem pop up. If both Fall and Waters make the Celtics rotation I might have to switch allegiances from the Bucks, lol.

Here's a pair of on-card autos from 2018-19 Upper Deck Chronology. I've glanced at the $5 and under offerings from this set and Brian Bellows was one of the biggest stars (no pun intended) available. The green North Stars jersey featuring the 1991 Stanley Cup final patch caught my eye and led me to spend $3.80 in credit. I nearly got both Bellows and Nelson Emerson for $5 total; Emerson's messy signature set me back just $1.31. 

More Whalers here with a Ray Ferraro Canvas insert. I have no idea when Upper Deck started sneaking retired players into what I thought was a parallel set, or why they picked "Chicken Parm". Regardless, as soon as I saw it I added it to my watch list.. and then someone bought it an instant later. So I quickly snatched up the next-cheapest copy for $2.80.

Ferraro was the Whalers' #2 center for many years, behind this Hall of Famer:

Until now I did not have a rookie card of "Ronnie Franchise" and one of my goals with this windfall was to fill that hole in my collection. I had always hoped to pick up a graded copy but I just couldn't justify spending triple-digits on a slabbed single. And so I examined my options on COMC, picked out the best-looking copy in my price range and made an offer. It's a bit of a gamble at $12.75, and I won't know if it paid off for a few months, but at least I can cross this off my shopping list.

If my math is correct that's a total of $49.91. Can't exactly call this a COMC Blaster.. a COMC Megabox maybe?  

This is the last time I'll be spending money at COMC until at least Black Friday, and I'll be happy to bring home some longtime residents of my watch list.. eventually.


Are you still shopping on COMC? Has your opinion of the site changed due to their indefinite shipping delays?



Thanks for reading!



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Free Stuff Friday - Time Capsule Cards

Last weekend I was at my mom's house in Connecticut, for the first time since February. Since then Mom has informed us that she's moving out of the house that she moved into when I was 18 months old - which would be the spring of 1982. Mom can't climb up and down stairs any more because her back and knees are beyond repair. She'll be 78 in September - which is when she plans to move into her new first floor apartment on the other side of town.

I was asked to help her clean out the attic crawl space, but I had so much fun up there that I just did it all myself. By the time I was done more than four hours had passed, and I swear it only felt like two. The attic was my sports card and memorabilia room, before I moved out and my nephews moved in. While the room itself was a mixed bag of my stuff (which is still there) and my nephews', the stuff in the crawl space was all mine. Or so I thought.

The big thing that had to come out was my brother's old weight bench. I remember pushing that thing around the room as a kid; we must have stuffed it in the "hole" at some point. Once that was unbolted and discarded I pushed everything within reach to the mouth of the crawl space. I sat on the floor and sorted through the pile of sports cards that had been sitting in there for over 25 years. The newest cards were from 1993-94. I wasn't expecting to find anything older than 1986 - the year I started collecting - forgetting that even in the pre-internet days I was able to acquire older cards than the current year. Duh.

The attic room is always hot, especially in summer. I had a bottle of water nearby and an open window ten feet from where I was working. I was sweating and dirty and I couldn't have been happier. Some of the things in that crawl space were a tad embarrassing, but most of them brought back great memories. 

I uncovered things that had been buried in there for so long I'd never seen them before. My sister's toy horse collection was strewn about the crawl space. Larger horses were in one box, and glass/porcelain miniatures wrapped in newspaper were buried in the fiberglass. My mom was not going to look past the wooden bars, but I didn't want to leave anything behind. There were some cards and books sticking out of the fiberglass fields, too.

Along the inside wall I found more of my mom's books, at least six boxes worth. I'd barricaded myself inside at one point and called for someone to help move them out of my way. No one heard me, so I pushed them out myself. One of them was an old World Book volume that I wanted to take home (I loved encyclopedias as a kid and I miss them) but I was too concerned with the sports stuff and forgot to bring it. Oh, and I found this:

 
As soon as I saw it I laughed out loud. Mom, were these my diapers? I'm not sure what a box would cost today but these were $6.99. My sister (who has grandkids now) saw this and joked that Mom should have stocked up on Pampers at that price. 


Anyway.. you're not here to see 40 year-old diaper boxes, am I right? You're here for cards. We'll get there.


Among the reading material I found were some record store ads. One was from 1992, when I first started purchasing CDs, watching MTV every day, and checking the Billboard chart whenever I was in a music store. 

The funny thing about this particular top 40 chart is that my boss gave me the nickname "Chris cross" when I started working there - and then asked me if I knew who Kris Kross was.

Yep, I knew. He even played "Jump" at full blast one Friday afternoon. We all had a good laugh. He still calls me "Chris cross" sometimes.

This is not mine. Queen released Hot Space in May of 1982, so this flyer has been sitting in the attic for about as long as that diaper box.

Here's a magazine from 1981 with a boy playing baseball on the cover (remember when kids played baseball?) I skimmed through it and found a Quebec tourism ad, which I found funny considering the cover headline of "America, America!"

This was also published in 1981. Apparently I acquired it at a library bookmobile some years later. Take a look at these rankings, it's kind of a time capsule within a time capsule:

Please excuse my scribbles. I scribbled on pretty much everything back then. 

I could go on and on about the things I found in the crawl space, and perhaps I will discuss them further in a separate post. But I've made you read enough for now unless you scrolled through just to see the free cards - if so, shame on you! :P

About half of the time spent "cleaning the crawl space" was actually spent sorting through the hundreds of cards scattered on the floor. 90% of them were damaged; I only kept about 30 cards for my own collection. Most of these were overproduction-era singles that weren't worth saving considering their condition. I brought home the rest, in case any of my readers could use some of them. 

None of these "time capsule cards" are in near mint-mint condition, but they are free for the claiming. All I ask is that your comment includes more than just your claim (and limit 9 cards per customer, please.) Since I'm giving away cards that would have ended up in the garbage I'll do my best to throw in some more modern cards, in better condition. 

Let's start with some oddball items. Here's the Iron Man and Stan The Man:

Along with these Starting Lineup cards I found three figures and the backer board of another figure.

I remember buying the Rite Aid boxed set but had no recollection of the Fleer sets until I found the empty Award winners box in the crawl space.

Griffey is one of five Collect-a-books I found. The others were Robin Yount (keeper), Jeff George (damaged, one page had scotch tape across it), Joe Dumars, and Charles Oakley.

Non-sports anyone? There were more salvagable non-sports cards than football, basketball, and hockey cards combined.  

Yo! Anyone like old-school hip hop? 

Some all-time greats in decent shape...

..and some all-time greats in not-so-great shape.

Some early '80s commons:

And a few notable names:

We'll end this giveaway with the oldest card - and perhaps the most well-loved:

Hardly a historic find, but hopefully some of you can use some of these.


Thanks for reading, and happy 4th!



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