A Steaming Pile of Stuff To Do, Part III
November 6th, 2009 by slangon
Before I get into this, I just want to touch on two points.
First, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I live in New Jersey and work in Manhattan, which means I have about an hour and 15 minute commute by train/subway in the morning. Normally, this time is very relaxing for me. I get to listen to some tunes, read a book or newspaper, drink some coffee and just relax in preparation for the day ahead. Today, the goddamn Yankees ruined that for me. Both the train and subway were swamped with 10,000 idiot Yankees fans, hootin’ and hollerin’ on their way to the ticker tape parade. Let the bad mood commence.
Secondly, and on a more positive note, I just noticed that this was my 100th post. I sort of forgot about that when I was summing up what a busy, exciting week it’s been here at SlangKo Inc.
Okay. On to the steaming pile of stuff to do. This here is a nice little stack of cards that I picked up at the local card shop. But let me explain a bit about my local card shop. It’s not very good. It’s the only card shop within 45 minutes to me though, so I kind of have no choice. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t say it’s not very good. It’s fine. They have stuff. I guess I just don’t like it because it’s really on the expensive side. To give you an idea, they were selling hobby boxes of 09 A&G for $105. I know, right. Really the only reason I ever go there is to either get supplies like boxes or sleeves, or for the giant Mets box. They have a couple of monster boxes filled with singles of all the local teams (Mets, Yanks, Phils) that are either $0.50 a pop or 15 for $5. If you buy the 15, that works out to $0.33 a card, which is bull since most of what’s in them isn’t worth that, even if you’re going by Beckett. It is, however a pretty cool thing for team collectors like me, so I don’t mind getting ripped off paying a little more. Last week I was in need of some storage boxes, so I decided to pony up $10 for 30 cards. Here’s what I got, in bunches.
A trio of 1969 World Series heroes.
A trio of Mets from the 1970’s.
A trio of 1981 Topps Mets. For me personally, the 1980’s were the start of the downfall of card design, but I thought the first half of the decade was still pretty cool, especially this one. How can you not like the hats?
A trio of 1986 World Series heroes. Let’s go Blue Team!
An octet of 2002 Fleer Tradition Mets. Funny story about the first two guys shown here. A few years back, when Piazza was still the King of New York, I was working on a freelance design project for the strength trainer for the Mets at the time (I think he was trying to start his own personal training company. I was designing stationary and business cards for him.) He found out that I was a huge Mets fan and asked me if wanted him to get me an autographed ball from anbody. For some reason that I cannot explain, I asked if he could get me Joe McEwing instead of, say Mike Piazza. I guess I’m not too mad. I always loved Joe. In hindsight, I don’t know why I didn’t just ask him if he could get me both Mike and Joe. I drank a lot more back then. Moving on.
A trio of cards of possibly my most favoritest battery in Mets history. Question: If Topps Sued Upper Deck over the O-Pee-Chee design, how the hell did these UD Vintage cards fly under the radar? That ’65 design is pretty damn sweet though. Also, that middle card, which is a 2003 Ultra, really threw me off. After I scanned it and put it away, I was curious as to what year it was, so I searched it on the web. None of the pictures that came up had those cut-outs on the top and bottom, so I figured I got a card that some weirdo decided to carve up. Turns out that’s how Fleer differentiated the Gold Medallion parallel that year. That’s just weird.
A trio of Mets that I couldn’t find a common factor for other than they played for the Mets during the mid-oughts (Is that way you call the 2000’s?).
And the 30th (and possibly 31st) card of the bunch…
I’m not ashamed to admit it. Sometimes I look through the Phillies and Yankees boxes too. This one is a 1986 Burger King All-Pro Series panel featuring 2 Hall of Famers. Plus a coupon for a free Whopper. At first I thought it was just Mike Schmidt, and was going to get it anyway because I like weird food cards, but then I saw that it was folded over like a booklet and saw that it also had Steve Carlton. And the Whopper coupon. It’s pretty cool that the panel is still intact. I guess someone didn’t want a free Whopper.
That’s all for today, kids. I still have the box that Stats-On-The-Back sent me and the TTM success to do. Stay tuned.
They couldn’t find a hat to fit Mike Schmidt? Maybe that “one size fits all” doesn’t really.
I think I go to the same card shop. I agree – nearly everything in there is overpriced except for the supplies.
The giant team monster boxes are usually entertaining, at least.