This is Christy and her Dog Charlie.  She is the one who got me into collecting, quite inadvertently.  For years I was a music guy with a whole big collection of vinyl.  I worked doing live sound for bands at several small/mid-size venues in DC and in Chicago before and after that.  I like sport, baseball and hockey mostly, and would follow along but didn't bother with cards or anything like that.  And to be quite honest I'm not sure why I latched onto "fiddling with cards" as it's come to be known around the house.  

As we were all coming out of Covid my wife Christy died suddenly, the details of which are not really germane to this post.  But suffice to say after a year or two of staring at the walls of wherever I physically was I needed something to occupy my mind and focus it on, so I didn't keep reliving the considerable traumas I was left with and somehow sorting large piles of cards did that.  To the point that I've ended up with complete sets, which didn't complete me after all. Also, lots of stuff I didn't want, but others do and I was used to buying/selling/swapping old records so that part of the hobby made sense.  So, I started to trade for Heritage and Archive sets, mostly, and then scrolling thru collections and checklists to find Action shots, Ivy cards, and foul names.  

I swing back and forth between feeling like this is the only thing that interests me to thinking this whole collecting thing is a colossal waste and that I should just fling all the boxes out of the window and then set them all on fire.  I'm trying to dial back the emotional extremes on both sides by enjoying what I do about the hobby and not get so far into it that I can't see a way out besides total destruction.  So, while I haven't found any new hobbies or interests, I have found Frankensets as a way to have order and chaos in the same binder.  The trick is trying to find things to trade for.  I've got some good stuff to trade and just added a box of vintage stuff to trade (1958-62 + 1969-76).  It's all base commons, but most of what I want back is on the less valuable side.  I just need help to find them because they don't obviously turn up on trade lists, as such.  Offer me up your truly trashed cards or check my wants for them.  So here are some sets I'm looking to build out of the Chaos.  

I'd like to build a set of a page or two of each Topps year from 1952-1985, to get a flavor of each year and basically of all guys named Dick.  There are a decent number of them up thru the late 70s, but there are not many superstar rare expensive cards, so I was able to easily add each years Dicks to the want list. I don't care much about he the condition, decent is fine, if it's totally trashed, I can put it in that Frankenset, but I don't care about most condition issues.  

I'm doing the Ivy set and the Action Parallel set and can share the spread sheet with blank slots if you have cards that might fit.  I also periodically search thru sets and add them to the want list, but if you see an especially good specimen hip me to it and I'll add it to the list if I don't know it.  

Of course, the Trashed set is proving a lot of fun to find lately, but I'd like to find cards in that kind of shape from all years, especially more recent years.  I have only 1 really mangled 2023 Heritage to speak of (a 400 series SP, no less, to make it even better) card that got caught between the lid and the row dividers.  I get "damaged cards" offered up but often when they arrive, they are just a little corner bend or edge chip on an otherwise clean card.  I want cards you can't conceive of doing anything with but throwing them away.  Ones you'd normally be embarrassed to trade.  I mean, seriously, look at what I've got so far in some other posts. 

And I want any card that has been defaced with teeth and glasses and bug eyes and sayings or even taped on word balloons.  I'd love to build a whole set of just these, but it will probably be combined with the trashed set because finding them in the wild is like finding hens teeth.  I'm going to do another post next week with some more posts of these defaced rarities.  But given the day that today is I'm probably just gonna fiddle with some cards for the next couple days and miss Christy and Char Char for a spell. 

And a quick post script.  I believe she is out there guiding my hand on what box to occasionally buy and guiding interesting deals my way.  I pulled Heritage Autos of George Brett and Fred Lynn, Archive autos of Manny Trillo (playing for the cubs when I was a wee tot going to the park in '75), Derek Lee, Juan Gonzalez, a couple of Randy Arozarena relics and a Garrett Crochet Rookie Debut Red Auto #2/5 that I got all the vintage stuff and cash off of.  So, I know she is still looking out for me, even if I didn't collect when we were together.  I love her and I love her wonderful pooch and I miss em both something fierce.  

 When I started sifting through piles of old cards a few years ago, not really collecting mind you, just throwing stuff into different piles and boxes, the first thing that I became enamored with was the action shot where the ball is in play but not in the possession of any player.  Balls on bats, balls on fingertips, balls in gloves, balls floating in the air especially.  My first several attempts at Frankensets involve action shots.  I'm a big chunk of the way into my current set which is these Action shots ALL on a parallel or insert card.  So, no base cards.  If I see a cool shot I have to find out if there was a Silver/Gold Signature, a green border, a sparkle pink, a Target Red, a Wal mart blue, a Meijers purple, a yellow Walgreens or even an Electric Ice parallel.  Then if there is, I gotta go find it.  Which is why many of you got trade requests from me about some obscure Fleer or UD card from the Gold Medallion or Gold hologram variety, respectively, of such cards.  Lately I've been experimenting with dispensing with the numbers altogether and arranging a Frankenset entirely visually.  Some grand extension of all cards somehow connecting together from one to the next.  Still working on that, but I have a couple single pages of things I was working out ideas with.  

Every ball is caught by the glove but is still a cm or two from hitting the leather and having the glove actually snap closed and count as possession.  A split second on a nearly microscopic scale.

Start in the upper left corner and allow your eyes to follow the ball thru the cards like a backward 6 and watch how you end up in an endless loop around the bottom two rows.

Schrödinger's Baseball has just been pitched in the center card. Until the ball is hit every single play is possible all at once. It could be fielded and thrown to first, a diving catch coming in to steal a bloop single or a smash brought back into the park, or it could be a foul tip straight up into the catcher's mitt.  All at once.  

Ivy, Ivy everywhere. Nor a leaf to pluck.

That is to say I'm not likely to see the ivy of Wrigley field at today's prices any time soon which proably explains this set.  This is a little bit of a change up from my other sets in that the star is the Ivy in the background.  I'll take close up super sharp leaves to the blurriest haze of a leafed wall in the distance.

I've got the spreadsheet updated to something like 400+ cards from all over.  The hardest part is to order them by number from the jumble in the bottom of a cigar box, but that now too, is done.  All that's left is to start putting it in the binder, which will commence before you know it.  But that still leaves a couple hundred cards needed so check the numbers when you see the Ivy and I'll trade for holes I need to fill.  Or if it's just a darn tootin' specimen.

I especially want shots like this, where you can see the houses across Waveland Ave that are now covered up by some sort of video screen monstrosity (which very likely cuts down the wind enough that they could put together a team to win it all in 2016). No amount of Ivy is too small for me to want it.  If you can find a card that has just one leaf on it I especially want it.  

Some of the cards are not so obviously Ivy because many walls are green, but even the blurriest Ivy has a certain texture.  Also there is a brown strip along the top that is broken up by a dark spot at even intervals which are the posts that hold up the catching fence that drunken bleacher bums fall into on occasion.  Its also an NL pitcher wearing his dark/grey road duds.  My only real problem with the picture is the casual way he holds his glove which seem to suggest that his mechanics are off which make me want to go google him and see if he was prone to getting lit up or ever had his elbow replaced.  But I digress.  This sort of shot is a bit like having Monet paint the background of one of DaVinci's Anatomy studies.  Many of the best Ivy cards are and as soon as they are bound up I'll have to figure out how to share the binder pages here.  

Look what Showed up in todays mail

 I scored a bunch of great stuff from an ebay buy today of assorted trashed and defaced cards.  I'm gettin enough that I am now making a spreadsheet of a binders worth, so I know what numbers I have and what I need to fill.  I haven't finished it, nor have I figured out how to post said sheet with the numbers I need. Or I could just periodically post a list of numbers I need filling, if I can figure out a way to get that list of empty numbers from an excel file.

First off, the defaced specimens' of the haul.  I'm debating if I will extend the frankenset beyond any brand/year/player and allow for any sport as well.  Betcha there would be some pretty funny defaced Cricket cards out there.  

I think those are supposed to be bruises on Paul Flatley.  And Killebrew?

This lot will probably make some of you cry but they are just beautiful to my eyes.  

I'm anxiously awaiting the next round of defaced and defiled cards from an ebay deal, but if you have stuff like this, from any sport or time period (doesnt have to be vintage if your pet wombat got ahold of your unfiled cards from Todays Series 1 release) I want them.  And I'll trade for them!

 

Do you have cards that have been defaced or defiled by some punk kid with no respect for the game?

Or by some witty doodler who had more time sniffing the marker than talent scribbling with it?

Or by a savagely furious 10 yo with a ball point pen exploding at some guy for blowing the game or just because he hates the name Leo?  

Well trade them to me for my "Defaced, Defiled and Downright Trashed" Frankenset.

I'm trying to find the worst condition cards I can to fill in every number.  These are the cards you would be embarrassed to put on your trade list regardless of who they are.  Every chewed up, creased, torn, hole poked, pockmark dirty ratty rounded corner edge ripped and torn garbage board stomped on with golf cleats can be repurposed into my set.  I'll even trade for them (not much, necessarily, mind you, but I will)

Every Card tells a story and if I can gather up enough of these to put in a binder I can't wait to see what kind of a tale they will tell.  

I started out on Set Builds but soon hit the Frankensets...

 ...FREE CARDS to the first person who can tell me where I cribbed this line from.

I started off building the Archives and Heritage sets and have finished several years' worth of base and some inserts (and still looking to finish those for the sake of it).  But as I put them all into card binders, I sat with them in my lap feeling rather underwhelmed.  I'd heard of this concept of Frankensets and had been tossing cards in a box based on various criteria and suddenly the idea of assembling by number all the cards of something that interested me re-lit my collector fires.  So now I have about 5 different Frankensets in various stages of completion and even more in the conception phase. 

And once I figure out all the bells and whistles of making this look snazzy, I'll start my ponderous oversharing on such topics as all my cards that picture Wrigley Fields Ivy in the background and the ongoing frustrating joy of finding cards defaced by juvenile delinquents abusing writing implements.