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.