King Kong and CSI Von

 My sometime-trading partner Mark (TCDB mzentko) sent me some stuff out of the blue that I certainly appreciate

Gotta love a well love double oh like the Kingman All Star card.  

And the Tony Armas is pretty shabby too.

I do love it when a card gets jammed in on the middle of the edge but does little damage to the rest of the card.  It always makes me wonder what happened as I run my fingernail over it.  And the Von Joshua card has so much going on.  He looks like he stepped off the set of CSI to investigate how he got that unibrow.  Plus, it's an ATF card with that Marlboro billboard.  I'm thinking its Yankee stadium.  

Now looking at Don's cartoon back I'm stuck by the thought that I have never run into one of these cartoon cards with cartoon glasses or mustaches drawn on.  They only did them like this for a year or two.  Did they have to stop because of reports from parents that these cards encouraged artistic juvenile delinquency? Thanks Mark.  

And if you have trashed cards you want to get rid of email me and I'll figure out something cool to send back in trade.  

Floating Balls in Sparkles has been cleaved in half, or maybe two thirds (part 2)

 Here's a couple pages of the Vertical binder in which all cards are of the Portrait orientation. 2/3s of the collection of Action Parallels stayed here but it opened up a lot of slots, especially on pages that were already filled in the old binder.  Here's a couple pages of the Vertical binder in which all cards are of the Portrait orientation. 2/3s of the collection of Action Parallels stayed here but it opened up a lot of slots, especially on pages that were already filled in the old binder.  

Here on the first page, you might not notice that we lost our #1 card, which was a Cal Ripken silver Sig on UD.  I do have at least one Horizontal alternatives on my want list.  I think there is a Chipper Jones Red or Gold foil on Stadium Club from about 10 years back that I'm trying to hunt down without eBay, but if you come across a candidate for #1 that has parallels, please let me know

See, #1 was really actually #10 Archie Bradley the dancing bear Orange Sparkle SN /25 showing thru the empty slot. But it is amazing that there are so many different angle shots of Ozzie's balls floating in mid-air all within the same 2 pages numerically.  

This is a random page a little further into the binder that I think spreads out the shots a little more evenly.

I've got so many cards that many of the numbers have more than one card.  I've been experimenting with doing 2 sets at a time.  Basically, putting dupe numbers in the back slot of the binder page.  

Some pages have only 1 or 2 but many pages are filling up close to full.  I figure I can build two set simultaneously.  to some degree I've been doing this on all the sets, the Trashed, action set going both ways, I've even got a 1996 Metal Universe set that I have been putting the Platinum parallel on the back of each page.  That set was the first I laid out this way and was one of my early experiments with the manipulation of the numbering for my own amusement.  

Floating Balls in Sparkles has been cleaved in half, or maybe a third

 I've been doing more trolling Ebay and trade lists for cards that might fit a frankenset and less writing about Frankensets.  I've got a few things to share in the coming days but right quick I have the results of splitting the Action Parallel set (AKA the floating ball in sparkle set) into two new collections: Landscape and Vertical.  Horizontal and Portrait, if you will.  It split up about 2/3 regular up and down cards and about 1/3 of the set are longways on their sides.  I don't have many full pages at this point and they are spaced out a bit, so there will be some cards that are a little blurry because they are a sheet or two below the top. 

 This is the first page

Here's a few that laid out nicely at random

I like the flow of the wide vision shots all laid out together.  It works better than getting a sore neck from twisting your head constantly to reorient the card.  I prefer to follow the flow of the ball in the action, and it just works better this way.  We'll take a look at how the regular orientation looks next time.  

I'll have to compile a list of all the numbers I need to fill in duplicate before I list the numbers I need.  In the meantime, if you have a Landscape/Horizontal oriented card of the Action Parallel sort it's a good bet that I'll need it to fill a hole in the new binder. So, let's trade.  

1959 Topps: Who punched Tom Acker in the eye?

 Anyone seen this Tom Acker misprint? Looks like somebody splashed acid in his face or great American hero Jason Varitek gave him the ARod special.

Given I have two and they have the same defect I thought he might have had an injury at first, but I compared it to ebay and TCDB entries and saw nothing similar.  Is this akin to the Ken Griffey Jr card that has the big scab on his elbow?  And was that big scab a true printing error or the result of playing on carpet in Seattle and or Cincinnati?

A real card Sophie's Choice but if she had twins.

 I found a couple choice things on Ebay the other day. this is a '51 Bowman and I almost passed by and missed the added facial hair.  I actually paid something like real money on this for the privilege of not having actual whiskers taped on, just bad pencil marks that were almost lost in the crease.

It makes me wonder if the card was creased first and then someone decided to add some (thankfully fake) whiskers on our pal.

I was really surprised to see this Sam Esposito on ebay given the condition.  Rarely do you get things this trashed sold with a straight face.  Normally people package it in a lot of low level cards or try to hide it in with some randoms.  Rarely does one try sell it at a single card rate. 

 

I mean somebody seem to have put a knuckle clear thru it.  So when it arrived I went running to the binder, I was already decided that this card was too good to  pass up and would knock out whatever was in there.  Probably a 70s miscut, I thought.  So when I got to slot 425 I was met with this.

Sad Trumpet Womp 

                                       womp 

                                                       

                                                          womp 

                                                                       

                                                                              womp 

                                                                                       

                                                                                                 womp. 

I must inform you this is not the first time this has happened.  Usually, one card is clearly way better.  But here my original card has a massive crease across his face, after which someone's dog gnawed off one of the corners.  But my new specimen has been punched clean thru with a karate knuckle punch.  I think it has happened with at least one other 1958.  I seem to recall finding a Cal McLish card that was defaced and rushed to get it as an upgrade for that spot and got to the binder only to discover I had a pretty beat up, but not defaced, Cal already.  So, if anyone wants to start your own trash set, I have dupes to trade.  Almost happened yet again yesterday.  I Saw a beat-up Ray Katt on ebay an went running to find out if it was worth replacing the...much more beat up Ray Katt. 

The Long awaited totally new and unannounced Frankenset Announced anew.

 Here are some mockup pages to a new Frankenset I've been playing around with.  Trying to do 1951 to 85 or so I have a page or two of each year's cards in a binder to have a representation of each year's style.  The layout is not totally random, but for the most part not a lot of thought went into how arrange each year quite yet.  

1960

1962  

There are certainly enough Dicks to fill up most years, but I don't have all the cards I need yet (trade with me) so I played around with adding some of the funniest looking guys. It makes me wonder if I should do a Frankenset for team Chew.

1974  

1975

1976 

You really gotta let Pete Ride the Center Square from here on out.  And you don't need to twist my arm to have the Glorious Afro of Oscar Gamble. 

1978 

Here I come up short again and think to expand the criteria of a theme out a bit. Still playing with a bit of Oscar Gamble and Warren Brusstar's white boy afro along with a spare baseball in his cheek

1979 

Still experimenting with the larger but still totally juvenile theme.  I'm also noticing Mr. Brusstar looks like Mr. Yuk and with that much chew in his lip he probably ought to call poison control.  

I've got all the Dicks added to my want list and I'm cool with pretty much any condition.  They don't have to be in horrible shape, but they also don't need to be in great shape. Any shape as long as they are of modest value.  This set is more about the history of cards and Dick is an easy name to find, which didn't have a lot of superstar players with expensive cards.  Most years up thru 1980 the name was common enough to fill up at least one binder page.  I haven't decided how I will organize each page, alphabetically, numerically, by team, or via haiku, so put your ideas in the comments.