The most insane lot of cards I have ever purchased. And that is saying something.

 I spend an inordinate amount of time trolling Ebay for cards that are damaged enough to go in my Trashed set.  And then I find something I spend time trying to research the numbers on barely readable cards to see if they fill a hole in the set.  And then I spend actual money I could use to pay the electric bill instead on other people's garbage. And sometimes I am met with a collection that is so savagely abused that I start plotting which cards I can sell off in order to finance this...

For Starters it's allowed me to add a half to my opening #1 card.

I've already got a Virgil Trucks 1959 that I thought would be tough to match...

but this '58 just blows the doors off.

For the 5th time now, I found something that was Just Trashed and rushed to its spot to replace whatever inferior specimen was there...

...only to discover that the slot held the same card in just as bad of shape. 

OK. Truth is this is the worst one, but clearly my filing system needs work.

I got some less common sets like the 1960 Fleer

The surprising thing is these cards smell pretty nice, like maybe some poor kids mom put these in with the washing, but this mom relied on an old wash board and tub.  Here he has his dungarees pockets stuffed with all his hero's like...

Don Mincher...

and Dave Nicholson...

...and Johnny Briggs

His mom is past soaking the jeans in the water while continuously spearing the fabric with a broom stick and is now grinding all the dirt out of the backside pockets and the front, where he wipes his filthy kid hands, on her trusty washboard. Her mechanically minded husband has repurposed a cement mixer and old beauty salon hair dryer into a sort of a laundry drying contraption.  But even after 14 hours rolling round in the warmish air she finds she has to hang them in the wind for another day or two.  At least they don't smell musty and moldy like many vintage cards that turn up in this condition, so after all that his mom must have used extra fabric softener.  A lot of it. It's times like this I wish they had perfected such things as Smell-O-Vision for blogs.  Seems like it should have happened by now.

So, as they hung on the line by their feet, something seeped out of the pockets and fell into a glop on the gravel below.  That's how our little friend discovered his prize cards had been through the literal ringer.  

Stay tuned for I have recently purchased the rare modern (1990s) lot that might be described as truly trashed, in a way you probably haven't seen yet.  I can't wait to get that collection and start sorting through it for the 8-10 relevant cards.