eBay, What you Wanna Do?

This weekend is a weird one for me. I have to go out of town for a business development industry group meeting, leaving tomorrow for Naples, Florida, and returning on Sunday. I almost never have to be gone from home over weekends for work or business development, so it is going to throw me off a bit I'm sure. 

Of course, I'm going to the beach on a weekend by myself. It's a rough life.

I've plucked a few cards and items here and there off eBay again recently. To celebrate, let's pluck a few strings on some 1970s guitar and get in that laid back beach mood.

The 1970s for college kids was a weird time. Apparently, Pure Prairie League's song "Amie" became popular on college campuses, especially in the Midwest, during what Wikipedia calls "a minor bluegrass revival." This song is what gave me my title for tonight's post. So, what card will it introduce?

I could stay with these 7/11 coins from 1984 a while -- maybe longer. My love for the oddball is well documented, and I greatly enjoy finding items like this to scratch the itch. Slowly but surely, I'm finding these coins for my collections. I've got two of the three Younts -- which I think are different literally only because of a single letter on their back. The Younts were released nationally, but the Molitor and Cooper are both from the "Central" issue. I now have two Coopers and one Molitor to go with my one Yount, and I am still looking for two Ted Simmons coins.

There are not many rock songs that feature a flute. You get Jethro Tull's stuff, of course, and then this Marshall Tucker Band song, and also Men At Work's "Down Under" -- but that's all I've got off the top of my head.

Another rarity -- at least for me -- is getting bonus cards in eBay packages. It seems a lot of other bloggers do a lot better than I do with this. Maybe they just buy more off eBay than me, but I rarely get bonus cards. This time, though, I did.



That's what makes that purple Bowman Carlos Gomez so cool to me. It is serial numbered out of 250, and the seller just threw it in with the Finest Black Refractor I bought for 99 cents (free shipping, I think) that it's pictured with. Just outstanding!

Only two more items, so two more laid back 70s Southern Rock songs.

For a while in the early 1990s and almost certainly influenced by the fact that I had moved to the South, I really got into the Allman Brothers Band for a while. It wasn't like I listened to them nonstop or anything, but whenever I was in a chill mood I wanted to hear stuff like this. Pop in the Allman Brothers Greatest Hits CD, and I'd be more laid back than Jimmy Buffett at 5 o'clock.

The opposite of laid back is this ridiculous Bowman's Best insert from last year. I actually found two of these pretty cheap from two different sellers at the same time, so I picked up my requisite "one each for the player collection and the team collection." Apparently, the mirror image here was that Braun had back-to-back 30-30 seasons in 2011 and 2012 in the majors, and Pederson went 30-30 in 2014. 

Is this racial profiling? I mean, is this one of those, "we can only compare Jewish players to other Jewish players" things? Or is it just a mere coincidence? 

Got me.

All this chill music gets me thinking about one of my favorite chill songs of all time.

It's not easy to be peaceful with all the political stuff going on. But I'm trying.

As a kid, I had a tremendous love for media guides. During a few years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Brewers Media Guide actually was available for purchase at our local grocery store. As a huge Brewer fan, I would wear out that media guide. I memorized middle names of players -- Cecil Celester Cooper, James Elmer Gantner, Paul Leo Molitor, pitching coach Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish .... and the wonder of what Robin Yount's middle name was since he was only listed as "Robin R. Yount."

I did not realize that Robin featured on the front cover of the 1977 Media Guide until very, very recently -- and the minute I found out, I snapped up the least expensive copy I could find on eBay. It's in great shape, so I just got a good deal.

Going back in time is often a lot of fun. Nostalgia is great -- so long as we don't fetishize it too much and remember that the good old times weren't always so good. Often, they were just old. The 1977 Brewers sucked, but better times were ahead. I hope that's where we are going too.