S.mackdown

I'm terribly slow at posting and at catching up on trades. I have a package waiting for one trade partner, and I need to put together another trade package for another trade partner.

Jimmy from Talking S.mack cards is the exact opposite of me. He is meticulous about following up with trade offers, making sure things are acceptable on each end, etc. I sent him a bunch of those Topps Heritage Minor League cards that I opened way back when, and in return he crossed some needs off my lists (and probably kept some cards from ever getting to the want lists in the first place).

I've been in a strange, out-of-sorts mood all day today. I had trouble getting my clutch to engage properly on my car this morning to allow me to start it right away. That threw me off for the entire day -- my schedule was off, my routine was off, everything felt off. The music in my life which seems to go with that is late 1980s stuff. Random 1980s stuff.

Like:

I tipped my hand on this Pixies song going around in my head lately. The normal speed version of this song is really good. But I have always been more drawn to the "UK Surf" version. It's more pensive, and that's usually the mood I'm in when I want to hear it.  Like yesterday and today.

Nothing says "pensive" like 2009 Topps base cards. I'm being serious here. I still have card needs in that arena -- 2009 seems like the time that a lot of my trade partners started coming back, but mostly they hadn't made it back enough to have accumulated enough 2009 base cards to send Brewers to me. Plus, 2009 is too recent for most card show dealers to schlep boxes and boxes of them to shows. So, it's a big hole.

That hole got smaller, though, thanks to Jimmy's kindness here!

Most people who have heard of Oingo Boingo know their album Dead Man's Party, which features the song "Weird Science." I heard that on tape as a kid and said, "Let's buy another one of their tapes." The one I bought -- probably through BMG -- was BOI-NGO. This album never got any airplay whatsoever, as best I can tell, though this song, "We Close Our Eyes," was covered by every teen boy's late 1980s crush (Susanna Hoffs) for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film soundtrack.

In that vein, let's show some cards from Peter Steinberg's favorite set, 1995 Fleer. Seriously, if you have duplicates, I think Peter, from Baseball Every Night, is trying to build at least 2 or 3 sets of 1995 Fleer, so send all your duplicates to him. He'll appreciate it greatly!

For some reason, it seems songs that I dig that are alternative end up on TV shows much later than when I get into them and suddenly become even more mainstream. "A Little Respect" by Erasure apparently got played on episode 3, season 1 of Scrubs. To be fair, this song did hit the top 20 in the United States, so it's not like it's entirely out of the blue.

Vince Clarke wrote the songs and played keyboards for Erasure. The guy is an awesome, visionary musician. He was a founding member of Depeche Mode, then formed Yazoo (known as Yaz here in the United States), then he started up Erasure. 

Some Upper Deck and some 1990s parallels to add to some player collections come with a little respect. I sometimes have trouble telling all the Upper Deck base sets from the 2000s apart. They all feature excellent photography that isn't overly filtered or contrasted so as to make veins pop off the card. But, they also tend to feature very similar minimalist designs. 

That, or I am just lazy and haven't taken the time to figure out which year is which yet. 

It's probably the second one.

Okay, last song to go with a great last card...inspired by what I just wrote about Vince Clarke:

This song has always kicked ass as a dance tune. When I was in my late teens, a buddy and I used to go to an underage dance club. We never had any money on us -- not even a quarter for water -- just enough to pay the cover charge and dance our asses off. While we always thought we were there trying to meet girls, the reality was we were there to hang out and have fun. We tried awkwardly to meet girls -- like teenage boys do -- but I usually ended up at least as interested in dancing like an idiot. 

I'd go home drenched in sweat, but thoroughly entertained. I loved the music -- stuff like Erasure, Yaz(oo), Ministry, Nine Inch Nails (Pretty Hate Machine came out in 1989, y'all), and even things like N.W.A. It was so much fun. 

As much as I can rail on and on about parallels, the reason I do it, I think, is because I'd like them to be more limited in scope -- maybe two or three per set tops -- and not as limited in number. I want to collect them. I want them to give me good memories 25 years from now about being shiny and pink and cool and attractive.

Well, at least as cool and attractive as this card design can be.

Jimmy, thank you so much for the great cards. They are much appreciated.

And everyone else, don't forget to send Peter your 1995 Fleer.

Mailday Post: Too Many Verlanders Giveaway

A couple of weeks ago over at Too Many Verlanders, Dennis ran a contest which was based around him giving away a bunch of cards.  In other words, he gave away cards and those giveaways led to entries in a contest to get more cards.  

Never one to miss an opportunity to fill a gap or two in my collection, I claimed two different items -- the Prince Fielder collection, in the hopes of getting a couple of cards of him on the Brewers that I didn't have, and the 1999 Topps Series Two set.  Since 1999 was right in the middle of my non-collecting years, those cards had escaped me entirely.

Those items got me a total of five entries into Dennis's contest.  I was lucky enough to top off claiming those previous items with finished third in the contest giveaway.  My selection: I took a blaster of 2008 Upper Deck Series 1 and 2 off Dennis's hands as well.  

Last week, the box with all those cards showed up -- it must have had a total of 500 or 600 cards in it.  Here are the highlights.  

As I mentioned, I knew I was getting Prince Fielders -- most of which now are listed up in my team trade bait section under "Tigers."  Three of those cards, however, were Brewers:

I really like this MLB Artifacts card (pardon the screwy scanning I did there).  Yeah, we've gotten tons of nostalgia-type cards in the past 15 years, but that one is a classy looking card.  

The 1999 Topps Series 2 had several Brewers, of course, and all of these were needed either for my player collections or the team set:

I don't know why I'm surprised when I get a Marquis Grissom card with Milwaukee, but I always seem to forget that he played with the Brewers.

After going through those items I claimed, I then cracked open the blaster box of Upper Deck.  I've opened quite a few packs of the Upper Deck First Edition set in repack boxes, so the card design was familiar to me.  The glossy finish and the silver foil on these cards was not.  I know I sound like a fan boy and I know that a significant portion of collectors don't like the full-bleed photos on cards, but, well, I love the full-bleed photos on cards.  It makes them feel cooler and more expensive, I guess.  Anyway, here are the cards I got from the blaster that I really liked:

I even got a Prince Fielder "Infield Power" insert.  And I think I'm collecting all Carlos Gomez and Jean Segura cards at this point.  Lucroy's too, of course -- I mean, who wouldn't collect the best player in the National League (oh God, please don't let there be an SI website curse)?

Finally, I believe Dennis was using some football cards as filler simply to keep the other cards from moving around.  While I'm not exactly a football collector, I didn't mind getting college football cards for my Georgia Bulldogs!

The NCAA would have you believe that the number 8 here is just generic and has nothing to do with A.J. Green.  Nothing whatsoever.

Dennis, thanks for the cards, the giveaway, and even for the Georgia Bulldogs cards.  I'm starting to contemplate whether I should try to collect college football cards of the Dawgs at this point!