"That's a peach, hon!"

Finally. Finally I have done most of the work I needed to get done this month. I've still got a few errands to run and all, but my work is nearly done. So, I can finally sit down and bang out some posts to thank all of you who sent me cards this month.  It's quite a few.  The first group of cards comes from a reader, Mr Haverkamp. His want lists can be found here in case you might want to trade with him.

By Golly, I'm hot today! 

No, literally, it's like 65 degrees here today and it will be warm for most of the rest of the year. 

Anyway, I already showed off the super-cool 1970 Topps Scratch Off of Mike Hegan. The rest of the package was filled with stickers -- lots and lots of 1980s stickers!

That is a ton of stickers, and it knocked most of the 1981 Topps Stickers, the 1983 Fleer stickers, and the 1984 Topps stickers off my want lists -- or at least made some headway in getting stickers to me that I need for my player collections.

To go with all those stickers from the classic era of baseball stickers, we need musical accompaniment from a classic rock band -- the Rolling Stones -- with "Brown Sugar," which was the first track off their first #1 US Album, Sticky Fingers. Supposedly, this song was written for any one of a number of African-American women whom Mick Jagger either had sex with/had feelings for.

Of course it is. Mick would sleep with nearly anyone -- over 4,000, according to his biographer. He couldn't be arsed to recall which of the black women he wrote the song for, right?

Back to cards...quickly...

Mr Haverkamp also sent another early 1970s oddball my way:

Too bad I have written up Ted Savage in my Meet the Brewers series (which has taken a backseat as much as blogging has lately for me!). Then again, it's my series, so perhaps I'll go in and add this in as an "update." 

Someone needs to tell that dude on the left that he's really worthless. But then again, they are all just coins.

Okay -- a few more items to show. These are all cards (though some are still oddballs!), so hopefully y'all will forgive me for closing with them.

)

Mr H hooked me up with several random cards and oddballs from the 80s and one from the early 1990s that I needed for either my team set or for my player collections for these players. For some reason, though I have never had any problem finding either 1983 or 1984 Donruss Action All-Stars, the 1985 ones have been elusive to me. I don't know that I've ever seen an unopened 1985 pack in the wild or in captivity, for that matter.

But wait. There's one more card:

A well-loved Harvey Kuenn 1959 Topps, with a photo from an angle that makes the chaw in his left cheek look deceptively small.  Then again, it's just a pinch between your cheek and gum, right?

Yeah. That's about what I'd expect for that too.

HA!

Yup, it's just the Boys Round Here, with their "chew tobacco chew tobacco chew tobacco spit." Guess we'll never get that song live with Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert getting divorced.

Don't worry about that, though. Just send Mr Haverkamp cards. Because these cards are a peach! 

I've Got Some Work to Do

Christmas came early to Off Hiatus HQ yesterday. My wife told me on Thursday that her parents had gotten me a big Christmas gift, and that they were making the 2+ hour drive to bring it to our house yesterday.

To be honest, I had no idea what they were bringing. I theorized that it could be a new grill since the one we have -- though just three years old -- is already looking a little worse for the wear. 

The gift arrived yesterday...in the back of my father-in-law's pickup truck.

I look happy there.  This photo is the realization that I need to go through these and sort them all out:



There are about 75 binders to go through.  Seriously. This is going to take a while.

Here's another view of the binders out of the truck, stacked in my screen porch:



My initial flip through these binders -- in moving them to my office and, then, getting them so they aren't just thrown all over the floor -- is that there is a lot of junk wax with a few oddball early 1990s sets thrown in and, randomly strewn throughout the binders, are cards from the 1970s. 

The man who had these cards passed away, and his wife and son wanted to get rid of them. The previous owner had pretty detailed inventories of what he had, so that's been helpful. However, his definition of star and my definition of star are slightly different. I would not, for example, have included Dave Bergman or Francisco Cabrera or Tracy Jones in a star binder.

Still, that's a lot of the fun.  It's too bad that I have a bunch of work to finish up today, as I might otherwise spend all day blowing through these things.

The best part for my wife and her parents was that this was a huge surprise to me. It's great to have in-laws who like me generally, but to care enough to find this, buy it, and deliver it to me is just unbelievable.

I really am a lucky man.

Burned Out

I'm feeling very burned out today. 

I don't mean that I'm burned out on blogging or sharing the great cards that folks send me. I mean that I've been writing literally all week at work.  A little known fact: the reality of being a lawyer for most people is that lawyers are not people who get in court and argue all the time. Some folks are like that -- criminal defense lawyers, for instance. But, most civil litigation lawyers and generally all other lawyers other than trial lawyers are really professional writers.

That's what I have been doing all week. I have a major court filing due on Monday that I still need to finish my first draft for over this weekend. 

In the interest of putting up a post, though, let me do a quick one-card post. It's just the tip of the iceberg of the cards that Mr. Haverkamp sent my way. And, once I get to Tuesday or Wednesday next week, I might actually have the opportunity to get some packages put together and post all the great cards that have come way over the past week!



This is just a cool card -- it is a 1970 Topps baseball Scratch off card of Mike Hegan, still with the Seattle Pilots.

More to come tomorrow, hopefully, or definitely later in the week.

Thanks for stopping by.

Christmas with Angus

One of the newer bloggers around the blogworld this year is Angus of Dawg Day Cards. He introduced himself to me through commenting here. He then started sending me cards -- here's the first time -- and even aided me in the War with JBF by delivering the final blow which led to peace in our time between Hazel Green and Sandy Springs/Dunwoody.

Around our Thanksgiving Day, Angus started spreading Christmas cheer around by sending out Christmas cards filled with baseball cards. 

From the very beginning of the packages of cards that Angus has sent to me, he's been quick to feed my oddball fixations. The Christmas Present was no different. 

It started a little slowly, though.

I wondered to myself why Angus had sent this card, and then I saw the fine print on the card noting that Parker was listed as "Now With Brewers." I thought then, "wait, I don't recall Topps doing that on Parker's card for 1990."

So, while initially a bit of a question mark, it all became clear once I read the fine print on both sides of the card. You'd think a lawyer would know better than to ignore that small print, but there we are -- a new addition to the O-Pee-Chee collection.

The remainder of my Angus Christmas special were all larger than life Donruss cards:

Donruss Action All-Stars and the Donruss Champions sets are some of my favorite regular-issue oddballs from the 1980s. The postcard size make them perfect for autographs that aren't cramped, and that same size makes it easy to find plastic sheets to store them in.

With such a great package of Brewers greats in large form, it's a perfect time to post my favorite Christmas song again: The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl.

Angus, thanks as always for the great cards. I'll keep an eye out at my local shows for more Cleveland Browns relics and autographs as well. No offense, but the Browns continued failure at being a good NFL team keeps those relics and autographs quite affordable.

Julie's Been Working for the Drug Squad

How else can you explain why Julie from A Cracked Bat would be sending out so many cards to so many people? She must have some kind of "connections" that are allowing her to put such great envelopes of cards together for people.

I have traded with Julie a couple of times already. In fact, my last trade post (called imaginatively "Julie: A Trade Post") is one of my most viewed posts ever (with over 1150 hits). It might be the American Girl part of the post that draws random hits to the post, but it's more likely that the world wants more "Cracked Bat"!

This time around, Julie sent me several very recent cards from a couple of the higher end sets:

Now that's a lot of Lucroy right there -- two of the Museum Collection base card parallels, the Topps Triple Threads base of both Luc and Gomez, the Lucroy Green parallel, and the Red prism card from Panini that reminds me of a Picasso painting for some reason.

Maybe.

Anyway, Julie also treated me to some relics and autographs too.

Coooooooooooooop! Dave Parker was a Brewer for just one year, but apparently the Brewers kept every one of his old uniforms to let Upper Deck cut them up into little squares. Finally, there's Carlos Villanueva, who was last seen in the bullpen for Baseball's Best Fans (who really seem to believe that Jason Heyward should have felt more kinship to St. Louis after 1 season than he would show for any other team in baseball).

Finally, Julie hooked me up with a few random cards for a couple of my other player collections:

Each of these great cards -- including the Gallardo Chrome Heritage up top -- were ones I knew that I needed for my player collections.  

This last one, though, was not.  I mean, I'm not a Scott Fletcher collector, except for his cards with the Brewers, of course...

...well played, Julie! Well played.

Thanks again for the great cards you've sent this time. And, guess what? I've been collecting up cards to send your way soon!