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Monday, September 30, 2024

Deke was cool

** I wrote this post earlier today, when I heard about Dikembe....  Now I hear that Pete Rose has passed too.  That'll have to be another post.  Quite a day.** 

Dikembe Mutombo died at only 58 of brain cancer.  That's a sad one.  I had a co-worker die of brain cancer at 58 a few years ago too.  Seems far too young...

Mutombo was never the best player in the league, but he was the best shot blocker at times, and an asset to his teams.  He was a lot of fun too, I always laughed at those commercials where he made appearances like this one.  I know this is usually a baseball card blog, but here are a few of the Mutombo's I own.




Wednesday, September 25, 2024

OverVladdy'd

  So my card show habits should be well known to readers of this blog.  I head straight for the cheap boxes and rarely come up for breath.  This has a big effect on how my collection develops.  Here are a few examples:

1. Certain players, I end up with a lot of.  This is because these players, while good players, do not have a high $$ value among the greater collecting public.  Because of that, I end up finding cool cards of theirs (serial numbered, cool inserts etc.) all over the cheap boxes.  Some examples are Joey Votto, Juan Gonzalez, Zack Greinke...  My collections of these kinds of guys are pretty cool.

2. The hot rookies generally don't make it into my collection.  Actually, this 'problem' seems to have diminished lately.  With the card companies pumping out soooo many cards due to the resurgence of the hobby, base RCs and even some nicer RCs are starting to end up in the affordable areas of the show.  As long as they are not graded.

3. Another effect of soo many cards being pumped out is that I am finding just a ton of the recent cards in the cheap bins.  Nice ones too, so they keep my attention even as I wish for more older stuff.  In fact, I've noticed that the ratio of 2020-2023 cards in the stacks I bring home has skyrocketed.  Used to be, maybe 60% of my stack was from at least 10 years ago, but now it might be more like 15%.  Lots and lots of new stuff.


Which brings me to the point of the post.  I have my keeper cards in alphabetical order, so Vladimir Guerrerro's cards are right next to his son, Vladdy Jrs cards.  As I was going through them the other day, I realized that even though I have been collecting Vlad Sr for a loong time, I actually have MORE Vlad Jr cards than his dads.  That isn't because I want baby Vlad more, its just that they are very plentiful in the cheap bins!!  That just felt weird.  Its not that I don't like junior, but I really like senior.

The end result of THAT, was that I went through the Vlad Jr cards I had in my keepers, and pulled a bunch.  They aren't bad cards, but I think I will focus my Vlad Jr collection a little tighter, at least for now.  So I have a bunch of Vlad Jrs below (they weren't all keepers) that I am willing to trade if anyone needs to bulk up their collections of him.  I'd strongly prefer to send a bunch out in bulk, rather than one or two at a time, but will entertain offers!

Young Vladimir started slowly this year, but really came on and should get some down ballot MVP votes.


Anyone else have players that they accumulate too many of?


Anyone want to trade for BabyVlads??  Shoot me an offer in email if you don't mind (find my email in my profile), I'd rather keep offers private at this point.  I like most players, modern and vintage, so many kinds of offers would make me happy.

Here's what I have available.....there are a few nicer base cards, but most are inserts or parallels of some kind.