Sorry Johnny, The Doors Seem To All Be Closed

Oh Johnny Football, will we ever see you don a professional football uniform ever again?

In July Manziel said he is taking things seriously and wants to get back in to the NFL. He said he has cut out is partying and was working out with the intent of playing in the 2017-18 NFL season. He re-hired his former agent Erik Burkardt and Manziel said that multiple NFL teams were seriously talking to him about coming back to the league.

As expected, no NFL team has talked to him and if they did, they are not admitting it. The only team that has talked to him is the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats who had him in their facility last week for a work-out.

It didn’t go well with the statement “Too many red flags” being tossed around the news outlets. According to sources within Hamilton’s front office, Manziel had trouble passing the physical and medical tests, he was not in playing shape and the team didn’t feel his off-field regiment was consistent with someone who wants to play professional football.

Money Manziel has already spread the news that if he doesn’t make it back in to professional football he wants to coach college football. I don’t think he has the demeanor to be a consistent and capable coach and I find it hard to believe that any reputable college would bring him on because he is a huge liability and the media circus that will follow him will be disruptive. Sure, I can see Texas A&M bringing him on as a consultant and pay him $100k to show up at alumni events to sign autographs or a D-III team bring him on to be a QB coach but I think even his coaching aspirations are a bit far fetched.

Monday Question Day- Traders?

Today is question day:

Do you consider yourself to be a trader (trade with other collectors)?

I usually do a couple of trades a year but I know that there are people who trade regularly and when I see these posts I think “Damn, I need to do more trades”. I think my issue is that I am rather shy in real life so I find it hard to reach out to people.

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1933 Kyriazi Cigaretters Manfred von Richthofen

This month’s VCoM is another German Richthofen card, this one is from a pack of Kyriazi cigarettes in 1933 and like many of my Richthofen cards this one is an illustration of the Baron. But the uniqueness of the card is that this image is not a common pose that you see and I have only seen used (in complete form) on the cover of the German version of his biography Der rote Kampfflieger while the English version of his biography The Red Fighter Pilot uses a more common photo of him wearing a coat and hat and facing in the different direction.

The card is standard tobacco era stock and is the height of the cards of the period but a little bit wider. The colors are beautiful and the card is in wonderful condition but there are two issues that were caused by someone, one intentional and one unintentional.  The card has been trimmed along the left and right borders, there should be a gold border on each side and they are extremely condition sensitive so someone along the way cut off the borders. The second problem was caused by the seller in his attempt to securely pack the card for shipping from Germany. The card was folded inside an index card and surrounded by cardboard that was taped together and it appears that during shipping the cardboard squeezed down around the left edge and pinched the card which caused some of the paper to rip off in the upper left edge.

I did suck it up and not complain or return the card because this card is very rare and I figured this will be a place holder until I can find something in better condition. It would have been easily avoided had the seller put the card in a rigid top loader but was happened can't be undone.

I did a translation of what is on the back and the top paragraph describes the set as having 240 German leaders from 1640 through 1918. The bottom paragraph seems to say something about the card being for a scrapbook and allowing the cigarette dealers permission to use the card.

Jon Jones Finds Himself In A Familiar Predicament

The UFC just confirmed that Jon Jones sample submitted the day before his fight against Daniel Cormier tested positive for the steroid Turinabol and he may be looking at a ban of four years since he has had prior positive tests that led to a yearlong ban.

Obviously everything will be verified before UFC makes a statement but if the test is correct and he was using steroids he will definitely be stripped of the Light-Heavyweight title that he just won from Cormier less than a month ago and will receive a multi-year ban.

Jon Jones is considered, pound for pound, to be one of the nest fighters ever and was looking forward to the possibility of a super fight versus Brock Lesnar but at this point everything that he has worked for has been tarnished.

Even with just the announcement you can expect the prices of his cards to dip and if he does get suspended you can assume that his career is over and prices for his cards will drop dramatically. I don’t own this 2010 Leaf MMA autograph card, but it has been one of my favorites of his autographs and if it drops down to a couple of bucks I would pick one up.

The Beast Jr. Has Been Updated

When I ended up restoring my computer at the end of July I had made the mistake of not saving certain files on my external hard drive before starting the restore and I lost a number of files with most of them being connected to my blog as well as some art projects.

Over the past two weeks I have sat down and went through my PC collections to get everything back up to date. My Bader and Buhner collections were completed quickly being only 127 and 135 unique cards, respectively. I still need to update my Largent collection but I decided to turn to the Beast Jr first and focus on my Griffey cards because I am not hunting down any Largent cards right now so that list can wait.

It ended up taking me almost a week to go through my Griffey collection to update my Beast Jr. spreadsheet and my want list but I finally got it all completed. I have posted my Griffey want’s list, which has grown by 24 cards since I last updated my want’s list here on the blog last January.

A quick update on my health; I have met three of my five new doctors so I have been very busy over the last few months. I meet my pain specialist tomorrow, meeting new doctors always causes a bit of anxiety for me because I had a bad experience with a doctor when my health first began to decline and now I never know what to expect. Over the next couple of weeks, I have to get an MRI and EEG test along with another blood test. Not long ago I had an x-ray to see how my spinal degeneration is progressing and luckily it has only gotten slightly worse. As odd as it is, even though my spine is slowly breaking down I have grown almost a ¼ of an inch in the last year.

And for those here to see cards, here is my newest Griffey which I pulled from a pack of 2017 Stadium Club recently.

Monday Question Day- Do You Grade?

Today is question day:

Have you ever submitted a card(s) to be graded?

Which grading company do you prefer when it comes to graded cards in your collection?

I have never submitted a card to be graded, even if I had the money I have a tough time paying the excessive cost of submitting a card but I do have graded cards in my collection. When it comes to grading company, I prefer PSA or SGC for vintage cards and BGS for modern cards.

The Art Gallery- 2005 Rittenhouse Archives The Munsters

This month’s Art Gallery display is a triple shot of the Munsters; Herman, Lily and Grandpa. The artists are Cris Bolson who did Herman, Dan Schaefer did Lily and Emir Ribeiro did Grandpa.

I believe these cards came from a 2005 Rittenhouse Archives The Munsters release but I can only find sketch cards and promo cards for the set so I do not know exactly how these cards were made available.

I was more a Addams Family kid but I did enjoy The Munsters so these kind of sketch cards have a sentimental aspect to them. I have been seeing Munsters sketch cards appear over the years but much of the cards are Herman, Lily and Grandpa with only a couple of Eddie and Marilyn sketch cards appearing from time to time.

Time For A Griffey Update

I reached another milestone in my Ken Griffey Jr. collection, I hit 1,300 unique cards when I picked up this 2001 Upper Deck Vintage base card a couple of weeks ago. With each one of my eBay sale I have left a bit in my Paypal account which I have used to hunt down very cheap base cards for my Griffey collection so I have been adding a couple of cards here and there.

In January 2014 is when I began to focus on my Griffey collection after adding my collection to Zistle and realized I was calling myself a Griffey collection but I only had 92 unique cards in my collection. Here is how the growth of my Griffey collection has gone since January of 2014:

January 2014 I was at 92 unique cards

January 2015 I was at 291 unique cards

January 2016 I was at 552 unique cards

January 2017 I was at 1,255 unique cards

This year has been slow going and about half of the 45 cards that I have picked up this year have come from trades with many of the rest being under $1 purchases but that is ok. Not every pickup can be a major find, I am glad to have a .35 cent card as much as a $200 card, it is all part of collecting one of the best players of our generation.

A Welcome Care Package

I just received a care package from Jon from A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts, which I very much so appreciate. He was wondering how I was doing and sent some cards and a DVD too.

The DVD is from the 2007 Season Ticket Holder package and includes highlights from the team’s 30-year history. It was narrated by Dave Niehaus, the voice of the Mariners from 1977 until his death in 2010, and just hearing his voice brought back some wonderful memories of watching baseball over the years. A lot of happy memories.

New additions to my Steve Kerr collection, Sonics collection and Mariners’ collections. There were more cards sent but I only scanned about half of the cards.

I have been working on my Edgar mini-pc and now I have my first Edgar relic card.

The Mariners just retried Edgar Martinez's number and in conjunction with the ceremony they did an Edgar Martinez bobble head SGA and his bat has a light on it that works. I am not a bobble head collector and have picked up only a couple of Griffey SGAs but I do plan on picking up one of the Edgar Lights Out bobble heads when they drop down to realistic prices.

It's a light bat (bobblehead)!

Edgar Martinez Bobblehead Night—with fully functioning light bat—is August 11th. https://t.co/hczcHnsOrT pic.twitter.com/q938N0JS3H

— Mariners (@Mariners) June 5, 2017

The last two cards are a Buhner and Edgar 1999 Upper Deck Black Diamond Triple Diamond #/1500. I had the Buhner card on my wants list so that is a number card off the list. I haven’t built an Edgar want list yet, I am making some changes in my collection so I do plan to create one eventually.

Some Treasures Should Remain Buried

As if you needed another reason to stay FAR away from antique stores when looking for card deals here was my experience. When my daughter and I hit up some of the antique stores a few weeks back I kept an eye out for cards. Usually the cards are priced exceedingly high but I have heard of the occasional surprise deal so I look when I am already in the store.

I didn’t find much, there were only two booths in about 6 stores that we stop at where I found cards and one didn’t have prices but when I find a dirty Ziploc bag filled with mid-1980s baseball cards I know I am going to need a Bill Gates type bank account to afford it so I passed that booth quickly. 

The second booth was a collectibles booth with action figures, priced to 1990s prices, comic books, which I didn’t look through, and Hot Wheels tagged at $4 apiece for the same cars I can find in any toy aisle today. I didn’t have much hope by the time I got around to the two glass cases where the cards were kept.

I think this photo represents the prices of the contents of the cases quite well. I was surprised to see a GMA card graded anything by Gem Mint 10. I could put a card in my kid’s bike spokes and let him ride around for two weeks and send it to GMA and still get a 10 grade.

There actually was a recent sale of a GMA 8.5, two weeks ago Probstein sold one for $3.83 plus shipping.