The Great Pumpkin Sketches On Cardboard

It’s Halloween again so that means some custom holiday cards. Last year I went with the Shadow Nightmares sketch cards and I decided to continue with some sketch cards this year, but I did a 180 degree turn going from scary to fun characters. This year I am going with the greatest Halloween special ever, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  

I only did two cards this year: 

Do you have to ask? Of course the moon glows.

Monday Question Day- Just Be Perfect!!!

Today is question day:

What rookie card, that you want/own, that is nearly impossible to find in Gem Mint 10 condition? 

For me it is the 1978-79 Topps Mike Bossy #115 rookie card, so many are off center or miscut. There are some decent centered cards but even raw copies can still run $50 and up and a graded PSA or BGS is closing in on the $100 mark.

I have this BCCG 7 in my collection but the front is significantly off center but the top-bottom and back centering is nice, still I would like to replace it with a better copy eventually.

Wallet Card #8- Local Geography

Thousands of years ago there was a lot of water in what is now Northern Arizona and it has affected the landscape in odd and wonderful ways with the most popular being the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon but in my immediate area there is an area of small canyons that have the most unique features created by running water. 

I don’t think there is an actual name for the area but it is west of my town between where I live and northern Prescott. The cool thing is that the early settlers to the area didn’t alter the area at all, the town was built south of the canyons and now that there are neighborhoods in the vicinity they are designed around the cliffs so the natural beauty was not changed.  

Another Cavalcade Of Griffey Cards XIII

In the early 90s Taco Time and the Mariners joined forces and Taco Time released several promotional cards and sets in conjunction with Alrak Enterprises. The Sonics also had a deal with Taco Time and there were Sonics promotional sets released too around the same time.

These two gold foil cards were from 1994 and are both post card size. The team card has a standard post card back while the Griffey diving card has two images of Griffey, one at bat and one close up, which is a pretty common image from those Alrak sets.

A Girl's Best Friend

A couple of months ago I downloaded the Batman Arkham games series (Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Origins & Arkham Knight) on my computer and played through all the games. I really liked Catwoman, which you get to play as her in certain areas of the games, she is just the perfect anti-hero.

I ended up picking up a couple of Catwoman cards that are based on the New 52 version, which is the version in the games. The coolest pickup being this Totally Fabricated Catwoman relic from the 2013 Cryptozoic DC Women of Legend release. The Totally Fabricated relics are manufactured relics by Cryptozoic but because they are for comics/cartoons I am ok with them.

It Made An Appearance

A 2012 Topps Under Armour Trey Griffey autograph finally showed up for auction, ending yesterday at a unbelievable $51.01, especially when you consider that he was undrafted and is on the Dolphins practice squad. Jameis Winston and Dante Fowler Jr are both in the same 2012 set with the Fowler autograph selling around $25 and the Winston autograph around $70 so we know that Griffey’s selling price is not based on potential, but on his father’s legacy.

I was expecting the card to end around the $15 range, with about $10 of that being based on his father, but this final selling price has made me sad. I really was hoping to add this card to my University of Arizona collection, but I will not pay anything near $50 for the card.

Another Cavalcade Of Griffey Cards XII

Awhile back someone, sorry I don’t remember which blog, posted about picking up some cards that had gum stains on them. When I was a kid in the early 1980s a gum stain on a card was a mark of death, it was destined for the spokes of your bike or to be drawn on and defaced, nobody wanted them. 

Now Topps makes it a variant of the base card in their Heritage releases, like we need more parallels, but in collectors who collected when the gum stain was a bad thing now sees it in a different light. It now transports us back to flipping cards against the wall in elementary school and leaves us wondering how many 1980 Rickey Henderson and 1981 Joe Montana rookie cards were tossed in the trash over a stain.

I caved, I had to find a Griffey gum stain for my collection, which is kind of difficult because by the time his cards began showing up gum in packs was quickly becoming a thing of the past but I did find a 1989 Bowman rookie card with that mark. I have picked up a couple of Griffey damaged and error cards over the years, things like this make each card unique.

More Injections In My Spine But With Bruce Lee This Time

Because of a delay with my insurance company my second spinal injection, which should have been two weeks after the previous one on September 14^th, got pushed back until today (5 weeks). I had the second round of injections this morning, three shots, and hopefully there is no delay for the third round.

I am in tremendous pain so I am posting a post that I had previously partially written.

Because the back of the card is blank and the seller had no information about the sticker I have no idea what set it comes from. The image is from the movie Game of Death, which was halted when Bruce Lee died during the filming of the movie, but was eventually released in 1978. If you have a keen eye you will notice that the man he is fighting in this scene is extremely tall, 7'2" to be exact, and is none other than NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

A little six-degrees (five degrees actually) of separation I have with Bruce Lee. Beginning in 1964 Bruce Lee trained with Ed Parker, the founder of American Kenpo. Ed Parker trained Bruce Denton in American Kempo in the 1980s. Bruce Denton then took on Loren Holmberg as his student in the early 1990s and in 1998 Loren Holmberg took me on as his student.

Here I am, a much younger and healthier Corky in my Kenpo gi, when my kids were younger they liked it when I wore it around Halloween. My son went as a ninja for 3 years in a row because he wanted to be like his "ninja" dad (as he put it). On a side note, I would be the worst ninja ever even challenging Chris Farley.

Jay Buhner con los Lobos de Arecibo

My Jay Buhner PC has been a rather easy collection to build because of the availability of his cards. There are a couple of limited cards but a majority of my collection has been picked up on COMC for under 1 dollar. It helps that his career checklist is pretty much limited to official release base cards and Mariners’ SGA sets, because most collectors consider him a semi-star (To me, most Mariners fans and Frank Costanza he is a super-star) he just doesn’t show up outside of base cards too often.

But every so often an oddball shows up that I had no knowledge of and I go in to full finder mode, not often but it happens. Last year I found out about a card out of Puerto Rico, 1988-89 Blanco Y Negro (BYN) Jay Buhner #A-22 and at the time I could not find any for sale and even worse, I couldn’t find an image so I didn’t know what I was chasing.

Eventually I found a seller out of Puerto Rico who was selling different BYN sets, including the 1988-89 BYN Lobos set with Buhner, but the site was questionable at best and my emails to them were bounced back as undeliverable but when I found out they sold on eBay under a different name I was excited.

Jay doesn’t seem to be very happy to be part of the Lobos de Arecibo organization but when you consider he only batted .189 over 30 games you can understand why he looks frustrated.

The Art Gallery- 2007 Topps Heroes Sylar

This month’s Art Gallery Display comes from an artist that I am unable to identify. I have checked through lists that I can find, even comparing styles, and I have had no luck. The set is 2007 Topps Heroes and is of the main bad guy Sylar.

Sylar was the ultimate bad guy, he was able to steal the abilities of other characters but he had to tear their head open to do it. He was one of my favorite characters but after the third season I was not able to continue watching because NBC had destroyed the show well beyond repair and I lost complete interest, even the attempted reboot Heroes Reborn in 2015 couldn’t bring fans back.