May 29, 2025

May 2025 Summary & Decades Blog Bat Around

Big news: As of the time I am writing this I am obsessively checking the tracking status of a personal grail card that is en route to my doorstep. I have a small player collection focused on cards of Charlie Bishop, a distant relative who played a few partial seasons with the Athletics in the 1950s. The full checklist has just three playing days Topps cards (1953, 1955, and 1955 Double Headers) and a handful of much harder to find regional issues. One of those has been identified by hobby publications as far back as the 1970s as being particularly hard to find, having been pulled from the presses before the full run of cards was completed. The only full set of 1955 Rodeo Meats cards in the Registry is in the process of being broken up and I was able to snag the Bishop card not too long after the listing went live.

Other arrivals this month include pick-ups for three of my other projects. Six '52 Topps commons came in, including a trimmed high number that set me back less than the cost of a pizza. A Luke Appling card was checked off my '49 Leaf checklist. I also added five Jose Canseco cards with the highlights being a '91 Topps Desert Shield and a '94 Bowman's Best Refractor.

Newly Posted in May

I'm down to the last dozen profiles of the 199 cards that make up the 1993 Finest Refractors checklist. This month highlighted a pair of constants from the American League, both of which played some of their final contests in short-lived stints in the rival league. Despite this residency in the DH-enamored AL, a pitcher found himself unexpectedly called to bat on multiple occasions. The second coming of Luis Aparicio likewise didn't find much success behind the plate, but he and his knee brace somehow managed to become (according to Immaculate Grid results) the most well-known White Sox shortstop.

Profiles of '52 Topps are rolling along. In May I took a look at "Muscles" Upton, a slightly-built infielder who seemed to make a career out of being used to balance out trades. The 1952 Red Sox had their own player with a BMI reading below 22 - one who gained amateur fame when he struck out 27 batters in a 7 inning game. The winner of a 1999 Seattle Post Intelligencer ranking of the greatest Seattle area athlete wasn't Ken Griffey, Jr., but rather a Detroit Tigers' player/manager who could apparently wrestle bears just as well as play baseball.

Blog Bat Around: Decades

A few weeks ago Baseball Cards Fan posted a Blog Bat Around idea. The challenge was to identify a favorite player for each decade for which you intentionally acquired cards. Each of the cards shown below are cards I specifically sought out either in my current collecting pursuits or during my obsession with all things baseball in the 1990s. The key is I had to have actually owned the card shown and have actively sought items bearing the likeness of the player shown.

1930s

Jimmy Foxx is the player I most sought from this period, though I have never owned a playing days card of the slugger dubbed "Double-X." In the '90s I once found myself out of cash at the end of a card show when I came across a beat up Foxx in my price range from 1934 Goudey, so a 1960 Fleer example would have to do. 

Instead, the player I found myself actually chasing was Heinie Manush. I didn't know anything about him other than he was a Hall of Famer when I picked up a 1939 Play Ball at a mall show. Learning more as I studied that card, his story grew on me. Ty Cobb more or less taught him how to hit as a pet project. He appears multiple times through some of the decade's best card issues. Manush played for a half dozen teams, giving his cards a rainbow of uniforms to see and making his career arc mimic those of the free agent players that I enjoyed following in real time. There's also the added benefit of his having a name that is fun to pronounce (Heinie Mah-noosh) and the knowledge that the plot of the 1942 film Obliging Young Lady is frequently moved along by an unhinged man who can't stop saying "Heinie Manush" in time with the sounds of the steam train in which the cast is being carried along.

1940s

The '40s again feature a player that I would love to collect but simply have never had any cards of his from the period: Bob Feller. Seeing as how his 1949 Leaf card is one of the toughest numbers in the checklist, it will be a while before I get around to doing something about that. The same goes for another favorite, Pete Reiser, who likely had more concussions than cards during the decade.

In the interim, I can satisfy this area of my collection with cards of Johnny Mize. He was pretty much the National League equivalent of Jimmy Foxx and stands well beyond most contemporaries when it comes to his advanced batting metrics. I specifically collect '49 Leaf cards and he was the very first Hall of Famer I added from this issue. It doesn't hurt that his '52 Topps card is one of the best looking, visually and statistically, within my other vintage set building focus. Couple that with the fact that the Ruthian Mize actually looks like Babe Ruth and is related to both Ruth and Cobb and you have some special cards.

 

1950s

This is an easy one. Since the day a random letter showed up at my house, I have been on the lookout for any new Charlie Bishop cards (see the intro to today's post for confirmation). Bishop is a distant relative of mine and is featured on a relatively small number of cards from the 1950s. Not bad for a guy whose minor league contract was once traded away by the New York Giants for a player locked away in a psych ward.

1960s

Frank Howard picks up the trail of slow-footed power hitters that featured names like Foxx and Mize. Growing up, I knew a handful of military neighbors who caught the occasional baseball game when traveling to DC. Frank Howard was their favorite Senators player and quickly became mine when we discussed this era of the game. His '62 Topps was my favorite from the decade. My first 1969 Topps card was a Frank Howard like the one below and quickly became the first step in an abandoned attempt to build the full set.

1970s

Two players were stalwarts of my searches through stacks of cards from the 1970s: Willie Stargell and Bert Blyleven. I credit the Stargell interest to my opening countless numbers of Donruss wax packs when they came with puzzle pieces featuring the new Hall of Fame inductee. The Blyleven searches stayed with me as time passed. I found myself wondering why so many were passing over the cards of one of the best pitchers in history - equal to Nolan Ryan in my view of the game. Picking up Blyleven cards was a way of making a statement to those collectors: I value things differently than you, even if, like everybody else,  I seemingly only pick good players or relatives as personal favorites. Blyleven's '75 Topps bubble gum bubble card is in my running for card of the decade, and his '71 rookie card scratches that itch to chase an unreasonable level of obsessiveness with condition. Today I have a limited number of cards outside of my primary set building interests and this is one of them.

1980s

Although the majority of my favorite player's games took place in the 1990s, most consider him a name from the 1980s. Jose Canseco was the only name I recognized when I opened my first pack of cards in 1991 and would be a staple search of every wrapper opened afterwards. The 1989 Topps All Star below was visually my favorite.

1990s

Cards of another home run hitter, David Justice, were a staple of my card collection binders in the '90s. Canseco was still the player I most wanted to find in any given pack of cards during the decade, but a Justice card was always a fine consolation prize. He played the full decade and is my choice to represent the '90s over Carlos Delgado who didn't really get going until the end of the period.


2000s and Up

The most recent pack of cards I have ever opened was from 1996. By 2000 I was selling off my collection and didn't come back to the hobby until taking care of higher ranking life goals. I only have two post-2002 cards in my collection and only one features a player active at the time of production. By that definition you can say I chase Shohei Ohtani cards though that would be quite the exaggeration.


April 28, 2025

Eight New Posts in April

 

That picture above represents the eight cards I profiled this month at CardBoredom. It also represents a good sampling of the cards I had hoped to land back when I was at peak collecting intensity in the 1990s. A bunch of '52 Topps, including Willie Mays? Yes please. More than one refractor in the same room as me? I can't believe it. The next thing you'll be telling me is that I've got a Billy Ripken error card in my pocket.

That's one of the effects of adding cards to the collection faster than I can write them up. The cards profiled this month were all added in the summer of 2023, implying my current blogging backlog is about two years deep. That seems like a pretty decent estimate of the current state of affairs. New additions have slowed compared to last year, so I should make some progress in narrowing that gap. In the interim, let's look at some cards.

1952 Topps

The quest to write up and complete the '52 Topps set ticked another 1% closer to completion this month. Highlights:

1993 Finest Refractors

Chronicling the set building project continued in April, bringing the number of profiled cards up to 94% of the checklist. There weren't a lot of big names this month, but the dwindling number of remaining cards will soon start becoming increasingly concentrated among those with more extensive fanbases. Covered in April:

  • A pitcher who supplemented his income by standing in police lineups.
  • What do you do when designing a baseball card for someone who appeared in a soap opera? Obviously you give him the worst picture in the set.
  • There are 15 active player collections in the PSA Set Registry focused on 1970s backup catcher Bob Montgomery. There are surprisingly zero focused on a second overall draft pick who generated more than 30 WAR and blocked Night Owl on Twitter.
  • Cleveland's second baseman and I have both been on the receiving end of women armed with brushes and body paint. He got a baseball card out of the deal.

Collection Update

I've been taking new additions relatively easy this year and thinning out some of the collection. Someone bought my stack of trimmed 1953 Topps commons, funding half of my year-to-date additions. Aside from a couple PWEs waiting to go out, I am largely done with mailing out cards until late in the year. The total number of cards in my collection is once again less than Barry Bonds' career home runs.

The big addition this month is an insanely well-centered 1949 Leaf Gene Hermanski, who as one of the two Brooklyn players in the checklist takes my Dodgers team set progress from zero to 50%. Adding Jackie will be a bit more...um...challenging.

My 1952's saw two semi-high numbers get marked off the checklist. Low grade Gently used examples of Pat Mullin and Birdie Tebbetts were slotted in with the rest of my cards. I also picked up a duplicate (but unique) Monte Irvin. Someone updated the Irvin card by using glue to affix a type-written statistical appendix covering his 1952 season as well as filling in the offensive categories originally omitted from the back of the card.

Next month should generate at least another half dozen card profiles. Happy reading and may your cards never be boring.

March 30, 2025

499 and Counting

I had intended to publish one additional post this month, but time simply got away from me. This particular post is significant for couple of reasons. It will showcase the acquisition of what I consider to be the best card currently in my collection and will happily coincide with being the 500th post at CardBoredom. However, I want this to be more than just a quick 300-500 word "look at this card you're already familiar with" type of write-up. As of now, I have not found the ideal approach to present it. So, for the present, I will let the idea simmer in the back of my mind while I focus on other things.

One of my recent diversions has been to enjoy the return of clear skies and warm air on the tarmac of the local airfield. Just last weekend my son and I had the opportunity to get a close look at a stunning SR22T that pulled up in front of us wearing a very unusual black livery. Aside from the features that make this such a visually interesting plane (e.g. doors that swing upward, pronounced angle to the wings, 4 blades instead of 3 on the prop, etc.), this one has a built in parachute system. The parachute isn't for passengers, but rather the entire plane itself. Should the aircraft experience an emergency that precludes a traditional landing, the pilot can deploy the device and drift down to the ground below. As Cirrus' marketing department likes to say, "Chute happens." 

Returning to the subject of writing about cards, it seems my case of writer's block might be little more than hypochondria. Five cards were profiled in March, four of which fell within the purview of my set collecting goals.

1952 Topps: A's pitcher Sam Zoldak hit a home run but could never prove it with a box score. Before the team in Washington hosted races between presidential mascots, they made their fastest outfielder race a horse.

1993 Finest Refractors: My daughter trades Pokemon cards while I remember the time Alex Fernandez's arm was turned over for the insurance money. Frank Viola fights some robots.

The final profile for the month focused on the most prevalent card in my collection: The 1953 Topps rookie card of Charlie Bishop. Grab a bag of chips and read all about it.



February 27, 2025

Year in Pics and New Wallet Cards!

 

This is the progression of wear on one of my 2024 wallet cards. The full extent of the damage to my selection of Bo Jackson cards can be seen in a post recapping the many adventures they underwent. There are fighter jets, insect swarms, genetically enhanced plants, and much more across 32 pictures of how they spent the year.

Detailed reviews of a couple of 1986 Topps Traded wallet cards soon followed with a focus on the Topps debuts of Bo Jackson and Jose Canseco. As usual, these include a history of how the cards came to occupy their current place in the hobby as well as a walk through the past and present trade opportunities that they offer. I never swung a trade involving either of these cards, but wonder if any of you had any experience swapping them in or out of your collection?

Join me in taking things a bit too far with the Wallet Cards of 2025:

 

SET BUILDING CARDS PROFILED IN FEBRUARY

1952 Topps: Moms threw out their kids' cards (and saved this one)
1952 Topps: Did you know this set almost had a card with a guy wearing sunglasses?
1952 Topps: Bill MacDonald was an above average player. Technically.
1993 Finest: An outfielder who can dunk a basketball.
1993 Finest: Bringing in a closer now that the set is 90% complete.


January 27, 2025

January Updates and the Refractor Report

If you make a suggestion, you better be prepared to execute the idea yourself. When I first started collecting 1993 Finest Refractors I discovered there was no central repository of information about the set. It was surrounded by legends, out of date information, and a patchwork of decaying message board notes of varying quality and timeliness. While building the set I gathered as much information as I could, and earlier this month I published a summary of some of the insights gleamed from this endeavor. This Refractor Report serves as both a snapshot of the current known state of '93 Finest Refractors as well as a summary of how this has shifted over the past 12 months. I plan to make annual updates and continue to expand my data collection efforts.

This month I also saw a few more collectors chronicle their hobby year with their own annual reports. I always enjoy combing through these posts and definitely saw some good ones.

I continued to work my way through profiling cards from my collection. Notes on five pieces of cardboard were published in January:

1952 Topps: When a Giants' star was attacked by a bat-wielding cabbie
1952 Topps: Another NY Giant appeared on a lot of bases and a lot of cards
1952 Topps: Hi-dee-hi-dee-ho! 1930s big bands on the diamond
1993 Finest: A walking luau once chased Hawaii's finest pitcher
1993 Finest: I try to one-up Will Clark in a game of yelling at clouds

Next month I plan to change out my wallet cards and provide deeper looks at a few of the pieces of cardboard that previously spent a year living in my pocket. 

Never let your cards be boring!

December 25, 2024

2024 Annual Report

 

Last month I promised that I would finally get around to taking a proper look back at what has transpired on my end of the hobby in 2024. Here it is: The 2024 CardBoredom State of the Collection Annual Report. I tracked the number of cards flowing in an out of the collection, identified which ones moved me closer to meeting my goals, and ranked the top 3 acquisitions of the year. Progress reports for each area of focus are also included, as are report cards for how things stacked up against previously published goals.

 
December isn't just a period for reflection on the past. The publishing calendar continued to move forward at a decent pace. Four other posts made their way out to CardBoredom readers during the month. There was a look at the 1952 baseball card issues not made by Topps. Profiles were written for '52 Topps cards featuring a multi-decade soap opera star and a guy who knew exactly how to make opponents angry. I also made up some numbers to make reading about Larry Walker more fun.

Last month I asked others if they would post a similar recap of their own collecting year. I'm curious to see how other collections developed and have already been pointed to some reading material put out by other collectors well ahead of me in terms of writing up their collection.

Happy new year and may your cards never be boring.

November 29, 2024

Homework Time - Tell Me About Your Collection?

Not many people like homework, but I have a secret that makes it pretty fun. The answer? It gets pretty interesting when you are the person who assigns the homework.

I have an idea that would be fun (for me) to see implemented. I want to read a summary of your hobby year. I was away from the hobby when many of these blogs started up, and the experience of discovering another good one is sometimes akin to joining a conversation without all the necessary context. Annual review posts are very helpful in coming up to speed on a collection and help identify subjects that may have been overlooked amid particularly active posting activity. Several of you have been doing this for years and I really appreciate it. [Some established examples: Tim Wallach / Night Owl]

I've been kicking the idea around for a while but never got around to properly preparing one of my own for publication. This time I'm ready. A full report has been written and needs only a few finishing touches in the form of final numbers for the year.

Here is the general framework I am using:

  1. Collection metrics: How many cards are currently in the collection? What is the breakdown between types of cards? How have these numbers changed over the past 12 months? How do these cards shake out in terms of number of what fits within the core collecting focus versus interesting items are that are just "there."
  2. Highlight new arrivals. Which new cards finish in the top three for the year?
  3. Review progress made towards longstanding collecting goals. Detail any changes in strategic direction.
  4. Grade performance against 2024 collecting goals and lay out new ones for 2025.
  5. Note any changes to the blog layout. A lot of work goes into personalizing these things and I suspect we are never finished tinkering with elements of design and usability. Did anything change in 2024?

 I'll have my report up at the end of December and hope to read about other collectors as well.

Other Items

 If you haven't been to the main CardBoredom site recently, here is what was posted in November:

1952 Topps: The best worst card I'll ever see from the high number series. Dick Kryhoski had an eventful introduction to the Navy. I accidentally went nuclear trying to add a card to the set building project.

1993 Finest: News flash - Athletes are good at athletic events. Also, some Greek antiquity, college football, and fast Saabs/slow Ferraris. My first experience with the retirement of a "modern" player.

Wallet Card: Looking back at the time I unsuccessfully tried to destroy a Ken Griffey, Jr. card.

 


October 30, 2024

Dash It All

 

Congratulations to the new World Series Champions! Or not. I'm writing this when it could still be either the Dodgers or Yankees. Like a chonky but enthusiastic squirrel I have been creating posts for use at future dates and throwing them into a publishing queue for future use. I already have enough profiles of cards from my in-progress sets to nearly get to the end of the year. Take a look at the ones that made it to the primary CardBoredom site this month:

1952 Topps

  • Prior to Shohei Ohtani, the last American League pitcher to steal home plate did so in 1950. He was even portrayed running to home plate on his '56 Topps card.
  • An excellent defensive infielder went to prison after explosives were planted on the cruise ship that would eventually become the set of The Love Boat
  • Pitchers will do anything to stay in the game. One even had his teeth removed to keep throwing.

1993 Finest

  • I don't believe the rumor that this member of the '93 Finest checklist is trying to corner the market for his Refractors.
  • A baseball card once became the emblem of clubhouse discord among the New York Mets.

Dashboards!

One of the reasons for getting so far ahead of writing has been to ensure an adequate flow of posts while I put the finishing touches on the reporting output of the databases that drive my collecting records. Earlier in the year I teased alongside the rollout of new player infographics that additional updates would be rolled out in stages. I am pleased to report the release of the next upgrade: Improved dashboards for my 1952 Topps and 1993 Finest projects.

The '52 Topps dashboard should look very familiar to anyone familiar with these cards. I think I got the coloring and cardboard texture right while capturing the current state of this project. It is certainly an improvement over the prior donut chart showing progress to date towards completion. Aside from expanded data and better aesthetics, what I am really excited about is how every aspect updates automatically based on the checklist where I track my progress. All I have to do is save the resulting image whenever I want to announce the addition of a new card. Anyone wishing to see the live version of the graphic can find it on my '52 Topps overview page.

Upgrades are also live on at the bottom of my Refractor Dashboard page, an area of CardBoredom that sees quarterly updates with the latest overview of data on these shiny parallels. I improved the graphics while automating future production output. From this point forward, publishing of this data should be able to take place with the click of a button after proof

Powering this from behind the scenes is database that extends well beyond what is provided by any individual publicly available collector resource. While the dashboard gives a general overview of the availability of these cards, the database and my internal files are now at a point where they can generate usable insights into chasing this set. In early January a much more detailed version of the dashboard will be released as a full report on the state of the '93 Refractor market. I promise it will not be just a recitation of pop counts. It's going to be fun.

Next month I will have a homework assignment for you. Until then, don't let your cardboard be boring.

September 30, 2024

September Summary @ CardBoredom

Peter Pan. Mean Girls. Mike Tyson. My look at 1952 Topps cards was all over the place this month. 

This doesn't mean I forgot about the shiny stuff. The '93 Finest Refractors that I have been profiling yielded a look at the stamped signature on my baseball glove as well as a piratical tangent inspired by Bill Murray's inability to pronounce "Galarraga." After all, you can't spell Galarraga without "Arr..."

When you're done checking those out, be sure to look at GTT's exploration of some statistical oddities in the 1953 Bowman sets. It will be well worth your time.

August 30, 2024

Back to School Update

Despite the protestations of the National Weather Service that the summer still has a few more weeks of life, area schools are resuming classes and I am calling the end of the season for 2024. I'm ready for it, having just returned from a family vacation that took place at a beach cottage that had been "renovated" via the owner's hilariously inept DIY skills.

I made a few card-related moves in the past weeks. The aftermath of the National Card Collectors Convention provided some inventory shifts among sellers, bringing to light some cards I would have not otherwise seen. I added a '52 Topps high number rookie of Dick Groat after finding a seller seemingly content to offer pre-pandemic prices on her cards. A quartet of  mid-grade1949 Leaf commons were acquired from a dealer working through the remnants of a collection that had been described as a "find" in various hobby publications a couple years ago. I checked a very tough serial numbered '90s Canseco card off my list and even landed my first Shohei Ohtani card (2018 Bowman base card w/pitching photo).

A little buying and selling for personal profit helped these transactions come about. At the same time I added the Groat card I added a mix of low grade '52 Topps stars and high numbers. Some were slight condition upgrades and the net result is a small pile of expendable '52 duplicates that are now in the process of being moved to other collectors. I have previously graded several raw Charlie Bishop cards in the hopes of attaining of completing a high grade run of his cards. One of these earned the description of "duplicate" after matching a previously graded example in my collection, allowing it to be sold to a rather ambitious set registry collector. The resulting proceeds and anticipated gains from those duplicate 1952s should offset a large portion of this month's purchases. 

I am back to posting on a reasonable frequency on the main CardBoredom site. Most of what was written concerned cards appearing in the 1952 Topps set. Topics covered included electoral shenanigans at the 1957 All-Star Game, a reliever who was released after one inning of work in 1952, the sunset card of a catcher kept out of the World Series by his battery mate, and a high number with a singularly unique base on balls to his credit. In addition to '52 Topps, I took a look at a 2001 Finest Origins insert of a once promising Dodgers hurler who came very close to spending the majority of his career on the disabled list.

A big card from one of my set building projects gets profiled next month. In preparation for this I recently visited the local library and picked up a biography of the card's subject. In the interim, I want to leave you with a recommendation for some fantastic discussions of card history. Do yourself a favor and look at what is being put out by History Through Cards on YouTube. Have you ever wanted to know more about the 1941 Goudey set? How about the myriad of legal battles between rival manufacturers in the early postwar period? He's got you covered without yelling "BOOM!" or employing annoying clickbait thumbnails. It's just video of a guy talking about cards after putting in the research hours that make him worth listening to. I'm all ears if you have any similar suggestions.

 

July 30, 2024

Nothing (sorta) Happened in July

On average nothing happened this month. I have the same number of cards in my collection as I did in June. For a while the mailman was wondering if I had moved. I wrote a handful of posts but did not publish anything for a 36 day stretch, actually letting 68 days elapse between profiles of specific cards in my set building projects.That was remedied at the start of this week with a look at Sherman Lollar's 1952 Topps card.

Same Numbers, Different Look

For several years each of the baseball card profiles posted to my site were accompanied by an infographic showing a player's performance relative to the other names in a set checklist. This worked pretty well for my own purposes, though the way I presented the data was not intuitive for those unfamiliar with the spreadsheets full of statistics that have long accompanied my collection. Just take a look at what I mean:

Shrug. It's difficult to immediately know which player is being reviewed. Things became particularly confusing for readers when trying to interpret the sliders at the bottom of the graphic, which were intended to show a player's stats on an annualized basis against the high, low, and median name with the checklist for each category. I got tired of thinking, "I should fix this" when drafting posts and shifted my efforts to actually doing something about it.

This month I rolled out a replacement set of graphics, replacing the existing items on my site and creating a spreadsheet that automatically generates all the images I need. I think this was definitely a step in the right visual direction. Newly added to the mix is a snapshot in time showing a player's stats as of Opening Day for the season in which the card in question was released. My player rankings were also tweaked so that they better reflect relative performance and eliminate the need to view pitchers and position players separately.

Was it worth the effort? Does the information presented make sense? Is it a step up in the looks department?

The Same Number of Cards...

Like most collectors I have a handful of duplicates that have accumulated either as extras in the purchase of card lots or leftovers from condition upgrades. This month saw the number of these surplus cards fall by two, with a pair of sales thinning out the extraneous parts of the collection and augmenting a collecting budget still feeling the effects of a purchase made at the outset of the year. 

Against this backdrop I purchased one card, a Tiffany parallel of a 1997 Fleer Jose Canseco. What sparked an interest in this one was a casual comment from another collector that he was having a difficult time finding the '97 Tiffany cards of his favorite players. Remembering that Fleer essentially packed out its parallels at one per pack, I was surprised to discover that 1997 edition was 20 times scarcer than its 1996 counterpart and and ~190x harder to come across than the base variety. It's one of those challenging cards to add to a collection when you're otherwise taking it easy.

Last month I added a similar hidden toughie to my Canseco pile courtesy of Penny Sleeve. He struck again this month, delivering an unexpected PWE with a 1953 Topps Charlie Bishop rookie. Bishop, as previously noted, was a distant relative of mine who played a few partial seasons with the Philadelphia and Kansas City Athletics.

 ...and Yet So Many More Cards

 I count cards as being part of my collection as soon as they are acquired, not when they actually get into my hands. Not all of these pieces of cardboard "live" at my house. Rather, some are in third party storage and others are held by services that aggregate small purchases into a single shipment to reduce delivery costs. While I wasn't very active in making acquisitions I did receive a nicely padded envelope filled with previously purchased cards.

 My annual COMC shipment arrived the same day as the surprise Charlie Bishop card. For those of you tracking that service's shipping challenges, this economy speed package arrived 24 days after requesting my cards.Inside were 34 cards comprised mostly of assorted lower grade '52 Topps commons. I try to pick out ones that will look good, at as much as I can with photos apparently taken by COMC with the backup camera from a junked Ford Escape. A few of the cards I received had some creases that are visible only in hand. COMC charges extra to protect cards in top loaders, an added protection that I decline in the checkout process as their bulk packaging is usually very good. Imagine my surprise when almost every card was received in top loaders of varying sizes and clarity. One even had a sticker from a well known hobby shop in Cincinnati and my assumption is the free top loaders are the result of the way the site's sellers delivered their inventory.

More to Come

I am soon going to resume a more consistent writing frequency at CardBoredom and there are several more site upgrades on the way. Better set collecting dashboards are coming, as is better photography for some items that I want to highlight. Another deep dive into one of my Charlie Bishop cards is in process and is pending a response from some witnesses to a key event that took place in 1953. Some improvements to the site's navigation are on the way as well as few select upgrades to this outpost on the Blogger platform. I don't expect to add many new cards to the collection between now and year end so my focus will largely be on upgrading CardBoredom and getting some planned posts published.