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:

• The best card in my collection: Willie Mays (also my 500th post)
• Life goal: Live such an interesting life that people name race horses after you.
• Another pitcher prompted me to feed some baseball cards to the local wildlife.
• This pitcher played for teams named the Commies and the Reds. I wish him luck answering any questions from the House Select Committee.

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.