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Mini pages, mega reaction

I go back and forth over whether I am naturally tidy or sloppy. I tend to think that I am tidy because my mother is quite the neat freak, and, oh, the random rules when I was growing up. Whether by force of habit or inherited genes, I tend to like certain things tidy. But only certain things. My desk at work ranks only third in the sports department in terms of health department disaster area, but consider that I have been meaning to clean my desk there for 15 years and have never gotten more than five minutes into it. That's a lot of accumulation. So it seems I'm only tidy about areas that matter to me. The kitchen, for example. Get those counters clear. Food is too important to eat in filth. And, above all, baseball cards. My collection is not as tidy as other collectors. I marvel at those who have their own dedicated card rooms and have constructed four-level shelves just for their binders. My goal is one day to have my own exclusive card room (my wife has even si...

The squeaky wheel gets the sheets

I am not a crusader. When I was a kid, I'd watch as my father would get into "discussions" with sales people about this item or that and often -- not all the time, mind you -- get what he wanted. The older I got, the more aggravated I became with this technique, and although I've been known to stand up for what I believe in, most of the time I just let it go, because honestly ... I'm lazy. Or dislike talking to people. One of the two. Probably both. It took a page, a ridiculous nine-pocket plastic page that protects bits of cardboard, for me to get noisy. I have been campaigning for a page to house 1975 Topps style minis -- cards that are 3 1/8-by-2 1/4 inches -- since I found out that the old pages for that size of a card didn't exist anymore. For probably 3 or 4 years on this blog I've mentioned that there needs to be a page that fits these cards. Once I got on Twitter and connected with UltraPro, that's when I saw progress. As Topps began...

Rejoice! The mini card page is near

I received a few more 1975 Topps minis from Mark H. the other day. Mr. Sutherland is one of them. The cards would be appropriate for this post, but I don't have the time to scan them all in, so I'll have to find something pseudo creative for those cards in another post. Those minis get me down to needing about 70 more to complete the set (I counted the other day and can't remember the exact number now because I'm old -- duh, I'm collecting '75 minis). This is great, of course, but it also means that time is ticking on finally getting pages to fit all those '75 minis. But apparently, UltraPro is clued into my '75 Topps mini completion timeline because this it what it released today: When I saw it, I kind of sat and stared at it in stupor. I had just woken up after another long Olympic work session and my mind plays tricks on me in the late morning. So, I just sent a little message to UltraPro to make sure it wasn't all a dream. To ...

Time is ticking

I just counted how many 1975 Topps minis I need to complete the set. And it happens to be exactly 100. I consider that a milestone to celebrate. If you knew what I have heard about collecting '75 minis my whole collecting life, you would be aware of how mind-blowing it is that I am just 100 cards away. Long before we were bombarded with "rare cards" and artificial scarcity, '75 minis were considered one of the more difficult cards to obtain from the '70s and '80s era. And yet -- 100 left. That's some cool beans. The person who got me down to 100 is The Junior Junkie . T.J. has this guy that he knows at card shows who always has '75 minis. In fact, he calls him "his mini guy." I really, really need one of those guys in my life. Where do you get one? But a sad little note accompanied this latest package of '75 minis. It said -- let me wipe away some tears here so I can read it: "This is the last of my mini guy's co...

For the sake of organization: The '75 mini page quest

I have been communicating with Ultra Pro's representative on Twitter about manufacturing a style of page that fits 1975 Topps-style minis. No promises have been made, but Ultra Pro said that they would study the issue. I got the impression that they weren't exactly aware that there was a need for pages this size, or that there were even cards this size. That's not a reflection on the company, that's a reflection on how old I am. Even a card set as iconic as 1975 Topps minis is "so old" that we can apparently just ignore them because "nobody collects that stuff anymore." But, take it from me, trying to organize my '75 minis is a real problem because I can't find the proper pages. I recently received a whole bunch of '75 minis from Andy at High Heat Stats . I love '75 mini packages more than anything that is not alive. What a great bunch of cards. They make me giddy like nothing else. But the whole page-sorting problem puts...