Bye Bye Mail-day Tracking Bye Bye Bye

OK so this post story will probably be two-fold. The main subject will be mail days tracking. I guess I'll start with what I used to do up until a little over a year ago. I think I have described the process in detail before so I'll try not to get too deep into this time. Basically until around mid January of last year (2019) I used to keep pretty detailed records of what cards I got in the mail, from where how much I paid for them etc. Since last January I haven't updated any posts or files, but still stupidly have been keeping all the packages and envelopes separate in their piles and marking the outer envelope with the receiving date, but often not keeping track of prices especially the shipping costs. So I have a few boxes of padded envelopes and PWEs with assorted cards that I know exactly when I got them but may or may not have what I paid for them. Sometimes Sportlots sellers include all the details, but often if they do include a packing slip the shipping fees are not listed. Sometimes they don't include anything so there is not even the record of what I paid for the lot or the singles or what have me. At one time I thought about trying to catch up and have a word file with some stuff that came in early 2019 but it is far from complete I think there are 3 or 4 padded envelopes left from January 2019 and some of the other months I have some packages listed here and some PWEs there. So That stuff came to a screeching halt sometime around this January. Except I have still been marking the envelopes with date received.

I used to keep track of all that stuff in two places first on the community site Trading Card Central (TCC) that was my main "storage" area for my mail day posts. I would then cut & paste my TCC post onto Trading Card Zone (TCZ) which a few years back changed it's name to Sports Card University. Sometimes the TCZ version I would tweak some to cater to that forum's platform. Usually I would draft my posts as a MicroSoft Word file or just a plain Windows Notepad file. Sometimes I would save the original file sometimes not. Well now long story short TCC seems to have finally bought the farm and bit the bullet, and formerly TCZ merged with another site to become Sports Card Club. The TCC site seems to be totally dead now (since around early Mar) and Sports Card Club is currently blocked by my work network and I haven't bothered trying to connect when at home.

So yeah I no longer keep detailed records of what I have gotten, when, or from where, or for how much. I can look at my buying history on COMC and Sporlots and Ebay (to some extent) but I'm not going to bother any more. Trying to do my previous card inventory logging delays the organizing and cataloging of my collection too much. So those days of being super detailed (or anal retentive) are over. I still have some records and I have my Check Out My Cards records that I have been meaning to make some "MailDazed From The Pazt" posts with those. I'm stalled on finding the dang Football cards from my very first order that were mostly from the 2009 Donruss Classics football cards. Maybe sometime I'll get around to that and scanning all the cards from my various orders there.

Well that is all that I will talk about that for now lets look at some cards:

OK so I'll show two cards that it turns out I got from a Sportlots order that I received on 19 Jul 2019. Two 2019 Panini Score Football cards both parallels, both Rams. First one is card 296 Todd Gurley Red parallel and the other is card 299 Brandin Cooks Gold parallel. Neither is a serial numbered card. I only know that information from the little paper slip I put in the penny sleeve that one of the cards was in. Part of my old system that sort of ended last year, except I have still marked the envelopes with the date I received things. I could look in my Sportlots buying history to find out about the order but I'm not going to bother.

 2019 Panini: Score Football: 299 Gold Brandin Cooks Los Angeles Rams

 2019 Panini: Score Football: 296 Red Todd Gurley II Los Angeles Rams

I really like the design of the 2019 Score Football. Especially the helmet in the corner. I wish the backs had more complete stats and didn't repeat the front photo. I'd rather have all stats like in the 1960s and 70s Topps monopoly days. I probably have the normal base versions of these cards from my Sports Card Forum (SCF) team trades but I'm not sure. I should also get the Red Cooks and the Gold Gurley to have those rainbows. Oh well a collectors life is never done, or his collection never complete or dead or something.

Introducing Maildazed From The Pazt

Maildazed From The Pazt: A NEW blog Feature

Introduction and Logo Key

Sometime in 2015 while contemplating my naval massive backlogged "to blog about sometime" queue/pile/boxes/hoard of cards I came up with an idea. Dangerous I know. I have many large lots of cards from mail-days gone by that still haven't been sorted into my collection. My collection is a bunch of small groups of sometimes related cards that should be a massive organized and well oiled trading card machine. Sometimes I have an accurate record of where, when and who they came from. Most times I have no idea. Yeah a massive lot of them have been sitting for years and years waiting to be blogged about. I know there are still some sets I'm itching to blog about and show off, but haven't gotten around to them. Some of them other bloggers have beaten me to the punch. There are also many cards that sadly will never be mentioned at all. Some of those at one time were in the "to blog about" queue but I decided to remove them from the queue. All these problems are due to this long queue line and being too damn proficient at procrastinating and letting things get out of hand. What should be a small effort is a super monumental task. Ultimately if I could just get everything completely organized THEN I could comfortably blog about stuff better. I would also feel better about trading and knowing what I had for trade. Did I mention the time it takes to scan stuff that delays things as well? Along with procrastinating on the scanning. There was also something about being organized. Whatever that is.

In the alleys and backwoods of the card forums I frequent. I have mail day threads and blogs where I post about what I got and usually from where or who and sometimes how much it cost me. The accuracy is not always detailed but generally good to OK. In 2007 shortly after joining the TCC site I started a blog there on their blog system. It started off as a place to post what I had for sale/trade, but morphed into a mail day blog. Now I am the only one who "blogs" there at all. Most people post their mail days in the specific Mail Day board there and show their scans/photos on the Show and Tell board. I seriously need to make sure all my entries from the blogging area are saved elsewhere because TCC has had some long downtime periods and since I'm the only one blogging there they might decide to close that section down sometime or the site will disappear. My saving effort is barely started with maybe two years worth of the 11 years of posts I have there.

Details of what I had gotten are pretty fuzzy for the early days. I didn't always have all the info sometimes didn't even bother mentioning how much I spent on the cards or left off the specific date received and there are way too many times I didn't keep up with the posting so I had to do a recap to catch up. Some stuff slipped through the cracks at that point. Card lots of 30 or more cards I only mentioned by number or just a selective group of maybe up to two dozen cards if I mentioned them at all. I've had to do recaps in recent months also. Those recaps are often from a couple of months of slacking time. There is usually enough info to scrap together an almost interesting post about a small or sometimes large lot of cards. I can also just show the dang cards which is what I usually end up doing with no story

Often when I mention my mail days elsewhere I clearly remember doing so and telling the tale of that particular card, set, or lot of cards. Then when thinking of something to post for this my regular blog I think "Well I've already talked about that card" when in fact I haven't. Not here, there yes, but here NO. Thus my "Blogged But Not Blogged" feature. Many times I haven't even cataloged the card in my Zistle collection lists, [this shows how long this particular post has been in the draft queue], or my Trading Card Database list. Sadly Zistle is now owned by Beckett and in danger of being a thing of the past. For the most part I have stopped adding to it.

Sometimes I've scanned just the front of a card. In the early days the front was all I scanned. Sometimes I still only scan the front if I think I won't talk about that card in great detail or it is part of a huge set that I can only show off a few cards of at any one time. Then when I look to add a scan somewhere I see the card and think that all is well with this blogiverse when it obviously is not. So I am often very wrong and I'm doomed. Doomed I Say! It's Hopeless! We're Doomed!

I often wonder if I should attempt yet another blog and make it exclusively mail day info? Hmm? I only have 11 years worth of TCC blogging to copy/transfer over. Seems like 100 or 1,000 though. The problem with that is eventually the mail day blog would become another blog that I would have to make at least one post per month on. I already have 3 blogs with that self appointed task. Some months I barely get something up.

OK enough background exposition talk lets get on with the showing off of cards. Heck since this is the first one of these let me just do the dang Logo Key: Some of the links below the thumbnails of the cards lead to a post on my Curly W Cards blog.

OK so this is the original colored scan logo I had intended to use.

As you can see in three of the corners there is part of an envelope or package those are for the background. I have since recycled them so I'm not sure who they would have come from. I made this logo shortly before or at the time I got the idea to identify the cards in these logos I put on my blogs. At the time some of those cards I had just gotten in the mail but the majority of the cards shown here are from a pazt maildaze from a checkoutmycards (often referred to only as COMC) order of 44 cards. Technically it was my second order from there, but my first order ever from there was wiped from their database when they redid their website a few years back (after being sued by the Big B). Some cards there still only have partial information. I plan on detailing the 44 card order in this feature sometime. It should be one of the in process posts in my draft queue. I have only ordered from COMC 4 times. Actually only "shipped" 4 times I currently have 7 cards I have bought in the last year that are in the "to be shipped" area of my dashboard there. I would order more often but you have to add rickin' frickin' money to your membership "store credit" account kitty.

ROW 1:

1976 Sugar Daddy Sports World (Series 2): FOOTBALL: 4 Sonny Jurgensen Redskins

1956 Topps Baseball: 49 Pedro Ramos RC Nationals

1959 Topps Baseball: 74 Directing The Power: Jim Lemon, Cookie Lavagetto, Roy Sievers Senators

1959 Topps Baseball: 465 Baseball Thrills: Sievers Sets Homer Mark Roy Sievers Senators

ROW 2:

1962 Topps Baseball: 88 Ralph Houk MGR Yankees (Yogi Berra in background)

1969 Topps Baseball: 650 Ted Williams MGR Senators

1967 Topps Baseball: 348 Tug McGraw Mets

1965 Topps Baseball:  574 Roy Sievers Senators

1955 Topps Baseball:  48 Bob Kennedy Orioles

1955 Topps Baseball: 13 Fred Marsh Orioles

ROW 3:

1968 Topps Baseball Game Insert: (Back) 9 Brooks Robinson Orioles

1972 Topps Baseball: Traded: 754 Frank Robinson Dodgers 

1973 Topps Baseball: 30 Tug McGraw Mets

1973 O-Pee-Chee Baseball: (Back) 30 Tug McGraw Mets

I am working on posts for my COMC orders so those will most likely be the next few "MFTP" posts. My last COMC order was 2 years ago. I have a huge watch list over there and about 7 purchased cards waiting to be shipped. I want to make a huge dent in purchasing my watch list before having any more cards shipped.

Accompanying A Strive Set Build 69 Style

As a life-long collector it is odd that there are many many (read most of the damn things) Topps Flagship sets that I still need to complete. Now days with the very short printed super high number cards even base set collecting has become impossible. Many collectors seem to start a set build and then wham bamm they are finished in a year or two with little effort. No matter how much it costs to complete or how many high value cards are in the set. Even if there are a bunch of super short printed cards. Well that is what it seems like to me anyway.

One of my big goals, as readers of this blog may know, is to complete the 1965 Topps Baseball set for my Strive for '65 set build. I'm already over a year and a half behind in that goal. Update to the set build. One of the common themes other than purchasing the cards from a Sportlots auction was that I also got some 1969 Topps Baseball cards to help with that set from yet more Sportlots auctions. I had three packages that had the 1965 and 1969 combo, one had some bonus stuff. Well not technically bonus since they were auctions also, they just hitched a ride on the Hippie '60s Trip. Now the cards in no particular order.

First a three card package the '65 was Marty Keough Reds. The two 1969 cards were 25¢ each:

4 NL RBI Leaders: Willie McCovey Giants, Ron Santo Cubs and Billy Williams Cubs

164 World Series 1968 Game 3: (Tim) McCarver's Homer Puts St. Louis (Cardinals) Ahead

Package two contained eight cards from 5 sportlots 25¢ auctions. [First picture at top of this post] I don't recall the distribution by auction of the seven '65 cards, but it resulted in getting one card duplicated. I also got one card I already had (the previous one of course is in better condition). I think it was a case of the needs of more cards outweighing not needing one card. The lone '69 card in this case is:

6 NL Home Run Leaders: Willie McCovey Giants, Richie Allen Phillies and Ernie Banks Cubs.

The final package only had one lone '65 card the Dave Vineyard (at 25¢) it contained a total of 19 cards from 7 different auctions (but yes the same seller) the shipping costs varied but came to $6.73 the auction prices ranged from 25¢ to $4.75. The grand total was $15.98.

The 1969 Topps Baseball: 8 cards 3 auctions two were for multiple cards at 25¢ each auction A's team lot and 2 Yankees, 2 Mets and the third auction was for card #12 at $1.25

12 NL Strike Out Leaders: Bob Gibson Cardinals, Fergie Jenkins Cubs, and Bill Singer Yankees

46 Fritz Peterson Yankees
72 Ron Taylor Mets
127 Kevin Collins Mets
143 Joe Mossek Athletics
195 John Odom Athletics
217 John Donaldson Athletics
313 Bill Robinson Yankees

BONUS CARDS: AKA Not '65 nor '69

1967 Philadelphia Gum Football: 1 card $2.25

120 New York Giants Team Card - Team Logo on front.

1982 Kellogg's 3-D Super Stars Baseball: 9 cards 2 auctions one of 4 cards at 25¢ and one 5 cards $4.75 (includes Parker and Cey). All in excellent condition with only a little bent warping.

9 Fernando Valenzuela Dodgers
25 Carlton Fisk White Sox
28 Robin Yount Brewers
46 Ron Cey Dodgers
48 Dave Parker Pirates
52 Chris Chambliss Dodgers
57 Dwayne Murphy Athletics
63 Vida Blue Giants
64 Eddie Murray Orioles

Sugar Daddy 1953 Comic Characters

Remember when you were a little kid and you looked forward to getting the Sunday edition of the newspaper so you could read the full color comic section? Back the early 1950s comic strips were super popular more so it seems than they are now days with the Anime comics and graphic novels and computerized shows on the internet and on television. In 1953 a company called James O. Welch Co. produced a set of trading cards that were inserted into the Sugar Daddy candy wrappers. There were 50 cards in all. Each with a comic character from one of the popular comic strips of the day. The character name was not included instead there were a series of blank boxes, like a crossword puzzle, that collector's were encouraged to fill out the name. When you collected 25 different cards you were to send in the cards, filled out with your guesses of the character's names and you would win a giant sized Sugar Daddy lollipop candy on a stick.

A second series was produced using the same 50 cards, except these include the name of the character and at the bottom of the card there was a coupon that kids were once again encouraged to send in. This time if you sent in 10 coupons and .25¢ you received a beanie cap or if you sent in 10 coupons and just .10¢ you received 12 beanie buttons.

Anyway you wanna see the cards. I have three cards with two different characters 2 from series 1 and 1 from series 2. Some months back I had mentioned these cards on the card forums where I mention my "mail days" so the description paragraphs I have more or less just copied from those posts to set up showing each of the cards, so there will be some repetitive information in this post.

On 05 June 2015 I got a lone card Non-Sport sweetie for $9.95 + $3.20 Shipping. A single nice condition 1953 R757-1 Comic Character Card "Sugar Daddy" series 29 The Dragon Lady from Terry And The Pirates. This was from a set of 50 cards where there are blank boxes that the collector was to fill in the blanks identifying the character and then after collecting 25 cards mailing the correctly identified cards in to the candy maker they would get a GIANT sized Sugar Daddy "lollipop". There is an identical second "series" R757-2 that has a "coupon" on the bottom of the card (similar to the tabs on the Red Man Tobacco cards). The coupon was for a beanie or set of beanie buttons.

On Wednesday 01 July 2015: I had a one envelope one card mail day. From Ebay for $24.99 + $3.00 shipping. Yeah I know the card was a bit expensive but I think worth it. a 1953 Sugar Daddy Comic Character Cards R757-2 #29 The Dragon Lady from Terry And The Pirates comic strip. A few weeks back I had gotten the other variant of this card the R757-1 variant for much cheaper. The first variant with the fill-in-the-blank for the name is slightly easier to find since it didn't have to be mutilated, this R757-2 variant the one with the coupon is sometimes difficult to find with the coupon intact and in such good shape as this one is in.

On 11 July 2015: From Ebay single package forget if it was a PWE or a small cardboard mailer. If I recall the contents (a single vintage non-sport card) was well protected by a cardboard sandwich and was in a penny sleeve. IN pursuit of my set build of the 1953 Sugar Daddy Comic Character Cards R757-1 (and -2 set) I got card #46 Indian Chief from the "Smitty" comic strip. The blanks are Unmarked of course as this is the way I am collecting this set. At first I was concerned that the card edges were TOO straight and it was "cut" but it seems to be the same size as my other card from this set. Oh the auction details it was a BIN purchase for $7.50 + $4.00 shipping.

I plan on getting the rest of this set both variants eventually. The sets are nearly identical 50 cards in the individual sets so that is 100 cards total. The dash one set I'll try to get unmarked and the dash two set I want with the coupon intact so both sets will take me a while to get. As usual I want to get it on the cheap.

Updated: 30 Mar 2017

My needs for the sets:
R757-1: (Fill in the blank) 2/50:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50

R757-2 (coupon version w/coupon): 1/50
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50

Weird Packaging: But Still Pretty Safe

On Thursday 26 March 2015 I had a three package mailday. Someday I might blog about the other two packages especially the second one that was a lot of 15 hand-cut mid 1970s Hostess cards many of them poorly cut from their product boxes. This post is not about them but about the third package which was very strangely packaged for what it actually contained. This is the story of this overpacked package:

This last package was a work of art. Very strange packaging. Without giving away what the item was yet I will mention I purchased it from Ebay an auction with the winning bid of $4.99 + $2.32 shipping. OK nothing out of the ordinary here. Reasonable final price for the item and shipping costs also reasonable.

Now the odd thing the packaging job: (Image blurred on purpose)

The envelope was 9" x 12" yellow clasp envelope. Super taped with clear shipping tape that I had to cut an opening at the top to get it open.

Inside that a piece of cardboard (white sort of odd triangular piece not sure what it originally boxed).

Next to that, I forget if it was taped or not, a clear ziplock plastic bag 6" x 11" has red lettering printed on it "AdoptaPlatoon www.adoptaplatoon.org" strange.

Stranger still in the clear plastic bag a paper bag that was folded and taped some. The paper bag from Burger King "Bags of Flavor"

with hand scribbled "yogi berra" barely legible. OK the cat is almost out of the bag.

Inside that a small plain white PWE (4x6) with one fold and surprisingly not sealed or taped. Then the card safe in a toploader with penny sleeve.

Yogi peaks his head out over the edge of the envelope to see if it is safe to come out.

Yes it is a 1961 Topps Baseball: 472 Yogi Berra Yankees MVP Card.

I left positive feedback because other than the strange overly excessive packaging it was a smooth transaction with safely delivered card. My feedback reads "Good Service. Strange packaging for one card but everything is good"