COMCritters

 Squirrels!

I make no secret of the fact that squirrels are my favorite animal of all time, I can spend hours watching their antics in my yard. One of my regular searches on COMC is Squirrel and I was able to add 4 new cards to my collection with this order. They are, in order, 1925 Wills's Life in the Treetops, 1959 Sweetule Animals of the Countryside, 1986 Brooke Bond Incredible Creatures, and 1999 Beanie Babies, which is actually a parallel and thus becomes my first Squirrel Parallel in my collection. I don't have the base card yet. 

Now let's talk turkey...

I'm also a big fan of turkeys, and consider seeing them in some field to be a highlight of most every trip. I even had a picture of me with some turkeys at the Trevor Zoo as my Facebook profile picture for a while. I saw this card posted on one of the blogs and knew I had to get a copy for myself, so I went straight to COMC and got one. 

I'm also a big beaver fan...and this is the biggest beaver I've ever seen! 

 But this may be the greatest hockey card I've ever seen! 

Hitting the Favorites- Non-Sports

It's so much easier to find cards for my favorite athletes. Type in their name, and hundreds of options are available. My favorite non-sports subjects? Not so much. In fact, this is the first time I've ever been able to get enough in one shipment to be able to make a post about them!

My love for squirrels is well known. But they are hard to find on cards! Or anything else for that matter. Most of the squirrel memorabilia you can find are related to red squirrels, which I couldn't identify with because we only ever had grays. Well, that is different, as we have had two reds visiting the yard recently, and so, I can happily add Red Squirrel cards to my collection now! (granted, it didn't stop me from doing so before, either, but I wasn't as happy about it)

 1939 Player's Animals of the Countryside

 1958 Brooke Bond British Wildlife

 1964 Hitchman's Dairies Animals of the World

 1982 Grandee British Mammals

1990 Brooke Bond A Journey Downstream

 1994 Brooke Bond Going Wild

2018 Wacky Packages Go to the Movies Sci-Fi Film Stickers

7 new squirrel cards! Can't beat that...in fact, it nearly doubles my collection because I had only 4 before getting this box! Except for the 1939 Player's set, all the others are brand new sets to my collection...and this is the first Wacky Packages card I've ever bought. As a general rule, I don't like them...but this one I did. Maybe someday I'll even pick up the parallels. Funny thing is, I have no idea when I'm going to post this, but I am writing it just days after visiting the American Museum of Natural History, and seeing lots of actual Jurassic remnants!

My other favorite topic, cars, was much harder to find. I do periodic searches for El Caminos (none new, I have all I know of already) and Edsels. I thought I had them all...but I didn't. I was quite surprised to find a new card of an Edsel for sale on COMC.

From 1962's B.T. Limited Modern Motor Cars, this card actually cost me more than any other that I got in this COMC order I think, at 4 dollars and change. There are two other back versions but the front image is exactly alike so I am not too inclined to buy the other two...not at that price. All three versions were being sold by the same seller.

One of the backs in in French and I think the two English versions may have been translated...certainly not written by anyone who knows anything about Edsels. Aside from referring to it as a Ford Edsel, which is so wrong- it'd be like calling a Cadillac a Chevrolet! Both made by General Motors but totally different- it also refers to the Ranger model as a "Rouger". And interestingly enough, the text refers to the car as if it's brand new, when in reality, the brand had been killed by the time this card was issued. And we know the card is properly dated because the set does include 1960s cars. Quite an oddity.

With this card, I now have 4 of the 7 known to me cards of the Edsel brand. While my completion percentage has gone down with the discovery of three new cards, I am in actuality very happy to be able to add another to my collection.

COMC Christmas: Non-Sports

For Christmas 2017, my brother gave me $100 in COMC. I hit all of my collecting interests, but I spent the majority of the money on non-sports cards...vintage non-Sports. Mostly Pre-War...some of them being Pre-WWI, and one pre-Spanish American War!

Here they are, in the order of being scanned (not chronological)

1939 Player's Animals of the Countryside

2001 Inkworks Simpsons Mania Promo

1992 Impel DC Comics Hologram

1911 ATC Sights & Scenes of the World (Pan Handle Back)

1992 CMK Cars of the World

1910 Wills Drednaughts

1924 Player's Natural History

1930 Godfrey Phillips Evolution of the British Navy

1912 Wills Historic Events

1932 Wills Homeland Events

1932 Wills Homeland Events

1932 Wills Homeland Events

1915 Lambert & Butler Aviation

1931 Player's Poultry

1922 Wills Did You Know

1922 Wills Did You Know

1932 Lambert & Butler History of Aviation

1901 Ogden's Imperial or International Interest

1910 ATC Fish Series (Piedmont back)

1909-11 Hassan Animal Series

1909-11 Hassan Animal Series

1895 Arm & Hammer Beautiful Flowers

1910 ATC Flags of the World Silks

1953-54 Topps World on Wheels

1953-54 Topps World on Wheels

1956 Gum, Inc. Adventure

1994 Marvel Universe

1994 Marvel Universe

Some thoughts on the above cards:

• With the exception of 1992 DC, 1910 ATC Fish Series, 1953-54 World on Wheels and 1994 Marvel Universe, all of the other sets are brand new to my collection, although I got more than one card from some of them here.
• Several of the sets are non-sports sets but include some racing cards, which naturally I targeted for my collection. They still count as non-sports since they are just a couple (or less) of sports cards in a non-sport set.
• I know of only three cards that depict an Edsel, and I now have two of them in my collection, as well as one parallel. 
• I mentioned the two World of Wheels cards when I did my Non-Sports countdown, and the Apperson was the first card out of the box when the COMC order arrived, so you will see it again shortly when I post my Card of the Day project for January. 
• I decided to get some of the 1994 Marvel Universe cards I needed after ranking the set 4th in my countdown- I now need 4 left to complete the set. 
• The 1895 Arm & Hammer card is only my third card from the 1800s! Well, third and a half.
• The Parthenon card has a metallic gold border that looks like it came out of the 90s or 00s, not 1910s
• This is my first Silk. It's a somewhat forgotten subsection of non-sports cards that was popular briefly about 100 years ago. 
• The Stoat did not come in a can. 

I'm going to get 4 or 5 posts out of the cards I purchased with the gift my brother gave me, but this is probably my favorite post. I believe it's also the first time I've gotten a squirrel and an Edsel into the same post- two of my absolute favorite subjects! 

30 Day Challenge 29: A favorite card before 1950

Approaching the end of this challenge. It's been fun to write them. It's nice to not have a long-form post that takes three hours or more to make from time to time. To be honest, I wrote the first 27 posts all on 3/31 and would have done the last three then too but I got too tired, and finished them off on 4/1...the day I plan to post the first in the series. I didn't get any scanning done during that time but it was worth it because I really enjoyed writing them.

I had two cards I debating showing here, both of which are in my collection. One, from 1909, and one from 1911. I decided to show the 1909 card, but both have been shown already in the past. I've shown most if not all of my pre-1950 cards on the blog already so a repeat here is no surprise.

From the 1909 Philadelphia Caramel set comes this card of a gray squirrel. Squirrels are my favorite animal and I can spend hours watching their antics. I also enjoy photographing them. My squirrel album on my website has 460 images, some dating back to the 1980s! Trust me, the photos get better later in the album. They are in chronological order of being posted so as my photography skills improved the photos improved as well. (naturally).

There are very few cards that show squirrels, and even fewer that show gray squirrels. This is the only one in my collection, and I am very interested in trading for any others.
Here's a real gray squirrel I photographed April 9th, 2009- 100 years after this card was made.

As you can see, the artwork is not particularly accurate, especially in the head/neck area. But I still love it.

Sets in my Collection #1 1909 Philadelphia Caramel Zoo / Introduction to new project

As I've mentioned a few times, I am working on trying to get at least one card from each NASCAR and NBA set, and for non-sports the sets that interest me.

I have, in my 27 years collecting cards, added over 1800 different sets covering many, many different topics to my collection. You will see of course Non-sports, basketball, auto racing, but also baseball, hockey, football, and pretty much everything else- eventually!

I'm going to go through each and every one in a series of blog posts over the next several years. I have not yet decided if I want to go in chronological order, or if I want to pull some favorites and post them, or group them topically- but I know I wanted to start with non-sports as that is how I started collecting back in 1988.

So, I begin with the oldest set currently in my collection, 1909 Philadelphia Caramel Zoo.

It is a 50 card set, and I have only 1, or 2%. I am planning on giving the percentages of how close I am to completing it based on the stats provided by the Trading Card Database.

I love squirrels, and when I saw that the set included one, I had to have it. Even though it was already over 100 years old when I got it, it cost me less than $10 with shipping, Can't beat that!

I know I have shown the front of the card before, but this is the first post dedicated to it solely, and I believe it's the first time I've shown the back. Not a lot going on back there, and it even predates the concept of numbering cards.

Hopefully this project will allow me to post more often, as it doesn't really require a lot of thinking or motivation on my part (lol). I could post one a day every day and have about 4 years of posts, so expect this series to be a mainstay on Cardboard History. I have created a tag called "Sets" that each post in the series will be tagged with.

Thanks for reading!

Month in Review - January 2015

I thought I would debut a new feature today, a look back at the previous month in my hobby. And of course, take a look at some cards that I have not posted yet.

January was an overall unpleasant month in real life, but the cards were great, of course. Not even counting the huge epic mailday I posted about yesterday, I had already gotten 699 new cards in the month- and more than half of them came from trades, which is always a good thing.

I have been constantly tinkering with Cardboard History itself, adding many new features in January, including a Blogroll, my Top 10 Wants, links to my tradelist and semi-complete wantlists, I figured out the Tagging feature, and I added several pages to the top, where you can follow along as I add new cards of my favorite player in the NBA, and view a listing, with links to the gallery, of all my completed sets. I have some more things I want to add, just need to make the time.

I returned to Ebay, for the first time since 2009. Back then they went to where you MUST pay with Paypal, which I do not have. Sometime recently they allowed you to pay without Paypal, so I made 4 purchases. One NBA card, two NASCAR cards and one Non-Sports card. The NBA card I chose is visible on my Elton Brand chart, #3 on the list.

I hit NBA card #77,000 on January 1st. I knew I was getting close, so I pulled from my stash of mixed boxes until I hit the exact mark, and stopped there, for that day. I'm actually doing better with adding to them than I thought I would, it's not like the peak years where I was adding 1000 new cards a week, but I think I appreciate the cards more now. I even take the time to read the backs, something I didn't do when I was getting that many new ones- I didn't have the time to do that back then, I could barely keep up with keeping my Excel chart up to date...which I ended up losing to a floppy disk corrupting. That happened sometime in 2005, and it still stings...but, I am working on (slowly) recreating it, and even better than it was before.

I added 8 new people to my collection in January, 6 NBA and 2 NASCAR. (I only keep track of these two sports- but I got hundreds, if not thousands, of new people in baseball, football and especially hockey yesterday) 3 of the NBA players are rookies who I got in Prizm, which came out in January. My brother treated me to a shopping bag full of Rack Packs, some of which I have not yet opened. Of the 6, 3 of them are One Hit Wonders! Besides Scott Meents, who got a post in One Hit Wonders, and Rex Hughes, who was detailed in "My Largest Trade Ever", the other is Mark Hendrickson, who played briefly with the 76ers in 1996-97. He only got one NBA card, although he does have college cards in my collection, those don't count towards the NBA collection. For NASCAR, I picked up a card of former Miss Sprint Cup/current broadcaster Monica Palumbo off Ebay, and then I found a website that was selling the 1991 Track Pack Yesterday's Heroes set for a great price, and added Jim Roper, who won the first ever NASCAR race- but only ever got one card.

I only added two sets, not counting the massive amount I got yesterday. That would be 2014-15 Prizm, and this one- now my oldest card in my collection, from 1909. This was the non-sport card I picked up off Ebay. Kind of amazing, but I was able to get this 106 year old card for under $6. And it's a squirrel, so you really can't go wrong!

It appears this card predates the concept of numbering cards.

I opened one box in January 2015. Press Pass Cup Chase. I don't usually like to spend that kind of money on myself, but being the last Press Pass set ever- and the last NASCAR set for the forseeable future- I had to. I loved it, and it got it's own post last month.

I also nabbed this relic parallel on Ebay. I was quite surprised but pleased to pay less than the serially numbered print run for this one. I should have taken a better photo without the glare, but I mainly wanted the show off the green foil and the 07/10 SN.

 

Here's the Jim Roper card I mentioned earlier and a really great looking insert from 2012-13 Crusade...also named Crusade. (I hate when card companies do that). Tim Hardaway Sr.'s not my favorite player, but I have always loved the refractor technology. This came out of the mixed boxes I love so much.

 

I found out this card existed during the month of January, and added it to my collection as well. It was exclusive to Club Maxx in 1991. They also did a handful of them in 1992, of which I have the Elliott from that year as well.
From the front it almost looks like a normal card...

But it's not, though!

I found a dealer that sells cards by the pound, so my mom treated me to 10 pounds of cards. It's been a little disappointing, though, as they are mostly all duplicates- and all but 2 cards have been from the 1989-90 through 1994-95 era, of which I have most of them already- and nearly every single card has been damaged. More than 90%. I've gotten more than 20 copies of the 1992-93 Hoops Chris Ford card, however. When I finish all the inner boxes, I will line them all up and take a photo. I have gotten a few new cards, but of the two inner boxes, of 6, I've gotten less than 30 new cards. I don't plan to buy any more from them. (If I could find newer cards, like 2005-06 and later, like this, I would do it, as I don't have many from that era, comparatively)
I did get this great error, though. I love error cards...you can somewhat see the kind of damage most of the cards have from the photo though. Scuffs, bad corners, dents throughout.

And then....there's this. I never have any luck with redemptions. I usually send them and get nothing back. (Fleer still owes me some) Not this time!

Only my second triple autograph in my collection. First NASCAR. Those are on-card, too, not stickers. That doesn't matter too much to me, but I know a lot of other collectors care.

And before anyone asks....it's not for sale! It's my third Newman autograph, but first for Tony and Danica.

As always, thanks for reading! I'll post the grand total of cards added in January when I finish going through all the new ones I got yesterday...but that's not going to be for a few days more!