Napkin Doon’s Attic Treasures #6: RO-CKY! RO-CKY! RO-CKY!

At some point in my past, I spent real money on Rocky 4 trading cards.  And I am so glad I did!  How awesome are these?

I wish I could get a job writing these captions.  In fairness, you’d be pretty limited in what you could write with so little room.

My only regret is that these are not Rocky III cards.   I will stop whatever I’m doing anytime that movie comes on.  Late at night I like to pretend Rocky III is about me and interchange Rocky with myself, and boxing with blogging.  It works seamlessly.  My favorite scene is when Adrian snaps Rocky out of his funk before his re-match with Clubber Lang.   In the Napkin Doon version, I imagine I have just been running sprints on the beach with the Dimwit, and I just quit on him.  He’s left in a huff.  It seems as though I don’t have the heart to blog anymore after my mentor, The Lost Collector, passed away (sorry AJ, but you had to be in this scenario).  I’m standing on the beach staring woefully at the waves when the Lovely Wife approaches (if you don't know Rocky III by heart, well skip the rest of this post, and, shame on you):

Lovely Wife: Can I talk to you? I want to ask you something important and I want you to tell me the truth.

Napkin: What?

Lovely Wife: Why did you come here?

Napkin: I just don't want it no more.

Lovely Wife: If it's over because you want it to be over, I'm glad.

Napkin: I do.

Lovely Wife: It's just, you've never quit anything since I've known you.

Napkin: I don't know what you want me to say. I mean, what happened? How did everything that was so good get so bad?

Lovely Wife: What's so bad? Tell me, what?

Napkin: I wrecked everything by not thinking for myself. I mean, why couldn't AJ tell me where I was really at right from the start? He didn't have to carry me and lie to me and make me think my blog was better than it really was when it wasn't.

Lovely Wife: He never lied.

Napkin: Those posts weren't funny. They weren't, Lovely Wife. I never posted anything interesting. There was always some angle to hold on to my blog longer than I should have had it. I mean do you understand what I'm saying here?

Lovely Wife: I understand, but you've got to understand that he read your blog and that was his job--humoring you!

Napkin: Look, but that humoring don't help nothing. It only makes things worse. You wake up after a few years thinking you're a winner, but you're not. You're really a loser. So we wouldn't have had the blog as long. So what?! At least it would've been real, Lovely Wife.

Lovely Wife: It was real!

Napkin: Nothing is real if you don't believe in who you are! I don't believe in myself no more don't you understand? When a blogger don't believe, that's it! He's finished, it's over, that's it.

Lovely Wife: THAT'S NOT IT!!

Napkin: That is it!

Lovely Wife: Why don't you tell me the truth?!

Napkin: What are you putting me through Lovely Wife?! You wanna know the truth? The truth is I don't want to lose what I've got. In the beginning I didn't care about what happened to me. I'd go to the computer, I'd run a Big Fun Game, I didn't care! But now there's you, there's the kids, there’s my Brycemas haul. I don't want to lose what I've got!

Lovely Wife: What do we have that can't be replaced? WHAT?! We’ve got boxes, we've got cards, we've got BINDERS! We got everything but the truth. WHAT'S THE TRUTH, DAMN IT?!

Napkin: I'M BLOCKED! ALL RIGHT?! YOU WANT TO HEAR ME SAY IT? You want to break me down? All right, I'm blocked. For the first time in my life, I'm blocked.

Lovely Wife: I'm blocked too. There's nothing wrong with being blocked.

Napkin: There is. For me, there is.

Lovely Wife: Why? You're human aren't you?

Napkin: Look, I don't know what I am. All I know is I'm a liar, and because of that AJ ain't here no more.

Lovely Wife: You didn't push him into anything! He was a grown man (I assume) and he did what he had to do! And you have no right to feel guilty for what happened. You don't! You were a blogger, and you did what you were expected to do, and you did what I and everybody else thought you should do. And you wanna tell me that those posts weren't real, that you were humored? Well I don't believe it! But it doesn't matter what I believe because you're the one that's got to carry that fear around inside you, afraid that everybody's going to take things away and afraid that you're going to be remembered as a hacker, that you're not a blogger anymore. Well, none of it's true! But it doesn't matter if I tell you. It doesn't matter, because you're the one that's gotta settle it. Get rid of it! Because when all the smoke has cleared and everyone's through chanting your name, it's just going to be us. And you can't live like this. We can't live like this. Cause it's going to bother you for the rest of your life. Look what it's doing to you now. The Dimwit thinks you can do it, so do I. But you gotta want to do it for the right reasons. Not for the guilt over AJ, not for the readers, not for the Gummies, not for cards or me, but for you. Just you. Just you alone.

Napkin: And if I lose followers?

Lovely Wife: Then you lose followers. But at least you lose them with no excuses, no fear. And I know you can live with that.

Napkin: How did you get so tough?

Lovely Wife: I live with a baseball card blogger.

Napkin: I really love you. I love you. [they hug]

Then I imagine a pulse pounding montage of me sorting through cards and doing typing drills.  I don’t know who should play Clubber Lang in this post, but whoever he is, he’s in big trouble now.

Napkin Doon Attic Treasures #5: A Long Time Ago…

In a small Texas town far, far away….  Little Napkin developed his early hoarding tendencies with Star Wars toys and products.   I distinctly remember my parents suprising me with my first Star Wars figure, R2-D2, right after seeing the movie for the first time.  My obsession was on.  I still love Star Wars, and still have all my toys.  I can’t wait to give them to my boy once he shows some interest, and then I can play with them again!

I just realized my two lifelong hobby interests have been Star Wars and baseball cards.  2 out of 3 of the geek triple crown.  The other, in my opinion, is comic books, and I never really got into those.  How in the hell did I ever manage to convince my lovely wife to pick me?

When I came across these cards, I was horrified to see that they had been wrapped in rubber bands.  The rubber bands were so old, that they fell apart when I tried to remove them.  Thankfully the cards were no worse for wear because of it. 

Actually, the cards weren’t in half bad shape, considering how much I handled them as a child.  I also have near complete sets of all 3 movies, so I might have to add these to the Super Duper Checklist and create an album for them.  Anyone have a suggestion for filling these types of sets?

Napkin Doon’s Attic Treasure # 5: Ken Burns Baseball

Do you ever have a half baked thought or notion in your head that you just can’t wrap up and articulate?  Something about this Ken Burns set I found in the attic during my vacation has spurred something in my mind that I can’t put together yet.  There is something about this set I think will help me better understand why I buy what I buy, and for what prices.  But first, some background on the set itself.  Of course, this set came out about when Ken Burn’s fantastic Baseball documentary aired on PBS in 1994.  I do remember purchasing this, at a K-Mart, but I don’t remember how much I paid for it.  I think it was $10, but may have been $20.   To me, this is a superb set, and I am glad I rescued it from the boxes in the attic.  The photos are top shelf, and the backs are interesting and informative.  There are obvious star subjects in the checklist as well as those that are not household names, but nonetheless had an impact on the game. 

I don’t know why, but this set has made me think about how I buy baseball cards.  For example, if I saw this exact set available at a card show today, I knew it was made in 1994, and the cost was $10, would I buy it if I didn’t have it already?  I don’t think I would.

But what if a set exactly like this came out this year with a 2011 copyright, and was available for $20 at a Wal-Mart?  Would I buy it then?  I think I would buy it. 

That seems totally irrational to me, but I think that is how I would behave.  Somewhere in the dark corner of my pea brain, I can explain this.  But not yet.  If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Napkin Doons Attic Treasure #4: 3D Cards

I found about 3 of these bad boys in the attic.   I was a little nervous scanning these things, as they seem  pretty delicate.   Tony Gwynn is the card I didn’t scan.   I didn’t dare put Mr. Gwynn under the scanner door, lest the card get crushed.  Boggs and Mattingly made it through fine, though, so now you have something to look at. 

These came out in 1985 and were sold in packs, 1 per pack.  And much like other stuff I bought back then, I have no recollection of purchasing or obtaining these.   These are even bigger than the Donruss cards I featured a few days ago.  They have some peel away strips on the back, so you could attach these to the wall if you so desired.   And, like some of the other oddball things I have found in my attic, these are super cheap on eBay should I decide to build the set.   

So, with the size, the adhesive feature, as well as the 3 dimensional format of these things, do they still classify as baseball cards?  Or are they just simply collectibles?  If so, at what point does a card cease to be a card?  How rigid are we when classifying these things?  Do the EX Century plastic cards I like so much count as cards, since they are plastic and not cardboard?  Why hasn’t the grape caught on as a pie?   You’ve got all sorts of other fruits that work as pie.  Blueberry works great.  Why not grape?  (I stole that musing from Curb Your Enthusiasm, but I love the question.)

Napkin Doon's Attic Treasure #3: Donruss Champions Large Cards

Welcome to another episode of  "Flip This Card Set."    Starring a near complete set of 1984 Donruss Champions oversized cards.  Except I don't mean buy the set cheap and turn around and sell it for a profit.  I just mean take something kind of worthless and turn it into something nice.

My initial thought when I came across these cards was "Meh."  But then the small gears in your pal Napkin's brain starting squeaking to life and I saw some potential here.  There are several things to like about this set.  1)The checklist is small (50 cards) and pretty strong. 2) The cards I am missing are pretty cheap on sportlots.com.  3)  Most of the players in the set are still living.
My thinking is these would be great for autographs on cards of the  living players in the set which is probably 90% of the checklist.  I think if I could complete the set, get 15-20 autographed TTM and put them in nice pages, this could be a pretty special part of my collection.
I am kind of excited about this.  I'll start sending out a few cards next week!

Napkin Doon's Attic Treasure #2: Talking Baseball Cards!

Sometimes, long before I met my lovely wife, long before I became the super cool dude you all know, I liked to sit up in my bed at night and talk to my baseball cards.  "Hello Darryl Strawberry.  My that was quite a blast you hit today.  Thank you for showing up twice in the wax box I bought last week."  Or "Hello Will Clark.  They say you will be one of the greatest hitters ever.  This 87 Topps card of you surely will be able to help buy me a car someday."  Or "Hello Andy Van Slyke.  I hope that when you are making your Hall of Fame acceptance speech, grown up Napkin Doon will be sitting in the crowd, cheering you on."
Well, imaging my delight when I discovered that some cards could talk BACK to me!  As I stumbled across these Baseball Talk cards in the attic last week, I recalled my lonely, lonely nights of listening to baseball cards.  How I ever had a girlfriend in high school is beyond me.

I've got about 10 of these, including the ones pictured above.  I actually, don't remember much of the audio.  I faintly recall Darryl Strawberry saying something about no one having career years during the Met's 86 World Series run, but everyone playing for the team or something.  There is also audio of Bobby Thompson's shot heard round the world.  But I can't find the player for these cards (which are in great shape by the way) to relive the magic.  Maybe I should pick one up cheap on eBay:

Then the lovely wife and I could snuggle up on the couch, sip some Pinot and listen to baseball cards.

Napkin Doon's Attic Treasure #1: Topps Micro Sets

As I may have mentioned, I am on vacation this week.  I had grand visions of organizing my cards, improving my blog and updating my super duper checklist.  I'd say about 0% of has been done so far. I was able to pull down some boxes of cards/collectables  from the attic and dig through them, but that's about it.   And, with me and the lovely wife taking the kids to the Tulsa Zoo tomorrow,  going out of town for the holiday weekend, and traveling on business the rest of next week, I don't see much accomplishment on the horizon.  Maybe when I get done with vacation, I can finally rest and get in some solid goofing off and cardboarding done.  Until then, let's take a walk through some of the crud  interesting items I found in the attic from my previous collecting days.


In one of the boxes from the attic, I found a couple of really neat Topps Micro Sets from 92 and 93.  From what I can tell, these two years, as well as 91 were the only years Topps put this product out.  I wish they would issue them again, because they are really cool.  Here are some of the cards next to a standard mini card and a penny for scale:

I felt very old looking at these cards, alternately holding them closer and further and closer again to my eyes trying to find the right distance to gain focus.  I didn't include it in the scan, but there are checklists in this set.  I defy anyone without a microscope to read them.    The 1992 set also included a 12 card "Gold" bonus set.


They also were one step ahead of themselves on the Diamond Parallel cards everybody is snapping up this year.  The 1993 factory set came with a set of 12 "Prism" Cards: