Top Blog Moments- IT'S A LIST, LOST COLLECTOR

Remember that time the Lost Collector wrote a post about how lists were lame, and it rubbed Night Owl the wrong way?  That was funny.

I'm happy to say that for as much grief as I give AJ (The Lost Collector), I consider him a friend and one of the best people I've met as a result of this blog business.  

So before my last post tomorrow, in honor of AJ, I wanted to stroll down memory lane and list out my Top 9 favorite blog moments from the last three years.  Why 9?  Because 7 ate 9.  Wait, no that's a punch line to one of my 4 year old's jokes.  Why 9?  Because.... I couldn't come up with 10.

Here they are, sort of ranked and sort of not:


#9 : Auctions/Gifts From Cleve:

Obviously auctions at Cleve's were a major part of my blog.  My involvement with Cleve's won't end with the ending of the blog thankfully.  And I'm still stunned by some of the incredible cards that Cleve has given me over the years:

Yes that's a Triple Threads dual autograph book card of Evan Longoria and Josh Hamilton.  It is indeed.

I guess these aren't directly tied to the blog, but they are so nice and Cleve is so awesome that they need to be on the countdown.



#8 :  Dayf sends me the best card I ever received from another blogger:

 

As you may recall, I made a lazy, half ass attempt to get George Will, my hero, on a card in Allen & Ginter.  It went nowhere, but did result in me receiving a custom made Will A&G card, courtesy of everyone's favorite Cardboard Junkie.

#7:  AJ Gets Ranced:

Speaking of exchanging cards between bloggers, I was very proud of what I sent AJ after he made a smart ass remark about some tainted cards I had opened.  His post is perhaps my favorite post related to my blog from another blogger.

I also want to send a kudos to Cardboard Catastrophes for the best title of a post about a trade with me:  Paper Products From a Paper Product.  That was brilliant, and Jeff is a fantastic writer and generous dude.

#6:  Etopps Scandal:

This is as close to fame in the baseball card world as I ever got.  I was mentioned on eTopps message boards and it led to a mild scandal.  It's a weak 15 minutes of fame grant you, but it's mine.

#5:  Hot Dog Tournament:

I know this was a stupid bit on my part, but it was a blast.  My stomach didn't appreciate it, and I won't do it again, but it was fun to write.  It's also been fun to re-live all the matchups and the controversies that occured.  What a thrilling tournament!

#4:  The Becky Bridwell Interview:

I was pretty of proud of this one.  It's as close to journalistic "work" as my blog ever got.  Adventures of Napkin Doon is not interview-centric at all, but the interview with Oriole's prospect Parker Bridwell's mom was fun, and she was an awesome person to correspond with.

#3:  Doon Discs:

This was a totally stupid spoof of phiten discs, but it was a wonderful creative release.  I was also able to use artwork from stuff I received from AJ and Dayf to make the "discs".

#2:  My Collecting "Food" Pyramid:

 

Other than my first Big Fun Game, this post was one I got the best response to early in my blogging days.  I think the analogy still holds up for me as a collector.  In fact, the comparison of junk wax to candy was spot on for me personally, because I'm getting to the age where splurging on either really makes me feel like crap.  I think it was my best "contribution" to the "blogosphere."

#1:  George Will Sends Me An Autographed Card:

Sure, this is number one for purely selfish reasons.  But getting an autographed card from George Will, and having his assistant tell me he was amused with my letter still gives me chills.  Best autograph I have by far.  This alone was worth starting the blog.


I'm sure there are a few things I'm forgetting that should make this list, but for now, that's it, that's the list. 

The Lost His Mind Collector

I'm interrupting my COMC Black Friday parade to show a group of cards that my good pal AJ from The Lost Collector blog sent recently.  He periodically sends great stuff out of the blue, and this package was no different.

First, the star of the PWE in my opinion:

An exfractor of the best player on the best team of all time, the 2014 Texas Rangers.  That's just my guess anyway.  My estimates conservatively predict a 140-22 Rangers record next year, with Beltre flirting with .400 and 60 home runs.  This is based on a complex algorithm-formula type thing I do in my head that I can't begin to explain to you in this forum.

Next is a neat oversize card from 1986 Donruss:

I like this card as a stunning reminder of how rough it used to be rooting for the Rangers.  Gary Ward was the "All Star" choice back then.  I'm going to pull this card our every time I get frustrated with a modest losing streak from the Jon Daniels era Rangers.

Finally, this:

 I assume AJ sent this because he thinks this is how we look and behave down here in Arkansas.  I'd take offense, except for this true story from my childhood (which took place in Texas, thank you very much):

I have an Aunt ("Genie" we'll call her) who is best described as a free spirit.  She lived about two hours from where I grew up in the panhandle of Texas.  I had no inclination that she had any interest in WWE (WWF back then) wrestling.  I did though.  Big time.  I would always try to attend WWF events whenever they made their way to Amarillo, Texas.  One year, "Hacksaw" Jim Dugan was in Amarillo, pairing with Hillbilly Jim to take on King Kong Bundy and Andre The Giant in a tag team match.

I looked out in the crowd and noticed someone holding up a sign that read:  "King Kong Is A Ding Dong!"  I grabbed my friend who was with me and was getting ready to make fun of the rube that had brought that sign.  But then I looked down at the sign holder- it was my Aunt Genie.  I slunk down in my seat the rest of the night.

Thanks for the painful childhood reminder AJ.

Burying The Rangers With The Lost Collector

It's official.  This country is broken, and we've lost our way as a decent society.  The Rangers have lost 6 straight and don't appear to be able to beat my son's little league team at this point.  I'm not one for exaggeration, but seriously, this Rangers collapse that is happening to me is the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone in the history of the world.

My only solace this weekend was the package of Ranger cards that my pal AJ from The Lost Collector sent me.  I was traveling on business all week- it was a LOOONNNNNGGGGG week too- and seeing the package from AJ waiting on the table for me was a nice surprise.

There was a bunch of 90s era Rangers (I won't call it junk when it has Rangers on it):

I love sorting through stuff like this, especially when I come across sets I've never seen before.

And there were some really super cards too:

I have no idea what this set is, but it's a really pretty card and numbered to #55.   But even better, AJ continued the Blalock hit parade with an auto!

I'm guessing this was one of AJ's TTM signatures.  Great card choice here with A&G. 

This one blew me away.  This dual relic Alexi Ogando card is like a bright shiny meteorite in hand.  Love it love it love it!

And last but not least is the Jim Mason auto.  This just looks like what a baseball card should look like. 

I know rationally that I should actually blame AJ for the Rangers slump, since they started this horrible losing streak probably the same day he sent this package in the mail.  But I'm going to let my emotions override logic and say that it's maybe not his fault, even though we all know it is.

Thanks for the cards AJ, and thanks for probably ruining the Rangers year even though I won't go on the record and officially put this disaster on your head.  But the whole world knows it, and god help you.

Old TTMs- Dedicated To The Lost Collector

I've gone from ignorance, to annoyance, to amusement, to addiction when it comes to Twitter.  I did not get it at first.  Now I'm checking twitter 20 times a day.  I don't tweet much, but I love watching my feed during Rangers games, and I really enjoy watching the little Twitter dust ups that occur periodically.  Sam at the Daily Dimwit, I'm looking at you.

The other night I enjoyed watching the Lost Collector tweet pics of a bunch of random TTM (through the mail) autographs he had collected over the years.  I thought I would outright steal the idea and show some of the TTMs I picked up long ago in my early collector days.  I also thought it would be interesting to see if anyone had any thoughts as to the authenticity of some of these.  I feel pretty secure about some, but others... maybe not:

This is probably my favorite.  I guess I didn't have a Craig Biggio card available to send at the time, so I used the back of one of those Fleer sticker inserts that showed pictures of stadiums.  I hope this is authentic!  If I can reasonably assume it is, I might send it in for PSA/DNA authentication.  It looks pretty close to other autos I've seen of Biggio on eBay.

This looks pretty close too.  I have to say, as a high schooler, I showed pretty good taste in which cards to send for autographs.  If it's real, this is awesome!

I can't tell for sure on this one.  Wonder if Canseco would verify it if I asked him on Twitter?

Wrapping up with another Hall of Famer.  I'd give this one about a 2% chance of being real.  It doesn't look like his signature at all to me.  Maybe I'm wrong.

And be sure to follow me and my non-tweets!  I'm at @napkindoon.  Don't bother following @Lost_Collector or @thedimwit.   They'll just cyber bully you and pollute your feeds with pictures of kittens and quiche recipes.

My Favorite Martin Redux

The Rangers have been red hot lately, and a contributing factor has been the stellar pitching of Leonys Martin Perez.  Perez  Martin has long been heralded as a top pitching hitting prospect, but seemed to regress last year and fell off a lot of people's radars.  Good thing the Rangers didn't give up on him, or trade him away because he's been a revelation this summer.

I decided I should get some cards of him for my Rangers album:

This Bowman Sterling card is numbered to 199 and is amazing in hand.  I got it for a buck on sportlots.com.  I'd like 8 more of these and make a whole page of them.

This is pretty much all I have of Martin, so if you have anything cool of his and are willing trade, let me know!

Finally, just to show that I do read the comments, let me humor The Lost Collector so that he isn't once again totally duped and disappointed by the title of this post:

Taking Crap From The Lost Collector

So A.J. from The Lost Collector finds me "unpalatable" eh?  I'm a "Jerk" am I?  Well, this is what my fellow Razorback Cliff Lee thinks about these insidious, and downright hurtful jabs at my expense:

Cliff would probably crack a bit of a smile if he knew that A.J. also played "good cop" in the mail to his "bad cop" online.  I mean, a guy would have to have a bit of a heart to send cool stuff like this:

I think, or at least hope, that someday we will look back on Derek Holland as one of the characters of the game.  He's turning into a stud pitcher, but he's also colorful and has a great sense of humor.  Did anyone see his "Dumb and Dumber" bit for the MLB fan cave?

I apologize for the strange scan, but that was the best I could do with this Will Clark UC3 card.  I'd never seen one of these before, and it's a neat card in hand.

Finally, I think this was meant to be a throw in, but it actually inspired me a little.  I've never put much though into collecting Rangers team cards, but I liked the looks of this and dug around to see what other Ranger team cards I have.  Turns out, I have a decent collection already and I put them all in a page in my Rangers binder.  It looks pretty cool, and I'm going to start looking out for more.

So, thanks I guess.   

Cleve's Auction Night: Trade Bait Galore!

Tonight (Tuesday) was the first live auction at Cleve's I've attended in months.  I had a blast and picked up a lot more than I had been recently, living on write-in bids.  Looking over my haul, I have to say I doubt I keep most of it though.  It's basically all up for trade, so keep that in mind as you look at the pictures.  Some of this is already earmarked for others, but I'll note that where applicable.

We'll start with a lot of 30 vintage cards, mostly 1958 and 1962:

 The 1958s all turned out to be Phillies, which I didn't realize until I brought them home.  I bought the lot mostly for Richie Ashburn, who is not represented in my Sampler Album.  The Ashburn card also fills my 1958 page.  The Ashburn is not in the greatest shape, but is fine for now.
 

The 1962s are not in great shape, but I was able to use a couple for the sampler album.  There were 30 cards in the lot in all.

I bought one other vintage card at the auction- this Jim Rice rookie:

 

My 1975 page is already pretty strong, but this is still nice to have.

I also picked up a couple of nice autographs.  These aren't guys I collect, but the prices were good and I'm hoping they will make good trade bait:

 

The Bautista is an on card auto from 2013 Heritage and the Ethier is a sticker with a relic patch from 2012 Bowman Platinum.

On the relic front, I also picked up this lot of cards, again, hoping they can be traded:

 

Not an exceedingly exciting bunch, but this Nomo card that was also in the group is pretty cool:

It's numbered to 250, and a pretty unique card.  I'm assuming my favorite Nomo collector is interested so I'm giving him first right of refusal.

Rounding out my purchases are a couple of Yankees:

 This Museum Derek Jeter may be difficult to part with.

I don't know anything about Mark Montgomery, but here he is anyway.  The two Yankees above have a hold on them for the Lost Collector, unless he angers me.

Grades:

Vintage 30 Cart Lot:  $10   B+:  The cards are a little on the dingy side, but that's still a great price for that many, including a Richie Ashburn.

1975 Jim Rice Rookie:  $2  A:  $2 bucks for that.  Really.

Tony Bautista Auto:  $5  A:  It's a beautiful card, even if I don't care anything about Bautista.

Andre Ethier Auto/Relic:  $3   A:  See above

Relic Lot:  $4   A+  The Nomo card alone is worth it, and at a minimum I'm bulking up my relic collection.

Jeter Musuem:  $2  B+:  I could probably get it for the same price on eBay or sportlots.com, but still.

Mark Montgomery Auto:  $3  B- :  Don't know who he is, but that doesn't mean he won't be good someday.

Again, practically everything is for trade, so don't hesitate to ask!

Return From Vacation Mailbox Goodies Posts: The Unexpexted Deliveries

My little family and I just returned from a wonderful Alabama beach vacation.  I won’t bore you with the trip details but I would like to mention one particularly fun highlight, and that was Lambert’s Café.  I’d heard of Lambert’s before and I guess it’s a relatively famous restaurant.  There are two Lambert’s north of us in Missouri, and the lovely wife and I have often mentioned making a trip to check one out.   To our pleasant surprise, there is a third Lambert’s on the Alabama shore, and it was a short drive from our hotel.

If you are not familiar with Lambert’s, it’s a kind of down home foods restaurant featuring fare those of us in the South love so much:  Chicken Fried Steak, Grits, Fried Okra, all that kind of healthy stuff.   Lambert’s is also known as the “only home of throwed rolls.”    Yep, the servers come out with big plates of rolls and throw them to you across the restaurant.  It was especially amusing seeing our son’s expression when a roll was thrown to him.  He thought it was the coolest thing ever.  I thought the endless supply of fried okra was the coolest thing ever.    Have any of you Yankees or that read this had the pleasure of fried okra? 

Another highlight was returning to several PWEs and bubble mailers with my name on them.  Two of them were from other bloggers, and both were unexpected.  And both were awesome.

First, my man the Lost Collector sent me a nice trio of “Dutch Oven” cards.  “Dutch Oven” is Derek Holland’s nickname BTW:

The silver ice cards are very cool.  Almost as cool as Holland’s porn star mustache. 

 
LC also sent this very shiny Hank Blalock refractor numbered to 399.  Finally, I managed to score a certified "Lost Collector" autograph:

I never realized AJ and I looked so much alike.

 I also had an unexpected card from The Diamond King.  We sent some cards back and forth recently, and I guess he was feeling pretty generous.  Or maybe he feels bad for calling me Doonie.  Don't feel bad.  Napkin Doon is a made up name, so take all the liberties you want.  I probably wouldn't like "doon-bag" though.  Anyway, check this puppy out:

 
Love me some Yu Darvish patch cards!  Let's see if me posting this today ruins Darvish's start against the Yankees tonight.

 
Thanks guys for the cool stuff, and be looking for something from me soon!

The Lost Collector Strikes Back

I thought it was a bunch of big talk on AJ’s part.

I didn’t think he could top what I had sent him.

He did.   I think he has won.

First, some background as to what I’m talking about- although some of you already know.  A while back, I “won” a box of 1990 Topps wax at auction for a few bucks.  The top packs in the box were basically ruined, by water I suppose, and some of the cards in the packs were pretty disgusting.  I showed pictures of these cards.  AJ, the smartass proprietor of the blog “The Lost Collector,” made a smartass comment asking if the Rance Mulliniks card in one of the pictures was available for trade.

So, I packed up the Mulliniks card in a nice snap case and sent it to him.  I thought it was pretty funny.  AJ thought it was funny, and wrote a funny post about it, and vowed revenge.

Later he sent me a note, innocently asking if I was interested in a couple of Topps manu-rookie card patches.  Indeed I was!  He sent them, along with his revenge, which totally floored me.   First things first though,  lets take a moment to appreciate the manupatch cards: 

These are so cool!  Especially the Banks.  I'm making pretty good progress on completing this set, and these are a huge help!

But wait, there was more.  How about a Torii Hunter Relic:

 Nice!  And some Rangers:

 

The Incredible Shrinking Kinslers

 
And then, well, I thought this was very nice:

What he’s referring to is that Cleve's (the LCS) has a vending machine that my kid's love.  They get all sorts of cool, random cards from it when we visit.  Recently, Cleve placed a vintage Mickey Mantle card in the machine.  I don’t think it’s been pulled yet, so who knows, maybe my kids will get it!   So before I get to the last part of the package, let me thank AJ for the great cards and the kind gesture for my young ones. 

Now that that is out of the way, let’s get to the final piece of the package.  AJ's revenge.  It came in the form of this envelope, with an ominous warning, and a single, solitary card:

 
What was in the envelope?  I..... I.... I'm sorry, I can't reveal it.  This envelope will forever be the "Rosebud" of this blog.

But, I will tell you the first words out of my mouth were:  “Holy S*&t.  Check mate, AJ wins.” 

Then I laughed.  The lovely wife saw the contents and covered her mouth with her hands and stared at me in disbelief. 

Then I hung my head in defeat.

Then I "laughed" some more.  Congratulations, "AJ", you are the master.
 
Wait. 

On second thought:

 (Skip to the 1:40 mark to get to the point of this clip)

I'm Coming to Get You
Rambo: First Blood Part 2 — MOVIECLIPS.com

It's not over yet.