These past few weeks have been very, very busy.

It has been a good busy, for the most part, but I have had a difficult time carving out a few minutes to blog. So, here I am – in the middle of a hectic schedule, writing this, so I can have a nice little fun account of what has been going on in life with my hobbies recently.

First off, Bo Jackson was in town, and I was unable to put enough brain power to it early enough to garner enough attention from others to make it worth taking the horrific trip to the George R Brown convention center. It was close though, but in the end, it just didn’t work out. I did make a pretty slick custom for it though! Hopefully Bo will come back at some point.

I’ve been wanting to utilize that blue prizm material, so it seemed to work out well. But gahhhh, what could have been. If only it were ALREADY signed!

The story doesn’t end there, though! This is where it gets interesting:

I went on a sports card collector forum just to see what was being written, and sure enough, someone wrote a posting about me saying I was a con-man, trying to scam people out of their money – that I had a sob story and was trying to get something for nothing. Imagine my shock to read all of this being posted about me! I was very happy to read that several members came to my defense. In the cut-throat, keyboard gangster/warrior world that is online forums, I consider myself very fortunate. It was quite possibly, the most fun thing I have read. The more people came to my defense, the more the guy kept grasping at straws for how I was doing something wrong (a common technique that accusers resort to once they realize the first thing they posted wouldn’t stick).

The aftermath of the whole debachle left us with a banned member (the accuser) and 3 pages of pure, unadulterated enjoyment!

Next up:

For the past few weeks, I’ve been toying around with dual cut autographed cards. Not real ones, mind you – just with making ones that look real. No, not the type that I could get $170 for on ebay like Honus Wagner (LOL) – but the type that looks and feels REAL … with an original design, and that it says on the back that it is not real & for display purposes only. I’ve put them up for sale at $13 each, and people have been buying a lot of them. Not only that, but when they get them, they love them even more than they thought! I really enjoy the look & feel of them, too. Here are a handful of them that I did:

In the middle of all this, I found a new love ….

HAM SAMMICH-DOG!!! Duh duh duh!

Don’t believe I actually ate it? Here is proof:

That just might be the highlight of all that I write today, LOL!

Moving on, if you recall – I bought a few cards from my flip quest funds.

I had a mountain of older wax boxes that someone picked up, so it left a little crater in the garage. Then, I convinced the buyer to grab all the miscellaneous boxes and odds and ends on the left side of the garage. Things have been going really well selling these. Tons of people have gotten tons of cards. Between the two dealer acquisitions, I’d say they rank up there to be among the best deals I have ever made.

Then, yesterday, out of nowhere, someone contacted me that sells to card companies (and I thought my link to card companies would be for them to hire me to make some … not sell to them!) said he was in desparate need of football “junk”. I have not really had much of a chance at all to go through the bulk of my acquisition, but he said he was paying good money for 3200 count boxes full of football card commons. Fortunately, and unfortunately, the boxes don’t have JUST commons. They have game used, serial # stuff, stars, etc. The guy had a deadline for Christmas, and was willing to drive 4 hours away to pay a price that he normally wouldn’t pay just to fulfill his order. So, after that conversation happened, I basically closed up shop and got to work.

I went into the garage and spent the next 4+ hours diving in and separating the football boxes from the other stuff. It took every minute of it, too. There was a bit of a miscommunication on price per box, but ultimately, we were both fine with figuring out the right dollar amount, and I was even allowed to remove the stuff I wanted while he packed up the boxes as full as he could. We ended up with 70 3,200 count boxes of football stuffed to the gills with cards. I think he got a great deal, and I was able to move some stuff that I got a great deal on, so it really was a win-win.

It wasn’t so cut and dry as that, though. It probably took 2 hours, plus he didn’t want ANY box tops! Not a big deal, right? Have you ever seen TONS of box tops in a small area before?

How does it not look like anything has gone? LOL! I have tons of baseball and basketball left…to the tune of about 225 or so 3,200 count boxes, I’d imagine. The great thing about it is that I found probably 15 boxes that were filled with either vintage common/semi stars or inserts, or stars. I didn’t even know I had the majority of it. It should prove to be very fun to go through, when I get a chance! There were probably 3 boxes worth of nothing but Nolan Ryan. Tons of doubles, but hey – I’m in the right state for it! There might be 5,000 (or more?) of Ryan alone.

If you take a look at this picture more carefully, you may notice something …

See to the right? That’s right, folks! I grabbed over 500 boxes of blaster, retail and hobby boxes … for the 5th year in a row. I generally use these to open, re-sell or trade people that would rather have new wax to open than their old collections. I spent more last year, but I got a much greater selection this year. Would you believe I haven’t even opened any of it yet?!?!?

There was a lot of hub-bub about the 2008 Bowman Chrom and 2009 Signature Stars cases that were selling in very limited supply. Well …

I got a case of each!

I know, I know. The images above are merely one box each … but they both came from the cases I got. Plus, TONS of other stuff!

I also picked up a few other things:

First, a mascot for my blog! Tan Man’s Baseball Fan! (My blog is tanmanbaseballfan.com if you didn’t already guess it).

It had been sitting in our game room for probably a year or two … finally got it up in my office. I love it, but wonder why they used a football and basketball on the pull chains. Oh well, football and basketball is cool with me too.

I picked up a Canseco collection of odds and ends (puzzles, nearly every starting lineup of his, a jersey, bobblehead, autographed baseball, figurine, etc.)

Not all of it fared well …

But hurray for super glue!

I’ll admit, it doesn’t look pristine, but the main thing I was going for was the Tacoma bobblehead of him. That way, he can sit on my desk and nod agreeingly (is that even a word? agreeingly?..oh well, it fits) with everything I say. Most of the bulk I received will be sold. My goal is to make my Canseco collection free when all is said and done…or at least close to it. I have 770 different cards of his right now. Not many … or any … are truly “expensive”. They are just the lower types of cards.

Here is my running checklist, if you would like to see what you have and want to send to me! 🙂 http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/josecanseco.htm

I have a 450+ card lot of his coming in soon as well so hopefully I can knock out a good chunk of my wantlist through that as well. They should be coming in today.

Wrapping up this blog, I have to share some more of my custom / TTMing experiences. I have been getting requests to do customs for friends and family members at Christmas gifts, which is really cool – I love doing though! The rest of this posting is not about them though. It is about some of the cards I’m doing for my own personal collection that I’ve been getting autographs on via TTM.

You may have seen this one before, but it is one of many John Goodman I have made to have him sign:

I’m crossing my fingers and toes on that one.

I also made a cool Tony Danza card – superfractor style for him to sign! I decided to do a 2014 Gypsy Queen, but was underwhelmed with how it came out, so I decided to make it a super.

The 2 Carrie Fisher’s came back (WOOHOO!) I love how they turned out:

I also made some of Tom Selleck.

Magnum P.I. (If you don’t have the theme song in your head youtube it ASAP!)

And of course. .. MR BASEBALL!

There is a little twist to this though.

I made it from using a japanese poster I found online:

And I already had received his autograph through the mail already:

You might be thinking “why did he send that card? It just does look odd!” There is a method to my madness … this ensures the right size of autograph, and allows me to do this:

so the end result can look like this!

If Topps and Panini can do sticker autos, why can’t I? 🙂

I think I’m going to be having a TON of fun with customs down the road, considering some of the other autographs I’ve received over the past few weeks …

Well, apparently I had a LOT to say about what has been going on here. There will be more to come in the future weeks. I am working on a fairly in depth project for my PC. Once I get all the pieces and produce it, I’ll be sure to post it as well. Thanks for reading!