Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Big Ben is Making a comeback!

Announced on Facebook TODAY: "The Baseball Card Blog will be coming back in 2010 with new content..."

Yes!!  The godfather of card-blogging is coming out of retirement!  If you have not been to Ben Henry's site, go there now and check it out: http://baseballcardblog.blogspot.com/ 

This is great news for the card-blogging universe.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

My Tribe-side of the Christmas haul!

My mother got me these Tribe-related items for Christmas this year:

We're going all vintage-like to show support for the boys in Red, White and Blue. Here's hoping for a great season!

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Not quitting my day job...


I see now that I was never meant to play Santa! Instead of getting the "12 Days" packs out in time for Christmas, I'm not shooting for "12 Days of January, or February maybe."

No excuses, no rhyme, no reason. The gift packs are still being assembled and are being mailed out as I can get them out. If you've asked for one, have no fear! Yours will be coming - eventually.

I realize I am probably the only one even remotely worried about it, but it bugs the fire out of me that the giveaway got away from me this year worse the in the past!

In the meantime, I hope everyone had a great holiday and has a super New Year's!!

Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas, Everyone!


My apologies if you did not get one of these in the mail! I underestimated how many I would need for my first-ever Christmas Card mailout! I hope you and your families have a wonderful Christmas season! See you in 2010!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Package from GCRL! Package from GCRL!

GCRL sent a package of cards to me recently and they were arranged (read, taped) to a folded piece of cardboard.  It was a lot like those repack boxes we all vow to wuit buying yet somehow end up duped into buying anyway!


In addition to the cards above (which are really penny sleeves stuffed with cards), there was a separate stack of cards in a card bag, too!

As you can see, there are all kinds of players, years, and brands!

I see now that the cards at the bottom should have been placed first so you could actually SEE the players! Ah well, all these years at this, and I'm still figuring out the scanner...

Don't get your eyes checked!  Don't adjust your set!  You *ARE* seeing double. :-)  Though, I think if you stare long enough, you can make the cards look 3D like those stereograms...

Score used some seriously bright orange on those puppies!

All in all, a great selection of Tribers from GCRL!!  THANK YOU very, very much!!

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Christmas cheer from Baseball Dad


I received a couple packages in the mail over the past few days or so and thought I would take a moment to share them with you!

First up, a big THANK YOU goes out to Baseball Dad for this very cool Denny's 1997 Pinnacle motion card of Larry Doby!! 

This card celebrates Denny's 50th Anniversary and is card 1 of 1 (not like serial number, but in the fact that they only had one card made for the celebration)!!

THANK YOU very much!! Merry Christmas!!

Friday, December 18, 2009

Merry Christmas!




The "12 Days" gift packs will be going out starting Monday.  Sorry for the delay but once again, things always seem to get in the way of a good giveaway!

If you don't hear from me before December 25 (which you should, but just in case):

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Wax Heaven, Farewell Old Friend

Mario, at Wax Heaven, has had quite a ride over the past two-plus years.  Yesterday, he announced that life was taking him in a different direction and that Wax Heaven would no longer receive new posts.  He handed off admin control to another person that will monitor comments to some of Mario's incredible insights, but nothing else will be posted.

Mario has done wonders for the card collecting blogging community.  He was one of the first (if not *the* first) card blog that reached agreements with card companies such that they provided him with FREE cards to review and give away.  He is also an avid Michael Jackson fan, and every once in a while, he would toss in an MJ reference. 

While Mario is not really going anywhere, the closure of Wax Heaven leaves a hole in this collector's online world.  Good luck, Mario, and take care.  We'll miss you waxing on Wax.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Tribe named in "Top 5 Farm Systems"



This really surprised me, but the Indians farm team system is No. 5 in the league!  Of course, many of the players brought up do not stay with the Indians in any form or fashion.  So, as I have been saying since, um, I was a kid, the Indians serve the purpose of being the farm team to the MLB.

More of the story, including the rest of the Top 5 and the WORST 5 can be found here:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/12/01/farm.systems/index.html?xid=cnnbin

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Ho! Ho! Ho! 12 Days of Cardsmas is here!

Ladies and Gentlemen!  Boys and Girls!  I'm makin a list and checking it twice!

It is time for the annual "12 Days of Christmas" giveaway!  Now, before I give the deets, let me say this: I have a few "Trick-or-Treat" packages that I have yet to send out, and I am sincerely hoping to finally drop those in the mail tomorrow!  Those who haven't received yours yet, please don't take it personally! It is my own shortcoming that caused it!

Now, on to "12 Days!"

Here is how it works:  You provide me with a list of the following:
  1. At least two or three of your favorite BASEBALL teams
  2. At least two or three of your favorite BASEBALL PLAYERS
  3. If possible, list two or three FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL, HOCKEY teams you like
That's it!  You send an email to me at davidinark@gmail.com with "12 DAYS" anywhere in the subject!   Please note, if it does *NOT* say "12 DAYS" in the subject, I may not see it!!  I will have a filter set up to catch all "12 DAYS" messages (as long as that is in the subject).

In your email, please provide the information requested above AND provide me a mailing address.  I have many of your addresses, I know, but I want to make sure I have everything up-to-date!

What do you get??

You get cards for each of the "12 Days of Christmas," of course!  12 so-and-so, 11 such-and-such, all the way to the partridge in the pear tree, which will, of course, actually be a card and not a bird.  All tolled, you get 78 cards! :-)

There are no "tricks" in these.  It's Christmas, after all!

Note: feel free to reply here, but ONLY email requests will be sent out.  In years past, mailouts have gone well into January.  I hope to get your gifts out by Christmas so you can open them on the holiday, but I can't promise anything.... Just look at my Halloween mailings for my track record... oy.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Catching up on posting, FINALLY!

Hello, Tribecards Fans!
  I appreciate your patience as I worked through (and am still working through) several things going on around here as of late!



First of all, an update on my novel writing: As of today, I am at 40099 words out of the 50000 it takes to earn the coveted "National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)" badge!  I am very excited to finally putting together the novel I started 15+ years ago while working on my Master's.  Of course, there will be TONS of editing to follow once it is done with this phase, but that is much easier for me than the first-run writing.



Next up, I got a new car to replace my aging truck:

From 2009 Charger


While I dearly loved my Tribe-inspired truck, the HEMI was starting to nickel and dime me to death at about $1200 a whack. Ouch.



And, I have received several gifts in the mail lately, too!  I can't believe the generosity of the card-blogging world!  Simply amazing.  It is incredible to think there were just a handful of people that started blogging baseball cards and what explosion took place in such a short time!  Sometimes I feel like one of the "old geezers" at this, even though I, myself, came into the game comparatively late. I digress.

First up, I received a bubbleope from BigD with cool cards in it:





First of all, I *LOVE* Studio cards.  Next to great action shots, the Studios are my favorites.  The 2001's included in this group have great posed shots.  Though, I admit, I am not a fan of the HUGE white border on the things! Ouch.  Remove the frame and you basically have a wallet-sized photo.  Some of the other goodies in here include Absolute Memorabilia - with full-frame foil features.  (Sorry, I've been working on my alliteration, can you tell?)

I also like getting multiple versions of the same card - like the regular and chrome versions of Vizquel in the Topps!  I don't think I realized until just now that most of these are Thome and Vizquel!  Throw in a couple of Cy Youngs, and this was a very pleasant surprise!!  Big-D also included Lofton, Sabathia and a Pronk, too!

THANK YOU very much, BigD for a wonderful surprise!!



The next bubbleope I received just a couple days ago, and it came from Max.  His note said there were "two great cards in here," but I beg to differ:




There are several great cards in here!  Granted, the Grady Sizemore Propaganda card is one of the coolest items I've seen.  I love that kind of artwork, and even did a mock-up of something similar for a worldwide interactive video program we hosted a couple years ago at work. (Sidenote: It is called "Megaconference," and connects hundreds of sites around the world at the same time, some of which perform songs, others read poetry, some dance, and most of us just sit there with our jaws on the floor at the wonder of it all)

I love the "Support Our Tribe" at the bottom of the card.  Are these available as posters?  If not, they should be!  But then we also have things like the Baerga Hit List (7030/10000) and the Score Platinum Team Giles.  Add to those a couple of Donruss Silver Press Proof cards and you can see there are more than just two great ones.  Of course, the "greatest" card in the lot for me is the Thome.  Not only is it a Thome, but it is a "Dropping the Hammer" game-used bat-in-the-shape-of-a-hammerhead card!  All I can say is that there was a lot of "Tim Allen-esque" grunting going around here when I laid my eyes on that one.

For the icing, Max tossed in a handful of 1982 Topps Traded cards, too!

THANK YOU very much, Max!!  Awesome stuff in here for sure!



I also received a BOX of cards from Kevin, but I have yet to even open those yet.  I will get to those very soon, though!  The anticipation is killing me almost as much as the anticipation of watching what happens to the kids in my story.  In both cases, I have no idea what to expect, but I have a feeling I am going to enjoy it once things are finally revealed to me!



Oh, one more thing... In June 2009, me and a couple colleagues went to Chicago for SharePoint training.  You may remember my posting about the Cubs-Indians game in which the Tribe lost in extra innings.  Well, we also managed to grab seats at the Bill Engvall "Aged and Confused" routine he was doing in Chi.  Turns out, they were taping the show to be put on DVD.  I may have talked about that then, I'm not sure and am way too lazy to go look right now.  In any case, his routine aired on Sunday and WE WERE ON!  In the TV version, we are 17 minutes into the show just before a commercial break.  You can recognize me by the fact I am wearing my INDIANS jersey.  And it is not a "hey I am in the crowd of people" shot.  Nope, this is a close-up shot of me and the two guys I was with at the show!  Yeah, I am still psyched about it... Just think, I will be on DVD players around the world.  My daughter (age 7) left the room embarrassed.  My son (age 14) thought it was the coolest thing ever - his Dad on Comedy Central for the world to see. 

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are in a holding pattern

Three things:

First, I know there are a few folks that did not get their "Trick or Treats" yet.  I *hope* to get those out first thing next week.  My deepest apologies.

Second, BigD sent me a bubbleope of cards some time ago and I had hoped to have those posted by now.  Alas, I have not, but rest assured, BigD - I got them and I appreciate them VERY much!! Thank you!

Third, I've been neglected all my blogs lately for two reasons, one of which is personally-motivated and the other is well, flat-out selfish.  The first reason is because of the work I am putting into my novel for the www.nanowrimo.org contest.  I am writing at least 50,000 words by the end of November.  So far, I am more than halfway there!  The goal after that is to rewrite and edit and eventually shop it out for publication (and most likely subsequently self-publishing it via LuLu.com).  The other reason is my latest addiction to Plurking.  It's yet another social networking site, combining some features of facebook with those of twitter.  If you'd like to read more about that, you can check out my post here: http://www.poppedinmyhead.com/2009/11/do-you-hear-crickets-chirping.html

In the meantime, keep the Tribe on your mind!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Belcher dons a Tribe cap

No, not this one:

(as seen on Thorzul)

But, this one:



Tim Belcher greed to become the pitching coach for the Indians yesterday.  Well, he'll be doing it for the whole season, really, but he signed up yesterday.  The new head-chief-in-charge, Manny Acta, is taking his time in rebuilding the Indians after Wedge's unceremonious dumping.

I haven't talked any about Wedge's replacement.  Call it sour grapes, call it being preoccupied with other things in life, call it "David Being Michael."  To be honest, I hadn't given much thought to Acta until today.  I'm sure many of you knew that he was the head guy for Washington.  I didn't.  Some of you may have known that he, like the guy he replaced in Cleveland, was fired from his job.  Nice.  The Indians couldn't wait to hire someone, so they picked the guy who was fired from his last job.  Maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that might not be the best method for picking potential employees - let alone the one who is supposed to be management material.  I guess we'll see how it goes.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Dave's not here, man....

I know, you're thinking, "Holy cow, man! Does this guy EVER post anymore!?"  Well, I have had the past few days off from blogging in order to become the "Fat King of Pop."  While this is not card related whatsoever, it is related to my (unlike the actual King of Pop) undying fandom of Michael Jackson:








Monday, October 26, 2009

You'd think I'd have this down by now... OY!

I know I should have all of your addresses, and probably do but don't have your blog names associated with your real names. So....


Here are the folks that I need your mailing address again, please:

AlbuqwirkE (unless you are aka Kris)

Rod (unless you are aka padrographs)

Collective Troll (how do i not have this!?)

Dave R

McCann Can Triple

FanofReds


Man, I feel like a retard (no offense to people with feelings or who may or may not be retarded or know someone who may or may not be).

As soon as you send me your addresses, I know the database will light up like a Christmas tree, er, a Jack-O-Lantern.

Please just send me your addy to davidinark@yahoo.com. Thanks!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Trick or Treat and Random Packs

Wow, I had no idea it has been nearly a whole week since I last posted.  Life has been keeping me pretty busy lately! Some bloggers out there will read this and say, "Well, if you had the passion to post, you wouldn't let that happen."  And to them I say, "pbtpbtpbt" in the vein of spitting raspberries. :-)

I am preparing the Trick-or-Treat packages to go out this week, and here is the list of victims for this year's endeavor:

  1. Baseball Dad
  2. Mark's Ephemera
  3. gcrl
  4. AlbuqwirkE
  5. Duane
  6. dayf
  7. Erin
  8. Rod
  9. The Diamond King
  10. White Sox Cards
  11. Brian
  12. night owl
  13. Collective Troll
  14. madding
  15. AdamE
  16. SpastikMooss
  17. Bo
  18. Dave R
  19. TheJaw
  20. JustinB521
  21. TSHenson
  22. PunkRockPaint
  23. Thorzul
  24. Don
  25. WickedOrtega
  26. McCann Can Triple
  27. Flyinloco
  28. FanofReds

I also owe a couple folks some random packs, and those will go out this week too.  My deepest apologies for not getting those this past Monday as I had said!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Breaking up is hard to do

I'm letting go... (sidenote - "Letting Go" is one of my all-time favorite Joe Cocker singles).

If you are reading this, and you are an Indians and/or Expos/Senators/Nationals fan, then you have been given the green light to take over my spot in I-Am-Joe-Collector's monthly box breaks.  The breaks have been fun and have netted me some very cool cards, but I am stepping out of the way for someone else to come in and take over.

I left a comment on Joe's blog, making it official, so those of you that want to step in and grab some Tribe cards, rush on over and tell Joe you want my spot(s)!



Now before anyone starts up the rumor mill, let me say that the reason I am bowing out is because the seasonal giveaways are coming up and I want to use my card funds for fun and games in sharing and spreading the wealth of card collecting!  Sure, I could forego "12 Days" this year, but, um, well, no I can't. I enjoy it way too much!

Tribe Cards from Westgate-on-Sea!

Do you know Jack?  How about John?



Most of you know him as JackPlumstead on The Pursuit of 80's(ness), and I usually refer to him as "John from across the pond."  No matter how you look at it, when a package of cards comes from Westgate-on-Sea, I know there will be cool stuff and that I am trading cards with a guy in England (and NOT England, Arkansas either)!!  I realize this is a bit of a digression here, but take a moment to stop and think about that - trading baseball cards with people all over the world.

When I was a kid, I had a group of friends (my brother, Mike, David (not myself, of course, another one), Anthony, a few others) that loved to trade cards.  We were young and naive then, so we liked to glue the cards into sprial notebooks.  Then, when it was time to trade, we would rip the cards off the pages and trade them.  We never cared what the BACKS looked like, it was all  about the fronts and who was on them.  We even made insane trades for checklists if the right person's name was on the thing.

Fast forward to today.  My circle of trading friends has grown immensely, and now it is more than the folks I see on a regular basis (or on any basis).  Thanks to Internet in general and "the web" & blogging specifically, I am trading cards with people from all over the US (one of which lives about 35 miles South or so) to other countries!  Perhaps I am being a bit dramatic to some of you, but I am young enough to se the world as flat as it has become, but I am also old enough to appreciate exactly what that means.

Whether you are a country music fan or not, Brad Paisley sings a song now in which one of the lyrics goes like this: 
"My grandpa was in World War II, He fought against the Japanese.  He wrote a hundred letters to my grandma; Mailed em from his base in the Philippines.  I wish they could see this now, Where they say this change can go.  Cause I was on a video chat this morning, With a company in Tokyo."
Web pages, online checklists, blogging, audio podcasts, online video box breaks, trading cards with far away lands.  We live in some pretty amazing times.

And speaking of amazing things, THANK YOU, JackPlumstead, for some VERY cool cards!  I am a huge fan of the thick Fleer eX and Flair cards!  I also like the Topps Attax cards. I know a lot of folks don't but, I am a big kid at heart, so anything that is 'gamish' appeals to me!  The Sizemore StarQuest foil card is a great example of how companies should use foil on cards - just enough for a WOW! factor, but not so much you can't read the bloomin' thing!  I like the blackout 2009 Topps cards, too.  They're different. 

I also appreciate the Joel Skinner card.  I think he got the royal shaft when he was cut from the team during the de-Wedging of the Tribe.  Skinner was not the greatest Triber to play for the team, but I believe he is one of biggest FANS of the team.  I don't know how many players feel about such things, but if I had played for a team and then was working on the team in ANY capacity after my career was over, I'd call that pretty fulfilling. 


I loved getting these! Again, thanks a bunch!!


Wednesday, October 14, 2009

very quick update

I am presently "borrowing" internt access from my mother-in-law, who lives across the yard from us.  We got a TON of rain over the past few days, and evidently our DSL runs in the open and dies when added to water.

I have card packages from John across the pond and my cards from the I Am Joe Collector Goodwin Champions break.  I think I might have another package, too, but I'm not looking at them to know for sure.

I will be posting the pics and packages once things are back to semi-normalcy (things are never normal for me, just ask my wife).

Monday, October 12, 2009

Going all Technorati on me...

So, I've decided to try my hand at Technorati, and they want me to do this: sfy56i74rg
Good luck to me, right?

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Coincidence? Decide for yourself...

I was out of town for the past several days, though I had created a few scheduled posts so things wouldn't lie dormant for too long.  I have to admit, I like scheduled posting.  This is not one of those.

After I returned home, I had a package from BaseballDad.  When I opened it, I found a white insert-holder with the following written on it:
I wasn't in the blogosphere last year at halloween so I hadn't thought of blogger "tricks."  This pack was made up BEFORE your "Trick-or-Treat" post.  As Ripley says, "Believe it or not" Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! (yes, verbatim!)
And then I began to reveal the cards.  It did not long to detect a pattern.  See if you can make it out (click on the photo to enlarge it):


So, did you see it?  I was "Alomared" in BaseballDad's own special way.  Every other card was a Steelers card!  How cool is that!? 

Oh, what?  You mean that WASN'T the "coincidental trick??"  Are you telling me that the trick WASN'T a stack full of Steelers card to an Indians/Steelers fan? 

What do you mean?  Are you saying that not only did he send every other card as a Kenny Lofton, but it was the SAME Kenny Lofton card? 

I just want to know if dayf put him up to that!?

As an aside, there are some very cool Steelers cards in there!  This was something of a trick AND treat!  THANK YOU very much, Baseball Dad!!  This was a lot of fun!  My wife laughed when I started showing her the pile of cards.  Well done.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Thorzul's Fleer Greats

Not long ago, Thorzul held his own group break.  He offered up cards from a 2006 Fleer Greats of the Game box.  One of the offers was for "Every other team."  Since the Indians were included in that group, I figured "why not?"  And, boy howdy did I hit the jackpot! 

Let's start with the "hits" of the box that I received.  How about an Earl Averill game-used bat!  Yeah, that's right, INDIANS! Wahoo!


Oh, but that isn't all of the fun in this group break!  You see, I also snagged another game-used bat...  How about Mike (friggin-ay) Schmidt!

And was that the end of the fun and games? Oh no!  How about a "Jack the Ripper" nickname card of Jack Clark!?

But, wait!  There's more!  We finish out the day with a Boog Powell autographed card!

And, I use the term "finish out" loosely, since there were TONS of cards in the stack!  Well, okay, 'tons' is a bit strong, but as you can se, there were tons of 'em!






AWESOME stuff!! Thank you, Thorzul!  I'm very happy with my decision to bite the bullet, pay a few extra bucks and go for it!  Well worth the price of admission!!

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Max strikes again!

I received a package from Max in the mail the other day (well, a few days, really).  I had to do a double-take because he just recently sent me some cards.  Sure enough, they were from him with a note stating, "these should have been in your last package..."


HOLY SMOKES!  These are very cool inserts and parallels of some GREAT Tribe players: Lofton, Belle, Carter, and a whole slew of Murray.

And then, just for fun, Max tossed in a 1957 Topps Gene Woodling!  Man, this was another great surprise from Max!

Thanks a bunch for some VERY noteworthy Indians!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

September JoeCollector Break Cards

For no good reason whatsoever, I had not posted these cards yet.  So, I figure this is a good time to do it!  These are the cards I won from IamJoeCollector's monthly group break in September.  He busted a box or so of ICONS and of Topps Finest and the coolest card of the bunch is the Kelly Shoppach LETTERMEN patch card:



It's a manufactured patch, but it at least LOOKS like it could have been cut from an Indians uniform.

Also for no good reason I could think of at the time, I signed up for the "Expos, Senators, Nationals" team in addition to the Indians for his group breaks.  Looking back, it is one of the best decisions I've made in a while, I think.  I have yet to come up empty-handed and some of the cards I end up with are not bad at all. 

And, there was a reason, actually.  I never seem to have enough Nats to go around for giveaways, so this was a way for me to accumulate some...


Of course, the real reason I jumped in on the group breaks was for the Indians cards!

I ended up with some doubles, so those will be, er MIGHT BE, tossed in to someone's trick-or-treat bag this year!


I am thoroughly enjoying the group breaks!  Way to go Joe!

Monday, October 5, 2009

Trick-or-Treat!



Oh, yes, it is time.  It is that time of year in which you knock on my door and say those magic words ("trick or treat!").  And what do you get in return?  You get either a trick or a treat sent your way, just in time for Halloween!

All you have to do, if you dare, is respond to this post with the magic words.  If I don't know where your house is, I won't be able to send your tricks or treats, so please make sure I have your address!  I would venture a guess and say that I have most of the address of my victims, er, readers.  But, to be on the (un)safe side, you might want to drop me a noose, er a line, at davidinark@yahoo.com or davidinark@gmail.com and I will add you to the list of victims, er, recipients.

Trick or Treat gifts will be mailed near the end of the month, as all hallow's eve approaches......  Make your request at your own risk!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

The Willie Blair Project

Sometimes, I am too smart for my own good.  Take my initial brain-jerk for Thorzul's Scariest Card contest:


Yeah, "The Willie Blair Project" was going to be one of my entries for this year.  I read his instructions.  I got a little sidetracked. I was watching "For Love of the Game" and saw "EW Top 25 1999" in Thorzul's post.  What I missed was the "Pre-1985" part until I re-read the post.  So, I present the incomplete work above.  Perhaps tomorrow I will take up the task once again, only this time I'll pay more attention.