A couple weeks back I worked out my first trade with Richard, aka Dawgbones. I got randomized a Phillies prospect in one of Kyle’s group breaks and per-emptively traded it to Richard for a relic to be named later. He had a nice Manny ginter relic that caught my eye and that was the basis for what turned into a massive card swap. This was what ended up on my end…
Derek over at Tomahawk Chopping is doing some spring summer cleaning and reducing down his collection. He knows I’m also up for some Red Sox randomness and he sent a little care package my way. He doesn’t realize it yet, but I sent him a little something in return. That’s card karma people! Pay it forward 🙂
So, as I mentioned before, I split a box of Chrome with Sam. It sucked. We got the absolute bare minimum for the box: Two rookie autographs. We got 1 black border (/100) and 1 blue border (/199). That’s it. No diecut (1:24 – 24 packs per box, we didn’t make the odds), no other colored borders. A handful of refractors, 2 or 3 xfractors, and that was it. In anger and spite I turned to ebay the next night and bought the team set for $3,99, which I obviously should have done in the first place. I pulled TWO friggin Red Sox. Unfortunately for Sam, there aren’t even any Astros on the checklist. That’s the an abomination Topps! Seriously. If if the All-Star game has at least 1 representative from each team, you should be able to find 1 card in your 100 for each team. That’s just sad.
The flip side to all that crappiness, the two rack packs and one blaster of Bowman Platinum I got were 1000% better. Scans after the break.
It’s been quite crazy around here the last couple weeks. For starters it’s been ridiculously hot, 95+ each day and the humidity wasn’t helping any. We had been getting some stuff cleaned up around the house and I took some time to organize my collection a little better. I made a “non Red Sox” binder with a dozen or so pages of guys I respect as players, regardless of their team, plus a smattering of “hot rookies” and other random stuff. I also took some PTO from work and made the holiday weekend extra long, just to take a “mental break day”, which I spent most of finishing Mass Effect 3, which I was terribly disappointed in the ending of. I had made the mistake of playing ME3 on a system I hadn’t played the first two on, leaving me with no previous save. Without one, you basically miss 3 or 4 main characters, and about 20% of the extra side missions, which makes “100%” pretty much impossible. I didn’t care, I was just trying to finish it so I could move it from my “Pile of Shame” to my game cabinet. See, cleaning!
Also, about two weeks ago now, I split a hobby box of Chrome with Sam. Our results were incredibly pathetic. I did scan them, and I sent off Sam’s half of the junk to him on Friday. I felt so bad that he bought into this box of junk that I gave him the only worthwhile card from the box (a black border).
I was also buying some retail to make up for my depressing Chrome box and had 200% better luck. I scanned those as well. I’ll post them in a separate post in a few minutes.
Thankfully the crazy is slowing down. After my wife’s grandmother passed away a couple weeks ago, things have settled back down and we’re back into our routine, which is good for the kiddo, she gets all bent out of shape when things are thrown off. Toddlers are just that way.
I’ve also got a couple freelance things lined up. I’m doing a website for my friend Paul, a shoot for an Oil and Gas company down the street, and I was going to be doing a co-workers wedding but that just got changed. They decided to go with a “real” photographer, which kinda hurt my feelings, but it lets me attend the wedding as a guest instead of shooting it.
I don’t really understand when people say things like that. A “real photographer”. Why, because my 5 years of shooting weddings doesn’t count? Because my 4 year degree, in fine arts, IN photography doesn’t count? Because I don’t have the tax burden, the overhead and the expense of running a full time studio? Apparently that’s the straw. The studio. You can be the best photographer on the planet, but if you don’t have a building address to put on a business card, people look at you like you’re some amateur hack. What’s even funnier is when you ask them who they hired instead, and you find their website, and they have no experience, no formal training, and are charging twice as much. I just laugh. This has happened before. Each and every time the person comes back to me later and says something like “we really should have had you shoot it, the pictures turned out terrible”. Yeah? No kidding? Duh! You can rent as many office spaces you want, but a good photographer is so much more than a studio. Oh well.
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