Yesterday, we went to the Colorado Tartan Day festivities here in town. Lots of good dancing and piping. Pretty good considering just a small local event.

Today, cruised by the lake so the kids could ride their bikes around there. Then, at the request of my daughter, we went to the chinese restaurant for lunch, my son even went for a BBQ bowl with shrimp and squid.

Spent an hour after that bowling, since the alleys here are non-smoking now, its fun to watch the kids try their hand at it -- they both beat my wife -- and she has her own ball I barely managed to salvage the title in the last frame.

Felt like summer today, almost washed the car, but then I remembered it is only April. Can't believe some around here are mowing their lawn -- it's not May -- and it's the weekend (I never mow on the weekend, I feel that is an assault on those two glorious days you can enjoy in your neighborhood in the quiet) Weekends are for BBQ, playing outside, and chatting with neighbors. Not for suffering audial assault, and yelling over the whine of gas powered lawn equipment.

Small wonder we leave town so much come Friday afternoon in the summer to hit the quiet of the mountains and forests.

Oh, where have all the comments gone?
And when will they return?
They disappeared when the site when down
And left me here to yearn.

Once again I am having some trouble with not receiving a reply to trade offers...

Guess it's just a cyclical thing, seems to happen about every 3 months.

Chewing bubble gum and taking names

Tiring of the cream skimming traders in this hobby. You know the ones. They troll by asking "do you have any autos or game used?"

But, they have no interest in helping you find those $1 cards on your want list. You know, the ones you look all over for, but can't seem to find anywhere for years on end

Best way to get my attention: send me a message when you've got some of the little cards off my want list. Or want a stack of the little cards off my tradelist. Then I feel the desire to peruse your list for further wants that I might just have access to.

Still looking at this nice set of cards that came in yesterdays mail. Think I'm going to focus on getting some more of these kinds of inserts in. Strangely, I haven't seen a lot of these before, guess my pack breaks weren't as good as I thought sometimes back in those days.

Going to run a little giveaway in honor of my upcoming 2 year anniversary here on the 27th, and birthday I guess too, in recognition of those who come in here to read the blogs. To enter, just add a comment to any of my blog entries (make it more than a word or two ) and I'll collect names (one entry per member, but you can comment more if you like) and enter them into a draw for some cards to be selected around the end of the month. Might be base, inserts, auto, GU, not really sure what might be there yet, or how many lots might get made, guess that's the surprise.

Slow today, it's raining outside, mixed with a little snow. Was thinking that the chat night really needs more people there to trade. Chit chat is nice, but I still haven't worked a trade deal on the chat night - let's fix that

So first night attending the local shop trade night...

More people there than I thought there would be, but it appeared that most of them were there for the drawings.

Walked in the door and dropped off the kids coloring contest entries, a nice thing they were running for an Easter contest and drawing, so the shop itself gets props for giving people additional reasons to drop by the shop.

The shop owner directed me to a few hockey folks, which was looking good. Until I went down there and saw that no one had brought anything with them to trade...as a nice bonus they all promptly ignored me and my son. Couldn't make eye contact with anyone even after strolling thru, putting a few cards out on the table to show people "hey I've got some stuff to trade", trying to give someone an excuse to break the ice, show some interest, call me a moron...something...

After about 15 minutes, a guy sits down at the far end of the table, and buys a few packs of assorted hockey. I think "hey at least I'll see some breaks"...guy never even looks our way, hardly even manages to even pull the cards from some of the packs...only interested in the "golden goose" I guess...

Shop moves on the the drawings, not a bad night to be in the mix, they are giving away a grand prize of 10 boxes of product, along with gift certificates, single boxes, grab bags. Have to be present for the big prize, so they draw names from the barrel, no one hits at ten boxes, they work down thru to five boxes, and a guy hits the prize. Course he seems intent on waiting until everyone leaves the store to pick them...so we won't be hanging around since we've already been here for an hour at this point. The only new product in this week is Bee Hive, but with my lack of any luck in pack pulls this year I think I'm done with packs for now.

I like the shop, but my son summed up the evening well with the statement, "Dad, no one even looked at our cards". I thought to myself, more importantly, "no one even talked to us". You go to an event that supposedly has attendees with some common interest and that happens?? I just don't get it.

Maybe I'll go again in two weeks and see if anyone is there to trade some cards (there will be another ten box drawing that week).

Okay. What is with people who ask for a price check on a card that can easily be found just by using the "bkt my collection" option???

If a card is hard to identify for certain, or is an unusual type of issue, or redemption maybe, that's one thing. But to take cards from an easily identifiable product and ask for a value - that's just lazy.

Let's not promote any more lazy in this hobby.

Almost finished with the Avalanche Stanley Cup Champs project, after receiving this one today:


Just looking for the last one - #34 David Aebischer and this will be put to rest.

Also, added some more images to my gallery. I think I'll scan everything that comes in and add it to that. That way I can review it down the road and see how much I really added to my collection this last year.

A little more time spent wandering the back roads of TCC...of the old school members (those who joined in the year 2005)...there are about 50 members who haven't visited in well over a year, but who took the time to put a photo of themselves in their profile. I find it interesting that people take the time to do that, but then never really gave it a go to participate...

I guess some people like to see pictures of themselves as many places as possible. (Nothing wrong with that if you're good looking like me)

A little more surprising are those who never fill out their profile or post up a picture of themselves, and post all the time here, those people must have some real ugly mugs

Took some time to scan a project I've been working on the past several years. I called it the "Lost Av's Project". The idea was to collect a card of every player who had suited up for the Avalanche for at least one NHL game, and had a card produced picturing them in the Avalanche jersey.

I excluded those players currently on the team, in the minor system but expected to return, two players whose cards are in another collection project (Severyn and Jones) , and players who had played multiple seasons for the Avalanche who had not yet been gone for 5 years (Aebischer, Blake, Bourque, Foote, Forsberg, Hinote, Roy)

I finally finished it up in December. I thought it was time to share some pictures.

Visit My Gallery if you'd like to see the scans

Views are appreciated, comments are welcome.

Ho hum...

Most exciting thing in the mail today was replacement nosebombs for my shades

Posted up the tradelist yesterday on every site that seemed worth posting it on. Will wait and month and see what comes of it.

Hmmm...tonight is trade night at the local shoppe...might have to see if that's worth a visit, or if it's even still going on...

Time to start thinking about the summer plans, school is out May 31st...that means time to hit the woods, the river, the bike trails, the backpacking trails...

Gotta get excited about something

Maxims to live by:

Never eat alone. Not only is it boring, but there is no one to help should you choke on something.

Finally got a couple Stastny rookies in today's mail.

Maybe we could get a show visit calendar here where we could send some short lists to those attending...and those folks could be on the look out for those items...the whole collectors helping each other bit. Now I know it would have to be limited, since I know that I'm not going to lay out a lot of cash for any but a few select collector's that I know would make good on the outlay for those items...

So how best to approach this then? I ask for a specific card, specify the top end of what I would pay for it, someone finds it for me, I hope that the seeker can use that as a finagling point to get the card I want for less than that maximum...then I can pay for it, or we can arrange a trade.

I guess I've always seen this as the point of the online trading community - being able to extend the number of possible traders thousands of times, but also being able to extend my collecting reach by having people find those cards that just don't appear in my market, and hoping I can return the favor for them as well.

I've seen "white whale" threads posted before, but they seem to get little attention. Now collecting at it's basest is self centered, as there are items we want for our collection that drive us to take action to exclude others from obtaining them...but I consider the other side -- there are many more items that I have no interest in that I would gladly take some time at the local show to look for to assist another collector, knowing only that they get the same great feeling from a nice find that I do.

So, the next show here is at the end of April. Gather your short lists together, make them specific (year, player name, set name, card number, team pictured with, highest price you are willing to pay) so that it is easy to locate on sight with list in hand. I would ask that you have the money readily available for any items I may find, so if you can't pay for the item should I find it--exclude it from your list. I will limit total list buy value to $25 for those I haven't dealt with before, and to $100 for those I have, for starters. (Those I haven't dealt with before will also need to remit payment before I send the cards).

Remember, I want to know when you are heading to a show as well, since I have lists of my own that I would love to have some help with.

So who's up for giving this a try? True, it may end up empty, since show contents are unpredictable, and want lists can be tight (I know mine can be), but what else are you too busy doing??

...and once again I manage to bust packs that apparently have nothing of interest to anyone in them...didn't get a single Avs card to add to the PC...guess that tells me how many more packs to break this season...

Hmmmm...but tonight is trade night at the local card shop...so maybe I'll give that a try.

After a good year plus of looking, finally landed an UD Stanley Cup Champs Nieminen card for the Avalanche collection. These really kill me, the card books at $1, and the players I'm looking for no longer play for the Avs, but it takes forever to track a single one down.

Would really appreciate some help tracking the last two - Blake and Aebischer, they book at a whopping $1.50 each. You'd think there would be quarter boxes full of them at one show someone here attends.

So that's a nice mail day, picked up a nice Forsberg insert for 99 cents as well.

So where are all those inserts from the second half of the 90's hidden at? There's certainly a few of them on the bay...but the number there doesn't seem high enough to account for all the ones that are out there. I mean, that there are many holes in the available sets that were produced...for star players I can see availability being lower...maybe, but it seems those are the ones most likely to be offered when they surface. Just wondering aloud after looking thru that annual the other day.

There's a few lists with them on there, but I rarely get a response when I reply to one of them. I think maybe I'm finding old lists sometimes, and the owners have either forgotten about them or just gave up on trading without taking them down...

Big reason why I think web pages should have expiration dates, so that unless otherwise renewed, they will drop from existence.
On that note: Tried the wayback machine on SCS - no results worth noting, it stopped archiving the page back in April of 2006, and what it does have is of no use to me in trying to retrieve a trader rating. Couldn't even find a single thread I had posted there. Bummer.

Made a trade today for something I can add to the personal collection, so that's a good day. Now I have to go to the carde shoppe to buy some supplies for mailing stuff. I like to keep on the optimistic side when planning for future trades.

Received a 99-00 Topps Stanley Cup Heroes Joe Sakic in the mail today - cool card from the "die-cut era". Maybe I'll scan it later, or maybe I'll just wait until I pick up the other to go with it...kills me that the Roy in this set is pictured with Montreal...why the heck did they do that? And not issue another after 2001 with Roy in the Avalanche uniform???

I'm also going to open up the floor - if anyone wants to send me their unwanted hockey cards for free, just let me know.

I get the feeling that there are members here who have never taken the time to look at my tradelist.

For the hockey collecting members at least -- What's up with that?

"I have a whole bunch of cards to trade, and I'm trading for pretty much anything"...don't you get real tired of this line? I do. Since it turns out that the ones who post it most certainly AREN'T trading for "anything".
It's more like "trading for those things you have that are a step up from what you want from me"

The other grating - "all I saw on your tradelist was..."...um, yeah I know what's on my tradelist, I put it together so that others would know what I had to trade...unlike many, who for some reason, will not take the time to create a tradelist...that way when you see something you like on my tradelist, you can show me what is on yours so that I can pick something that is of interest to me...rather than the old "what are you looking for?"...which is maddening in itself; because, if you take the time to look at my profile and webpage link...which is always in my signature...it is laid out quite clearly what specific cards, and what cards in general, will be of interest to me...take ten seconds to review the profile of the trader you are dealing with...you might find something out about them...like what they like to collect.

That said, come offer me something for this stack of Forsberg cards, so I can expand the breadth of my collection.

Got a couple trades in this last week. Just have to get the new guy to post up a reply on our transaction successfully and it will be nice to have some new cards to look at.

So, Peter's off to Nashville...well, maybe that will mean some Predators looking for some cards of his to add to their collection? I certainly hope so