A random assortment

 Since my last post, I've been trying to get everything as back to normal as it can be with a wife who just had surgery, a kid who is hyper and smart as ever, and a job as a baker in a retail store with zillions of Instacart shoppers, production still at crazy levels since COVID hit, a major holiday coming up, and a boss from hades. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied at how things are. 

Karen is on the mend. The surgery went well, the headaches are gone for now, and we are just waiting for the incision to heal up. She is actually in Tampa right now, about 3 hours away, enjoying a work Christmas party at Top Golf. If I were off tomorrow, I would be there with her. 

I couldn't resist the urge and purchased another value box of 2022 Topps Chrome just hoping to pull a Wander Franco base card. I didn't, but I did pull another Jarren Duran refractor. Not much of a box, but I did get some trade fodder. While we were in Gainesville, we stopped at a card shop between checking out of the hotel and going to the hospital, and I picked up some Tiger singles from the '70's mostly. 

I should've looked at my sunset card list, but I just didn't have the time to dedicate to looking at lists besides my Tigers want list. I got some good cards, including a Mark Fidrych rookie for about 50 cents each. The '59 card was 3 bucks. I thought I found a Bill Madlock rookie amongst the '70's cards, but it turns out it is his second year card. Oh well. I'll just add it to my Cubs binder or trade it to someone who could use one. 

I have kind of been on a spending spree lately when it comes to cards. I purchased a few lots on eBay of Topps Traded sets, just hoping to complete a few sets by adding the Traded ones. I also got some random Tigers and Traded sets from a FB junk wax group. All in all, I have the 1985-1994 Topps Traded complete sets. As far as complete sets I already have, 1986-1990 are complete, 1991 is missing some (I don't know how many), 1992 is complete, 1993 is missing a few, 1994 and 1995 are missing a number of cards, and 1996, 2000, and 2019-2022 are complete. The rest are missing a number of cards, some sets more than others. I don't know if I could get a complete Topps run from say, 1985-2022 with what I already have, what I'm willing to spend, and what some of the prices for cards are these days, but I'm happy that I have the run of Traded sets that completed the 1986, 1987 (5 cards away from being done, which should be easy to find), 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1992 Topps sets. 

I also purchased the 1990-1992 Topps Debut sets, just because I always saw them on the back of 1991-1993 Stadium Club cards and have aways wanted to own a few because I could never find them anywhere. All 3 of those sets should be arriving tomorrow, and Kyler should have fun sorting those out. I have my eye on a 1999 Topps set and a 1999 Topps Traded set on eBay which would knock another set out, but I gotta watch what I'm spending and how much I have coming to the house before Karen decides to put an end to all of it. 

Karen and I had our 10th wedding anniversary on December 8, and we went on a short lunch cruise along the St. John's river. While we were probably the youngest people there, it was fun, and I had a blast spending time with her. After that, we went to a few stores and got most of our Christmas shopping done. 

We took some family pictures a few months ago and finally got them back. I was happy with the results. 

Don't let the smiles fool you. We are all crazy and have our problems.

I had a little time to work on customs today. My new laptop is nice, but I'm still trying to get used to everything on MS Paint and the newest version of GIMP. I am able to pull up a number of templates that I have saved to set pages, but for some reason, when I open them in Paint, they are about 3/4 of the size they need to be. I think I figured out that GIMP will show them normal size, and if not, I can zoom in a little more delicately that in Paint, and that allows me to get a screenshot of the file in the correct size, and then open it in Paint. 

I have been back working on the 1996 Topps set. On my old laptop and older version of GIMP, I had a system to where I could get the blue headshot on the card just by setting a color level (I can't remember which one now) to 235 or so, and it worked like a charm every time. I can't find out how to get to that setting on the newer version, but I think I found a way to turn the entire photo blue and I just have to blend it in with the card template. I think it works. Here are some of my first attempts on the new GIMP program.

That one was really weird looking. 

And now here are some of the ones with the new process I am trying.

Not exactly like a 1996 Topps card, but better than a color shot. 

I'm also stoked because I found a photo file I made a long time ago that featured card company logos, rookie card logos, team logos, uniform logos, hat logos, even templates for the 'position' baseball players from the 1976 Topps set. I thought the file was gone forever, but I decided to see if I sent it to anyone in FB Messanger. Sure enough, I did. I pulled up the file, had to open it in GIMP, but I got it the size I want, and it's back to its original form. The AJ Sager card above had a Tigers logo, and I smudged it away, took the Rockies logo from a David Nied photo, and added it to Sager's cap, and then also added the Rockies logo to my logo file. You don't know how much I missed that file. I'm off Friday, so maybe I'll make some more customs.

I also updated a number of pages today. I updated my Tigers,Rays, and Sunset Cards wantlists, updated all of my Favorite Players so my 'haves' list is current, and I added a special section to my main wantlist that lists all of the Detroit Tigers Topps cards I need from 1980 to 2022. I have the complete Rays Topps run from 1997 to 2022, and I figured with the Traded sets I've purchased, and maybe some trades and luck, that it could be finished by this time next year. While some sets are complete (1989 and 1990, 2019-2022), others have a decent amount of cards to go. I also included 1 or 2 '70's sets in the list since I am 2-3 cards away from completing them. If you have any Tigers cards you want to get rid of, let me know, and I will be happy to add them to my collection and maybe complete some Tigers Topps sets along the way. Your help is appreciated, and I'm starting to get a nice trade stash going to send back your way.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy