* Insert Austin Powers Joke/Pun Headline Here *

Because this post has "Mini Me" and "GOOOOOLLLLDDDD" written all over it.

Or, I guess I could have gone with a "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" reference.

Stepping Up To The Plate

Grabbed another printing plate.  If I was a good blogger, I'd go through my collection and find out how many of these fellas I have.  But I'm not.  But I do have a bunch of them and this is one.

Which goes nicely with these:

And, yes, I still dislike this picture. But I do like being 50% complete on another printing plate set.  One of these days I'll complete the 4/4 quadfecta, and that day will be grand.

Birthday Cards

My family is pretty cool as they continue to put up with my odd (to them) hobby of card collecting.  So when my birthday rolled around, I was pleased to see some birthday trading cards attached to my birthday birthday cards.

From my wife, some Masterpieces:

From my sister and brother-in-law, a chromey Series of 1s and 2s:

And, finally, an eBay seller threw in some Bowman extras with a card to be shown later:

Opening packs sure is fun.  I just wish I had a greater desire to seek out packs more often.

Back to the Basics

One of the great things about the Hochevar Buy-Out was that it brought me back to the basics of why I restarted my card collection.  Showing off these Hochevars is probably definitely way boring for most readers, but he's the reason I collect cards again and he's the reason I found the card-blogosphere, so I'll continue to show them.

Here's a back from the 2010 A&G base card that, prior to the HBO, I'd yet to own.

And the rest of the backs.

And, if you're keeping score at home, I'm half way through the 2010s, which means that I'm over half way done showing off the HBO cards.

Enjoying Some Birthday Pi

Today I turn 31.  My 30th year had its ups and downs, so I'm glad to have entered my 31st trip around the sun.  As I usually try to do, I have requested that my family bring me birthday pie instead of birthday cake, since pie is the superior dessert.

So, feel free to join me in enjoying a slice of red "pi" on my big day.

(So this was the post I was planning on doing today, but my lovely wife preempted me by putting up the below post.  Good thing she's so damn cute or I'd have to be mad at her.)

Happy Birthday, Fella

Because you only turn 31 once.  

Happy Birthday, Pal.

Zooming Out To See the Big Picture

About a year and a half ago, I lamented how much I hated the picture of Hochevar that Topps used for his 2010 flagship card.  Looking at the two cards below, a red/orange border parallel and the team set card, it's plain to see that the tightly cropped picture is way worse than the wide shot.

And, since showing off rainbows is what I do now, here are my non-chrome 2010 Topps cards.

Lots of sweet variations of an awful picture.

The Scanner Was Out Of Commision For A Week

No, not the machine. It was fine. When I say "scanner", I'm talking about the person responsible for scanning my cards.  That jackass decided to take last week off. But he's/I'm back. I can tell you're all very excited to hear that.

How about we hop back onto the HBO-train and enter the 2009 section of my purchase. Since the blog had cooled off for a week, a polar bear decided to set up shop on the scanner when I got there.

Not too shabby of a little card.  Here are the rest of the '09 Topps T206 cards in my collection.

Now that the scanner is back in town, be on the look out for some more HBO purchase cards.

Picture This......

......card featuring a picture of the person who signed it.

How cool would that be?