Customs Help

Being that I deal with professionals on a daily basis that have to fill out countless forms, applications, etc., and are expected to know how to read instructions, I have found myself flummoxed and/or lazy.

Would someone please help me figure out how to fill these dang forms out, so I can send Captain Canuck some cards?

Many thanks!

Need Addresses

GCRL's request to cash in on his trade made me realize that I probably should be sending out cards I've promised to people.  While I am still going through my cards and checking out people's want lists, I want to send off what I've already pulled and promised, so I no longer have that feeling of impending doom over my head.  It's my personality. I can't help it.

So, I need address from the following people:

WSC – Need it.
MattR – Need it.
Fan of Reds - Need it.

Cpt. Canuck – Have it and will mail on March 1st.
Dan – Have it and will mail on March 1st.
Wicked Ortega – Have it and will mail on March 1st.
Play at the Plate - Have it and will mail on March 1st.
Troll – Have it, but need more ammo.
  
GCRL – Have it and mailed it (2/17).
Night Owl – Have it and mailed it (2/22).

Email me at uncle_docs_closet(at)yahoo(dot)com.

I Dream in 2½ by 3½

I know I've been neglected the old site, but I do not feel really sorry about it.  Sometimes it is necessary to step away every once in a while and decide whether or not something is a good thing.  This was probably even more precipitated by the fact I've begun dreaming about baseball cards again.

Some may think dreaming of cards is awesome, but to me, knowing my own personality and my addictive behavior, this grabbed my attention in the wrong way.  It makes me think of the former Wax Heaven (I just realized WH is back in an altered state - I really must get out more) and his post about how cards were making him neurotic, thus he decided to shed his cards and focus only on Canseco.  When one has consecutive dreams for over a week about the cardboard menagerie with some of those dreams making me wake up in a cold sweat, it made me do some introspection.

When I was younger, one of my all time favorite dreams is having an amusement park entirely to myself.  A park similar to Disneyland (not Disneyworld, boo!), where every ride is mine for the riding.  At the end of one ride similar to the Haunted Mansion, I rode the conveyor belt out of the bowels of the ride to find myself in a shop.  Not just any shop, but a card shop with bottom barrel prices.  I went mad in my dream, scooping up 50s Topps for pennies on the dollar and loading myself down so heavily that I had trouble making my way out of the amusement park.  Great dream, except for Donald Duck confronting me in a barren barn during a thunderstorm.

I digress to last couple of weeks, where my dreams took a more sinister turn.

One dream had me running through my house, trying to lock all the doors as some mysterious hand kept trying to claw its way in.  I ran madly down the hall and then found my self in the card closet (Uncle Doc's Closet to be exact, which is what the card closet has been named in several houses because I had to try and keep my nephews from getting their hands on cards they shouldn't have been mangling - which is where my email name comes from and the phrase "stay out of Uncle Doc's closet" that my mom would tell my nephews).

Anyways, as I baracaded myself in the UDC, a wolfman-like hand was trying to pry the door open.  I began screaming and thrashing, then my wife woke me and told me I was having a nightmare.

Wife: "Wake up, wake up!  You're having a nightmare. What's wrong?"

Me: "Someone was trying to break into the house."

Wife" "Oh no, sounds awful!"

Me: "They were trying to steal my baseball cards."

Silence for a few seconds

Wife: "Go back to sleep!!!"

The next night, I dreamed I was in a Wal-Mart-esque superstore, and while wandering the aisles, I noticed some binders with vintage Topps.  The vibrant colors of 75 and the pristine black borders of 71 were beckoning me.  I looked at the smiling face price tag and saw that every card was a penny.  I moved in for the kill, and then a line a mile long formed in front of me.  A line full of people who I know, but know not what they look like.  Night Owl, GCRL, WSC, Thorzul, Beardy, Sooz, Troll, etc.

I grimaced at the back of the line, itching to tear through the binders, all the while someone further up the line was hooting and hollering at their finds.  I grew anxious and tried to move up the line, but now security was involved and keeping the line in order and preventing jumping.

By the time I got to the front of the line, all that was left was 87 Topps.  Another nightmare indeed.

When I woke from this dream it left me hollow.  All of a sudden I am having nightmares about baseball cards.  What does this tell me, Dr. Freud?  I can only surmise that my desire to HAVE all cards is creeping back.  It may not make sense to you, but I must fight this yearning.  No one, save for Bill Gates, Keith Olberman or Wayne Gretzky can have ALL the cards.  It's financially impossible and irresponsible for a regular Joe like me to want, need all cards.

I don't know where this is leading me, but if the nightmares persist, I may have to reevaluate dipping my toe back into collecting.  Cardboard is nice, but cardboard doesn't hug or love you like your family.

Me

BBCR History: 1981 Topps - The Charlie Leibrandt Incident

What:  1981 Topps – #126 Charlie Leibrandt – Cincinnati Reds
When:  Sometime in 1981
Where:  Second floor of 4024 Risa Court, Tierrasanta, CA

As my three older sisters and older brother will attest, I was a holy terror from the ages of 3 to 6.  In one instance, I ran out the front door while my sister E was babysitting.  She was on the phone at the time, saw me run out the door, chased me and slammed her foot into a steamer trunk, thus breaking her toe.  The said steamer trunk was for a trip to England I believe, so I was the culprit in sending a teenage girl on a once in a lifetime trip with a broken bone.

In another incident, I fancied myself as Indiana Jones.  I donned my best corduroys and vest, put on my holster and cap pistol, affixed my plastic Bowie knife to my belt and adorned my new found whip.  A whip that was incidentally my mother’s clothes line, which I had cut down.  I strutted around our cul-de-sac, acting the part, waiting for an adventure.  Soon enough, an older kid came by and gave me the business.  I pulled my whip out, reared back and SNAP, popped the kid right in the forehead.  He went home crying, and with no doubt, I was crying a few hours later.

Now that you get a feel for the terror I was as a child, I unfortunately did not hold back on my older brother, J.  On one day in 1981, something transpired between my brother and me.  I believe it had something to do with me going through his baseball cards, and if memory serves me correct, it was his New York Mets.  What I did or why I got the reaction I got is lost to the ages, but my brothers response was to storm into my room, grab my shoebox and pull out my Cincinnati Reds.  At this point, I know I was hysterically screaming. 

He snapped off the rubber band, and threw my Reds all over my room.  As the cards rained down, I was frantically whining for our mom to end the carnage.  Before my mom arrived, my brother reached down, and grabbed a 1981 Topps Charlie Leibrandt.  He then stood up and tore it right in half.  I’m sure I lost it at that moment.  That card remained in my collection until around the turn of the millennium.  I think I finally found a replacement card and decided to trash The Leibrandt Halves.
 

Should have kept the original for posterity

Soon our mother was there, and likely took my side, since I was the baby.  I remember her making my brother pick up all the cards and place a rubber band around them before placing them back in my shoebox.

In retrospect, I don’t know why it happened, but I can almost guarantee that it was my fault.

Bip Slip

 

So far I have been fortunate enough to have avoided the dreaded "bipping," and that is most likely due to only one blogger out there has my actual mailing address.  Thank goodness for that, and if he ever gets the notion to bip me, he or his chosen recipient will receive the mother of all bippings.  I will say that while I was going through a box of 89 Topps, I found an inordinate amount of cards from a chap from Flint, Michigan.  Even weirder, these cards were slightly larger than the standard 89 Topps by about an 1/8th of an inch, which is why it caught my attention.  They are either some special printing or counterfeits.

Be warned.