Flinging More Poo

Happy Belated Festivus

I missed my annual Festivus column, so now I gotta throw a little more poo at the usual Hobby shit-wits. Myself included.

I went on vacation over Thanksgiving (it was awesome, thanks for asking) and put my eBay store on vacation hold. Big banner across every listing that I am out of town until a specific date and shipping will be delayed if you buy something while I am gone. Needless to say, I get a pissy PM from a buyer two days BEFORE I am scheduled to return about why he hasn’t received the item yet that he bought on Thanksgiving Day. Umm, lemme think…either because you are too dumb to understand how a calendar works or you don’t read. Either way, maybe a do-over of third grade is in order for you.

Then there is the latest Hobby Karen. I was lucky enough to find a partial set of a hot nonsports issue in what turned out to be really nice shape for the issue. I sent a small group for grading (should have those in about 4 months: lazy fuckers) and I decided to do a set break rather than try to flip the rest as a lot. I posted every card for auction starting at $9.99 per card. Not all of them sold the first week (probably because I stupidly ended the auctions on Christmas Day) but the listings that did sell went for multiples of the start. I dunno about you, but when it comes to selling cards from a hot set, I like to run them at least three times at auction before I give up and put them into either the store as BINs or into a lot to blow out. Some guy who watched but did not bid on a card then PM’d asking me to buy it for $13 delivered. I did not want a BIN at $13 after just one run, but I was willing to take $15 (in the spirit of the season, I guess), so I put up a $9.99 bid and $15 BIN. If he was smart, he’d have just bid on the card and let it go, but he bid $9.99 and taunted me via PM.

As you know by now, I am a thin-skinned egomaniac with an insane level of bile in me, so getting in my face like that is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and when you mess with a bull you get the horns. Canceled the bid, blocked the bidder, bada bing, bada boom. The card will sell eventually, but not to him.

The life lesson I derived from this interaction was a basic one that I need to be reminded of sometimes: never be nice. Kidding, folks, just a joke. What I meant to say was that the beauty of doing this thing for myself is that I don’t have to deal with anyone (else) who is mean, sarcastic or snarky. I can block their ass and ignore their PMs. I was also at fault here, so I am a shit-wit too: I wanted to auction the card again, so I should have just told him to bid and see what happens. But I didn’t and that was a mistake on my part. I get that. But taunting me? Yeah, well I made your bid disappear: it’s a Festivus miracle!

Some of my stupidity is stylistic, I know. I was never a good trash talker in sports or in life, so maybe I am just not well-suited to dealing with Millennials and Gen Z card bros, who seem to never shut up. The stream of F bomb-inflected street slang and trash talk, fist bumps and bro-hugs just annoys me to no end. As I’ve said before, whenever someone asks me to ‘hit him up’ my fists curl involuntarily and I think about punching him in the face.

And while we are on the subject of things that piss me off, take modern cards…please. I don’t get the appeal, and the more cartoony they are the less I want them. At least the shiny shit in the mid-1990s tried to enhance the athletes’ on-field images and came up with some truly beautiful sports photography. Search “1997 Topps Stadium Club Michael Jordan” on eBay and take a look, or some of the Fleer Ultra Kobe Bryant cards. Beautiful stuff. The new cards gamifies all of it to the point where it just looks stupid. I don’t want to own it and I feel a bit dirty dealing in it, like selling porn from behind the register at the 7/11, but I sell it anyway because business is business and the card version of porn is lucrative.

And don’t get me started on the myriad variations of every card in every set. I tried to collect a rainbow once. It is as manipulated as social media algorithms and frustrated me just as much. One of one, one of two, one of three, how am I supposed to complete a run when every fucking issue from every fucking manufacturer has fucking cards I can never, ever fucking get? How is that remotely supposed to be relaxing or fun for me?

Let’s also talk about the insane level of waste these cards generate. One of the most obscene spectacles, from an environmental perspective, is watching someone break a high-end modern box. It is just layer after layer of packaging to get to the handful of cards at the center. Here’s an idea for you, Fanatics: how about we just spare the environmental degradation of all that wasted packaging? No one gets wet over it, so just issue the cards in a simple, elegant packet and be done with it. And can we at long last abandon the pretense that anyone collects the base cards and stop making them? Just hand out 10,000 “Loser” notes and one envelope with an actual card in it. Oh, wait, too close to a lottery? We wouldn’t want that...it might interfere with placing the latest parley on the Las Vegas Raiders game on our smartphones.

I hate Pokemon, too, fuckin’ obnoxious little bugs. Where’s a can of Raid when we need it? Just because it gives fat chicks something to collect doesn’t mean we have to pretend to care what a Charizard is. I am so sick of those shitty little insects infesting every card show I attend. The Strongsville show announced a merger with a modern show but will segregate the vintage and modern areas. Bravo! Every show should put the vintage dealers all in one area so I don’t have to push my way down aisles clogged with fat young men swinging their Zion cases of shiny shit at shin level as I try to find the table with 1968 Topps Football commons. And don’t get me started on all the other TCG and comic book, er, graphic novel, crap at shows. Weren’t those the kids we looked down on in sixth grade? How are they crashing our card shows? Go back to ComiCon where you belong.

One more modern affectation that makes me nuts: the slabs for slabs. Have you seen these monstrosities? Bad enough that we have to put our cards in slabs. Now there are slab protectors that put the slabs into another slab with metal sides. Some people are even ridiculous enough to make necklaces of the slab-slabs and wear them like the nerd versions of gangsta rappers. If you have to make a Pokemon card your fashion statement, you need to get a life in the most desperate way imaginable.

Oh, yeah, Happy New Year! Burn one for me tonight.