Outside of Here Is Death . . . and eBay

It's been a while since I posted last. The rest of my life seems to pause when the end of the semester hits and I'm writing ridiculously long seminar papers on Endgame that will make Samuel Beckett roll in his grave. As Hamm says, "Outside of here is death," and I'm beginning to feel like Clov as I lock myself inside my office and tap away at my keyboard into infinity.

While I don't seem to have time for anything, I actually still eek out hours of aimless wanderings around eBay. And sharing my recent goodies from there seems simple enough to write about right now.

The Cracker Jack sets were a nice, quirky vintage set, and I was happy to snag this Cabrera bat card. The bat chunk has a loose sliver showing. Someone had a rough cut at the factory when they were slicing up Cabby's bat. I think that makes it an official one of one saw-used relic.

The card came in a lot with this one:

That's one hell of a lot to snag up two of Cabrera's more interesting bat cards for around $3 shipped.

This is my first manu-leather nameplate thing-a-ma-bob. And I have to say I dig these cards, as ridiculous as they may be. The original Pudge threatens to become a new player collection for me. I've been looking for his cards more and more lately. I actually just picked up a Masterpieces GU Fisk card for my boss for Bosses Day, and he loved it. I knew he was a White Sox and Fisk fan, but I had no idea whether he was into cards or not. Smarty-pants university faculty members aren't supposed to be into nerdy card-collecting, right? Well, turns out he's an old school vintage collector, and he was psyched about these new relic cards.

The dealer who sold this manu Fisk card to me sent me a football card on accident. I shipped it back to him, and he refunded my money, plus gave me a few bucks of Paypal credit. And then, miraculously, this card arrived a few days after the refund, but the dealer didn't want me to pay again, gave me this as a freebie in exchange for the mess up. I have to say that sometimes eBay screw-ups can be pretty great.

OK, back to Beckett, back to my office, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me.