All Work and No Play, Except for a Little eBay

I've been hiding in the library, studying for my upcoming qualifying exams--a test that makes every PhD student cower in fear. So sorry I haven't been posting much. Having 100 books to read in less than a month doesn't leave much time for anything. All reading and no blogging makes Dhoff a dull Vealtone. I'm way behind in trade posts, in everything.

But there's always time to waste away a few minutes shopping on eBay. I recently picked up some Pudge GU cards:

Nothing too amazing: an awkward toothy smile and a big ol' swatch of white. I'm always happy to pick up a Pudge jersey card, but I have to complain about the design here a bit. The scrawling "Honor Roll" text makes this card overly busy. Then again, maybe I'm just sick of words.

On the other side of the spectrum, I love the design of this card. The background is all shiny and refractory and fancy. I like the circling of the bat for the bullseye effect, too. And, of course, we have an action shot of Pudge wearing the right jersey.

This is a set I really admire. Diamond Kings just did it right in 2005, as far as I'm concerned. The double GU is always nice, as well. But there's something very wrong about this card. See the big crease.

Here's a close-up of the back to highlight the crease. That's what you get with free shipping, I suppose. I've won a few cards from this dealer, and I think the crease occurred from trying to jam a GU card into a regular width top loader. I have to actually cut the cards out of the plastic when I get them from this dealer. Still, a cool card for the player collection regardless.

Last but certainly not least: my first vintage Mays card. And it's one of the multi-player subset cards that I dig so much from the early Topps sets. A bit of tape residue, but that hardly bothers me. Not like a creased Cabrera, anyway.

Well, back to the library for me.