[JollyElm]

"Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a card collector."

I present to you 2022's Collectorisms Part X - Section 1 of 3 (Yes, I've developed enough material to turn this new section into a trilogy*...so stay tuned!!)

***ALERT!!!!!!*** This is meant for entertainment purposes only!!!! Hopefully, laughs will abound!!!!
Before you do anything, scroll down to #512 and read it, so you will understand what's going on here. Life sucks, so grab yourself some yuks!

This is a work of fiction. Do not read this post if you are currently taking a drug for depression. If a rash, redness, irritation, or swelling develops, discontinue reading. Please do not eat the urinal cakes.


"Lord loves a working man, don’t trust Whitey (Ford)..."



*And like 'The Godfather' trilogy, you'll love some of it, hate some of it and will ultimately end up screaming, "When in high f*ck is this thing finally going to end???!!!!!!"




491. Cravin'-It Emptor
When your unbridled desire for a card causes you to be unaware of all of the red flags pointing to it being a scam.

492. Sacrificial Jam
Stuffing random cards you couldn’t care less about into each end of a vintage set box to act as a space-filling buffer and protect the ‘good’ cards from getting damaged.

493. Stampire
A tobacco card collector who preys on finding ones with specific stampings on them.

494. Leap Frauds
The hackers and scammers who continue to jump from one platform or account to another after being exposed time and time again.

See also: Whack-A-Troll - the endless pursuit of warning other collectors about new scam artists appearing on the scene.

See also: Scamster Wheel - the scumbag mindset of always searching for new and innovative ways to rip off people.

495. Schlock Photos
The generic, traditional poses used time and time again by Topps and other baseball card companies.

• Flesh Rhombus
A pitcher with his hands and mitt above his head, elbows pointing outward, to mimic the start of a wind-up.

• Grass Squat
A catcher devoid of equipment and nowhere near home plate, crouching down in the middle of the field to receive a pitch that will surely never come.

• Stretch Strong-Arm
A pitcher who’s leaning far forward with his pitching hand outstretched, mimicking the end of his release.

See also: Sleepbalker - when the hurler, seemingly in a daze, is still firmly holding the ball in his outstretched hand.

See also: Bringing the Greet - when this pitcher is also smiling happily at the camera.

• Batting Trance
An expressionless hitter forced to stand in the ‘ready’ position, looking at the camera with his bat up, waiting for a phantom pitch to come.

• Longholler
A manager with his hand next to his mouth pretending to be shouting out instructions to his players.

• Sir Lanceswat
A player majestically gripping his ‘wooden sword’ with two hands while directing it at, or in the general direction of, the camera, so it appears to be coming right at the viewer.

See also: Knights of Columberus - a group of these types of cards.

• Moundticipation
A slightly crouched pitcher with his hand and mitt at the ready, apparently either waiting for the ball to be tossed back to him by the catcher or preparing to field a come-backer.

• Hatless Couture
The standard close-up head shot of a player not wearing a cap, which purposely eliminates any hint of which team he plays for.

See also: Chinchilling - a closeup of a player casually looking skyward, chin jutting out with only the underside of his cap brim visible, so the team logo remains unseen and unknown.

• Wadworker
A card showing the player with a huge gob of tobacco stuffed in his cheek.

See also: Chawtograph - any signed Nellie Fox card.

• Foul Haul
An player with his mitt near the grass, pretending to backhand a non-existent ball while clearly standing in foul territory.

• Crouch Potato
A hunched-over infielder looking at the camera with his hands and mitt primed to scoop up a grounder hit directly at him.

• Knobster
The self-assured, ready for the coming fight pose of gripping the bat with two hands as it rests upon a shoulder, knob bottom facing the camera.

• Gutclench
A hurler at a full stop in the ‘set’ position, hand grasping the ball inside of his mitt at his stomach, stoically looking off to read the catcher’s signs or slyly keep a runner in check.

496. Optimullet
A card that is optimally beautiful when looked at from the front, but when you flip it over there are significant problems on the back.

See also: Hind Thwarters - a visually gorgeous card in a slab that has a lower grade (or qualifier) based solely on an otherwise ‘unseen’ issue on the reverse.

See also: Stainted Love - a card that looks beautiful on front, but has a dark, egregious, unremovable gum stain on back.

497. Popanoia
The unshakeable feeling in your gut that the graders at any TPG literally don’t want your cards to receive high numbers.

498. Crumb-Drops (also Price Droop)
Anytime someone bumps a for sale thread with a declaration of “PRICE DROP,” when it’s nothing but a slight, insignificant reduction in price.

See also: Bump Jump - when the latest lowered price on a card is finally attractive enough for you to pull the trigger.

See also: Flies on the Prize - the acute awareness that all sorts of other collectors are buzzing around, primed to zip in and beat you to it when the price drops to the right level.

See also: Slash Bash - a thread where the seller has a wide variety of cards listed and lowers the price on ‘everything that still remains.’

See also: Slabtain Obvious - if any graded card remains unsold in the B/S/T after a short while, it simply means the asking price doesn’t correspond closely enough to any recent sales price data.

499. James Banned
A collector of players who have been banished in some way from the major leagues or are otherwise found on baseball's ineligible list.

See also: Bitter Batter Bettor Barter (tongue twister) - any trade involving a Pete Rose card.

500. Tuxidermy
Any card sitting inside of an elegant, black and white SGC slab.

See also: Black Slab Affair - how exquisite a group of cards looks housed in these SGC holders.

501. Frontalbacks
Cards having wet sheet transfers on them.

502. Parkaeologist
Someone who is able to deftly analyze the visual clues hidden inside of a photograph to determine what old baseball stadium the picture was taken in.

See also: Circa-Catch - when said clues also indicate, within a close proximity, the year in which the photo was taken.

503. Jeepers Keepers
Having two of the same card, both having relatively minor, but different, flaws or drawbacks, and you go back and forth trying to decide which of the pair is the ‘better’ one to hold onto.

504. Redruelin’ (slang)
Memories of begging your dad to hit the gas station, even when the tank was full, because you were salivating over getting your hands on more of the football or hockey stamps they gave away free with each visit.

See also: Gas Brags - kids who pridefully showed off all of the service station stamps they were able to accumulate.

505. Buy Diver (also George Washington Conniver)
Economics 101 aside, someone who’s always listing cards at sky high prices, but when he contacts you about one of yours, he insists on getting it for mere peanuts.

506. Ghostboxed
Opening a newly delivered auction win, only to find you were presumably sent an empty package by the seller himself, because there is no evidence of tampering present anywhere on the mailer.

507. Valchemist
Someone trying to turn cardboard into gold by pricing an SGC or BVG card at the much higher value of what the same card with the same number would go for in a PSA holder.

508. Holigraze (also Thankstaking Feast)
The great purchases you’re able to make, because ‘no one’ else is paying attention to eBay that day due to it being a major holiday or some other attention-grabbing event or occurrence is taking place.

See also: Grafternoon Delight - feeling like you commited a crime, because you won a card at such a low price only because of the early, extremely-low-traffic time of day the auction ended.

509. CSI-Don’t-Think-So!
The shock of seeing an eBay seller wearing serious medical or museum curator quality gloves while holding the card in the auction pic, and immediately knowing this thing is gonna be way beyond your budget.

510. Packne Scar
When a supposedly reputable seller of unopened material’s reputation becomes sullied due to a highly visible mistake.

511. Evolutionary Cardwinism
The incremental change in valuation from, say, a Hank Aaron card being worth, “My friend’ll give me three Mets for it! Dyn-o-mite!!!” when you were a kid, to putting it under a blacklight to root out any unseen flaws, using calipers to measure centering, and so on, to formulate a specific monetary dollar value for it today.

512. Puncertainty Principle
The fact that whenever a thread is meant to be, or turns out to be, humorous, one thing is undoubtable - as the witty remarks come, trite plays on words and double entendres will abound.

513. Wahoo-Turn
Trading for a Sam Crawford card.

See also: Love ‘em and Heave ‘em - a trade including a Paul Casanova or Ron Darling card.

514. Upgrift
Auctions employing deceptive tactics to meet hidden reserves.

515. Window Hopping
When you have nothing against a particular seller in the B/S/T, but you know everything he lists is very overpriced, so you just skip past his FS threads as you’re looking for cards to buy.

516. Ex-Postage-Facto
The listing of a single card for sale at, say, $50, then including at the very end of the post, “Add $4 shipping,” instead of just saying, “$54 Dlvd.” right at the top to begin with.

517. Slabbetizer
A card or autograph which has gotten a PSA ‘Quick Opinion’ or Beckett ‘Raw Card Review.’

518. Pokémonstrosity
The disappointment of walking into a baseball card show to find that 95% of the tables are hawking nothing but modern day items and non-sport cards.

See also: Pika-ching! - a quite valuable Pokémon card.

See also: Yenolds Rap - happily belting out the beats after you’ve ripped a pack and acquired a very pricey foil parallel card.

519. Fool’s Sold
Adding a new post to your own thread (that everyone is now forced to read) to declare that the card has been sold, instead of simply editing the title to reflect this fact.

520. Bickerton Annoyance Ratio (BAR)
A mathematical assessment of a net54 member’s overall nuisance factor, stated in the argument to post quotient of b = a ÷ r, wherein a = the total number of posts by a member in a single month that are argumentative, contrarian or otherwise negative, and r = the total number of all posts by said member in the month.

See also: Hyber (palatalization of “High BAR”) - anyone with a BAR that doesn’t have a minimum of one or two zeros to the immediate right of the decimal point.

See also: Flaming Snowball - like the proverbial snowball endlessly rolling down the hill, someone who never tires of being argumentative in seemingly every thread in which he appears.

See also: Reverse Avalanche - the people who plainly have had more than enough, and start loudly telling ‘Mr. Snowball’ to go back from whence he came.

521. Grody to the Packs! (informal)
A great enthusiasm for 1980’s-era junk wax.

See also: Hijunx - the sheer delight of ripping open any wax pack from any manufacturer from any year.

522. Moppetroglyphs
The random words, numbers, etc., written on a card by a kid back in the day.

See also: Boyjotting - attempting to decipher, when not readily apparent, the possible meaning of, or the reasoning behind, the specific scribblings on an old card you own.

See also: Defacelift - any attempt to remove ink or pencil marks from a card.

523. Rubicontract
The implied agreement that once the ‘official’ taped seal securing a card inside of a toploader is breached, any attempts to return the card to the seller for a refund are null and void.

524. Float Earthers
Rookie cards, leaders cards, or team cards that picture nothing but the disembodied heads of the players.

See also: Heliuminary - when one of these ‘hovering heads’ is an all-time great.

525. Auction Grouse
Anyone who rightfully badgers an auctioneer to take down a deceptively-listed item currently active and being bid on.

526. The Odes of March
Warm remembrances of your youthful self being all excited that winter was finally abating and the turning weather meant a new baseball season was on the horizon.

527. “You never walk into the same card show twice”
A time-honored expression marking the fact that the beloved hobby is and always will be in a perpetual state of change.

528. Killebrewmaster
An ardent collector of all things Harmon Killebrew.

529. Theoretical Bizz-Assist
Someone expressing their strong opinions on what exact changes must be made to a TPG’s business model to help right the ship.

530. Brandwagoner
A collector who suddenly becomes interested in the charms of an old set from a secondary manufacturer that other people have been marveling about forever.

531. A Life Sentence for Driving 56 MPH (metaphor)
The ludicrous assertion that the sins of players who completely ruined the very meaning of statistics due to a daily diet of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are somehow comparable to players who popped stimulants in the old days.

532. Potato Sacker
An ardent collector of 1968 Topps cards.

See also: Burlapses - the empty spaces in the pages of your 1968 Topps set binder.

See also: Knit Captivating - Johnny Bench’s appearance on his rookie card.

533. Coroner’s Tablers
Fans of the cold, dull, gray 1970 Topps set.

534. Kiblitzer (Yiddish)
Someone who seemingly has a front row seat to every thread in the B/S/T, and rushes in to buy up everything before anyone else has a chance to even view it.

535. Primarinara
The extra ‘sauce’ of value that is associated with a card being numerically first in a set.

See also: Primarigold - one of these cherished cards that is in fantastic shape.

536. Coin Flakes
Any prized and valuable card that was originally found inside of, or printed on, a box of cereal.

See also: The Breakfast Snub (or “Snap, Crackle, Flop”) - the complete letdown of your young self digging through a box of Kellogg’s to get to the 3-D treasure at the bottom...only to find the card is a random player you’ve never heard of on a team you have no interest in.

537. Perfecstration
The irritation of trying to remove a newly delivered card from an overly snug ‘Perfect Fit’ sleeve without causing damage.

538. Zamcronies (also Wintree-Huggers)
Avid collectors of hockey cards and memorabilia.

See also: Smugshots - the smiling, toothless faces pictured on any vintage penalty minutes leaders hockey card.

539. Packwards
Describing a card that was never issued in packs as “Pack Fresh!”

See also: Fresh Cents - the use of “Freshly Graded!!” in a listing, in the strange hope that those words alone will help the card sell for more money.


End of section 1, so go take care of your St. Patty's Day hangover...