[JollyElm]

“And then? And then when I walked down the street people would've looked and they would've said, there goes the best there ever was in this game of puns and wordplay.”*

I present to you 2022's Collectorisms Part XI - Section 3 of 3


*Which is entirely false, because this stuff is just monumentally tiring, amirite (that's a call-back to the first post in this nonsense thread)?


727. Denty-Header
A card having a crease running across the player’s face.

728. Golden Newbies
The cards produced after Topps stopped issuing sets in multiple series that you’ve always considered to be too ‘modern’ to bother getting graded, but now are old enough that they can carry some nice value.

729. “My horsehide is living rent-free in that guy’s mitt”
When one net54 member seems to have a weird obsession with another member, and his attempts to continually go after him are laughably in vain.

730. Brimmortals
The special category of players whose career numbers are a no-brainer for enshrinement in Cooperstown, but whose unforgiveable baseball sins have left them stranded forever on the threshold looking in.

See also: Hofogenous - the proper descriptive term used to indicate that a group of cards is ‘all’ Hall of Famers, except for the fact Pete Rose, Joe Jackson and/or other pariahs are actually a part of it.

731. Dotcomaraderie (also The Fellowship of the Grab)
The joy of different people with different likes, interests and personalities all meeting up on-line for a shared enthusiasm of baseball card collecting.

See also: Ballpayers - the card collecting community as a whole.

See also: Aarpool Lane - the more senior collectors who enjoy looking back and sharing nostalgic stories of the innocent, halcyon days of their card collecting youth.

732. Shtick Figures (also Packsimiles)
The colorful illustrations of baseball players found adorning vintage wrappers, boxes and other packaging which were obviously intended to resemble real major leaguers, but whose facial features were altered slightly to make them ‘different’ people.

733. Weakilateral
Card sets, like 1954 Topps and others, that appear to be off-centered just by the very nature of their layouts.

734. Short Border Crook
A seller on eBay who deceptively crops his picture to eliminate a little bit on all sides of a lower or mid-grade card to make it magically appear to have four perfectly sharp corners.

735. Detourist Trap
When a card gets caught up in the annoying and pointless over-examinations, delays and worries associated with eBay’s authenticity debacle.

See also: Crawlternate Route - when one of these overly-authenticated cards takes much too long to get into the hands of the buyer.

See also: The Set Break Swerve - the crafty inclusion of such algorithm-upsetting words as “set break” or “pack” in an auction listing to avoid leaving it susceptible to eBay's authentication policies.

736. Window Toast
A card in a holder that has become quite faded, most likely due to being regularly burned by the sun’s rays as it sat forever inside of a shopowner’s display case.

737. Mantoll
When trading for or buying a Mickey Mantle card, the need to always buck up more than it is currently worth, because both you and the other guy know full well it will continue soaring up and away in value from the moment you land it.

See also: Multimantler (slang) - a shorthand way of suggesting a card is valuable, in that a trader would have to offer up an assortment of pricey Mantle cards to get it off of your hands.

738. Netflixceptional
Any hobby story or occurrence that is so magnificent, it would make a must-see movie or TV series.

739. Blue Yonderers
The players and cards you can never go wrong with, because they will perpetualy continue to go up, up, up in value.

See also: Blue Chippopotamus - an elite baseball card that not only will always be very desirable and fat with value, but will continually and exponentially fatten in value.

See also: Trajectormenty - when you’ve been meaning to land a key card for some time, but it just keeps getting further out of your reach as it gets more and more expensive.

740. Pafkontrary
The belief that Topps’ 1952 offering counts as their first real entry into the baseball card marketplace, but that requires entirely ignoring the 1951 ‘Red Back’ and ‘Blue Back’ sets which were released just the year before.

741. Imaginotion
Getting lost in revery thinking about what it would be like to possess one of the most historically epic cards known to man.

See also: Boy Meets Grail - any nostalgic recounting of the time your younger self (or perhaps your son) first caught a glimpse of an illustrious, world famous card.

742. Demigodawful (also Halfpointless)
Any card having a numerical grade of 1.5, which means it doesn’t quite have the divine status of being totally, completely horrific, but falls just a hair shy of that dubious status.

743. Buy of the Tiger
The serious landing of a great old card of one of Detroit’s finest players, such as Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline or Charlie Gehringer.

744. Blowback to the Future
The anger over Topps ruining great old vintage cards by invasively stamping the fronts for contemporary buyback insert promotions.

745. “Four is the New Seven” (adage)
As old cards are regularly being hammered by the new brutality of the TPGs, lower slab numbers are not only the order of the day, but are now more acceptable to collectors than ever before.

See also: Higher Heightsing - with high grade examples of cards becoming a rarity due to harsher grading standards, when you see a vintage card with a high number sitting inside of a new holder, you know the graders TRULY deemed it to be outstanding.

See also: Apexceptional - a newly graded vintage card with a high number on the slab.

746. Sitcommerce
When apologists for notorious on-line price extortionists claim they have fine business models, and you can’t help but laugh and wonder, “If that’s the case, why don’t they buy up all of the same cards that others list on eBay for 1/4 of their price and sell them for a huge profit??”

747. Tirading Cards
The cards in your collection of players you find completely, utterly repugnant.

748. Sarcophagospel
The accepted belief that in order to sell a card for a decent price these days, you need to have it graded and situated inside of a slab.

749. Fandom Numbers
How a team’s devoted followers can tell you without hesitation what number uniform an average player from decades ago wore.

750. Breaker’s Dozen
The serendipitous discovery that a wax pack you opened up contained an additional card that pushed it past the number of cards the pack was supposed to hold.
Also applies to the insertion of an ‘extra’ chase card in a modern pack.

751. Swellebration
When a rare or expensive card comes up for auction and captures everyone’s attention so much that a thread is started to enthusiastically begin marveling about how high the bids are going and wondering what the final hammer price will be.

752. Slabsolutism
The state of needing to keep a collection uniform by ensuring all cards are only housed inside the holders of one’s preferred TPG.

See also: “Beauty is in the eye of the reholder” - the motto of such collectors.

753. Insamenity
When the same sellers bring the same boxes of ‘looked-through-a-million-times’ cards and the same wildly overpriced superstars to show after show after show and expect different results.

754. Calamnesty
When something goes very wrong during the course of a transaction, but you are satisfied that the other party wasn’t motivated by malicious intent.

See also: Walking on Neggshells - the internal debate of trying to decide if the relatively bad eBay experience you had merits leaving negative feedback for the seller.

755. Goncore
Any regular issue, not a tribute or special, card of a player appearing in a set the year after he had actually played in his final career game.

756. Batters Not Included
When an eBay seller has multiple cards showing in his pics, but issues a disclaimer stating that the auction is only for the single card listed in the title and not the other ones pictured.

757. Siameasly Twin
That no good so-and-so who collects the exact same stuff as you, and he’s seemingly always able to grab the cards you lust after right from under your nose.

See also: Caintemptible - when you become filled with a murderous rage as your ‘collecting brother’ smugly posts yet another new pick-up.

758. Fraughtical
The inherent issues and dangers faced when attempting to make a purchase from overseas.

759. Pigmentality
Using your familiarity with the specific colors Topps assigned to each team’s players in certain sets to quickly determine if the small portion of a card you can see popping out of other things has the right hues to potentially be an important card.

760. Booster Rooster
A member crowing words to the effect of, “What a great card! I can’t see this one lasting very long,” in someone else’s FS thread.

See also: Whine Seller - anyone who expresses disdain for the fact that no one is jumping on the cards he has put up for sale.

761. Close Horse
How cards of Hall of Fame relief pitcher, Hoyt Wilhem, always seemed to have him sporting yet another new team’s uniform each season.

762. Prigonometry
When a superstar switches teams via a trade or a huge free agency deal, and he simply expects the current wearer of ‘his’ uniform number on the new team to hand it over.

See also: Centeryielder - a player who willingly agrees to surrender his number to the new guy.

763. Plundervalued
An accounting term referring to buying a sizeable lot of cards with some pricey ones mixed in, and by applying the money spent across everything, including the commons, you are able to tell yourself you got the big cards at a super price.

764. Endless Cardboard in a Cardboardless World
The future of the card collecting hobby.

765. Prebay Rare
Cards that used to be crazy cool, because they were so scarce you would never catch a glimpse of one except in a baseball card magazine or price guide, but now can be readily seen anytime you want on eBay.

766. Weedsteed
When a section is overcrowded by newer and newer threads being started, but you have the guts to face it head on and post your new thread anyway.

767. Marital Defrayal
After buying an expensive card, swearing to your wife that it’s your full intention to ‘try’ to sell off other things of yours to get the money back.

768. The Gift of Grab
The ability to use your amiable personality and people skills to pursuade a seller to lower his price down closer to where you want it to be.

769. Bypasstros (also Living in the Pastrodome)
When you hear the Houston Astros mentioned and your brain skips past and can’t seem to acknowledge the fact that the team is ‘now’ an American League squad.

See also: Wisconsolable - still not being able to understand how, why or when the Milwaukee Brewers became a National League franchise.

770. Bent Grade
The way to differentiate slabbed cards with qualifiers from those having ‘straight’ grades.
“It’s OC, a bent 9.”

771. Scamputee
Any lovable card you own which has significant portions of it missing.

772. Platinum Bland
That certain highly valuable and treasured card which every collector is ‘supposed’ to drool over, but really does nothing for you personally.

See also: Desirablasphemy - making the mistake of voicing this opinion to other serious collectors.

773. Grift Basket
A large box of cards for sale that the dealer claims hasn’t been searched through or cherry-picked, but you know darned well every decent card above ‘common’ status has been summarily removed.

774. Unreasonable Reasonableness
When a seller who always lists his cards at ridiculously high prices says he is open to reasonable offers, but you have no idea what his definition of ‘reasonable’ could possibly be.

775. Refried BINs
When you message a seller offering to buy his card for a little bit less than what he’s listed it for, and his response is to immediately raise the Buy-It-Now price on the already overpriced card.

776. D.H. Flawrence
Anyone who actively writes, compiles and maintains checklists of official and unofficial errors and variations across baseball card sets.

777. Bilottoral
The duality of being a true collector who’s in it for the enjoyment, but also someone who is always striving to make sure his collection continually grows more and more valuable.

778. Historyonics
The melodrama of someone insisting his views on what a long dead ballplayer was like are indisputably accurate, although he has no first hand knowledge of the subject and all of his opinions are based upon 2nd, 3rd or 4th party accounts bent and twisted over a huge length of time.

779. Grime Reaper
When a card is so hard to find that its awful condition doesn’t even come into play, and you just grab it the moment an opportunity arises.

780. Drearview Mirror
The misery of only finding out after the fact that a card you’re always hunting for came up for sale recently and was landed by someone else.

781. Fringe Vanilla
The players whose career numbers are somewhat in the neighborhood of Cooperstown-worthy respectability, but don’t enjoy much, if any, serious support from baseball fans for enshrinement.

See also: Free-for-Hall - any thread that was ostensibly started to ‘discuss’ the merits of various enshrined Hall of Famers, but devolves into a rancorous, opinionated airing of grievances.

See also: cooperstown Hall of Participation (cHOP) (under construction) - a place to eat breakfast while putting a bunch of theoretical, non-standardized sabermetric baseball statistics through a blender to make them fit your opinion of whether or not a borderline player deserves enshrinement in The Hall of Fame.

782. “Why don’t you two get a (private chat) room!”
The frustrated cry of everyone reading a thread that has degenerated into nothing but an endless back and forth between a pair of headstrong members.

See also: Greeting a Dead Horse - other members being forced to open the thread every time one of these combatants issues a new post, simply to mark it as ‘read.’



Finally, the end of this trilogy!!!

But since you've been such good boys all year, a half-Krampus, half-Santa hybrid will show up at Christmas time to leave even more funny stuff coal in your net54 stockings...