It's that gloriously delicious time of year again...
...you know, when you burrow under the huge pile of coats amassed on the bed and slowly wait for all of your relatives to eventually hit the road.
Presented for both white meat and dark meat fans alike
(and for those who don't give a flying f*ck either way), a very special
Collectorisms Part XIX, now stuffed (get it?) with more puns and wordplay than ever before!!!!
Collectorisms will not interfere with Thanksgiving football game viewership. We suggest you ask a young niece or nephew to read them aloud to you as you scream at your fantasy football players on the TV.
First, let's start with some small appetizers...
1123. Eat, Drink & Be Wary
The way in which collectors celebrate holidays, enjoying themselves while always being mindful that they can never take their eye off of the ball and miss out on opportunities that may present themselves that day.
See also: Gobble Hobbled - losing your sense of time in the wake of a tryptophanic stupor on Thanksgiving Day, which causes you to completely miss the ending of an auction you were hoping to bid in and win.
1124. Bring Your Yappetite
The excitement of knowing that the family event you’re attending will have other collectors there, so you’ll finally be able to gloriously chat away with like-minded folk.
1125. Counting Your Lessings
The disappointment of seeing the low, sub-par winning bid of an auction that you inadvertently scheduled to end on a major holiday, when eBay traffic is presumably at its lowest.
1126. Turkey Chaster
Someone who decides that Thanksgiving is a day for family, so he’ll remain righteous and chaste and not sully it by hunting for cardboard on any of his devices.
1127. Snarecrow (slang)
Anyone putting a huge, early auction bid stake in the ground to warn potential competitors, “You better stay far away! This card will be mine!”
1128. Smashed Potaters
Any cards which feature and celebrate players blasting historic home run ‘taters.’
And now on to the main course..
1129. Maizmantelaron (
“Mays/Mantle/Aaron”)
A descriptor used to generally indicate the types of vintage Topps-era cards to be found.
“The card show was cool. ‘Maizmantelaron’ as far as the eyes could see.”
1130. Bogus Halfsies
The silly “Take 50% Off Marked Prices!!” bins sighted at card shows, when anyone who hasn’t failed first grade math understands that taking half off of something that’s priced three or four times as much as it should be doesn’t magically turn it into a bargain.
See also: Hypercentaging - the act of dealers ensuring that every card found in their “Take 50% Off Marked Prices!!” sections has an excessively high, fake ‘regular price’ attached to it.
1131. On-Hand/In-Handing
The card show sales tactic of justifying much higher than eBay prices by telling customers, “It’s worth it, because you’re here in person, so there’s no wait time. You can actually take possession of this card right now.”
1132. Card Submission Serenity Prayer
An invocation which helps card collectors remain level-headed and composed when they face the trials and tribulations of the grading process:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the grades I cannot change,
courage to resubmit and change the grades I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”
1133. Gratifictitious
When someone pretends there’s a lot of interest in a card he’s offering by bumping a thread with, “Thanks for the many inquiries, still available.”
1134. Alreadyhads
Cards that are shown off in the new pick-ups thread which aren’t technically new, such as cards of yours that just came back from being graded, etc.
1135. Sacramentality (also
Godspiel)
The mindset of using “God bless!,” “Shalom!” or other brief religious phrases in an eBay listing to give the impression that you’re a virtuous and reliable seller.
See also: Flock Fleecer (or
The Passion of the Heist) - when such usage is obviously nothing more than an unholy pretense to sucker ‘believers’ in and take their money.
1136. Trapdoorsman
Someone bumping their ‘for sale’ thread with an ominous “Final price drop.”
1137. Happy Scour
Taking an optimistic final lap around the floor in the waning hours of a card show to look for dealers - readying to pack up their tables - who might now be willing to drop the prices on their unsold cards, so they can score some quick and easy last-minute cash before heading out the door.
See also: Loss Weeders - the cards a seller accepts lowball offers on at the end of a show to add some final greenbacks to his coffers, while also thinning out his unsold inventory a bit.
1138. Golden Chimney
The additional premium you know you’ll pay when bidding on an item being offered by an eminent, highly advertised auction house, because they get more traffic and consequently more bidding competition than smaller auction houses do.
See also: Victory Penalty (VP) - the buyer’s premium paid on top of the ‘hammer price’ in an auction.
See also: License to Shill - any auction outfit that allows consigners (and/or people directly connected to them) to bid on their own pieces.
1139. Lostponement
When a card that has been lost in the mail forever and forgotten about suddenly decides to turn up in your mailbox out of nowhere a long time later.
See also: Prodigal Card - the item residing in such a package.
1140. Paranoia is a collector’s best weapon (truism)
If your first thought about each and every collecting interaction is, “This frickin’ guy is trying to pull a fast one on me,” then you’re going to go far in the cardboard world, kid.
1141. Deadboarding
Someone thinking they’re clever by once again trotting out the tired old phrase “buying pictures of dead guys on cardboard” to refer to card collecting.
1142. “He’d hit the ‘Buy It Now’ button for the Brooklyn Bridge.”
An expression noting how someone seems to be especially clueless, gullible and ready to fall for scams.
See also: Brooklynbridgiot - a less than charitable description of such a person.
See also: Schadenfraud (German derivative) - experiencing feelings of pleasure or self-satisfaction after learning someone got taken by a scammer, because all of the signs were there from the get-go and the fool obviously should’ve known better.
See also: Infomerciful - the compassionate act of seeing someone clearly not in the know and about to make a huge purchasing or selling mistake, and stepping in to save him by sharing insights as to why it would be a very bad move to make.
1143. Upslope/Downsloping
The strategic approach of not only seeing if the asking price of a card is in line with recent sales, but digging a bit deeper to determine if that data reflects a card whose value is on the rise or in a troubling decline.
1144. Absent Finded
Unexpectedly stumbling across a card in your home that you have no recollection of ever putting in its current location and were quite convinced you had lost long ago.
1145. “Tomb for one more, honey!”
A phrase denoting you’ve found yet another card to add to the growing TPG submission order you’re assembling.
1146. Green Eyedometer
A measure of the degree of personal jealousy and envy felt by a collector after being blown away by a pick-up made by someone else.
See also: Impressure Gauge - wondering, after making an incredible pick-up, how strong the awed and dazzled reactions are going to be after you post the pics of your new acquisition.
See also: Acclaimpishment - posting a pick-up, not because of your excitement over it, but just to bask in all of the pats on the back that are surely to come from everyone.
1147. Snark Shield
When a member feels compelled to start his post by expressly stating that he’s asking a “Serious question,” so as not to be on the receiving end of the sarcasm to come.
1148. Vision Guessed
The quest to zero in and determine what grade a card ‘should’ receive based on nothing beyond closely examining it with your own two eyes and perhaps using a magnifying lens.
1149. The Rising Tide Sinks All Boats (maxim)
When the continuing rise in prices of mainstream card sets forces collectors to shift their focus to other more affordable pursuits, they find the prices of those cards have climbed way up into the stratosphere as well.
1150. Fullblack Position
The involuntary (wrongful) assumption that if a 1971 Topps card has fully black and unblemished coverage on all sides, corners and edges, then no other aspects of it matter and it will come back with a high number grade.
See also: Blackstabbed - the angry feeling of betrayal when a richly black 1971 card comes back graded lower than it should’ve been, usually accompanied by an utterance of, “But...but there’s not a single bit of white wear in the black!!”
1151. Obsolentimental
When a very old, long-dead thread is suddenly brought back to life via a new post.
See also: Howard Carder - the member who is responsible for digging up and bringing the ancient thread back from the dead.
1152. “Collectito, ergo sum.” (loose Latin)
The philosophical dictum stating that the very act of realizing you are seeking out new collectibles to obtain indubitably proves that you do, in fact, exist.
1153. PeeCeeing
The act of buying something for your personal collection, and not for resale.
1154. Minimaxification
The purchase of a card deemed ungradeable by one TPG - because it didn’t meet the minimum size requirements - in the hopes that another TPG will see it differently, put a number on it and ultimately turn it into a big moneymaker for you.
1155. Affordignoredability
As people complain that certain underappreciated HOFers’ cards ‘should’ be much more expensive than they are, the wise collector stocks up on those cards for the very fact that they’re still quite modestly priced.
1156. Melidoing (eponym)
The act of laying a vintage card you’re getting ready to submit for grading on top of a modern card to ensure it measures out properly.
(Etymology - derived from the use of a 1993 Topps Melido Perez card in this fashion.)
See also: Thinnocuous - any cards that came out of the factory naturally cut a little shorter top-to-bottom or side-to-side than what they were ‘supposed’ to be.
1157. Shaken, Not Blurred
An explanation noting that the image on the card you’re showing on-line is properly focused and not blurry in real life, and the only reason it doesn’t look sharp is a result of your poor, shaky-handed picture taking efforts.
1158. Toutlook
The Topps method of always including the next series checklist in with the current series of cards to tell kids, “Better save up your pennies, because look at what great things are coming next!”
See also: On Side Kick in the Ass - seeing all of the magical cards in the high series on the last checklist, but when you hit the store to spend your allowance and finally complete your set, you’re crushed to find all of the baseball has been done away with and replaced with new boxes of football cards.
And on that appropriate football note, this chapter comes to an end.
Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!!!!!!!!!