[JollyElm]

They're Baa-aaack!!!! I present to you 2021's Collectorisms Part IV (also SemRANTics or VoSLABulary)


***ALERT!!!!!!*** I can't say this strongly enough. This is meant for entertainment purposes only!!!! Hopefully, chuckles and guffaws will ensue!!!!

No international treaties were breached in creating this magnum opus.


Okay, here’s the fourth part of this nonsense, but it gets better. I have not only copied and pasted all of the updates together right here in the original post, but I have also added a ton of bonus material. You know how when an album is remastered/reissued, they include bonus tracks? Well, that’s what you have here, and now more than one quarter of a thousand Collectorisms in one place, so enjoy the heck out of it (or don’t enjoy it, your choice)...



204. Hot Water Theater
When you pop into a water cooler section thread as a casual change of pace...and suddenly realize you’ve stumbled into a shit show!!

205. Blockroach
A seller who, no matter how many different ways you try to prevent his listings from showing up in your eBay searches, still finds a way to get his auctions through.

See also: Demoniker - a secondary or supplemental eBay username employed by these types of sellers.

206. Autosnafu
The unfortunate way card companies cut noteworthy signatures out of full pictures or documents to scrunch them into the tiny window of a chase card.

See also: Bullfit! (informal) - an autograph that is partially cut off or obscured in one of these contrivances.

207. The Equivoprevarication Hypocrisy (also Chirperjury)
The fact that countless sellers holler and exclaim that the card they’re selling looks so much better than the grade it received...yet not a single one of these hawkers ever says that one of their cards actually looks worse than the grade given.

See also: Jumba-Liar - an auction description that’s a veritable hodgepodge of half-truths and falsehoods.

208. Cardboard Cryptid
A card that is virtually impossible to find perfectly centered.

See also: Proportunate - feeling psyched about finally finding a ‘decently’ centered example.

209. Bubble Scramble
With card prices continuing to rise exponentially, your buying habits are being completely redefined every single day.

See also: Crumbrage (also Cellar’s Market) - being annoyed that the only cards you can now afford are basically the bottom of the barrel throwaways.

See also: Trainwrecktrospect - looking back on the very poor decision of selling your cards too soon, too cheaply before prices really began to escalate.

210. Hubba-Hubba-Bubba (also Riding the Cardboard Escalator)
The happiness of seeing the huge bubble gum card bubble magnificently increasing the value of your collection.

See also: Dweller’s Market - being unsure whether now is the right time to sell, or if prices are going to continue to climb.

See also: Bubble Dump - deciding to take a quick profit by selling off your cards right now.

See also: Kurt Bevacquation - the desire to sell off your collection in a hurry before the giant bubble bursts, so you can use the proceeds to take your family on a great trip.

211. Slabberdasher
A collector looking for input and ideas on how to best display and lay out his cards, uniforms and other memorabilia in his ‘man cave.’

212. Breaking the Plastic Ceiling
The moment you decide that the vast majority of your card purchases from here on out will be of the graded variety.

213. 52 Hours a Day (colloquialism)
The amount of time spent discussing the endless fascination with Mickey Mantle’s first Topps card.

214. Guillotine Set (also Overheaded)
Any baseball card offering which is comprised of an inordinate amount of headshots.

See also: Marie Fantoinette - someone who adores those types of cards.

See also: Beheadhunter - an avid collector of the 1960 Topps set.

See also: Yearbooker - a lover of the 1960 Leaf set.

215. Meticumulation (also Minticulous)
A collection of only very high grade cards.

See also: Wantificating - a collector arrogantly explaining why he doesn’t dig the card somebody bought, because some specific aspect falls shy of his own finicky grading and collecting requirements.

216. The Lonesome Sighway
Feeling isolated and forsaken, because you are seemingly the only person who collects and/or is into the types of cards you collect.

217. Wynicism
On the rare occasion you actually triumph in an auction with a pretty low bid, your mind instantly becomes clogged with thoughts such as, “Uh oh, how did I possibly win it?? Did I miss something?? Is there a flaw in the card I didn’t see?”

218. HOFOMO (acronym)
Fear of missing out on your opportunity to buy Hall of Famer cards at decent prices as said prices continue to soar.

219. Leatherman (also Addicted to Glove)
Someone whose collecting focus centers around the all-time great fielders.

See also: Slugbug (or Slamlord) - a collector focused primarily on legendary power hitters.

See also: Moundhound (or Hurlieman or Firehauler) - a seeker of cards and memorabilia portraying the most celebrated pitchers in the game’s history.

220. Bad Commacation
Not properly inserting a comma in your sales price, so at first glance a card appears to be an incredible ‘bargain’ at $850, and not $8,500.

221. Disgarveyfication (also Flaw of Averages)
Thinking the superstars you worshiped as a boy were clear cut all-time greats and first-ballot HOF’ers, but when you give their stats a once-over now, you realize they were just meh.

222. 177/537 Disease
Seeing a vintage card and having the innate ability to immediately remember what number it is without giving it a second thought.

223. Non-Mathematical Gradipulation
Not being able to understand how a card graded as an SGC 80 works out to be a 6???? Why isn’t it an 8????

224. Garbarian (also Raimentic)
Someone who is able to readily identify what year a photograph was taken based on specific aspects of the player’s uniform.

See also: Costdoomer (or Garfomentor) - someone who heartily disagrees with his assessment of the apparel in question.

See also: Boutfitter - a member who happily jumps in to fight in defense of the OP’s conclusions.

See also: Dorian Ungray - the use of very old photos by card companies, where there is clear evidence (a long gone stadium, an old uniform, etc.) in the photograph that proves it was snapped many years ago...not to mention how absurdly youthful the player appears.

225. Erudouche
A person who feels obligated to point out words that 99.99% of the population uses as synonyms (“rare” and “scarce,” e.g.) actually have sightly different meanings.

See also: Dickthyologist (or Marine Biolojerk) - someone who jumps in to ‘correct’ anyone using the time-honored exhortation “Squish the fish!!” (meaning “Beat Miami!!”), by pompously stating that a dolphin isn’t a fish, it’s a mammal.

226. Canardboard (also Hubriscation)
The smug and silly dismissal that valuable baseball cards are “just cardboard.” Sure, and ‘The Mona Lisa’ is just some pigment on a piece of wood.

See also: Glampifying - romanticizing a pile of old cards in bad shape for sale by referring to them as being in “Collector’s Grade.”

227. Exorbitancy Coefficient
The mathematical formula involved in determining if using a combination of 15% off coupons, credit card points, and eBay bucks will offset the ridiculous asking price of a card enough to ultimately make buying it ‘worth it.’

228. Twoplicity
The suppositional rule of thumb that a card with a qualifier should have a monetary/trade value equal to a straight graded card two whole numbers lower.

See also: Registry Disparity - how this principle is weighed in to determine the final grade average of a collector's registry set.

See also: The Binary Conundrum - owning a graded card with a qualifier, but since the ‘defect’ is so minor, it definitely doesn’t merit having a two-grades-lower drop in value.

229. Unkindred Spirits
Rookie cards of players that never made it big appearing in the same set with the same layout as other valuable, much sought after rookie cards.

230. Coming In from the Mold (also Grabbing the Raines)
When a long-retired player finally becomes a HOFer and you start digging through your old cardboard boxes in search of his cards.

See also: Vexaltation - being pissed that when you dig those cards out they are in awful shape because they’ve been rattling around in your commons/junk boxes all of these years.

See also: Mildewphoria - the delight in discovering you have a bunch of his rookie cards socked away.

See also: Epidemacclaim - the huge amount of overpriced cards suddenly appearing everywhere on eBay the moment the ballplayer is finally elected to The Hall.

See also: Prognostogainer - someone who speculated perfectly on the HOF vote and was able to cheaply load up on the player’s cards in advance.

See also: Windfault - spending a lot of money buying the rookie cards of a player you were sure was going to be enshrined this time, only to see him once again fall short.

231. Individual Wagneria
The cards that normal people hold up as their own personal most valuable or treasured collectibles.

232. Lexiconjecture
Seeing a word, phrase or acronym in someone’s post and not being able to tell if it’s a misspelling or an example of new terminology that you are unfamiliar with.

233. Master Set-back (also Annextra)
After someone makes a new variation discovery (usually a minor printing anomaly), and you realize the card in your master set already is this version, so you must sadly go out and spend the money to add the ‘regular’ version.

234. Scaventurous
With a smile on your face and your team’s cap on your head, standing at the entrance to a card show and wondering what magical hidden treasures you are going to come across today.

See also: Capture the Slag - happily spending very little money and amassing a nice pile of star cards in really bad shape.

235. Too-Too Clock
Although everyone is (rightfully) complaining about how expensive cards are getting these days, the simple truth is cards have always been way ‘too’ expensive since the beginning of time. Even when Mays and Mantle cards could be gotten for $5 apiece, that was considered a ludicrous price.

236. Deceiviation
When someone is touting a major Hall of Famer card for sale, but when you look at the listing, you find it’s not the player’s ‘regular’ card, but a much-less-desirable combination card, World Series or league leaders card, a checklist or even a 1975 Topps MVP card.

See also: Sidemicks - the players appearing on cards with Mickey Mantle.

See also: Trophesizing - calling a card for sale a “rookie card,” when it’s actually a second year card that has the Topps All-Star Rookie trophy on it.

237. Thrillogical (also Prosposterous)
Having a card listed with a ‘Buy It Now’ price for quite some time and it never sells, but when you decide to relist it as a straight auction, the hammer price ends up exceeding what your BIN always was.

238. Droughtstretch (also The No Cardboard Blues or Cry Spell)
That horribly sad period of time when you have absolutely no eBay wins coming to your home in the forseeable future.

See also: Dearthling - a collector caught up in this pitiful situation.

See also: Droughtburst - the card you finally buy that puts an end to this terrible stretch of time.

239. Bendacity
Looking at a prized card you own that is creased, and not being able to fully accept and get over the fact that there will never ever be a way to flatten it out and rid it of those nasty wrinkles.

240. Pocket Scientist (also Neinstein)
A collector who has a knack for quickly placing cards into the right page slots (while transferring a partial set into a binder) by efficiently doing the multiples of 9 math.

241. Leftopper
The ‘proper’ orientation of team and other horizontally designed cards (in albums and holders) with the de facto ‘tops’ on the left side and NOT on the right side.

242. Auspiezious (eponym)
A mediocre player who holds a place of prominence in the collecting world simply because he appears on either a rare variation or an otherwise significant card.

243. Charcoal Merchant (also Blackpeddler)
A person who deceptively darkens the corners and edges of 1971 Topps cards in order to pull a fast one and pass them off as high grade.

See also: Sharpieshooter - one who is highly proficient at this deceitful activity.

See also: Tragic Marker - the discovery that one of your key 1971 cards was recolored sometime in the past.

See also: The Gray-Sided Giveaway - when a recoloring job is so amateurish (perhaps done quickly by a kid back in the day) that parts of the ‘colorless’ gray side edges of the card are also blatantly splotched with black.

244. Spider Banes
Very conspicuous print lines that adversely affect the look of an otherwise nice card.

245. Club Orthoboxy
Keeping your cards sorted by teams and not in numerical order.

246. Sicken Scratch (also Scrivendacity)
When someone posts a nearly illegible handwritten letter or postcard from an old time player and doesn’t include either a transcript or a summation of what the heck it says.

247. The Apopalypse
The constant ‘the sky is falling’ cry (heard very less often these days) of people thinking the graded card market is going to bottom out.

248. Despairasitic (also Gone With the Win)
Checking on an auction you’re really hoping to win with a low snipe bid, but seeing there’s a multitude of people watching it, so you realize you don’t stand a chance in hell.

249. Hemlinegevity (also Puberty Derailment)
How ‘all’ kids collect cards from early on in grade school up until they start chasing skirts sometime in middle school, only to then pick up the hobby again decades later.

250. Case and Effect
The manner in which card collecting has drastically changed with the onset of professional grading. It used to be that you’d grab any card you need for your set, centering or other factors be damned, but now the paradigm of what constitutes ‘acceptable cardboard’ has been changed for many collectors.

251. Standing Shill
The BS involved with ignoring the fact that illegitimate bidders screw everyone over and drive prices fraudulently upward. It’s usually accompanied by an inane statement such as, “I bid the maximum I’m going to bid and that’s it. Whatever happens, happens.”

252. In Screeno Veritas (Lat.) (also Web Phlegm)
The attempt to use Photoshop to alter a picture to trick people into believing you own a card...but the posted picture has enough clues in it to prove the truth. You ain’t got it.