Just Twenty Cards #3: Drown and Roast

How about this summer?

Japan has had a rough year this year. A good-sized earthquake hit Osaka in June, and heavy rains caused unbelievable floods across Western Japan. And what seems like a never-ending heat wave has tormented Japan for the past two weeks. Last Monday, Japan set a new record high temperature; the mercury near Tokyo hit 41.1 degrees Celsius, which is about 106 degrees Fahrenheit.

It's been about a month since my last post, so before I get to the cards, what has happened? Well, after my last post, I got busy finishing my assignment near Yokohama. Lots of cleaning and packing and plenty of extra things to do at work. Then, I spent a week without a school, but I ended up going to two schools to help out. The other three days involved lots of cleaning at the office.

And now I'm in Sapporo! I've been here for a couple weeks now, and while the weather is cooler than in Tokyo, Sapporo doesn't have air conditioning like Tokyo does. My apartment has no A/C. And I've been waking up to an indoor air temperature of 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). That's not exactly comfortable! So I have been slowly getting this apartment cleaned up a bit and staying otherwise fairly inactive to beat the heat. Honestly, sleeping hasn't been easy in such hot weather, though I'm adjusting, and the heat is finally moving away.

Something else that hasn't really helped has been the constant Pokemon Go events. I don't spend money on the game, but this summer seems to have had something big happening every weekend, with Community Days, event weekends, and Japan's Special Weekend. There's an event this Saturday, too. And next weekend. And I believe the weekend after that. And probably the weekend after that, too! So, other hobbies have kept me busy. If only I could drop a few pounds from all this walking! 

Anyway, back to the cards. Just a bunch of flufferbutter and whosy-whatsits.

 The Pacific Rainbow has always been more intriguing to me than the Bowman/Topps Chrome and Panini Prism/Optic rainbows. Pacific went nuts on parallels long before the others did. They just weren't as attractive as Panini's and Topps' offerings.

 "Smile Mr. Niekro." "Why?" "Thirty years from now this picture will be on a baseball card." "I'll be a grumpy old man then." "Well, you're a grumpy old man now."

 I've always liked event-based cards, especially those with a newspaper theme. That's a nice orange parallel on the Finest card, too.

 I love Turkey Red and other art-based sets. Too bad I didn't need these.

 Speaking of art cards, I didn't need these Diamond Kings cards for my sets, but they fit in my type collection for some reason. One of these days, my Diamond Kings collection will be completely up to date. One of these days.

 My scanner didn't like the dark borders, so this card becomes a "guess the card" game!

 I've picked up several of these Club 3000 cards over the years, but never bothered working on the set. And I don't think I ever will; it seems to be missing just one small thing, whatever that is.

 Yay, reprints of old cards!

 Shiny! That was a nice Jeter, too. I think the design of this Finest Moments set is better than the Heyward set.

 Promos are often uncatalogued in my database, mainly because they and other single-card "sets" are tacked on to the end of base card checklists.

Retired players. When I was a kid, opening Topps packs, I occasionally came across those Turn Back the Clock cards. Old players were in a bunch of oddball sets I picked up over the years. And I ended up with that 1982 K-Mart set that reprinted a bunch of Topps cards. While I preferred cards of active players back then, exposure to the greats of the past brought me a greater appreciation for the game's history and eventually history in general. So some older players is fine. (Let's vary it up a bit, though, and get some of the lesser-known greats in there too!)

Until next time (hopefully not next month!)!