If there was ever a time the world needed something that was Rolling On The Floor Laughing Our Asses Off At Ourselves funny, it would be now!! But before you go searching for something funny, why not unpack all of this garbage first...
Spurred on by my first
solo TPG submission (check it out here with links to 'before' and 'blind reveal' videos: https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=340670), I sheepishly present
Collectorisms Part XVIII - Section 2.
Collectorisms are NO LONGER gluten-free.
1085. Submissionary Position
The viewpoint that once you send off cards to be graded, whether it‘s due to unjustifiably low grades, long delays, excessive fees or other issues and complications, you’re just waiting to get screwed.
1086. Pocket Pretty (slang)
A card that looks majestic while sitting unexamined in a binder page, but once you remove it and give it a once over, the otherwise unseen flaws that make it ‘unworthy’ of grading become readily apparent.
See also: Marilyn Shunroe - an otherwise absolutely gorgeous example of this unfortuante phenomenon.
1087. Flip Mining
The process of digging through your boxes, binders and other accumulations of cards in search of potential ‘gems’ to be sent off for grading and ultimately put into ‘flips.’
See also: Numeralgorithm - when deciding what to have graded, the process of taking the amount you paid for a card and adding the estimated grading/shipping fees to it to arrive at a minimum grade number it would need to receive to make the card ‘valuable’ enough for its submission to be worthwhile.
See also: Mossed and Found - the discovery of a great card in an old, hasn’t-seen-the-light-of-day-in-years box which is a perfect candidate for grading.
See also: Optimisplacedism - digging through the boxes of cards you’ve dug through a thousand times before in the hope of still finding something ‘overlooked’ there.
See also: Nullifind - coming across a beautiful card during your search that you can’t believe you haven’t already sent in to be graded before, but once you inspect it and see its ‘hidden’ problems, you remember exactly why you didn’t submit it any of the other times you could have.
1088. Attached Detachment
The psychological disorder at play when you fool yourself into believing you’re actually capable of separating yourself enough from the emotional attachment you have to your own cards to offer an unbiased prediction of what grades they deserve.
See also: Disexpectant - having the resolve to truly respect and accept the ‘lower than they should be’ grades you know your cards are slated to receive.
1089. Fuctuation
The varying degrees of foul language - ranging from mild annoyance to screaming to the heavens in a blind rage - flying out of your mouth as you first learn what grades each of your cards received in your TPG submission.
1090. Pack Freshtration
The exasperation of sending a card off to a TPG that you can find nothing wrong with and still looks as sweet as it did the day it first came out of a pack, but it comes back with a much lower grade than it deserves.
See also: Ripple Crippled - the close re-examination of a now-slabbed, supposedly wrongly undergraded card that leads to some sort of, “Oh, dammit, I didn’t see that tiny wrinkle when I sent it in,” moment.
1091. Upinionated
The funny way your attitude towards a card you’ve had forever and liked well enough suddenly transitions into a joyous ‘marching bands down Main Street’ revelry once it comes back from a TPG with a high number on the slab...even though it is literally the same card it was before.
See also: Gradulation - the big-time props you get from other collectors which is based solely on the grade numbers your cards received.
1092. “Live by the Soared, Die by the Floored” (proverb)
If you’re happy with the high grades your cards receive from a TPG, then you also have to be content with and accept the low grade numbers they may give your other cards, too.
1093. Popper Games
Any thread centered around asking people to guess what grades they think the pictured cards will receive.
1094. Starfirster
When deciding to work on building a complete set, the preference to go after the big money cards (Hall of Famers, rookies, etc.) right away, and not leave them to become an ever-increasing financial burden later on down the road.
See also: Starlaster - taking the less stressful completion route of checking off as many of the common, lower cost cards you can, and leaving the arduous task of securing the big money cards for some hypothetical point in the future.
See also: Low-Card Diet - chasing the easier and generally less expensive low number series cards first.
See also: High-Card Diet - chasing the rarer and more expensive high number series cards first.
See also: “Sometimes the cards we want the least are the cards we want the most” - the frustrating plaint of any complete set chaser when he reaches the point of being forced to buy cards he couldn’t care less about in order to mark them off of the checklist.
1095. Unacknowledge is Power
The perhaps morally corrupt dilemma of knowing if you choose NOT to disclose to an obviously clueless seller how valuable their item truly is - worth significantly more than they realize - it will turn into a major score for you at their expense.
1096. Yestergraded
The indication that a card was slabbed back when grading standards weren’t nearly as harsh as they are today, so there’s little chance it would ever receive as high a number now.
See also: Etched in Sand - the impermanence of any number on any slab, because if a card is cracked out and resubmitted, there’s no guarantee whatsoever it will ever come back with the same grade it has now.
1097. Cardslabic Equation
Although the ‘buy the card, not the slab’ mantra is uttered constantly, the truth is everyone has their own way of blending together what the card itself looks like with what the number on the holder SAYS IT IS, to determine its proper value to them personally.
1098. Unformation (refer to
#836)
The bits of insider knowledge about specific cards or sets you’ve acquired or discovered for yourself over the years that ‘only’ you know about, so you keep these hobby secrets closely guarded to avoid hampering your ability to use them to your advantage.
See also: Yapprehensive (also
Proprietwary) - always being mindful of keeping your big mouth shut and not inadvertently spilling the beans about these exclusive insights to the competition.
See also: Keeping Two Sets of Looks (or
Shadow Need List) - having a want list that is shared publicly, while also having a second one that’s ‘for your eyes only’ and includes the ‘secret’ cards you’re always on the hunt for.
1099. Uverprotective
Being vigilant in the use of light-filtering precautions to ensure the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays don’t get the opportunity to unduly bear down on your exhibited collectibles and cause fading, discoloration, and the eventual deterioration of the pieces.
1100. Cathedrool
The unbridled passion for seeing old photos capturing the magnificence of long ago bulldozed ballparks.
1101. Provenonsense
When the story of where a claimed-to-be-authentic piece originated from turns out to be nothing but a load of bull.
1102. Type Yay Personality
An exuberant hobbyist who enthusiastically collects because he loves the joyous celebration of grabbing the cards he desires so much.
1103. Incanduskant
The far less than bright - and inadequate for examining cards - lighting conditions found at every card show venue on the planet.
See also: Murky Turkey (slang) - a card which looked quite nice to you in the dim environs of the show floor, but once examined under ‘normal’ lighting at home, turns out to be a very ill-advised purchase.
See also: Dreary Farmer - a card show attendee who’s more apt to reap rewards, because he’s wisely equipped himself with the proper hand-held lighting tools to effectively cut through the shadowy gloom.
1104. Multislabulous
Assembling a set where each card is graded, but not exclusively housed in a single TPG’s holders.
1105. Linklaxity
The posting of nothing but a live link in a thread without including any sort of base context as to why it’s there or where it leads to if clicked on.
1106. Subsequentropy
The scientific concept that the worst time to buy a piece of memorabilia associated with a historical event or milestone - like a no-hitter, World Championship, etc. - is during the wildly unstable and chaotic pricing timeframe immediately following the event.
1107. Self-Fulfoolment
When a dimwit fraud using images taken from the internet doesn’t realize that he’s actually trying to sell you YOUR OWN DAMN CARD.
1108. Defaultered Reality
Whenever you see an extremely old card in high grade, you must operate from a base of automatically assuming it has been altered in some way...until you are convinced otherwise.
1109. Worm Blooded
Someone with a knack for being the ‘early bird’ on certain cards or sets, so they are able to affordably buy what they want long before the huge increases in popularity and prices start happening.
1110. Authenticrater
The seemingly random occurrences of pieces falling through the cracks and into the abyss, wrongly rejected by eBay’s authenticity program.
1111. “We’re going to need a bigger bloat”
An expression noting that even though the values of your biggest cards have ballooned extraordinarily, you’re still not going to sell until the sales prices swell even further.
1112. Kinfirmation
The finding of a second example of an error, variation or ‘recurriation’ card you’ve discovered, verifying that it is not simply a ‘one-off’ and there are others just like it out there somewhere.
1113. The Overpayment Necessity
The stark logic that it is absoutely imperative for some buyers to markedly overpay for cards, because without that upward push in the sales prices realized data, the value of our own cards will never rise.
1114. Scuff-Shuffling
The act of quickly and recklessly looking through stacks of graded cards (not in protective sleeves) without having a care in the world for all of the friction and scraping the holders are being subjected to as you whip through them.
See also: Scrape Stacker - a person engaged in this activity.
1115. Crockstars (slang)
The players in smaller, off-beat, or insert vintage sets who must’ve been considered the cream of the MLB crop at the time to warrant their inclusion, but in hindsight are nothing more than permanent residents of your ‘commons’ box.
1116. “Is there a card doctor in the house??”
Whether with nefarious intent or not, any thread asking for help in ‘improving’ the look of a card.
1117. Drawbactuality
When a card looks ridiculously undergraded, so the seller/owner explains what its (unseen to on-line viewers) obvious problems are in hand that make the grade exactly right.
1118. “Never trust a collector who trusts you back” (maxim)
The sad fact that every single collector is always sitting on the razor’s edge of deciding what’s the right or wrong thing to do in any given situation.
See also: High Road Rage - when you purposely do the morally right thing in a tricky situation to avoid screwing someone over, but in the end you yourself end up getting screwed.
1119. Nightsnagging
Any West Coast bidder using the two or three ‘extra’ hours to score auction wins as a huge portion of his competition lies asleep in bed due to the time difference.
See also: Discounting Sheep - a mocking way to describe the money you’ve saved as your competition was too busy getting some shut-eye to bid in the auction.
1120. Whatiffication
The gaudy asking price of any unopened vintage pack, which is set under the assumption that however unlikely, it very much could hold one of the treasured cards from the set.
See also: Prognosticatalyst - the attempt to drive up the bids on an unopened piece by really pushing the fact that there’s a good chance it does indeed hold the celebrated card everyone is dreaming about.
See also: Fortune-Seller - an owner who’s hoping to make big bank off of this prophesying selling strategy.
See also: Rackefeller - someone owning an unopened rack pack with a majorly valuable card showing.
1121. Print Sheesh
The stark realization of seeing a pic of an uncut print sheet from long ago and how miniscule the ratio of HOFers to commons actually was inside of the packs kids were opening.
1122. Past Life Progression
When a card has been broken out and regraded, but it came back at a lower number, so the seller includes pics of the old, higher-numbered flip to basically claim, “I swear it’s in much better shape than it looks! Here’s proof!”
With section 2 coming to an end, I've done all I could to make us laugh at ourselves. Want more of it? Take off your clothes and face your wife or girlfriend. The yuks will be a-flying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (No offense.)