The New Directory of Collectorisms...

[Leon]

I think my collecting centers around this one-

1079. Dabble Vision
Having a main collecting focus, but also occasionally picking up items from other specific sets or issues that you have come to take a fancy to.

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Originally Posted by JollyElm

"Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine wordplay, puns, drollery, and attempted witticisms...

Attachment 589244

...go down, in a most (hopefully) delightful way!!!!"


Presented for chimney sweepers and collectors alike (or both at the same time, as their is no rule against chimney sweeps being collectors), Collectorisms Part XVIII - Section 1.


Collectorisms may cause psychotic breakdowns in those prone to such reactions. Please consult the included Collectorisms brochure for further information.




1053. Downton Hobbey
The opulent state of existence the more affluent members of net54 enjoy as they gravitate together and continually pat each other on the back over their latest obscene purchases, while paying little attention to the lowly interests of the budgetary peasants who also call the site home.

See also: Coy Polloi - the monied collectors who fly under the radar, because their modest, more down-to-earth posting activities don’t leave the impression they have huge budgets to work with.

See also: Westminster Slabbey - any thread serving as a glorious display venue for their museum-worthy pieces.

1054. Scallywagner
Any of the legion of Honus Wagner cards and pieces that due to the use of virtually the same image, bear a striking resemblance to his legendary T206 card.

See also: Wags-Adjacent Premium (WAP) - his greatness as a player aside, the higher than ‘normal’ prices each one of these pieces commands, because of the permanent association with his T206 card, the crown jewel of collecting,
“Man, I really took a ‘wapping’ on that M116 Honus card!”

1055. The Multiple Bid Absurdity Principle
The rationale that any bid made during the course of an auction is a wasted bid, because it harms you by needlessly and artificially raising the price of the item. Logically speaking, the ONLY bid one should ever make is an all-in, last moment snipe bid.

1056. Swapaganda
The half-truths, lies and hyperbole at play when someone is laughably trying to convince you that the trade offer HE’S proposing will clearly make you, not him, the ‘winner’ of the deal.

1057. Fulcrumble
In hindsight, the precise post that takes a thread that was cruising along normally and begins steering it downhill into a shit show.

1058. “The Future’s So Dim, I Gotta Wear Grades”
As you sadly decide it’s time to begin planning for the hereafter, step one is to make sure each and every one of your cardboard assets is housed in a respectable TPG’s slab for a straightforward and easy liquidation by your eventual heirs.

See also: Zero Sum Claim - the fear that after you’re gone, your wife will lose out big-time by selling your cards for the fictionally low prices you ‘swore’ to her you paid for them.

1059. Divorchestration
Having a strategical arrangement in place which will conceal the existence and/or value of your collection for maximum effect, so your no-good, dirty, road whore of a soon-to-be-ex-wife won’t be able to take you to the cardboard cleaners.

1060. Adverlution
The realization that many of the sponsors you so fondly tied directly to the N.Y. Mets as a young fan (Schaefer Beer, e.g.) had already filled the exact same role as the mainstays of the Brooklyn Dodgers years before.

1061. Umbilical Cards
The collectibles that still remain at your childhood home, and not only did your mother NOT throw them out, she has kept them safe and properly stored for you.

1062. Slabpremacy
The hierarchical structure of the Third Party Grader world where the sales prices realized of the same cards with the same number grades will vary widely depending on which TPG’s holders the cards sit in.

See also: “Tux the Rich!” - a seller’s hope that seeing more and more big money cards sitting inside of SGC holders will further elevate the TPG’s status and begin bringing the sales prices realized numbers closer to what the same grades sell for in rival PSA holders.

See also: Law of Diminishing Diminishments (AKA Bottom Barrel Parity) - in layman’s terms, the lower you go down the number grade scale, the less disparity will be found between the sold prices of cards in PSA holders versus those housed in other slabs.

See also: Plastic Turtleharing - deciding what works best for you personally as a seller, going with SGC to get your cards back quickly, but they will likely sell for lower prices, or sending them off to PSA, which will take an interminable amount of time, but should yield greater resale results.

1063. OPCOC
The proper descriptive acronym for Canadian O-Pee-Chee cards, since every one of them is bound to be found severely off-centered.

1064. Eavesdropportunist
Someone who sees what specific cards or items are being discussed or sought after in threads, and surprise, surprise, he suddenly posts a new FS listing in the B/S/T selling one of the very items being talked about, as if it’s just some sort of a random coincidence...NOT.

1065. “Put it in the tool belt”
An expression noting that the hammer has come down and the auction is over.

1066. Top-Dropper
When a large group of cards from a specific set is offered for sale or trade and, of course, the range of numbers included in the lot stops dead before reaching the high series.

1067. Gregmorrisified (eponym)
When you no longer bid in a particular seller’s auctions, because his fine, trusted stature in the hobby has made bidders flock to his offerings and considerably raise the prices of each card well beyond what they ‘should’ be.

1068. Frankensteinbeck
Anyone regaling you with entertaining sagas and recountings of their experiences collecting the T206 ‘monster.’

See also: Snagatha Christie - someone telling a fascinating and entertaining tale, complete with twists and turns and surprises, about how he came to own a particular card.

1069. Goosejuicer
Any of the storied card dealers from long ago who came across great bulk discoveries of previously rare, impossible-to-find cards, and slowly milked their golden finds for all they were worth.

1070. Semanticks
Members who try to shift the direction of a thread by arguing over the specific meaning of a word or words used by the OP, when the meaning was as clear as day to anyone not trying to suck the life out of a thread for their own pathetic enjoyment.

1071. RevenooBSTer
Someone fresh to net54 whose entire low post count tally is comprised of nothing but ‘for sale’ listings in the free B/S/T section.

1072. Orville Breadenbacher
Anyone who is set to make a killing after his TPG submission popped with great number grades.

1073. Ignorvitation
When someone expresses his annoyance at something you wrote, so you invite him to simply add you to their ‘ignore list.’

See also: Witless Protection - the technicalities in play which allow members who are so full of opinions about everything, to still not be required to have their names appear in their posts.

1074. Ship-Shopping (slang)
After winning an auction, scouring through the seller’s other items to take advantage of his “additional cards ship for free” policy.

See also: Defrayvity - the act of buying another card or cards in order to distribute the single shipping cost equally across multiple items and effectively lower the end cost of the original card you bought.

1075. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Questions
When the photograph used on a card leaves you cluelessly wondering, “What in high heck was going on the moment this picture was snapped??”

1076. Same Shoot, Different Day
Any cards of a player appearing in either the same set or a set from a different year where the photos used aren’t the same, but were obviously taken during the very same photoshoot

1077. Shrilliteracy
When an eBay auction screams “READ!!!” in the title, but when you look at the description, there is nothing additional there to warrant the inclusion of such a demand.

1078. Curbin’ Planner
Someone who, because he’s moving away or some other factor, has decided it’s time to gather together his boxes of junk cards and leave them on the street for the garbage man to haul away.

See also: Street Swoopers - the people who furtively creep in to dig through the refuse left out on the curb in hopes of finding desirable collectibles hidden inside the rubbish heap.

1079. Dabble Vision
Having a main collecting focus, but also occasionally picking up items from other specific sets or issues that you have come to take a fancy to.

1080. Pastposement
Any team card which featured a photograph taken years before and didn’t reflect the club’s 'current' roster.

1081. Tykeoon
The self-assured, modern card collecting juvenile found at shows who has great market savvy, cash to burn and an advanced set of negotiation skills.

See also: Teenageriatric - a young collector possessing a wealth of vintage card knowledge far beyond his years.

1082. Proptimizing
When scammers are sure to feature all sorts of obviously authentic low-value cards mixed in with their big-money forgeries to bolster the impression to their ‘audience’ that everything in the lot as a whole is legitimate.

1083. Backflapper
Someone whose natural inclination is to house slabs in protective card sleeves by having the resealable adhesive strip ‘hidden’ on the back side of the card holder.

See also: Frontflapper - someone who is more at home having the sealant flap situated on the front side of the card holder for easier access.

1084. Craigslast
When a list is compiled, from best to worst, of platforms you can trust to successfully conduct collectibles commerce on, it is rather obvious which site will always occupy the space at the very bottom.


And section 1 comes to an inglorious end.

[ClementeFanOh]

“Dabble vision”- perfect. I have that diagnosis! Trent King

[Yoda]

Just remember when sweeping chimneys not to keep your cards on your person. Soot is not good for them.

[JollyElm]

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: 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.

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.)

[Yoda]

Derek, I think it is time to find a literary agent and then a niche publishing company and allow these pearls of collecting jargon loose on unsuspecting public. I think it would be a runaway best seller among card addicts if not a candidate for a Nobel Prize for literature. If nothing else, it would bring smiles to many, like myself.

[robw1959]

I can't believe I've been here since 2012, but just came across this thread for the first time! Ailing a little bit today, but the first 50 put a smile on my face. I actually copied and pasted everything - to the tune of 182 Word document pages on my hard drive, so I'll have plenty of perusing to do in the days to come. Thank you, my brother, for this labor of love. It is right in my wheelhouse, personally, and so amazing to behold. I need time to take it all in.

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by Yoda

Derek, I think it is time to find a literary agent and then a niche publishing company and allow these pearls of collecting jargon loose on unsuspecting public. I think it would be a runaway best seller among card addicts if not a candidate for a Nobel Prize for literature. If nothing else, it would bring smiles to many, like myself.

Originally Posted by robw1959

I can't believe I've been here since 2012, but just came across this thread for the first time! Ailing a little bit today, but the first 50 put a smile on my face. I actually copied and pasted everything - to the tune of 182 Word document pages on my hard drive, so I'll have plenty of perusing to do in the days to come. Thank you, my brother, for this labor of love. It is right in my wheelhouse, personally, and so amazing to behold. I need time to take it all in.

I gotta be honest, guys, I've just assumed no one reads any of this stuff anymore, but I still plug away trying to make a little fun of us all. And the revisions keep coming in an attempt to continually improve/update what's already here.

So, thank you, Yodes & Rob (whoa...sounds like a 1970s singer/songwriter duo), you've given me the strength to carry on.

With appreciation,
Elms (or is it, perchance, Derek?)