Delivery Time! A Package from December (2017)

In my (almost over) quest to get all caught up in trade posts, it's time to finally post about a package from Dennis over at Too Many Verlanders that actually arrived in December of last year.  In my defense though, the package was a large, flat rate bubble mailer that meant the particular package always had to be on the bottom of the stack (or else the stack of mail would inevitably fall over).  Even better, I have since received a second package from Dennis that I did get posted on my blog in a much more reasonable amount of time!

So rather than continuing on focusing on my posting shortcomings in the past year, let's instead celebrate the generosity of one of Michigan's finest!

Dennis' package was a surprise mailing - and the main reason for the mailing was actually not baseball cards (though he did include a smattering of random Reds).  Instead, the highlight was this:

That's a 1987 Sports Illustrated featuring Eric the Red on the front cover.  Now, I am the first to admit that I don't collect magazine (lord knows my lovely wife might actually kill me if I add yet another collection to my repertoire.  That said, I did enjoy reading through the magazine...and man.  I was born in 1982 and this magazine came out when I was only five years old.  Still, based on some of the advertisements (in particular) in the magazine, it's clear that time truly waits for no one.

Case in point:

First of all, Radio Shack is (I'm pretty sure) extinct.  You know what else is extinct?  Almost everything in this photograph, including that dude's short shorts (sometimes things are definitely best left behind in time). 

While I definitely enjoyed the ads in the magazine (and the article on Eric Davis), there were a couple of other interesting articles in there including one on Jim Abbott. 

I give Abbott great respect for what he was able to do on the baseball diamond.  I think it's pretty cool that Sports Illustrated did this feature while Abbott was still only a sophomore in college. 

The magazine was definitely fun to flip through (and I will be passing it onto my younger brother who wasn't even born in 1987 - I think he'll get a kick out of everything as well).  I do have to show another pair of advertisements though...

I have to ask...does anyone today find that car remotely beautiful?  I'm guessing not (or else maybe I just offended half of my readers, could go either way here I suppose).

And finally, one more bit of proof that time knows no limits:

Wow.  Not all that long ago, I read a book all about Bell Laboratories, AT&T, etc. which was actually quite fascinating (even if it was a bit of a dry read).  In terms of the ad, I love the last paragraph which I'll transcribe below if you can't read the scan:

"And as phones grow more powerful and computers grow more sociable, the benefits to all of us will grow only more abundant."

I am willing to wager that there wasn't anyone at AT&T (or any other company) who could imagine what technology, specifically phones, look like about 30 years after this ad was produced.  We've come a long way from that little cardboard insert making your phone a more powerful computing machine.

Many thanks for the great package, Dennis!  Once again, I apologize for the amount of time that it took me to post about it...but at least I was able to finally set aside time to do a proper read through of the magazine (and a corresponding post). 

At this point, I only have one more old card package to show off on the blog (and it's not even that old, it arrived around August 1 of this year).  Once that's done, I'll be officially caught up...which means let's get the trade flood gates opened back up!