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My second 1935 Goudey: Grimes, Klein, and Cuyler

Dave Farquhar Baseball January 4, 2015January 1, 20151950s, 1980s, 1990s, baseball cards, Burleigh Grimes, chicago cubs, Goudey, Jose Canseco, kmart, Louis County, National League

Sometime around the sixth grade I realized that prices on modern cards were very volatile. If a star player had a bad month, his card prices were likely to suffer, while a good month or good season could send prices skyward. I have few regrets in life, but I do wish I’d sold or traded off my Jose Canseco rookie cards when their book value was $300. I could buy several today for $5 or $6 if I wanted more. (I’ll pass.)

That’s about what I paid for my second 1935 Goudey card, which featured not one but three Hall of Famers in Chicago Cubs uniforms: Burleigh Grimes, Chuck Klein, and Kiki Cuyler, along with Woody English. And when I bought that card in the late 1980s, I knew none of them were going to have a bad year the next year.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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My first 1935 Goudey card: Joe Vosmik

Dave Farquhar Baseball January 3, 2015January 1, 20151980s, baseball cards, cleveland indians, Goudey, left fielder, Louis Browns, Louis County, Washington Senators

Dad and I were at the late, lamented World of Baseball Cards on Lemay Ferry Road in south St. Louis County sometime in the late 1980s, flipping through vintage cards. Among the old cards in the pile was a 1935 Goudey 4-in-1 featuring Cleveland Indians players. The most noteworthy was Joe Vosmik, an All-Star left fielder who batted .348 that year.

I was debating whether to buy the card or not when Dad glanced over. “Get that one,” he said. “My dad knew Joe Vosmik.”

Dave Farquhar

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An insider’s account of the fall of Radio Shack

Dave Farquhar Retail, Retro Computing December 4, 2014February 6, 20221980s, best buy, black friday, Circuit City, radio shack, VCR

When I heard Radio Shack was going to be open on Thanksgiving day, I wondered why they would bother. The few Radio Shack stores near me are deserted on normal days, so I didn’t know why anyone would take time out of Thanksgiving Day to go to Radio Shack.

Based on this sad account from an employee who spent hard time working at Radio Shack, I was probably even more right than I thought. The first story, from Black Friday 2004, tells the tale of a store that, when all was said and done, probably lost money on Black Friday. And this was in an era when tech blogs would say, “Believe it or not, there are worse places to be at 6am on Black Friday than Radio Shack.”

I’m not sure anybody believes it now. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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The power company’s aid in saving energy

Dave Farquhar Saving money October 31, 2014July 17, 20171960s, 1980s

My local electric company is going to start including a power usage comparison on the monthly bill.

For the last several years, they’ve been sending one annually, but it’s not all that hard to miss it. This is why I generally know I use less electricity year over year, but I don’t know how many people actually see the report. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Attention St. Louis: Two shock jocks don’t speak for Kansas City, or for the Royals

Dave Farquhar Baseball October 14, 2014October 14, 20141980s, cardinals, Kansas City, kansas city royals, Louis Browns, Major League, Oakland Athletics

I noticed a lot of St. Louisans were rooting for the Royals, then, suddenly, they turned into die-hard Orioles fans. That’s odd, especially considering the Orioles used to be the St. Louis Browns, who left town in 1953. That’s like Kansas City rooting for the Oakland Athletics or Sacramento Kings.

Then I found out two Kansas City shock jocks, Danny Parkins and Carrington Harrison, ranted and raved about St. Louis for about an hour one day, and a bunch of St. Louisans took it seriously.

Whatever.

OK, so Kansas City has a couple of guys with no class on the radio. So does St. Louis. What town big enough to have more than one radio station doesn’t? But let’s talk about class for a minute. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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HP splits in two.

Dave Farquhar Hardware October 13, 2014September 6, 20241980s, capitalization, compaq, DEC, dell, hp, IBM, lenovo, lexmark, Western Digital

Don’t you feel like trying something new
Don’t you feel like breaking out
Or breaking us in two
You don’t do the things that I do
You want to do things I can’t do
Always something breaking us in two –Joe Jackson

After years of buying up companies, HP is splitting up. While that’s probably more prudent that exiting the desktop PC business, which is another idea they flirted with in the past, it’s anyone’s guess how this is going to work out.

But it’s what all the cool kids are doing, so it’s what the investors want, and that means HP is going to do it. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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What it was like owning a Commodore in the 1980s

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing October 6, 2014May 30, 20251541, 1571, 1980s, amiga, christmas, commodore, commodore 128, commodore 64, kmart, piracy, public domain, sears, toys r us

Since questions occasionally come up, and I remember well what it was like owning a Commodore in the 1980s in the United States, I’ll share my recollections of it.

It was very different from computing today. It was still interesting, but it was different. Technology moved fast in the 1980s, so if you blinked, you missed stuff.

Dave Farquhar

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Remembering Dolgin’s

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, St. Louis October 3, 2014June 19, 20231980s, 1990s, best buy, Bing, christmas, Circuit City, commodore, commodore 64, IBM, Kansas City, LinkedIn, Missouri, profiles, Retailing, sears, tonka trucks

Growing up in Missouri, a lot of my Christmas gifts when I was young came from a catalog showroom called Dolgin’s. One of my earliest memories is going to Dolgin’s with my mom and aunt, who showed me some Tonka trucks and asked me which ones I liked best.

I know a lot of people remember going through Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs, but I remember Dolgin’s catalogs the best. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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How to cut your water bill

Dave Farquhar DIY, Saving money August 22, 2014September 10, 20171960s, 1980s, hardware store

I’ve talked a lot about how to cut your electric bill and how I successfully cut mine 19 percent, but I haven’t talked much about water bills. Part of it is because water is cheap in St. Louis–the two largest rivers in North America converge here–but in some parts of the country, water usage is at critical levels, so cutting your water bill could mean saving real money.

I’ll never forget a commercial I heard when I was in third grade. “Did you know that every time you flush your toilet, you use 5-7 gallons of water?” a guy said with a drawl, before urging people to flush less. Being very juvenile, I thought it was funny.

But if your house is older, your toilet may very well be trickling water all the time, literally nickel and diming your water bill continuously. You can fix that for less than $10. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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