NEIGHBORS : Variety in Stock : In this offbeat store, you might walk out with a Jose Canseco rookie card or a china set.

Looking for the perfect gift to give that baseball card/fireplace mantle collector in your life?

Well, for one-stop shopping you might want to try the Premier Sports Cards and Collectibles shop in Ventura.

You could pick up a Jose Canseco rookie card for about $100 and that mantle piece for $650.

And why not toss in a Marilyn Monroe print, a used Duran Duran compact disc, a set of basketball cards and some jewelry.

This offbeat business is owned by Mike Lynch and Mike Wills, two 27-year-old Ventura County natives who decided to chuck desk jobs for something a little more exciting. They opened the shop in August.

“I thought I was stagnating. I was constrained as to what I could do at my other job,” said Lynch, formerly a financial analyst at Northrup Corp. “The only similarity between that job and this one is that I have to get up in the morning.”

Lynch said he’s had customers come into the shop to look at sports items and walk out with furniture.

“A mother came in with her son to look at the cards,” he said. “She ended up buying a china set.”

A word of caution: There’s a book sitting on the fireplace mantle titled “How to Sell Anything to Anybody.”

Remember last week we told you about a delivery service in Newbury Park that will send packages to the Persian Gulf at no cost?

If you plan to send paperback books or magazines here’s a tip from Mary Lynch, librarian at the Ray D. Prueter Library in Port Hueneme.

“You can’t send pictures of women into Saudi Arabia,” she said. “Bare arms are a no-no.” That includes the appendages of women featured in magazine ads.

Lynch knows what she’s talking about.

The library sent some magazines via a Seabee battalion and plans to send an additional 500 paperbacks that are ready to go overseas whenever arrangements can be made to get them there.

“The Seabees took a lot of romances and a lot of mysteries,” she said. “But some of the covers had to be torn off the romances.”

Anyone who’d like to donate some reading material can call 486-5460.

In the announcement for its annual Sespe Rendezvous, the Ojai Valley Muzzleloaders Assn. listed some of the scheduled activities:

“Black powder cartridge match, cannon match, wild savage attack, PLUS pancake breakfast with hot coffee.” You know, a savage attack just isn’t the same without some flapjacks and a cup of java.

Most of the activities will be pretty authentic--with costumes and equipment from the 1830s.

One thing that probably won’t be authentic, though, is the menu. Said organizer Charles Bates: “We don’t have access to buffalo.”

Is your bone marrow clean enough?

Talk to Bill Berk. He’ll be teaching an introductory class on the Chinese art of internal power exercise, Tuesday from 7:30 to 9 p.m. For information on the location call 486-0459.

The exercise, Berk said, is a three-step process that demands some mental and physical exertion.

“First you do a stationary meditation in a squat position with your arms in eight different positions,” he said. “You hold it for anywhere from five minutes to three hours.”

Step two is bone-marrow washing. It involves lightly beating certain acupuncture points with metal rods wrapped in cloth. “It creates more blood cells and improves your immune system.”

Then there’s step three, which can’t really be discussed in a family newspaper.

Let’s just say it has to do with swinging and holding weights with certain parts of one’s body to improve the immune system.

Hey, don’t knock it. Berk said his teacher lived to be 117 years old.