Black Saturday

This will be a very quick post to tease quite a few future posts. Today I got up early and drove two hours to Nashville for a card show, thrift store, and card shop trip. And after another two hours to get home I'm both very weary and wired at the same time.

So here is a picture of my card show purchases, plus 4 cards from the card shop:

This is what almost 700 cards looks like. Crazy, I know. At least half this box is comprised of 90's refractors from the three major sports, that were all 10 cents each!

And if that wasn't enough:

This picture is comprised of Ebay and Sportlots purchases, TTM's, and a package from a fellow blogger. I should probably mention this is all from just this past week.

And on top of all that I will have almost 200 cards from COMC arriving in the next two weeks or so. They have been building up in my account since the spring sale and now that there is an incentive to have them shipped, I have done so.

There is also a new printer/scanner on the way, so it should make this blogging thing a little easier for me.

So please stay tuned as there is plenty of content to come.

TTM Triumph #3: Glen Combs

Here is another pretty cool success. This time from Glen Combs.

Glen was drafted by the San Diego Rocket in 1968, but chose not to play in the NBA. Instead he elected to spend his entire career in the ABA, playing for four different teams over a seven year span. He was member of the Utah Stars championship winning team of 1971, the same year he led the league in 3 point makes. He was also a 3 time all-star. Glen retired in 1975, finishing his career with a 16.5 ppg average.

On a side note, this card is somewhat special to me, as it was the first card that I ever got from the 1971-72 Topps set. So it's pretty neat to now have it signed.

As usual a big thank you goes out to Mr. Combs.

Trade cards and an autograph

Here are a few more things I got at the antique mall that I talked about in the second to last post. I should probably mention that these items came from the same booth as mentioned before.

I only started collecting trade cards this year, and admittedly don't know as much as I should about them. I didn't really need another thing to collect, especially since at times it seems like I already dabble in just about everything under the sun. But I guess when your a pack rat (bordering on hoarder) and interested in non shiny objects, you don't really have much say in the matter.

Trade cards were in an early form of advertising in this country primarily from right after the civil war to the early 1900's, although they started in England in the late 1700's. What I find the most interesting about them is the fact that any particular card could be the only one of it's kind left, since a lot of them didn't survive. Although since it was a popular hobby at the time, there are quite a lot that were preserved in scrapbooks.

This first one is my favorite and the only one I have done any research on:

Carlton McCarthy was a confederate soldier in the civil war. He wrote and self published a book on his experiences entitled "Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia 1861-1865", which amazingly is still in print. He later wrote a few more books and from 1904-1908 was the mayor of Richmond,VA. The picture didn't come out to well on this one, especially the dullness of the gold color(it's much brighter in person). I couldn't find any more examples of this card online.

It's really neat to read the price list on the back of this next one:

Here is one with a philatelic tie-in:

This last one is obviously damaged but I had to have it, since the face on the moon made me think of
the old silent film "A Trip to the Moon".

I have no idea what the advertisement is for though, as all it says on lower part of the image is "First Quarter".

I will end the post with an autographed postcard of Richard Martin that I found while searching through a box of oversized baseball cards from the 80's. Sorry for the glare on the image.

Dick Martin is best known for creating the character of Chico Rafferty, which he portrayed in 29 westerns in the late 1940's thru early 50's. I have never been a big fan of westerns but at $3.00 I wasn't going to pass it up. And I don't really have any doubts as to it's authenticity, since he would be sort of an obscure actor to create a fake autograph of.

Also I have made a few small changes to the look of the blog and since I still don't really know what I'm doing, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

TTM Triumph #2: Tom Kozelko

Here is another recent return, from Tom Kozelko. Tom played at the University of Toledo where he averaged 20.8 points a game from 1971-73 (freshmen weren't eligible to play so he sat out the 1970 season). He was a two time MAC "Player of the Year" in 1972 and 1973.

He was drafted by the then Capitol Bullets (soon to be Washington Bullets) in 1973. He played for four years in the NBA, where he didn't see a lot of playing time, but that is to be expected when you are playing behind Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes. After his tenure in the NBA he played one season in Italy before a back injury effectively ended his career.


This is Tom's rookie card from the 1975-75 Topps set. It is also his only card ever issued.

He was also kind enough to add an additional signed index card.

So a big thank you goes out to Mr. Kozelko for the autographs, which really made the previous couple of "blah" days be forgotten almost instantly.

Baseball cards from an antique mall

In my quest to explore my new(ish) surroundings, I recently went to an antique mall about thirty minutes from where I live. Not that there is very much here to explore mind you, but there does seem to be an abundant amount of antique malls not so conveniently placed about thirty minutes away in every direction.

I don't know how well I can set the scene, but I'll try. This particular store is almost literally in the middle of nowhere, so much so that even when the GPS tells you that you are in the right place, you think it must surely be wrong. When you leave the highway onto an unpaved road and only see a gas station to your right and the back of an unmarked red building(mall) straight ahead, it feels more like your pulling off into a truck stop then an antique mall. It does seem a little weird to approach a business from the back, but they do like to do things backwards here.

The mall itself is fairly large, consisting of two long hallways of booths. The first hallway was pretty much the same as any antique mall, by that I mean that there is a lot of neat stuff that is all way over priced.

Anyway fast forwarding ahead a little, to the second row. I could tell right away that this row was going to be much better as there were noticeably much more reasonable priced items.

Then about 4 spots down I came across the holy grail of antique mall booths:

I will try and describe the sheer awesomeness of this setup. So on the left there are vintage board games, vintage greeting cards, some toys, sports cards, and tons of philatelic items (i.e. stamps, old domestic and foreign covers, first day covers, postcards etc.). On the right there are about two dozen boxes of misc. paper ephemera, boxes of vintage dog tags(animal). And even though you really can see them in the picture there are a plethora of binders full of cards, coins(mostly foreign), milk caps, tokens, Magic: the Gathering, trade cards, postcards, and more paper ephemera. The back shelves are just loaded with sports cards consisting of sets, lots of singles, team bags, sealed packs and more.

The singles boxes were divided by sport and team. The prices in this booth seem to be a bit odd, in that half the items are overpriced and the other half are underpriced. I was pretty thorough in going through everything, but I feel like there was still a lot that I didn't get to. I must admit that I got very overwhelmed with this much to search through.

I should probably mention too, that the cards in this post are only about half of what I got. The rest will have to wait until a future post.

And now the cards:


1959 Topps Tom Morgan #545

At $1.50 I thought this was pretty good deal.


1962 Post Nellie Fox #47

There were 5 or 6 Post cards, but this was the only one under $10. For $2.00 I was going to leave Nellie there with his overpriced brethren.


1969 Topps Deckle Edge Frank Howard #16

50 cents for Mr. Howard.


1970 Topps Scratch off Tim McCarver and Richie Allen -both unscratched

I know these aren't rare, but I never see them anywhere other than online. I think these were both $1.00 each.


1971 Topps Billy Martin and Bobby Bonds

These two were both 50 cents each.


And I will end with a bounty of 1979 Hostess cards

All of these were 50 cents apiece.

Thurman was $1.50

Pops was $2.00

This was my one splurge item at $7.50, I don't think I overpaid but it still seemed like a lot.

So there you have it. Not a bad haul from an unlikely source.

TTM Triumph #1: Jerry Sloan

After seeing the success that many of the bloggers have had with obtaining autographs through the mail I decided to give it a try. Mind you this isn't my first time doing so, it's just this time I won't be reaching for the stars. You see, as a youngster in the early 90's I was naive enough to try and obtain signatures of names such as Ken Griffey Jr. and Michael Jordan. And as you can probably guess, that didn't work out too well. After so many failures I just kind of developed a mental block on the whole idea.

So after all these years I'm ready to try again with much more reasonable expectations, of course.

In the last two weeks I have sent out 12 envelopes. And two days ago the first one came back from "The Original Bull" Jerry Sloan.

I'm assuming most people know who Jerry Sloan is, so I won't rattle off a bunch of stats from his playing days or his long coaching career. I also won't mention that he is a Hall of Famer who is known to be generous with his signature. So a big thank you to Mr. Sloan for signing both cards and for giving me hope for future returns.

Contest winnings

A couple of weeks ago, Billy over at Cardboard History was having a contest whose prize ended up being split between all the entrants. So this post will show my portion of the bounty.

I had planned on waiting until I got a scanner before showing these, but that is taking longer then anticipated and I don't want to seem ungrateful by not putting them on display. I will apologize in advance as a few of the pictures are less then ideal.

So here we go:

The 1981-82 Topps Wayne Cooper was the oldest of the bunch.

 Scotty Brooks has barely changed in the last twenty years.

 I'm going to send the Bob Thornton out for an autograph attempt.

 I really like the Ultra card of Tim Legler attacking the basket, especially since this might have been the only time he ever did so.

Billy, did you check and recheck the Finest to make sure they weren't refractors? These cards still give a lot of collectors fits.

 The '97-98 Fleer card of Penny Hardaway with Hakeem draped all over him is probably my second favorite from the group.

 Being some kind of holoview, the UD3 Shaq card seems like it would be impossible to show it clearly.

 The 1999-00 Black Diamond Shareef Abdur-Rahim is really neat. I didn't have any cards from that set.

 Here is an example of the bad pictures I warned you about.

The 2004-05 UD Pro Sigs Eddie Jones is really neat too, and is one of many cards from a set that I haven't seen before, that were included in this package.

With Greg Monroe gone, Andre Drummond seems to be finally coming into his own. I have enjoyed the design on the Past & Present sets.

 Shiny Wes Matthews gets my vote for the best card in here. The Trail Blazers really disappointed me by not even making him a new offer this past offseason.

I guess last year's MVP should get his own spot at the end.

Thank you again Billy for the cards and since I don't recall ever getting cards in the mail that I didn't pay for, this really was nice of you.

Adventure Time sketch card

Finally! A reasonably priced AT sketch card.

These cards are never in my price range, so I was very surprised to be the winning bidder on this one.

The artist is Mikey Babinski. I don't really know anything about him, but a google search tells me that he has done quite a bit in recent years.

I like the mention of Frank Frazetta on the front, although I don't know how many AT fans would know who he is.

This card is just wonderful!

Sometimes I really don't understand other collectors!

Actually, it's probably most of the time.

My most recent purchase is a perfect example:

1961 Fleer Jack Twyman #65

 I was the only bidder on this card. Can you guess why? Well I'm about 99% certain it's because the card is off center. And of course this means all the grader's out there won't even look twice at it.

I really don't get the whole grading fad (to me it's still just a fad). But from what I have been able to gather, off center cards seem to be just about the biggest flaw a piece of cardboard can have when it comes to grading.

The total with shipping for the card was $4.24, and there is no way you would ever find a '61 Fleer (HOF'er) for that price at any card shop or show. Yet, no one else bid. Like I said, I really don't understand.

For those that care here's the back

It's interesting to note that the Celtics player mentioned on the back (shown on front) is another Hall of Famer, Frank Ramsey. So two hall members for less than the price of one!

You be the judge: Is this the best or worst repack card of all time?

I was doing some sorting yesterday and came across a card that I had somehow completely forgotten about.

The card in question came from one of those 100 card Fairfield repacks in the little hanger box, that was purchased sometime before this past summer.

I guess it's probably best to show the card now and then discuss it more below.

1976 Topps Derrel Thomas

That is some card, huh?

My first reaction upon pulling this card was to smile. I mean look at the corners,  the creases, and especially the tack hole. I don't know how the cards are chosen and dispersed into these packs, but it seems amazing that this card could have ended up in here.

And you can tell there has to be a story behind this card. It looks like Derrel was some little kid's favorite player and that when the card wasn't in there back pocket, it was tacked to the wall for safe keeping. I kind of like the thought that one of the workers at the Fairfield factory was once that little kid and decided to send the card out into the world. You know, like that old saying about if you love something set it free.

So what do you think? Is this the best or the worst card to come from a repack?