A Thank You Post #3

The third and final installment in this trilogy of thank you posts, will be showcasing cards from Oscar, of ATBATT fame... in what was the first of hopefully be many future exchanges between Oscar and I.

This package contained a great deal of variety, as well as a number of firsts for me. So without further ado:


1990 Swell Baseball Greats

This was a really "swell" way to start off the package. This is a set I really dig, and both of these were needed, so that's always good. I'm pretty sure this is my first card of Clyde King as well.



2012 Topps Golden Moments

A pair of firsts for me here.



2009 Topps Update Legends of the Game

This was another one of the firsts in this package. I feel like I must have seen these before, but my brain is messing with me, by saying "no, you haven't!". Either way, it's a really cool card from what appears to be a pretty neat insert set. I can certainly see myself trying to complete this set.



2013 Topps Chasing History Gold Holo-foil

My second favorite card from the package. These cards look so great in person.



2005 Upper Deck Pennants

I have mentioned it more than once before, but as far as modern baseball sets go, my absolute favorites are the players of yore sets. And Oscar managed to include a card from one of those sets that I had been completely unfamiliar with. After looking at some of the cards, I really like the crisp cleaned up images, this Richie Ashburn being no exception.



2016 Topps Pressed into Service

I see these all the time while doing the COMC challenges, but hadn't gotten any yet. Looking at the checklist, this Stan the Man is (in my opinion) clearly the best card from the set.



2011 Topps Diamond Stars

This was my first time seeing one of these as well. Very attractive in person.

2011 Topps Cognac Diamond Anniversary

I believe this is only my second of the cognac parallels. Easily the best photo of the bunch as well.



2013 Topps Emerald Foil

I just saw an article yesterday talking about the hand injury that had plagued Chris Davis last season finally being healed, which I would imagine, is good news for Orioles fans. Now that I have almost two pages of emerald green's, it's probably time to add those to want list as well.



2011 Topps Lineage Platinum Diamond Anniversary

I will end with my favorite card of the bunch. I really (really) like Topps Lineage, I like the base cards, the parallels, the inserts, the relics, heck I pretty like everything about the set... and yet I have almost nothing from it. I would really like to get at least one box, but I just know that I'm going to end up getting an expired redemption, and because of that belief, I just can't do it. If it were a Panini product I would, because Panini would still honor it (or at least replace with something else), where as Topps just tells you to eat it. And for some reason, other than a few parallels, I never see any of this stuff at shows. It really seems to be one of those proverbial no-win situations. So that being said, I really appreciate this card being included.

Thank you again, Oscar. This was a very fun mix of cards.


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A Thank You Post #2

The cards featured in today's post come courtesy of Jim (GCRL) of cards as i see them, who has by far, added more buybacks to the frankenset build than anyone else, myself included.

I feel like at this point I should go back and find out how many Jim has provided, and add a counter of some sort on the side of the blog. This package alone, saw 30 more being added to the set.

Going from oldest to newest, means starting with my favorite first. Not only is this my third of fourth '59 in the set so far, but it is also now the pinkest card in the set. It was kind of neat to see that Mr. Constable was born only about three hours east of my newly adopted home.

This Don Wert has certainly seen better days, no worries though, Mr. Wert is still a welcome addition to the set.

This card not only marks the first time Gary Neibauer has made an appearance in the set, but it's also Julio Navarro's (#36) first as well.

I wasn't familiar with Steve Braun in the least, and Considering he spent 15 years in the bigs, I don't know how that was possible. I should have at least been aware of him if only because he was a member of the Mariners during their 1977 inaugural season, which also saw him play career high 139 games that season. I guess it's good thing my Mariners fan card expired, and wasn't renewed a few years back now, otherwise it probably would have been revoked. Steve Braun also happens to be #12 on the all-time pinch hits list with 113.

I think there is some kind of unwritten card show rule, that no matter what size, all boxes of vintage cards must contain at least one Gates Brown! Interestingly enough, I saw that he too was on that all-time pinch hits list at #15 with 107.

[Editorial note: This is where two more 73's (Chris Chambliss and Oscar Gamble) were supposed to be, but I accidently deleted the photo before I could load it. So consider them here in spirit]

Skip Jutze was also a member of the Mariners '77 inaugural team, which I already knew, however I wasn't aware that he provided the Franchise's first ever grand slam. He hit it off Rudy May on 4/17/77 in a 10-2 win over Baltimore at the Kingdome, it's even more impressive if you consider that up to that point, he had only amassed two home runs in his previous five seasons.

"Sometimes that Campanis, he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. Y'know the thing about a Campanis, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... until he bites ya. And those black eyes roll over white, and then... oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin', the ocean turns red, and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces."

I think before these three, I only had two 75's in the set.

Is it just me, or do John Ellis and Glenn Adams look like they could almost be twins? Same nose, cheeks, lines under the eyes, eyes are pretty similar, and same eyebrows. I imagine if they had been posed similarly, it would be even more pronounced.

Larry Gura is another one of those guys that I always seem to come across cards of.

I didn't know that Rick Reuschel had a brother that played as well. No offense to Paul, but he looks like he would have been more at home in the PBA.

Thanks again, Jim. This set build wouldn't be nearly as far long as it is without all of your assistance.


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A Thank You Post #1

Due to the weather being really nice lately, and the COMC challenges finally working properly this week after months of being completely wonked up, I haven't been spending very much time thinking about blogging. Between trying to get outside stuff done, and building back up my COMC credit before the challenges start screwing up again (because they will sooner or later), there hasn't been a lot of time for me to do anything else. That being said, I have a couple of posts to do that I really don't want to let go for too long, lest I start to appear to be ungrateful for the things that have been recently sent my way. So the next three posts will be devoted to the generosity of others.

This first of three thank you posts is going to be slightly different than the next two, in that not only will it be a thank you post, but also a recommended (highly) eBay seller post.

About two weeks ago I won a couple of different 2014-15 Prizm basketball parallel lots from kbsportzcardz on eBay. After the auctions ended, I was contacted by the seller, who since I don't know if he would want his real name mentioned publicly or not, I will just refer to as "Ken". Anyway, Ken sent me a message asking if I would be interested in any extra base cards, as he had opened four cases of the 2014 Prizm, and as one would expect, had plenty of base duplicates. At first he wanted to know if I was interested in any particular players or teams, which I was not, but I did let him know that I would probably be working on the set at some point, to which he replied... and I'm paraphrasing, "Great, I can definitely hook you up"... and hook me up he did.

Now, I was honestly only expecting maybe 25-30 base cards (at best) to be tossed in, which would have been great, instead Ken decided to drop a Prizm bomb on me:

I don't know if that first picture fully illustrates the sheer quantity of cards, so here is a another angle:

Each one of those nine stacks is comprised of more than a hundred cards, which is just crazy, right? If I had been smart, I would have taken a picture of the cards in the box, but after opening it, I believe I was in what could be called a "state of shock/awe" for a few minutes afterward. The box had to weigh at least 20-25 pounds, so I knew that there was clearly more than the 25-30 extra cards that I had been sort of hoping for, but I still wasn't expecting this.

Later in the evening I contacted Ken to thank him profusely, and to offer to pay something towards, not only all the base cards, but the difference in shipping as I knew this box cost more to send than the $6 I paid for shipping. Ken didn't want any extra compensation, instead I was told that it was done merely as an act of kindness, and to pay it forward when possible, which is something I had already intended to do upon seeing all of these cards.

So since there are so many duplicates, if anyone reading this wants any, please let me know. I'm assuming Billy wouldn't mind a few, and if Chris sees this, you will be getting some as well (Note to Chris: I'm still working on putting your box together, but going through these has delayed me even more). Anybody else though? Raz, Rockets? Kerry, Blazers? Anyone else? Also, if anybody wants a 100-150 card starter set, I can easily put that together. Most of the rookies are missing, along with the Lebron's, Curry's, etc., but there are still some big names. A large part of the duplicates come from the retired player's portion of the checklist, for example, there are about a dozen Iverson's, Shaq's, Bill Russell's, Grant Hill's, Mychal Thompson's and so forth.

And if that wasn't enough, after I dug through all the base cards to get to the cards that I actually purchased, I found that Ken had also included these two as well:

On the left is a Boris Diaw Blue Mojo Prizms jersey card, and on the right, an Enes Kanter Blue Mojo Prizms parallel. Both of these were greatly appreciated as well.

After all that, here are the four lots that I won, all of which went for far less than I anticipated:

From left to right: Blue Wave Prizms, red, white, and blue Prizms, Green's, and Prizm Prizms (AKA refractors).

Since there were way too many to show all of them, and this post going on way too long, so I will just provide a small sample of what was in each lot. Starting with the Prizms:

Green's:

Blue Wave's :

Red, white, and blue's:

Many (many) thanks to "Ken" for the overly generous amount of freebies, thanks doesn't seem like enough, but hopefully it will suffice. And for everybody else, please click on the link near the top of the post and add him to your favorite sellers list. This is the kind of person who eBay needs more of, and who deserves as much business sent his way as possible.


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The True Home Run King!

As part of my most recent COMC shipment, I was fortunate enough to have three vintage Hank Aaron cards counted among it's contents. Two of the three were gotten during a fire sale for fairly low prices (low by eBay standards), although once you see those two you might understand the reason for the heavily discounted prices.

This '59 Topps is one that I have wanted for awhile now, even if it didn't feature Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews, I still would have wanted any card from that era of baseball that had been titled "Fence Busters". Somebody in the past appears to have not been overly concerned with Eddie's side of the card, as he seems to be a little more worse for wear than his fence busting counterpart.

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of the 1959 Topps set, I'm going to start putting a little more effort in trying to get all of the multi-colored rising sun cards, including an upgrade of this one at some point.

Hank's '57 season was so impressive, and apparently still relevant enough at the time, that they were still talking about it two years later.

This is my first all-star card for my glacially slow 1960 set build. For some of the lesser names on the all-star checklist I will aim for a higher condition, but seeing as how much better conditioned examples of this card can go for, I might no be upgrading this one very soon... if ever.

Three years later and they were still going on about his '57 season.

Another set need, and by far the nicest one (condition wise) of the trio, also the most expensive. Even though I have stopped working on a number of the vintage baseball sets, for reasons that are too long to explain here, I feel like I have an obligation to complete the '69 set.

Thankfully twelve years later, Topps wasn't still comparing his most recent season's numbers to those of the '57 campaign, although that might've only been because there wasn't enough room to squeeze in another comparison. It's kind of interesting to see that as of 1969 there were only eight guys in the 500 HR club, while currently the list stands at 27. Scrolling through the names, I counted six that shouldn't even be allowed on that list due to their known cheating (steroids, HGH, etc.), and two more that are highly suspect. So in a theoretical perfect world, that club would probably be considered even more exclusive, with a membership of just 19.


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Moses in Gold

Because of some lapses in posting during the last couple of months, I have an ever increasing number of 2013-14 and 2014-15 Prizm cards piling up in scan folders. There would easily be enough to cover a weeks worth (or more) of posts, but since I have no interest in creating a dramatic drop off in my somewhat already low viewership, I probably won't be doing a Prizm themed week anytime soon.

So for the sake of a quick post (and only a temporary drop in views), I will pluck out what some might consider the best of the bunch:

I had been wanting one of the numbered to /10 gold parallels, preferably from one of the pre 2016-17 sets for about a year, before getting this 2014-15 Moses Malone gold pulsar a few weeks before Christmas. For those that don't know or the few that might actually care, the gold pulsars were exclusive to jumbo boxes, while the regular gold's were available in hobby boxes only.

Since I'm never very happy with how Prizm's scan, I have included cell phone picture as well:

Unlike some of the other Prizm colored parallels that I'm attempting to complete sets of, I will probably only end up with a few of the gold's, so I have been a little picky on who I went after... and of course trying to steer clear of some of the high prices that certain names command. About a week before I won this one, I had bid on a Kareem gold pulsar that ended up going for more than I wanted to spend, so as a consolation prize I got the "Chairman of the Boards" for around $6.50 delivered... not a bad consolation prize if I say so myself.

I still need to get one of the regular gold's from the 2014 edition, along with gold's from all the other pre- '16-17 sets (I really dislike this years design). I wouldn't mind picking up one of the black 1/1's for a reasonable price either, but the odds are highly against that happening.


                

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Seeking assistance from a more knowledeable vintage baseball collector

I had planned on doing a football post today, but I haven't really felt like typing any words onto a screen for the last few days now, and since I seem to be completely incapable of writing anything in advance for these frequent periods of blogging lethargy (I have no idea if I'm using that word in a sentence correctly or not) of mine... I end up with no football post! I know, big loss right?

So in the non-existent football posts place, I thought I would ask for some help on a question that has been bugging me for most of the day, which is... What was the first baseball set to include cards of managers? Not player-managers, just manager-managers. And I'm looking for the first nationally released set, not some obscure regional issue. I keep thinking '33 Goudey, but I'm pretty sure that's going to end up being wrong.

I know this is something that seems more like message board material, but I'm not really the message board sort. And Google is not helping at all (as usual), so I was hoping somebody reading this might know, preferably without having to go through any effort to come up with an answer, as I'm not trying to get anybody to do serious research on my behalf. I will be most grateful if anyone can be of some assistance.


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My First 1962 Post Canadian!

I have a post containing about a dozen Post cards in the works, but I thought this one might warrant it's own post (feel free to start a drinking game):

1962 was the last year in which Ernie's cards would list his position as anything other than first base. After playing the last couple of games of the '61 season at first, he would move there full time beginning in '62, and other than the occasional foray at third... he would remain there for the rest of his career.

When I came across this card on COMC, it was listed as having water damage. After looking at it as closely as one can on a via a compute screen, I decided it didn't look too bad and decided to take a chance on it... it also didn't hurt that it was on sale at over 80% off.

Normally when I think of water damaged cards, I think of warped cardboard, but other than the light staining that you see on the one side, there are no other signs of anything being wrong. After seeing the card in person, I'm definitely glad I took the chance on it, although if had been anybody of lesser note I probably wouldn't have bothered.

I really don't see myself getting too many more of these, as just trying to work on the regular old American Post sets is proving to be more than enough of a challenge for me.

P.S. Who knew it would be so difficult trying to limit how many times you say "post" when you're writing a post about Post?


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