Celebrating Opening Day with a scan dump (Part 2)

Given how things have gone in recent years, it's hard to believe that there was a time when I was able to post once every 2-3 days on here. These days, I feel like it's a win if I can finish 2-3 posts a month. I still haven't fully adjusted to this new normal though, and often end up scanning more stuff than I'll ever be able to get to. I need to learn how to start picking my spots a bit better. In the meantime though, I've got scan folders galore. 

I know now that I won't ever be able to get all of the themed posts that I had planned on doing, done, but do still want to show the majority of the cards in said scan folders, if only so I don't feel like I wasted my time doing all of that scanning. The easiest (for me) way that I've been able to think of to get all of these scans out there is to do a series of scan-dump posts, which is why you've already seen a couple this year, and by my calculations, will likely see four or five more by year's end. Today's edition will cover the last of the old baseball scans. All but the last card came from COMC, and all have been sitting in folders for between 2-4 years now.

I can remember thinking at the time that I probably shouldn't have gotten Bobby Shantz (despite his cheapness) because this card is in every single '61 Post lot that you find on eBay, and since I still need a bunch of cards from the set, I figured that it wouldn't be long before I got one of said lots which would've included the Shantz. Fast forward a bit, and I still haven't gotten one of those lots, so Bobby's purchase doesn't look so bad at this point.

Everything I said about the Shantz card applies to Elston here, too. I wrote 95¢ under this scan, so I guess looking back that wasn't too bad of a price.

I'm no longer actively collecting Larry Doby, but am still keeping what I have, and wouldn't hesitate to add to his inactive collection were I to come across any more cheap cards of his. And in case anyone's wondering, the only reason I stopped looking for his stuff is simply because it's gone up so much in price since the boom started.

Because of how much time has passed since purchasing most of them, I don't recall too many details about most of the cards in this post. This Kenny Holtzman (and the next card) is the exception though. This was the first card I bought during 2022 Black Friday sale. It set me back a whopping 47¢. And despite not being the biggest fan of the Kellogg's 3-D's, I couldn't pass up this uncracked copy for that price.

Kenny was the first card that I bought during the 2022 Black Friday sale, and here was the last. I don't remember why I did it, but right before requesting my shipment Monday night (the last night that one could qualify for free shipping), I decided to look and see what the cheapest Red Man (w/ tab) on the site was. Low and behold, it was somebody that I actually collect! At around $7.50 this was also the most expensive card that I had gotten that weekend. No regrets. If I wasn't already now working on half a gillion different sets again, I'd strongly consider going after all of the Red Men. And speaking of collecting Red Men, if you feel like following someone's progress on the '52 set, go check out Eric's.

Despite my interest in collecting real stamps, I don't have a lot of desire to do so with those of the Topps variety. I've never taken the time to see who's on the checklist for these various sets, but I don't see myself ever getting too many more of them.

I know that when I got this card that it was for a very specific reason, but this was during the delayed shipments era (aka the 'Rona), and by the time I finally got it in hand, I could no longer remember why I had wanted it so much. I'm hoping that it'll come back to me someday. In the meantime, it was added to my pseudo set-build.

This is just nice looking card, isn't it? The blue sleeves of Luis' warm-up jacket blend in well with the background color.

It's subtle, but I'm thinking that this card was meant to be used in some sort of promotionial capacity. 

I know why Upper Deck wouldn't have done so, but this card would've been so much more interesting if they had swapped the pictures. The Jay Buhner Fan Club T-shirt reveal is considerably better than a headshot.

I don't go out of my way to seek out Junior cards anymore, in fact these last two are probably amongst the last 3-4 that I've gotten since the Boom got going. This one was actually from one of their eBay auctions, and while the background does pop a bit more in person, overall, the card was a bit underwhelming. As an aside, I won a few more of their auctions last month (not an easy thing to do anymore) for cards from a considerably older, and more interesting, set. It'll be awhile before you, or I, see them though, as they're currently sitting in my account waiting to be shipped.

This was a bit of an impulse purchase. I saw it for the first time while looking through someone's sale, thought it was very neat looking, so I bought it. Five dollars (and some change) seems like a lot to spend on something "just because", but in this instance I think it was worth it.

Vic Raschi is a guy I collect solely because of his being a Portland Beaver. I don't add to his collection very often, but when I do...

To my knowledge, there aren't a lot of locker room shots in the '54 Bowman set, or very many other sets from this era, so in my mind it makes this particular image stand out a bit more.

That's it for the COMC portion of the post, but before I call it a wrap, I'm gonna squeeze in an eBay purchase from either last year, or the year before. I just don't know, it got scanned right away, stuck in a folder, and then forgotten (the scan, not the card -- I've seen the card in it's binder many times since).

I know that a lot of collector's aren't too keen on mis-registered cards, and I'm not either when it's just a slight blur, but I absolutely love them when they're this off. This is my second 1970 Topps that's this wonked, and unlike the Tony Perez, which is even better, this one fit into a player collection; that being Mike Cuellar. Since these are listed under so many different descriptions, they're not always easy to find. In fact, I only came across this one while doing a general search for Mike Cuellar. I think it was just described as an error. At around $5, I know that I overpaid for it, but I really wanted, and had been prepared to go higher if need be. As much as I love the individual card, I can't help but wonder how awesome this whole sheet would've been to see (and potentially own).

There's a part of me that would like to just get the rest of scan dump posts done (so that I no longer have to see my folders of shame), but I have a couple of thank you posts that I really should get to, so those'll probably be what's on tap for the coming month.

Doling out for Doby

Even though I spent over four hours at the big card show back in September, I could probably count on one hand the amount of minutes that I spent looking at vintage stuff. There were a number of reasons why this was, but I think the primary reason was that there was just too darn much of it!

It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure seemed like just about every other one of the 180+ tables had at least one box of discounted vintage. And those boxes ranged from your average two-row shoebox all the way up to fruit boxes full of off-condition cards that were just strewn about, sometimes in toploaders, and sometimes just in penny sleeves.

I'm sure that a few people reading are probably thinking to themselves that there's no such thing as too much vintage when it comes to card shows, and that's cool, but for me it truly was too much.

I've mentioned this before, but ever since I stopped working on all of the various sets that I was building, I've been somewhat rudderless when it comes to cards, especially those of the vintage variety. This is part of the reason that I decided to start the Reggie Roby collection, which has been fun, fun even to start a bunch of other player collections. These new collections are made up  primarily of guys who played during the 60's and 70's, all of whom have much smaller checklists than Reggie, so this should give me some more focus, and a reason to start looking through the discount vintage boxes again. I also have a large vintage baseball project that I've been thinking about starting for years, but I know it's going to be a lot of work to get started, which is why I keep putting it off -- but if I ever do get it up and running, I'll really have a reason to scour those vintage baseball boxes.

Back to September though, I didn't have these player collections going yet, and obviously the big project hasn't bee started, and I'm no longer working on any vintage sets, so there just wasn't much reason for me to spend a lot of time digging through mountains of old cards. I did however spend a few moments at a couple of tables looking for some cheap '61 Billy Muffett's (to no avail), and I did stop at a table that had a monster box of vintage football, but there were no prices and the dealer was deep in conversation with someone who was set up next to him, so I just walked away. But other than that, the only vintage cards I really saw (and bought) were the one's that came out of the bargain boxes from the last two posts, oh, and there was...

... this bitchin' 1955 Larry Doby Red Man!

It was only after I had paid the fellow for all of the stuff that's been in the last two posts, that I noticed the cards that were laid out on the table in between his bargain boxes. I find myself not even looking cards that are in glass cases, or in this case, laid out in toploaders, very often anymore, because I just assume that there going to be out of my range, so why bother looking? This time though, I did, and when I did I found myself being drawn to the trio of Red Men that were laid out, Larry in particular.

I picked him up and asked how much he was (expecting the worse of course)? Five bucks was the answer I got, I definitely wasn't expecting that! I noticed a faint crease going across the back horizontally, and the guy noticed me looking at it too, so I when I looked back over at him he held up four fingers, and I said four dollars? He nodded yes, and that was that. And as for that faint crease, it truly is just that, it's so faint that it doesn't even go all the way through the cardboard, meaning that there's no sign of it from the front.

This is only my second Red Man, and is far nicer than my other one (Carl Erskine). It's still got the tab, and it's just a great looking card of Larry during his last year in Cleveland. And in case anyone cares, the other two on the table were Carl Erskine and Warren Spahn. In retrospect, I should've inquired into the price of the Erskine, as it was much nicer than mine, and I probably should've tried to do some haggling on the Spahn -- but oh well, I got the one that I wanted the most, so that's all that really matters.

At $4, this was my largest single purchase of the day, and looking back, I still can't believe that I was able to get him so cheap!

Even though I'm getting a little tired of doing them, I've still got one more card show post to do, and then I probably won't have another one until February. I thought I was gonna have to go to one next weekend to do my Secret Santa shopping, but I found some pretty cool stuff elsewhere, and no longer need to go to the show... so I ain't gonna!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.