My playing days are nearing an end

I wouldn't expect anyone reading this to remember that there was a time, probably more than a few years ago now, when I more than slightly enamoured with all things Panini Golden Age. I can't say that I was going for master sets from all three years worth of releases, as each set had over 300 1/1's, but I had been looking to complete the base sets, most of the mini sets, the insert sets, and the autograph and relic sets. 

I think I was starting to fall out of love with this idea right around the time the boom started, but can't say whether or not the boom was completely responsible for my giving up the attempt. I do know that one of the deciding factors was that a number of the autographs shot up in price, and while I was at about the halfway point on each of the autograph sets, I had no interest paying multiple times more for the one's that I still didn't have, nor was I interested in waiting the 5-10 years that I predicted (publicly) the boom would last before the prices would come back down to Earth. I ended up giving my base sets, and some of the more common inserts, to a couple of people who were very interested in receiving them, grouped my mini's together in a couple of lots and sold them, and after pulling out the one's that actually meant something to me, sold the rest of the autographs and relics via the eBay (getting a lot more for them than I should've).

Despite the purge, I did, in the hopes of someday completing them, hold onto the cards I had from the two insert sets that I liked the most; those being the 2012 Batter-Up, and 2013 Playing Cards. I'm down to needing just two cards from the Batter-Up set, but haven't been able to find either of them for a reasonable price. I have however been able to add a few new additions to the Playing Cards over the last year or so, and as you may be able to guess, am about to show them.

Panini used the upper portion of this image for a few sets back in 2013 and 2014, but I believe that this was the only card they produced that features the full photo. It's pretty basic bat-on-the-shoulder Evers photo (I don't think Johnny cared much for having his picture taken), but it's still a nice photo nonetheless.

Speaking of nice photos! I could've swore I had this card already, but after carefully going through my set a couple of times found that I didn't (it's always weird when you think you have a card, but don't). Now I do.

This is my second copy of this card, as I had moved my earlier one over to the Perry Mason collection.

Arky is one of those HOFers you don't hear talked about much these days, or at least I don't. I've always thought it was odd that, given his accolades, and people's long-time opinion that he was the second best shortstop ever to play (I'm sure that some of those opinions have changed in recent decades though), that it took a vote from the Veteran's Committee to finally get him enshrined.

And speaking of Arky Vaughan...

... this seems like a good time to show off a really nifty Wheaties panel that I got earlier this year:

Arky appeared on a number of Wheaties boxes during the 30's, this one being from 1937 (the so-called sixth series). Prior to this year, I hadn't really ever paid much attention to these old panels, but for whatever reason, have been doing so this year. After seeing how many neat one's are out there, I feel like I've really been missing out all of these years; and am now trying to make up for lost time. I've been able to get three so far this year, and would very much like to try and increase that number by a couple of more before the calendar changes over to 2025.

Of the Playing Card photos in this post, this one is my favorite. The angle of the photo over the diamond creates a really interesting effect. Sort of optical illusion-y, but sort of not.

I hate this oft-used photo of Hack Wilson. It's been used on a number of cards over the years, for reasons I can't begin to fathom. It's just so awkward looking. It's a good thing that this one might be the cheapest card in the whole set, because I found it hard to even pay what I did to get it.

I'm now down to needing just nine cards for this set. Ideally, I'll be able to get at least 4-5 more during COMC's fast approaching Black Friday sale (and hopefully at least one of those two needed Batter-Up's as well), and then be able to finish the set sometime next year.

And while I'm here talking about playing cards, I might as well squeeze in one more...

My days of wrestling fandom are long passed, but I do still get a card from time to time that reminds me of that old childhood interest (obsession?). I was big fan of heel wrestlers as a kid, and the Million Dollar Man was right up there amongst my favorites (I'm still of the opinion too that the Million Dollar belt was the coolest title belt ever). I noticed during COMC's last BF sale that someone had a bunch of cheap WWF playing cards, including all four colors for Ted DiBiase. I just wanted one though. Green seemed like the most appropriate color for the character, so here it is.

On a final, and completely unrelated, note, I quietly added a free stuff page to the blog back in June that I thought was gonna go over better than it has thus far. I really thought I was gonna spend the Summer making a bunch of mailboxes happy, but I've only been able to do so for three folks as of this writing (of course, those three people would be the three that I'd expect to find the page on their own). Three people since June is not a good ratio, and while I'd like to say that this is an example of how far the blog's have fallen, I think it's more of a case for how far I've fallen as a blogger. Years ago people would've been around here enough to have found the page organically, as I had intended, but I guess now it's gotten to the point where I've got to practically beg folks to take my unwanted stuff. I already had bunch of stuff to add to this page at the time of its creation and have since unloaded multiple binders and therefore now have even more to give away, so if you're inclined to want to get some free cards, this is me asking you to please take a look at the page.

Trippin' Balls

I know I've mentioned a few times on here in recent years how much I enjoy mis-registered cards. I don't come across them nearly as often as I'd like, and when I do, I'm not willing to pay the exorbitant prices that are usually attached to them. Occasionally though, i.e. once or twice a year, I'll happen upon one that isn't being sold by a delusional seller; like this absolutely wonderful George Saimes that I got off of the Net54 a couple of months back.

The '67 Topps football set is already the most psychedelic looking sports card set ever produced, so it seems sort of apropos to find such an acid trip of a card on that design. Has any card ever looked more Crimson and Clover than this one? If so, I've not seen it. One can only imagine what the full sheet must've looked like.

I have 5 or 6 cards that are this off now(I only like them when they're full on whack-a-doo), but this one is definitely my new favorite.

Other kinds of extreme printing errors appeal to me as well, and since I'm talking about such things, it seems like a good time to show off this wonked up TCMA card that I got from COMC last year...
 

There's an awful lot going on here, so hopefully I'll be able to break it down properly. First off, this is card #269 Al Worthington, except instead of Al's picture, you've got Al Pilarcik (#212) in the forefront, and Preacher Roe and Johnny Podres (#239) in the background. The colors are a tad off in the scan, but that doesn't away from how wild this particular card is. And what's more, it's kookiness isn't confined to just the front.

As you can see, it was supposed to be Al Worthington's card, but even his write-up wasn't safe from the ghost of Billy Cox (#83).

I'm not even sure how such card can happen, but from what I've seen, a number of other kooky cards were produced during the printing of this set. Whether they ever actually made it into packs, or were secreted out the backdoor, I do not know, and honestly, I don't really care. I do know however that it's a crazy-awesome card, and I feel very fortunate to have been able to get it.

It's done this time!

I don't know how long ago it was now, but some years ago I got the last card I needed, John Havlicek, to complete the 1976-77 Topps basketball set, did a blog post to proclaim it's completion, and if I recall correctly, received a collective yawn. 

I know that blog folks don't care about basketball cards, so the crickets were no surprise, but as it would turn out, those chirps were premature. 

At the time of it's completion, I had the set in a binder, but in an effort to free up some space, I moved to a box (one of those graded card boxes that COMC always sends my stuff in) shortly thereafter. Fast forward a handful of years, and I decided that I wanted to put it back in a binder, which I did, only to find that something was eschew; namely that I was missing a card, #21 Steve Mix. At first I thought maybe I had just put the cards away originally slightly out of order, but a couple of passes through my "completed" set told me that that wasn't the case. As big as these cards are, there's no way I could've misplaced one, so it was obvious that an oversight had occurred and I was still one card away from completing the set.

I have a decent amount of duplicates from the set, but as you can probably imagine, no Steve Mix. The only thing left to do was to hit the interwebs in search of my needed card. And boy was that fun. Given their size, and the fact that they're "vintage" basketball, which apparently has become considerably more desirable since the boom started, not to mention increased postage costs in recent years, and you get a perfect recipe for a lot of overpriced singles. After halfheartedly looking off and on for a few months, I finally settled on the above copy from COMC for $2.48, which just recently arrived along with 36 other cards that I had shipped for just a couple of bucks thanks to the $5 shipping coupon that they gave me after taking a ridiculous amount of time to send the previous order (this one took "only" six weeks). 

Considering that this set is loaded with HOFers (some of whom have two cards), Steve Mix was an unlikely fellow to need last (Hondo made a lot more sense), but oh well, it's done. And this time I'm sure!

But wait, there's more...

I have a number of other vintage basketball sets in progress, or at least I do now, again. I hadn't added any cards to these builds for a few years, probably since before the boom started. In fact, prior to just a couple of months ago, most of them had been long since been cannibalized for player collections. But, as I mentioned in the previous post, I've started rethinking a lot of my player collections, which has led me to put all of my old basketball set builds back together (minus the couple of cards that I gave to someone else so that they could finish two of their sets -- those I'll have to re-buy).

Now that all of these sets are back on, I'd very much like to be done with them; just one thing less to have to look for. A lot of the prices on COMC have gone up considerably since the last time I looked to add any cards to my sets, but even so, I've been able to find a few cards in recent months whose prices were more akin to what they used to be. 19 of the 37 cards in my most recent shipment ended up being of the vintage basketball variety.

The oldest basketball set that I'm working on is the '69-70 set. Finding four that I need for less than $2 apiece seemed like a pretty good deal in today's market. Bob Boozer, who was just coming off his best season (21.7 PPG with Chicago), is the highlight here.

Number of cards now needed to complete: 32

This is probably the cheapest of the league leader cards from the '70-71 set. And poor Darrall Imhoff, he was given one of the all-time worst photos on this card (Jerry Sloan's card in this set is even worse).

He's not talked about much anymore, if at all, but Jeff Mullins had a really solid stretch of about 5-6 years there with the Warriors. 

I thought for sure that I'd be able to add a few more needs from this set, but alas, two was all that I was able to manage.

Number of cards now needed to complete: 40

Having been so many years since I last worked on it, I was a bit surprised to find that I still needed so many from the '72-73 set. Thankfully, I was able to get all of the most expensive cards long before they jumped in price. Some big names here up on that first row. At around $2.50, Mel Daniels was the most expensive one from this group. Merv Jackson was a much needed upgrade.

Like the year before, the '72-73 set has separate checklists for the NBA and ABA, and for reasons unknown to me, the NBA checklist from the '72-73 set has gotten quite expensive. This one showed up on the site for like $17, which there was no way I was gonna pay that much for a checklist, but a few weeks later it went on sale for $5, and while that seemed like an awful lot, compared to sold prices on the eBay, it was actually quite reasonable. Obviously I ponied up the five bucks for it. I believe that this was the most expensive card left that I need.

Number of cards now needed to complete: 11

Similar to the '72-73 set, I thought I only needed 2-3 from the '75-76 set, but that number turned out to be 10; half of which I was able mark off with this order.

The Bulls had an awful lot of talent on their roster during the mid 70's, unfortunately for them, a number of teams had more.

Number of cards now needed to complete: 5

But wait... there's even more!

The '77-78 offering is my least favorite vintage basketball set, and as such, I've never put a lot of effort into completing it (either in white or grey back form). That being said, I couldn't pass on this very reasonably priced Robert Parish rookie (white back) that I saw on Sportlots. Cards from this set always scan poorly, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say that it's even nicer than I thought it would be. Despite my not being a huge fan of it, I am now making a bit of a push to complete the set, if only so that I can say at some point that I've got a complete run of 70's basketball sets. This was by far the most expensive card left for this set that I needed.

Number of cards now needed to complete: 45

It's a lofty goal, but I'm hoping by year's end that I'll be able to complete at least one of the sets seen in this post, or one of the two that wasn't, those being '71-72 (14 needed) and '74-75 (4 needed).

Bo, Joe, and more Bo

I've been rethinking my player collections in recent months, namely whether or not I really need so many different ones? And also, if a few choice cards for certain players might work better than just trying to accumulate as many of said players as possible?

I've come to the conclusion the answer to the first question is, no, I don't think I need to be collecting so many different guys at this point. I'm slowly finding that I've lost complete interest in collecting some of the people that I have been, and have started removing their cards from binders. It's been nice in that, not only is freeing up binder space, but also is helping reduce my overall collection; which I had started to think was getting near unmanageable (for me).

As for the latter question, I believe that for certain people, going forward, a few choice cards will be sufficient enough to represent my fandom and/or appreciation of what they've accomplished. The more I think about it, the more I like this idea. To some degree, I already started doing this last year, namely for Ichiro and Mike Alstott; though, that was primarily because I realized that I really don't like the look of most of their cards. I don't know what it is about those two, but they both seem to have an awful lot of cards from sets whose designs I find to be atrocious. After whittling out all of the ugly cards, I was left with like three for Mike, and maybe 15 or so for Ichiro. A more recent example would be, Bill Walton. I can't remember why I was doing so exactly, but less than a week before his passing I found myself going through my collection of his. My favorite cards of his are from his playing days, and those are all in either, completed sets, or set-builds. Not counting those, my collection of his, such as it was, consisted of just a couple of autographs, and some, to be frank, rather ugly modern Panini cards. It took just a few seconds for me to decided that I just wanted to keep the autographs, and ditch all of the other shiny shit. It's funny too, because I got to thinking how neat it would be to have a whole page of autographs from him, and then what happens, he goes and leaves us just a few days later. I don't know if that page idea will still be doable, if it is, I'll probably have to wait awhile before the prices come back down.

With a lot of my player collections now in flux, I decided to take down that page from the blog until I get everything sorted out (it wasn't getting much traction anyway). As it stands, I can think of about a dozen players that will be safe from the coming purge, two of whom just so happen to be featured in today's post.

I was fortunate enough to get a few cards from, Jim, he from the now daily, cards as i see them, earlier this year. The envelope consisted of four cards, two of which were the post playing days Bo's that have been seen thus far. As I told Jim before he sent these, I rarely by modern Bo's (as there's still more than enough from his playing days that I don't have), but I'll gladly accept them if they're being sent to me. Both of these were new to me.

The Bo's were nice enough, but they can't compete with this pair of Joe Rudi's. It looks so strange to see him as a Red Sock. It was probably even weirder for fans at the time. I've mentioned before how neat I think it was that all three of the card companies gave him a final card in 1983, but Topps did him pretty good the year before as well, giving him a card in the base set as a Sock, and another in the Traded set as an Athletic. I already had the base card, so it was to get the Traded one to go with it.

Many thanks to Jim for the cards!

There was a seller on eBay earlier this year that did a "set break" of MSA Holiday Inn discs. The bidding on all of them started at 99¢ with free shipping, and from what I saw, most of them ended at that same price; including Joe.

I probably should've gotten a few other players, but my heart wasn't really in it at the time.

My last COMC shipment had a few Rudi's in there as well. Both of these were got during the Black Friday sale. My interest in autographs has been waning pretty hard, but for five bucks I couldn't pass on this particular one. I think this was either my fourth or fifth autograph of Joe. The buyback was a cheap last minute purchase. It wasn't needed, but obviously I got it anyway. This was my second buyback of his.

This card represents the first Fleer Sticker that I've ever owned. I really like this look of this set and could see myself collecting it someday. I think it's safe to say that this is one set that will never be affected by the boom, so I will not be looking to add anymore stickers to my collection until I'm ready to start working on it. 

I noticed a few months ago that a seller on Sportlots had three copies of Bo's Cyberstats for 20¢ each. As you can tell, I bought all three. The Joe Rudi Sticker came from this seller as well. Knowing how poorly these scan, I tried to get the effect to pop more via a photograph; which didn't really turn out all that well either. I had zero copies of this card prior to the purchase, and now that I have three, I'd kind of like go for a full page's worth.

Artist and custom card maker extraordinaire, Gavin, who of course, also helms Baseball Card Breakdown, sent out some of his creations to a few folks earlier this year, ostensibly in thanks for supporting his MusiCards blog. I was fortunate enough to have been included. I don't really like the idea of getting things just for commenting on a blog, as I'm of the opinion that folks should be doing that whenever they can anyway (if you can spend your whole day commenting on every single thing that comes across your Twitter feed, I see no reason why you can't do the same for a few blogs here and there), so instead, I prefer to think that these two cards were sent to me for no other reason other than that Gavin thought I would enjoy them. And he was right, I did.

It took me longer than it should've to realize that the Bowman Bo had been arted up. The background looked so natural that I didn't even notice it right away. I initially thought that I had been sent just a regular Bowman to keep the other custom company. Obviously that wasn't the case. It's artiness is more subdued than a lot of Gavin's other cards, but I think it works really well on this card.

The Score (blue superfractor?) appeared in one of Gavin's posts quite awhile ago, and was much coveted by me. At the time, I thought about inquiring as to it's price, but figured he'd be able to get more for it on the eBay than he would from me, so I held off on sending the inquiry. Fast forward a bunch of months and look what showed up in the mail, my much coveted Bo! I really appreciate Gavin sending this one, not only because of how cool it looks, but also because I know that he could've easily sold this one for a decent sum.

Being a pretend artist myself, I can really appreciate how much effort that Gavin puts into his customs, and am always grateful for the opportunity to add a few more to my collection.

Poor to fair

Normally when you come across something on COMC that's listed as 'poor to fair', it's not hard to see why. Whether it's the rounded corners, noticeable creases, paper loss, etc., you're not usually gonna be left wondering why it's earned this particular distinction -- but sometimes, and it doesn't happen very often, you are. Such was the case back in November during the Black Friday sale when I found two 1975 Hostess panels from the same seller, both being listed as poor to fair, with neither having any obvious flaws.

When it comes to questionable items, I rarely take chances on that site anymore (they're missing a lot more creases than they used to), but again, these two panels looked fine to me, and nobody else was buying them, so I figured I'd give them a go.

I haven't really talked about it much, if at all, but I am collecting the Hostess sets in single and panel form. I don't actually believe that I'll ever complete any of the sets in panel form, but I like the way that they present, and am always curious to see who was paired with who. The above Carlton/Cey panel is my first one that still has a bunch of the box attached, which I do really like, but those seem to usually carry a bit more of a premium.

It took a bit of searching once they arrived, but I did find a small wrinkle (that doesn't go through to the back) on the upper right part of Steve Carlton's card. And while I'd prefer that it wasn't there, it's not egregious, and I don't think that that alone should've knocked it down to the lowly poor to fair category.

I've checked this one multiple times, and can't seem to find any issues whatsoever. I can't help but think that maybe it was accidently labeled as poor to fair. Of course, if it that was indeed the case, I can't help but wonder why the seller didn't protest the label? I guess it doesn't really matter anymore though, as it's now mine; and I've labeled it as 'neat to pretty cool'.

From what I've been able to gather, both of these panels are two of the more common ones from the '75 set, but at $2.80 apiece, I'm awfully glad I decided to take that chance.

Giving BSC a go

I can't remember who it was at this point, but a fellow blogger mentioned BuySportsCards.com (or as the kids call it, BSC) sometime in the last six months or so. I had been unaware of the site prior to his posting about it, but like most collectors, I'm always on the lookout for new places to buy things, so I didn't waste any time checking it out. 

I found the search function to be quite clunky, and not very enjoyable to try and use. And I guess because of that, and the fact that I didn't buy anything right away, my brain did what it's so prone to doing with new things; which is to completely forget about them. And so it went for many months, until just recently when I was typing in a website and the autofill gave me BSC.com. I guess there's something to be said for not ever clearing ones search history.

After re-finding about the site, I decided to give it another go. It was still clunky, well, at least until I figured out that you can use the main search bar when you're on a particular seller to look through their inventory. This improved the sites usability (for me) ten-fold, as I had been trying to search via the crappy filters that are on the side of the screen.

Now that I knew what was what, I promptly found seller, The Set Builder, who had a couple things that I wanted, which were also very reasonably priced, so, I figured I might as well put in a small order and see how things went. I'm pleased to say that they went quite well, and that this was the first of what I'm sure will be many future orders.
 

The site seems to be similar to Sportlots, in that a lot of the items don't have photos (they have stock photos instead), though certain sellers have actual photos for their listings. The guy that I bought from was one of those. 

My order consisted of just six cards (I figured a smaller order would be best to test the waters with), which can be easily be broken down into a pair of trios. First up is three from the '69 Topps football set, highlighted by a new to me Papa Nerf. I could've swore that I had that particular card already, but apparently I didn't. Now I do.

Unlike Fred, my knowledge of Johnny Robinson and Tom Sestak is quite limited, but, and no offense to either, they were gotten strictly for what was printed on the backside of their cards...

Not the most exciting pieces of Fran Tarkenton's puzzle, but I believe that these two bring me to now having 6 of the 10 pieces. That's 60% completed for all of the mathologists out there. It's worth noting too that these two pieces combined for less than 90¢. They would've been over $4 had I purchased them from COMC.

My other trio was made up of three more copies of Carlos Brown/Alan Autry/Bubba's lone football card. These three cards are why I ended up choosing this seller. Given their price (less than $2 for a NM and two VG's), I would've bought these alone had there not been anything else of interest to me; so the 69's were just an extra added bonus. I haven't looked yet, but I'm pretty sure that I'm up to 8 copies of this card now. My original goal was to fill a page, but at this point I don't think that I'm gonna be able to stop with just one more copy. I wish I knew why older me enjoys seeing multiple pages of the same card so much, as it's the polar opposite of how my younger self collected.

The total for my order was five-something, $1.35 of which was for shipping. Not bad for six vintage cards in relatively decent shape.

Sender Unknown

Back in 2020 I received my first ever envelope from a person, or persons, unknown. Now, a little over four years later, I've received my second. 

I've recently decided, mostly because I never finished it as a kid, to start working on the 1989-90 Fleer basketball set again. I'm not starting with much, but I did take my Terry Porter out of his collection to add it to the set, so this Terry will now replace that one in his collection. Detlef is a nice addition to the set build as well. And this is two posts in a row with Otis Thorpe sighting; I could get used to that. As for the card itself, I never noticed the precarious placement of that unknown Buck's hand 🙈.

A few of the cards in this envelope are as mysterious as the sender himself. It's still nice to be thought of though.

My first three 2023 football cards. For a modern set, the design of this Legends subset isn't that bad. I like the the bright blue and green elements. And of course, the Prizm looks much better in person than it does here. 

My favorite card of the envelope is the one I led off the post with. Normally, I probably wouldn't like this sort of card, but for some reason it just works for me. Plus too, I so rarely get any Dickerson's anymore, so I really appreciate being able to add something new to his collection.

Many thanks to the mystery sender, whoever they may be. If you were going for the element of surprise, you've certainly achieved it!

And as for who may've sent this envelope, I only have two clues...

I guess it's a good thing that this envelope was deliverable, because that's all there was for a return address. Seems like this would narrow down a bit, but I don't have my address visible to everyone on the site, just friends, I think, but I don't think any of those people are in Hartford...

The only person that I know of who has ties to CT is Chris, but this doesn't feel like a Chris sort of mailing. Well, that, and in all of our years of sending things back and forth, Chris has never gone the mystery route, and I don't think he would start doing so now.

[Fun fact: A grandpa of mine, with many greats in front of that title, was one of Hartford's founding fathers]

Not a lot to go on, but more than there was last time. Though, I'm guessing that these mystery envelopes came from two different people, as the contents of said envelopes were polar opposites of each other. Thanks again to whoever went through the trouble to send this!

And on a completely unrelated note...

After over a year in the making, and many months of delayed shipping, my latest COMC shipment has finally arrived! Happy day!