Happy birthday to me

For someone who generally doesn't like to acknowledge their birthday, or for anyone else to, I seem to be developing an odd habit of posting on said day of birth.

This makes two years in row now, although full disclosure, I hadn't planned on posting today, and am only doing so because it's the first day this week that I've been able to sit down and actually focus on "creating content".

I did another free-trial on Newspapers.com, and spent yet another week trying to accumulate as much information as humanly possible. It's really hard to do that, and attempt to put out any kind of meaningful post at the same time, hence no posts on here, or over on the new blog. 

In other news, I tried to get the heat stroke on Thursday, and then felt like hot 💩 yesterday because apparently I'm still not old enough to know when to come in out of the sun. I feel fine today though, so no damage done, I guess.

It's supposed to be stormy all day today (real cats and dogs type stuff), meaning that I'll probably be stuck inside, which is about the last place I'd like to spend my birthday, but I haven't learned how to control nature yet, so what are you gonna do.

I could lie and say that the couple of cards in here today were bought as birthday presents to self, but they weren't, they just happen to be a few cards that I've picked up in recent months that don't fit in with anything else that I currently have in the works, post-wise that is.

I came across an article on Al Schacht, baseball's pitcher-turned-comedian, while doing research for the already mentioned second blog, last month during my first Newspapers.com free trial, and realized that I had never seen a card of him before, which got me to wondering if he did in fact have any? Turns out that he does have a few, one of which just so happens to be the most unique card to come out of the 1939 Play ball set. And in a stroke of what can only be referred to as "dumb luck", I was able to procure a relatively cheap copy the very night that I set out to look for his cards. 

I thought about doing an entire post on Al, but he's been written about so much over the years, I didn't want to have to spend weeks trying to seek out original material, nor did I want to borrow from anyone else's research (I'm trying to get away from that). That being said, I did find one item of note, which is mildly interesting on it's own, but even more so when one realizes that it came from the same year that this card was produced:

Courtesy of The Knoxville News-Sentinel 6-22-39

In today's money, that's roughly $41,000 for his highest paid season of ball - which I'm assuming was in 1920, but also could've been '21, which would've been closer to $46,000 - versus the $586,000 that he was expected to pull down in 1939 for "clowning around". Looking at what the two professions pay these days, one can really see how times have changed. Whether for the better or not, I'll leave that up to you to decide.

I didn't spend a lot of time doing card things during my recent two-month absence, in fact, other than buy a few cards, I can only think of one card thing that I did during that time, and that was to try and reduce some of my player collections. I didn't keep count, but was successfully able to quit collections for around twenty guys (mostly on the basketball side). Unfortunately for me though, I also started two more for, Mike Cuellar, and the unsung hero of the Dolphins perfect season, Earl Morrall. I already had a couple of cards for each guy, and have since been able to acquire a card for each collection. For Earl, it was this 1960 Topps, which admittedly isn't his most interesting card, and as for Mike's, that'll be in an upcoming post.

I'm not sure if it's because everyone else seemed to start collecting them again after that dumb MJ special aired last year, or if it's because I haven't attended a card show in almost two years, or maybe it has something to do with me realizing that ]cards have been overly shiny and often times, artificially limited, for more than half my life now, but a funny thing started happening last year... I began to lose interest in 90's cards, namely mid to late 90's basketball cards. I know that's probably sacrilege to today's collectors, but the appeal just isn't there for me anymore. I find myself looking at a lot of them now, and thinking, these MF'ers are directly responsible for all of the garbage that's put out today. Usually nostalgia overrides all with me, but that seems to be limited more to early 90's base cards more than anything currently. The late 90's shiny and "rare" stuff just isn't doing anything for me anymore! 

I say all that, and yet I still bought one of those intentionally created "scarce" cards last month, and true to current mood, it didn't do much for me.

My collection for former Blazers are still important to me, but I kind of hate having to buy cards like this now for them. Even back in the 90's, or 1997 to be more specific, I wasn't overly impressed with the Z-Force Rave's. I guess it's because they weren't different enough from the base cards for me to understand the premium that they carried on the secondhand market. I never sought them out at the time, and have only bought a few since for player collections, but have never grown any more fond of them. I think Cliff is my largest player collection, so I am glad to have been able to add to it, but in this instance, it's more like I'm just glad that I don't have to buy this card again. Oh, and there is still the "Super Rave" to find, but I'm in no hurry for it to be found, at least not by me.

This ran a little longer than planned (as usual), so if you'll excuse me, I gotta go find some productive way to spend my birthday, as just sitting around on the computer all day wouldn't make for much of a happy birthday.

Colossal card show recap: Part 3

Welcome back, for the third, and final installment of this recap series.

Seller #8:

The way the two gym system was set up, you had to enter through the smaller one, go across the small alley/car lane, and in to the larger gym. They blocked off the lane in between the gyms, so that the dealers who usually park there, couldn't. It worked out pretty well that way, at least people didn't have to try and squeeze between cars as they walked form gym to gym. I mention this because when I arrived  at around 7am, about half the dealers in the smaller gym hadn't set up yet, so I did a quick walk through of the ones that had, and made my way to the much fuller large gym.

After about two hours in the larger gym, I decided to make a trip out to the car so that I could unburden myself a little bit (especially the comics from the first post), so I had walk back through the smaller gym to do so. By now all the dealers had probably been set up in the smaller gym for at least an hour, so when I came back from the car, it was time to see what this gym had to offer.

Walking in, at the first row of tables directly in front of you, was an older guy who hadn't been there during my original pass through. The first thing I saw was a 3200 ct box marked "50 cents each or 3/$1". There was a guy just finishing up with said box, and after I saw some of the cards in his stack, my inner self started dropping four letter words for not getting here sooner.

The box was only about half full at this point, and as I saddled up to it, the seller informed me that it had been picked over pretty good so far (more internal swearing). The box was full, or rather half full, of nothing but 60's baseball and football. And everything was in either top loaders or those soft flexible holders (don't know the name), so most of the stuff was in fairly decent shape.

There was quite a bit of '65 and '66 Topps baseball, neither of which I'm collecting, so I didn't end up getting as much as I thought I would. And of the stuff I'm collecting, there were a lot of thing I already have. That being said, I still found 30 cards, including the 67's above.

If you look closely, you can see that four of the 63's here have wax stains on the front. Which doesn't bother me anymore, especially after I learned last year of the method using pantyhose to remove front of the card stains. Everything's still in boxes right now, so I don't know where my pantyhose are (that sounds weird), but once I find them, these will clean up nice.

These were the only three 64's in the box.

One lone '71 as well.

I think these '67 Topps football were the best, and most surprising thing to come from the box, as this is a set that is never found in discount boxes (at least not by me). I suspect that there had been more, but by the time I got there, there was only four left, so I ended up with a pair of Oilers...

... and a pair of Patriots. Even though I don't have a lot from it, this set is probably tied with the '69 Topps as my favorite vintage football set. And speaking of 1969...

... I found some of those too!

It's been a while since I've been able to cross any numbers off this checklist.

After finishing up with the discount box and paying, the seller, having seen what I bought, let me know that he had some better cards from some of the same sets in a two-row shoebox that was marked "$2 each or 3/$5". After looking through it, I came away with four cards that he let me have for $6:

Some more 64's. At #521, Tom Satriano is a needed high number. And Boog... well, he's just Boog.

Another wax stained card that will look amazing once it's removed, this Dave Giusti rookie is also a high number, at #509.

I'm always surprised that I don't see more 1969 Topps at these shows, as it's not like it's a hard set to come by, but for whatever reason, I just don't come across it very often. At least I was able to add this cool home run leaders though.

I'm not usually a very talkative person, but I really enjoyed talking to this particular vendor (so much so, that I apparently forgot his name already). Normally when someone asks me what I collect, knowing that they are just going to try pawn off some overpriced item in one of their cases, I will give a non-specific answer along the lines of "well, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that". But when this guy asked, you could tell he was genuinely interested, so I didn't mind giving him some specifics. He thought it was funny to hear how many sets I'm trying to work on. And I couldn't help but think, that this guy is like the grandpa that just about everyone ever, wishes they could have. I certainly hope our paths will cross again.

Seller #9:

This was my second to last stop, and I was just about done for the day. My social anxiety was starting to kick in, as even though the show had been going for at least four hours by now, it seemed like the amount of people showing up was growing exponentially. This was another dealer I hadn't seen before, from what I could gather, he owns a card shop in Kentucky. He had two tables (I believe) of mostly vintage baseball and football. In retrospect I should have spent more time at his tables, but again, I was really wanting to leave at this point. So, I basically stopped long enough to look through one of those floppy binders (I don't know what you call the non-rigid ones) that had 4 or 5 pages of '62 Post. It wasn't the greatest selection ever, but I did find this needed Don Zimmer for a dollar, so that was pretty neat.

Seller #10:

Even though I was past the point of needing to leave, I decided to make one more sweep through the larger gym, which turned out to be a pretty good idea. There is a husband/wife (I'm assuming) combo who only set up at the big shows, they usually have a couple tables of nothing but vintage. And when I vintage, I mean like, just about anything you can think of... they probably have it. Glass cases loaded with stacks (and stacks) of high end stuff, and shelving units behind them, that must have at least 50 thick binders of cards separated by set. It's really quite something, I'm to gather that they set up at The National every year, so I would imagine to well there, you would need this kind of inventory.

Even though I have seen them there four or five times now, this was actually the first time I had ever stopped at their tables. There are usually so many people going through their stuff, that I, not wanting to try and squeeze in, just keep on going. When I had gone by earlier, it was crowded, but now there was actually some open space for me to finally see what all the hype was about.

I can honestly say that at this point in the show, I was very much overwhelmed by their selection, I just couldn't take it all in. Realizing this fact, I decided that would just ask to see one of the binder's, try and find something I need, and leave. Because it was already the closest one to me, I went with the '62 Post football binder, and even that ended up being too much for my sleep deprived/anxiety riddled brain. Did you know that there are multiple background color variations for almost every card in that set? Well, I didn't, and that binder was chock full of all those variations. I got a couple of pages in, found the Bart Starr for $4, and figured that was enough for one day... or so I thought.

As I was paying, the guy asked me (I'm assuming because the Starr is in somewhat of an off condition) if I was interested in "scratch and dent" stuff. I know he didn't mean it, but the way he said it sounded kind of like an insult, I brushed it off though and said "depends on how bad they are". I was then directed to box the size of a literal shoebox, with a couple of small stacks of marked down cards.

Sitting right on top was this 1939 Play Ball of John "Black Jack" Wilson, who just so happened to be a fellow Portland native.

Even though it's a little rough, for $3, I had to have it. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that, other than being familiar with his name and that he was from Portland, I didn't know much about Jack Wilson. If anyone is interested, I found a really good article that the SABR.ORG people put together.

For two bucks apiece, I also ended up getting two 1950 Bowman's, which also happen to be my first cards from that set.

Both of these are pretty cool in their own way. The Earl Johnson, not only because of the PNW connection, but more importantly, because he was a celebrated WW2 veteran. As far as Al Papai goes, this was his one and only card, so it's always kind of neat to find those guys that only ever got one piece of cardboard.

At this point, there was another wave of people coming in, and it seemed to be getting very warm in there (it was 90 degrees outside) -- and the walls started feeling like they were closing in, so after paying, I made a beeline for the exit. I had spent four hours there, and in that kind of setting, with that many people, fours hours is just about my limit. Even though it started to get a bit rough towards the end, I'm still very glad that I went, as I was able pick up some really neat cards (and comics).

I know these past three posts have been pretty long(winded), so I really appreciate any of you out there, who actually took the time to read them all the way through.