A not so Secret Santa

Matt had mentioned in the past, that the most awkward thing about hosting the Secret Santa, was telling whoever drew your name that they did in fact draw your name, by doing so, your basically telling someone that they have to buy you something, and you know something... he wasn't wrong!

It may have been even more awkward for me this year, because I had to tell Nick, of Dime Boxes fame, that he had drawn my name for the second year in a row. I don't know what the odds of that happening are, especially since I wasn't the one doing the randomizing last year, but it did happen. Nick took the news in stride, as I expected him too, but it still didn't make sending the email any less easy.

Nick and I have exchanged cards a few times now over the last couple of years, so I knew that what ever was sent, would end up being good, and I was right.

The package started with a pair of big names from the 1973 Kellogg's set, aka the best Kellogg's set (yep, I said it), and much needed hall of famer from the '76 Hostess, which btw is the only Hostess set that I'm still working on. Both of these sets have been slow going, as I never see them at shows, and COMC rarely has any reasonably priced copies that I need.

I've been chasing the 2011 Legends Parallels quite a bit as of late, so this Paul O'Neil was a nice surprise. The Hitman Hearns Bread for Energy was even more appreciated, in fact when I went to cross it off the checklist I noticed that once this was removed I was down to needing just one more to complete the ten-card set, a quick jaunt over to COMC revealed that the last card, Norm Cash, was on sale, so I'm to report that this insert set is now officially in the books.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to revive my buybacks frankenset or not, I wonder if this is Nick's way of saying that I should? And if I'm not mistaken, this is the first TCMA Baseball's Greatest that I've added to those sets since last year's Secret Santa package from Nick. The guy that I was buying these from at the card show, hasn't been there in quite some time, so trying to complete the sets (cheaply) has become considerably more difficult.

While probably not the "best" card in the package, this '61 Topps Billy Muffett would rank as my personal favorite. If anyone's seen my newest tab at the top of the blog, you might have noticed that I'm looking for multiple copies of this card, why? Well, I don't exactly know! You see, I only just saw this card for the first time a couple of months ago while working on the COMC Challenges, and when I did it was love at first sight.

I don't exactly know why I like it so much, I mean Mr. Muffett didn't do anything overly special during his MLB tenure, and he never played for the Portland Beavers, which is a trait that has become quite appealing to me over the last few months. And it certainly isn't the appearance of the old Yankee stadium in the background, heck, that's shown in like half the cards from the '61 set alone. So like I said, I don't know what the appeal is, I just know that I want as many as I can get -- you'll see what I mean when I start getting to my COMC stuff.

I should also note that as per usual, I had to go and take the picture before taking the wax stain off, one of these days I'll remember to start doing the other way around.

It must be getting close to Christmas, because it's not everyday that someone sends you a vintage Willie Mays! I keep going back and forth as to whether or not I want to work on the 1972 Topps set.
I do love the set, and I've probably got half of it, but I just don't know if trying to complete the other half is even financially doable anymore -- even if I don't though, at least I now have another cool vintage Mays to join the couple of other old cards of his that I have.

It seems like it's been forever and a day since I was last able to cross a card off of my 1960 Fleer checklist, George doesn't look too happy about it, but I was!  And I'm not positive of this, so don't go and quote me on it, but I believe that this might have been the first card to show Mr. Sisler as a Brave, if that is indeed the case, I wonder if one could refer to it as his Braves rookie?

All of these were great, and really were more than enough, but Nick being Nick, he had to go and toss in some extras. And when I say extras, I'm talking about 60-70 more cards. There was easily two posts worth of stuff, but since I'm so behind with posts right now, I've decided to go the best of route, or, if you prefer, the Whitman's Sampler route:

I guess these would be classified as the miscellaneous section of the extras. Got a little bit of everything in here, I needed the Hornsby for my set, the Marichal Deckle is pretty neat, and there's even an Ichiro disc -- speaking of Ichiro...

Counting the disc, there were 19 Ichiro's in this package, all but the DeLong looking one were new to me, and even with that one I don't mind having a duplicate (or two). Nick didn't say as much, but with him being an Ichiro collector, I have to assume that these were all duplicates.

A few more Ichiro's, these being of the, shiny but rendered less so by the scanner, variety. Having not seen it before, I was impressed by the niftiness of the Gold Label card.

Some more odds and ends. Sometime in the upcoming year I plan on doing a post about my collection of minor league cards, I say collection, but it's really just a couple of hundred cards in a monster box -- the only question is, will I be discussing my finally getting around to organizing it, or will it end up being a massive giveaway post?

It wouldn't be a proper package from Nick without a large contingent of old-timers, all of these ended up being new to me, so I'm certainly not complaining.

And here's some old-timers with fancy borders. The 2005 Donruss Greats is apparently yet another one of the players of yore sets from the mid-2000's that I missed during my hiatus from card collecting.

Imagewise, the scanner really did a number on these two, no matter though, they look really great in person. Both will be nice additions to my newly created team binders, the Randle features a great action shot, and I believe that this is my first card of The Bird.

And finally, some more vintage in the form of a needed '62 Post card, and a rarely seen in person by me, 1970 Fleer Laughlin, featuring the once (in)famous Philadelphia Athletics $100,000 Infield (times have certainly changed).

Nick, thank you so much for the cards, and for being such a good sport about drawing my name... again! As much as I enjoy receiving packages from you, I do very much hope that someone else gets to benefit from your generosity next year, for your sake, and theirs.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.


P.S. Thanks to Nick for unknowingly providing the title for this post as well!

BLOG BAT AROUND: red cards for Red Schoendienst

Last week, Collecting Cutch started a Blog Bat Around to honor the recent passing of Red Schoendienst. The idea is pretty simple, just find ten of your favorite "red" cards, and then show 'em off.

I have never participated in one of these before, mostly because they usually seem like they're going to require a lot more effort than I'm willing put forth. This one however seemed like it wasn't going to be just too easy/fun to pass up, so without further ado, here's ten of my favorite "red" cards... seven of which have never been shown here on the blog before:


2012 Panini Cooperstown Signatures Red Schoendienst

This one seemed like a fairly obvious choice.


1949 Bowman Willie Jones RC

This Bat Around gives me a good excuse to show my only card of Puddin' Head again.


1974-75 Topps Bill Walton RC

I'd be remiss if I didn't include the Big Redhead.


1960 Fleer Ted Williams

Teddy Ballgame thinks that this was a "splendid" idea for a Bat Around :)


1955 Bowman Bob St. Clair RC

Had to get at least one football card in to this post.


2008 Topps Chrome Ichiro Trading Card History Refractor

I don't have a ton of Ichiro cards, but this by far my favorite of what I do have.


1952 Topps Look N' See Amelia Earhart

Another redhead... who just also happens to be the most famous person in this post.


1999-00 Skybox E-X  E-Xceptional Tim Duncan

One of my favorite insert sets from the 90's, featuring one of my favorite players as well.


1951 Topps Ringside Max Baer

Bad scan aside, this is a pretty cool card. It's also my only card from the set.


2013 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures Stan Lee

Saving the best for last? I bought the expired redemption for this card in January of last year for around half the price that the actual card was selling for at that time, and three months later I had this card in hand. People can say what they want about Panini, but there's denying the fact that their the most honorable when it comes to redemptions... especially those of the expired variety. I really love this card, and consider to be one of my better purchases since returning to the hobby.

Thanks to Collecting Cutch for starting the Bat Around, as I had a lot of fun putting this one together. The best part was that it only took me about 15 minutes to find all the cards. I've only seen one other "red" post as of this writing, so hopefully a few more of you will be jumping on board, as I'd really like to see what everyone else can come up with.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Bing, Frank, and Kiki

After going through all of my old photo/scan folders last month, I ended up finding quite a few things that I had forgotten about, including today's triple shot of 1960 Fleer.

I'm not entirely sure when I got these, but I am certain that they represent the last three that I have gotten, because I don't recall cracking open the 1960 Fleer binder any time recently.

Was a member of two Philadelphia Athletics world series winning teams, in 1929 and 1930. He, and the team, ended up missing out on a third consecutive championship in 1931, by one game.

I don't know if it's been mentioned before or not, but I just noticed that the stats on the back of the card, don't match up with those on Baseball Reference. They have him listed with 1820 games played, 1934 hits, .311 lifetime average, 993 RBI', 96 triple's, and 116 home runs. All the World Series stat match-up though, so it leaves one to wonder, which source to go when looking for his correct statistics?

A prolific home run hitter in his time, he also won a couple of championships with Philadelphia ('10, '11, and '13).

Once again, Fleer, and Baseball Reference, seem to differ slightly when it comes to the numbers. On the site it says that he had 5984 at bats, 991 RBI's, 315 doubles, 103 triples, and 96 home runs. But once again, even with some of those glaring differences, the World Series totals match-up.

An outstanding hitter, he also led the NL in stolen bases four times. Won a championship with Pittsburgh in 1925, and was robbed of the opportunity to potentially win another in 1927, thanks to a dispute with Pirates manager Donie Bush.

Since I've already done so with the previous two, let's take a look at the stats. This time Baseball Reference only differs on two of the major league totals with 157 triples and 128 home runs. And for Kiki, there is finally an alternate number on one of the World Series stats, as they have him listed as having 12 RBI's.

Again, I don't know if anyone has brought light to those statistical difference before, but I find kind of interesting and am certainly keen on finding out more about it.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page