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.

Winning

It's been a been long time since I've done a fluffy "Here's some crap I won on eBay!" post, in fact after going back through the archives, I can tell you that it's been over eight months since such a post appeared on this blog... so I guess one could say that I'm overdue?

So I'm gonna do just that today, but before I get to those fluffy eBay wins, I've got to give some public thanks for a very unexpected win that came via a contest on Twitter.

Between people's unsolicited political opinions, and the apparently never-ending Astros saga, Twitter has been pretty unbearable as of late, even more so than usual. I've stated recently that I'm down to about five minutes or less spent on the site per day, well, in recent weeks you can probably knock that estimate down by another three minutes or so.

Now if you've ever spent any time on Twitter, you know that there are no shortage of contests, and if you haven't, well, there's a lot of contests! As far as cards go, these contests are usually for some autograph of whoever's the current flavor of the week, which I never enter, in fact I hardly ever participate in the giveaways, that being said -- I did recently come across one that was worth entering.

I don't know what I was more surprised by, the fact that @Very_Cool_Cards was willing to give away a 1968 Topps Game Hank Aaron, or that I ended up winning said playing days card of the true home run king? That was a rhetorical question by the way, as me winning would be the bigger surprise of the two. It's been a few weeks since the contest, I still can't believe that I came out on top, especially since were at least 150 people that entered (many of whom were probably much more deserving). I just finished cataloging my humble little Hank Aaron collection this past weekend, and after doing so, I can say with all honesty that this one is now amongst my favorites -- it was also my first "good" Topps Game card, so that was pretty cool too.

I hadn't had the good fortune to have any real contact with Damon, the man behind the Twitter handle, before this, but hopefully that'll change going forward. Thanks again for the contest, Damon. You made this particular blogger very happy!

**************************************************************************

One of the twice a year super mega card shows is happening in Nashville this weekend, and I had been looking forward to it for months, but I found out a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't be attending (more on this in Saturday's post), so I decided to use the money from a recently sold card, money that had been reserved for the show, and spend it elsewhere. This "elsewhere" ended up being eBay.

I don't spend very much time on the eBay anymore, between the ever increasing shipping costs, as well as the ever increasing amount of people who seem to have no idea how to properly package stuff, it's just not worth the effort most of the time. However, I do still check for certain things from time to time, one of those things being cheap vintage monster/horror magazines (don't worry, there are more cards below). Usually these searches don't yield much, as there are still a lot of collector's out there who are willing to pay big bucks for such magazines, thus not very many cheap one's showing up.

It was during one of these searches, that I found two different sellers who were auctioning off fairly decent sized collections (60's-00's), all of which were ending on the same weekend. The first seller had nothing but magazines, while the second seller had magazines, comics, and even cards.

Despite thinking that I probably wouldn't actually end up winning anything, I still went through all of both sellers items, and added a bunch of stuff to my watch list, then a funny thing happened... I won some stuff... from both sellers no less!

I can't remember who recently said that we should be sharing the names of the good sellers on eBay, but I agree, especially as the amount of bad one's continues to increase. So, with that in mind, here's the first group from mikestoysoc:

Up until now I had been completely unaware of Monster Fantasy, granted it only ran for four issues back in '75, but still...

I ended up going a little outside of my comfort zone to acquire the first, and...

...second issue! Number's 3 and 4 were available too, but having never read the magazine before, I didn't want to take the chance that they might not be any good -- after reading the first one, I can say that I should've taken that chance. But oh well, I can always try and get the other two later on.

This is probably a good time to mention that I'm not going too deep into these right now, because I'm toying with the idea of doing a series later in the year for Halloween, and these, along with some of the other magazines in my collection, would likely be revisited (and much more in-depth).

I can even begin to tell you how much I LOVE obscure one-off's, and this one fits the bill perfectly. I realize that the subject matter isn't for everyone, but it still makes me wonder why someone would go through all of the trouble to get a first issue printed ('77), and never do a second? As an aside, I don't how a kid was ever supposed to try and save their allowance back in the 60's and 70's, I'd never even be able to make it past a comics rack/magazine stand without spending all of my weekly allotment.

I'm ashamed to say that I avoided Scary Monsters for a really long time, primarily because I didn't think that a contemporary monster magazine, written by contemporary writers, could be any good, and boy was I wrong... which is precisely why one shouldn't judge a magazine without ever having read it! The articles are actually written (mostly) by folks who were fortunate enough to be around during peak monster madness, i.e. the 50's and 60's. If I hadn't found a cheap beat up copy at a bookstore a few years ago, I may have never given it a chance. Since then, I've picking up more cheap copies whenever I come across them, which is very often by the way. This seller only had a few issues, and few of them were drawing an unusual amount of attention, but I was still able to grab the 2011 & 2012 year end annuals.

If you click on this seller's link, you'll see that they don't have a great rating, but the had decent combined shipping rate, and more importantly, they pack my magazines really well, and to me that's all that really matters.

Alright, on to seller #2, aka bthoven14. They had a lot more variety available in their round of auctions, but they were also offering free shipping, which meant that it was also a lot harder to land things on the cheap.

See... more cards! They had multiple copies of this Kaline Nu-Scoops, in varying conditions, and I think I might've gotten the very last one (I kept getting outbid on the others). Not only is this just an awesome card, but it also happens to be my first Nu-Scoops. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm always forgetting that this set even exists, then I see one that Nick got at a show, and I'm like "Oh yeah, that's a set, isn't it?". Now that I finally have one, I even went and looked at the checklist, bad move, there's apparently quite a few cards that I didn't know I needed and/or wanted.

For all of you back addicts out there.

It wasn't until I started pulling apart all of my abandoned set builds, that I realized just how many cards of Boog I had, certainly enough to warrant yet another player collection. This seller had a bunch of 1970 Scratch-Off's, and many copies of each card, including Boog. I didn't get the nicest copy, but I did get the cheapest, and it is unscratched, so I'm content with the purchase.

Starlog was always very hit-and-miss for me, some issues were really good, while others were almost unreadable. There used to be a place in Portland called Periodicals Paradise, which in it's original guise, sold nothing but back issues of magazines. It went through many changes over the years, and moved locations many times, becoming a little less of what it was each time it did so. But in it's original form, and original location, it was just about the greatest store that has ever been. I bring this up, because way back when, 25+ years ago to be more specific, they used to always have back issues of Starlog for a buck each -- and I haven't seen one in the wild since they left their original location. This one obviously didn't come from the wild, but it was just a shade over a dollar, and looked interesting, so...

And finally, a non-annual issue of Scary Monsters. This seller packaged everything really well too, so you can take solace in that should you ever decide to throw any business their way.

I actually bought stuff from three different sellers over this particular weekend, but after dealing with two stand-up individuals, it should come as no surprise to hear that the third ended up being a flake. After a couple of weeks of nothing, I contacted them to find out what's what, and got the old "Sorry, my dog fell down an abandoned mine shaft, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". Then it was "Sorry, you know that abandoned mine shaft that I mentioned my dog falling down, well, now an asteroid has hit it, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". which was then followed by "Sorry, you're not gonna believe what happened now, you remember that mine shaft that my dog fell down, the one that was subsequently hit by an asteroid, well, now a mountain has fallen on it. Darndest thing I ever saw, it just tipped over, right onto that asteroid crater, the one where the mine shaft that my dog fell down was, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". I may have exaggerated this series of messages just a tad, but it's close enough for you get the gist. I did finally request, and get, a refund, as they clearly had no plans of ever sending anything. Thankfully the item in question wasn't anything rare, or otherwise hard to come by, but it's still kind of sucky when you think that you're going to get something, and then because of some incompetent human, you don't.

So there you have it, not nearly as much stuff as would've come from the card show, but I'm good with that. This group has a quality over quantity feel to it, and that's something that I most certainly wouldn't have been able to say about the haul that most likely would've been brought home from the show.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

COMC Shuffle #11

Another week, another ten randomly selected items from last year's COMC hoard!

2013 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures #AL

My memory isn't always the best, but I remember this card, as it was the first one that I bought (using earned credit) during last year's Black Friday sale. I already had one copy of this card, but it was so darn cheap that I just couldn't pass up getting another one. Most folks probably would've tried to flip it, I ain't most folks though, so I kept it, I mean there's really such a thing as having too many autographs of Mr. Tiger... even if they are duplicates?

1972 Topps #734

A 1972 High number... dun dun duuuuun! Whenever this was gotten, I was undoubtedly still under the impression that I would be working on the set at some point, however I am no longer under any such delusions. All is not lost though, as I will soon be starting something that I've been thinking about, and even talking about publicly, for years now, which is to try and collect all of the former Portland Beavers who appeared on cards through 1973 (I might change that cutoff point to '75). Bob Burda spent all of 1961 in Portland, so he would obviously fit right in to such a collection.

1971 Milk Duds whole box

I already covered my disappointment with the damaged Milk Dud boxes that I received, so I won't rehash it again here today, I'll just that Luis is the only one of the non-damaged boxes that I will be keeping.

2013-14 Panini Prizm Retail Green Prizms #254

The 2013 Prizm set has a few Christmas cards in it, that being a green parallel with a player in red jersey or vice-versa. I'm of the opinion that Hakeem (despite the bad scan) is the best looking of those Xmas cards, so much so in fact, that I ended up getting all of the available copies that the site had to offer. Now if another one ever shows up, the seller will probably price it at something crazy like $20, because COMC logic dictates that if you have the only one on the site, then it must be crazy rare... and worth a small fortune.

1933 Goudey #39

Mark was the last surviving member of the 1927 Murderer's Row, won two titles with the Yankees, but the thing that I find most interesting about him, isn't even baseball related, no, it's that he was born in San Francisco in July of 1904, less than two years before the 1906 earthquake. He touches on this a bit in a really good 1987 Los Angeles Times article -- he also shares plenty of anecdote's from his playing days as well.

2012 Panini Black Friday Progressions - magenta #47

If you had told me three years ago that I would one day own around twenty hockey cards, and that Chris Kreider would be representing almost half of that collection, I would've said "Who are you, and how did you get into my bathroom?".

2014-15 Panini Prizm Red, White, and Blue Pulsar Prizms #1

This kid is pretty good at the basketball.

2014 Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures #DWL

I know nothing of racing, and I'm not even going to pretend to, old D. Wayne (don't call me Dwayne!) was a card that I needed for my set, so I got him, that's all.

1973 Kellogg's Pro Super Stars #34

Ah, my favorite Kellogg's set! I always wonder how many people cringe every time I say that? But trust me, I'm not saying for the shock value, it truly is my favorite Kellogg's set, I'm not collecting it anymore, but I will still be picking up the bigger names when the price is right.

1999-00 Flair Showcase Elevators #7E

I think that this was only my second card from the set. Love this insert set too, it's like the cracked ice cards before there was such a thing as cracked ice cards. It's always nice to be able to get inserts of Pippen in a Blazers uni as well.

Looks like another week of shuffling is in the books, but I'll be back around the same time next week with another batch of randomly selected cards.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Backlogged baseball

I used to be so good about showing off my card show spoils in a timely manner. When I first started the blog a couple of years ago I would have everything photographed and/or scanned within a day or two, the recap post(s) would then be up within another day or two - fast forward a few years, and now I feel like I've accomplished something if I'm able to get all of that done within the following 30 days.

No sense of accomplishment this time though, as I'm just now getting around to the goodies that were gotten at the last show that I went to, which only took place at the end of this past November! Yep, only 2 1/2 months ago, that might be a new record for me?

I hadn't originally planned on going to this particular show, but I had plenty of Secret Santa shopping to do, and this was going to be my best opportunity to find some stuff for Billy and Mark, stuff that hopefully wouldn't suck.

Since it's been a couple of months now, some of the details are a little fuzzy, but I do remember that the weather was supposed to be nice that day, so I was trying to get there and back as quick as I could, I hate wasting nice days away from home. Because of this, I ended up getting there about half an hour earlier than normal. Usually things are jumping at that these shows around the crack of the dawn, not this time though, in fact, there was only about half a dozen dealers set up when I got there, but things did get going pretty quick.

Everybody's favorite seller, Jim, wasn't even there yet, so I had to bide my time by going to one of the few guys who was set up, a guy I've never seen before, who had pretty expansive spread. Much of his offerings were of the football variety, which worked for me, since that's what I've been most interested in lately, at least cardwise. After going through all of his football cards (those will be in a separate post), I noticed that he had two 3200 ct baseball dime boxes, so I went to work on those.

The first row I started in on had around 100 Griffey's grouped together, a lot of it was stuff that I already had at one time in my original Junior collection, stuff I don't really want again (early 90's base), but there were a few things of interest. The Gallery PPI up in the right hand corner is one of those auction points cards:

I remember these from the 1999-00 basketball set, but I never knew that they did them on the baseball side too. The basketball points were literally just points cards, these are actual baseball cards, which are apparently collected as such. I already showed this card to somebody via the interwebs, who didn't hesitate to make me an offer for it, supposedly a 100 points Junior is somewhat desirable, who knew? I think this is pretty nifty card, so I didn't take the offer, tempting as it was.

Of the dozen or so Griffey's that I got, this 1999 Tek is probably the coolest. Looks like these tend to sell for a bit on COMC, so that's always fun to find something like that for just a dime.

Found a run of Ichiro cards as well. I already had a copy of both the Lineage refractor, and the green Bowman, but they're both pretty, so I certainly didn't mind getting another of each. Even at a dime, the gold Bowman probably should've been left behind... it's not a very interesting card.

Here's just some random shiny.

And here we have some random... random? The Thome Clippings card is kind of neat, I don't recall ever having seen one of those before. I have quite a few Triumvirate's on the basketball side, but this was my first baseball one.

I have wanted one of Dan(ny) Ainge's baseball rookies for a long time, I say that, but I've never actually took the time to look for one, so I guess you can say that I wanted one in spirit. This one's got a punky corner, but it'll do until I can find a better one.

I had just finished getting through the first row of this dime box when Jim finally got there, so with the prospect of being able to get in on his stuff right away (that never happens for me), I quickly settled up with this guy - with every intention of coming back and seeing what else his boxes had to offer (spoiler: I didn't) - and made my way over to Jim... just as he was putting out mucho stacks of vintage!

I got there just in time to secure a spot before the feeding frenzy officially began, because of this, I was even able to go through three whole stacks before anybody else, plucking out four cards along the way. The first of said four cards was this really fantastic '62 Al Kaline, numbers two and three were...

... these guys! As far as vintage all-star subsets go, '68 is probably my least favorite, too much wasted space for my liking - that being said, it's not very often that I come across an affordable vintage Aaron or Clemente, in this kind of condition.

At $5 apiece, these last three cards were my "big ticket" items from the show, although the fourth card I had picked up, a creased '64 Mantle, would've been a little more, but Jim and I were a bit off with what we thought it was worth (I was most certainly being too cheap in my assessment of the card's value), so I didn't end up getting that one, which is fine, as there's plenty more of them out there.

While making my way through what was left of the "good" stacks (HOFer's, high numbers, etc.), I overheard someone asking about a couple of unpriced stacks, as it turns out, those were the 25 cent piles, which were made up of mostly "commons". There wasn't much left for me to look through by the time I got to them, but I did find one biggie...

... ANOTHER 1961 BILLY MUFFETT! This pretty much made up for not being able to get the Mantle (I'm only half being facetious btw).

Jim didn't have any dime boxes this time, but he did have some 6/$1 boxes, and those rarely disappoint, so after the vintage had been gone through, I hit the bargain boxes:

Jim had an awful lot of these 2018 sepia refractors, had I known that I would be owing a couple of people return packages, I would've bought more than just these three.

I've been buying any, and all, cheap copies of the 2011 legends variants (in parallel form) that I happen to come across, the Koufax Cognac for 15 cents might just be the best deal that I've found on one so far.

Tim must've just hit a homer, good for him! Normally I'm not a big rookie guy, but even so, I'm not gonna pass up a cheap Freddie Freeman. The McGwire is a sample, so that's something?

The last of my baseball purchases from Jim's bargain boxes is kind of interesting, and I have no clue as to what it is. The front is done up to look like a '58 Hires Root Beer (even though Mantle didn't have a card in that set), and the back...

... well, I don't what the back is supposed to look like, but it's certainly not a Hires back. I don't think it's a Broder, feels much different than those usually do, so I guess if anybody know what's going on here, please let me know.

By this time, it was getting kind of late, but since I hadn't found anything for one of the two people that I had to find Secret Santa gifts for, I decided to hit up one more table, and I'm glad I did, because not only did I find enough SS stuff, but I also found...

... a couple of much needed Golden Age inserts in a dime box! Unfortunately, that's all I found in these particular dime boxes, but just finding these four cards alone made the dig worth it.

I was now done for the day, there was still plenty of tables that I didn't even walk by, but I didn't care, it was time to go... so I went!

There was plenty of basketball and football cards gotten as well, especially football, so you can expect to see those coming soon to a computer (or phone) screen near you.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.