Celebrating Opening Day with a scan dump (Part 1)

I've already mentioned a few times that one of, or rather, my only, unofficial goal for this blog, this year, is to empty all of my old scan folders -- and with it being so hard for me to post right now, the only way that I'm gonna be able to achieve this goal is to do some scan dumps throughout the year.

So far I've been able to get the football portion of my old scans done, and with Opening Day fast approaching, I figure that this is as good of a time as any to get the baseball dumped.

Part 1 will cover stuff from Sportlots, most of which was gotten early last year, and Part 2 will feature items from COMC, most of which has now been sitting in folders for 3-4 years. A lot of the cards, especially in today's post, were intended to be shown in more elaborate posts, so most of them weren't scanned together, as one would normally do with cards of this sort.

I've flip-flopped many times over the years about whether or not I like the '86 Donruss/Leaf border design. My current opinion is that I don't like it very much, but if asked again this same time next year, it'll probably have gone back the other way.

I bought quite a few card over the years at Kay-Bee (and even more at the Kay-Bee Toy Liquidators outlet store in Troutdale), and yet, I don't recall ever seeing any of their branded sets during all that time. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I didn't even know that they ever had their own cards until after I started reading the blogs. I might go back and collect those sets someday, but in the meantime, I'm all for adding cards like this to player collections.

This is a good looking card. The only way that it could've been better is if Topps would've let the image breathe a bit more (i.e. not cropped it down quite so much).

One nice thing about collecting Gene Tenace is that all of his playing days cards are plentiful, and aside from his rookie in OPC form, all are very cheap. It's hard to believe that Fleer could not find a better image for their '84 set. That one is really bad.

I'm usually a little less excited to get cards from after someone's playing days, but this one from the '87 Mother's Cookies set was an exception. It's just such a great looking card. And as an extra added bonus, I'm fairly certain that that's Joe Rudi there in the cage behind Gene. 

I knew when I bought this one that I a couple of Gene's Hostess cards, but didn't think I had this one, and didn't double-check before purchasing. Turns out that I did in fact have one already, but it worked out okay as I've since decided to put my Hostess set builds back together, and since my other copy is cut better it went towards the set, while this one was able to replace that one in my Tenace pages.

I'm not far enough along with the '77 set to justify buying singles, as I should be looking for a nice lot, but Bert was awfully hard to pass up for a quarter.

I've really cooled on Topps Coins in recent years, so much so that I rarely ever even look to add them to player collections. Obviously, I made an exception for Boog. Now if I could just remember to stop trying to scan coins, as the result is always the same, that being that the scanner focuses on the rim and ends up blurring the image below it.

It's funny how much joy a crappy looking card can bring me. Bones Ely is notable for many things, but for this blogger, he and his brother purchasing, and then selling, the Portland Browns (the Beavers before they were the Beavers) during the 1904 season is what made this particular card, his only card, so desirable. And for such a cheap thing, it sure proved difficult for me to get. I feel like I've been trying to do so for more than a few years now. At some point, I hope to do a much longer write-up about him over on my Beavers blog.

Jamie Moyer in Dufex? Yes, please! 

I have a page of post-playing days Chuck Connors, which this was a fun addition to.

I started out the post with a Big Bo, so I might as well close out the post with a handful of regular sized Bo's. These two were long-time wants as well. The blue Classis is, well... classic!

I thought I had already had a couple of copies of this Traded card, and bought this one thinking that it would get me closer to a page's worth. As it turned out, I had none. I must've been having a flashback to my original collecting run.

Did you know that were cards on the bottom of 1990 Fleer boxes? I didn't.

I bought more packs from this set as kid than I'd like to admit to, but never got a box, and apparently never saw the bottom of a box, so I had no idea that there were cards under there. I never know what the going rate is for something like this, but I think that this card was around a buck, which seemed reasonable. It was cut well, and isn't wrinkled, so that's about the best I could hope for a "card" of this sort.

That's it for this one. If all goes well, I should have part two up by Wednesday or Thursday.

Bo: Then and Now

It's a trivial thing, I know, but still, I kind of envy other bloggers who've kept track of how many mailing they've received from other people. I suppose I might've done so had I A). Thought I'd ever be blogging for so long, and B). Thought anyone would ever actually send me anything. But I didn't, so I haven't.

Again though, it's hardly even worth mentioning, but it would be nice to have a list with some numbers that I could quote when posting about a mailing from someone; especially today's someone.

I may not have a list to tell me how many envelopes I've received over the years from, Bo, from Baseball Cards Come to Life!, but if I did, he'd probably be at, or very near, the top of said list. Heck, I've even sent enough in return that his address is one of a few that I actually have memorized. As a quick aside, it's funny to think that when I was a kid, I could, and did, remember dozens of telephone numbers, as well as numerous physical addresses -- and today, I can't remember any phone numbers (or at least any that are more than three numbers), and have maybe four addresses in my mental rolodex; ironically all belonging to folks that I've never even met, or spoken to on the telephone. Odd times for sure. Anyway, back to Bo...

He was kind enough to send an envelope earlier this year, which I still hadn't covered on here, and now just a few weeks ago another one arrived --which I guess was all the incentive I needed to finally give some public thanks. 

Most of the cards from the oldest envelope were claimed from Bo's trade bait posts, including the Vida Blue/Gene Tenace rookie up top. And while I've never been, and never will be, "rookie card guy", I still appreciate being able to add that one to the Gene Tenace pages. I don't know if I'll ever be willing to splurge for the OPC version.

One of the few exceptions to the above 'claims' statement, was these two. I really can't remember why Dick and Wes were in here, which I suppose is why I shouldn't be waiting so long to do these kind of posts. As the young radicals might say, I need to "do better". I do collect Dick Groat though, and rarely ever add any cards to that collection, so... any Dick is good Dick 🙈🙉🙊.

As far Wes goes, I still don't know what to do with him. I'm sure that I'll figure out something at some point though.

I believe that this was my third copy of Boog's '64, and while I hadn't planned on doing a page's worth of this particular card, it's awfully tempting for me to want to do so whenever I see a one whole row filled with any of the same card. The presentation of the League Leaders card is very interesting with Harmon looking directly into the camera, and Boog and Reggie looking in opposite directions below him. 

Catfish is another one of the early 70's A's guys that I collect for reasons that are still unknown to me. And even though I haven't put much effort into it lately, nor have I even tried to figure out how many more I need, I am still attempting to collect all of the action cards from the '71 set. 

There's a part of me that wants to collect all of the late 80's/early 90's magazine cards. There's also a part of me that wants to add Gregg Jefferies to my list of player collections. Thankfully, I've been able to resist both wants... so far!

We never ate a lot of frozen pizza's when I was growing up, and on the rare occasion that we did, it was usually Tony's. I do remember when this set came out though, but I didn't like Tombstone enough to try to get my mom to get one so that I could get any of the cards. It is nice looking design though, despite the lack of logos.

I do collect Jamie, but I don't really want every single card of his right now, and I never remember to look for any of his more interesting cards; which leaves me with not much of a collection. I'm pretty sure that this one was just a tossed in extra, and it was much appreciated!

That takes care of the old envelope.

I knew that Bo had a few cards set aside for me, but didn't think he'd mail the two that I knew about, so I was a tad curious to find out what would be padding out this newest unexpected envelope...

Bo sent me an email a few weeks ago to let me know that he had a few extra Posts available. Leo here ended up being my only need (at least in the condition that I'm striving for with my Posts). I could've swore that I already had this one, but after checking my list, and double-checking in their binder, it turned out that I didn't. I guess I had just seen it enough times online that I thought that I already gotten it. I've been focusing on my Jell-O and Post sets quite a bit lately (you'll be hearing about this in the very near future), so it was really nice to be able to mark another '62 off of the list.

I'm really surprised that there weren't more takers on Bo's recent OPC trade bait post. People are always goin' on about OPC this and OPC that, but when someone comes along and offers up a bunch of 70's OPC for trade, it's radio silence. Were I working on any of those sets, or even a team collector, I would've been all over those extras -- as it stands though, Gene was the only card suited to my interests. It probably won't happen very often, but this an instance where I was able to get the OPC version before the Topps.

1991 Upper Deck might be the best football set, photo-wise, ever. And I'm probably wrong, but it also feels like it was the last football set to have multiple shots of blood spattered/smeared jerseys. I'm guessing that this wasn't Dennis' blood, and judging by those eyes, he was looking to shed some more. 

I didn't think I needed this card, and I see that my list on TCDB says that I already have one, and was apparently wanting another? I haven't gotten into the Reggie Roby/Dennis Smith binder yet, so I either wanted an upgrade, or something went awry when I was making that list. If it turns out that I didn't need an upgrade, it won't be the end of the world, as there's certainly worse cards to have two copies of.

The next three cards were very unexpected, especially coming from Bo. He obviously took a few minutes to look at my TCDB want list too, which was nice of him to do. I had (or still have, I think I forgot to go mark these off) four cards from the Pacific Lucy set on there, including this one, which just so happens to be Aaron Spelling's only real card. 

Most of the time when I add cards like these to my want list, it's because I want them for a themed page, and often times, said cards are the only examples for certain people, in this case; Bob Jellison and Elizabeth Patterson respectively. Unfortunately for me, it's been so long since I added these two to the list that now I can't remember which pages I wanted them for. I have no doubt that it'll come back to me, I just need to take a few minutes and figure it out (probably by looking through their list of credits). I also think that the timing of this envelope was a bit curious, as I was just finishing up Lucille Ball's autobiography, Love, Lucy, when these arrived. A very enjoyable book, by the way.

I know that we're a few days past Thanksgiving, but nevertheless, I'm thankful to Bo for all of our interactions, and envelopes sent, over the years. I'm also thankful to him for being so supportive of all of my various blogging endeavours. He's one of the few people that reads, or at least scrolls through, all three of my blogs; and I always appreciate his doing so.

I was planning to try and get caught up with the last two old envelopes from bloggers (Jeff and Fuji) before the end of the year, but another one just arrived from Tom a few weeks ago. There's at least two other posts that I really want to do as well, so I don't know, trying to squeeze in five posts during December will be quite the feat (for me). I think it'll be a Christmas miracle if I do.

Better late than never

Is there a record, amongst bloggers who actively exchange cards with other bloggers, of who's gone the longest before trading with the Night Owl? If there is, I think I now own it.

I started this blog almost 7 1/2 years ago, and have been fortunate enough to receive, and send out cards to quite a few different bloggers, and blog readers, during that time. However, it wasn't until just this past December that I partook in my first bit of extra-curricular activity with the ever popular winged wordsmith behind Night Owl Cards (and now 1993 UPPER DECK as well).

Some of you might be wondering what took so long, and honestly, I don't really know. I don't think that there's any reason why, it just, for whatever reason, took us a while to swap some cards. For blog purposes, it would've probably been more exciting if their was some great backstory involving murder and betrayal, but there isn't, sorry. 

 

I think I could count on half a hand that number of times that 1987 Topps has appeared on this blog. At this point in time, most collectors seem to either really love the set, or really hate it. Haven't you heard, it's 2023, the internet demands that you pick a side! Me though, well, I guess you could say that I'm indifferent to it. Thanks to my brain slowly turning to mush, I can't say for certain anymore, but it's possible that the very first pack of cards I ever got were 1987 Topps, and if it wasn't the first, it was certainly one of the earlier sets that I collected. With that in mind, there should be at least some nostalgia attached to the set for me, but it's hard to be nostalgic for something that's never gone away -- and from what I've been able to gather, is never gonna go away. I may be neutral on the set, but after all of the blog posts that I've seen in recent years, I'm very glad that I'm not collecting anything current, because I'd probably have a very different take on it, what with it's design constantly being rehashed and all.

These two cards stem back to last year when, much to Mr. Owl's chagrin, he was "gifted" a vending box of 1987 Topps from somebody at work. The resulting blog post was equal parts "Look what someone had the gall to give me!" and "Please take these off of my hands!!!". I knew that I couldn't help him move very many, but I did rattle off a couple of names of guys that I seem to be in need of, and Jamie and Joe were the two that he was able to take care of (please don't ask who the other names were, because I cannot remember anymore). I have a blank backed copy of Jamie's rookie, but somehow did not already have a regular one. And Joe is one of a handful guys that I'm trying not to collect, but still am sort of anyway.

As nice as it was to get them, I'm not sure that these two would've been enough to justify the cost of a stamp. However, they had company...

I suspect that this, and the next card, are copies that have both been upgraded, thus rendering their slightly off-condition counterparts expendable. I too will undoubtedly upgrade this one at some point, but for now, it's just fine for my set. And given current prices, it'll probably continue to be fine for at least the next couple of years.

If the Post was unexpected, which it was, I don't know how to describe this one. I mean, it's not everyday that someone sends me a playing days Erskine. Sure, there's a vertical crease going down the middle, but it doesn't detract from the overall image very much. I've come to realize that if I want to pursue this set in any sort of serious fashion, I will have to be more tolerant towards acquiring cards that are in a similar state. If not, I'll have to be content to sit on the sidelines until the moneyed crowd moves on to something else.

Many thanks to our resident avian author for the envelope, hopefully it won't be another 7+ years before we can do this again.

On an unrelated note, I noticed yet another new blog on the block, and as usual, thought it was worth mentioning. So, if you have a few spare minutes, and are inclined to want to do something nice for someone else, go show Dillard's Dugout some love. One of the best ways to prevent a new blogger from getting discouraged is to let them know that they aren't typing into a void.

Splurging on Sportlots: Part 1

I mentioned at the end of my previous post that I was expecting this week to be busy, and surprise surprise, it has been!

The weather is getting really nice, really quick. Meaning that any free time (during daylight hours that is) has been, and will continue to be, spent getting things ready for spring/summer. All of the various storms that have rolled through in the last year or so, have really taken their toll on the house's siding, and I've been waiting for a stretch of dry weather to fix all of the various problems before any major summer storms can come and make them worse. It's been slow going so far, but I think I'll be done with as of Friday. It's almost time to start planting things as well, so there's plenty of garden prep to do as well, including my "favorite", tilling :(

All of these hours spent doing extracurricular work has got me plumb tuckered out, mentally and physically (I suspected that it would). As such, I'm not looking to write the card blog equivalent of "War and Peace", at least not this week. So as planned, I'm gonna drop a two-part Sportlots order on you. 

Thanks to an eBay sale, I had some extra money last month (scroll down to find out what I sold), and decided to treat myself to some cards. Normally I would've just saved it for a show, but I'm not feeling the idea of driving to Nashville any time soon, and with eBay being kind of sucky right now, I decided, after doing some looking around, to spend some of my ill-gotten gains on Sportlots. I ended up buying from three sellers (acardman, shaner18, and whoops24), and to my great surprise, wasn't disappointed with anything from them (are the sellers on Sportlots actually getting better?).

Today's post will cover baseball(warning: there's not very much)/basketball portions, and if I can get it done by then, Friday's post will be all football (and I know how excited you'll all be for that one).

I grew up in Mother's Cookies country, but only ever encountered the various Mariners issues (which were so plentiful at the time that you couldn't even give them away). In fact, until my late teens, I was under the impression that the only cards Mother's made were those of the Mariners variety. Of course I've learned otherwise since, but it's still a little off-putting to see an MC card featuring a non-Mariner. This one does spotlight a future Mariner, but it still looks odd to me.

Jamie looks so young here! And to my knowledge, this is the only card in which he can be seen sporting his ill-advised hoop earring. I know that almost of us went through a rebellious phase when we were growing up, and probably made a few poor decisions during said phase, but even so, this earring was an especially bad idea on Jamie's part. I know that he got rid of it fairly quickly, and refuses to ever talk about it, so if it weren't for this card, most people might not have ever remembered what the media dubbed, "Earring Gate".

I guess it's because I wasn't collecting in the mid-aughts, but I am not familiar with Topps Cracker Jack in the least. I remember the mini '91 Topps' that came in Cracker Jacks, but that was about it. I see that Topps did all of the usual stuff with this set, mini's, parallels, 1/1's, etc. I've looked at a few other cards in the set, and am not overly impressed. I did like this card though, which is a mini by the way. 

Speaking of mini's...

This Bo is so mini, it's Micro! MicBo? Bocro? I had actually never seen one of these in person before. I had always just assumed that they were about the size of the above mentioned Cracker Jack cards. Turns out that I was wrong though, as they're even smaller...

I don't know why, but I really love this photo! The only thing that would've made it better is if Bo had been playing for one of the 'bird' teams.

I don't know if anyone's noticed or not, but I haven't been doing much baseball here on the blog in recent months. In case anyone has noticed, and wondered why, it's simply because I still don't have the majority of my player collections inventoried. I'm kind of burned out on adding lists to the TCDB, and am down to adding about one player a week at this point, which makes for some very slow inventorying. I think that Bo is the only modern baseball player that I've done so far, so I didn't have to get up and go look at what I already had while placing these orders. And I don't have very many cards of Jamie Moyer, so it's pretty easy to remember what I do and don't have. Everybody else is a little more difficult.

All of the baseball or bust folks can probably bounce now, as that was the extent of my baseball purchases. Whoops24 had a few more $1 and up baseball cards that I was interested in, but I wasn't looking to go too crazy with my spending. If they're still available in another month or two, I'll probably go back and grab a few of them.

I think it's because a lot of newer collectors are just finding out about it, but I feel like I've heard and seen more talk about the 1988 Fournier Estrellas set in the last year or so, than I had in the previous thirty. Of course most of these people only care about the MJ card, which isn't a bad thing if you're of the sort that doesn't, because the rest of cards in the set can, for the most part, still be had for very little. 

It's been a long time since I last acquired any new 1991-92 Fleer Wheaties. If the shipping wasn't so prohibitive, I'd just try to get some of the full sheets and cut out the cards that I still needed, but as long as it saves money, I'm okay with going the singles route too.

A Wheaties back for anyone who may be interested.

As a kid, I thought that there was almost nothing cooler than the Tony's Pizza Fleer sets. The only thing that edged them out in terms of coolness, was the McDonald's Hoops/Upper Deck sets. I used to have a complete set of both of the Tony's sets, but that was long time ago. Owning complete sets doesn't really do much for me these days, I'm mostly just trying to fill out player collections. 

More Tony's! If I was actively adding cameo cards to my player collections, I'd have to get two more Thunder Dan's, as both Buck Williams and Terry Porter are clearly shown (same goes for the Cliff up above where James Edwards reaching into the frame).

1989-90 Fleer has really shot up in price as of late, which seems a little weird to me, but it's the usual, MJ, and graders. It doesn't really matter to me either way, as long as I can still upgrade a few more cards on the cheap, like this uber-crispy Moses that cost me all of 18¢.

Some months ago I decided to open up my 1989-90 Hoops Superstars boxed set, and pull out all of my player collection needs. Before doing so though, I did decide to check eBay, and despite all of the current card craziness, was still surprised to see how much these sets that you couldn't sell at any price two years ago, were currently going for -- but then again, MJ, and the graders! I already had a loose MJ, as well as a few others, so I decided to sell my set, and just buy the couple more that I needed for 18¢ apiece off of Sportlots. My set sold like six hours after I listed it, the funds of which covered this Sportlots splurge, and then some. 

Oh, and I'm assuming that most of you are familiar with this set, but in case I'm wrong, yes, the borders are supposed to be yellow, my scanner just didn't pick it up very well.

Panini stickers were one of my favorite things to collect as a kid. There was so much variety, and they could be found at every grocery store, for not very much money. All of my stickers are one of the few things that I wish I had held on to when I stopped collecting, but how was I to know that I'd be so nostalgic for them 20 years later. Oh well, most of the singles can still be gotten on the cheap too.

I got a bunch of 91-92's. These can be a real pain to get off of the scanner tray, hence the bad photos.

I don't have a checklist going, but I'm fairly certain that I only need a few more from this set now.

If you didn't know any better, you'd swear I was a Celtics fan. I'm not by the way, I just collect a number of the teams former players. Larry is from one of those team sheets that were given out at games. I always liked the Tower of Power inserts. Top Flight? Not so much.

I still like the '93-94 Hoops set quite a bit, though I never owned a lot of it as a kid, which is kind of weird in retrospect since Hoops was my primary basketball brand. The LJ is a promo, and the other two are obviously 5th Anniversary parallels.

Seeing as how I rarely buy from Sportlots, I took this opportunity to grab some cheap Cliff Robinson inserts and parallels. I didn't scan the back, but this particular Stick Ums is of the Italian variety.

With this blue parallel, my Cliff E-XL rainbow is now complete. Granted, said rainbow is made up of only two cards (base and blue parallel), but a rainbow's a rainbow, right?

My scanner made this Topps at 50 look like absolute 💩.

Ditto on the blue Fleer Brilliants. I've never been a fan of the Mystique set, but a gold for 18¢ was awfully difficult to pass up.

Post-2000 basketball sets do very little for me, but I kind of like the looks of this Fleer Tradition. I also really dig the shade of green that they used for the parallel. It's very close to the color of my bedroom walls (center stage green).

I'm not sure how it is that I've gone the last ten years without knowing that Topps went back to the tallboy well at some point while I was away, but apparently they did back in 2001 with their High Topps release. Seeing as how I'm just now finding out about them, they obviously went over about as well as Fleer's attempt to bring them back in the previous decade. Collector's by in large didn't care for them in the 90's, and clearly still didn't in '01. Given how unpopular they are today, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I don't think that we'll ever see another set of tallboy's released. I mean seriously, can you imagine what would happen if Panini made a tallboy set? Today's "investors" would lose their collective sh*t! 

I don't have my LJ cards inventoried yet, but was certain that I was buying a duplicate hologram (because it was cheap), turns out though that I didn't already own a copy, so I guess that was a small win on my part. And t's impossible to tell from the scan, but the Metal is a Silver Spotlight.

My 1997-97 Metal Universe Reebok Silver didn't scan so well. I think I can almost guarantee too that you won't see a worse looking scan on the blogs today, it's that bad. I already had two of the Starquests, but wanted at least one more so that they could fill the row of a page.

That'll do it for this group. If you're one of the few folks out there that enjoy football cards, you might like Friday's post. If you're not one of those few, well, Sunday's post will be baseball related (another card bought from the sale of that Hoops Superstars box), so you can just wait until then to come back around.