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.

The 700 Club

Today's post is #700 for this blog.

On one hand, it doesn't seem like a lot compared to some other folks, as that's less than two years worth for the daily posters; it's taken me over seven to get here. But on the other hand, a lot of other blogs have come and gone during the last seven years, the majority of whom never even got close to 700 posts. 

It does feel like something to me, but I don't know where it would rank on the chart of great blog accomplishments. So, with that in mind, I'll just be conservative and call it a mild accomplishment... yay me!

A much larger accomplishment was recently achieved by another blogger, that being, Nick, who just celebrated his 11th year over at Dime Boxes. 

Like the previous year, Nick celebrated his anniversary with a giveaway, which as luck would have it, I was actually kind of early for. 

Normally, I wouldn't refer to working on, and then getting stuck on, a blog post, as a good thing; but that's exactly what happened on the night of Nick's giveaway, and it actually worked out fairly well, for me that is. I don't know if it's because I'm looking for inspiration, or just seeking out a distraction, but I will often go check my blog reading list if I get stuck somewhere on a post in progress (which happens more often than it probably should), read a post or two, comment where I can, and then come back to my post and see if I can get it moving again. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. On the night of Nick's giveaway for example, it didn't.

Early as I may have been on this particular occasion, I wasn't the earliest. I think I was #3 or 4, but was still able to get my top want, so you'll not hear any complaining from me.

Having just started back up with my Post sets, it seemed rather fortuitous that a '61 Post Jim Bunning would be amongst the freebies, and what's more, it hadn't been claimed yet! I think it's considered a win anytime you can add HOFer to a set-build. I would've been more than content with just that card, but did push the greed boundary with two more claims.

I've mentioned it a few times before, but when I was a kid, the only Mother's Cookies I ever saw (and owned) were those of the Mariners variety; thus leading me to think for the longest time that they only ever made them for the Mariners. In fact, I don't think that it was until I started reading the blogs that I found out that there had been whole mess of non-Mariners Cookie cards produced throughout my childhood. Nick had 4-5 A's up for grabs, I missed one that I would've liked to have by just a couple of minutes, but still managed to get these two. I say that I collect Blue Moon Odom, but that collection consists of only a few cards, and almost never gets added to. And I just a said few posts back, I've been very tempted to add Carney to the list of player collections, but have yet to officially do so. In the meantime though, it doesn't hurt to pick up a few of his cards here and there.

Thus ends the claims portion of the post, but if you were fortunate enough to participate in the giveaway, you're probably already well aware that Nick included some extras in each envelope/package...

It's funny, I didn't grow up an A's fan, nor did I ever even know an A's fan, and yet, as an adult, I seem to be drawn to a lot of former A's. Gene Tenace, Ken Holtzman, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, Vida Blue, Joe Rudi, Bert Campaneris, and John Odom are all players that I collect. And Sal Bando and Carney Lansford are among the players that I've thought about collecting. It's also interesting, and a bit odd, that aside from Carney, all these guys [Edit: save for Vida] retired before I was even familiar with baseball. It's just strange.

Worst scan you'll see on the blogs today!

I'm pretty sure that this is the first card from this set that I've ever seen in person, and even though I'm sure that I've seen cards from it on the blogs, it feels like this is the first time that I've even heard of the set. And without even looking at the checklist, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that this would be the card that I'd want the most from it. Oh, and aside from a suspicious "relic" card, this is now my only other post-playing days card of Senior.

Nick always includes a couple of extra Juniors, and the last couple of times they've all been new to me; this time being no exception.

These were the random portion of the extras. The is pretty neat, so I'll be keeping that one. The other two though, well, if anyone wants them, just say the word. I am thinking about working on a Kellogg's set, just not this one. And as good as Johnny Bench was, he is of almost no interest to me collecting-wise. 

Thanks again for the giveaway, Nick. And congratulations, again, on hitting the 11-year mark, it really is quite a remarkable achievement.

More from the Baseball Card Store (and Nine Pockets)

With new non-sport listings on Sportlots slowing down considerably, and not very much stuff being added to the Baseball Card Store as of late, the mini buying spree that I was on during October has come to a screeching halt. And this is good thing too. Not only did I go a tad overboard with the purchases last month, I also seem to have reached that burnout phase... just in time for the Black Friday sale on COMC!

Speaking of COMC, I don't want to make any predictions, but judging by the lack of real discounts that I've seen so far from their pre-BF sales, this might end up being a down year for what's normally their biggest event of the year. I hope I'm wrong, because I've got lots of earned credit available, but it's not looking promising so far.

And speaking of burnout too, dang I'm tired of scanning. I actually got completely caught up with that the other day, and can now start bindering the various stacks that have been growing throughout the year. It's funny, I was thinking the other day that I'm basically now a cold-weather binderer, as I rarely ever start putting things in pages until the cold shows up, which it has. And now that I'm caught up with all of my scanning, I have incentive to not buy any more stuff. I have about 40 cards sitting in my COMC account, and about a hundred sitting in a Sportlots box, but I'm at least a month or two away from getting those, so I'll worry about having to scan them whenever they get here.

As the title so blatantly implies, I've got another batch from the Baseball Card Store to show off. This was my second, and final, order from them during October. I think the couple that runs the site might've got a bit burned out too, as they were listing stuff like crazy last month, and now have done very little so far this month. And I don't blame them for that in the least, it can't be easy running that site with just two people doing everything.

I only bought one of these, and yet, two arrived. I probably should've checked to see if it one of my other purchases was missing from the order, but I didn't, and it's much too late to go back and do so now. At least there's a pretty big difference between the printing on these two cards, so they'll look good side by side in the Bo binder.

I didn't think there'd be much interest in the contents from this order, as there was a lot less variety in it than the last one, so I only scanned about half of it. I can't imagine that too many people care about 1991 Fleer football in 2022, but I scanned these if only because I was surprised to learn that I didn't already have them. 

This is the sort of thing that's usually gone within a few minutes of being listed on the site. I'm not sure how it slipped through the cracks, but I'm glad it did. I'm sure I've seen these Ames before, but like with a lot of things these days, my brain is doing it's best to convince me that I'm just seeing one for the first time. Either way though, this card was definitely my favorite from this package.

Apparently my scanner doesn't do Topps Coins very good. It seems to have focused on the rims which led to a blurring of the photos in the background. I never thought I'd be buying any of these again, and also wouldn't have thought to check the site for them (I only happened upon them by accident), but here we are! I don't know if anyone else use to get those pack repacks from Toy "R" Us, but there was usually at least one pack of these coins in there -- and because of that, I only associate them with those packs. I can't remember how many different loose packs came in those repacks, but I do recall that sometimes there'd be upwards of three packs of coins in there. I absolutely hated them as a kid, would always try to get one that only had one pack of the coins to try and limit how many of them I acquired. I'm still not overly enamoured with them, but I don't think I need anybody else now, so two won't kill me. And speaking of those repacks, damn if I wouldn't love to own just one of them at this point. You'd think that there would still be some unopened ones around, but if there are, they don't ever show up on eBay.

I don't know if I'll ever get around to making a list of my Junior haves, and even though I don't look for him very often anymore, when I do, I just go by what looks familiar, and what doesn't. I did pretty good with the 5-6 I got this time, only previously having the Swing Men. The card in the middle is kind of interesting in that it's crazy thin. I don't think I have anything else from that set, but I can't imagine that the base cards would all be so flimsy. It must just be the checklists that are like that.

I've been saying for awhile that I needed to start getting more of Papa Griffey, so I did -- he made up about a quarter of this order. And no, I didn't get two Topps', the one on the right is from up North...

Now I just need the micro, Tiffany, and Operation Desert Shield to complete the rainbow.

I never though I'd be seeking out any 1990 Score again either.

I know that it probably won't be happening, but I'd like to see Ray Caldwell get some more cards. 

People don't look like Ernie Lombardi anymore.

Had to get a few more from Demolition Man. I think I have all the cards that I wanted from this set now.

Near full sets of 1989 Batman, series 1 and 2, were added to the site right around the time I started putting together this order. There were a few stickers put up too, the two of which I really wanted were snagged by someone else before I could finish checking out. I still got a few of the wanted base cards though, including these two of the lovely Vicki Vale.

We as collectors often complain about card companies using recycled photos, with good reason; but this is one of those instances where it doesn't bother me in the least. Even as a kid, I thought it was odd that Topps released both a flagship set and Stadium Club set for Batman Returns. Granted, both of them have their appeals, but given how many of the same shots they used for the sets, one or the other probably would've sufficed. I thought it was interesting too that one of these (I can't remember which is which) is #13, and the other is #31.

I have a lot of fun trying to put together unconventional pages for certain themes. In this instance, Diamond, will be added to an unconventional Batman page that I've got going. It would be interesting to know if anyone reading this knew off the top of their head what connection, Diamond, aka Erika Andersch, had to Batman? Not wanting to wait to find out, I'll just tell you, she was one of the Red Triangle Circus Gang, more specifically the Knifethrower Dame, in Batman Returns.

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On a completely unrelated note, Greg, the man who continues to put card companies to shame, from Nine Pockets, recently held yet another giveaway for some of his creations. 

I don't think anyone has ever just given away as many of their customs as Greg has. Or if they have, I haven't encountered them. This time the giveaway was for an assortment of NES-styled stickers from various teams and sports. I have received quite a few things from Greg this year, and feel a bit guilty about the lack of items that I haven't sent in return. That being said, it was physically impossible for me not to try and get this 8-bit Blazer. I know that people have been making stickers for a long time now, but even so, there's still a small part of me that thinks that this must be some kind of sorcery. Regular people having stickers made of whatever they want... how is that possible!😛

I haven't decided yet who I want this to represent, so for the moment it'll remain unstuck, this'll definitely be making it onto a binder at some point in the not too distant future. 

Many thanks to Greg for the sticker, it looks really good. And to any other interested parties, you might want to go check a couple of posts back and see if he still has any that went unclaimed; I can assure you that you won't be disappointed.

Give a little, get a little

Jeff, from Wax Pack Wonders, recently let it be known that he was now working on the 1973 Topps baseball set. Having about a hundred cards left from my abandoned set build, and absolutely no use for them, I was eager to see if I could help. 

I wasn't able to knock off as many of his needs as I would've liked, but did find a few. 

Jeff, being the sort that he is, wanted to send something in return. Not having any public want lists for Jeff (or anybody else for that matter) to peruse, I just went and looked at his 'for trade' list on the TCDB, picked out 10 possible cards, and told him that I'd be fine with whatever combination of those he wanted to send. He sent all of them, plus an additional card. He's that sort, too.

It's probably been a few years now, but at some point I got, and showed off here on the blog, the gold version of this card. Ever since then, the base and silver versions have been pretty high up on my personal want list. I didn't think it would take so long to acquire the base version, but apparently the blue border is prone to chips and dings, and most of the copies online seem to be of that variety; which is what I didn't want, so I waited, and then waited some more. I saw this on Jeff's list, and figured that if anybody was gonna have a nice copy, it would be him. And I was right, it's very nice. I would've been quite content with just getting this one back for those 73's. 

Bo is one of the few players that I still actively look for cards of, and I feel fortunate to have gotten four needed cards in a single mailing. I didn't realize it until the cards got here, but the one on the right is an insert. I thought from the picture on the TCDB that it was from a subset. Nope, it's an insert, and a very subtle one at that.

I've thought to myself many times that I'd like to complete Danny's entire baseball run, but the idea never seems get much further than that. This is the one baseball card of his that I already owned, mine has a punky corner though; this copy is considerably nicer.

Cool card, terrible scan.

I'm not sure why, but lately I've been thinking about guys from my childhood that I should've been collecting (but don't), either from the beginning, or when I came back to cards a dozen or so years ago. Dave Winfield is one of those guys. It feels like it's too late to start such collections now, but that doesn't mean that I can't add the occasional interesting card of one of these guys to my "just because" binders.

I think I've mentioned it on here before, but after noticing that I had some pretty nifty Tim Salmon cards, I went ahead and decided to collect him, at least selectively. I don't want all 10,000 cards of his, but will try to add a "good" card to his pages from time to time. I thought this one was kind of interesting, or "good" if you will.

I remember seeing this card for the first time just a couple of years ago. I thought it was pretty neat, decided that I wanted a copy, and then promptly forgot all about it. I saw it again somewhere recently, and was even more enamored with it than I was a few years back. Finding it on Jeff's trade list just a few days later seems pretty coincidental, like it was just meant to be. Joe Carter is another guy that I should've been collecting. If it weren't for Bo's Gun show, this would've been my favorite card of the bunch; it is a very close second though.

Here's the extra one that Jeff threw in. I have 2 ½ pages of this card in refractor form, on e whole page in golden sparkle form, and maybe another pages worth of it's various parallels. I haven't put it away yet, but I think that this is only the second copy of the base version that I have. I should probably get at least one pages worth of this one too. This was a nice surprise, very unexpected it was.

Not being overly focused on acquiring cards right now, I'm more than happy to send things out and not get anything in return (I tried to do so in this instance). That being said, this was a cool bunch of cards to get in return for some others that I no longer wanted. If they could always be like this, I might actually try to get stuff in return more often. 

Thanks again, Jeff!

At least they weren't lost

Like a lot of other folks, I claimed a few cards back during Nick's big "Dime Box Anniversary Giveaway Extravaganza" series of posts some months ago. 

I'm usually a few days behind when it comes to blog reading/commenting, which isn't conducive with participating in giveaways. Such was the case here as well. I saw the first couple of giveaways days after they had dropped, and was not in the least bit surprised to find that there wasn't much left to claim by that point; Nick is a pretty popular fellow after all. My memory of such things has already begun to fog over, but I do seem to recall lucking into being early for at least two of the ten giveaway posts. In fact I think that those were where the bulk of my 11 claimed cards ended up coming from.

There was a period not too long after the series of giveaway posts that the blogs seemed to be nothing but people gushing over their various claimed goods. And given what, and how much, some of you claimed, I think you were completely justified in your gushing. 

I had to wait a little longer than most folks to get my stuff, hence the lateness of a proper thank you post. 

I'm not sure how many months passed since the extravaganza ended, and my cards arrived, but it was long enough that I had written them off as not going to show up. I figured that Nick had either forgotten about me, or that they had been sent, but had been "lost" somewhere along the way. Turns out that it was the former. It's not all that surprising either since Nick and I don't interact very often, and of the two possibilities, it's certainly the better of the two. I don't mind being forgotten about, but absolutely hate the thought of someone paying to send me something only to have it be misdelivered or pilfered while en-route. I was eventually remembered though, and was sent my claims, as well almost two team bags worth of  random stuff. 

As mentioned, I claimed 11 cards, mostly just stuff for player collections, well, save for George Foster up top. I thought about collecting him, but don't really want to take on anyone else at this point. He will instead be added to one of my pages of 80's cards that I like for whatever reason, but have no where else to put them (I have pages like that for 50's-90's). 

I was surprised to see this Finest Bo show up in one of those posts. I don't particularly care for the set itself, but have wanted this particular card for a couple of years now.

Junior is from the Topps Magazine. Those cards are very alien to me, so anytime I can get one of somebody I collect, I will.

I like this Fernando card, though I couldn't exactly tell you why. I just do. He'll be added to an 80's page as well. And I had seen this Larry Walker on the blogs many times over the years. It too has been coveted for a while. He'll be making his way onto a random 90's page.

Personally, I would've been fine with just those, but as mentioned, there were two additional team bags full of mostly random stuff. I say mostly because there were about 25 more Ichiro's in there, and I'm pretty sure that those weren't random.

I didn't feel like scanning everything, so here's just a few of my favorites. I particularly like the Donruss Classics and the Opening Day next to it. With me not going to shows anymore, it's kind of a rarity for me to go find the Ichiro binder so that I can add some new cards to it. I think 23 of the 25 cards were new to me, which wasn't too bad.

I don't normally collect reprints, but these were fun to find in with everything else. I've never even seen one of the Tom Barker game cards, real or reprinted, in person before. For a reprint, this one is on some really nice cardstock.

If I could go back and start collecting over, or even start back when I returned to card collecting in 2010, I would go after those SI for Kids sets, at least up to the mid 90's. A few of those cards are pretty pricey now, and I'd never pay $50 (or more) for a Tony Hawk "rookie" (I don't know if I'd even be willing to pay 50¢ for one), so trying to collect them at this point is pretty much out of the question. I feel like I really screwed up on that one. 

I think a few of these other cards were duplicates from Nick's many mini collections; approaching baseballs? Players with animals?

More mini-collection dupes? Microphones on cards? Guys signing things? Orel's in Cleveland?

More dupes? Baseball scratch-off's? Guys pretending to play the git-fiddle?

The mini-collection dupes were fun, and many will be added to binders, but my favorite of the extras was this Ken Griffey. I saw the '82 Donruss design showing just a bit while I was going through the cards and thought that it would be neat if it was Ken, or Dave Winfield, and did that slow reveal thing that Twitter tells me everyone who opens a pack these days does when there's a "hit" in the pack. I don't remember people doing that way back when, but whatever, I did it for this card; turned out to be a pretty good "hit" too. I probably you should've filmed it for the YouTube😊. Anyway, it's a neat card, and was a pleasant find amongst the stuff in Nick's team bag repacks.

Many thanks again to Nick for the cards. Considering I don't have any want lists up for public consumption anymore, he did really well in picking out extras (there was plenty more that were worth posting, and I totally would've done so if I could've gotten someone else to scan them all for me). I think going through these team bags was the most fun I've had while doing a card related thing this year, so I'm grateful for that as well.