Buybacks from The City of Champions

A few posts back I wrote about my recent interest in attempting to build a frankenset comprised entirely of buybacks. Now not only was it by far my most viewed post to date (thank you to everyone who took the time to read it), but it also had the added benefit of bringing me into contact with three new people to trade with. One of those being a fellow named Josh who let me know he had a couple buybacks available for trade, which I will get to in a moment.

Before I get to the cards I wanted to mention that while Josh isn't a fellow blogger (yet?) you can check out his Twitter page @JoshSamBob, either for potential trading purposes or to just become acquainted with a seemingly all around nice guy. And if you are interested in trying to work out a trade with Josh, one of his areas of interest is in cards pertaining to Jewish baseball players, so he put together this nifty spreadsheet that could definitely be helpful in that regard.

So here are the three buybacks, all from the recent 2016 Topps release:

1978 Topps Darrell Johnson #79

1983 Topps Geoff Zahn #547

1985 Topps Reggie Jackson #200

It is very neat to have Mr. October represented in the ever growing set. It's kind of weird too, in that I don't think I had ever seen this card before. I don't know if I have a mental block on '85 Topps, or if I have just never really paid any attention to this set. Either way, it's great to see and have it now.

So thank you again, Josh! I'm grateful to you for letting me know these were available, as they certainly helped the cause. And for everyone else reading this go follow him on Twitter, I can't imagine you'd be disappointed in doing so.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Cards from Chicagoland

A couple of weeks ago Tony from the Cub-centric blog Wrigley Roster Jenga was having a "name the source of the post title" contest, which I was fortunate enough to get correct. Although, honestly I think I just happened to see it first (hence my win).

The source of the quote was from "Mystery Science Theatre 3000", a show I hadn't seen or thought about for quite some time. As I told Tony, I really don't think I was their target audience, as I truly did just watch it for the movies. A lot of the films they lampooned were not readily available to see anywhere else at the time (early to mid 90's), unless you were fortunate to live in an area that was still blessed to have a local late night horror host, and Portland was not one of those areas. Don't get me wrong though, even if I was there primarily for the movie I still found amusement in the commentary.

The prize for the contest was a team bag full of cards from the team of your choice. Since I'm not a team collector, Tony was kind enough to alter the prize to fit my set collecting ways. And considering the fact that he didn't have any checklists to work with, me ending up needing nine out of the ten cards sent wasn't too shabby (especially considering the cards) on his part.

If you pay close attention you might notice somewhat of a not so surprising theme here:



I don't really have anything interesting to say about the cards individually. But, I will say that as a group they are freakin' awesome. I hadn't even seen half these before, so it's pretty neat to see and read something new (or old).

I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with Tony's blog. But if somehow you're not, do yourself a favor and check it out. If you enjoy reading things that are well written, well researched, and are often sprinkled with humor, then it's probably the place for you.

So, thank you Tony. The cards you chose to send are really great, and don't be too surprised if some baby bears show up in your mailbox sooner than later.

And finally, in honor of Tony and any other Cubs fans:

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Some Heritage of my own

Looking at everyone's recent posts featuring cards from the newest Heritage release, reminded me that I hadn't looked around for any of the Heritage Real One Autographs for at least six months to a year.

Since these are one of my favorite series of autographs, I decided to remedy this searching drought by scouring all the major sites for some cheap new additions. I found a seller on Sportlots who had five for sale at fairly reasonable prices and better yet they had the 'make an offer' feature turned on, so I promptly put in offers on all of them which were thankfully all accepted.

So for your viewing pleasure. Here are my most recent acquisitions, all from the 2013 edition.

1. Tom Brown:

Mr. Brown's career in the majors consisted of only 61 games for the Senators in 1963. He batted a meager average of .147 in 118 at bats with 17 hits, 4 RBI's, and 1 HR.

 He is much better known for the success he had playing in the NFL. As a safety for the Packers from 1964-68, he won three championships including Super Bowls 1 and 2. His biggest moment coming in the 1966 NFL title game against the Cowboys when he intercepted a fourth-down pass in the end zone by quarterback Don Meredith in the final minute, thus preserving the Packers' 34–27 victory over Dallas.


2. Hal "Skinny" Brown:

Mr. Brown played a total of 14 seasons in the majors with five different teams (White Sox, Red Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Colt. 45's) from 1951-64. Brown was a knuckleballer known for his outstanding control, unfortunately he didn't get a lot of run support for the majority of his career which resulted in a 85-92 lifetime record. His best season came in 1960 with the Baltimore Orioles when he went 12-5 and had a career low ERA of 3.06. Although the next season wasn't bad for him either going 10-6 and set an Orioles single season record of 36 shutout innings, a record which still stands by the way. Mr. Brown unfortunately passed away on December 17th of last year.


3. Jeoff Long:

Mr. Long played parts of two seasons with the Cardinals and White Sox from 1963-64. Originally a pitcher in his first two minor league seasons he converted to a first basemen after little success on the mound. In his 56 games played he batted .193 with 16 hits, 9 RBI's, and 1 HR. The reason for his limited time in the big league was due to an unfortunate incident on July 15th 1964 when playing left field he slipped on the wet grass and injured his knee at Fenway Park. He would spend the better part of three years trying to recover and after a brief attempt a comeback he retired in 1969.


4. Jack Spring:

In case anyone wondered about the minimalness of the autograph. Jack Spring had Parkinson's disease, so that would have obviously affected his signature.

Mr. Spring spent parts of 10 seasons in majors with seven teams (Phillies, Red Sox, Senators, Angels, Cubs, Cardinals, Indians) between 1955-65. Jack was primarily a relief pitcher for most of his career with 186 innings pitched he went 12-5 with a 4.26 ERA. Mr. Spring unfortunately passed away on August, 2015.


5. Pumpsie Green:

Mr. Green played five seasons in the big leagues, four with the Red Sox and some of his last season with the Mets. He is best known for being the first black player to play for the Red Sox in 1959. He was primarily used as a pinch runner and as a backup for multiple infield positions. Over his career he had a .246 average with 13 HRs and 73 RBI's.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

TTM Tragedy #1: Dal Maxvill

Since you normally can't have triumph without tragedy, I thought I would show an occasional failure to go with my ever increasing amount of successes. And by failure, I mean one that has come back either unsigned or even worse, with something wrong with it. Obviously I can't show the ones that go out and will never be coming back. Like for instance sending a request to somebody who then gets fired less than two weeks later (It has happened to me twice now), which I then know for a fact won't be coming back.

So let's get to first installment in what I hope won't be a regular feature on this blog:



It looks much worse in person!

I thought initially that the envelope had gotten wet during it's return, thus causing smearing. However since the ink on the SASE wasn't blurred, nor were there any signs of ink smears on the inside of the envelope, one can only deduce that it got smeared before it was even put into the envelope. On one hand, I can still appreciate (and am grateful for) the fact that Mr. Maxvill took the time to sign it and send it back even in it's flawed state. On the other hand though, I kind of wish he would have just not returned anything.

One thing that I thought was interesting though, was the fact that this card and the Frank Lary success arrived on the same day after exactly two months to the day, after being sent out together on the same day.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Buybacks. Yes please, but only if they're cheap!

Before I get to the topic at hand I wanted to mention that a couple of days ago I realized that has now been a little over a year since I moved to Tennessee. With all the "excitement" that comes with living here I completely missed my one year anniversary, or as the cool kids would say, "my Tenniversary"  (I don't know if the kids say that or not, but it is kind of catchy). This was also around the time that I first discovered that there were blogs dedicated solely to cards, thanks to a google search that ended up taking me to a blog run by a fellow by the name of Fuji. From then on I was an avid reader of a lot of your (I'm assuming most people reading this are bloggers) blogs, and after about six months I finally got up enough courage to start one of my own. I am now coming up on my six month blogiversary, which probably doesn't sound like a big deal to most of you, but it is to me since I really didn't think I would make it more than a month. So, yay me!

Okay on to buybacks. Which like a lot of things, are relatively new to me. When I started collecting sports cards again around 2010, I didn't have much interest in what was new at the time and I still don't for the most part. There have been a few exceptions of course, but for the most part I'm content just reading about the newer stuff on everyone else's blog posts. So I hadn't even heard of buybacks until about a year ago, and at the time I didn't think much of them. I just remember reading about how much everyone disliked them, one could even say hated them. I never came across any back home at the cards shows in Portland and I hadn't seen any here, until just a couple of months ago.

I finally encountered some in the wild at the end of January show and was almost immediately smitten with them. Now I know that as primarily a collector of vintage cards I should loathe these defaced cards, but I don't. I have no idea why I like them so, maybe it's just because the whole concept seems to be on the silly side. There seems to be a lot of arguments for and against them, that I won't get into here since they have been covered ad nauseam elsewhere. I will say that obviously I would rather Topps have just started inserting unstamped vintage cards in packs, but I still prefer stamped vintage cards to more reprints. So now that I have seen and bought a few, the question became what to do with them? After a couple of weeks I had what I thought was an original idea, which is to start a buybacks frankenset (thanks to Nick, I know what that is). The thought of doing a frankenset had never really appealed to me before, but these seem like say were made for it. Anyways as I said, I thought it was an original idea. That is until I saw Jeff of 2x3 Heroes fame was already doing the same thing, NUTS! Even though I'm slightly dismayed that I didn't think of it first (although I'm not that surprised), I'm still kind of excited to be doing something that is very out of the ordinary for me.

Ok, after that crazy long opening. Here is what I have so far, for my burgeoning set:

Topps must not be to fond of Jim Fregosi, judging by the placement of the stamp.

13 of the 15 cards shown above came from the same seller and were 25 cents each, which is about my preferred price to pay for them. The two Steve Stone cards were the exception at 10 cents apiece.

I have been surprised to see how much buybacks have been selling for, especially on eBay. I thought I might be able to get some cheap lots, but that hasn't worked out very well so far. Once you breakdown the per card price of the sold lots it usually comes out to multiple times higher than the original non stamped versions sell for. And I'm just not willing to pay that much for these, no matter how much I'm interested in them. So even if it seems like the majority of people on blogs and on message boards are anti buybacks, there is obviously a large contingent out there in favor of them. I have also been surprised to see how much they are listed for on sites like COMC and Sportlots, although I would hope even the people who really like these aren't paying anywhere from $5-20 for a stamped common from the '59 Topps set.

And here are my most recent acquisitions courtesy of Robert from the budget conscious $30 A Week Habit:

Robert was kind enough to send these two from his box of 2016 Topps, that he made available to anyone who wanted them. Which of course, I did. Thank you again, Robert! These two are very welcome additions, especially the '74 Boots Day.

They seem to be upping the silliness factor with buybacks of cards from the 90's and some kind of color coded system for the stamps to denote rarity. I think I will be trying to stick to the pre 90's stamped cards (pre 1975 will be my main focus), and I really don't think I'm going to be paying any attention to the stamp color.

I thought for sure I would find some more at this past weekend's show, but if there were any to be had I didn't see them. The good thing though, is there's always next time.

Before I wrap up this post I wanted to mention that if anyone reading this has or gets any unwanted buybacks (the older the better), I would be most interested in trading for them.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Harpooning a white whale

It looks like Saturday was card show day for a lot of the bloggers, and I was no exception. I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to attend this past weekend's show or not, but there ended up being two deciding factors in favor of me going. The first being that the show was being promoted as the biggest yet in Nashville with 63 sellers/105 tables. And secondly, my favorite dealer sent me a text earlier in the week to let me know that he was going to be there (originally he wasn't going to be). So I couldn't very well not go after finding out someone was coming from a couple states over with items that are specifically geared towards my interests (see inserts below), I would look like quite the heel if I said I was going to pass. They also had the Beckett grading people there again and a former University of Tennessee football player signing, both of which weren't of interest to me. But it was part of the reason for the size of the show, and it certainly contributed to ridiculous amount of people in attendance.

Before I get to far into the post I wanted to mention that because a lot of the cards weren't scanning well, I ended up using a lot of pictures instead. And since I wasn't feeling too great when I took the pictures, some of them are less than ideal. On the bright side though, I have more card images in here than I normally do. Also even though I'm starting with basketball (I can hear audible groans), there is plenty of other things covered further down.


When I first walked in, I immediately noticed a seller that I had never seen before setting up along the front wall. He was putting out a lot of 3200 ct boxes (maybe 12-15) that were clearly comprised of nothing but vintage from the four major sports, and most of them were dollar boxes. What was even better was the fact that I was the first person looking through them that day, so the possibilities of what may lay ahead seemed endless. What first caught my attention was the sight of tall boys sticking out of some of the boxes, which I will get to a little further down in the post. So I quickly started jumping from box to box to get a quick sense of what was there and probably all the while looking like I had ADD, ADHD, and AC/DC. While this was taking place I was talking to the seller who started putting out more boxes of stuff that was much nicer and much more than a dollar, so I moved over to those to get first crack at them as well. Now these boxes were loaded with probably a few of most collector's dream cards, with fairly reasonable prices. I spotted one of my white whale's almost instantly, and here he is:



1972 Dr. J rookie!

Look at him! Isn't he wonderful? There was no price on the toploader, which as most of you know, usually isn't a good sign of things to come. So I hesitantly said " I almost hate to ask, but how much is this", fully expecting to hear a card show inflated price of say $75-$100. But after asking me what it books for these days and me giving my usual honest reply of "I have no idea", he looked at the condition of the card and said "how about $25". To the casual observer my outward appearance would have been calm as I gave the card another once over and said that seemed like a pretty good price, all the while on the inside I was doing cartwheels and heel kicks. Now I know some of you might think $25 for the condition of this card is a lot, but even in this condition it would normally sell for at least double on eBay (probably more). I always thought I would end up with one in worse condition that would set me back even more. There are a lot of reprints of this card out there in various conditions, but after feeling it, and more importantly smelling it (yes, I smelled it. Almost 45 year old cardboard is going to have certain smell, which this one did) I am near 100 percent confident that it is authentic. It's amazing to think about how long I have wanted this card, and now I have it. It seems almost surreal!

As exciting as that card is, there is still plenty to get to. So on with the show.

Here are some 1969-70 Topps from the same seller:

You can see what I was talking about with the scanner doing some weird things to the color on these. Even though all these came out of the dollar boxes, the seller ended up giving me a discount on the total price of everything. So these ended up being priced at between 50 and 75 cents each, which is a pretty darn good price.

1971-72 Topps Roger Brown RC x2:

Here is a tip from me to you. If you ever come across any Roger Brown rookies that are cheap and in decent shape, Buy Them! This is a card that has been quietly going up in price and no one ever mentions it. The two above were $1 each.

Two more set needs:

Here are a couple of serial numbered cards from a different seller that were 25 cents each:

I was getting really tired of taking pictures at this point, evidenced by these still being in there top loaders.

And my usual pile of 90's basketball inserts from my favorite seller:

There is just no way I can show all of these, as there is over 200 in these two stacks. It is almost impossible for me to resist these at 10 cents each, which is why I have been getting so many the last couple of shows. As proof, here is a bonus picture of three shows worth of still unsorted inserts:

It may not look like it, but there is probably 800-1000 cards there waiting to be sorted.

If I had to show just one out of the current batch, I would probably go with this:



1997-98 Fleer John Stockton Decade of Excellence Rare Traditions parallel

I didn't even know there was a Decade of Excellence parallel. After looking around online for these I saw that the cheapest one listed on eBay is $16, so I guess this wasn't a bad purchase for 10 cents.

I will close out the basketball part with a couple of dime box 90's refractors:

There wasn't a lot of baseball cards for me this time, but probably the best deal I got was on this 1953 Topps Johnny O'Brien rookie:

This came from the last table I stopped at on my way out. How much would you think this card cost? It doesn't have any crease, but it does have the issue with the two lower corners. Would you believe it was in an 8/$1 box, so like 12 1/2 cents! Crazy right? It was the only vintage card in the box, but even though I only really wanted this one I did manage to find seven more items of interest.

These next couple were the only other vintage baseball I was able to get:



1960 Topps Ernie Johnson

1969 Topps Deckle Edge Ron Santo and Boog Powell

1973 Topps Carlton Fisk

 The above four cards came to a total of $4, which I didn't think was too bad.

How about a whole mess of 1981 Kellogg's cards:


More lazy picture taking!

All of these were 10 cents apiece as well. I ended up getting a few doubles, but there is over half the set here. On a side note, I don't think I will ever get used to seeing Vida Blue in any colors other than green and yellow. It just looks unnatural!

And the rest of the baseball:

The Willie Mays helps with the Cramer set I'm working on. I have never seen the three Babe's before.


Moving on to the football portion. These are my first cards from the 1965 Topps set:

These are in better condition than the scanner would lead you to believe. These were the tall boys I saw sticking out at the first table I went to (mentioned at the beginning). After the total price was figured out these ended up being about 75 cents each. I am very happy to finally get a few cards from this set.

Here's a another card from the same seller of a fellow who's name a few of you might recognize:



1960 Topps Jim Brown

This is another amazing piece of cardboard. He was in the same box as the Erving rookie. And even though there was a ton of great stuff in that box, I had to be content (which I am) with the Dr. J and this card being my two splurge purchases. I have really started making some good headway with this set, which is nice considering it's not a particularly large set.

Don't worry the post is almost done, all you have to do is make it through a couple of autographs and you will earn a gold star for your endurance.

First up is in person autograph of Larry Legend:

I got this from one of the elder statesmen of the dealers at the show. I was told that he got it from a guy had some items signed by Mr. Bird at a charity golf tournament. Since the autograph looks perfect in comparison with other authenticated examples shown online, I'm pretty confident it's genuine. I have also read many times that Larry will sign in person (no TTM though), so that helps verify the story a little.

And from the same seller this 1997-98 Skybox Premium Popeye Jones Autographics:

 I will close with three from my favorite seller (Jim). He always has a couple of boxes of various priced autographs and memorabilia cards, which tend to be picked over pretty good before I get to them. So I was a little surprised that there were actually still a couple of things of interest to me in there. These next three came out to a total of $15.

1. Yvan Cournoyer JSA authenticated autograph:

Now I have no idea who Mr. Cournoyer is, I only bought it because I love his signature. Here is a slightly better angle to see his great penmanship:

It shows a lot better in person and the silver paint pen is really striking. This is also my first JSA autograph. It has the sticker on the back and came with an additional piece of paper from JSA.

2. 2013 Panini Golden Age Jim Kiick Historic Signatures:

Another card closer in my attempt to acquire all the Golden Age autographs.

3. 2007 Press Pass Joe Bellino Saturday Signatures:

I think I might start actively collecting Heisman Trophy winner autographs, especially since I have 5 or 6 now. By the way Mr. Bellino won the Heisman in 1960.

That does it for by far my longest post yet (and probably ever). I had a lot a more to say, but this has taken me far longer to put together than I wanted. And I am really tired of working on this as I keep losing my train of thought, so my apologies if it seems a little disjointed.

Thanks for taking a few moments to look at my page.