Sort 'em If You Got 'em.

       Yesterday was National Baseball Card Day and no, I couldn't get to the National this year (or any year, yet) and no, I didn't get out to my local card shop.  But if you saw my last post, you know that I had plenty to do - I had 925 cards sent from COMC to sort through and revel in.  And that's exactly what I did:

These piles all make sense, to me anyway.  The majority are baseball cards but there are also football, hockey, basketball, bowling, tennis, golf, softball, gaming, movie (James Bond, Batman, and Star Wars among others), music (Beatles and Guided By Voices), and all sorts of Goodwin Champions which include all those things and more. There are three separate piles of Mets cards alone, and also one each for the Saints and the Devils and the Knicks, and a couple of players even got their own piles, Tom Seaver and Todd Hundley (no, really, I am a Hundley super-collector at this point). After that there are Hall of Famers and current stars and retired stars and birthday boys and all-star rookie trophy cards.  It was a fun few hours to go through all these.

I obviously can't highlight and scan 925 cards (103 scans! That would more than double my Seaver memorial post) so I will semi-randomly grab some cards that are either fun or fun to look at or just interesting, to me anyway.  Plus there were a few surprises even for me because after two-plus years, I had forgotten I'd bought them.

The top three here are some multi-player game used cards, one with Gary Carter and Mike Piazza - basically my two favorite players of all time - one with a "Bat Rack" of Mets with the aforementioned Carter and Piazza plus Jose Reyes and Kaz Matsui (remember when he was a thing?) and the third is a glorious mix of 1973 World Series adversaries from the UD Decades set, that one has Tom Seaver and Bud Harrelson along with Reggie Jackson and Bert Campaneris.  THAT is the best card I completely forgot I bought and I was giddy when I saw it.  But it also begs the question, how could I ever forget that card?

 

There is also a Ralph Kiner announcer card, a rarity of him with Mets colors, a great Lee Mazzilli from 1979 Hostess (I have the panel with Steve Garvey and Mike Schmidt but I needed it solo), a 1970 OPC Mets World Champions #1 card, a low numbered Frank Thomas jersey card (with pinstripes!) and a pair of one of my favorite unusual uniform subjects - Pete Rose on the Montreal Expos - I now have a complete page of him in French red, white, and blue.

Let's do a second nine, shall we, I can't just show you less than 1% of these, can I?

First off is the other side of that Carter/Piazza tandem jersey card.  Now I have to decide if it goes with the Carter collection or the Piazza.  Maybe Carter because he's technically the 'front' of the card?  Then you have two modern Topps Hall of Fame short prints.  I am not a big fan of these but sometimes Topps picks really cool photos for them and these two definitely fit that category.  The Koufax is a magnificent shot of him admiring the scoreboard from his perfect game and the Nolan Ryan is a brilliant candid shot that should/could have been one of his 70s cards.  Topps should only pick pictures of this quality when doing these short prints (alas, they often do not).

 

 

There's also a few fun vintage cards here, a 1974 Tony Oliva with its proud position designation of Des(ignated) Hitter, and a late 70s run of Tom Seaver O-Pee-Chee cards.  That last one in the left corner is a 1998 Fleer Tradition Todd Hundley '63 Classic card numbered to /63.  I told you I was becoming a Hundley super-collector.  I also had my eye on a Piazza version of this card but alas did not pull the trigger on it and now it is gone and I might never see another.  I have put that card in my Needed Nine, you can find that list on the right side margin of the blog.  

I teased it in the post from the other day so here is a much better view of the 1952 Andy Pafko #1 I acquired:

I am not certain why I ever bought into the hype of this card but somehow over the years I did and I just decided I must own this stupid thing.  I ended up getting it during the COMC Black Friday sales and the price was right for this condition.  I think what I really like most is the randomness of someone like Andy Pafko being the first card in their first big set.  He was a good ballplayer but nothing anyone would ever consider a superstar.  Donruss went with Ozzie Smith, Fleer went with Pete Rose, Score went with Don Mattingly, Upper Deck lucked out and chose Ken Griffey Jr. over Gregg Jefferies and Gary Sheffield for their lead off but somehow Topps went with Andy Pafko as card number one. If anyone knows the solid reason why they chose him (I don't recall ever seeing one) please enlighten me.  For now, Andy has a hot date with the other two 1952 star cards I keep protected: my Gus Zernial and my Bob Feller.  

I have gotten to the point in my Gary Carter collection where the only cards I don't have are either strange local oddball issues, low numbered monstrosities, or (somewhere in between) just plain old stuff I don't think is worth the money.  I did pull the trigger on a solid gold Gary that I just couldn't pass up during that black Friday sale.  I must say, it is shiny!

I doubt these Danbury Mint cards will ever be worth much (I also bought a Jerry Koosman one in this batch) but I suppose if times are tough I could melt them down and make fillings out of them or something.

Lastly is a card that probably only means something to me but I am so happy that I got it, the nerd in me is still glowing.  It is a 2019 Goodwin Champions Robert Pollard printing plate, a yellow 1/1. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pandemic left me a lot of time at home to sit and listen to music and Uncle Bob here cranked out something like seven albums (and counting) during 2020 and 2021.  Maybe it is the old man in me, but I don't listen to a lot of music the way I did when I was a younger man but the pandemic did a lot of strange things to all of us so it was nice to have new Guided By Voices albums flying out at the rate they used to in the 1990s.  This card will now be the centerpiece of my Bob Pollard collection from that Goodwin set and I have to trust in myself that I don't become that lunatic who needs to hoard the one-of-one cards.  It helps that I haven't seen any of the others for sale...you know, not that I've checked or anything.  Now excuse me, I have 905 other cards to put in their proper place in my collection. 

Quirks: The Toss.

       We all have certain quirks to our collection and some of them are of the pictures on the cards.  Hell, there are blogs related to and/or named after such photographic peculiarities.  Let's see if you can figure out which one this post is about...

Got it yet?  Good. 

Did you ever back into a collection?  I don't mean just accumulating cards of a failed prospect or a favorite star but did you ever just suddenly realize you have dozens of a certain kind of card and you wonder, hey, how did that happen?  I noticed on many of my 9 pocket pages of players and sets, I had a bunch of players doing "the toss" - a time tested pose.  I decided a few months ago to gather them together rather than let them breed in the wild. 

Sure, we all have a fondness for plays at the plate, vertical action shots, players leaping at second base during a double play, catchers in gear, etc.  Some folks might like posed shots with bats pointing at the viewer or specific position poses.  But for me, there is something so enjoyably goofy and childlike about The Toss, be it posed or candid. 

I am sure there are dozens more out there that I don't have in my collection - heck just looking at these pages I realize I don't have one of the more iconic Toss photos, the 1989 Topps Steve Avery draft pick card.  This is my first foray into photographically specific oddball collections and I hope to expand on the theme.  If you have any or come across any that you don't see here, feel free to send them or offer to trade them to me.  For now, I am going to go find a low grade 1972 Topps Roberto Clemente. 

Before and After.

       I have a menial part time job.  How menial? I refuse to even tell you what it is.  The good thing about this job is that I can do it with no thought or function, it is 2 miles from my house, and they pay me straight cash (attention NSA and IRS, no, they don't).  It also helps fill in the time when "real" work isn't available and keeps me out of trouble.  Well, at this particular workplace, one guy got fired and another just up and quit leaving them very short handed and since I am a little underemployed otherwise, I told them I could fill in until they found someone.  This was my first mistake.  My "part time" job has taken up 48 hours each of the last two weeks and this is a job where I am on my feet 8-12 hours at a time.  Needless to say, it has left my old body very tired and left me very little time for my favorite hobby (thus the lack of updates lately - at least I have a decent excuse for a change...).  In fact, it has left me with little time to do anything with all my incoming cards except this:

Yup, I have just been throwing them in a random pile on the floor.  So sad.  I was on a listia and ebay buying kick the last couple weeks to boot, so this pile got very large and unruly very quickly.  Lucky for me, I had a nice quiet evening tonight, leaving me with a good block of time to tidy this all up.  Let's see what happened, shall we?

A few months ago, I threatened to make a page of the 2013 Opening Day Blue Shiny parallels:

This page is the fruits of what became quite a labor.  I went on ebay and bought two lots of these, figuring I could make a page and use the rest as listia and/or trade bait.  One of the lots came right away, the other did not.  I got an email from the seller saying they got returned to him by the post office and refunded my money.  I have my suspicions he didn't like the price he got for his lot, god I hate that...but oh well, I then bought another little lot and finished off this page.  It's got a good balance of teams and players and a good contrast of photos.  I like it and the scan doesn't do it justice, it is not just shiny, it is SHINY!!!

Speaking of shiny, I also bought a lot of these on a whim:

I wasn't even sure what they were, but I got them because the lot had a couple of Mets in it.  Then I read up and found out they were hobby shop redemption cards.  I have no doubt all those fine honest shop owners didn't open the packs and put them online for sale.  Nooooooo.....that would never happen.  Anyway, I can't decide if I like the design of them or not.  They have a bit of a Lichtenstein thing going on, but there is also a lot of odd negative space.  I cannot deny, though, that they are quite shiny.  And lord knows I have some Spring Fever because my team is not in the playoffs again for the seventh year in a row.  I am rooting for a Dodgers/Red Sox World Series if anyone cares and honestly, I am not sure I even do. 

One of my many odd Listia buys was a batch of Andres Galarraga cards:

I was at the time looking for oddball Post cards, but I ran across this lot of 10 Galarraga cards.  I didn't have a page of Big Cat cards because he always played for teams I didn't care for and he flamed out late in his career as a Mets Spring Training signee (one of many with that distinction).  But I guess time heals all wounds and for the equivalent of a dime, I added this page to my retired books.

Next is a page I am happy to add to my binders:

These are 1995 Topps Premier Hockey Special Effects cards.  Sadly, they did not scan as well as I wanted them too, but they are quite shimmery and shiny.  The "special effect" is a sheen of shininess that looks like skated-on ice and believe me, it looks quite nifty.  I learned of the existence of these cards a couple weeks ago when I wrote up this post about shiny football cards.  I was so excited to learn they existed, I went on ebay and got a big lot of them from Canada.  I even decided to let a Rangers player creep in there, a team I do not usually let onto my pages.  But I look at it as, the Rangers winning the cup was so rare and unusual I might as well throw them a bone.

One last batch of listia lot hijinx:

I was looking for Drew Brees cards and came across this insert set from this year's Topps football flagship.  They are based on those very cheesy inserts they put in rack-packs back in the late 80's and early 90's.  I thought they were die cut to have rounded corners to be all modern and classy, but it turns out that is just a trick of the light.  The seller also mailed these in a plain white envelope with no protection whatsoever. By some bit of dark magic, they made it through the postal system unscathed.  Listia is such a crapshoot; maybe that's why I like it so much...I need a little more excitement in my life.

There were so many odd cards in that pile that will eventually show up on the blog, but here is one I am not sure will ever get a chance to be featured otherwise:

I really like this insert set.  I have a few of them in my collection and if I was really feeling frisky, I could buy the 10-card set and make a page.  But right now, I am content to own the Griffey in all its teal colored jersey see thru glory.  It's even better that I grabbed it on listia for a faux fifty cents.

One last thing you may have noticed in the lower right of the pile:

My menial job does let me talk to people and we have many many regular customers.  One of them I have known for a long time and he is a real character.  He repairs pin set up machines for local bowling alleys.  This is a very specific skill and judging by this gentleman, it obviously requires eccentricity.  Anyway, he noticed I had been working everyday for 2 weeks straight rather than my usual 2-3 days a week and we got to talking.  He asked me "well, what do you do when you aren't here" and I told him my vocation and I told him I was also a writer.  "Well, what do you write about?"  I told him about my failed life as a novelist and I told him I have a blog.  "What is your blog about?"  Now, people usually ask these question about writing to be polite.  My usual answer about my blog "baseball cards" immediately makes 99% of people change the subject as they have either no interest, understanding, or patience for such things.  Not this time.  His face lit up and he said "Really?  I used to collect back in the day..."  And off we went on a 20 minute rapid-fire conversation about baseball, baseball cards, and collecting in general.  We talked about favorite players and teams and the like. What we have, used to have, going to shows, selling at shows, that I used to work at a card shop etc.  This doesn't happen to me very often outside of a card show, so it was quite a pleasant little moment.  Later in the day, the dude comes back and hands me this little pile of stuff and says "I don't collect much anymore and I thought you would like these more than I would."  I mean, look at those cards.  These aren't junk, this is a Piazza rookie card, two rare Piazza parallels, and a couple of nice 1970's vintage cards (of course, I will have to bust them out of those screwdown prisons).  I can be quite the curmudgeon when it comes to talking to people at work, especially when I am tired but in this one time, it seems hard work and being personable was more than its own reward. 

Complete Set Sunday: 1990 Starline - Long John Silver's.

       In my last post, I went on and on about my birthday presents to myself, one of them being a repack.  In that rather disappointing pile of cards was four cards that immediately sparked my memory and yet, at the same time, made me say "hey, I don't remember these at all."  The cards belonged to the 1990 Starline set.  Now, I remember these posters being everywhere when I was a kid.  It was a very clean design and if you went to toy stores or shoe stores or sporting goods stores, they were everywhere.  I cannot, though, for the life of me, recall them releasing a card set of them.  On one hand, this makes perfect sense - I have never eaten at a Long John Silver's joint ever.  I don't even know if they have them in Jersey, to be honest.  On the other hand, I pride myself in owning oddball food issues, so I am truly surprised this set got by me.  I went to ebay and picked up the set of 40 cards for $3- shipped.  Plus it was sent from a town in New Jersey, so I got it the next day; practically instant gratification. 

The set came still sealed in the original packs that came from the restaurant.  I assume you got one with each purchase, meaning you'd have to choke down 8 different meals of fried mystery fish to finish this set.  Yuck. 

I was kind of torn how to handle this set.  As you may well know from reading this blog, I am kind of obsessed with having everything neatly fitting in to 9-pages (thus the name).  If fact, I have covered this particular predilection before.  A 40-card set does not fit neatly.  Even with the 8(!) header cards, this would be 48 cards, also not neatly divisible by nine (checks 3rd grade math flash cards, hey! I'm right).  So I looked at the way the cards were packaged and realized that these are eight pretty big stars.  Plus I had the leftover cards from the repacks to fill in the one blank, so voila:

They all work very well aesthetically and the loose Chris Sabo breaks up the color scheme.  I love it when a plan comes together.  

Let's look at the back:

Wow. That is pretty ugly.  You do get to see one card back, and it is not Chris Sabo but Glenn Davis (I like to keep people guessing).  I checked my set books before I decided to keep them wrapped to see if there was a set with a 4 or 3 card gap and there was not, so for now, I am satisfied to keep the set this way.  Maybe one day in the future I will get the urge to spring them from their decades-long plastic cocoons.

      Click here to see the checklist, if only for posterity and understanding.  And if you would like to actually see all the cards in the set, check out this post from Fuji, who covered them better than I ever could.  For now, this thick awkward page will sit in my set binders as a monument to the fact that as a teenager, I liked to get fat on burgers and doughnuts and not fried fish.

Mancrush.

From the lovely folks at the urban dictionary:

Man·crush
noun   \manˈkrəsh\

1.  When a straight man has a "crush" on another man, not sexual but kind of idolizing him.

          Many straight men end up having man crushes on Johnny Depp (I don't blame them).

2.  A man having extreme admiration for another man, as though he wants to be him.

          "I've got one hell of a man crush on Hugh Hefner. He's made all the right moves."

       There are a dozen other definitions, but they all say about the same thing.  I am not ashamed to say that I officially have a mancrush on Matt Harvey.  I wrote about him in July during the occasion of his major league debut.  I wasn't 100% sure at the time if I was going to give over my heart to him.  Well, six gutty grand innings later, he had struck out 11 and looked like an absolute horse on the mound.  This wasn't Bill Pulsipher or Paul Wilson fools gold - no way - you could see right away that this kid is a stud: great mechanics, explosive fastball, bulldog attitude.  I lamented not having received a redemption autograph in that other post.  Well, I have since augmented my Matt Harvey collection:

Those bottom three Bowman platinum cards are refractors.  I wouldn't mind picking up a couple more of the 2010 Bowman rookie rainbow now before the cards get to be way too expensive.  Otherwise, I think this is a pretty nice beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.  If it weren't for my policy of not giving the Wilpons any of my money this year, I would have already headed over to Citifield to see him in person.  For now, I will be content to watch him from my living room, as I will be tonight against the Cardinals.

You should know, my first mancrush came to be on May, 22, 1998.  That was the day the Mets traded for Mike Piazza:

This is a page of his first 1998 cards as a Met, it is one of my favorite pages in all my collection.  I had always admired Piazza from afar.  His 1997 season was one for the ages: .362 40 HR 124 RBI as a catcher.  How could you not respect numbers like that from a man wearing the tools of ignorance?  Then early in 1998, the rumblings came that the Dodgers did not want to sign Piazza to a long term contract for the money he wanted.  Next thing you know, he was shipped off to the Marlins and the baseball world was abuzz.  The Mets (back when the Mets actually traded for good players) got him a week later.  I still remember where I was when I heard them announce the trade, it was that big a deal for me.  And let me tell you, it was mancrush at first sight.  He looked so good in that Mets uniform.  He brought credibility to a team that had been trying to find some, much the same way that Gary Carter had 13 years earlier.  Yes, I idolized Gary Carter, but that is because I was a kid when he was playing.  I was a week short of being 23 years old on that day in 1998, so officially a man, thus Mike Piazza will always be my first mancrush.  Oddly enough, on top of all that, today is his 44th birthday.  Happy Birthday Mike!
 
There have been others in between then and now (Prince Fielder, Nomar Garciaparra, Torii Hunter to name a few) but there is one other player to keep an eye on for my baseball admiration, Mike Trout:

My Trout collection is small, obviously, just as my infatuation for him is still growing.  But this kid is unbelievable.  I don't think I have ever sought out an Angel game in my life, but now, as long as this kid is playing, if they are on MLB network or ESPN, I won't miss one.  Plus, he is a Jersey Boy, so that might add to the allure.

***

While I was looking for that Matt Harvey jersey card I thought I had (and I did) I found this card:

This is a 2005 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Team Trios card.  It features bat pieces and uniform swatches of Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, and Dwight Gooden and is numbered to /100.   I had completely forgotten that I owned this awesome card.  Yet there it was, misfiled in my Mets box with some rookies and right next to Matt Harvey jersey card.  Is that an omen?  A coincidence?  I will not speculate.  I will say this card easily fits into my favorites category.  Hopefully, Matt Harvey will fit in nicely with these pitchers in Mets history.

Cleaning.

       It's been raining the last couple of days.  While I am not exactly Rain Man when it comes to the rain, I tend to mope around the house hoping my sinuses will stop throbbing when the spring showers come.  The rain plus insomnia led me to do a little spring cleaning.  I tackled some of the boxes I have previously shown awful pictures of; I delved specifically into some of the oddball memorabilia boxes, the stuff that is not strictly baseball cards, but more baseball card related. I will just randomly grab a few things and write about them, since I am sick of trying to figure out why I bought most of them in the first place or what the hell I am going to do with them.


OOOOoooo.... off to a good start, a couple of old school Mets pictures.  These are photographs, not cards or post cards.  I have no earthly clue where or when I got them.

The names of the players are written on the back (Al Jackson and Wayne Garrett) in different inks and handwriting.  I recognized the players, I do not recognize the handwriting (it is not mine, anyway).  These are still kind of neat and I will find a spot for them in my Mets books.  I need to catalog my stuff better, I'd like to know where these came from.

These are pretty cool too.  Some of you may have seen these before - they are from the late 70's - they are patches that are 2½" x 3½", so they are baseball card size. 

I do actually know where I got these from...a local card shop had about 1000 of each of these in a box in the back, so I bought a couple of them a while ago.  I am puzzled as to what to do with them and this is obviously not the first time I have been puzzed by them since they ended up in one of these boxes.  Should I put them in top loaders and treat them like cards, or should I find a garment and treat them like textiles?  I guess this conundrum is why there haven't been more issues like these.

OK, crazy food issue time.  It is a promo sheet of Ritz Cracker Don Mattingly cards from 1989...

...in fact, there are two of them...

...and I would be lying if I told you I didn't just look these up on ebay to find out what the hell they are.  My love of wacky food issues would usually be trumped by the subject being a Yankee, but since these aren't licensed, perhaps I made an exception seeing as the interlocked NY is nowhere to be seen.  I also found this in an envelope with these:

A Don Mattingly autograph from a 3x5 signature book.  It is not an index card but a page from one of those little scrapbooks (how odd is it to have this of a living recent ballplayer?).  Somehow, I imagine I was going to combine this bizarre cut signature with the Ritz Cracker sheet to make some kind of framed Mattingly collectable .  Or something like that.  Maybe, I dunno.  I really have no idea where I got either of these things.  Maybe I will now shift gears and make my own Donnie Baseball custom card with the cut signature, perhaps when a streak of arts and craftiness strikes me.  Sounds like a fun project to me.

Oh boy!  A box...a flat box with no identifying marks whatsoever...



It's a collector's plate.  Um, OK.  It 's all gold a shiny, even through the wrapping.  Let's see who it is...

Why, it's Nolan Ryan.  This is from Topps and it is from 1993.  I recognized the photo of Ryan from that card, but...

...the back of the plate clinched that notion as that is the back of his 1993 Topps card.  This thing fit perfectly on my scanner, which should give you some idea of the size.  I would love to eat my breakfast, lunch, and dinner off the all time strikeout king's face everyday from now until the end of time, but alas, that little blurb there on the bottom of the back says that this is a display piece and not suitable for food use.  Sad.  Yet it also says to hand wash the plate, so in a way, maybe they are daring me to eat off of it.  I just hope I didn't actually spend real money on this thing.

Let's go out on a better note than that.  I found these oddball oversized cards:

Well, I don't think they are cards, per se, it says on the front that they are pictures.  I don't remember these at all much less where I procured them.  I only have three of the packs and it says there are five.  I can't see if there is anything on the back of them.  Since they are career leaders, I assume there are some all-time greats inside.  Listings on eBay show that they are from 1983 and that they actually fold out, accordion style, just like on the front icon.  How freaking weird are these things?  I am torn, do I open them?  Tear them apart?  Sell them on eBay?  Does anybody really really want these things and has something to trade me for them?  I might keep the pitching leaders, though, no matter what, seeing as there is no doubt a Tom Seaver in there.  I just wish I could remember where I got them from.  See what happens when you don't organize and write things down?  Maybe I'll just throw all this stuff back in the box and wonder about them all over again 5-6 years from now.  Sigh.

Quick Trade with gcrl

      You may think that I have abandoned blogging everyday or perhaps my industrial strength ADD has kicked in and my focus has gone elsewhere.  Well, luckily the answer to both of those is no and no.  The truth is I have been traveling and, surprisingly, actually working more the last couple weeks (yay!).  How do you bloggers with a full time job do it?  I guess blogging is like anything else in this world - if you really want to do it, you find the time.

     Tonight I can't sleep, so here is a quick post about a little (yet awesome) trade with jim of gcrl (the man has a lot of ee cummings in him).  I find his main blog a most excellent read (I am a huge Ron Cey fan), but my trade query regarded his side project, oh my o-pee-chee! (oh mon o-pee-chee!), which is a fantastic salute to one of my own obsessions, the variations on O-Pee-Chee cards.  Now, I had recently found a nearly complete 1986 OPC set amongst my piles.  It was missing six odd cards; I can't figure out if they were pulled out of the set by someone (or even myself once upon a time) or if these really were the actual six cards that helped this set evade completion.  Knowing the cards he had on his site were all his, I figured if anyone in the blogosphere had these six cards, it would be him, or he would know someone who would.  After a quick email exchange, I was tickled to know that he had the dastardly six I needed:

Odd combination, don't you think?  Jim also found a few of my rookie all star needs.  In fact, he emailed me that he had a 1964 Jimmie Hall and I ignored it at first, figuring he had emailed me this information by mistake.  But nope, it was on my wantlist and he had read it and found it for me.  The man knew my wantlist better than me...much like Henry Jones Jr., this is why I write things down, so I don't have to remember.  And once again, it is nice to know the system works!  I hope I can find the time this week to get to the post office to drop his cards in the mail.  Plus, his generosity is being rewarded by an all out insomnia driven search for a few of his nebulous nine.

Jim also put a little note in with the cards, always a wise decision, since sometimes packages get misplaced or worse, get to the bottom of the pile...

...no jim, thank you!

Jaybarkerfan's Junk Part 2 - The Lots

       Yesterday, we covered a card draft held by the esteemed Jaybarkerfan's Junk on his blog.  But Wes wasn't done getting rid of his cards, oh no.  He was also offering team lots.  Lots!  My favorite.  And Mets! also my favorite.  So you can tell what a fool I am for lots of Mets.  Basically, all he wanted was the cost of shipping for them, so how could I resist (spoiler! I couldn't).  So along with my draft pickings came four jam-packed team bags full of Mets:

Also, altruistically or practically, I cannot tell which nor will I speculate, Wes was giving some lots away.  Yup, just giving them away...so because I also have an odd enjoyment of defunct teams, I grabbed his lot of free Expos, because, hey, free stuff! (what's with all the exclamation points? and parentheticals? I guess I shouldn't have had that third cup of coffee).  Before we break down the Mets, lets  take a quick look at some of those Expos...

...and we are already in a cardboard happy place.  Overly colorful Larry Walker rookies, dust-flying plays at the plate, those sharp mid 90's Expos unis, fabulous early 80's record breakers, and Mike Fitzgerald, one of the four quarters the Mets gave the Expos for their Gary Carter dollar.
I love players on odd teams; everyone remembers the Mark Langston trade because it had Randy Johnson in it, but few recall that a) it even involved the Expos or b) Langston was only in Montreal for half a season.
One can criticize Milton Bradly for his shitty attitude all they want, but no one can deny his awesome name.  He'd just be an ordinary malcontent if he was Robert Jones, but instead, he was a colorfully named malcontent.
Last, but not least, is Woody Fryman.  I always enjoyed Woody's cards as a kid because he looked 150 years old on them, even when he was 35.  Now, Woody is 42-43 in that picture there, and sadly, looks younger than I do now at 37.  Oh the ravages of time.  Of course, Woody is now dead and so are the Expos, but they will both live forever on cardboard.  

OK, lets break down that Mets lot.  Yes, there was a bunch of junk wax in there, I didn't expect anything less.  When one is dealing with lots, especially team lots, you know that 12th 1987 Topps Keith Hernandez All Star card is waiting for you.  But there were plenty of gems as well. 

I can never pass up Mike Piazza cards.  Ever.  I always loved that 1998 Finest card, his white uniform just pops out from the dull silver background.  I didn't have that 2002 Ultra short print, I only have the gold medallion version, so now we've got new cards...yay!
As you may have read earlier, my brother and I went to Jackie Robinson Day in Philly last weekend.  Since all the players were wearing #42, the Mo Vaughn jokes came fast and furious.  My favorite: "Are those Mo's old jerseys?"  "No, they saved three or four of them and sewed all of today's jerseys out of them..."
My other favorite card on that page is Don Schulze.  Why?  Well, in 1987 the Mets pitching staff was the walking wounded.  Everybody got hurt one way or another. My brother and I went to a game in early August expecting to see Sid Fernandez pitch but instead, we got Don Schulze (they never said what El Sid's injury was, but we are pretty sure it had to do with the buffet).  And he got brutalized.  And for the last 25 years, Don Schulze has been a punchline in our family.  Sadly, that was Don's last appearance in a Met uniform, yet he got himself a 1988 Topps card, so he's got that going for him.

Look! Nolan Ryan cards!  In a Mets uniform! (more exclamation points? really?)

I have often said that I have more cards of Nolan Ryan in a cowboy hat than a Mets uniform.  While that joke is not quite as accurate the last few years with all the faux-vintage cards around, the 1991 Pacific Nolan Ryan set seemed to be nothing but Ryan in a cowboy hat.  I see now that the problem I had with that set is, I bought nothing but the second series.  Obviously, Wes bought a lot of the first series, because I got a boatload of Nolan Ryan from him...in a Mets uniform!  I got several of each card, so if any other Mets fans have the same issue I (used to) have, I would be glad to part with some of the doubles.  Plus look at the baby picture, jeez he was born with that giant head....I feel bad for his mother.

Oh yes, there is plenty more...

This mishmash of stuff does have a theme.  Gregg Jefferies, one of the great disappointments of my life, did get some wonderful cards in his day.  I love that shot from the '91 Upper Deck set.  As I have gushed before, I love double play cards, and Rey Ordonez got himself a few nice ones, that Stadium Club shot included.
I have a bunch of those Tom Seaver Baseball Heroes cards, but I have never looked to see if I have them all.  That is one I didn't have, so the answer to that question was "no" and now is back to "I don't know."
Tim Teufel was always one of my forgotten favorite Mets.  He didn't look like a ballplayer, he didn't move like a ballplayer, heck, if you saw his batting stance, you might swear he wasn't a ball player at all.  Yet, he was a pretty solid contributor.  He was greater than the sum of his parts and scrappy, to use two horrible cliches.  Plus, his last name means "devil" in German - he is literally the devil...how cool is that?
Ryan Thompson is another in a long line of Mets disappointments (Jeff Kent was shown earlier but not mentioned - they came together from the Blue Jays in the David Cone trade - double disappointment!).  But I have a large Ryan Thompson collection.  Why?  Well, besides the fact that you always seem to accumulate cards of your teams failed prospects in gross, I have not one but two friends with the moniker "Ryan Thompson."  If I had the same name as a major leaguer, I would have my business cards printed on my same-name player's baseball card. 
I am currently infatuated with the 1994 Fleer set, a set I never really collected or even really looked at much before.  I am looking to pick up nine cards for a page (I have 2 so far) and I am looking to put together the Mets team, this is two more cards towards that goal.

There were some minor league cards too...

As I get closer to acquiring all the Mets cards from major manufacturers from the last 50 years, I find myself contemplating whether or not I should start picking up minor league Mets affiliates team sets.  You know, so I can have something new to drive myself nuts about. 

One great thing about baseball cards is, even when you think you have All The Cards, you don't...

...there is always an oddball you have never seen, an insert from a set that you didn't collect, a shiny variation of a vague set.  And, of course, stickers.  That Strawberry is an OPC sticker, to boot.  Oh yeah, and that cool graded Johan belonged in the Draft portion from yesterday but somehow wound up here.  Ahhh, my wonderful organizational skills.

There was a large vein of recent Mets cards, which is good, because I am still filling in the gaps from the last couple years:

There was an abundance of 2011 Topps, which I think finishes off my team set (I'll have to check).  I didn't have a Lucas Duda from the 2011 Bowman set, nor the Ike Davis from Heritage, and now I do.  I think James Fuller invented the steam engine or the hair brush or something, I'll have to check that as well.

Last but not least are some more contemporary Mets:

I think I now have 2 of those Gold R.A. Dickey cards.  I also think I am now one away from completing the Golden Tom Seavers, I have four and I believe there are five of each player.  I read a lot of trashing of the 2012 Topps design, but it has grown on me.  It is simple and modern with a little elegance and a little pizazz.  It fits in nicely with the last few years of designs with its white borders and curves.  I think I prefer the 2010 Topps design, but certainly not those two...is there a more apropos indicator of how lousy the Mets have been recently than Oliver Perez and Francisco Rodriguez?  I think I better wrap this up.

One man's Junk is another man's treasure.  Thanks Wes!

Jaybarkerfan's Junk Part 1 - The Draft

       This post was going to cover my recent dealings with Wes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk but it seems there is so much stuff, I am going to have to split it into two parts, Kill Bill style (definitely NOT Twilight style).  Wes recently cleaned house, or at least cleaned card pile, and had all sorts of stuff up for sale, trade, and such.  He also decided to run a trade bait draft, a brilliant solution to get rid of those middle of the road cards - too nice to give away, not substantial enough to sell on eBay, not beloved enough to have been directly traded for.  I decided to buy into this draft since he wisely had a complete preview of all the cards he was going to have up for bid (a most welcome bit of organization) and there seemed to be some stuff I would want.  Part one here is going to cover the draft.

       This was a most deliberate process.  It went round by round via lists we sent by email.  I am surprised it didn't take longer than it did (which was actually quite a while).  As an organizationally challenged person, I appreciate Wes' patience and thoroughness.  It was quite a nice little distraction to see what cards I got and missed on.  In the end, I am quite pleased.  Let's take a look at what came in:

The 1952 Coogan there was my #1 pick.  How can you turn down a such a perfect piece of imperfect vintage cardboard?  While I don't think it was my first choice, it does fit a very specific purpose.  My 1952 Topps page is mostly very well loved cards.  One of them, though, was not.  This specimen will fit right in with the rest of the well-loved original Topps cards and I can move the more handsome card to a toploader or to eBay.  I plan on starting a series of posts highlighting my Topps pages, since these pages cover every set since 1952 (and a lot of them replace the sets I built myself).  You will see the Coogan there.  Also here is a Nolan Ryan insert I didn't have, in fact one I have never heard of...it is from one of Donruss' Spanish language sets.  The two Reggie Jacksons here are wonderful; great contrasting images and uniforms.  Plus, shiny!  The Gary Carter there is actually not the 1978 Topps card, but the 2011 Cards Your Mother Threw Out insert (observant students of fontage will notice the difference).  If my mother ever threw out my baseball cards, I'd disown her.  The rest of the cards are all pretty predictable: a David Wright insert, a 1992 Gold Winner Met, a groovy UD Decade Gaylord Perry and a Allen & Ginter Mickey Mantle.  Well, OK, that last one isn't exactly predictable, but I can't turn down A&G vintage stars, even Yankees.

On to the next nine:

Right off the bat, three Mets inserts of three of my personal favs.  I looked and could not believe I didn't have that Wonder Years Mike Piazza card.  I own the UD Retro Lunchbox of Piazza for crying out loud, but somehow that piece of nouvelle psychedelia missed my collection.  The second row has some Sportflix Cecil Fielder goodness, a Paul Sorrento über-shiny Pinnacle card that I did not have (click here to see why this is important), and a Joey Votto insert from last year for his player page.  The last three there are: a 3D Topps insert of Ubaldo Jimenez - this set is so wonderful, plus it matches will with the Fielder above it.  I have a soft spot for ol' Froot Loops, so I had to snag that Mickey Tettleton insert...after all, how many Mickey Tettleton inserts can there be?  Lastly, I grabbed that Neil Walker Topps Gold card for Robert's Insanity Set, but it turns out it is a number he already has, so it will find a spot in my Rookie Cup collection.  Oh, and these were kind of in drafting order, but I think I mixed them up for aesthetic layout purposes.   I am a slave to my particular fashion.

Last batch:

First card here is a 1998 SPx Finite Frank Thomas.  I was obsessed with this set when it came out.  It was the first all serial numbered set and I fell for it head over heels.  I bought boxes and boxes of it.  It has three levels of shiny to each card and they are numbered accordingly.  This is the "spectrum" level, the highest thus the lowest numbered, this one is numbered to /1750, which in 1998 was pretty damn low.  Plus, the scan doesn't give it its proper blinding due.  Second, there is another Mike Piazza insert I didn't have, as well as a Tom Seaver shiny insert that I didn't have.  In the very middle there is a Carlos Delgado insert which I picked late, just because it is a Met and I am a completist when it comes to having all the Mets.  Also picked late was that 1983 Topps ERA Leaders card.  I am a sucker for league leader cards.  The rest of this scan are minis, all with various destinations.  The Adrian Gonzalez mini is going to Night Owl, since he is more obsessed with minis than anyone ever.  The Reggie and Seaver minis are going right into my player collections.  The last three are Allen and Ginter minis of various years and subject.  I will probably keep them, but the McGehee might go to Thorzol when he has his "Trade Me Anything" posts.  I keep oddball Brewers around for just such emergencies.   

So I picked up 28 cards for about 50 cents each.  How can you beat Seaver and Piazza inserts, 1952 Topps cards, and Allen and Ginter mini inserts for 50 cents a piece?  Point is, you can't.  Thanks again Wes for running your draft and having such marvelous cards to choose from.

Coming tomorrow: Lots from Jaybarkerfan's Junk.  Lots and Lots of Lots.

Cooperstown.

       By my early teens, my mother was out of ideas.  She raised me, my older brother, and my younger sister by herself - my father put the absent in absentee father by disappearing before my eighth birthday, never to return.  To her credit, she could have given up at any time and never did.  I was always precocious and hard to handle, but when the double whammy of my brother leaving the house to join the army and puberty hit, I became borderline incorrigible. My mother grew up with four sisters and didn't exactly know what to do with a boy. It was my mother who took me to baseball games as a child and now at age 13, when she was trying anything to reach out to me, she decided to take me to Cooperstown.  This was a grand idea as it was pretty close by (we live in northern New Jersey close to New York...how close?..like 400-yards-from-the-border close) and it combined my two favorite nerdy things: baseball and museums.  The first trip went so well, it became a yearly tradition.  We went four or five times in my teens and they are some of my most cherished late-childhood memories.  My last trip took place somewhere around my 17th birthday.  Through the years, I had always wanted to return.  My brother and I talked about it and talked about it but never went.  For four years, I dated a woman from Syracuse with family in Watertown, Rochester, and Buffalo, so I was constantly in upstate New York, yet somehow I never got around to going with her either. 

       So last month, when I was suffering from a nasty case of cabin fever, I got the brilliant idea of driving up to Cooperstown.  I find spontaneity the best, so when this idea came on that Saturday morning, I got in the car and just went.  After a long winding two hour drive, I was there.

That scan shows my ticket and brochure.  The bottom ticket there is from one of my childhood trips in 1992, but it has the "junior" discount, so I think that is my sister's ticket and not mine.  It has been in my Hall of Fame binder for 20 years and I just noticed that.  Either that, or my mother somehow convinced the guy back then that her gigantic 16 year old son was a "junior".

I also took some great pictures in the museum with my cell phone.  Do you think I have any idea how to get pictures off of my phone and onto my computer?  Nope.  I tried for two days with no success, so you will just have to imagine how much fun I had in the museum. Besides, this is a card blog, not a repository for my pseudo-vacation photos.

OK, trips like this require a pocket check, so let's do it:

Now, aside from the museum, the strip of Main Street in Cooperstown has about a dozen sports memorabilia and card stores.  It is basically the baseball geek mecca.  I had left without my wantlists or anything, so I was flying blind, but I picked up some good stuff.  The receipt there is from one of the shops.  The Cooperstown Bat brochure is for a gift I want to buy for my uncle.  I even found two dollars stuck in the CB Brochure there - score!  I also had to buy a hat in the museum gift shop since I left the house without one and I chose the one day of the year it actually snowed this winter to drive north.

So what cards did I score?  Aside from the usual bevy of Mets (which will show up in another post) and, oddly, some Saints (which already got a shout out in a recent post) I filled in some holes in some pages and player collections and I will, appropriately, show the Hall of Famers I got here.

Working on a budget, as usual, I picked up some nicely worn and loved vintage cards.  That 1971 Bench set me back a whole quarter - but I knew my Bench collection was heavy on faux-vintage, so I had to have it.
 
From the same pile came they 1971 Kaline, which totally matches that 1966 in dinged cornerness.

Breaking with the pattern here, I did not buy that 1971, but that handsome 1974. And who rocked better sideburns, year after year, than Stretch?  I used to own the "Wash. Nat. League" error version; it was a cornerstone of my long neglected error and variation collection.  I still need one more vintage McCovey to finish this page - that Topps Archives card belongs with my Rookie All Stars.  You can see how organization is not my strong suit...moving on.

I found a bunch of these Ripken '94 Score cards I didn't know existed in one shop.  I grabbed nine of them and made this page, I decided to break up the longways and uprightways cards for a little variety.

When Topps went through their reprint-a-famous-player's-cards-every-year phase, Nolan Ryan was one of those players (also see Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle).  I had long known I only had eight of those cards.  Much like the McCovey, I put X in the center square and picked up that 1975 reprint for this page.
 
I have long been obsessed with Babe Ruth's pitching career.  And if there is one player that has more faux vintage cards than the Babe, I don't know who it is.  Yet somehow, I did not have the Babe in a pitching pose on a card...until now.  I have no idea why I didn't put it in the middle, where it belongs.

Last but not least, I had recently reorganized a few players pages and I recalled that Fergie could have a nifty stripe of the three teams he is best known for if I somehow scored a third Rangers card.  When I saw that 1976 Topps with the palm trees, how could I resist even if I didn't "need" it.  Turns out, it makes this page look pretty awesome.