TWiB: Scorpions, Saito, Stone Fingers, Soccer, and Storage Boxes

Yee haw.  Baseball is back.  Sure it's only Spring Training... but it's better than basketball or even following my beloved San Jose Sharks who have flirted with .500 the entire season, but haven't been able to hold my attention.  I guess I'm still adjusting to the new and not-improved era of Sharks hockey.  I'll still support them by wearing my jersey and collecting their cards, but I'm ready to focus my attention on baseball.

Okay... let's kick another This Week in Blogging post off with a minor league card of his Airness...

#1:  An Expensive Minor League Card

1991 Upper Deck #SP1

On Monday, Ryan over at This Card is Cool showed off a really cool jersey card of Michael Jordan from his days with the Scottsdale Scorpions.  Back in the mid 90's, I was one of those collectors who chased his baseball cards.

2001 UD Prospect Premiers Heroes of Baseball Dual Jersey #J-JJ

It took me awhile, but I finally added my first and only memorabilia card of MJ back in 2010 that also happens to have a Scorpions swatch.

#2:  Super Saito!

Greg over at Night Owl Cards showed off the COMC haul he recently received and included were some Takashi Saito cards.  He mentioned him being a pretty big deal during his two years with the Dodgers and he wasn't kidding.  You should check out his 2007 stats.

2008 Topps Silk #NNO (#'d 44/50)

Saito has gotta be one of only a handful of players who had a lower career ERA in the MLB than across the Pacific in the NPB.

#3:  Stone Fingers

No idea how or why Toby Harrah received that nickname... but it's an attention grabber.  He was featured in a post I read over on The Shlabotnik Report this morning and it reminded me of when I was a kid.  Back in 1982, Harrah hit .304 with 25 home runs... which made an impression on the ten year old version of me.

2013 Tristar Signa Cuts Bronx Edition Red #NNO (#'d 1/5)

Although I mostly associate him with the Texas Rangers and Cleveland Indians, I just couldn't pass up this terrible looking cut signature of his.  I found it at a card show back in 2019 for a buck.

Looking back at that card show haul reminded me of another really cool purchase I made:

2019 Chrome Negative Refractor #203

I purchased this card off of a dealer for $20.  These days regular Chrome rookie cards of Tatis sell for $80 to $100 on a regular basis.  This card is over $500 now.  Crazy times people.  Crazy times.

Anyways... getting back to The Shlabotnik Report... if you enjoy learning interesting 70's baseball trivia, please check out his series:  The 1970's: A to Z.

#4:  Another Interesting Collection

The Best Bubble has some of the most interesting mini collections around:  Bubble Blowing Cards, Athletes Balancing Bags and Balls, and Marlboro Man Advertisements just to name a few.

2017 Archives Fan Favorites Autographs #FFA-BV

On Monday, he showed off some cards from his Fans In The Stands collection.  It's so cool and unique.  Anyways, outside of the famous Mark Jackson Hoops card (which I don't own yet)... this Yankees fan was the only card that came to mind when thinking of fans.

#5:  Creative Design

I just wanted to give P-Town Tom over at Waiting 'til Next Year a huge shoutout for his custom storage box.  If you haven't seen it, please head over to his blog and check it out.

#6:  Entertaining Errors

Matt over at Big Blue Cardboard showed off an interesting error card this week... where Panini placed a David Wilson sticker-graph on a Rueben Randle card.

I just happened to be watching a Tony Gwynn Jr. card featuring his father's autograph earlier in the week on eBay.  Due to collecting cutbacks, I let it go.

2006 Exquisite Collection Dual Rookie Signatures #55

However I did grab this one a few years ago off of COMC.  If you're bored, I wrote a post about this goof in further detail five years ago.

#7:  An Entertaining Soccer Card Post

Are you a soccer card collector?  Head over to A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts to check out his Kaka card.

2013 Topps MLS Kit Relic #KIT-CW

Outside of the occasional San Jose Earthquakes autograph or memorabilia card, I don't really chase soccer cards... but I do enjoy watching them play at Avaya Stadium (when there's not a pandemic).

#8:  Football Card Blog Bat-Around

1975 Topps #525

1975 Topps #60

Ryan (SumoMenkoMan) is hosting a "Living" Blog Bat-Around over on his blog.  For details, please click either of those links or you can read my response post from Thursday.

#9:  Leaving Your Collection Behind

Dime Box Nick gave his readers something to think about this week, when he wrote about what would happen to his collection if he had to leave it all behind.  It's something I've thought about on numerous occasions.

And it's one of the reasons, I've started to clear out some of the stuff cluttering my place...

Last week, I threw this collection on Craigslist for $100 and three different people reached out to me within an hour.  The only interaction I had was with the first guy... and I immediately accepted his $70 offer.  He was happy... I was happy.  That's what I call a win/win situation.

Yesterday, I listed some boxes of basketball cards for $400 and sold them this morning.  However I'll hold off on showing the photos until I've actually completed the sale on Monday.

As for the rest of my stuff... I'm going to slowly move duplicates of sets and graded cards I've accumulated over the years.  No... I'm not dumping my collection.  But do I really need ten 1992-93 Fleer Ultra Shaquille O'Neal PSA 10 rookie cards? 

That wraps up another This Week in Blogging post.

Feel free to throw down your thoughts on Spring Training, MJ's baseball cards, custom storage boxes, selling sports cards, or collecting soccer cards down in the comment section below.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

It's Show Time!

It's official.  I'm addicted to cheap cards.  Seriously... it's a problem.

Ten days ago, I walked into the annual TRISTAR Sports Collectors Show with a plan:

#1:  Show some self-control and limit my dime box and dollar bin purchases.

#2:  Look for either a graded 1956 Topps hall of famer or a complete 1973 Topps baseball set.

Pretty simple and not too challenging, right?  Wrong.

My friends set up next to the guy from COMC, who happened to bring a boatload of shoeboxes and 5,000ct. boxes filled with dollar and dime cards.  It was almost as if the Cardboard Gods were testing me.  If they were, I failed miserably.


Purchase #1:  Dime Box Purchase  $10

If you're a 70's vintage guy who doesn't care too much about card condition, than this was the show for you.  The COMC guy had monster box after monster box filled with 70's baseball.  I saw multiple rows of 1971, 1972, and 1975 Topps baseball.

When I got there, three guys were sifting through them, so I skipped those boxes and targeted his other dime boxes:

I ended up grabbing 121 cards for $10, which is a little over 8¢ per card.  Eight cents for a 1984 Topps Traded Bret Saberhagen rookie card was hard to pass up.

Can you believe that back in 1990 this card sold for more than $20?  Talk about sports card depreciation.

However... that's nothing compared to this card:

I found this card, which I needed for my 1986 Donruss set sitting in the COMC guy's dollar bins.

Purchase #2:  Dollar Bin Purchase  $100

I probably should have started with these boxes, because they were loaded with all sorts of cool stuff.  Vintage.  Memorabilia cards.  Rookie cards.  Autographs.  Low numbered inserts and parallels.

One of my first finds was the 2006 Upper Deck Dustin Pedroia rookie card and after about an hour, I had pulled out 129 cards and 6 sets.  Here's a sampling of the stuff I found:

I was kind of shocked when we added up everything and was about to start putting cards back when he told me to take everything for $100.  That's about 75¢ per card.

After sifting through them at my house, I discovered that about half of the cards were damaged to some extent, which was kind of a bummer.  Oh well... you get what you pay for.

I'm still stoked that I found this minor league card of Edgar Martinez:

It wasn't the best deal in the purchase, but it's my second favorite card in the bunch right behind the Canseco, which as crazy as this sounds... actually booked for $100 back in 1990:

I realize that most people don't take Beckett's values seriously anymore, but back in the day... the card shop I worked at couldn't keep these in stock and routinely sold them for full Beckett value.

Based on percentage rather than actual value, can anyone think of other cards that have depreciated as much as or more than the 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco?

Purchase #3:  Dime Packs  $5

There's nothing Earth shattering here, but for the price of a Whopper and some fries at Burger King, I was able to pick up 58 packs for a rainy day.  I'm mostly looking forward to the 1980 Topps Footballer cards, which I'll eventually share over on APTBNL.


Purchase #4:  8x10 Cards  $2

There are a number of you who don't like these oversized cards, but when it comes to my player collections, I'll take them... especially when they're 8 for $1.

My favorite?

I've always loved this action shot of Nomo... and the Dufex technology is a nice added touch.

Purchase #5:  Sets  $8

My first four purchases were made with the COMC guy.  This one came on the other side of the show, where there was a guy selling complete sets for a buck each.  He seemed motivated to dump his sets, so there's a good chance I could have gotten these cheaper.  But there's no need to haggle when you're already getting a good deal.

After eight hours of hanging out at the show, I dropped $125 on a ton of cards.  Unfortunately... I accomplished neither of my original card show goals.  I'm still debating whether or not it was worth it.  On one hand, I got a lot of cool stuff for myself and fellow bloggers.  On the other hand, $125 would have easily paid for a PSA 4 graded Willie Mays or Sandy Koufax without cluttering my office with stacks of cardboard.

Who would have thought that card collecting could create such first world problems?

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

Public Service Announcement

I'm going to preface this post by stating that I support and have faith in companies like Upper Deck, Tristar, Topps, and Steiner.  They're all companies who stake their reputation on their products that includes autographed memorabilia.

In fact five days ago... I purchased this Eric Chavez signed baseball off of eBay for $6.05 (+ $5.95 shipping):

It's one of those Tristar Hidden Treasure balls that come out of those mystery bags you see at card shops and card shows.  Each bag contains an autographed ball, a card with the player's name, and a certificate of authenticity.

And each ball has a tamper proof hologram that has a unique number, so collector's can verify the authenticity of the ball.

If you go to their website and plug in the code, they'll tell you who signed it, along with where and when the signing occurred:

Not bad, right?  Sure... maybe they could add a Polaroid of the athlete signing the specific ball too.  But in general... all of these measures along with a solid reputation was enough to earn my trust.

Well... at least until I learned about some shady stuff last night while hanging out with two of my buddies.

One of them is a guy who makes a living off obtaining autographs at team practices, golf tournaments, and games.  While the other is a sports card dealer that sets up at shows in our area.  Both are veteran dealers who have set up at the annual Tristar Show at The Cow Palace for many years.  And both are acquaintances of a guy who now has me questioning if some of my Tristar autographs are actually authentic.

Let's give this guy an alias and call him Mr. Scam.  He's a guy who lives in the Bay Area and regularly sets up at the Tristar and GTSM card shows selling his autographs.

For years, he's used Autograph Certification Experts (ACE Authentic), which is a local autograph authentication company that doesn't have a very good reputation in our hobby (ex. not allowed on eBay).

However... Mr. Scam has found an even better way to authenticate his fake signatures.  And believe it or not, it's actually something that any of us could do and get away with... which is very, very scary... especially for guys like me who has spent a lot of money on Tristar certified autographs in the past.

So here's the deal...

Step 1:  Mr. Scam buys multiple autograph tickets for a specific player.  We'll go ahead and use Buster Posey as an example, since he was one of the players involved in the scam a few months ago.

Step 2:  Mr. Scam also purchases the Tristar COA's to go along with each of his paid autographs.

Step 3:  Mr. Scam stands in line and gets his items signed by the player in front of a Tristar representative and hundreds of other fans waiting in line.  Let's say that he had Mr. Posey sign two photographs.

Step 4:  After he gets his autographs, Mr. Scam gets into another line and waits to get his items certified.  THIS IS WHERE THE SCAM TAKES PLACE.  While in line waiting, he puts the two signed photographs in his bag, and pulls out two Buster Posey jerseys signed by Mr Scam.

Step 5:  When it's his turn, he hands them the two Mr. Scam signed Buster Posey jerseys which get Tristar holograms attached to them.

Step 6:  Later on, he takes the two photos that Buster Posey signed earlier in the day to PSA/DNA and has them authenticate the real signatures.

In the end... Mr. Scam walks away with two signed Buster Posey photos (PSA/DNA authenticated) and two forged Buster Posey jerseys (Tristar authenticated).

Here's an example of what I'm talking about...

This jersey actually has an authentic signature of Buster Posey that was obtained at Pebble Beach in February.  However since it contains Posey's short signature, JSA didn't authenticate it.  So the owner went to Tristar and pulled off the same "switch-a-roo" trick that Mr. Scam uses and received the Tristar hologram.  With Tristar backing up the signature, the guy turned around and had it authenticated by PSA/DNA too.

Now like I said... this is actually a jersey that Posey held and signed (my buddy was at the same golf tournament and knows the guy who obtained it), so the autograph isn't in question.

It's the authentication process that I'm questioning.

Do you need a little more evidence?  Well here's the thing.  Buster Posey charged $200 to sign jerseys at the Tristar show.  Do you really think that he's going to give his fans the short signature for that price?

Here's what it should look like:

That's the signature fans received when they paid full price at Tristar.  But there's one more thing that's shady about this jersey...

The inscriptions were added by someone other than Buster.  The Sharpie used is obviously different, plus Mr. Posey wasn't standing around adding inscriptions at Pebble Beach.

Now there's actually a fairly simple solution to stopping guys like Mr. Scam and the guy who once owned the Posey short signature.  Tristar needs to attach the tamper proof hologram immediately after the athlete signs the item.  This prevents shady people from switching out their items.

Just in case you're wondering if I've notified Tristar, I sent them a message on their site that includes the same details in this post.  If and when I hear back from them, I'll definitely let all of you know what they say.

At the end of the day... I still have faith in the products I receive directly from Tristar, like stuff I purchase off of their site or things I pull out of their products.  However... this is a huge flaw that needs to be addressed and fixed as soon as possible... otherwise supporters of their products are going to be dealt a major blow in the long run.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!