Around The Card Room, Take 17

I got my first job was pushing in carts and bagging groceries at the Dierbergs in Manchester, Missouri during my junior year of high school. Bagging groceries was not very difficult, but I always seemed to end up on shopping cart duty for long stretches of my work shifts. St. Louis summers are hot and pushing in dozens of carts at a time in 95 degree heat with high humidity got old quick. I could have gone back to the grocery store for a second summer, but opted for a more interesting summer job my senior year of high school.  

My mother always played the organ at church when I was growing up. She had a long stint at a church in west St. Louis County where she also served as the choir director. My senior year of high school, one of her choir members had a son who lost his wife to cancer. The family had three children, two boys in elementary school and a daughter who was a two. Needless to say, the family needed some help, especially during the summer when the kids would be out of school. 

Long story short, I was pretty good with kids back in the day before I worked as a teacher. I did some volunteer work around the church with little kids and also did a high school senior project where I went back and worked with my former fifth grade teacher to help out struggling readers. I had one five minute interview where I met the father and the three kids after church and was hired to be a "manny". 

So long grocery carts.

I spent my summer playing games in yard, watching movies, bowling, and swimming. The kids taught me about Nintendo and I tried to teach them about baseball and baseball cards. It was a fun job that I ended up keeping from my senior year of high school through my senior year of college. I do not want to linger too much on the kids, because this is a post about an item from my card room. Let's just hit fast forward and say that all three of them are successful, amazing adults.

One of the best parts of this job was an invitation to the Boeing Leadership Day at Busch Stadium, which is where the father worked. The Cardinals hosted the event annually and would station eight to ten players around the concourse of the stadium a few hours before the game and Boeing employees could walk the concourse, meet the players, and get autographs signed.  

I deferred to the kids on the players we visited and I could have used several different baseballs here for this post, but I went with my favorite. 

Darryl Kile.  

As we walked the stadium and visited the different players, you could always tell the ones who enjoyed interacting with fans and which ones did not. Some of the players would chat up fans, take pictures, and sign everything and anything. Others kept their heads down, signed, and had limited interactions with the fans.  

Darryl Kile was great at the event and definitely fit into the category of being a player who was happy to interact with fans. He signed my baseball on the sweet spot without even asking. I do not really like talking up players at autograph events, but I made sure that I thanked him after he was more than generous with the autograph. 

I got a "You're welcome" and was off to see Fernando Vina.  

Incredible.  

Here is the back, err, the front of the baseball.  

 Look at that Mark McGwire bat in the background.  

Bet that has a good story too.  

Trading Card Co-Op

It's been awhile since I have had a chance to visit a local card shop here Raleigh.  It's been almost a year and half since the area has had a shop.  I have enjoyed hanging out at the card shows that are at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds during the hiatus.  There are always plenty of good cards at those shows, and it's fun to meet and talk to all the different collectors, but I have still missed having a card shop to call my own.  

A few of the collectors, who run some of the booths at the local card shows, have been working on a plan to bring back a card shop to the area.  After a lot of planning and hard work their shop, the Trading Card Co-Op, opened this weekend.  Sure, there was a tropical storm lingering around North Carolina during the beginning half of the weekend, but that was not going to stop me, and a bunch of other collectors, from making a trip out to the Grand Opening.    

If you live in the area, or are visiting the Raleigh area, the shop is in the Royal Building on Hillsborough Street across from Meredith College.  It's in the same building as The Brickhouse restaurant and Ben & Jerry's.  A convenient location, just a stop light down from 440.  

The shop has a really cool feel and has a little bit different set-up from other card shops.  The store is inside the building and collectors are welcomed by a glass facade, which makes up two of the four outside walls of the shop, and a nicely designed store logo on the front door.  

The inside of the Trading Co-Op has a really cool concept and feel.  From the outside doors it looks like any other card shop:  Boxes of new products on shelves, tables with boxes of cards, display cabinets, etc.  However, once you get inside the front door and start looking at the store's inventory and talking to the owners you will see why this is a unique and must see hobby shop.  

When I first visited the store I spent some time talking with Jimmy, who ran Big D's Card Shop and was also a fixture at many of the local card shows, along with James who is also a fixture (and organizer) at the local card shows.  There are several other collectors who frequent the local card shows who have also an interest in the Trading Card Co-Op, which is really where the shop takes on its flavor.  

The Trading Card Co-Op has much more of a card show feel than a card shop feel.  The display cabinets are each stocked by one of the steak-holders in the store.  There is literally something there for everyone.  When I visited on Saturday morning, I had a fairly busy day planned, and can honestly say that the forty-five minutes to hour that I spent in the store were insufficient to take in everything that I would have normally done on a visit to a card shop.  

Again, a stand alone brick and mortar card shop might be doable in that amount of time, but a good card show?  You can't pass up a good table, I have been there.  Only, at the Trading Card Co-Op you are looking in the standard card shop display cases.  

I started out with Jimmy's cabinet since he always has some Durham Bulls goodies lurking inside for me.  You can't see it too clearly from the picture, but there are some nice Blake Snell cards on the bottom shelf.  Jimmy is also the resident expert on the Carolina Hurricanes and always has a nice mix of hockey cards.  

I had actually done a little work with Jimmy on a few cards the week before the store had opened and picked up two nice cards, one Cardinal and one former Durham Bull. 

 Cardinals player first:

I have a bunch of the Cardinals autographs out of the Past Time Pennants set, but did not have the Gibby autograph.  Always a nice signature, plus he is wearing his trademark jacket underneath his jersey.  Jim Edmonds rolled like that for awhile too.  

Durham Bulls player:

I have not done much with memorabilia cards this year, but this one was too nice to pass up.  The card has the authentication sticker on it that Topps started using last year with the Strata cards.  I am typing this post while holding a baby, that's been most of my day, so I still need to look up the code to see when Archer wore this jersey.  

So, this is where the card shop feel kicks in.  After finding a pair of nice cards from one seller, I moved over a cabinet and found a few more nice things around the shop.  I picked up an Aledmys Diaz Optics rookie card from James.....

who had a stocked cabinet filled with all sorts of great baseball, football, and basketball cards along with some great autographed memorabilia.   If my budget had been a little larger I could have had a pretty fun time picking out some of the cards in here.....

Really I could go on and on about each of the different sections of the store, but I am not writing a dissertation here.  Let's summarize it this way:  The inventory is really strong in each of the cabinets and the collectors running the store are very knowledgable.  Here's a look at some of the other cabinets......

This is one of the cabinets (above) that I could have spent some more time on.  I see that Rodon on the top shelf.  Let's hope its there next week.  Some very nice hockey and football stuff in here too.  

This cabinet (above) was baseball heavy with a lot of nice modern stuff on the top and some vintage stuff underneath on the bottom two shelves. The vintage cards looked sharp.  The cabinet below had some great basketball autographs and cards, a little soccer, and a nice Piscotty card on top. 

a cabinet of autographs......

and more...

                  

They even have a cabinet with gaming cards. 

If I had spent another hour or two at the store I could have sat down at each of the cabinets and done a write up on each of them and had a lot of material for my post.  I feel that way moving from table to table to table at a card show sometimes too.  I picked out a few cards, but could have easily bought something from each and every cabinet in the store and the pieces would have been strong additions to my collection.  

There is even a section in the middle of the store with boxes sorted out by teams for collectors looking for some more inexpensive single cards.  I found a cool old Pacific Darryl Kile parallel numbered out of 70...

The store also sells packs and boxes, which is the direction I went, since my time was limited and I have been a little behind on my 2016 cards.  I missed the basketball, football, and hockey boxes, but in the picture at the bottom you can see the shelves wrap around most of the store.  They also post collectors opening boxes and their hits on their Facebook page. 

I decided to work on Stadium Club and Finest.  I know the post is getting long at this point, but everyone wants to know what came out of the boxes.... 

 Let's start out with the Stadium Club.  

The base set probably deserves its own post, or two, which it will get in the coming days.  I pulled two autographs out of the box.  First up, is Reds catcher Kyle Waldrop.

Waldrop has been in Triple A with the Louisville Bats for the last few years.  The Reds had him up the last week or two, but I believe he's been sent back down to the International League.  The Bats are out of the playoffs, so I am guessing that he might be done for the season after this weekend.  

Which brings me to my other autograph....

which belongs to Rangers pitching prospect Luke Jackson.  Kind of a different looking card, so I had to flip over to the back which revealed that I pulled.....

a 1/1.  While Jackson has not spent a ton of time with the Rangers this year, the former first round draft pick, is still rated by most publications as a Top 20 prospect in the deep Texas system.  In fact, several have him ahead of Michael Matuella, former Duke pitcher, who once was considered a candidate to go first overall in the 2014 draft.  

and the Finest.  I will do more pictures, less words....

all very nice, so the two autographs had a very strong Durham Bulls flavor to them.  First up is Andruw Jones.  Always a very nice looking signature....

and the final autograph was my favorite card I landed from the first weekend of the Trading Card Co-Op: 

This is just a great looking cards.  Not sure it needs a lot of explanation.  

Overall, I had a great time during my brief stop at the Trading Card Co-Op, but I am looking forward to my return visit in the very near future.  There is so much in the store and it is such a cool concept to have a card show set up and feel.  If you live, or have the chance to visit, the Raleigh area I highly recommend a visit.  

My Top 50 On Cardboard- #20 Old Guys- Part 1

If you've done your math on all of these posts I have made during my brief time blogging, that all focus on the thirty year window I have been collecting cards, then you'd know that my collection began sometime during the late summer or fall of 1983.  Cards and collecting have changed greatly over the past thirty years.  Some of the changes have been good, while others have been not so good.  I am not going to get into a specific list of items that I feel have been positive or negative this evening, instead I am going to focus solely on one item that I feel has been a positive for the industry no matter the type of collector you are.

Sometime during the mid 90s there was an obvious and significant boom the number of card manufacturers and brands on the market.  This trend as a whole had a definite negative impact on the hobby as a whole.  Look no further than the fact that only two cards companies, Topps and Upper Deck, still have the lights on in their office buildings.  Within all of those card releases from all of those different card brands came a nice new little niche: New cards for old players.  Sets such as Upper Deck Legends, Topps Archives, Donruss Classics, and others produced fabulous lines of older players from yesteryear and offered collectors a chance at relics and autographs of players who had been retired for years.

Growing up a Cardinals fan in suburban St. Louis my life as a baseball fan has been pretty nice.  I obviously grew up collecting cards, but I was also fortunate enough to live in where my father was a pretty big fan of the game too.  When I was younger we would always go to a few Cardinals games every summer and I would get to see some of my favorite Cardinals in action: Ozzie Smith, Vince Coleman, Willie McGee, John Tudor, Jack Clark, amongst others.  Along the way my father would always tell me great stories about games he attended when he was my age living in North St. Louis within walking distance of old Busch Stadium.

I heard plenty about the Cardinals players from his generation starting with Stan Musial and covering the team through the sixties with tales about Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Mike Shannon, Roger Maris, and others.  To this day, I still get the occasional story about a game my dad saw as a kid.  I have heard the Don Larsen perfect game story several times, but still love it every time I hear about how he walked home from school to get lunch and the World Series game was on the radio....

Hearing about the players that played before my time peaked my interest in collecting their cards.  As a kid I obviously could not afford most of the cool vintage cards of Musial and other great players from past generations.  Even as I got older, the vintage cards could still be out of reach at times.  Luckily, the niche card set focusing on the older generations of players helped me, and other collectors, pick up cards of older players for our modern collections.

Over the next two days I am going to show off some of the cool cards out there for collectors to pick up which feature older players.  Tonight's focus will strictly be on autographs.  Tomorrow's post will feature relic and base set cards.  Fair warning, these posts are Cardinals heavy.

Combo Autographs:

1994 Upper Deck Mickey Mantle/Ken Griffey Jr. Dual Autograph 

This is one of the most iconic cards of the past thirty years and I own it with a grain of salt.  I really just wanted to own a Mickey Mantle autograph.  Nothing more.  I ended up with a Ken Griffey Jr. autograph attached to the side of it.  While some collectors love the combo autograph, I just do not always get the connection.  I get the connection that Griffey and Mantle were somewhat similar players, but there were also some difference there too.  In my opinion, combo autographs work when the combination of players is obvious.  Throw Maddux and Glavine on a the same card and have them sign it and it's a no-brianer.  Give me Mantle and Maris.  Cool.  Mantle and Griffey.  Ehh.  I know there are plenty of people who'd love to own a Mantle/Griffey auto, so let me give you a better example of the ridiculousness that can happen when you pair modern players with older players.

2004 SP Ozzie Smith/Matt Bush Dual Autograph 

Do we actually know why Upper Deck lost their baseball card license?  I might speculate that cards like this Ozzie Smith and Matt Bush autograph combination may have contributed.  With the Griffey he was at least an established player by the time that cards was produced.  Putting a prospect with a Hall of Famer is a sure sign of future disaster.  Never a good idea.  Never.

If you want a solid combination autograph think about these two factors: same team, same era.  Here's a good example of a really good multiple signature card:

2004 Upper Deck Legends Timeless Teams Cardinals Autographs 

All the signatures on this card belong to Cardinals.  Check.  All the signatures on this card belong to members of players from the mid to late 60s Cardinals.  Check.  Add in the fact that this trio won a pair of World Series rings and three National League pennants and you've got yourself a winner of an autographed card.

Single Autographs
Obviously this is going to be my favorite category featured on this blog post.  I love collecting autographed cards and have made a point to pick up a card, or two or three, of as many Hall of Fame players as possible.  Beyond the obvious Hall of Fame targets it's also fun to find older retired players with cool autographs too.  By older, I could mean anyone from George Kell to Jose Oquendo.  Not always older.  My main criteria for finding Hall of Fame autographs on cards is simple: certified and on-card.

2004 Topps World Series Highlights Stan Musial Autograph

Most players who sign regularly can be found on-card with a slight premium on some of the cards.  Of course, there are others you can only find on stickers and other players whom you just end up with and say good enough...Tony Perez on a sticker.  Sounds good.

2003 Donruss Signature Tony Perez Autograph 

I cannot emphasize the certified part enough.  There is plenty of money involved in autographs and baseball cards.  If you are going to invest money in finding the autograph of a player like Stan Musial or Mickey Mantle why not spend the extra dollars to ensure that the card is the real deal?  Sure, that sounds a little bit snobby, but I just like to be smart with the money I spend on cards.  I'd rather have less money and know something is the real deal than a little more money and an autograph that's not worth the card it's signed on.

Not to say I am completely against on-card autographs of former players, I am not, but just be careful.  If I get the autograph myself then I am cool with the card.  If I get the card from a highly trusted source than I am cool.  Never Ebay.  Ever.  Here are two on-card autographs in my collection that were acquired in person:

2000 Fleer Impact Daryl Kile Autograph 

  This Darryl Kile autograph was a card that I got signed in-person before he died in 2002.  I got tickets to a corporate event at Busch Stadium from my summer job during college and had the chance to meet several Cardinals players and get them to sign autographs before the game.  Kile signed a ball and a card for me.  While I have seen other autographs like mine out on the secondary market, I have not bought them because I did not see Darryl Kile sign the items.  I saw him sign this card.  Not for sale or for trade.  It stays.

1991 Fleer Todd Zeile Autograph 

This Todd Zeile card was an in-person card that was signed for a trusted source of mine.  While I did not see Todd Zeile sign the card I have little reason to believe that anyone would want to forge a Todd Zeile autograph and then sell it in the card shop outside of St. Louis for a few bucks.  This Zeile card is a perfect example of a dilemma faced by team collectors.  What do you do when a player has no certified autographs?  This is a great way to add them to your collection.  In this case, my source is one of my favorite card stores outside of St. Louis.  The guy has tons of items like this that he picks up from the Cardinals Winter Warm Up or from other very reliable collectors.  He's allowed me to add at least a dozen good autographs of 80s and 90s Cardinals to my collection.

New Darryl Kile Card

I picked up a new Darryl Kile card in a trade a few days ago and was happy to see it in my mailbox this afternoon.  The card is a 2002 Upper Deck 40 Man Looming Large jersey card.  I collected Darryl Kile cards back in the day, but of course the card companies stopped making cards of him immediately after his death in 2002.  He has no certified autographs and only one materials card.  Even though he had played for the Cardinals for several season when the 40 Man card was released, the people at Upper Deck put a Rockies jersey in the card.  Brilliant!  I still watch for his cards and will trade for one if I don't have it, but it's also nice collecting a player that doesn't have hundreds of 1/1 cards, printing plates, and autograph variations.  This is a card that I have duplicates copies of and will buy or trade for more if I have the chance.

I also posted a scan of my Darryl Kile autographed card.  I got the card signed in 2000 at a Boeing event at the stadium.  Pretty sweet card.  

2002 Upper Deck 40 Man Looming Large Darryl Kile Jersey

2000 Fleer Impact Darryl Kile autograph (in-person)