March Mystery Post

This post will be a mystery at first since I'm not sure what I'm going to post about. This month of March was lets just say a Family Thing Month. I prefer not to discuss it on my blogs. I try to keep mu family stuff away from here since this blog is primarily for Trading Cards. Even my regular blog Kirk's Knook I try to keep away from discussing some of my personal and family stuff.

While looking through my card hoard searching for something to blog about last night (30 Mar 2022) I came across some stuff I forgot I had. Among the forgotten goodies was this Wax Box Panel of 4 cards from 1991 Topps Baseball.

Wax Box Panel number 3 of 4 if they were numbered that way. The individual cards are lettered as the numbers. This panel has cards numbered lettered I, J, K, L Yes the top left corner is crunched. I think it has always been that way. I think I got this from some sort of trade, or perhaps a large card lot or oddball card lot purchase. It could also have come from my friend's Son's collection I had acquired a few years back.

1991 Topps Baseball Wax Box Card Panel:

I Willie McGee St. Louis Cardinals

J Dale Murphy Philadelphia Phillies

K Eddie Murray Los Angeles Dodgers

L Dave Parker Milwaukee Brewers

I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep this or not, but it does have a Fave Baltimore Oriole (in a different uniform). In fact 3 of the 4 players featured on this panel are in the uniforms of teams I am not used to seeing them in. Dale Murphy I am used to seeing as an Atlanta Brave, Eddie Murray the aforementioned Oriole, and Dave Parker a Pittsburgh Pirate. The completest in me sort of wants to find the other 3 panels, but oddly I don't normally collect box panels anymore.

Topps Now: Harper Now

I did a little Topps Now splurging on Ebay a little while back. I purchased a total of 8 Topps Now cards from this year and last year. The ones from last year I've been sitting on for a little bit. You could say they were all technically Washington Nationals related, but yeah, technically these cards I'm about to show are not Nats cards they are Phillies cards with Bryce Harper. Huh? Oh yeah that tiny contract thing.

Now that Bryce is on a different team any new cards of him I get in his Philly uniform I'll yak about here on this my main blog. Old Nats Hawper cards I'll chat about on my Curly W Cards blog. I suppose I could also post the Harper Phillies cards on my Nats blog but I don't want to. Occasionally I will post Nats Alumni in team uniforms from their post-Nationals career, but I probably shouldn't. Then again these are my blogs my rules.

Before I get into the two new Harper Now cards I'll show the two copies of the technically first Bryce Harper as a Phillie card. Another blogger showed a new Bowman card which is the first released in packs product so he considers that one Harper's Philly debut card I hear that one is another dang super short print. UGH first 2012 Topps Archives SSP RC and now this? ACK! Anyway my "first" Bryce as a Phillie card I posted about on Curly W Cards when I ordered the two copies and gave the pertinent details of the order. The images I showed there were from the Ebay listing the images here are the actual copies in hand.

 I might eventually purge down to just one copy someday.

2019 Topps Now Baseball: ST-3 Bryce Harper Phillies

Now onto the other Now cards. Both I got from Ebay two different sellers. The first one is his Spring Training Debut with the Phillies I got for $7.50 Free Shipping.

2019 Topps Now Baseball: ST-4 Bryce Harper Phillies

The other card I got for $8.00 Free Shipping it is from the regular season. Harper's First Home Run as a Phillie.

2019 Topps Now Baseball: 24 Bryce Harper Phillies

I don't like the Now backs with no description of the event. Sometimes the card title on the front is not enough. And NO I will not pursue Bryce's "First Homer vs The Nationals" or "First Grand Slam vs Old Team".  You have to draw lines somewhere sometimes.

Strive For '65 Saturday: A Three Card Monty

STRIVE FOR '65 STATUS:

26 May 2018 Strive for '65 | 1965 Set Build | Master Want List Current card count: 273/598 (275/600) 46%

Here is the link to my last update from the end of December. So five months later I have only 3 more cards to add to this set build. While I was checking the Trading Card DataBase, to add this trio into it after receiving the cards, I had a bit of a shock. I saw that all three cards were already checked off there and thought I had mistakenly gotten three duplicates. I mistook the pink "want it" ("Need It") for "Have It". The color highlighting was not registering to my mind. I was just seeing the check mark. That is one of the dangers of marking stuff there on your "Want List" instead of just leaving the dang thing blank. I am glad I am not going crazy in that sense. I did need all three cards for this set build.

Wednesday 23 May 2018:

Received a small photo envelope with three cards from three Sportlots auctions. I got each card for the 25¢ opening bid plus a total of $5.75 shipping ($3.75 first item the $1.00 for each of the rest) The cards are in fantastic shape for 53 year old cards. They have some centering issues not perfect but much better than some of my others from this set. So here they are:

 351 Jim Perry Twins

Jim's brother Gaylord was featured in my last post from this series (link at the beginning of this post). I am fairly certain that it was not just a coincidence. As you can see Gaylord is mentioned on the back of Jim's card and in case you were wondering yes Jim is mentioned on the back of Gaylord's card.

 521 Philadelphia Phillies Rookie Stars: Dave Bennett and Morrie Steevens

Interesting how Morrie spells his last name with a double "e". It is even more interesting that I didn't notice his last name being misspelled with the more common "correct" spelling. Then again I didn't do any digging on that I just figure it is something that has a big chance of happening.

 537 California Angels Rookie Stars: Marcelino Lopez, Rudy May and Phil Roof

This card is interesting in that for a Team Rookie Stars card it has 3 players not just 2. I personally like it because Rudy May and especially Phil Roof were fave PC guys from my childhood to chase. Back then my PC players if they weren't Senators or Orioles were either super stars I had heard of or just guys I liked their names or I happened to have more than just one card of. In the late 1970s I was "super collecting" some players without realizing what "super collecting" was. It wasn't called that then. I don't think there was a name for it yet. Just as "scrapbooking" was a thing before it became a popular hobby in recent years.

The Latest Additions:
Wednesday 23 May 2018:
351 Jim Perry Twins
521 Phillies Rookies: Dave Bennet, Morrie Steevens
537 Angels Rookies: Marcelino Lopez, Rudy May, Phil Roof

Strive For '65 Status Saturday: Been SportLotin'

STRIVE FOR '65 STATUS:
23 January 2016
Strive for '65 | 1965 Set Build | Master Want List

 Current card count: 246/598 (248/600) 41.5%

As I mentioned last status update post (the first of this kind of post sort of) I did some ordering on Sportlots. The first cards that came in (last Saturday of curse the day my last update was posted) were all from one dealer at $1.00 each. There were five more modern cards with them from the 2003 Topps Bazooka set, but that doesn't matter here for this post. This post and any later posts will only mention cards from the 1965 Set build, even if it was just one card from a box of thousands.

I will list the cards newest arrivals listed first and grouped as they came.

The Latest Additions:

Friday 22 Jan 2016: 7 cards from Canada
46 Bob Lee Angels VG
47 Tommy Harper Reds VG
52 Ed Roebuck Phillies VG
57 St. Louis Cardinals Team Card VG
74 Red Sox Rookie Stars: Rico Petrocelli and Jerry Stephenson VG
82 Braves Rookie Stars: Santos Alomar and John Braun VG
431 Cardinals Rooke Stars: Nelson Briles and Wayne Spiezio EX

Wednesday 20 Jan 2016: One '65 card only
60 Jim O'Toole Reds VG/EX

Tuesday 19 Jan 2016: Wow I tied my record for most packages received for a card mail day at 13 packages (3 bubble mailers, 10 PWEs). Not all had 1965 cards, but I got a total of 13 cards to add to this set. Most of the envelopes had 2 or 3 cards with 4 cards being the most cards in an envelope (that one had no '65s) So here we go for this day:

64 Lou Burdette Cubs EX/NM

4 NL 1964 Home Run Leaders: Willie Mays Giants, B. Williams Cubs, J Callison Phillies, D. Cepeda Giants, Jim Hart Giants VG/EX
209 Pittsburgh Pirates team card VG has crease

19 Gates Brown Tigers EX/NM

338 Philiadelphia Phillies team card VG/EX

83 George Thomas Tigers EX

173 Detroit Tigers team card VG Front blot thing right side, back very clean

29 Felix Mantilla Red Sox VG front has medium to dark gum stain, dent/ding indentation left side by team banner
78 Dal Maxvill Cardinals EX/NM
426 Milwaukee Braves Team Card EX Back off center on bottom part of a cartoon top is on right.

9 AL 1964 Pitching Leaders: Dean Chance Angels, Gary Peters White Sox, W. Bunker Orioles, J. Pizarro White Sox, D Wickersham Tigers Overall good offcenter to bottom some back has some pencil marks underlining all the Chicago players.

36 Bobby Wine Phillies Excellent front has some printing goof dots on players hat and a light printing streak line.

423 Jesse Gonder Mets - In Excellent shape

Received on Saturday 16 Jan 2016: One package 3 cards.

61 Chris Cannizzaro Mets (The guy whose name was misspelled, well missing the first name initial actually, on checklist no. 1 card 79 to make that variant)

151 Kansas City Athletics Team Card - Very off-center to the bottom edge, very noticeable on the back

234 Chicago White Sox Team Card

Backlog Of... Well Just Stuff

Edit: Oh pooh I already had a post scheduled for when I originally posted this. Sorry for the edit/change in posting.

Just to let you know I have a huge backlog of stuff including tons of scanning that I want to eventually post to this blog and my Curly W Blog. The biggest part of the problem is PRO-crastination. Procrastinating on scanning, procrastinating on most aspects of organization. I even procrastinate a little when I mention my maildays on on card forums at my TCC "blog" and TCZ show and tell "mail bag" post. Oddly enough those are more up-to-date than this blog is in part due to not including scans (sometimes I do, but it is very rare). Sometimes I wait waste a day or two before mentioning what I got in the mail there, sometimes it is the sheer volume of what came that intimidates me. Then there are these blogs and they really intimidate me when I look at how much I have to catch up on. So...

That means that some of my posts about maildays in the next month or two or three might be from ancient vintage maildays. I will most likely point out that they are from sometime in the way-back past and not something that just came "the other day". Try the other day from the other day from about two years ago in some cases. Then again I might have to wait until I complete a set or sub-set to mention some of this stuff.

The wonderful thing about blogging is there is no real standard for how, what, or even when you post something. I wonder if I should have ever composed this particular post to begin with.

So yeah I have some upcoming posts about stale snail mail.

Hmmm I should show a card or two... don't think I've shown this one.

1994 Ted Williams Baseball 9 Andy Etchebarren Orioles

(Front and Back)

and How about this one?

 2009 UD Goodwin Champions Mini Black Border 215 Jimmy Rollins Phillies

Gypsy Queen Back

(Front and Back)

1993 Upper Deck Fun Pack Mascot Madness Subset

In 1993 (and again in 1994) Upper Deck released an odd brightly colored baseball set they called "Baseball Fun Pack" they look like someone was on spring break in the late 1980s. One of the insert sets they randomly placed in the packs are this set called "Mascot Madness". The set consists of five cards of those fun loving foam heads the mascots. The "players" of this set are: Phillie Phanatic - Phillies, Pirate Parrot - Pirates, Fredbird - Cardinals, BJ Birdy - Blue Jays (who I featured in a "Mascot Mondays" Post) and Youppi - Expos. The backs of these cards give a brief bio of the mascot and the front has a full color picture next to a holographic picture of the mascot in front of a "field of stars" I guess to give a far out spacy feel to the set. Like many 1980s - 1990s holographic cards the hologram isn't that much of a big deal now. Back then it was but now-days it is eh. So here is the full set enjoy.

 1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

1 Phillie Phanatic - Phillies

(Front and Back)

  1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

2 Pirate Parrot - Pirates

(Front and Back)

  1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

3 Fredbird - Cardinals

(Front and Back)

  1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

4 BJ Birdy - Blue Jays

(Front and Back)

  1993 Upper Deck Baseball Fun Pack Mascot Madness

5 Youppi - Expos

(Front and Back)

I am always on the lookout for Mascot cards. I also accept Mascot Postcards and team issued promo cards/photos of mascots.

Collect The Mascots 2006 Upper Deck

I mentioned this particular set when I presented one of the cards from it for my Mascot Mondays post on Mr. Met. It was produced by Upper Deck in 2006 and is a mini-set of just three cards. Designed for kids and part of some online card giveaway or contest. They apparently were inserts to the regular 2006 Upper Deck Baseball set. So here are the three cards from:

2006 Upper Deck Collect The Mascots Set

This set features three of the most popular MLB Mascots at the time it was produced; Wally The Green Monster (Red Sox), The Phillie Phanatic (Phillies) and Mr. Met (Mets). The backs are all the same telling how the giveaway works. The only differences on the backs are the actual card number in the upper left corner and the website card entry code for that card at the bottom. Everything else is the same.

2006 Upper Deck Baseball - Collect The Mascots

MLB-1 Wally The Green Monster - Red Sox

(Front and Back)

 2006 Upper Deck Baseball - Collect The Mascots

MLB-2 Phillie Phanatic - Phillies

(Front and Back)

 2006 Upper Deck Baseball - Collect The Mascots

MLB-3 Mr. Met - Mets

(Front and Back)