Little Big.

       I often wonder what I would do if I were rich.  I live a comfortable middle class lifestyle with very few complaints: I get to go on vacation, work on my terms (mostly), want for very little, and, hey, I even get to indulge in my hobbies.  I also collect baseball cards on my own terms with my own little group of rules - but much like my lifestyle, I can't help but imagine what would change in my piles if instead of $100 of disposable income a month, you suddenly injected millions of dollars. 

I adore old tobacco cards.  I love the look of them, I love the feel of them, and I even love the smell of them.  I really hate graded cards mostly because all you can touch is the little plastic prison and you don't get the tactile joy of colorful pieces of century-old cardboard.

I like to think that if I were suddenly flush with cash that the page you are looking at would be full of real cards rather than knockoffs.  Fourteen of these cards sit in a sort of limbo of unofficial reprint and unscrupulous counterfeit.  You'd know this if you look at the backs. 

The one in the middle is a Hygrade reprint from the 1980s.  It announces with great pride that this card, if real, would be worth $700! I have one of the t206 Honus Wagner that tells us it would be worth north of $8000.  Eight grand for a Wagner?!?! Sign me up with or without a lottery win, I'll take out a loan for that price. Today's hobby puts that card in a six-figure number and you can easily go into millions for it.  If I were rich, would I invest in Hans rather than stocks?  You're damn right I would.  Alas, they would all be in graded slabs but I would be willing to forgive that this one time.  I have even seen one of these in person at the Cooperstown hall of fame.  I am pretty sure that is as close as I will ever get to one, much less owning one.

Here in the top row, you see more beautiful legitimate reprints of t206s, this time by Capital - courtesy of our friends at Renata Galasso - also from the 1980s.  But then they take a turn, as now sadly, our narrative will as well. Let's get back to those backs for a moment. 

You will see that they reproduced the backs nicely and also, wisely, put the line 'Capital Reprint' at the bottom.  In that lower corner, you will see what looks like legitimate looking aged cards and yet when you look at the backs, you see that there is some paper loss, right at the bottom. Hmmm.... What that means is some low-life imbecile tried to make these look and feel real, and to the non-collector they might have gotten away with it.  I picked these up at a show in a dime box years ago and the seller and I had a giggle over them.  He forgot where he got them from but I am certain he was not the perpetrator of the awful attempt at fraud.  But see, in the end this is why we can't have nice things.  This is one of the main reasons we have graded cards in the first place and have to hide cardboard away forever behind plastic.  Sure, any good collector would know these are garbage, but they were made to fool the layman into thinking they had vintage treasure.  They make me sad and I am glad they are now in my collection, free to be ridiculed for the trash that they are.  But they still look neat in and of themselves and I like to think the other reprints make fun of them when I close the binder, like some weird outtake from Toy Story.

Let's cleanse the palate with the opposite in size and stature.  These are 1971 Topps Supers and they are firmly ensconced in the oddball section of the hobby.  And they are some of my favorite things ever.

Once again, it is definitely a touch thing.  They are the size of a postcard and they feel heavy in your hand.  They are made of a thick cardboard that almost seems like they'd make moving boxes out of them otherwise.  They even make a neat sound when they smack together (though I don't recommend doing that if you care about future value).  Plus the colors and faces on these really pop.  Topps did similar supers in 1969 and 1970 too, but I think they perfected them in 1971.  Of course, sigh, they never made them again after that.  They've made plenty of big cards, sure, but these were not just parallels or fancy inserty box toppers or anything, these were their own set and a completely different thing. These eight will have a place of honor in my book of weird things.

I added these recently in a Facebook marketplace purchase, in fact it was 10 cards for $10 (a bargain at twice the price) so if anyone needs a Rico Carty or a Larry Dierker from this set, let me know and we can work something out.  If I were rich, I could just altruistically send them to you but instead, we'll have to trade like the unwashed masses do.

***

Post script: the title of this post refers to a very odd band, if you know them you know what I am talking about, if you don't you can click here (so so NSFW) and feel your brain melt for a few minutes.  Give it a chance, it is catchy, though, seriously.

Not Nine.

       I have been extolling the virtues of the nine-pocket page, but as we all know, they aren't the only pages that exist.  So, to show that I am an open-minded all-embracing card lover, not some kind of standard-sized bigot, I present all the wonderful shapes and sizes that make our hobby great:

(sing along, if you are in the mood)

TWO!


FOUR!


SIX!


EIGHT!

 Who do we appreciate?

Well, I really love these:

Fifteen!

And twelve!

Nonononono, no more of that faux vintage stuff, and that page isn't even complete (even if the set is) c'mon, let's see the real thing...

Damn baby, that page is so sexy, let's turn around and see that backside.

That's what I'm talkin' about...

Aesthetics.

       I was going to call this post "A for Aesthetics" but I want to keep this thing simple (and I would never want to endorse Sue Grafton novels, directly or otherwise).  Everyone seems to be down with the concept of this blog and I appreciate all the well wishes and encouragement.  But I also want to assure you all, there is more to all this than just slapping nine cards in a page and calling it a day.  Each page needs to not only represent the player, set, or concept, but it has to look good doing it.  At least, that is the goal.


Here is a page of Stan Musial modern retro vintage cards:
 
All very different looking cards; some are very busy and modern, some are more staid designs and/or reprints.  All of them live together well on the page.  All the photos make sense where they are placed. 


Here is a page of Wally Joyner that illustrates this concept even better.  Different sets and photos all arranged well:


If he's looking up, he's on the bottom.  If he's looking right, he's on the left, and so on.  To look good is to feel good. Its got a couple of rookie cards and some OG Upper Deck in there too.  So in my binders, at least, Wally Joyner is the equal of Stan Musial, if not greater.


I do like the break up the monotony of page after page of player after player with some themes.  


Nomar is one of my favorite players of all time.  He has an astounding four pages in my retired binder.  I went with an all fielding page here:


I really like to do this with catchers.  As a failed former catcher myself (with the bad joints to prove it), I like to highlight the tools of ignorance, behold the recently retired Jason Varitek.


I do have binders that collect sets as well as players.  I find Allen and Ginter to be both awesome to rip open and collect, yet hard to work with in my nine card structure.


I mean, these '09s look nice, but page after page of similar looking A&G cards gets tiresome, so I tried to break it up with some bat-on-shoulder solidarity in '06...

...and some horizontally-oriented '07s.




I'll do this with players too.  I have two or three pages of Cal Ripken Jr. and since he has a little under a bazllion cards, I was able to cobble together a longways page:



I am certainly the demographic Topps is after with all their old timey sets and players, because I can't get enough of them:
 
Though it is a sad statement that this is the least busy of all the Topps Triple Threads sets.

While I am on the subject, it is soapbox time.  I try not to complain too much about cards since this is my hobby and all, but I cannot ignore Topps and their recent quality slip.  It is not just the monopoly that has led to this sad state, they were well on their way down before that.  I have a fantastic example here.  These are the 2002 Topps 206s:


Great pictures, well colored, the subject pops off the background, high quality stuff, pays homage to the original set, looks great.


And these are the 2009 Topps 206s, a mere 7 years later:
 
Mediocre pictures, horrible photoshop effects, awful over saturated backgrounds, inconsistent and lazy coloring of subjects, looks like a high school art project...and what the hell is going on with that Lou Gehrig?  He had ALS, not Down's Syndrome. Whatever happened in those seven years, design and quality control took a long looooooong step down. 
 
/soapbox


As a palate cleanser, here's one more good example, from the HoF binder; Goose Gossage in all his goosey-ness, lots of teams represented, lots of sets represented, mustache very well represented, the pictures all nicely arranged:



And here...well, here is one of my Hank Aaron pages, it's all over the place...

...it needs a little work, though Night Owl should appreciate the original well-loved 1975 cards from my brother's collection.  

       And to those who asked, I will be working on the wantlists and gotlists sometime this weekend, or next month, I am in no rush, but thanks for inquiring, I am aware they need to be posted.  And once again, thanks to everyone who has come to look at my little blog and especially those who have taken the time to comment.