Another Epic Mailday

Have been out sick a few days, so I couldn't keep up my posting pace.  But this past weekend I hopefully will build up a multi-post buffer.  We'll see...

Anyway, my main trading guy (BseballCommish75 on SCF) had been telling me he was getting some stuff from a guy named Lee on that forum.  Lee had also offered a bulk box of extra stuff that he was trying to get rid of to gain space.  Commish didn't need it, but recommended that he send it to me.

Here's what I got this past Thursday:

BOOM!

When I come home each evening, I always glance at my front step in the hopes that there will be a huge box of cards waiting for me.  This time it really happened!  (Sort of, I was home and I actually met the UPS guy at the door).

I opened it up and saw this:

Those markings were accurate!  Starter sets of 1992 Upper Deck, 1993 Classic Best minors, 1993 Topps, 1994 Collector's Choice, 1994 Upper Deck, 1996 Coll. Choice, 1997 Upper Deck, 1998 CC and 1999 Topps.  Was glad it wasn't a whole box of 1991 Score or '89 Topps, anyway....

These were all 800 count boxes, some full, some not, but they were all exactly what they said.  Most of the starters were Series 2, with a few exceptions.

I had some of the sets already.  1992 UD, 1993 Topps, 1994 CC.  So those are available for trade.

A few years ago I completed the 1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond parallel set, but didn't do the regular until now.  The Classic Best minor league set is nice, so I'll keep that.  There are about 120 dupes available.  I just traded for a complete 1992 UD set, so the chunk of #401-700+ is up for grabs too.  The 1999 Topps is really just a chunk from #364 to the end, so I will probably make a set with that, but after I took one of each from there, the remaining stack was still taller.  

So to summarize, here's what you can make me offers for:

1992 UD - #401+
1993 Classic Best minors - (about 120 dupes 1-300)
1993 Topps - (mostly Series 2 - multiple starters)
1994 Coll. Choice - (mostly Series 1 - multiple starters)
1994 Upper Deck - (about 140 dupes, mostly Series 2)
1996 Coll. Choice - (about 275 dupes, mostly Series 2)
1997 Upper Deck - (about 400 dupes, mostly Series 2)
1998 Coll. Choice - (about 375 dupes, mostly Series 1)  Update - actually Ser 1!
1999 Topps - (about 200 dupes, from #364 on)

if you'd like to make a trade, check my wants here to see all I'm looking for with these and everything else.  Email me at QAPLAGCA at yahoo dot com.

Also in the box was this funky five-slot display box with what appears to be the eclectic mix of junk wax and newer cards still inside.  Not sure what you would use this for, but it might work for collecting insert sets before you sheet up a master set or small sets that aren't big enough for their own box by themselves.  If anyone must have it, let me know.  It says it holds 800, but that sounds ambitious....

Thanks again to Lee for needing to clear space!

2016 Passion Sidelines Connections Odell Beckham, Jr.

The latest addition to my custom memorabilia cards is the 2016 Passion Beckham/Net Sidelines Connections dual relic.  Card contains game worn jersey patch swatch and snippet of kicking net twine.

 I started with the 2016 Prestige Connections Eli/Odell, at least the team logo, bottom bar, and Prestige logo.

Combined that with net relic from a hockey card, the nameplate from a "Sidelines" card of OBJ, and a patch swatch from another year.

Had to modify the Prestige logo of course, and add a heart from a Google search.  Creating the "o" was the tough part, though the "a" and "n" were scratch-made too.

 

The "Sidelines" is also pieced together from the "Connections" letters, and then placed over them in the upper flipped copy.  Manufactured "D" and "L" as well.

Future subjects may include Chad Johnson (cheerleader proposal) and Joe Namath (with Suzy Kolber).  

Many stats he led, and records he owns. Talkin' 'bout Puddin' Head Jones

This one's for Jon at A Penny Sleeve for Your Thoughts.

A couple years back I had been looking through websites and card dealers and such and kept seeing different cards from the 1950's.  I had none in my collection, but I had seen some at different shows, especially the National.  I wanted to add some as type specimens, but felt like just getting random cards of anyone wouldn't be very satisfying, so I thought having samples of the same player would show much better.

The next question was, of course, who to choose?  My knowledge of the sport at that time is minimal, so I would just choose someone interesting, but still affordable.  Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Yogi Berra are great, but would cost a fortune to collect in any volume.  A clever nickname was a good starting point.  Quick research led me to Willie "Puddin' Head" Jones of the 1950 "Whiz Kids" Philadelphia Phillies.  A comparison of his card images with those of fellow Phillie and second nominee Granville Wilbur "Granny" Hamner gave Mr. Jones the victory.

Ol' Puddin' Head got his nickname from the popular song in the 1930's.  Except in name, Mr. Willie doesn't really resemble the subject of the lyrics (which don't start until about 45 seconds in) except that he did well in his career too.  I don't see anywhere that Willie started at such a low point like "Wooden head" did....

So anyway, I've been picking up Willie's cards for a good while now, and have most of the basics and a few oddballs at this point.  Kinda went about it a little different than most, in that initially, instead of a typed text list, I printed out a page of images of his cards and wrote the sets and numbers next to the pictures so I could match them at a glance.  I remember either at Chantilly or one National I was shopping at Uncle Dick's tables, and he and his grandson were fascinated by my printout.

I also don't store his cards in a binder with all the rest of my player collections.  Being that half the cards are not the standard 2½" by 3½"size, it is not possible to put them in order in nine (or six, or even eight) pocket sheets.  So I just keep them in top loaders and card savers in a stack in my baseball cabinet.

Won't keep you waiting any longer.  On to the cards!  I left the penny sleeves on, so there are streaks and lines that aren't on the actual cards.

1949 Bowman RC, 1950 Bowman, my first oddball 1951 Berk Ross (still attached to Bobby Brown), 1951 Topps Blue Back, 1951 Bowman, and probably my favorite, 1952 Bowman.  Nice dense signature, and he includes the nickname.

Starts with both 1952 Topps, the red and black backs, then the SP 1953 Bowman color, '53 Topps, '54 Bowman, '54, '55, and '56 Topps.  Got some good deals on these.  The '52's were $17 and $25 respectively, and '52's in general are a hot item.

The most well known and widely traded and owned of the bunch, 1957 through 1961 Topps.  '59 and '60 are my second copies, as I have the others in their respective sets ('59 is finished).  Willie looks happier in these compared to the older ones besides his first few.

Skipping ahead a little, these are the modern Topps Archive reprints of the early issues in regulation size.  Scanned front and backs, and included my other favorite Mr. Jones for scale.  These are the easy ones from the dime and quarter boxes. 

And finally, a couple cool oversize issues.  1958 Hires Root Beer with the advertisement tab, and a 1952 Red Man without the bottom tab.  Since these didn't break the bank, and there aren't 900 other cards to finish him off, I'll probably get the respective tabless/tabbed versions of these two as well.

So there you are.  It's a modest collection so far, but I hope you enjoyed the look at these cards from a somewhat earlier era.

Federation Starship COMC-1701

I named this blog after the Borg race from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  It also kinda fit the card hobby.  My initial vision was that I would write everything as if you were hearing it from the Borg themselves.  But I quickly threw that out the window to allow myself to express my views and relate my collecting experiences much more easily.  (And without my Geek meter running in the red all the time.)

As part of my recent COMC order, I picked up these chase cards from the 1993 Skybox Master Series Star Trek set.  These are the Spectra cards, or at least four out of five.  The missing one is #3 Navigating the Asteroid field and is from a different artist than these four.  That one was too expensive for me to pull the trigger.  The ones I did get were much cheaper than when they first came out (and I didn't pull any).

The Spectra "effect" is really quite remarkable.  I'm not sure if Skybox or anybody else made sports cards with this technology.  With all the different effects at that time like Dufex, etc. I'm surprised I don't know about more products that use Spectra.

Here's how they look when tilted to the light.  See how different areas glow?

Here's a closeup of one of the cards taken at different angles.  This is the same card!  

I'd really like to be able to show them as an animated pair over top of each other, but I don't think my template will allow it.  

Here's a rough example of the effect.  The photography isn't great.  My unsteady hand and the penny sleeves combine for a bit of fuzzyness.  The middle image is actually a scan....

These are just too cool.  #ResistanceIsFutile.

Rickey says Rickey is just getting started

Started a trade recently with Adam of Arpsmith's Sportscard Obsession when I saw him post about breaking boxes of 2013 Hometown Heroes.  He ended up with some parallels of a couple of my player collection guys, so I inquired...

I got all three of these parallels, plus a bonus:

A really nice Topps Chrome "Blue Wave" Alfred Morris auto.

My Redskins team collection is substantial, but takes a back seat to set building and player collections most of the time.  Even though I've got a nice catalog of pretty much everything there is for the team, (which I bought many years ago) it's still tough to sit down and flip back and forth in that list to check every card if there's more than a handful in front of me.  And with the sheer number of parallels, gamers and autographs out there in the last few years, I just pick them up as they come along, but don't expend a lot of cash and energy pursuing them.  So this was a nice bonus.

So what to send in return?

I figured Adam would need a bunch of HHeroes inserts at least, and I may get lucky and he'd be missing a few last base cards.  Or barring that, I could hit some of his extensive SF Giants needs.

This proved very tough initially, as his HH needs are most plentiful for the tougher parallels of his player collection guys.  So I ended up with one whole card for those.  Then I scoured through the Giants a little, but was kinda frustrated then too.  So I moved on to the player collections.  I went through and found a few Rickey Hendersons that sounded reasonably "gettable" and checked them on COMC.  I've been ordering cards like I just won the lottery lately, so I added several of my player guys' more obscure issues to fill out a cart and placed the order. 'Cause you can't just order a few at a time, right?...

Then Adam posts later about updating his wants for several modern sets.  I saw a few that I knew were in my tradeables box and started looking them up.  I found a few on one set, then another, then a few more, and pretty soon I had a decent stack going.  So what started as a desperation buy with no other return fire bloomed into a pretty decent trade.

The Rickeys (and the rest of my COMC order) showed up today, so I'll be packing and sending it all out...probably early next week, since it's going to be snow, sleet and ice tomorrow and then the holiday as well.

Rickey says "Here comes Rickey!"

Cards from the King!

Received a package out of the (Dodger) Blue, (kinda literally) from the award winning blogger Greg of Night Owl Cards.

I had inquired about the 65th anniversary reprint of Sparky Lyle's '77 Topps card, since he is one of my 50+ player collection guys.  Love those pseudo '75 backs...

 That topped a nice stack of things from my lists.  Some base hits from 2008 Topps and 2005 Donruss Champions.. 

Some 2013 Hometown Heroes inserts...the Torre goes in another one of my PCs..

Some nice 2016 Ginter inserts....love the mascot in-real-life cards....

A 2016 Bunt insert that mimics a book...so very "physical" for a set that comes from digital nothingness....

And some miscellaneous Redskins cards for my only true team collection....

Thanks a bunch G!  I hope to increase my posting rate on here this year, but I can only aspire to be as insightful, clever, and consistent as you are.  Happy blogging and trading in 2017!

Trifecta

Just found a new candidate for my birthday posts.

From another fan site:
Born January 9, 1995 Nicola Peltz is emerging as a force to be reckoned with, on both the big and small screen. Her most prominent roles include the series Bates Motel (2013), and the films The Last Airbender (2010) and Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014).

 

Welcome to the club Nicola!

Ya shouldn't run from the Five-O

Today I hit the half century mark.  Doesn't seem real.  I don't feel fifty.  (Don't feel Fiddy either.  The only rapping I do is with Christmas paper, and that's over).  Upside is, people tell me I don't look it either.  So I got that going for me.

But as is my tradition here, I'm sure you'd rather have a look at these two gals who also came into the world on January 9th - Kate Middleton and Nina Dobrev....

Wow, turns out this is my 100th post!   Maybe this year I'll strive to double it before the next birthday post....

Epic Mail Day!

Here's a quick preview of everything that was waiting for me earlier this week.  All in one day!

 I will post on most of these transactions in the coming days.  It is a combination of one of the two SportLots orders I placed last week, one blogger trade with Kyle at Nolan's Dugout, one trade on SCF, and one trade from my main group of Trading Bases. 

The TB trade is actually still inside the three long boxes in the back.  They contain three sets, 1994 Topps, 1990 and 1992 Upper Deck. 

One more SportLots order is on the way, and a COMC order is packaged.  Also just paid for some on eBay...

I really gotta ease up.  The addiction is getting out of hand.

Snowflake effect started 23 years ago

Topps Holiday set features snowflakes imposed on pictures of baseball players.  Normally, they wouldn't play baseball in the snow, but it may have actually happened before.  Circa 1994, and then in 2003....

You may have to click on the pictures to see it better...

There were just a few flurries to start.  The stars were the first to notice.  Neon Deion, Hawk, Rickey, Rock...

  

  

Seemed like it was only coming down in certain spots.  Like right over the pitcher's mound....

But it started coming down in other areas....in the field and the on deck circle....

  

in the outfield....getting slippery on the basepaths....

    

Started getting heavier..

 Jose Rijo had seen this before...

Hard to pitch with it blowing around, or sticking to your face....

Buehrle says, it's getting hazardous out here.  LaRussa thinks we might have to call the game....

 

No Jose, it's called a snow bunny.  Not a snow bunty.....

Papi says, put away your snow shovels, We gonna keep playin'!

Everyone got home safely, though.  They used the leftover sticky UV coating on the parking lot.