Happy Birthday Vin Scully!

 

More cool images like this here.

WellPacked4U

Went shopping on eBay recently to fill out my blogger Secret Santa contribution ('cuz I couldn't find enough in my own stashes.)

Without giving it away, the person I drew is a significant team collector, so I went in search of some team sets to knock out whole blocks on his list.  Who ya gonna call for that?

TeamSets4U!

They actually have their own website - https://www.teamsets4u.com/

But I found their eBay store and picked out a couple from the appropriate franchise.

And of course, I added on some for myself to round out the shipping costs.  Knocked out five Redskins teams that I don't have represented in my collection.

They all arrived the other day.  Very well packaged in team bags (of course), and then not just bubble wrapped, but Double Bubble packed in two plastic envelopes for safe travels.

Glad to knock off some obscure team sets for a good price, and know that I can find any random team set at any time with them.

Matt Kills Several Prime Targets

Got a package last week from Matt of Heartbreaking Cards Of Staggering Genius that was kinda like déjà vu all over again.

It's always nice to get surprised by hits to your prime want lists, but the downside is that you have no chance to mark them as incoming, so you might get them twice.  But not all of what he sent were repeats, Matt hit some other good stuff too.

 Trout Fire.  Just wow.

 

The two Bunt killers.  Nice.

And the two E-Motion killers.  Excellent!

Same Bonds card, but different number.  It's actually better to have more than one of these to show that there was one for each HR.

But there were more first time hits!

Combs is the last base card for the set, and Hawkins was a variation hit. 

Got some bonus Yellowness for the trade box.

Mack was one of three remaining base cards to crazy '95 Fleer.

Always LOVE hits to Hygrades.  This is the yellow back version of the orange front Robinson.  But wait, there's more!

Lewis (the red $2000 value version) and Lajoie (the red $10k version) as well.  Both are also Hygrade reprint inserts.

And finally, a card I couldn't ever find an actual image of online.

The actual 2003 Yankee Signature Series Torrez.  Let's see how my mockup custom compares.  Actual card on left, my version on right.

 

Hey, not bad.  I guessed on the photo cropping.  Had to add the bottom third of my photo by hand.

Thanks a lot Matt!  I usually don't mention it when someone duplicates hits, but the ones you did were pretty awesome anyway, and ya added in some fantastic stuff on top of them!

Card Shopping Tragedy

When your phone dies the first time you go to a new epic card shop so now you don't have access to your want lists...

Got to a great new shop in an antique mall with tons of stuff about 11AM.  Phone died at 1:30.  All my lists are on my website.  No power outlets in the shop booth.

More on this later.

OPC stands for Oh, the Pitiful Collation

Finally broke my box of '17-18 O-Pee-Chee hockey over the weekend.

I did OK with inserts and high numbered specialty subset cards, but there was no "hit", which isn't as huge a disappointment to me as some (mostly since the "hit" would have been some kind of manu-patch anyway, and we've had enough of those for a while.)

But at the very least, I was hoping I would make substantial progress on my large base set list.  After my first round with this product, I still needed about 139 base cards out of the first 500.  Let's just say I didn't quite make it....

This was the last box in the trifecta I ordered from Charm City.  I'll post the Score later.

Broke them at my friend's house while dogsitting....

Everyone likes minis, right?  OK, I really don't, so these are trade bait.  The shiny black ones look cool, though...

Got some decent names in the regular ones too.  That Keller kid is in the flyer for the "extended rookie class" or whatever.  Someone will want him.

And got an Ovie for my Capitals collection.  Though I think I remember getting one of him before.  Hopefully it was one of the shiny ones.

More black shiny parallels.  More trade bait.  Bruins look neat on black cards.

 The "regular" shiny parallels.  Just more potential base card needs I didn't get - unless you want to trade me base for them!

The playing card inserts.  These are cool.  The regular ones are all trade bait except Laine (King of Clubs).  I've bought several of these as singles, so that dropped the percentage chances that I'd need them out of this box.  The shiny one is going out to be forwarded to a Flyers collector.

 

I think I have a list (or at least a number grid) of the Retros I need for this set.  These are the best part of this product, but a pain to complete.  Here's a quick look at what I got this time.  I probably should have bought a stack of these I saw at a show a while ago, but passed on them since I didn't yet know what I had.  Hopefully these turn out to be mostly needs.  One of them turned out to be a blank back variation. (Update: they were, in fact, mostly needs, thank goodness!)

Here's the front of the blank one.  Nice that it's a rookie and a goalie.  Who needs it?

OK, so out of this whole big honkin' stack of base cards, I was hoping to knock off at least about forty or fifty from my want list.  It's over 3½" high, so about 175 cards or so.  Fifty is less than a third.  I figure that's a fair expectation.  Am I wrong about this?

Now, the cards above #500 (of 600) consist of Rookies, which are always scarcer, Season Highlights, Team Checklist cards, and League Leaders.  So they're most likely mixed in separately or something.

Most of those I pulled were, in fact, on my list.  I got a few dupes that I remember - two regular checklists and a few others numbered 5xx.  So not too bad.  This is as I would think these would come out.

So then the rest of the base.

Here's what I got.

These aren't the big names out of the bunch.

This is the whole assortment that was on my list.

Are you ready?

I got six muth#$)(*&^ng cards.

SIX.

Out of about 175.

SIX.

SIX!!!!

Somebody please trade me some base cards from my list.  I have a HUGE stack of dupes.  I have two and three of some players.  Probably more now.  Trade me some for these before I burn them to cure my raging annoyance.

Highly Substantial And Completely Awesome

An epic week of blogger trades continued with the receipt of a small package from Brian at Highly Subjective And Completely Arbitrary.  (Check out his post to promote the Secret Santa this year.)

As much fun as it is to receive cards from your top wants list, as shown in my previous post, I like to spread the love myself, especially at the big shows.  I try to take several blogger's short lists with me and see how many I can find for a reasonable cost.

One hit I got at the last Chantilly show was card #1 from 1955 Topps, Mr. James "Dusty" Rhodes, who was the first entry on Brian's list.  I found a couple of them from a favorite vintage dealer and put one on my stack.  Brought it home and sent it out to its new owner in Minnesota.  I left the original price sticker on it so Brian would have a ballpark idea of how far to go in return.

My man had to go WAY past that number, or he found some great bargain bin gems.  Check out what I got in return!

1964 Topps Yogi Berra.  A little high on the centering is the only minor deviation from perfection that I see.  This would have covered the Rhodes card by itself!

But nope, Yogi brought friends!  An even nicer Brooks Robinson....it's had a little corner abuse, but nothing that shows much now.  That white streak under his chin is exaggerated by the scan and is really just a print streak.

And he wasn't done yet!  Check this great Warren Spahn too!  One of his nicest photos.  And just as major flaw free as the others.  I was just blown away.

For an extra bonus, there was this Redskins police set still in the baggie.  I've actually got all these, but not in their original packaging.

Just goes to show you that generosity among bloggers gets paid back in spades!

Thanks isn't a strong enough term, Brian!

New Player Collection

As if I needed another player collection.  I already have 60+ baseball guys from the 60's to the 80's and a few outliers, plus all the other sets, teams, etc. I've got going.  But I couldn't resist.  This guy has a very limited, though somewhat specialized catalog, so it might be a little tough.  But with a name like this, how can I not?

Picked up these two Pookie Bernstines in my last SportLots order.  Came across him browsing the listinge for other minor league cards of my players and others' set lists.

From his stat sheet, he never apparently made it to the show.  He has ten total cards, all minor league.  Half of them are Coach cards.  This '89 Peoria Chiefs card uses "CH" as the abbreviation for Coach.  Don't they know it's supposed to be CO?

Here's the rest of his catalog.  I'll probably have to pick these out online later, but would love to trade for any of them you have to spare.  Maybe I'll put the '86 ProCards on the back of the nine pocket page so then all his cards will fit in one.

"Pookie" is fun enough, but the incongruity of the last name puts it over the top.  Stereotypes are bad, but you'd expect a guy with that name to look more like Mel Brooks than Denard Span.  Or at least if it was Bernstein.

P-Town Shoots 'Em Down!

Got maybe the best package of the year so far this past week.  Not in terms of volume, but just for the sheer destruction it wreaked on my priority want lists.

P-Town Tom of Waiting 'Til Next Year sent return fire from a trade or two we did a while ago.  He had done some shopping for me, and boy, did I get some great stuff!

Properly padded, and complete with painter's tape folded with pull tabs, two big bundles of goodness were readily accessible.  It seems there were complications with SportLots, but it all came out OK in the end.

I can see there are hits to my top 12 list already.  There would be so many knockouts, it was like a Batman fight from the old show....

The first and only card that didn't complete a set - 2006 Fleer Nickaname Greats Don Baylor.  A copy for my player collection of his.  One of the best insert sets ever.  Fleer figured out a bunch of guys with legit nicknames, instead of the suit-and-tie committee originated junk that Topps puts out as nicknames on cards these days.

Nextt up, 1990 SportFlics.  A set I picked up almost complete for very little in Michigan.  Had five cards left to find.

All five are done.  One set down!

I've got a little binder that is nothing but all the inserts and special cards from the first few years of Upper Deck.  The Heroes, SPs, holograms from '89, Silver Sluggers, etc. including these Scouting Reports from 1992.  Had five of those left too.

Not any more!

I had just picked up the better part of this little set from the dime boxes of some dealer at a recent show.  1993 Pinnacle Cooperstown is a neat little 30 card set of (at the time) Hall Of Fame prospects.  I think the majority of them have come true since.  Pinnacle made some really rather elegant cards back in the day.  I like the simple yet strong design of these.  This list was still marked ***NEW*** on my website.

It's gone now!

Another Upper Deck insert set I like is the '93 Clutch Performers, endorsed by Reggie Jackson.  You can see his signature across the title at the bottom.  I always forget the name of these (since it's hard to read) and think about them as "Reggie's Best".

And now they're all reunited!

Upper Deck also had some Stadium Club-ish inserts featuring shots by renowned Sports Illustrated photographer Walter Iooss ("yoas").  Had one remaining.  Mr. "I'm a badass" Will Clark here.

That's a wrap!

Now these weren't even on my top priority list.  Not yet, anyway.  I had a small list of future priority wants to put up when others were eliminated.  So these didn't even make it past that.  These are 2007 Topps Opening Day Puzzle cards that go together to make the image on the back.  Tough part is how to put them in nine pocket sheets in a way that displays the picture.  The whole image is like four cards tall by six or so wide.

Dey Gone!

Now we begin the biggest targets.  These two were #12 out of my top dozen.  The order is rather random, since I don't bother to rearrange all the listings every time I get one.  It's too much work.  So I just put the next ones in the newly vacated spot.  1995 Skybox E-Motions complete!

There goes #12!

I figured this next target would be kinda easy since there are 73 variations - one for each home run he hit that year.  Guess they weren't that common, or have been squirreled away since 2002, because this is the first one I've ever seen in person.

And one's all I need!


Next, there was a pair of inserts I needed to complete one of the most fun sets that Topps has done in a while.  The Lightforce cards are pretty cool looking, which compensates for them really just being star-worship against a wild background.  The Programs are a great original idea.

 

All Bunts are hit!

And finally, one of those cards I figured I might have to buy for a premium considering the subject matter and that I had missed the chance to pick it up before for cheap.  The original Fire insert of none other than Mike Trout from 2014 (before they made whole sets of the stuff.)

My lists are devastated.

Tom, I can't thank you enough!  Let's continue the epic trading!