Set Course For The Lenticular System

Another shop visit, another starter set.  This past weekend, I spent a whole day at Rocky Ridge Collectibles several miles west of home.  Got there at about 11 and stayed until closing at 5.  Nothing but sifting through quarter, 50¢, and dollar boxes for the most part.  Somehow, I skipped over photographing all the loot I brought back, but I can show you the next vintage set I've decided to pursue.

Besides the 1970 set that I knocked out a couple years ago, I've only recently delved into completing sets of Kellogg's 3-D cards.  The first was a lucky find from a neighbor of a few key 1972's.  This time, I found a whole box of Kellogg's in that shop and put this lot together.  It's mostly 50¢ singles, with one at 75¢ (Horton) and five others for a buck a shot.

There are a couple decent HOF'ers in here.  Morgan, Blyleven, Santo, etc.  I like how Tommy and Willie Davis are almost next to each other (they're a few cards apart in the checklist).  There are several of my player guys in here too, so I'll be comparing those specimens to these and putting the best ones in their binders.

These three round out the set lot.  A few noticeable, albeit minor cracks in a some of them, but at these prices, I'm very satisfied with the condition.

Full names on the backs.  Some of those middle names are interesting.  Sparky is one of my PCs, but the other guys aren't as familiar.  I had a Dave May for a long time and just recently traded him away.

There are three variations in the '74 set.  I got one edition of each.  I put little notes to show what the differences are.  From what I read, none of the versions are really that scarce.

Buddy and Wilbur are stat variants.  Guess they fat-fingered the numbers the first time or recalcuated later.

Not too many huge names to look for - Ryan, Gibson, Reggie, Bench, Carew, Rose, Seaver.  My want list goes like this:

1974 Kellogg's  *** NEW ***

   1 Gibson  2 Monday  3 Coleman  4 Campaneris  5 Fisk  6 Palmer  7b Santo (Cubs)  8 Ryan  9 Luzinski  10a Bell (134 R)  11 Watson  15 Sanguillen  16 Burroughs  18 Goodson  19 Colbert  20 Reggie  25 Hunt 28 Bench  30 Carew  32 BWilliams  34a Wood (959 SO)  37 Stargell  38 Rose  40 Speier  44 Hunter  46 Blyleven  47 Kelly  48 Singleton  49 Mota  51 Bando  52 Seaver   

Swapping Cardboard Greats

I saw that Henry from Cardboard Greats was a Craig Kimbrel collector, so I offered him my Triple Threads from 2013.  He gladly accepted and came back with two real nice items in trade.

First is this elegant 2003 Flair Greats GU jersey of Carlton Fisk.  This is from back in the day when you knew (or at least had some confidence) that the swatch really was from an actual garment that the guy pictured did in fact use in a regulation major league game.

And they said so on the back.  Not like today where the blurb is so non-committal that you might be looking at a piece of fabric from a men's league jersey from a softball tournament in Birmingham, Alabama.  (No offense to Birmingham ~ I'm still mad that I can't watch your AAF team too.)

The other piece is this fancy Legendary Cuts bat piece from Big Red Machine cog George Foster.  Nice use of gold foil around a cool picture (that's been used several times before), but makes for a nice composition.

And again, the comprehensive and authentic text on the back.  "Here's a piece of history."  Thank you very much.

Appreciate the trade Henry!

Together As One

Sounds like this is going to be an epic rallying cry for all you collectors to start a movement toward better products, more interaction, and raising awareness.

Nah, I just thought I'd show a little technique I use to align pictures in blog posts.  Not sure if this is the best way to do things, but it works for me.

When you're writing something that compares two cards or images, and you want them to sit side by side, Blogger doesn't really make that easy to do.  Most of the time, pictures will be inserted in the center of the page, and form a column with a line of text space in between each picture.  If your pictures are small enough to fit two across a page (or more), try these steps to get them to sit together on the same line.

First insert your pictures normally:

Then I type a few random characters on the line between them.

 gfdss

Next, press delete to back the lower picture against the text.

 gdfss

Then click on the beginning of the text (before the "g"), and hit Backspace a couple times until the first picture jumps to the same line.

gdfss

And finally, I replace the gibberish text with a space or two just to keep the pictures separate.  Otherwise, if you try to click between them, it's hard to keep from extending the "link" to the full size picture and getting blue underlines in the space between.

 

And voilà, both pictures are side by side.  These two are Medium size.  Anything larger will result in them shifting to another line once the post is saved.  So confirm with your Preview function and then save immediately.

Angels In Our Midst

When I looked up the 1977 Charlie's Angels set on the Database, I saw that there weren't any scans beyond the first series of 55 cards.  Like a dutiful member, I figured I'd scan the batch I just got from Stuart in Michigan and fill out some of the blanks.  It's going to be a bit tedious to separate all the front and back images, (and get the backs right side up in a lot of cases), but I've got 'em all scanned at least.  Figured I'd show 'em off here.  It's not the complete set, but gives you a good idea of what they're like.

Tried to put all the horizontals together, but it didn't quite work out....

As you can see, this lot pretty much excludes anything with Farrah.  

The vast majority are really just portraits of the girls, with or without captions that go with the plot of the show.  But that's really all anyone wants to see with these anyway, isn't it?

Cheryl Ladd was really adorable.  But I'll always like Jaclyn Smith the best....

 

 The Database has all these stickers already, but I threw 'em on the scanner for your enjoyment too.

And did you know there is an O-Pee-Chee version of the set?  The first series of 55 comes in English only AND bi-lingual versions.  Not really sure how to tell 'em apart, since the only copyright info is from the tv studio on all of them.

There are two dots in the lower right corner of these cards.  The Topps ones above also have either one or two dots in the same spot.  I couldn't find anything that said what they mean.  If anyone knows a good reference site for these, leave it in the comments.

These are pics I'll print out and put on the outside of the binder.  Nice way to end.

Blog Bat Around Update: Current Collection Projects

Got a bit off track this past week after a visit to a friend's out of state, a rough ride back, and a full life schedule until now.   At least I have four days off to build up the post queue.

Updating last year's Bat Around post on current collection projects, just like NPB Card Guy did.  I knocked off a lot of my major vintage sets that I was in the midst of a year ago.  Let's run down the list...

Actually, the first three finished projects were documented in detail back in July when I killed 1960, 1970, and 1972 all in the same show.  These are the last cards I needed to cap 'em off....

1964 Topps

This set is coming along swimmingly too.  I'm down to about 60 base cards (mostly in the 400's) and 30 high numbers.  The majority of these are big names like Willie Mays, Pete Rose, Koufax, and the Ken Hubbs memorial etc.  I've got an extra one of the card shown here that I'd love to trade for a star or two that I still lack.


1950 Bowman

I've got these in a binder now, neatly displayed in those special 12 pocket sheets for stickers.  They fit quite nicely.  I'm going to have to redo the last 75 or so that appear with and without the copyright lines on the back.  I didn't make two spaces for each card when I put them in initially.


1963 Fleer

Also done and documented earlier.  Found good ol' Smoky Burgess to kill it at my local monthly show in September.


Other Set Builds

Besides vintage, there are plenty of other wantlists in flux throughout the year.  I started - and just about finished - 1970, 1971, and 1972 Topps football in the last few months.  I'm down to very few cards on very radically different sets, like 1987 Hygrade All-Time Greats, 1990 SportFlics, 2017 Bunt blue parallels, 2018 Holiday snowflakes, 2009 OPC black, 1995 Fleer, 1994 Donruss, and 1977 Topps Cloth Stickers.

Still rumbling along on several Topps Heritage sets, the last couple flagship sets and inserts (those that I've selected to do), a few Allen & Ginter, GQ, and Upper Deck products. 

Plus crazy stuff like Star Wars (orange series will finish them), Charlie's Angels, bunches of Space sets, lingering football and hockey sets, and on and on.


T205 New York Giants team set

This one is still at the point I had reached a year ago.  No new purchases have whittled down the last seven cards as yet.  Will keep an eye out for these when I go to the National in July, especially a Mathewson under $400.


Player Collections

 

These are ongoing and ever-expanding as usual.  I don't think I ever make a shop purchase or a show run without hitting at least something for one of my player collections.  With such a ridiculous amount of them, it's hard not to.


Moon & Space binder

Made a nice spine graphic for the binder itself from culled pictures online.  An A&G box topper about JFK and his speech proclaiming the moon landing project fits nicely in front.

A sample page of the oddball singles with some recent additions.  These are in the front and precede the whole sets...

 

...which have grown significantly since I found those Space Shots and Brook Bond Tea series.


Washington Redskins

Another continuous input stream, but at a slower rate than most of my other collections.  Since managing a list of everything I have is so tough, and I don't generally carry the list with me to shops or shows, new Redskins are rarer.  There's a whole monster box at a shop that I might try to visit this weekend, but going through every card might mean flipping through dozens of pages back and forth to figure out which ones I need.  It would basically take an entire afternoon by itself. 


Errors & Variations

With every set I start, there is a good 30 to 40% chance that there will be variations or errors involved.  The latest ones would be the 1980 Baseball Immortals, 1977-78 Topps hockey, and 1970 Topps football.  (Still need a black name Hill).


Etc.

A little bit of everything....