Night Owl Skillfully Navigates My Lists

As I returned home from the annual Ephrata, PA card show Saturday (more on that in a later post), I was greeted with a package from Night Owl in my mailbox.

The banner item was this 4½" x 7" Claude Osteen Ticketron photo.  On the back in the 1971 Dodgers schedule.  This will go well with the other oversize things of him in my PC.

Man, if you could go back and be there for the Sunday autographs sessions...

 

Also included were these two Cal Ripkens.  The A&G is the shiny flavor, and the left one must be from Archives or something, it has the '69 design on the back.

The bulk of this package was current Stadium Club, however.  I really like these Triumvirates, even though they're really tough to put together.  I decided I wanted the first three from the Orioles at least.  One down, two to go.

 

The rest were hits from my base set that are what's left after my break of compact boxes a few weeks ago.  Still had a lot of them to find.

 

The majority of them were, of course, Dodgers.  Some big names too!

Even if I was unaware they are now Dodgers...

Or some that are iconic in blue...

Or just iconic....

The fascinating thing is, at my first stop at the show, I picked out 58 base singles from the same Stadium Club set.  When I saw NOwl had SC for me, I thought "Oh geez, I probably duplicated half of them."

But alas, there were NO duplicates.  We "dodged" that bullet. (ba dum bum)  Amazing!

So, to keep the exchange cycle going, I'll be sending this along to New York.  

I have another show in two weeks that's even bigger, so I'll try again to hit some more, and hopefully find some other blogger's wants as well.

Thanks for the read.  Next time - my show haul....

Aspirations

A co-worker gave me a factory set of 1991 Classic Best minor league cards a while ago.  It's a 450 card set that comes in a custom box with each block of 100 cards wrapped in cellophane.  This set had sort of a defect in that two of the blocks were of the 200 numbers, so I was missing the 100's.  I put them on the Trading Card database and they've come rolling in.

There are many players who went on to have significant major league careers.  Like these two:

But some of the others who didn't quite make it have similar names to those that did.  Though not all of the successful people made it in Major League Baseball.  

Cristobal Colon only played 14 games for the Texas Rangers.

He could have been Bartolo Colon!

Steve Rolen never made it beyond A+ ball. 

Scott Rolen has been on the HOF ballot.

Fred Russell was "straight outta Compton" but only had a few years at A level.

Bill Russell was a staple for the 70's and 80's Dodgers.

Oscar Munoz pitched ten games for the Twins in 1995, going 2-1.  

If he was Anthony Munoz, he would be a Hall of Fame lineman.

Jeff Jackson played from 1989 to 1998, but didn't go higher than AA.

Everyone knows what Bo did in two sports.

Some guys just weren't meant to be athletes.  Paul here actually appeared in 18 games for the Orioles in '93, with a .213 batting average.

As Harry Caray, he would have had a long career in the broadcast booth.  (Not to mention tributes by Will Ferrell.)

Freddie Davis, Jr. went five seasons in various levels up to AA with a total record of 12-11.

Sammie Davis, Jr. has been called the greatest entertainer in the world.  He started in Vaudeville at age three, was part of the Rat Pack with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, and was in show business until his passing at age 64.

Rod Bolton was called up a couple times for the White Sox in '93 and '95, but only amassed a record of 2-8 in 156 innings.

Michael Bolton started as a hard rock singer in 1975, but switched to adult contemporary in the 90's and had nine #1 hits among 24 albums.

Kelly Lifgren was 28-44 from 1988 to 1993 with a 5.13 ERA.

Nils Lofgren (left) has been a musician since the late 60's and is a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band as well as Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

Donovan Osborne actually played nine years in the majors, but over a 13 year span.  He did not play in 1994, 2000, 2001, and 2003.   His career ERA is a respectable 4.03 with 558 strikeouts.

But he's not the Prince Of Darkness!

Oh, what could have been!

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.

Chantilly Show Loot

It was a weekend of shows.  Cars and Cards.

I spent Saturday at the 2018 AACA Fall meet in Hershey, PA looking at old cars.

Gorgeous classics, muscle cars, and big cars with tail fins, that's what I like best.

Sunday, I was back in my best environment, hunting for cardboard.

Knocked out a lot of my A&G needs...

Also found some Stadium Club inserts and a couple odd singles.  Always nice to find Jeter inserts that I don't have.  It amazes me that even if I find a big stack of his cards, there are hardly any of the dozens of Jeter inserts that I need to kill so many sets.

Also got some box loaders for almost nothing to whittle my 2016 set down to a few.

Picked these up for my friend Stuart:

One dealer had a stack of 1977 O-Pee-Chee, that I purged of my player collection guys.  Love the picture variations on a couple of these.  The Fisk & Sutter are Archive singles.

Same vendor had a box of mojo hits and parallels.  These are all also PC guys.  The Bowa bat piece has him as a coach, which is rather unique.  It was a lot but I didn't figure to see it again anywhere.  Hopefully the shiny A's and Evans aren't dupes.  GQ Bo is just a SP.

Worked on my '71 football at Uncle Dicks.  Also filled out some old Redskins I'd been hunting for a while.  Bosseler is a Post.  The new ones at the bottom I picked up at the end of the show for 50¢ each, which is probably a little much, but harmless fun.

He also helped me with my '71-'72 hockey set.  Down to only a few high dollar ones.

And finally, I always try to peruse my favorite blogger top want lists before a show.  Will be sending these out.  You know who you are.

While I was picking out the Hoyt and Dusty, I found this Monte Irvin that just appealed to me, so he came home too.  Can't really see anything wrong with it for such a discount.

I felt like I spent the whole weekend driving and walking around big places, but it was fun.