Speaking Of Assimilations....

Not sure if five weeks is the longest I've gone without posting, but it's probably close.  I feel like half the time I'm apologizing for my absence on here.  Well, I am sorry I haven't been around, but I'm not sorry about why.  Without going into too much detail, it's basically been a whirlwind romance.  It started late last year, took a while to get going, and then took off about April or so.  We've been dating steadily since May, and it just keeps getting better.  We match so well on so many levels, that it's been relatively easy.  It's amazing to both of us how it's gotten to this point.

But anyway, enough of the mushy stuff, you guys want to see cards!

I did manage to make the July Chantilly show on what used to be Sneak Preview Day (Friday) but is now basically a whole third (first) day.  The show now runs 1PM to 8PM, instead of starting at 5.  I got through the bulk of it all, but really just hit most of my favorite dealers.

This is an amalgamation of several purchases, all of which are for player collections.  The first things I found were the Safelon discs from '76.  I have a big list of '76 and '77 discs for my PC guys, but this flavor wasn't even on it.  Got all but three or so of the guys I seek.  

The Sutter is a '79 Hostess, which are somehow the most elusive year.  I still need about a half dozen of my guys.  Have just about all the rest except for a few SPs.   Bo Jackson was from yet another new unknown football set that just came out.  The Dusty & son is from the current Archives issue, and of course, I will snag anything Jordan Addison.

Knocked out the better part of my '62 Post HOF'ers with this batch from my man Steve B.  Still looking for a good starter lot of commons, but most of the big names are found.  I continued to strike some other vintage-ish wants with him too...

Almost finished the '69 Fleer World Series from the starter I got from the set hoard.  If I'd have started them with Steve, they might be even better.  These were nicer than any I have already.  

These aren't the ones with the team logo stickers, they're the blue backs.

Stepped over to my regular current insert guy and massacred my list of silver parallels to '24 A&G.  There were still two full snap boxes that I didn't go through, but my list was so huge, I was afraid of too many duplicates.  Still ended up with a half dozen of these that I actually didn't need.  Also got some '23 Heritage short prints and a few other misc. items.

Moved on to Stan's and filled out these '61 Golden Press'ers.  Down to Ott, Ruth, Foxx and  and Wagner.

Also got three of the four '65s from him.  The last purchase of the day was the "C. Canizzaro" flavor of the 1st Checklist from Uncle Dicks.  This completes my '65 Topps set!

Thanks for stopping by!  Can't guarantee any better frequency of posting, but I can say that I'm jumping right into the 1963 Topps set.  Stay tuned for that!

Adiós El Tiante (part 2)

Luis Tiant was my favorite baseball PC player.  He passed away on the 8th at the age of 83.

Here is everything I have of his that isn't really a plain standard card.

I've got a bunch of these Sportscaster game cards of my PC players.  One of these days I'm going to have to plow through all the listings to see which ones I'm still missing.  They aren't necessarily listed by player - like this one - so it's a bit tougher to research.

These Linnett portraits are a little smaller than the Sportscasters.  They are very colorful and very '70's.

This Metallic Impressions is from 1993.  I just got this one last month or so.  Actually got two of them - bought one and got one in trade around the same time.  Might work out if I can trade it for the other four PC guys I need from that set - Blue, Bonds, Foster and Lolich.

Also from 1993, the BAT card from UD All-Time Heroes.  Technically, this is the base card.  There are no other kind in the set.  I always think these are an insert from the 1994 set, but I'm wrong.  The whole deal in '93 are these derivatives of the old T202 Triple Folders.

One of the seven PC guys in these 2024 Oversize '75 box toppers from Heritage.  I still need Guidry and Tenace to finish them.  I wish Heritage did more with retired players, but I guess that's what Archives is. 

Speaking of which, here are two autographed Archives cards.  But these are just in-person signed, as opposed to the officially sanctioned flavor with the bigger stamp - like this one.  I didn't remember these were what they are until I pulled them for this post.

Here's both sides of the same situation.  The one on the left is an encased and serial numbered issued autograph.  The one on the right is a base card with an IP auto.  That one was probably cheap.

Here are two more recent officially issued signatures.  The Prizm is a bit over the top gaudy - must have also been cheap or I might have passed it by.

Surprisingly, this is the only jersey I have of Luis.  I don't strive to pile these up for most of my PC's except for the few I'm going for supercollector status with.  Nice looking card though.

And finally, a quadruple dual jersey of Boston's finest numbered out of 75.  You could argue I need a second one for my Fisk collection.  I would say that it's too bad that Dwight Evans and Cecil Cooper weren't the other two players featured.  Then I would have 100% player collection guys on it.  Oh well, I like Rice & Lynn too. 

And that wraps it up for my Tiant collection.  Hope you enjoyed. 

A lot of my PC's started when I had a few cards of the same player and I just liked him.  Tiant was definitely one of the coolest dudes to play the game.  He was funny and kinda badass at the same time.  Plus, he was a loyal and caring family man, as you could see in the program about bringing his parents to America.  I appreciate players much more when they're good people too.

Adiós El Tiante (part 1)

Just a day after I posted about my favorite football PC player's birthday, my favorite baseball PC player passed away.  Luis Tiant was 83.

This 6" x 9" MLB photo decorates the cover of the first of nine binders that house all my baseball player collections.  Luis' cards are right up front.  There are 13 pages from the binder and several other things, so I'll split this into two posts since there are 27 images.  

Here is everything I have of his so far....

It all starts with the personalized IP autographed 1965 Topps rookie card.  Somewhere I had a picture of he and I when I got that signed, but I can't find it.  Not a great shot anyway and he seemed like he wasn't enjoying himself that day.  I just started the '65 set, so I'll need another one at some point for that.  

Found one of the '69 Topps highlights with his signature on it too.  Don't think it was very expensive.  Going through my collection to make these scans, I realize how bad some of these vintage cards are as far as centering.  That '66 is terrible.

The second page is a 9-pocket mini sheet with several inserts and oddballs.  (The bottom slots are empty so I cropped them out.)  A '69 Topps transfer, the regular and OPC deckle edges, a Dell photostamp, a Milton Bradley, and the '70 Kellogg's.  

The O-Pee-Chee versions of the '69 League Leaders cards begin page 3.  As a rule, I put Topps first, then Hostess and Kellogg's, then any others after that.  That changes in 1980 when Topps is no longer the dominant company.  The middle card is a Kahn's.  It might be '70, but only fits in the middle page slot sideways.  There will be a bunch of odd-sized items later that live in the odd-size binder, but that Kahn's just didn't have a good spot in that one, so it stays here.  And those '70 "Supers" aren't really super-sized.

The next page has holes - mostly for OPC versions.  Tiant has no '72 cards.  He was injured and spent significant time in the minors in '71 according to the back of the '73 cards.  I left a slot open for the OPC ERA Leaders below the base card, and for the '74 OPC below the base Topps too.  It works out better to show the pairs this way with an odd number of pockets. 

More from the '75 design later.  That SSPC is such a funny shot.  It looks like he's thinking "If this fool doesn't take the picture and get out of my way, I'm gonna sock him in the mouth!"

More OPC's, a cloth sticker, and a '79 Burger King that is like a Traded card.  Ya gotta love the pairings of the late '70's Topps & OPC's when a player changes teams.

Here's where the order switches.  All companies are in alphabetical order now.  I stuck that little stamp from '83 with the Donruss.  It's actually in a folded penny sleeve draped over the card.

Now it gets really diverse.  Senior Leagues, Swell, Line Drive, Minor Leagues, and Action Packed.

Moving on to post-career issues.  Ted Williams, Upper Deck, Fleer, etc.

Lots of reprinted images in this section.  Archives, Fan Favorites, Retired Signature, and the more uncommon Shoebox Topps issues, among others.

Now the finishes get more fancy then the photo selections.  I'm sure there are a lot more out there that would expand this part of the PC.

More retired player sets, more repeated pictures.  I think there are even more parallels of those Absolute Heroes.  I'm sure I'm still looking for the pewter '06 Greats.

And finally, you have the Topps Chrome Anniversary premiere edition and all the parallels, along with a few of the other issues from around the same year.  The base and Mustaches card are online exclusives.  The Archives '75 isn't what I was talking about before.  This year's Heritage box toppers are even nicer.

Had one straggler stuck on the back of the last page.  Didn't want to start another sheet just for one card.

Stay tuned for part two - all shapes and sizes - plus the mojo hits and a non-card item or two.

Three Shows In A Month - Part 1: Ephrata, PA

Well, it's been another long pause between posts, and now I have a backlog of show loot and a Bat-Around to catch up on.  

The first of the three shows was on March 23.  It's the once-a-year affair in Ephrata, which sits between Lancaster and Reading.  It's a good show for vintage, as a lot of the dealers are old school and only do this show.

One of my favorite dealers there always has bindered starter lots of vintage sets in more than just baseball.  These were two of the best offerings this time.  I did NOT bring either one of these home, however.  

I did whittle down my '57 set quest by several from a couple dealers.  Ol' Granny was the most notable of this bunch, especially being in a Phillies-rich environment. 

Also snagged this Carey RC and the lone '62, both from the scarce series' in each set.

Got three more of the Golden Press cards that I started from a TCDB trade.  I thought these were interesting, but really fell into actually collecting them when they were offered from a collector who had many extras built from a few different starter sets.  These are officially from 1961, despite the labels on a couple of them here.

These two look like vintage, but are actually 2011 Heritage and 1994 Baseball: The American Epic. (The Ken Burns film tribute by Upper Deck).  Always nice to find a Jeets from my want lists.

Found this buyback of one of my more obscure player collections - hopefully cheap, since the back is way off center.

And rounding out the vintage, this Post Jell-o card of Ron Fairly.  (The Post cards' stat line divider extends far beyond the numbers and past the blue stars.  The Jell-o's line stops close to them.)

One quick hockey hit - this '81-'82 Topps Gretzky put my wants down to just some West region cards.

The ubiquitous Washington selections that I always seem to find.  This time with some mojo mixed in with the varying degrees of shiny and parallel.  That Garçon medallion thinger wasn't expensive even though it is numbered to 25.  Some of these are older than I usually get.  Typically I'll only see the last couple years', but I was confident these were all needs.

I managed to find only one of local kid Addison.  Did better with his at the other two shows.  This one is really for my co-worker who coached him in middle school.

The penultimate football acquisitions were some inserts from the last several years.  Two in die-cut form.

And finally, I got a huge starter lot of 2020 Topps XFL from a dealer who had them in a dime box.  I told him I'd love to make a set out of them, but it would take a long time to sort it out.  He said I could have the whole batch for five dollars.  SOLD!  Ended up making close to two sets out of them.  I love the spring leagues.

So that's my haul from the first show.  Stay tuned for two more....

Additional Atypical Arrivals

Yep, more incoming cards.  Because this is all I do now.

I'm pretty sure this was one day's mail, and it's TCDB traders, plus my best trader buddy Stuart's latest contributions.

 
Starting on the left, two bonus packs of this year's Topps Big League.  All of which I put on my available list on the Database.  A couple Carlton Fisks and some other 70's player collection oddballs that I'll show better in a moment.  And a '75 mini upgrade for my completed set. All those came from Stuart.  The Upper Deck Updates are a TCDB trade that I didn't mark as received until the next week.  Oops.

Most of the rest is other Database trades, except for the UD XL & Fleer Team Action football from Stuart in the loose stack.  The Fisk Archives and the Priest Holmes parallels are player collection hits.  The rest is set hits except for Bruce Smith and Lavar Arrington, who go to my Washington football horde. Those GameDays are mostly inserts from '93.  The Gus Johnson was apparently still on my wantlist from when I picked it out from another trader who really didn't have anything I could use.  

Here are all of the Burger Chef Discs. 

And the backs....

Full view of the Golden Age Fisk box topper.

And the Fleer football.  I just love these sets.

And that small silvery bundle in the first picture is actually holograms from the Brockum Rock Cards from 1991.

Here's what they all look like.  Completed my set.  🎸

Thanks again to Stuart (he always likes to be mentioned on here) and the TCDB traders.