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.

2016 Collective Awards

Welcome to the first annual Collective Awards! 

It's the end of the year awards show where the categories are all made up by me on the fly, and the winners are who or what I choose, which is probably in the minority of popular opinion.  At some point, maybe I'll come up with an actual statue design.  In the tradition of the Oscars, we'll call them the Borgs for now.

First off, the award for Best Base Design.  And the winner is, Allen & Ginter.

     Base Topps was too foggy, Gypsy Queen was kinda weird.  Bunt was cool, but plain.   Stadium Club was decent, but the more I saw it, the less I liked it.  Bowman was similar to every year (all of which I ignore).  Panini Donruss wasn't bad, but kinda recycled.  Everything else is either high end, or not a regular set in the first place.  A&G is very elegant, even in black as X.

Next, for the Most Annoying Design Feature In A Base Set, Topps wins for the mist clouds.

     Guess they were trying to create an ethereal effect, but it just looked like a brush fire at the ballpark.  They had a line called "Fire", but this isn't what they had in mind. 

Stay at the podium Topps, because you win the next one too!  A second award for Biggest Attempt To Correct A Design Flaw goes to Topps Holiday.

     The snowflakes look a lot better than the smoke, but they've only played a few games ever when it is actually snowing.   Well played, Topps, just in time for Christmas - yet another version of a set you already put out.

Now, on a more positive note, for the Most Original Insert Concept, the award goes to Pressed Into Service. 

     Finally something we haven't seen before that is directly related to games and that doesn't just include the same old players.  The blew the budget on the idea, because the design is a little lacking in the artistic elegance department, but kudos for the originality!

Continuing on the insert categories, the next award is for Best Continuing Insert Series.  The winner is First Pitch. 

     Love these in that the subjects are very diverse, though the team choices - not so much.  That may be just because of the predominance of Hollywood / New York / Chicago / Boston celebrities.   The design has evolved to match the corresponding base set in the last couple years, but they still have enough of a common thread to tie each year's series together.  Bonus points for the inclusion of some gorgeous ladies throughout. (I heart Haley Atwell.)

On the flip side, the statue for Worst Execution Of A Nice Concept (known as the UD Doc award) goes to Berger's Best.

     What should have been an inspiring tribute to a man that was not only the heart and soul of the Topps creative team, but basically made cards in general what they were in the golden years and are still basically existing as today, ended up being another generic reprint set that only noted which cards were popular throughout the years.  None of them mentioned a damn thing about Berger's contribution to their design, manufacture, or anything.  They just had his picture on the back.  Way to respect your elders, Topps.

Speaking of history, the Borg goes to 100 Years At Wrigley for Best Historic Insert Set That Doesn't Involve the Yankees.

     The Wrigley series is a nice unique design, with the elements of that ballpark easily recognizable.  A diverse selection of players (not just Cubs), events, and personalities makes these one of the best (and it turns out, most timely) insert sets they've come up with.  I'm even happier about them now that I finally found the Bryant #1 that I was missing.
     And not to bash the Yankees, (even though I'm an O's fan and they deserve it), they just get overdone.

My candidate for favorite 2016 card comes from this, but it's so outside my wheelhouse, I don't feel quite strong enough to make that official (you'll see why), the Best High Odds Insert of the year is Topps Laser.

     Basically, it's only because I actually managed to pull one that I even list this as a category.  Most of the time I consider stuff like this a pipe dream, but thanks to the box I got from Charm City Cards of Baltimore, I really did pull a Corey Seager Laser Relic two color patch!  Real nice design in a booklet card no less.  And I own one!

The "opposite" of that award is the double combo of Best Mojo-less Set and Best Rookie Saturation-less Set.  And the hands down winner is Topps Bunt.

     I said it before.  Watch out Topps!  I wouldn't be shocked at all if this product OUTSELLS all the other high end, "thuper mojo hitz" products, AND all the 100 real players + 350 rookies stuff that's put out COMBINED!  Boost the graphical quality of the design with brighter colors and a little more dynamic look, and you'll have a huge sellout!

And the final award of the evening is also the biggest and far reaching.  The prize for Corporate Monster Stomping On The Hobby goes to all the major companies for Sport Exclusive Deals. 

     You know the deal.  We all say it.  Exclusives benefit no one except the one company that can make proper cards for the sport any way they choose.  Creativity doesn't thrive.  Other companies efforts that would normally have surpassed the exclusive holder's offerings are opressed by lack of logos, team nicknames, and cropped photos.  The promised innovation is a joke.  You want innovation?  Let them all compete against each other in a level market and see how they'd have to come up with original ideas to keep ahead of their peers.   Rant over.

We hope you enjoyed tonight's show even though there were no poignant acceptance speeches, entertaining introductions, musical numbers, or hot babes leading the winners on and offstage.

$30 worth of help on a quest

Just got my package today from Robert at $30 A Week Habit.

He emailed me a little while ago inquiring about trading me some 2002-03 Pacific Quest for the Cup hockey cards.  I sent him some vintage baseball in return for these:

 

Quest for the Cup is one of five Pacific sets from that year that I'm building.  It's also one of the shiniest.  I'm also finishing Calder, Heads Up!, Vanguard, and Private Stock Reserve.  Haven't even started the flagship set yet.  I got most of them from cheap boxes I bought on Atlanta Sports Cards (site offline at time of writing) site a couple years ago.  They had most of the Pacific products from this era at very low prices.   2002-03 is my favorite hockey year for hockey cards.  

Robert started with five rookies from the end of the set.  Two of them are the gold parallels, but I crossed 'em off anyway.  Pesky rookies.   Sometimes I skip the rookies at the end of hockey sets.

Then we go on to the inserts.  Calder Contenders in gold with the inset pics of the logos and the players.  I like that they didn't use an "echo picture" in these, and didn't distort it.  That just weirds me out.

The Chasing the Cups are kinda generic, but nicely colored.  The backs are nice, with another second photo and a simple layout that you can read.

Raising the Cup cards are what I consider the marquee insert for this set.  Matching the base cards with the Stanely Cup featured as prominently as the player photo, but not overwhelming it.  These make nice use of team-color foil as an accent behind the cup and enhancing the name and title.

Hadn't had hits to any of these sets in quite a while.  Always fun to trade with blogger guys and see your stuff on their site.  Thanks again Robert - until next time!

The Dallas Standard

*Sigh*.

I hate to be "that guy" again, but it's getting ridiculous.  I don't post enough about football to show that I'm really not a total conspiracy theorist and hater.  It just comes across that way.

The last week or so, it seems like there have been a few things that make ya go "Hmm..."

Dallas played on Week 11 Sunday at 1:00 vs. the Ravens.  Washington played the Sunday night game at 8:30. 
The next week they faced off on Thanksgiving in Dallas.  Was the seven hour difference an advantage to Dallas?  Not sure.
The next game Dallas had wasn't until the next Thursday, (last night).  They had the whole seven days off.  The Vikings played the previous Sunday.  Dallas gets the extra rest again.  Advantage?  Maybe, maybe not.

I was actually surprised that there were no egregious calls during the Thanksgiving game that influenced the outcome.  Washington was competitive, and the game was played well by both teams.

Minnesota was not so lucky last night.

At around 6:45 to go in the first quarter, Zeke Elliott fumbles.  He clearly loses the ball, then falls on it and has it in his hands.  Anthony Barr of the Vikings jumps down and pulls it away.  Quite often during the average fumble, there is a pileup and the ball passes to a few different players until they get sorted out.  The last guy with the ball generally wins.  In this case, Elliott acknowledged he lost the ball and the offense started moving off the field.  But then the officials decided it needed to be reviewed.  After going under the hood, they decided that "the ball was recoverd by a Dallas player and then taken away by a Minnesota player."  Dallas ball.

Then, with ten and a half minutes left in the fourth quarter,  Dallas punts.  Adam Theilen of the Vikes catches the punt and runs a little ways to the side and is tackled.  Dallas players came off the tackle with the ball.  Dallas challenges the play.  It is determined that Theilen fumbled just before hitting the ground.  As he rolls over, the ball is loose, and then he gets it in both hands before a Dallas player pulls it away.  It is again ruled Dallas ball.  The next play is a Dez Bryant touchdown.

So in both cases, there was a legitimate fumble, recovery by the same player, and then an opposing player with "simultaneous possession" pulls the ball away.  Both times, Dallas gets the ball.  But they weren't the ball carrier to begin with in the second instance.  If the Vikings take the ball away, according to the refs, it's Dallas ball.  But if Dallas takes it away, the refs say they get to keep it.

I say they can't have it both ways.   Glaring double standard.

Are we going to start a debate about "what is a fumble recovery?" now, like there is for "what is a catch?"

Or is it just that Jerrah's team is on another nationally featured game, so they get all the breaks?

Like I said, I'm really trying NOT to be that guy....