Una Vida Bien Hecha

According to Google, that means A Life Well Done.  

One of those ended recently with the passing of pitcher Vida Blue.  Well known for his championship seasons with the Oakland A's of the early 1970's, Cy Young, MVP, and Pitcher of the Year awards, and a few no-hitters, Vida was 73.

I have a decent collection of Vida Blue cards, although I don't have a lot of rare or exotic stuff.  As a tribute, here it is for your perusal.  Please excuse the glare of the pages I left them in during scanning.

The first page of his (and of my second player collection binder), starts the general pattern of Topps and O-Pee-Chee in that order.  The classic 1971 was a hard one to duplicate when I built the set a few years after I got this one.  I don't have the OPC yet, dangit...and when I do, it's gonna break up this page.

I actually had to steal a couple of the '72 League Leaders from a later binder with Mickey Lolich.  I guess I had them in there because he's first on the cards.  Will have to pick up second copies of the two I'm missing.  (Well, third copy of the Topps, since I have a complete set otherwise as well.)

One of the best color schemes ever on those '75s, and it was repeated on the MVP cards too!  This page has a bit of everything with two different SSPC issues and the representation of both Hostess and Kellogg's.  

Here is the flip side of the middle row in case you're not familiar with the SSPC short set.  Bonus bilingual OPC.

Transitioning to his Giants years, but not until the '77 Cloth Sticker sneaks in.  He's so well known for his time in Oakland, but he spent so many years in San Francisco, it makes you think he wasn't there for that long.

Just to keep the young'uns from getting bored with "just lousy base cards", here's the first of the handful of autographs.  I almost forgot them, but I knew I was missing something.  (I store my autos and gamers in holders in a drawer separate from the binders and sets.)

Crossing into the 80's, so now they're ordered alphabetically by company.  This page is pretty diverse too.

In person autographs, authentic or not, go a long way to make '82 Fleer a lot more interesting.  The plain cardboard behind the K-Mart card is another one just like it, but with a blank back.  I don't remember where I got that, but it was worth the likely 25¢ price for the novelty.

Don't turn off the scanner yet!  Had to pull out the oddball binder again and find the full panel from the '81 ScratchOffs.  Double shot of PCs on this one with Dusty too.

Now we're up to the time when Blue actually wore blue.  Don't think I ever saw him play for KC... One of the more classic Super Star Specials in '83 Fleer.

His cardography skips a couple years until he reappears on the Giants.  Half of my unusual stuff has him in the orange and black.  The scanner got close to showing him among the three images on each of those SportFlics cards.

The only Giants auto of his I own.  Shout out to Gavin at BBC Breakdown who likes these.  Not sure if I got this from him, but he'll be involved down the line here shortly...

Here's the fun stuff ~ Senior League.  Though I wonder why he bounced around to so many of the teams.  Maybe a lot of the guys did.  None of it lasted for too long.

Into the post-career section now.  I like those Upper Deck Heroes in the last two spots.  I have the oversize version of one of the other group shots.  I should look for this one to go with it.

Another diverse page of backs.  Sorry, not the greatest scan.  We don't show backs a lot in the blogosphere.

Some "Greats" stuff here.  I just got that MDA card in trade from the Database this week.  I so regret missing a starter set of those Sports Illustrated Greats.  Would love to build that set.

A couple empty spots in the next few pages.  Only because I must have been adding in the middle of full pages and created some working space.  That last card looks a little odd, eh?

I can never remember where half this stuff comes from, but generally it's from quarter or dollar boxes at shows or shops.  This one seems to be a leftover from the Super Teams autograph session that got overlooked, or was just some insider dealer's remnants.  Who knows?

Would've been a better design than this one.  This Timelines was probably cheap though.

More spaces awaiting new cards in the early 2000's.  I thought about grouping all the '71 designs into one sheet, but there are actually only around four of them including the actual '71.  Seemed like there were more.

I consolidated these into two rows for the scan.  Always love 2004 Timeless Teams.  

Thanks to Gavin for the last two originals.  Love cross-sport designs that work. That '76 is a Topps reprint(?) from something in the 20-teens.

And my final page - the new stuff.  I haven't bought Archives for years, but those poster cards are AWESOME.  Waiting to find the actual posters in the wild.  Yet another BCB creation - how cool is the bubble gum card?  Even though the '52 design has been run into the ground, AND I think retro design Chrome is silly, for some reason I really like those 2021 Platinum Anniversarys for my player guys.  There are way too many parallels too, but I'll try for them as I find them at reasonable prices.

My last mojo is a combo pair from Golden Age.  The A's colors really blend well with this set's hits.

 

Now I'll bring it home with the unusual stuff.  Going in order, there are six of my player guys in these '79 cartoons.  Wish they'd have made a lot more.

 Here's his 1980 Super...

 

Not sure what year these came out, but it was during the SFG years, so this should be close to the right spot.  I have this one and another cup of Bobby Grich.  Unfortunately, they've faded in the sun.

This is one of those early 80's All-Star program inserts.  Found a batch of them cheap on SportLots if I recall correctly.  It's usually about 50/50 whether I mess with stuff like this.

Now minis like this ~ I love!  Have all but the rarest back on these Golden Ages.  He shows up a lot in that set.

And the most recent item - this artist created Project 70 card.  It's really thick and encased in a sealed holder.  Of course, it photographed much better than it scanned.   This is the one item that is newer than the Heritage Greatest Moment at the top of the post.  Again, I don't usually mess with online exclusive artsy interpretations - mostly because they're generally ugly, but this one was nice - and on sale.  

If you made it all the way to the end here, thanks for reading (or skimming or whatever).  In any event, if you liked these, you probably agree with me that Vida Blue was one of the coolest dudes and has some of the nicest cards in the history of the hobby.

PWE = Pretty Wacky Experiences

Chugging along with the Database entries and more trades.  Most of them are PWEs like I mentioned before.  Got another one that arrived completely intact, but looked like it had been shot with a shrink ray.

Those are standard size card pockets, but no, the cards are supposed to be that way.  Those are the Topps Micro versions from each of the three years they were made ~ 1991 thru 1993.  These just about complete all my player collections except maybe Carlton Fisk.

Also last week, I got a return envelope from somewhere I've never sent cards before. 

This was the inside wrapping around the plastic page that held the cards.  The envelope actually had a return address of New York, NY, but I sent to Israel.  That was pretty cool.  Only cost me a bit over $3 for First Class International.

Then Friday, I got a major mailday:

One bubble mailer and four PWEs.  You can see the different postage on each one.  The butterfly stamps are equal to one regular first class stamp plus the extra ounce / non-machinable extra charge.  The bunnies are the extra oz./non-mach by itself.  So if you have a two ounce envelope that is rigid - it's one of each.

After depackaging, this is what I ended up with.

Here's a sampling of what was in those trades.

My last base (SP) from the latest Ginter set.  The Ohtani is a duplicate, because I didn't have any of the Banner Seasons on my want list.  I think I missed updating the database after buying a bunch of '22 Ginter at Chantilly.  That's the downside of keeping two sets of wantlists.

Love all the special Cal Ripken sets and subsets.  Though I figured no one will be trading things like this, so I ended up buying this on and one of the Skybox E-Motion ones too.  This one's got an issue with the foilage, as you can see it's a different shade in the left section.  Hopefully the one I bought is consistent.  This one is available cheap when that one gets here.

Some "A-list" retro stuff from a couple different trades.  The Aaron is from the '94 Archive set, and Abreu is one of three '07 Heritage SPs that I knocked off.

I picked this 2020 Archives Robles just to add to the random cards of his I occasionally pick up that generally get added to sets of the same year and not a player collection.  I actually ended up with two of these - the database will repeat a match between two traders for some reason and I didn't catch it.  Mostly because I don't analyze my trades that closely since my main goal is to move out as much stuff as possible.  I know it makes people feel better if they have a couple more to match up when I'm sending twice as many.  Not sure that was the case here, but either way I have one available...

A couple that look like pure Overproduction era commons, but upon closer inspection, you'll realize that the '90 Donruss checklist is the factory version with a different range of numbers, and the '91 Comstock is the Mariners version (vs. the Cubs version which is blue bordered.) I had a notation about lines in the bottom right corner being extended, but I can't find the reference to it, so I crossed it off since it definitely isn't the Cubs version.

Down to Pat Benetar for my series 2 set of ProSet MusiCards!  Metal horns up! I'm not building the entire set, just the hard rock acts and a few awesome females.

Some foil-stamped football from various years.  These are 1997 Upper Deck and 2015 Prestige.  I think the Prestige card's scan stretched at the end.  The extra glossy (and usually shiny) ones tend to do that in my scanner.  I've also been getting a lot for my builds of '97 Stadium Club and this set...

...from two years before.  There's a lot of rainbow foil on these.  The logos for the first season's of NFL in Carolina and Jacksonville are cool.  The foil doesn't scan well, of course.

And finally, one of my favorite products to get in trade (or find cheap for sale) is Fleer Action Football.  These killed off half my 1986 wants.  I also got one of the two Washington stickers from this set, but odd size stuff won't feed through my scanner.

Does Heritage Stay True? (1959 vs. 2008 edition) Chapter 5 - Finally!

Back in June of 2020, I started a series comparing the 1959 set with it's "tribute" - 2008 Heritage.  It was originally inspired by Bo and his Cardboard Cousins posts. 

I got as far as card #268, and then just kinda stopped.  Not sure why, except my own distraction to other topics at the time.  Before we rejoin the journey, let me recap a few things from my first post.

Since I have both sets complete, I chose the 1959/2008 set comparison.  Having the cards hasn't really been that helpful though, I largely relied on the database listings and a spreadsheet where I laid out both sets side by side.

As I went through the lists, I noted the matching pairs, and also the significant stars or cards that were paired in mediocre combinations, or worse - not at all.  The criteria for a good match is simple - players share some characteristic: slugger, ace pitcher, or at least the same position, and for the same team.  There's a chance there may be something different, like a common nickname or something, but it doesn't happen often.

Alright, let's get back into it.

At #270, some good star power, but I wouldn't say they're a match.  Fielder seems more of a big fun guy, while Hodges is probably a bit more serious.  

Let's try the Dodgers' first basemen together...

...and put two guys playing for Milwaukee with some great memorable cards together.

That's just a great hobby pairing right there.

On to #283, you've got the immortal Russ Heman with another guy named Cabrera...?  Just kidding.  Miggy is probably a future HOF'er, right?  Let's see what else we can do.

Virgil is a vast improvement.  Tigers third baseman, the first Dominican to play in the majors (OK, Miggy is Venezuelan, but still...), and well, ....he didn't actually show up on the League Leaders.  Still better than a random Cleveland pitcher!

Wasn't thinking when I was going through the spreadsheet and marked these two.  Tony Gwynn the elder had been retired for 7 years already.  This is his son.  But either way, the only similarity is the color scheme.  

Checked the '59 Milwaukee roster (again) and found that - according to Baseball Reference, Gwynn Jr. and Brother Frank here had rather similar numbers.  Junior was more of a runner since he only placed as a leader in fielding range.  But their hitting numbers are in the ballpark.

Right next to them at #287, we have a couple of Dodgers.  But the positions don't jive that much.  They are both notable players, but not superstars, but I'll swap this pair for another.

That's just a little bit better.  I'm not really sure why...

OK!  They finally got one right.  Though the modern font thing is still jacked up.  And Ramos and Pascual are more memorable to me than the Nats guys.  Mostly from seeing them on more cards.

Again, colors good, players not even close.  This one is an easy fix.

I mean, come on.  Both guys end up running the Bronx Bombers.  It's a no-brainer.

At the 300 mark.  This is a good one.  

And a good place to end the first batch in three years.  Now I'll have to make up more of the graphics.  These are all I still had left except for the Gwynn Jr./Stone duo which I just made.  They're easy to do as long as the database site is up, which it wasn't when I began tonight.  (Anyone else getting 502 Bad Gateway or Certificate errors on there?)

The earlier articles had about twice the comparisons.  Is this a good length or should I go longer?  Let me know in the comments.