Trade O' the Day.

       Kevin of O's Card of the Day (and about half a dozen other blogs) is my oldest online trade partner.  Way before this blog existed, my first online trade was sending him some 1965 Topps cards for his set.  After seeing that his love of the Orioles is as strong (if not stronger) for my adoration of the Mets, I started putting O's cards aside for him almost immediately.  It has now become an unbreakable habit.  If I am opening a pack or a repack or even if I am at a show, I just instinctively put aside Baltimore cards and when the pile becomes large or interesting, I send them off to Maryland.  When I am lucky, a return package arrives and a couple of weeks ago, such a package was waiting for me and boy is it a doozy.

There was some 1970's Mets goodness:

Granted I have most of these cards, but the Torre is destined for my page of 1978 Topps manager cards that is now almost complete and the Hodges will find a home on his player page, which is now finished.  That Mike Jorgensen was somehow missing in my collection.

There were some new Mets in there too...

I didn't have any of those 2012 Triple Play cards nor that Lucas Duda.  The 1993 Leaf Fernandez was also a new edition (the backs of those cards are magnificent). And speaking of the backs, that mini Strawberry's back is full of such teasing at how good he could/should have been - "After Darryl's final Mets campaign in 1990, his 252 home runs were 2 more than Willie Mays and 14 more than Babe Ruth through their age 28 seasons" *heavy sigh*.  And then there is Bobby Bonilla, the scourge of both Mets and Orioles fans.  I'll get back to that card...

Kevin also seems to mine this endless vein of oddball and vintage (and oddball vintage) football cards and sends me the Giants and Saints he finds. 

Yup, that is a 1960 Topps Frank Gifford.  Drink it in.  Next to that is a pair of 1969 Topps stamp books for the aforementioned Giants and Saints.  Simply amazing stuff.  And perhaps I can start a rumor that Gary Jeter is Derek's half brother and cause a sudden spike in the value of his cards. 

More 1990's football goodness:

I have precious few 1993 Score baseball cards and even fewer football cards.  I guess you can say I spent my senior year of high school and first year of college doing things other than collecting cards, so those are good additions to my collection.  That Stadium Club card of the Saints punter spinning the ball is great and then on the bottom far right is a Bo Jackson SI for Kids card.  That card is so perfectly early 90's, it scares me.  It will find a place of honor in my Bo collection. 

Last but not least, Kevin sent a little note on the best stationary possible:

He not only mocks the Yankees in it, he apologizes for putting Bobby Bo on top of the package.  Way to scare the shit out of me, Kevin.  The back of that card lists Bobby's hobby as golf and lord knows with the Mets and the Orioles, he did a lot of that after September.  I assume that card was a giveaway with a pack of Ultra Pro pages, man did anyone who bought that package get ripped off.  I will begrudgingly put it with my Mets oddballs and hopefully it won't show anyone the Bronx. 

Everything Old Is New Again.

       As you know I don't do resolutions, but seeing how today is New Year's Day and this is my 200th post, I figured it might not be a bad idea to do a little State of the Blog address.  Of those two hundred posts, only 71 came last year so I would like to get around to posting a little more often than every 5 days.  I also have about 20 half written posts in the drafts that I would like to try and take care of in the dead time between now and spring training (6 weeks and counting!).  I have added some blogs to the blog list (and removed a few dead ones) and if you would like to be added to that list, drop me a line.  I have some series ideas that my intermittent posting hasn't let me bring to fruition, I would certainly like to get those off the ground and bring them to all six of you who read this blog with regularity.  That said, I have an awesome blog and if you don't read it all the time, you should and if you haven't read all my posts, you should go back and do just that, don't worry, I'll wait.


If we are going to do old and new, tried and true today, let's look at a couple of recent trades - nothing more tried and true than a trade post.  First off is one of my oldest and steadiest trade partners, Night Owl.  A few months ago he wrote a platonic love letter to me about how I get him.  Seriously, that shit made me blush.  Well, I can pretty much say that notion is reciprocal.  As I have pointed out before, we have gotten to the point where we don't even set up formal trades, we just put cards aside for each other and when we point out cards in the comments of posts, those get put aside as well.  Then eventually one of us will email the other and into the mail the piles go.  Honestly, my trade relationship with Greg is better than most of my current face-to-face interpersonal relationships and I have never met the man.  Anyway, this pile came to me at the end of November right after I sent him this pile. 

Oh those David Wrights.  Since the All Star game was held in Citifield this year, it figured all the Topps Update AS cards would be Mets centric, but wow, Topps outdid themselves with the official logos and some great pictures.  That Chrome Wright on top is probably in my top 10 all time favorite David Wrights already.  Zack Wheeler is going to get most of my love this year while poor Matt Harvey is on the shelf so I will probably end up doing a rainbow of his rookie card so that Chrome is a good start.  I am holding out hope that Juan Lagares turns out to be Steve Finley and not Alex Escobar.  Last in this scan is a marvelous little juxtaposition of a 2013 mini 1971 David Wright and an actual 1971 Topps Mets card.  I am not sure if Night Owl planned it to be such a nice contrast, nor could he have known that I did not have that awesome Sadecki card, but it sure as hell worked out well.  Someday, I want to know why Topps has decided to reprint the 1970's designs in mini form with modern players.  I would really like to have been in on that little committee meeting - and it had to be a committee, because only groupthink could have come up with such an odd and misguided idea as that one.

Not only does the Owl take direction well, he also reads my posts and wantlists:

I asked him for that Frazier All Star Rookie card and he threw in the Rosario as well.  I had stated in a recent post that I didn't have a complete nine pocket page of Clayton Kershaw and in an altruistic gesture (or perhaps in a doubles dump) he provided more than I needed to put that complete page together.  I must say, that red bordered Dodger card just pops. 

Oh, and he also bipped me with Strawberrys:

But the joke is on him, I love pages of single cards, even junk wax ones.

Everything was properly packaged as always and he used blue painters tape to hold it together, but I do have one issue...

...he wrote a little note but I am completely puzzled as to its meaning. A little help, Greg?

The "new" part of this presentation is my first unsolicited trade with a reader who does not have his own blog, a man known in the blogiverse as Zippy Zappy. 

He emailed me out of the blue that he had a bunch of Mets cards and that he had looked at my want lists (hey, someone reads my want lists!) and that he had a bunch of those for me too.  You see here in this first scan some of those Mets cards.  I am gonna miss Johan Santana but since he hasn't pitched much the last year and a half, I guess I am already used to it.  I hope one of those three Prizm rookies pans out.  And it's hard to tell, but that Zack Wheeler is purple.

He also looked at my player want list and came up with some great stuff:

I have a weird attachment to Alex Gordon and now I have a page of his cards to accentuate that odd infatuation.  ZZ is a Yankees fan and filled my odd request for horizontal Derek Jeter cards.  I had obtained a Listia lot of Jeter cards that I had earmarked for trades but it turns out that seven of them were horizontal, so of course instead of getting rid of them I decided to make another page of Jeter cards.  With those two, it is now complete and I hate to say it is pretty sweet.  The Trout, Bautista, Bruce, and Votto go towards finishing their pages as well.  That Bautista card is very very blue.

Zippy Zappy collects Yankees cards and in exchange for this pile of booty, I sent him a nice assortment of 40-50 random Bronx Bomber cards.  Since I did not have a want list to go by, I just kind of picked as many oddball and obscure cards I could of players I figure he liked.  He told me I did a pretty good job as he only had 3 or 4 of the cards I sent.  Who knew I had pinstripe instincts?

Here you see some 2013 Topps Update Mets needs and a wonderful Mr. Met insert from Opening Day.  I have never heard of Logan Verrett but I assure you, he is a Mets prospect.  It is so rare to see green on a Mets card that isn't the grass.  Also here are a couple of Gary Carter cards, one of which I didn't have (the white GQ parallel) and one I already had which featured prominently in this snarky post.  And that lower left card is a gold shiny Matt Harvey rookie card.  Wow, I might not have sent ZZ enough for this package, huh?

The last scan covers some junk wax era stuff he sent, 99% I already had.  I believe that Rick Cerone might be the only one I needed but I certainly appreciate the effort.  Those Knight and Strawberry cards are tremendous to look at so I included them here.  The last card in the package blew my mind...

It is a 2007 UD Kellogg's David Wright card that I didn't even know existed, probably because it is Japanese.  Not only did he include this fabulous oddball food issue, he even translated it for me in his little note for me.  Believe me fellow bloggers, if you get an email from Zippy Zappy requesting a trade, answer that thing ASAP.  Thanks Kenny!  You have been proudly added to the trade wall of fame.

***Update*** Turns out right after I posted this, I found out Zippy Zappy started his own blog literally yesterday (thus making a liar out of me;). You should go check it out: http://cervinupcards.blogspot.com/

Mail Call: Oddest of the Odd.

       I have not chronicled my new found love of Listia as much as I think I should here on this blog.  I certainly have shown my love for oddball cards and dime boxes at card shows.  Listia allows me to indulge these two loves at the same time without even having to leave my house.  I mean, sure, I try and secure quality cards from Listia, but my real favorite thing is to find weird lots of cards and buy them.  Last week, I bid on what I thought was three pretty crazy cards.  Instead, the seller put some unexpected bonuses into the envelope and may very well have created the freakiest lot I have ever seen:

The original lot was the Strawberry, the Whitney Houston(!) and the Superman hologram.  I am not entirely certain how I even ran across this lot; I must have searched "strawberry" I suppose.  As I have shown in the past I love those 1990 Starline cards (and I don't have the individual Stawberry), I adore shiny (and Superman), and say what you will about Ms Houston, but that rendition of the Star Spangled Banner is top drawer.  So I figured, what the hell, the expense was minimal.  In and of itself, though, that odd threesome probably would not have warranted its own post.  It seems the Listia gods were looking down upon me and struck hard.  The seller threw in the other six cards you see there with no warning or provocation.  And what a wonderful six cards they are.  First of all, how did they have the prescience to know I collected Frank Thomas, much less include a card I did not own.  Then there is the marvelous Brooks Robinson K-Mart oddball card, also a card I did not own.  I covered goofy fun NFL names yesterday and Dana Stubblefield definitely fits that mold.  And while basketball cards are not my favorite, an über 90's looking Phil Jackson, a so-lame-it-is-wonderful Amar'e Stoudemire rookie, and a Tim Hardaway NBA Hoops rookie is a triumvirate I can get behind. 

Thank you rosemaryforsythe, I will never forget you.  This group is so ugly, so disparate, so random it's wonderful.  I almost want to leave them as a single page but alas, this is the one time they will all be together for posterity.  Drink it in. 

Another Trade With Robert of $30 A Week Habit.

       My collecting habits have been well chronicled on this blog, as have my buying habits.  Which is to say, my habits are consistently inconsistent.  I go to shows and dive into dime boxes.  I buy and sell on ebay.  I have a new love of the junk on listia.  I am the king of the impulse buy at K-Mart and Target. What happens to all these cards is they get neatly sorted into piles.  I think that is the zen part of this hobby for me.  I sit on my couch in front of a little card table in a yogi position with my legs folded under each other (no joke) and break all these cards that come into my collection into piles of what goes, what stays, what I need, what others need, etc. etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

       I read so many different card blogs and it is hard to say why some folks get piles and some don't.  Maybe it's because he has a hook or because he has so many interests, but Robert from $30 a Week Habit gets such a pile.  My excess Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, and Topps serial numbered cards all get thrown together and when the pile gets too big or I get tired of looking at them, I compare and contrast what he needs (or might need) and out the door they go.  It is an inelegant solution but it seems to make me seem altruistic.  Sometimes I even remember the actual cards we agreed to trade.  Lucky for me, Robert is always ready to reciprocate:

That Darryl Strawberry is from this years Archives and it is a beaut. The mini Ted Williams I asked for a long while ago and only remembered that I had when I saw it.  The Topps Gold Nieuwenhuis is a great picture of a player that has proven you can't steal first base enough that I don't think the Mets will call him back up no matter how well he fields.  The shiny Jose Bautista was on my wantlist - yay! someone reads my wantlists - because I want to make a player page of him (3 down 6 to go).  He also included a nice shiny numbered autographed Devils rookie card...because, hockey!

Finally, the Chrome Heritage David Wright (always appreciated) is a nice contrast to the 1964 Topps Joe Gibbon, the actual card we had agreed to trade.  He bought it for his set not realizing it had the added Heritage parallel stamp on it.  I wanted one of those because I have been integrating one into the Topps pages since they started inserting those things in 2008 with the 1959 set.  I sent him one, sans foil, from that '64 page he needed: the John Roseboro (a player whose most famous hit with a bat did not involve a ball).  And as always, Robert included a nice little note to remind me who sent the cards...as always the man is unflappably polite.  Thanks Robert!

***

Want to get a pile too?  Really the best way is to be a team collector since I have boxes and boxes of cards all sorted into teams.  If you have stuff from my wantlists, send me an email and let's get cracking. 

Father's Day.

       Father's Day is not my favorite greeting card holiday.  Last year, I was feeling sort of morose and gave the five cent version of why and then was pretty negative to the cards I featured.  Well, this year, I have decided to accentuate the positive.  It is quite an exciting time in my family because my brother and his wife are expecting their first child in about six weeks.  Not only will this be the start of the next generation, it will be the first time someone will be happily referred to as "Dad" in this family in decades.  Needless to say, I am very excited for my brother and he is, well, he is scared shitless.  In honor of his impending paternal status, I have decided to highlight my player collection of his favorite player, Keith Hernandez. 

Let's start off with the nine pocket pages:

These are the faux vintage reprint cards.  For such a popular player, it sure seems like there is not a ton of these out there like some other players of similar stature. 

There in the middle you see some great before and after shots of Keith's mustache.  It was quite a big deal last year when he shaved it off.  In fact, his upper lip is still naked and it still looks weird.

See what I mean about not a lot of the new stuff featuring him?  I have a rare empty spot.

Let's get to the section with his playing days.  First off, a page of him on the Indians, a stage of his career that he and all of us would like to pretend never happened. 

The less said about him in a Cleveland uniform, the better.

Here we go, he's in the blue and orange of the boys from Flushing, much better.

The second 1989 Topps card here is a box bottom card, which is baby blue and alas, did not scan well.  Those cards really looked sharp.

The 1959 style card on this next page is from Baseball Cards magazine.  He looks pretty panicked that they picked pink for the border, I think he has a point.  

If it seems Keith has a lot of cards showing him fielding, you're right...and he should. He won 11 straight gold gloves and it is one of the rare cases where a player deserved every single one of them.  He was an artist at first base who practically redefined the way the position is played.

Keith was named the first team captain of the Mets back in 1987. If you look closely, you will notice that on the 1988 Score card he has a 'C' on his jersey.  While I have seen it a few times since, I hadn't seen that in baseball before. 

Hey look! A decent scan of a Sportflix card, you can almost see an actual picture there.

If you check out this picture, you'll see his 1986 Topps All Star card in the background along with former Mets teammate and fellow Met broadcaster Bobby Ojeda.  I know if I had a baseball card, I would keep them around like that too.

It kind of makes sense to have Keith Hernandez featured on Father's Day for me.  My father was a dude with a mustache who could kind of be a dick and Keith is, well...he's had his moments.  My mom liked dudes with mustaches and intimated to me when I was a kid that she also liked Keith's butt.  That would theoretically make that 1984 Topps card a favorite of hers.

Keith was traded from the Cardinals to the Mets in 1983 for two stiffs because of his love of the nose candy.  It was one of the rare cases cocaine did something good for the Mets. 

I have no idea where I got that 1981 OPC card, but I am glad I own it. You can see on the 1978 Topps card there that he is not 100% sold on the mustache.

I remember buying this 1987 Star set from a kiosk in the Paramus Park mall when I was 12 years old.  Why do I remember that so vividly yet I cannot recall important events of my life?  Or even where 90% of the other cards in this collection came from...sigh. 

So those are the pages, but since I am on a roll, let's go into the shoe boxes to see what other goodies I have.

Right off the bat, I have his rookie and the mini.  That mini is really well centered, considering I have seen that card in all sorts of alignment disarray. 

I also have a nice big bat piece and a very handsome autograph.  Not only is it on card, but it looks splendid; you can make out every letter in his name.  That is a quality signature.

Wow, I have a lot of bat cards but no jersey cards.  I should pick one up eventually so I can fill out the quad.

That Team Tribute card with Gary Carter and Lenny Dykstra is all sorts of shiny.  Sadly, the scan does not do it justice.  The quote they used for the Bazooka card is very amusing.  Keith is, of course, famous for his love of the night life to the point where he dated Elaine on Seinfeld.  I hope I don't have to explain that to you.  If I do, you might be reading the wrong blog.  

Some nice low numbered shiny here:

Those Pristine cards look fantastic, too bad Topps felt the need to hide them in gigantic sealed special holders.  I usually bust those out; I have no idea why I left this in its uncirculated prison. 

A couple of inserts of him on the wrong team again:

That is his 1983 Topps Traded card, which was featured in the pages, so I guess I have two of them.  Anyone want to trade for that one?

Finally, a few more nice inserts:

Those Topps Super Teams refractors are pretty much the ultimate in shiny cards ever.  Damn, I adore that set.  The Dynasty Card there has Gary Carter and Dwight Gooden on the front.  I remember having endless arguments in my youth with Yankees fans over who was the better first baseman, Keith Hernandez or Don Mattingly and who would make it into the hall of fame first.  Sadly, the unfortunate answer to that particular question is: neither. 

That's my Keith Hernandez player collection. There are some cards I'd like to add to it, but I think it is pretty comprehensive.  I now leave you with the immortal words of Ralph Kiner - "It's Father's Day today at Shea, so to all you fathers out there, Happy Birthday."

Complete Set Sunday: 1990 Starline - Long John Silver's.

       In my last post, I went on and on about my birthday presents to myself, one of them being a repack.  In that rather disappointing pile of cards was four cards that immediately sparked my memory and yet, at the same time, made me say "hey, I don't remember these at all."  The cards belonged to the 1990 Starline set.  Now, I remember these posters being everywhere when I was a kid.  It was a very clean design and if you went to toy stores or shoe stores or sporting goods stores, they were everywhere.  I cannot, though, for the life of me, recall them releasing a card set of them.  On one hand, this makes perfect sense - I have never eaten at a Long John Silver's joint ever.  I don't even know if they have them in Jersey, to be honest.  On the other hand, I pride myself in owning oddball food issues, so I am truly surprised this set got by me.  I went to ebay and picked up the set of 40 cards for $3- shipped.  Plus it was sent from a town in New Jersey, so I got it the next day; practically instant gratification. 

The set came still sealed in the original packs that came from the restaurant.  I assume you got one with each purchase, meaning you'd have to choke down 8 different meals of fried mystery fish to finish this set.  Yuck. 

I was kind of torn how to handle this set.  As you may well know from reading this blog, I am kind of obsessed with having everything neatly fitting in to 9-pages (thus the name).  If fact, I have covered this particular predilection before.  A 40-card set does not fit neatly.  Even with the 8(!) header cards, this would be 48 cards, also not neatly divisible by nine (checks 3rd grade math flash cards, hey! I'm right).  So I looked at the way the cards were packaged and realized that these are eight pretty big stars.  Plus I had the leftover cards from the repacks to fill in the one blank, so voila:

They all work very well aesthetically and the loose Chris Sabo breaks up the color scheme.  I love it when a plan comes together.  

Let's look at the back:

Wow. That is pretty ugly.  You do get to see one card back, and it is not Chris Sabo but Glenn Davis (I like to keep people guessing).  I checked my set books before I decided to keep them wrapped to see if there was a set with a 4 or 3 card gap and there was not, so for now, I am satisfied to keep the set this way.  Maybe one day in the future I will get the urge to spring them from their decades-long plastic cocoons.

      Click here to see the checklist, if only for posterity and understanding.  And if you would like to actually see all the cards in the set, check out this post from Fuji, who covered them better than I ever could.  For now, this thick awkward page will sit in my set binders as a monument to the fact that as a teenager, I liked to get fat on burgers and doughnuts and not fried fish.

Game Seven.

       There are no sexier words in sports - heck, there might not be sexier words in the entire English language - than Game Seven.  Game Seven is truly the ultimate.  Sure, the playoff play-in games from this year (and the last few years) have been cute, and yeah, they are do or die, as are game 5's in the early rounds.  But Game Seven is a climax.  It has built from something dynamic; two teams have battled to a six game stalemate that can only be answered in this one final game.  It is a grand thing the Super Bowl lacks.  The Super Bowl builds up off of hype and presentation.  Hockey and basketball have them as well, but in essence, there is no greater Game Seven than in baseball.  A baseball Game Seven builds off of two teams who have to prove something after fighting back and forth everyday for a week.  And, oh look, the NLCS will play just such a game this evening.  Goodie, goodie!

       I have no horse in this race.  I don't care for the Giants and I truly despise the Cardinals, but wow, have they played one hell of a series.  I will be rooting for the Giants, because, well, screw the Cardinals.  Yes, I have not forgiven them for 2006.  Really, I have not forgiven them for 1985 yet, either.  So on a purely superficial and selfish level, I want the Giants to win.  I also think a Tigers/Giants World Series would be a good match up.  Besides, we just had Cards/Tigers a few years ago and Tigers/Giants would be a first time ever match up in the series and those are always fun.  So I will be eschewing a dull Monday Night Football game this evening and DVRing Dancing With the Stars and instead, I will be riveted to the most awesome spectacle in sport: Game Seven.

And after that little rant, let's look at a few of baseball's Game Seven heroes...

Jack Morris (1991)

Morris solidified his reputation as a "Money Pitcher" by going out in game 7 of the 1991 World Series and pitching 10 shutout innings.  I think he would have gone 20 in this game if need be.

Johnny Damon (2004)

Damon hit my favorite game seven home run (at least that I watched live) in the top of the second inning of game 7 of the 2004 ALCS.  The Red Sox had come back in the series from being down three games to none to force the game 7.  Damon hit a grand slam to make the game 6-0 before most Yankees fans had settled into their seats.  It was a glorious death blow to the Yankees. 

Luis Gonzalez (2001)

Gonzalez ended the 2001 World Series by dunking the ugliest little blooper over Derek Jeter's head to score Craig Counsell and beat the unbeatable Mariano Rivera and end the Yankees latest dynasty.  Most people I know were rooting for the Yankees at the time for all sorts of convoluted reasons; I would root for the terrorists before I root for the Yankees.

Edgar Renteria (1997)

Renteria had the game winning single to win the 1997 World Series - which is certainly pretty cool. But he also holds a wonderful trivial distinction.  He also made the last out of the 2004 World Series for the Cardinals.  He is the only person to be the last batter of a World Series both as the winner and the loser. 

Bob Gibson (1964, 1967)

 Bob Gibson didn't have a nickname...Bob Gibson didn't need one.  Bob Gibson won not one, but two Game Sevens in his career (and heck just for good measure, he lost one too, in 1968).  I think if you asked 100 people who they would want to pitch Game Seven, at least half would say Gibson.  I can't say I disagree with them. 

Bill Mazeroski (1960)

This page is pretty awesome.  It has more than a few heroes on it.  Bucky Dent hit a homer that eventually won a playoff game.  Bobby Thomson hit a homer to win a playoff series.  Kirk Gibson won a Game 1 with a homer.  Roger Maris won a Game 3 with a homer, as did Mark McGwire.  Don Larson pitched a perfect game in a Game 5.  Joe Carter hit a homer to win the 1993 World Series, though it was game 6.  Jackie Robinson's last game in the majors was Game Seven in 1956, and he played in a bunch of them, including Brooklyn's only winner in 1955.  This whole page has nothing but game winning credentials.  But Bill Mazeroski has the absolute unique distinction amongst this page - and big league history - for hitting the only World Series Game Seven winning home run in the bottom of the ninth.  He is pictured rounding third from that day in 1960 on the card above. 

Grover Cleveland Alexander (1926), Walter Johnson (1924)

Here we get a twofer, a pair of old pitchers who came out of the bullpen to secure Game 7 victories for their teams.  Ol' Pete Alexander did it in 1926 and The Big Train did it in 1924.  That is 780+ wins to call on in the late innings.  All hands on deck indeed.

Darryl Strawberry (1986)

The Mets have been beaten in Game 7 three different times (1973, 1988, 2006) and the 1986 World Series is mostly known for its Game 6, not seven.  But do not underestimate that '86 game seven.  It was a stirring comeback win for the Mets.  They were down 3-0 in the early innings, Ron Darling giving up a couple of nasty home runs, one off of the glove of the pictured Darryl Strawberry.  The Mets would chip away at the Red Sox lead and Ray Knight hit the home run that gave the Mets the lead they would never relinquish, but it was Darryl Strawberry who put the exclamation point on the evening, hitting a monstrous towering blast that made it 7-5.  The Mets won the game 8-5 and the series.  That was 26 years ago and 11 year old Max has been waiting for another one ever since.  

Not shown: Gene Larkin (1991), Frank Viola (1987), Brett Saberhagen (1985), Charlie Leibrandt (1985), Willie Stargell (1979), Reggie Jackson (1973), Mickey Lolich (1968), Lew Burdette (1957), Johnny Podres (1955), Enos Slaughter (1946).

(definitely) not shown (for a reason): Yadir Molina, Orel Hershiser, Francisco Cordero, Aaron *bleeping* Boone.

Homemade.

       As I have mentioned before, I have a deep adoration for oddball cards and food issues.  It would seem that a very specific aspect of that particular kind of card has been fodder for some recent debate.  I'd be lying if I didn't often look at other posts and say "me too!" and I am going to do that here, but add a twist at the end.

Here is a page of random unsorted retired players that I have in a binder but have not fully organized nor integrated into the rest of my collection:

I am going to do something that haven't done on this blog (I don't think) and just focus in on three of the cards on that page:

What you see are three old school food issues cut off the sides and/or backs of boxes, all to varying success.  I am pretty sure whoever snipped off that 1976 Hostess Bake McBride sneezed somewhere near the bottom.  How else do you explain the sudden and inexplicable chunk taken out of the lower right corner?  That 1962 Post Felipe Alou has been well loved all around.  It was cut with B+ precision, but then obviously put into the kids' back pocket.  Those are some impressive creases, even by my low standards.  That 1961 Jim Coates is cut rather well, but it is the back thatI find much more interesting...

...I believe that is a baseball rubdown from one of the 1960's oddball sets floating around (someone with a better knowledge of the 60's could help me out on that one), a rather ingenious use of them, by the way, to fill in the empty brown cardboard void.  That is why that random Yankees common has remained in my collection all these years.

But those three cards are before my time.  How did I do as a kid when the scissors were allowed out of the drawer (there was a nasty incident in my extreme youth where I played "haircut" with my little sister, thus eternally banning me from using scissors without permission.  Even as an adult I find myself asking permission to use the scissors, rather than asking where they are.  But I digress...)  The following cards have been in my collection for decades and each and every one of them were cut off of their cardboard panels by yours truly:

Not too bad, if I do say so myself.  The top two 1987 Fleer cards are box bottom cards.  The Grote is a 1976 Hostess card that I cut off of a panel I bought at a show in the late 80's.  That one is the only one with some suspect trimming.  It would seem that I had the same issue with a lower corner as the aforementioned Bake McBride card, though quite not to the same extreme.  Perhaps there is something about those cards that just begs for poor trimming.  The 1986 Topps Gooden is also a box bottom card - very sharp.  The other four drakes cards are slightly smaller by nature, not by butcher.  I included that Gooden Glossy All Star card as a visual guide of a standard issue size card (I am also amused that the two pictures on the 1986 Drakes and that card are practically identical).  So, perhaps it is cheap 1970's cardboard that makes for bad card cutting, not over-caffeinated or under-intelligent children.  Oh, and it seems I have doubles of that 1986 Drakes Gooden in the middle, so if you want/need/desire that card, drop me an email. 

So where was this twist I promised?  Well, I have done other things with scissors and baseball cards and  boxes.  First, I like to make binder labels out of them...

I have about a million of those "Topps of the Class" cards laying around, so it made sense to tag my Topps binders with them. Here I do the same thing for a football binder...

I also noticed that the graphics on the boxes were kinda neat, so maybe I could make labels out of them:

I am pretty sure that football label is the first one I consciously made to be a label for my binders.  I also noticed that recent modern binders use a label that is the standard size of a baseball card.  So making binder labels out of card boxes then grew into me finding the best 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 bits on a box and making my own unique cards out of them:

One of the obvious drawbacks of this little art project is they use a lot of Yankees on baseball card boxes.  Luckily, I have Big Papi and Bruce Lee to balance out all that Jeter and A-Rod nastiness.

That middle card there is from a blaster of 2009 OPC, I believe, and it makes for a better ad than any of the advertisement cards Upper Deck put in their packs the last few years.  These cards are also the only time I ever put cards in back-to-back, since the opposite side is either blank cardboard or very abstract bits of the reverse of the box. So what you are seeing here is only two pages:

That middle card is the closest I will ever get to having the Abraham Lincoln DNA card in my collection, but that is certainly good enough for me.  I even got some of the A&G box seal onto that one.  I like to see if I can get odd little bits into the card like that...like the hologram on the Drew Brees card, or the kung-fu dude flying out behind the Ken Griffey card.  The bottom right card is not from a baseball card box, it is actually from a Whiffle Ball display.

Since I so rarely buy any new product, much less entire boxes of new product, I am afraid those last four or five spaces might never get filled in.  I have a bunch of other homemade box cards scattered in my collection, so perhaps I will bring them all together just to have the pages complete.  I thought with all this talk of cutting out cards off of boxes, I would go a little outside the lines and show you what someone with a pair of scissors and a lot of time (and boxes) on his hands could do.