Mail Call: Weekend Wives and Dives.

      Some weekends lend themselves to heavy blogging and some don't.  This weekend's unbelievably beautiful weather obviously was not one of them.  I spent time outside and even spent enjoyable time with my family. *gasp!*  On Saturday, though, a pile of envelopes with some eclectic contents was sitting on the table:

Inside you have a bevy of football cards from all over the map, from commons to cards for my 527's to nifty manu-patch cards of Drew Brees.  Also there is a wonderful oddball, a 1971 Bazooka card, a set that has slipped through my fingers for some time.  Best part of that card?  I picked it up for nothing on Listia.  The last two cards are wonderful in their own personal way.  Penny Hardaway is one of the all time "what if" players in NBA history, sure, but why did I pick up this particular card?  Well, while surfing the aforementioned Listia, I ran into this card and it reminded me of a girl I dated from Memphis and her father's soul food restaurant.  Turns out, back when Penny was in college, after games they would all go to this joint.  Her father, who was quite a character, had all sorts of memorabilia on the walls and would ramble on and on about that team and how good Penny was. He'd also feed us just the most amazing food you have ever imagined: fried pork tenderloin, mac & cheese, collard greens.  Simply amazing.  Now, I hadn't thought of that particular little anecdote in years, decades even.  But that one card brought it all back...the smells, the stories, the hero worship, and the food (oh the food).  If that isn't why we collect these silly cards, what is?  The other card there is one from one of the terrible Batman movies featuring Drew Barrymore.  I have been in love with her since I was 6 years old and saw her in E.T.  Needless to say, I think of her all the time and don't need reminding, but it's nice to have her in cardboard form too. 

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If you kids get bored with the same old cards, head over to View From the Skybox and get your filthy mitts on some new ones via his latest contest which is pretty nifty if you ask me.

Summer Solstice.

       It's the longest day of the year, as good a time as any to take a break from sports cards and post some slightly more titillating fare.  An ex-girlfriend of mine once remarked about my hobby "You collect little pictures of men, how is that not gay exactly?"  A statement of deep profundity, even if it is not an original observation.  As luck would have it, not every collectible sports card has a dude on it.

The only thing missing from that page is a gal who likes hockey, I guess Manon Rhéaume was unavailable for a shoot. 

Here are some non-sports gals:

Bikinis? Roller skates?  Boy shorts? Tank tops? God Bless America!

(being an ass man myself, the backs of these cards are even better than the fronts...)

This page embraces every cliche about women you could want...

...and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  If loving Marilyn Monroe is wrong, I don't want to be right.  Even dressed for winter, she is unbelievably hot.

Heck, some of these cards can get down right risqué:

Wait, risqué nothing, most of those girls are naked, what's suggestive about that?

I will now go consider going to the beach and daydream about being 23 again. 

You Left Me Standing Alone.

       I do not own a page of Blue Moon Odom cards.  If fact, I looked in a few places and I am not sure if I own any Blue Moon Odom cards.  Which is a shame, because I like the name Blue Moon Odom and it would be topical, tonight being a blue moon and all.  I also have been drinking.  DRUNK POST!!! WOOHOO!!!!   Like I said, I couldn't find any Blue Moon Odom cards, but if I had been looking for Sam Octoberfest, American Pickers reruns, and homemade chili...mission accomplished!

       One page I did find, however, is very amusing to drunk Max:

At the end of most of my player books, you will find a few 4 and 8 card pages with the odd sized oddball cards.  This one is especially beyond the normal amount of odd oddball though.  Before I get into it, let's look at the back too:

We're gonna have to break these down one at a time, starting in the upper left.

1) That is a sticker that came with the Mr. T In Your Pocket gag gift that I bought my ex-girlfriend about 8 or 9 years ago.  It was one of those little soundboard thingies that spouts catchphrases when you hit one of the buttons.  My ex, being easily amused (she dated me for 4 years, after all) used to call me and just press one of the buttons over and over again.  Along with the obligatory "I pity the fool!" it also said things like "First name Mister, middle name period, last name T!"  and my personal favorite "Quit your jibber-jabber!"  I hadn't thought of it in a very long time, but seeing that sticker made me miss answering the phone and hearing "Q-Q-Q-Q-Q-Q-Quit your jibber-jabber!!!"  She would hit the button rhythmically for emphasis.  I have no idea why it is in here but it did kindle nice memories.  OK, moving on...

2) A 1984 Carl Yastrzemski Donruss Champions card.  I think that is just runoff from the legitimate cards in the book.  Poor Yaz, always stuck near the end of the list.  Pity us poor 'M' people; sometimes folks will throw the people at the end of the alphabet a bone and start at Z and work backwards.  Either way, us M's are right in the damn middle.  Did I mention I can spell Yastrzemski without looking?  Even drunk?  Now that is a bar bet I should go clean up with....

3) Billy Joel "The Stranger" press pass.  They gave these out at the Last Play at Shea concert, which I was lucky to attend because my buddy's girlfriend had to work:

buddy: "Hey! You got 275 buck to waste?"
me: "Sure!"
buddy: "OK, you're going with me to the Billy Joel concert tonight" 
(I may have been drunk then too...)

Anyway, I am not a huge Billy Joel guy.  I like him fine, don't get me wrong, but I like my music a little more hardcore and rock and roll and non-mainstream and whatnot (hipster! snob! *flips bird*).  But growing up in the 80's with a more mellow music liking brother, I am overly familiar with Mr. Joel's canon (and I am sure he would appreciate me blogging about him while I was drunk).  I went to the show, which was bathed in historic rhetoric - last rock show at Shea Stadium, blahblahblah.  Considering we had awesome seats and like half a dozen other famous classic rockers showed up (Roger Daltrey, Steven Tyler, Paul McCartney, etc.) it was about 100x cooler than I imagined it would be.  So, they gave us this thing, which I am not sure we got because we had good seats, or if everyone got them, or like the first 10,000 got it or what.  But I remember being offered $50 for mine after the show.  And I also recall them going for similar money on ebay afterwards. But I am a sentimental fool - and because I had such an unexpectedly good time - I kept the thing for prosperity.  Somehow, it wound up here.

4) Mickey Mantle: His Final Inning.  At first glance, one would think this is a card, but it isn't.  It is one of those bible tracts people hand out on the street by subway stops and whatnot.  I am 99% sure I got this in Boston in the late 90's or early aughts.  Full disclosure: I used to collect these things.  As a lapsed Catholic and confirmed atheist, I found the real fire and brimstone tracts funnier than most prime time sitcoms.  They usually had names like "Heaven or Hell - Which Will You Choose?" or "Do You Want to Burn for All Eternity?" with corresponding graphics and over the top preaching backing up those notions.  Hilarious.  Alas, that collection was only a passing fad and I am pretty certain I chucked the whole pile in the trash after moving them one too many times.  I should have put them in top loaders or pages like this to preserve them.  Anyway, this one is a little less old time religion and more self help.  It covers the Mick's drinking and how he recovered and redeemed himself before he died.  It is actually kind of rational about the whole thing.  Definitely a switch from most of the little pamphlets I was handed by the Park Street Station.  I can only assume I kept this thing due to its baseball subject matter.  (I just checked ebay - I could get a whole dollar for one of these.  Plus my memory for dates isn't always flawed: it says there they are from 1998).

So, all that from a few beers and a lack of Blue Moon Odom cards...Wow.  Admit it, you missed me.

Complete Set Sunday - 2001 UD Legends of New York

       If you read yesterday's post - and if you didn't, just scroll down and do so - you know that I am spending this afternoon in Philadelphia in the sunshine of the upper deck of Citizen's Bank Park watching my Mets (hopefully) beat the Phucking Phillies.  But, through the magic of scheduled posting, this write up has appeared for your reading pleasure.  Seeing how it is the first full week of the season and that I am going to Jackie Robinson Day, and since it is Complete Set Sunday, I have chosen a subject near and dear to my heart, the 2001 Upper Deck Legends of New York set.

This is a very handsome set.  Granted, also a bit of a niche set, but this was Upper Deck at the height of its powers.  The set covers all four major league teams that have been in New York City in the 20th century.  They first cover the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Today's honoree, Jack Roosevelt Robinson is there in the lower left corner.  I am sure if Ralph Kiner is covering today's Mets game, he will wish him a very happy birthday.

The set selects the all-time players from each team and then highlights the best seasons of both the team and the players.  It is a very well researched and well thought out set.  There is also something else magnificent and unique about it...

Those brightly colored bits are not just colorful...they are FUZZY!  Yes, this is the first non-kiddie set I can ever recall that, instead of foil or refraction, used fuzziness as an element of design.  It makes the very attractive cards very tactile as well.  The only thing more irresistible in life than shiny might just be fuzzy.  I dare you to pick up one of these cards and NOT touch the little felt part. 

Yes, I am kind of skimming over the New York Giants, I am pretty ambivalent towards them.  Let's get to the best part, that's right, my Metsies!  and look, here they are!

OK, so maybe the Mets don't have the Hall of Fame superstar selection that the other three teams have, but they are probably more beloved than all the other three teams put together.  Yeah yeah, the Brooklyn Dodgers were worshiped by a whole borough, but that was, like, 60 years ago.  And remember, they LEFT!  Sure, at one point I loved my ex-girlfriend, but she walked out on me and barely bothered to say goodbye.  Face it, for all the love and myth-making, the Brooklyn Dodgers are the psycho ex-girlfriends of New York baseball (and the Giants are just the over-infatuated wannabe boyfriend who followed them).  OK, I am getting all worked up here over a history that isn't even my own; this is a good opportunity to look at the backs of the cards.

Gotta love cards that include full career stats and good write ups.  This is a habit that Upper Deck worked itself into and then, sadly, got itself out of.  Luckily, this set lands right in the middle of their disciplined period of fabulous full stat backs.  I also like the graphic that echoes the front picture and uniform number.  The yearly highlight cards also have very well written info.  Did I mention how well put together this set is?

It is obvious that the Mets don't have a lot of great position players, but I will put their all time starting five up against any other teams' in the last 50 years...Seaver, Gooden, Koosman, Ryan et al.  Pitching is the richest part of their history, by far.  It is a sad testament that Wayne Garrett was still considered an all time great Met 11 years ago.

Yup, I am showing every last Mets card in the set.  Besides, they don't have a lot of pennant winning seasons, so it will go by pretty quickly.  I appreciate Upper Deck's use of Mr. Met as their alternate logo.  Say what you want about baseball mascots, but if you don't like Mr. Met, there is something seriously wrong with you.

Also included in this set is that other team.  That collection of overrated, overpaid, overweight, overfed, overwrought overlords.  The team that was born on third base and thinks it hit a triple.  Damn Yankees...

Since they cover all the MVP and pennant winners of a team in the set, there is a LOT of these cards.  The less said about them the better.  I don't even wanna touch their fuzzy parts.  Lets move on...

There is also a subset that covers all the Subway Series played by the New York teams.  I guess the set was put together too late to include the 2000 World Series - which kinda works out in a Mets fan's favor.  The set concludes with a newspaper inspired subset of date specific achievements.  Alas, these subsets lack the fuzzy bits, but are pretty neat nonetheless.

This set is obviously not everyone's cup of tea.  Having grown up in New Jersey a fanatical Mets fan surrounded by a family of Yankees and erstwhile Brooklyn Dodgers fans, this set is an extra large chai latte for me.  I put this set together while living in Boston after a crescendo of New York baseball greatness.  The Yankees did what they do and the Mets actually mattered at the time (and Boston's time was yet to come).  I bought two boxes of this product from my local card shop (I assume at a great discount) and then bought packs until I completed the set.  Well, nearly...if I recall, I was one card short for quite a while and finished it off after finding that one card on eBay.  I also still have a number of the game used inserts, which were also pretty cool; they will no doubt pop up on a few "favorites" posts.

       Needless to say (yet I have said it like a dozen times) I adore this set.  Why this set is in my binders is pretty damn obvious and if I have to explain it to you, I will punctuate my speech with head slaps.  I can even overlook the fact that it is 200 cards long and has an awful overrun of 2 cards in the whole "divisible by nine" obsession of mine.  Since this set coexists with a number of other New York themed sets, that over run is matched up with another and it isn't so bad.  Why yes, I do have a whole binder of New York themed sets - and this fantastic set leads it off.  And I do wish the whole "fuzzy" thing had caught on, but I guess you can't have everything.

LuniTek.

       This post is about my furthest journey out into the collecting wilderness, Topps Tek.  In the late '90s, it seems card companies could not draw the line on what wacky crap they would put out.  Cards escalated with gold, shiny, gold and shiny, then thick, then plastic, then 1998 brought us the first set of Topps Tek.  It was plastic, thick, AND shiny; a set that had 90 players, 90 patterns, which means a master set of these badboys would be 8,100 cards. Eight Thousand One Hundred Cards.  And I know collectors who attempted this.  I sold them boxes and boxes of this stuff. I watched them trade and use a website called eBay to augment their collections.  It was a major obsession for some and I thought they were nuts.  1999 brought a second round of Tek - 45 players, this time with home and away variations, making 90 cards total and 30 patterns each.  This is a more manageable 2,700 cards for the master set ("manageable" being a very loose term here).  Having watched the insanity the year before, I anticipated a similar crazy push and bought a lot of it for the store.  Turns out, people had come to their senses and I way over-ordered this product from Topps and ended up having 3-4 cases of this stuff laying around for months.  During a late season lull in product, I got the bright idea "hey, why don't I buy all this Tek stuff and try to put together a set myself?"  As usual, I was way ahead or (in this case) way behind the curve.  I bought it all, busted it and was, um, not even close.  At only 80 cards per box, 6 boxes per case, and less than perfect collation, I wasn't even half done.  Oh, I went the eBay route and sold the gold cards (numbered to 10! - they actually still bring good money) and inserts (FantasTEK Phenoms and TEKnicians - oh those punsters at Topps) and bought some other lots and everything, but after a year, I was still only about 2,000 cards in. 

      The cards sat in a jumbo shoebox for a few years, nearly forgotten as I focused most of my energy in those years to vintage sets.  Then in 2003, the madness returned and I was like "hey, why don't I finish that Topps Tek set?"  Yes, in retrospect, it was a poor decision.  I went back to eBay and after 6 months only got another 300 cards.  2,300 out of 2,700 would seem like way too much to turn your back on.  But I did.  My girlfriend at the time was a very kind and understanding woman, but she never understood my love of baseball cards and really REALLY did not understand my obsession with finding the same card over and over and over again (yes, I made the mistake of explaining it to her one day when she asked me "whatcha doin'?"  Let that be a lesson to all the boys and girls out there - never ask that question and never answer it).  So when we decided to move in together, one thing I did was pare down my card collection and one big casualty was the '99 Tek near set.  I don't regret dumping the set - even though, later on, the girl dumped me - and I cannot imagine what people who tried to put together the '98 set are like.  I suppose there is a wing in asylums everywhere for the 1998 Topps Tek set builders.  I mean, the 2,700 cards beat me, a devout (if recovering) completist...I cannot imagine what 8,100 cards has done to the psyche of some men.

In my binders lies a few reminders of my insanity tango with Tek.  Enjoy.
 
As a post script, Tek went out with a whimper in 2000 with a set I don't think anyone remembers.

If anyone knows of anyone who has completed a master set of Topps Tek, please let me see the link.  And the phone number of their psychiatrist.