Cleaning.

       It's been raining the last couple of days.  While I am not exactly Rain Man when it comes to the rain, I tend to mope around the house hoping my sinuses will stop throbbing when the spring showers come.  The rain plus insomnia led me to do a little spring cleaning.  I tackled some of the boxes I have previously shown awful pictures of; I delved specifically into some of the oddball memorabilia boxes, the stuff that is not strictly baseball cards, but more baseball card related. I will just randomly grab a few things and write about them, since I am sick of trying to figure out why I bought most of them in the first place or what the hell I am going to do with them.


OOOOoooo.... off to a good start, a couple of old school Mets pictures.  These are photographs, not cards or post cards.  I have no earthly clue where or when I got them.

The names of the players are written on the back (Al Jackson and Wayne Garrett) in different inks and handwriting.  I recognized the players, I do not recognize the handwriting (it is not mine, anyway).  These are still kind of neat and I will find a spot for them in my Mets books.  I need to catalog my stuff better, I'd like to know where these came from.

These are pretty cool too.  Some of you may have seen these before - they are from the late 70's - they are patches that are 2½" x 3½", so they are baseball card size. 

I do actually know where I got these from...a local card shop had about 1000 of each of these in a box in the back, so I bought a couple of them a while ago.  I am puzzled as to what to do with them and this is obviously not the first time I have been puzzed by them since they ended up in one of these boxes.  Should I put them in top loaders and treat them like cards, or should I find a garment and treat them like textiles?  I guess this conundrum is why there haven't been more issues like these.

OK, crazy food issue time.  It is a promo sheet of Ritz Cracker Don Mattingly cards from 1989...

...in fact, there are two of them...

...and I would be lying if I told you I didn't just look these up on ebay to find out what the hell they are.  My love of wacky food issues would usually be trumped by the subject being a Yankee, but since these aren't licensed, perhaps I made an exception seeing as the interlocked NY is nowhere to be seen.  I also found this in an envelope with these:

A Don Mattingly autograph from a 3x5 signature book.  It is not an index card but a page from one of those little scrapbooks (how odd is it to have this of a living recent ballplayer?).  Somehow, I imagine I was going to combine this bizarre cut signature with the Ritz Cracker sheet to make some kind of framed Mattingly collectable .  Or something like that.  Maybe, I dunno.  I really have no idea where I got either of these things.  Maybe I will now shift gears and make my own Donnie Baseball custom card with the cut signature, perhaps when a streak of arts and craftiness strikes me.  Sounds like a fun project to me.

Oh boy!  A box...a flat box with no identifying marks whatsoever...



It's a collector's plate.  Um, OK.  It 's all gold a shiny, even through the wrapping.  Let's see who it is...

Why, it's Nolan Ryan.  This is from Topps and it is from 1993.  I recognized the photo of Ryan from that card, but...

...the back of the plate clinched that notion as that is the back of his 1993 Topps card.  This thing fit perfectly on my scanner, which should give you some idea of the size.  I would love to eat my breakfast, lunch, and dinner off the all time strikeout king's face everyday from now until the end of time, but alas, that little blurb there on the bottom of the back says that this is a display piece and not suitable for food use.  Sad.  Yet it also says to hand wash the plate, so in a way, maybe they are daring me to eat off of it.  I just hope I didn't actually spend real money on this thing.

Let's go out on a better note than that.  I found these oddball oversized cards:

Well, I don't think they are cards, per se, it says on the front that they are pictures.  I don't remember these at all much less where I procured them.  I only have three of the packs and it says there are five.  I can't see if there is anything on the back of them.  Since they are career leaders, I assume there are some all-time greats inside.  Listings on eBay show that they are from 1983 and that they actually fold out, accordion style, just like on the front icon.  How freaking weird are these things?  I am torn, do I open them?  Tear them apart?  Sell them on eBay?  Does anybody really really want these things and has something to trade me for them?  I might keep the pitching leaders, though, no matter what, seeing as there is no doubt a Tom Seaver in there.  I just wish I could remember where I got them from.  See what happens when you don't organize and write things down?  Maybe I'll just throw all this stuff back in the box and wonder about them all over again 5-6 years from now.  Sigh.