Do You Believe in Miracles?

 Kind of.

This package was waiting for me on my doorstep yesterday:

yes, that is a 1952 Topps #1 Andy Pafko along with 1989 LJN Baseball Talk. Fun Times!

If you cannot read that tiny little print on the label, it came from the glorious Seattle suburb of Redmond WA from a company you might know, COMC.  Remember them?  Well, I requested this package in February and it was scheduled for a May delivery - I doubt you need a calendar to see what today is but I can assure you, it is not May.  I am not saying I completely gave up on ever seeing it but their pandemic combination of horrible customer service and empty promises made me wonder if 2022 was out of the question.  But it did arrive.  They have answered emails faster of late and it was very well packaged when I got it.  You can see a nice tease of the stuff that was on top and I am going to spend the weekend sorting and enjoying the 900+ cards that are inside.  I am not here to praise COMC or bury them right now since the world is still knee deep in madness but I will say to anyone reading this wondering if they will ever see their package: miracles do happen.

COMC Badge and Pages.

       Pitchers and catchers report today! Simply one of the best days of the year and not a moment too soon.  The weather has been rainy and dreary and football is over so the dead of winter is at hand.  But nothing combats and destroys the wintry blues like pitchers and catchers reporting.  A close second is going to the mailbox and seeing a big ass box from COMC.com full of all the weird shit that site has to offer. Sticking with the sorting theme from last post, here you see the layout of the grid of goodness that going through a box of 206 cards that were all chosen for their specific nature to my collecting needs.  Each pile is a player collection or a photo collection or a theme collection or a sport collection.  I cannot think of a better way to spend my afternoon where my clothes stay on (not that I am above sorting cards in the nude).

The packing list covers up my nephew's blocks, which I was too lazy to remove from the coffee table.

There is far too much here to highlight each card so let's stay on message and look at the pages that were created and/or completed from this batch. 

Here is a page of 2002 Topps Ten that was completed with the acquisition of a Rangers-clad A-Rod card.  I found a small vein of these cards in an old shoebox and a moment of weakness made me find a few others and when I got to 8 I dejectedly decided it needed a ninth for a page.

Not this is a terrible set in and of itself, mind you.  It's just, well, boring.  It's like one big league leaders subset and the design is underwhelming. It is also an orphan set in that they only did it one year, though I think they did basketball the same way in 2002 as well.  Sports card companies just couldn't help themselves at the turn of the century and just cranked out whatever they felt like it.  Not every page is a winner.

Oh, but then there's this one, the diametric opposite of that Topps Ten page.  These are the 2016 Topps Bunt Program cards. 

I can't say I quite understand the Bunt online cards but I do like their physical manifestation.  They are everything a kid-centric set should be: bright, bold, colorful, and imaginative. These inserts have big logos, a fun baseball theme, faux wear, and good backs (which I neglected to scan ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).   I got the Papi in a lot I got on Listia and decided to find him 8 buddies to make a page.  This was a joyous one to put together. These Bunt cards are everything Opening Day isn't (and that's a good thing).

And to complete a bizarre trio, here is a page of the 1991 Pepsi Flavor of Baseball Superstar cards. 

I am not a big Pepsi drinker in the first place but I never knew these cards existed until one day recently I was looking for Dwight Gooden cards and found his (gloriously bad) version from this set (click on that, it looks like he's pitching in a rec league).  They are everything you want in an oddball food issue.  They have a gaudy product logo, a dense and inexplicable title, no official MLB logos, poor photos, poorer cropping, and a derivative design reminiscent of one of the most terrible over-produced sets of all time.  And as a topper, due to what I can only imagine was crappy cutting, they are all a little wider than 2.5 inches so they barely fit in a standard page (I had to look for one that was a tad bigger, owing to Ultra Pro's sometimes awful quality control).   This page is like good camp, it couldn't be planned for, it just had to exist. 

***

And as a total non-sequitur, I recently earned my red founders badge on COMC.com doing their infamous challenge. 

I doubt many of you are impressed but if there is anyone anywhere that I could brag to and get a positive response from this information, it would be on a baseball card blog.  Most people given this fact would tilt their head at me and stare like a confused dog.  All it really means is I need to sleep better and/or leave the house more.

Post Post.

Rejected titles for this, um, post:

       Past Posting.

       Post Haste.

       Post Tense.

       Post Modern.

       The Post With The Most.

       If You Come To a Post In The Road, Take It.

Okay, that last one is a little bonkers, but still.  Anyway, one of the most viewed entries in this blog was my dissertation on miscut cards, which itself was an off-shoot of a posting by Night Owl about the dangers and misadventures of cutting vintage cards off of boxes.  My love of oddball food issues has been pretty well documented on this blog.  What is just inexcusable on my part is that until this week, I did not own complete pages of the classic 1960's Post cards; all I had was a single example of each year hiding in the back of my retired players binder.  I am not sure what came over me, but I decided to remedy that woeful situation and bought lots of each year from the same seller (saves shipping after all).  These are the pages that came from that eBay buying spree.

1961:

The Jim Coates was the original card I had, the other eight are what I selected from a very eclectic lot.  Names like Marvelous Marv and Vinger Bend come to mind when looking at these, not to mention that Moon Shots, while impressive, are the second thing one thinks of when looking at Wally Moon - especially when looking at him.  Coming off cereal boxes, the backs of these cards are boring. but someone tried to make this one at least a little cooler. If I was a kid with a blank back, those ruboff tattoos or stickers would definitely have found their way to the vast landscape of empty cardboard. 

1962:

Post adds a little more color and a logo to the fronts of these but keeps the basic design the same.  In fact, given that they were using only one side of the card, this is really the most efficient design you could ask for.  You get a sturdy photo, a line of yearly and career stats, and a nice write up about the player.  You would be hard pressed to come up with a better one.  The Felipe Alou was the original card I had, the others chosen to fill out the page were either great names (Bubba! Blasengame!) or due to their sparsity in my collection.  I really should have more Don Zimmer and Bob Allison cards.

1963:

The design sticks to the basics of the last two, with a tip of the cap towards the 1961.  I have no idea if all these cards were owned and trimmed by the same kid or not but I must say, he did not get better with age.  Maybe he had the bad habit of eating his cereal while trying to cut the cards off the box.  The original card here was the Drysdale, which was altruistically donated by the aforementioned Night Owl after he posted about his Post cards. I must say, Post did like to get players posed with a bat on their shoulder.  I actually had to pick and choose to keep the whole page from being nothing but players with lumber on their deltoids.  1963 was a pretty good year to be a kid and a baseball card collector as you had the Post cards, the seminal Topps set, and the first Fleer set with modern players.  

Sadly, for some reason, Post stopped putting baseball cards on their cereal boxes and wouldn't make another set for 27 years.  We would have to eat Frosted Flakes and Twinkies in the 1970's and Drakes Cakes in the 1980's to fill the void.  I might have to start picking up some of those to make complete pages of them next.   If I am gonna be an oddball food issue collector, I better be willing to go all the way.

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.

Hey Everyone...

...who wants to see my new shiny Dickey?

Uhhhh...yeah.

This marvelous little pile came from the Night Owl, who when he pulled the R.A. Bowman card not only earmarked it for me right away, but somehow resisted the urge to make the obvious lame joke I did.  That is why Night Owl is a better man than me (and most of us).  In my defense, dick jokes are much easier than college residence assistant jokes.  Also included are an awesome 3-D David Wright from this years Opening Day.  I was quite fond of the 2010 3D inserts and these are equally nifty.  I may have to find a lot of these to make a page.  I have also grown to enjoy the sheen on this year's gold Topps parallels; I already have a page of those, though.  That Mr. Turkey Dwight Gooden card combines my favorite failed Met and oddball food issues...what's not to love?  I also must give a shout out to the Topps Fan Favorites cards he included, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan cards are always appreciated, that but sticking out there belongs (fittingly) to Sid Fernandez - who may have been the widest pitcher I have ever seen, and I had never known that Ron Swoboda card existed, and now I need a second one for my Rookie All Stars collection.  Finally, I must say the 1984 Fleer set is not my favorite, I find it a little too minimalist, but I do find the blue stripe works well for teams with blue as a main color and, since the 1983 Mets spent a lot of time in blue 80's style pull overs, the team looks great in this set.  I don't have many of the 1984 Fleer Mets for some odd reason, but now I have two more, including the OG Brian Giles.  Thanks Night Owl!

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.

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.

Jaybarkerfan's Junk Part 2 - The Lots

       Yesterday, we covered a card draft held by the esteemed Jaybarkerfan's Junk on his blog.  But Wes wasn't done getting rid of his cards, oh no.  He was also offering team lots.  Lots!  My favorite.  And Mets! also my favorite.  So you can tell what a fool I am for lots of Mets.  Basically, all he wanted was the cost of shipping for them, so how could I resist (spoiler! I couldn't).  So along with my draft pickings came four jam-packed team bags full of Mets:

Also, altruistically or practically, I cannot tell which nor will I speculate, Wes was giving some lots away.  Yup, just giving them away...so because I also have an odd enjoyment of defunct teams, I grabbed his lot of free Expos, because, hey, free stuff! (what's with all the exclamation points? and parentheticals? I guess I shouldn't have had that third cup of coffee).  Before we break down the Mets, lets  take a quick look at some of those Expos...

...and we are already in a cardboard happy place.  Overly colorful Larry Walker rookies, dust-flying plays at the plate, those sharp mid 90's Expos unis, fabulous early 80's record breakers, and Mike Fitzgerald, one of the four quarters the Mets gave the Expos for their Gary Carter dollar.
I love players on odd teams; everyone remembers the Mark Langston trade because it had Randy Johnson in it, but few recall that a) it even involved the Expos or b) Langston was only in Montreal for half a season.
One can criticize Milton Bradly for his shitty attitude all they want, but no one can deny his awesome name.  He'd just be an ordinary malcontent if he was Robert Jones, but instead, he was a colorfully named malcontent.
Last, but not least, is Woody Fryman.  I always enjoyed Woody's cards as a kid because he looked 150 years old on them, even when he was 35.  Now, Woody is 42-43 in that picture there, and sadly, looks younger than I do now at 37.  Oh the ravages of time.  Of course, Woody is now dead and so are the Expos, but they will both live forever on cardboard.  

OK, lets break down that Mets lot.  Yes, there was a bunch of junk wax in there, I didn't expect anything less.  When one is dealing with lots, especially team lots, you know that 12th 1987 Topps Keith Hernandez All Star card is waiting for you.  But there were plenty of gems as well. 

I can never pass up Mike Piazza cards.  Ever.  I always loved that 1998 Finest card, his white uniform just pops out from the dull silver background.  I didn't have that 2002 Ultra short print, I only have the gold medallion version, so now we've got new cards...yay!
As you may have read earlier, my brother and I went to Jackie Robinson Day in Philly last weekend.  Since all the players were wearing #42, the Mo Vaughn jokes came fast and furious.  My favorite: "Are those Mo's old jerseys?"  "No, they saved three or four of them and sewed all of today's jerseys out of them..."
My other favorite card on that page is Don Schulze.  Why?  Well, in 1987 the Mets pitching staff was the walking wounded.  Everybody got hurt one way or another. My brother and I went to a game in early August expecting to see Sid Fernandez pitch but instead, we got Don Schulze (they never said what El Sid's injury was, but we are pretty sure it had to do with the buffet).  And he got brutalized.  And for the last 25 years, Don Schulze has been a punchline in our family.  Sadly, that was Don's last appearance in a Met uniform, yet he got himself a 1988 Topps card, so he's got that going for him.

Look! Nolan Ryan cards!  In a Mets uniform! (more exclamation points? really?)

I have often said that I have more cards of Nolan Ryan in a cowboy hat than a Mets uniform.  While that joke is not quite as accurate the last few years with all the faux-vintage cards around, the 1991 Pacific Nolan Ryan set seemed to be nothing but Ryan in a cowboy hat.  I see now that the problem I had with that set is, I bought nothing but the second series.  Obviously, Wes bought a lot of the first series, because I got a boatload of Nolan Ryan from him...in a Mets uniform!  I got several of each card, so if any other Mets fans have the same issue I (used to) have, I would be glad to part with some of the doubles.  Plus look at the baby picture, jeez he was born with that giant head....I feel bad for his mother.

Oh yes, there is plenty more...

This mishmash of stuff does have a theme.  Gregg Jefferies, one of the great disappointments of my life, did get some wonderful cards in his day.  I love that shot from the '91 Upper Deck set.  As I have gushed before, I love double play cards, and Rey Ordonez got himself a few nice ones, that Stadium Club shot included.
I have a bunch of those Tom Seaver Baseball Heroes cards, but I have never looked to see if I have them all.  That is one I didn't have, so the answer to that question was "no" and now is back to "I don't know."
Tim Teufel was always one of my forgotten favorite Mets.  He didn't look like a ballplayer, he didn't move like a ballplayer, heck, if you saw his batting stance, you might swear he wasn't a ball player at all.  Yet, he was a pretty solid contributor.  He was greater than the sum of his parts and scrappy, to use two horrible cliches.  Plus, his last name means "devil" in German - he is literally the devil...how cool is that?
Ryan Thompson is another in a long line of Mets disappointments (Jeff Kent was shown earlier but not mentioned - they came together from the Blue Jays in the David Cone trade - double disappointment!).  But I have a large Ryan Thompson collection.  Why?  Well, besides the fact that you always seem to accumulate cards of your teams failed prospects in gross, I have not one but two friends with the moniker "Ryan Thompson."  If I had the same name as a major leaguer, I would have my business cards printed on my same-name player's baseball card. 
I am currently infatuated with the 1994 Fleer set, a set I never really collected or even really looked at much before.  I am looking to pick up nine cards for a page (I have 2 so far) and I am looking to put together the Mets team, this is two more cards towards that goal.

There were some minor league cards too...

As I get closer to acquiring all the Mets cards from major manufacturers from the last 50 years, I find myself contemplating whether or not I should start picking up minor league Mets affiliates team sets.  You know, so I can have something new to drive myself nuts about. 

One great thing about baseball cards is, even when you think you have All The Cards, you don't...

...there is always an oddball you have never seen, an insert from a set that you didn't collect, a shiny variation of a vague set.  And, of course, stickers.  That Strawberry is an OPC sticker, to boot.  Oh yeah, and that cool graded Johan belonged in the Draft portion from yesterday but somehow wound up here.  Ahhh, my wonderful organizational skills.

There was a large vein of recent Mets cards, which is good, because I am still filling in the gaps from the last couple years:

There was an abundance of 2011 Topps, which I think finishes off my team set (I'll have to check).  I didn't have a Lucas Duda from the 2011 Bowman set, nor the Ike Davis from Heritage, and now I do.  I think James Fuller invented the steam engine or the hair brush or something, I'll have to check that as well.

Last but not least are some more contemporary Mets:

I think I now have 2 of those Gold R.A. Dickey cards.  I also think I am now one away from completing the Golden Tom Seavers, I have four and I believe there are five of each player.  I read a lot of trashing of the 2012 Topps design, but it has grown on me.  It is simple and modern with a little elegance and a little pizazz.  It fits in nicely with the last few years of designs with its white borders and curves.  I think I prefer the 2010 Topps design, but certainly not those two...is there a more apropos indicator of how lousy the Mets have been recently than Oliver Perez and Francisco Rodriguez?  I think I better wrap this up.

One man's Junk is another man's treasure.  Thanks Wes!

Complete Set Sunday - Division.

        I always think of a "Base Topps Set" as 792 cards.  I am well aware that Topps hasn't had a card set that number for 20 years, but the 792-era, from 1982 to 1992, coincides perfectly with my childhood set building.  Before that it was 726 for a few years and most vintage sets are some random number pulled out the last series' butt and now, 660 rules the roost (or 990, depending what you think of the third "update" series), but the aforementioned eleven year run seared that magic number permanently on my brain. 

       The great thing about 792 card set was it was divisible by nine - 88 pages held a whole set.  You bought a box of 100 pages and you could house the whole Topps set and have a dozen leftover to play with as you wanted.  In my numerology-oriented brain, this is a big deal.  I am far far more likely to put a set into binders if the total set is divisible by nine.  In my world, 100 card sets are the devil, 90 card sets are perfection. 

       Let's look at the phenomena with two small oddball sets from 1992.  First up is the Donruss Coca Cola Nolan Ryan set.  Most people don't like the 1992 Donruss set and I don't blame them; it is very plain looking and poorly executed.  The Nolan Ryan set, though, added gold borders which made the baby blue headers pop and practically looks like a different set because of it. 

The set itself celebrates Ryan's career with a year-by-year synopsis, one card per year.  It came a single card at a time in specially marked Coca Cola products, specifically in the soda can 12 packs, along with 3 regular 1992 Donruss cards.  You may wonder why these cards look a little odd...it is because they are still in the original cellophane they came in:

Useless trivia alert! Andre Dawson's middle name is Nolan, and so is Nolan Ryan's...his actual first name is Lynn.

Ryan was everywhere in the early 90's.  His 5,000 strikeouts were a huge deal and his throwing a couple more no hitters in his 40's made him a Paul Bunyon-esque folk hero.  I fell hook, line, and sinker for the hype and became a big Ryan collector.  The fact that he was one of the many Mets-that-got-away also made him intriguing to me. 

Ryan really loved to play up that cowboy angle; I am pretty sure I have more cards of him wearing a 10-gallon hat than a Mets cap.  The great tragedy of this set (other than the fact that, since this set is 20 years old, that dog is long dead) is that it is 26 cards.  So close, yet so far - I mean, look at that sad last empty pocket.  This set stayed in my collection because of my love for Ryan and the novelty factor of having it still in its original packaging.  Make no mistake, that empty space bugs the living hell out of me.

       The other set we'll look at is the Upper Deck Fanfest All Star Heroes set.  It was given away at the 1992 Fan Fest in San Diego and was made specifically for that event.  It features mostly full bleed photography, which was pretty new for the time, and a simple border on the bottom.  The set starts off with 10 "Future Stars" and later on, the set ends with 10 all time type players, an early example of nostalgia driven player selection.  Since it is not a big set, so let's look at the whole thing all at once:






The set has some good looking pictures, it is chock full of stars of the time (many of which are now or soon will be Hall of Famers), and it is a somewhat scarce regional oddball issue.  On the other hand, it is hardly a seminal achievement or anything.  So what was the factor that put it over the top in making me keep it in my collection?  At 54 cards, the set fits perfectly into six nine-card pages.

Post Script: The 1992 Fanfest set also has a rare gold parallel that was randomly given out as well.  The gold set was one per case (about 1 in 30) and the sealed box is indistinguishable from the regular one so it is quite rare.  I used to have the whole gold set as well, but sold it off on eBay as single cards years ago.  I did keep a page of the gold cards, yet for the life of me, I cannot remember why these particular cards were kept:

Were they ones that didn't sell? Was I going for a mix of old and new?  Did I just dig the pictures?  Was it some combination of the three?  Far too many questions to answer on a Sunday morning.