Drunk Post: Who Wants It?

      As promised in my last post, I have been drinking. A lot. So it's time for a drunk post!!!  And I am going to ask a question I haven't asked in a while...who wants it? 

No, not my tacos, they are already in my belly...

...and they we're fucking delicious.  No. I am giving away some really great cards here.  Like, how about a 1952 Mickey Mantle!

Okay, not really.  This is actually a hilarious card.  This is a bootleg copy of the 1983 Topps reprint of the 1952 Topps set.  I bought two of these thinking they were the actual 1983 versions, which were 100% issued by Topps and were pretty much the first faux-vintage they ever made.  But on first glance of the back, I knew things were a tad wonky.  The front looks pretty good but the back looks like it was done on a Canon copier in 1983.  It is even clipped on the bottom by the bit that reads "1952 Reprint Series" One of these is in my Mantle pages as a great example of a copy of a copy of a copy (think the Michael Keaton movie Multiplicity).  But if you appreciate such horrors of ineptitude, all you have to do is say you want it.  I don't run contests or ask you to follow me or wax my car or anything. But you might want to wait a moment because I am also giving away...

A 1979-80 Topps Wayne Gretzky rookie card!

You miss 100% of the shots you don't make and this card missed 100%

In the toploader in low light after your third or fourth margarita, this card actually looks kinda good.  The colors of the front are on target and then you turn it over and quickly notice that the texture of the back is all wrong because this was printed on the photographic paperboard they used to include with digital cameras back in 1998.  Unauthorized reprint is a really nifty term for counterfeit but this card has all the presentation of a $100 bill with Benny Hill on it instead of Ben Franklin.  But it is still worth owning if you aren't going to try and fool your blind neighbor into buying it along with your dead parrot.  It can be yours for the asking price of nothing because it is worth less than nothing - but is still a cool copy of one of the cornerstone cards of any hockey collection.  So who wants it?  Just drop a comment or an email or a smoke signal and which card you want (you can only have one) and I will send you a fantastic (copy of a copy of a copy of a) 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle or a (painfully fake) 1979-80 Topps Wayne Gretzky rookie.  Like any good bar, first come, first served.  Now, who dares me to eat the worm!?!?

Sorting things out.

       A few leftover notions from my 2018 Topps post from Sunday.

I spoke of the look of the new flagship set and while I don't hate it as much as I have 2017 or 2016 since Topps has gone to a borderless design, they have started to take on the vibe of late era Donruss base cards and this is not necessarily a good thing.  I think one thing that always made Topps special is that they had a specific feel and natural progression and the border is one of those things that now seems is lost. I feel this year's design, unlike the last 2 years, would look great with a border.  My awesome, utterly professional and in no way amateurish photoshop skills came up with this:

You can add a border and they look much more like classic Topps cards (think 1996 perhaps) and if you need to have things extend out a bit, you can see I took the ribbon to the edge of the card and continued the disintegrating name plate into the border as well as the team logo (where applicable).  I am sure somehow Topps thinks borderless cards are all "futuristic" but they have been around since 1990-91 and used on regular base cards since 1994 Donruss and Upper Deck.  I am not sure those are touchstones to be aspiring to. Flagship Topps always had a classic look and they seem to love to celebrate their history, so why have they turned their back on it the last few years in the name of "the future?"

***

We all recognize what this is:

I have collated cards for as long as I can remember yet I have never given it much thought.  I don't know if it is like scoring a baseball game but I suspect a lot of people have quirks to the way they do it, as I have seen folks in card shops and at shows do it their own way.  If I have a few dozen cards, I just do it in my hand like shuffling a poker deck.  If I have a few hundred, I sort them as you see above, into blocks of numbers of 50, e.g. 1-49, 50-99, 100-149 etc.  Then I sort them further.  If there is a few thousand to do, I so the same thing, then break them down into the 10s as I do it and then hand sort.  It is a monotonous activity but I have always found something relaxing and a little zen about it.  When I was a kid, my mom referred to it as me "playing solitaire" (which I supposed when you are 10 has a whole different meaning than when you are 15, but I digress).  And this is just numerically.  Anyway, does anyone have any different way they do things?  Let me know since I am momentarily obsessed with whether there's a whole different system I have never been privy to.  Not to mention there is also the classic 8x4 grid of sorting things by team, another issue all together.  I always do the teams alphabetically but maybe you do them by league and/or division?  I must know!  

***

And finally, a wonderful bit of card serendipity that I am sure we've all had or hoped to have at one time or another.  As I was searching for the new Topps on Friday, I was also meeting a friend for coffee at a Dunkin Donuts I don't normally go to.  I was a little early and there was a comic book shop next door, so I ducked inside there to kill the 10 minutes I had to wait.  Now, I am not comics guy but I can always enjoy a comic book shop just for the nerdy vibe, the toys, and there's always a chance they have some sports stuff stuck in among their wares.  They had a few long 5000 count boxes full of MTG and Pokemon cards and the like but then my eye caught the unmistakable dull gray cardboard color that can only be vintage Topps cards.  There was only a couple hundred of them, but what a vein of joy it was.  They weren't in sleeves or priced but going through them, there were some I just had to have...

How often does a coffee date turn into 1975 Topps?  More than that, was some of these...

I love the 1973-74 hockey design and there are a couple of wonderfully miscut ones as well.  So I only had a few minutes with these cards and I had no time to go through them all.  These are the few I nabbed while I was there initially.  When I went to check out, the n̶e̶r̶d̶ dude behind the counter said, "oh, anything in there without a sleeve is 10 cents"  I had lucked into a 10 cent vintage box in the middle of Wayne NJ on a Friday afternoon!  I had my coffee and caught up with my friend, and then you better believe I marched back into that shop and bought just about every one of those cards that even remotely interested me.

All because of my efficiency in finding the new Topps and over-promptness in meeting my friend, I now have a few hours of bliss ahead of me this week.  Oh, and I also have this:

If you need an explanation, I don't think we can be friends.

Reciprocation.

I have ended a long fallow period of blogging and declared this month the one where I settle all draft folder business so I can move on anew without dozens of unfinished posts hanging over my head.  This past week, I have concentrated on trade posts that for whatever reason, did not get completed. 

       In one week of August 2014, I received not one but two packages in return for my sending out unsolicited cards.  The first bunch is a perfect little pile from everyone's favorite chronicler, Fuji.  Apparently, I had sent him a little something in a fit of mass mailing and these are the cards he came back with:

I must say, two game used cards and two autographs is tough to beat.  I especially love the Jorge Toca, one of my favorite Mets prospects that never panned out.  He was supposed to be the Cuban savior and he wasn't even as good as a Cuban sandwich.  Plus, it is hard to beat a shiny Dickey and an even shinier David Wright.  Allow me to extend a 遅ればせながら ありがとう to Fuji for these great cards I know I can use.

The other package that arrived in the dog days was one from Robert of $30 a Week Habit.  I had sent him a stack of gold numbered parallels I had found in a dime box over the summer for his Insanity Set.  Finding cards for this project of his has been one of my favorite altruistic distractions and he always returns the favor in kind.  This time, he outdid himself:

First of all, more than anyone, Robert looks at and follows my want lists.  He sent me a half dozen 1983-84 OPC hockey cards for one of my pages.  And then, not to be out done, he sent a low numbered camo Mets card from 2013 and a Johan Santana game used Heritage jersey card.  Johan will always be a hero to us Mets fan, so this piece of cloth was greatly appreciated.

I always refer to how endlessly polite Robert is, and his friendly note that was included in the package is no different.  Thank you, Robert.

What The Devil?

       I don't write nearly enough about hockey on this blog.  I also think I write that opener every time I do get around to writing about hockey.  After getting off to a nifty 3-0-0 start, the Devils are stuck in a rut at 9-11-4 at the quarter post of the season.  But hey, we actually won a shootout after losing frickin' 18 in a row.  But the 500 lb. elephant in the room is that for the first time (literally) in my adult life Martin Brodeur is not the starting goalie.  What's worse is that today it was announced that Brodeur is going to sign with the St. Louis Blues.

Brodeur would have been the first hall of fame player I got to watch for their whole career, beginning to end, on one of my favorite teams.  Now he joins Tom Seaver, Mike Piazza, Gary Carter, Patrick Ewing, Drew Brees, Scott Stevens et al., though I am holding out hope for David Wright.  The closest thing I can think of is either Lawrence Taylor or Ken Daneyko.  The problem with LT is I am not sure how attentive a fan can you be as a first grader (not to mention his post-playing career peccadillos make rooting for him difficult) and while Ken Daneyko was a great tough defensive player, I wouldn't go looking for his plaque in Toronto any time soon. 

I think this is as good a time as any to display my Brodeur collection.

These are some recent base cards.  I haven't been buying new baseball very much in the last five years, so you can only imagine how much that my poor mistress hockey has been neglected.

One subset I did pick up is this Hockey Heroes page; this one has been featured here before.

I am a sucker for those Beehive sets, probably because of their elegant simplicity.  On the opposite end of that spectrum is that 2001 Atomic set, which is thick plastic die cut garish wonderfulness.  You'll see more of that card soon.

As you can see, I bought a lot more hockey product in the late 90's. 

Those rookie cards are just glorious not just because they are rookies but because they are the only ones I have of Martin in the old red and green Devils unis.  I hold those ugly things very close to my heart.

I find hockey inserts wonderful, probably because they always involve a ton of silver foil and shininess.

There is a jersey card and some refractors in this scan but also an autograph and friend of mine was kind enough to pick up for me back in 1995.  That card also has red and green goodness, that card is basically Christmas.

See what I mean about silver and shine?

The scan doesn't do some of these justice, they are blindingly bright.

Remember what I said about that 2001 Atomic card?

Well, I have two variations of it, one if them is the numbered parallel (on the right) and the other is the promo card (left) which has slightly different cropping and extra die cutting. 

While I am not a huge fan of horizontal cards, they work well for hockey goalies. 

That top right card is a motion insert when Topps and Upper Deck were going through some kind of Sportsflix phase in the late 90's.  Upper Deck should have stuck with die cuts and holograms, so gorgeously illustrated by that 1996 SPx card on the bottom left.  They really got those right the first time.

All of these cards have a shiny element in them that the scans do not show well.  That Stanley Cup card especially loses something. 

Brodeur brought the Devils three cups in his day in 5 finals appearances.  The poor Blues haven't ever won one and haven't even been to the finals since the late 60's/1970, back when all the expansion teams were in one division and someone had to make the finals.  I will be silently rooting for a little late career miracle for them.

Speaking of a lack of shiny, you can't even see the refraction on that Finest card.  Pity.

Brodeur is now 42, look how young he looks on that 1990 Score rookie card.  He's got his "I shave once a week whether I need to or not" mustache working there.  I truly hope this works out in a Oscar Robinson-on-the-Bucks or Ray Bourque-on-the-Avs sort of way and not in a Joe Montana-on-the-Chiefs or Willie Mays-on-the-Mets sort of way. 

Sho' Nuff.

       As you may have been able to tell from yesterday's teaser, I am on the road away from Starting Nine World HQ and currently at my brother's house in PA dog sitting.  It is a nice situation where I get a little QT with the dog and a staycation away from the world.  Another perk is I found out there was a card show Sunday at a fire house in Newark DE, not far from where I am staying.   It's always nice to get away and even better to see some new faces and sellers.  So I ventured out to (the safe) Newark yesterday with a fist full of dirty money and my usual penchant for dime box diving. In fact, just about all the cards you are about to see are dime box finds unless otherwise noted. 

I will start off with some current stars:

I picked up a good beginning of a Yoenis Cespedes page, and seeing as I had zero of his cards set aside for such a thing, six is a very good start indeed.  Keeping with the Cuban flavor, that is my first keeper Yasiel Puig as all the others I have pulled have gone out to greener, bluer pastures.  Jose Fernandez is also from Cuba, Giancarlo Stanton, alas, is not.

How about some faux-vintage Hall of Famers?

I go a little crazy when I find these kinds of players in dime boxes.  Plus, these are some great looking cards.  That Bench GQ Collisions card is just magnificent.  That Frank Robinson is not only a picture I have never seen before, but the kind of photo you don't often see on cards at all.  And somehow that Tony Gwynn wandered in on this group but seeing how he just passed, I will let it pass.

These are 2010 Topps Vintage Legends cards:

This is yet another one of those insert sets that shows how infuriating Topps can be.  They used some great old timey players on Topps designs they weren't originally shown on - a very good idea.  They also picked some photos they hadn't reused over and over again - also good.  But the usual 5% failure on their part shows in font choices and incorrect colors -  the kind of thing that would take but a minute to fix.  I am sure I am not the only one to rail about these inserts but since they are new to me, I am railing anyway.  Still, this will make for a great page.

Here are some more faux-vintage:

That Vlad Guerrero Post card did not scan well but trust me, the chrome parallel makes it look all shiny and so different but not from the originals.  Alas, those are just reprints of the Robbie traded and McCovey Washington error, but since I don't own either of these cards anymore, I will enjoy them all the same.  I like the simplicity of those UD Origins cards so I am gonna track down 6 more and make a page.  I have wanted that Vida Blue card since I saw it on another blog last year and now I have it, for a nice thin dime. 

Did I pick up any real vintage?  Why yes I did...

I nabbed that '67 Jim Wynn and '66 Hoyt Wilhelm for a buck a piece.  Seeing how the Wynn is a semi high and the Wilhelm is a high number, that is quite a deal.  The Fred Whitfield and Charlie Smith are welcome additions to my slowly dwindling All Star Rookie needs - also just a dollar each.  The other three cards are from reprint sets, but I am a rookie cup completist, so they had to come home with me.

I really like these 1993 Upper Deck Iooss Collection cards.  They are the height of minimalist design and the photos are incredible.  Not only am I gonna make a page, I might build the whole set. 

The other five surrounding those cards are some nifty retired star pick ups.  I always forget Carlos Delgado came up as a catcher until I see one of his rookie cards. 

Out of the almost 500 cards I picked up (don't worry, I am not going to show all of them) I bought exactly one (1) Gary Carter card.  Bizarre.

I am pretty sure I don't have any of those Mike Piazza cards  - I also picked up one of his cousin, who has decided to go by the same name - this strategy didn't work for Edgard Clemente either.  The Frank Thomas No Name On Front card you see there is from the Cards Your Mother Threw Out insert set from a couple years back.  I wonder if anyone's mom actually threw one of those out considering at the time they were a big deal and worth about $2,000 even back then? 

Some more favorite players:

A six pack of Reggie Jacksons - Reggie seems to have gotten a lot of my love on this blog lately, huh?  I picked up two odd Jeff Bagwell cards, one with rainbow action and the other where he seems to be hitting the Space Shuttle.  I have never seen this card before but it may quickly become an oddball favorite.  I mean, look at it!  How wonderfully ridiculous.

Wait, did I not buy any Mets cards?  Of course I did...

That David Wright refractor on the top was bought for a dime.  I will grab almost any refractor for a dime, much less my current fave.  The Bowman Platinum Wright on the second row did cost me a dollar, but it was worth it - the scan does not do the shininess justice. 

More Mets:

I have developed some mad respect for Bartolo Colon.  He is older than me, he is fatter than me, and he is pitching in the major leagues.  You kids can live vicariously through Mike Trout or Jose Abreu, as for me?  I am kindred spirits with old Bartolo there. 

I found a vein of 1995 Flair cards, so I grabbed all the Mets, alas there are 8 and not 9:

I added the Iooss Hojo card to round out the scan, which kind of fits and also kind of doesn't.  The 1995 Flair set is a really nice one.  It sort of echoes 1955-56 Topps while at the same time looking both very modern and timeless.  I am sorry I missed this one 20 years ago.

More more Mets:

The top row is a nice trio of Mets failures.  The middle row has some actual vintage, once again, cards had for a dollar.  Any time you can get Choo Choo for a buck, you do it.  The bottom row are all cards I am 98% certain I already have but I couldn't pass them up for a dime a piece - one can get on a roll that way.

Saints?  Saints.

I like that Drew Brees cards with him shown on Purdue look almost indistinguishable from the ones with him on the Saints.

A few more football cards:

No matter how terrible the Mets are this year, it is still way too early to be thinking about fall and the start of football season.  I mean, summer just started.  Yes, I am trying to convince myself this is true.

I even nabbed a few hockey and basketball cards, but very few:

Wait, that is a baseball card - no it isn't.  That is Trevor Gretzky, Wayne's son.  I doubt he will amount to much as a player, but hey, he got a baseball card (his dad never did).  You see a few Knicks cards from the heyday of the early 90's.  All Knicks fans did back then was complain that they didn't win championships; if only they could see the future when making the playoffs would be a pipe dream. 

I didn't buy much Allen and Ginter last year, so when I found a bunch of the non baseball players, I pounced.  I mean, there is a Fish card...Fish! 

Aside from Abe Vigoda, there are some lovely ladies and Ben Franklin, who would greatly appreciate being included on such a scan. 

I am semi-obsessed with that Topps 75 set.  It highlights all the non-sports cards Topps has put out over the years and I might just have to invest in the base set.  Where else can one find Donkey Kong, Neil Armstrong, Martin Van Buren, and Mulder & Scully? 

Also here are some Heritage Flashback cards, including two of the Beatles and one of the Stones.  That seems like a proper ratio to me. 

I also built some ready made nine pocket pages:

2013 Topps WBC inserts.

2014 Panini Prizm.

I have been burned by this product the last couple years, so I just bought nine of them for a page to be done with it.  Same crappy look, same pseudo-chrome design, same no-logos. Get your shit together, Panini.

The aforementioned 1995 Flair:

Remember when early Alex Rodriguez cards were a big deal and not in dime boxes?

2010 Turkey Red retro stars:

These not only look great, I just noticed everyone has their socks looking properly done.  This is a great page for that alone.  High striped socks forever!

2004 UD Legends basketball:

I saw the World B. Free card of this in one of the dime boxes I scoured and I decided to get him some friends to make a page.  I am glad I did this if only to highlight Artis Gilmore's amazing facial hair and expression. 

2013-14 Score Hockey Gold:

I found some of these and decided I liked the look of the design and I picked up nine of them.  Turns out, this is the gold parallel and not just the base.  Works for me.

Speaking of Gold Parallels:

One dealer had a huge block of Topps Gold parallels from all sorts of years, so I grabbed a bunch.  I am talking about close to 100.  I will spare you the details, you know what these look like. 

I was kind of underwhelmed by the high end cards most of the dealers had.  Luckily, I was not interested in buying fancy shiny cards.  I did find this Drew Brees double jersey card...

...that Drew Storen kind of came with the Drew Brees.  The cards were $6 each or 2 for $10.  I can't resist a bargain and a 2 for 1 Drew special just seemed right.  And of course, I picked up some cards for other bloggers as well.  At a dime a piece, it is hard to go wrong with a little altruism.

I had a great time at the show talking to some new collectors and mocking a few Phillies fans.  An even better time was had this evening while I figured out the peculiarities of my brother's scanner...

...lucky for me, I had an adorable helper.

Mail Call: Double Dutch.

       As of the beginning of March, I had never traded with continental Europe and now, just six weeks later, I have done so twice - both times have been with the appropriately named Dutch Card Guy.  When I posted my Topps Heritage box break, the big "hit" I got from that box was a CC Sabathia Mint card with a 1965 nickle embedded in it numbered to /15.  A neat card for certain, but not one exactly in my wheelhouse.  Enter DCG.  I knew he was a CC collector but I wasn't sure if he'd want the card so I put it on eBay.  I got a bid on it immediately, which wasn't too surprising, but low and behold, it was by the aforementioned DCG, which was.  He messaged me that he wanted the card and was willing to bid for it.  I told him, nonsense!  I am sure we can come up with a trade for it.  He told me he had this card he pulled last year:

A coin for coin swap?  Perfection!  I pulled the card's auction immediately and we hammered out some details and this wonderful trade was complete.  I don't know if I am ready to become a Mike Trout super collector but a card like this might get the ball rolling on such a thing.  If I can trade awesome hits for cards like this, it might be doable; his cards aint cheap, ya know...

The details included that wonderful 2005 Topps Steve Trachsel red x-fractor you see below.  Those red refractors really pop and I have found for some reason, the 2005 ones really work, not to mention that is a nifty picture of The Human Rain Delay.  I didn't have a Mets one of these and now I do. As good as the scan here shows it, believe me, it is ten times shinier than that, even.

He also threw in a couple awesome unexpected goodies, that 2014 Donruss Puig and that 2008 UD Masterpiece Ryne Sandberg, great cards both, ones I did not have and will definitely keep.  So thank you once again, Jeroen, for a unique trade. I also want to thank the Dutch Postal Service, which once again got a package across the Atlantic to me in less than 10 days. Sometimes the USPS can't get things across two states in less than 10 days.

***

Also in the mail today were these two cards, both interesting in and of themselves even if on the surface they appear rather bland.

I picked up that Roy Campanella on the right from Listia and is just a glorious card.  It is a TCMA card from 1979 and it emulates the classic 1953 Bowman Color set.   It does two things for me: it completes my Campanella player page and it also shows him on a card with a full photo standing - something I neither had seen before nor owned.  Given his tragic accident, I think this was a necessity for his page. 

I picked up the other card on the left from eBay and it doesn't certainly look extraordinary at all, does it?  I mean, it is a player so obscure I had to look up since I have never heard the name - turns out Mike Leclerc had himself a decent couple of years in the NHL before retiring at the tender age of 30.  I will chalk up his anonymity in my world to the fact that he played on the west coast and the Devils don't play the Western Conference much.  I kinda like it because it shows the old garish purple and teal-green colors of the old Anaheim Mighty Ducks plus that so-awful-it's-kinda-neat logo of theirs.  It is a jersey card too, so I get to touch the fuzzy.  But the key to this card is the serial number; anyone who has dug deep into my wantlists knows I have an affinity for the number 527 and lo and behold, yes, this card is serial numbered number 527.  But there is something very special about this particular card, look at the back and see if you can spot it:

Here, I'll make it very obvious for you, in case you are missing it...

Enhance!!!

^^^^^^^ look here dummy.                               

Yes, you are seeing that correctly.  That is a card serial numbered higher than its supposed edition.  I gotta say, there is a lot of reasons that Pacific went out of business and I wanna say quality control might be one of them.  I have never seen such a thing on a trading card?  Have you?