Sort 'em If You Got 'em.

       Yesterday was National Baseball Card Day and no, I couldn't get to the National this year (or any year, yet) and no, I didn't get out to my local card shop.  But if you saw my last post, you know that I had plenty to do - I had 925 cards sent from COMC to sort through and revel in.  And that's exactly what I did:

These piles all make sense, to me anyway.  The majority are baseball cards but there are also football, hockey, basketball, bowling, tennis, golf, softball, gaming, movie (James Bond, Batman, and Star Wars among others), music (Beatles and Guided By Voices), and all sorts of Goodwin Champions which include all those things and more. There are three separate piles of Mets cards alone, and also one each for the Saints and the Devils and the Knicks, and a couple of players even got their own piles, Tom Seaver and Todd Hundley (no, really, I am a Hundley super-collector at this point). After that there are Hall of Famers and current stars and retired stars and birthday boys and all-star rookie trophy cards.  It was a fun few hours to go through all these.

I obviously can't highlight and scan 925 cards (103 scans! That would more than double my Seaver memorial post) so I will semi-randomly grab some cards that are either fun or fun to look at or just interesting, to me anyway.  Plus there were a few surprises even for me because after two-plus years, I had forgotten I'd bought them.

The top three here are some multi-player game used cards, one with Gary Carter and Mike Piazza - basically my two favorite players of all time - one with a "Bat Rack" of Mets with the aforementioned Carter and Piazza plus Jose Reyes and Kaz Matsui (remember when he was a thing?) and the third is a glorious mix of 1973 World Series adversaries from the UD Decades set, that one has Tom Seaver and Bud Harrelson along with Reggie Jackson and Bert Campaneris.  THAT is the best card I completely forgot I bought and I was giddy when I saw it.  But it also begs the question, how could I ever forget that card?

 

There is also a Ralph Kiner announcer card, a rarity of him with Mets colors, a great Lee Mazzilli from 1979 Hostess (I have the panel with Steve Garvey and Mike Schmidt but I needed it solo), a 1970 OPC Mets World Champions #1 card, a low numbered Frank Thomas jersey card (with pinstripes!) and a pair of one of my favorite unusual uniform subjects - Pete Rose on the Montreal Expos - I now have a complete page of him in French red, white, and blue.

Let's do a second nine, shall we, I can't just show you less than 1% of these, can I?

First off is the other side of that Carter/Piazza tandem jersey card.  Now I have to decide if it goes with the Carter collection or the Piazza.  Maybe Carter because he's technically the 'front' of the card?  Then you have two modern Topps Hall of Fame short prints.  I am not a big fan of these but sometimes Topps picks really cool photos for them and these two definitely fit that category.  The Koufax is a magnificent shot of him admiring the scoreboard from his perfect game and the Nolan Ryan is a brilliant candid shot that should/could have been one of his 70s cards.  Topps should only pick pictures of this quality when doing these short prints (alas, they often do not).

 

 

There's also a few fun vintage cards here, a 1974 Tony Oliva with its proud position designation of Des(ignated) Hitter, and a late 70s run of Tom Seaver O-Pee-Chee cards.  That last one in the left corner is a 1998 Fleer Tradition Todd Hundley '63 Classic card numbered to /63.  I told you I was becoming a Hundley super-collector.  I also had my eye on a Piazza version of this card but alas did not pull the trigger on it and now it is gone and I might never see another.  I have put that card in my Needed Nine, you can find that list on the right side margin of the blog.  

I teased it in the post from the other day so here is a much better view of the 1952 Andy Pafko #1 I acquired:

I am not certain why I ever bought into the hype of this card but somehow over the years I did and I just decided I must own this stupid thing.  I ended up getting it during the COMC Black Friday sales and the price was right for this condition.  I think what I really like most is the randomness of someone like Andy Pafko being the first card in their first big set.  He was a good ballplayer but nothing anyone would ever consider a superstar.  Donruss went with Ozzie Smith, Fleer went with Pete Rose, Score went with Don Mattingly, Upper Deck lucked out and chose Ken Griffey Jr. over Gregg Jefferies and Gary Sheffield for their lead off but somehow Topps went with Andy Pafko as card number one. If anyone knows the solid reason why they chose him (I don't recall ever seeing one) please enlighten me.  For now, Andy has a hot date with the other two 1952 star cards I keep protected: my Gus Zernial and my Bob Feller.  

I have gotten to the point in my Gary Carter collection where the only cards I don't have are either strange local oddball issues, low numbered monstrosities, or (somewhere in between) just plain old stuff I don't think is worth the money.  I did pull the trigger on a solid gold Gary that I just couldn't pass up during that black Friday sale.  I must say, it is shiny!

I doubt these Danbury Mint cards will ever be worth much (I also bought a Jerry Koosman one in this batch) but I suppose if times are tough I could melt them down and make fillings out of them or something.

Lastly is a card that probably only means something to me but I am so happy that I got it, the nerd in me is still glowing.  It is a 2019 Goodwin Champions Robert Pollard printing plate, a yellow 1/1. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pandemic left me a lot of time at home to sit and listen to music and Uncle Bob here cranked out something like seven albums (and counting) during 2020 and 2021.  Maybe it is the old man in me, but I don't listen to a lot of music the way I did when I was a younger man but the pandemic did a lot of strange things to all of us so it was nice to have new Guided By Voices albums flying out at the rate they used to in the 1990s.  This card will now be the centerpiece of my Bob Pollard collection from that Goodwin set and I have to trust in myself that I don't become that lunatic who needs to hoard the one-of-one cards.  It helps that I haven't seen any of the others for sale...you know, not that I've checked or anything.  Now excuse me, I have 905 other cards to put in their proper place in my collection. 

Trade with Dime Boxes.

This month has been declared the one where I settle all draft folder business.  This week I am focusing upon the trade posts that I scanned and set up, but for some reason, did not complete. 

Last July, I had a card overload, full of show trips, dog sitting, and sorting through a lot of new product that I had ripped but not collated properly. I had a great time doing nothing and as I read through blogs, I could go through want lists and help out.  Enter Nick and his blog Dime Boxes - The Low-End Baseball Card Collector's Journey (sort of the blog equivalent of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). I am a huge fan of this frugal and eclectic approach to collecting.  When I posted Topps series two, Nick let me know he was building the set and would like to swap to get my cards since I was not.  I checked out his wantlists and saw he needed a bunch of other 2014 stuff as well and I sent him an email and after the usual back and forth, I sent off a metric fuckton* of cards from his lists.

In return, a few weeks later, I found a fat and heavy jiffy pack full of Mets cards. 

That John Maine covers not only my love of Mets cards but one of my favorite collecting quirks. It is also impressive to find a Mike Piazza card I do not have.

This pack was loaded with oddballs and oddities.  I mean, when was the last time you got a package with two pitchers batting cards?  Not to mention a player taking photos card?

Plus there was two vague shiny Mets I didn't have, that 3D Bonilla and that dufex Murray.  The early 90s were a black hole for the Mets, but the cards were pretty sweet.

And the oddballs keep coming fast and furious here.  Food issues, box sets, Ted Williams faux-vintage and...

...SSPC cards.  How great is it when an Archives reprint is the least oddball of any card in a scan?

Speaking of faux-vintage, there was some Tom Terrific cards too.  And some Nolan Ryan on the Mets cards. I need to make a Nolan Ryan Mets page now that I finally have more cards of him in blue and orange than cowboy hats.

And low and behold, it's one of my all time favorite card sets from the 1990s, that hot pink Classic update set.  I have the whole set somewhere - I recall buying a bunch of those on clearance at Bradlees back in the day - I just didn't have a single of that Julio Machado card. Machado was a pretty terrible pitcher but he is famous for eating iguana and randomly killing a woman after a car accident.  Seriously, I couldn't make that up if I tried.

Not only were there great Mets cards in the package, there were some cards straight off my want lists too.  He sent cards for my Mike Trout collection and my Jim Bunning and Jim Kaat pages.  I am still torn if I should start a Trout collection but I am accumulating his cards anyway.

Also from my player collections were a couple of Jeff Bagwells and Reggie Jacksons, two of my faves.  That center Bagwell hologram is so beautiful yet so vague, I'd never even seen it before. 

There was so much in that package, I obviously ran out of patience for it and just did a Gilligan's Island "and the rest" on it.  Just from here, I see Diamond Kings, more food issues, more Classic, some 1985 All Star cards, 1990 Score Traded, a couple more Reggie Jacksons, and I wisely emphasized the 1966 Topps Dan Napoleon. That is a super card.

Nick put a friendly little note in with the trade pack and yes, I can assure you these cards found me well.  I am just sorry it took me so long to post this awesome trade.  Thanks, Nick!

*it's an industry term

Archivist.

     I have been in the middle of some major spring cleaning here at Starting Nine World Headquarters.  Not just the collection, which is getting a sprucing, but the whole darn house.  Which means two things, I haven't had time to blog much and I have to go to the store to buy something new every other damn day to replace or improve what's there.  Yesterday found me at Target and wandering around Target means but one thing, walking by that card nook 5 or 6 times.  This, as always, is too much to take and I found a few jumbo packs of Archives in my basket at the end of the trip...

I opened this Friday night while watching yet another disappointing Mets loss so maybe my enthusiasm was low so I waited until this morning to write about the cards; I can't say my mood improved much. 

Let's start with something they did very right, the 1973 design:

This is one of my all time favorites and they nailed it.  They got the fonts right and the position logos are there in all their glory.  My only quibble?  The pictures are all tightly cropped the way they have been this year and maybe they would have gotten things perfect if they had chosen a few off beat, wide angle oddball shots like they did back in the day. 

They also did they 1980 design:

And again, the design and font looks wonderful, the only problem?  They just used the 1980 design in Archives two years ago.

Now we get to where things start to come apart:

Okay, disregarding that the 1989 set is hardly a classic, let's look at the major flaw that makes this a failure.  They got the design elements of the team name and the angle of the ribbon and even the curved corner correct but look closely at the player names.  Once again, right font (which is always appreciated and a surprise from Topps) but the alignment is all wrong.  They all seem to be justified to the left and this is not how the original set looked.  Yes, it's a small thing but to someone who opened a million packs of this stuff, it is huge.  Look at the Sonny Gray or Bob Gibson or even the Adam Eaton or Joe DiMaggio.  The names on the 1989 set were centered and it makes 90% of these cards look all cockeyed and wrong.  It wasn't that good looking a set to begin with, so to flub this detail and make it look worse is just inexcusable. Plus, haven't we seen that picture of Adrian Gonzalez some place before?  Somehow, the page I made for current players has three of these '89 cards on it.

Let's have a brief six card palate cleanser.  Back to the 1973 design, these six vintage players look like they could come straight from the original set, if it weren't for a few team issues and the "Topps" logo...and maybe the fact that Juan Gonzalez was 4 years old in 1973, but I digress.  Even with a Tom Seaver photo they have used 100 times before, these six cards show what is right and good about this set.

Oh but we are right back at it with those bottom three, they show what is so so wrong.  It's like Topps did 95% of their job on this set and just said "eh, fuck it" and didn't bother with the rest.  It is what I find so frustrating with Topps and their exclusive agreement with MLB; they have no motivation to give that last 5% - which is maybe the hardest five percent - the little things that are the difference between a disappointing set and a "wow! this is freaking awesome!" set.  So what is wrong with those three cards?  Well, the Yankees cards are blatant and obvious to anyone who collected back then.  The Yankees team name was white and not blue.  The Braves blue was much lighter on the originals as well.  These are the little things that are the difference and they would make me pull my hair out if, well, it wasn't mostly gone already.

What is the other great failing of the 1986 design?  It is the smallest defect but really the largest....

Those damn copyright/trademark logos after every team name!  The originals did not have these and in the long run, they are superfluous as most of us have railed against oh so many times before.  The backs of these cards get marred by three or four lines of copyright information and ownership rights and the like.  If all that information is there, why on earth do they feel it necessary to mess the front with this as well?!?!?!?  If you have it on the back, you don't need it on the front and vice versa.  It's like I'm taking crazy pills here...  I am way too worked up for a Saturday afternoon but it just looks awful here; little bleach spots that are pretty illegible but so terribly noticeable.  Between that and the color issues (the Brewers and White Sox are incorrect as well), it ruins all the things they did get right. 

I didn't pull any short prints in four jumbos but I did nab a couple of inserts.  Those 1980's style glossy all star ones were never much to get excited about 30 years ago and nothing has changed.  That deckle edge Derek Jeter is beautiful, I hate to admit. 

There are six more vintage player cards that, once again, look tremendous and proper to the era.  I made a veteran page that tries to highlight the best looking of these cards.  Want to know something as a fabulous aside?  My brother got me a yellow A's Reggie Jackson jersey for my birthday.  I should take a picture of me wearing it holding that card. **UPDATE** Turns out that Reggie is a short print because they made the short prints this year in the same designs as the base set.  We can also put that on the "fail" side of the ledger for this set.

Also in the "so close but so far away" column are the backs.  They did so many things right with the backs but then once again dropped the ball with the little details...

I will let it pass that they can't print complete batting records for the vintage players without the font being so tiny as to be illegible but it is still frustrating.  You can also see the aforementioned copyright information and, come to think of it in tiny illegible font, you can believe every single card has that on it.  Topps got the colors and the fonts all correct on the back and even decided to include cartoons where they were appropriate and even matched the style of each set.  Problem is, they only made about 10-12 cartoons for each 50 card subset so they repeat over and over again.  Are you telling me that in Topps vast archives, they couldn't come up with 40-50 separate cartoons?  Or if they wanted to use new ones, were they too cheap to commission that amount.  Once again, it is the little things that kill.

Triple Trouble.

       I miss breaking high end product.  Oh, I am well aware of my reasons for not doing it anymore (money, sanity, etc.) but that doesn't mean that every once in a while I don't crave the rush of dropping a few hundred dollars on a small shiny box of cards and the heart pounding anticipation of opening the thing.  For all its dangerous fun it is, in the end, merely dangerous.  The end game usually winds up being disappointment and despair and you can't keep chasing the card dragon without it stealing your soul.  But I digress.  My Bukowski-esque romanticizing aside, the one product I can't seem to leave behind is Topps Triple Threads.  I had great luck with the first two incarnations of this stuff and I guess it has never left me.  Even after some very lean pickings in the next couple attempts, it has its hooks in me and has not let go.

After an aborted attempt to join a case break of this year's Triple Threads, I decided to apply that money to some eBay purchases instead.  Not only did I succeed in getting the cards I wanted, I used my new found frugality to do it right (prepare for some humblebragging):

I bought a small lot of game used jerseys for the price of one Matt Harvey by waiting out a couple people on a late night auction.  Selling off the other two cards ended up paying for that Matt Harvey.  The ones numbered to 27 are the gold or sepia tone...it is hard to tell sometimes.  The nice big swatch and the fact that it is much shinier than my scan would indicate make that a tremendous card.  The real star and the card I really had to hold out to get was that Amazin' Triple.  The Triple relics can be real hit or miss as they have gotten very corny and odd in what the pieces spell out.  Here though, you see a classic that can't go wrong. The Mets have been "Amazin'" since 1962 and since this card features David Wright and the two great hopes for the future - Zack Wheeler and the aforementioned Matt Harvey - this was an absolute must have for me.  I really really wanted one that was numbered to /9 and very very shiny but the bidding got out of hand, so I had to settle for the slightly more muted version numbered to /36.

I truly don't care about the numbering as much as I care for the look of the card.  Case in point is that the parallel of the base I loved the most this year was also the highest numbered, the "amethyst" version, or as the laymen would call it, purple.  I am a sucker for purple, so I nailed down a nice lot that not only had three of my favorite players ever (see above) but also allowed me to make a page of current players:

All that blue and purple is jarringly contrasted with the orange of the Kung-Fu Panda in that first spot on the page (and to a lesser extent by Buster Posey in the middle).  Sometimes I just can't help myself. 

I also picked up a lot of base cards so I could make a page of retired players:

Yankees?  Braves??  Tom Glavine?!?!?  At times you are simply at the mercy of the lot you buy.  Aesthetically here, you get a nice George Brett powder blue uni breaking up a ton of old school flannel.  I think this page works well, even with Tom Glavine involved (never forgive, never forget).

Could I have blown a couple of C-notes and gotten my fix?  Sure.  But for a fraction of the cost, I got the cards I really wanted and some piece of mind that maybe as I grow older, I might even grow up.

Just Because.

Keith Hernandez is the only one mentioned in this graphic three times, a minor upset.  I've always felt Rollie Fingers had the definitive mustache in the 20th century.  What do you think?

Card Draft Results: Shoebox Legends.

       The Whaler Worshiping Wonder over at Shoebox Legends recently held a card draft.  One thing you folks may not know about me is my minor obsession with the Hartford Whalers, problem is the NHL has conspired to keep me infuriated about hockey, thus unable to post about it...but I digress.  I saw the nice mix of cards he was offering and bought in.  I do enjoy these as a way of putting unwanted cards in the hands of those that want them, skipping the messy middle man of commerce or the convoluted nonsense of contests.  In these, everyone wins: the draft holder gets some cash and rid of some excess cards, the drafters get some cards they want at a fraction of the price one might normally pay. As it is, I paid about a dollar a piece for these cards and there is not a single one you wouldn't grab if you saw it in a dollar box at a show or in a store.  The system works!

Let's take a look at the haul I brought up with my net: 

Nine nifty cards here.  The Maine game used there was my first pick - not exactly a glamorous choice, but one I was happy with after the first two cards I wanted went off the board one-two.  That shiny Jeter card was nabbed in one of the four bonus rounds that were offered, a very nice wrinkle in the draft game.  Jeter may not be my favorite, but hey, shiny!

Seven more:

I really like the Turkey Red Chrome cards, and he had a bunch of the Mickey Mantles in the draft.  I think I got three of the four.  That first one is a refractor, once again shiny trumps Yankee.  That hockey card on the far right is numbered 02/10 and I got it in a late round, which I considered a major upset.  Like any sports draft, you always look for value in later rounds.  There was a bunch of game used Hockey cards in the draft and I got a couple of nice ones - dual ones to be specific.  I would be lying if I said I was planning to keep the Rangers one, but I have a friend who will appreciate it a lot more than me and I am sure he has some unwanted Devils card he will swap me for it. 

There was also some great vintage stuff in the draft and I am sorry I didn't snag more of it:

In some kind of grand oversight, I do not own a 1970-71 Topps basketball tallboy. Well, I should say didn't, because now I have that one - and it's a Happy one at that.  The most popular cards of the draft seemed to be the 1953 Bowman color cards and I was a round behind in grabbing the best ones, but I did procure the two you see there.  In one of the bonus rounds, I added that 1962-63 Topps Bill Hay to my small collection of vintage hockey.  If they ever clear up the lockout mess, I might even show you some of them.

One other wonderful thing SL did was properly pack the cards for shipping: top loaders for the better cards, soft sleeves for all the cards, team bags to hold them together and...

Blue Packing tape!  It is my continuing crusade to get all people to never ever use scotch tape on top loaders and this is yet another opportunity for me to mention it and even to show the pleasing results.  Plus, he used enough tape to hold these cards together so tight that even the US Postal Service couldn't move the pile.  Well done.

Oh, I forgot two cards!  Two awesome 2007 Goudey mini short prints - one for my Reggie player collection and one just because.  Magnificent. 

No, Shoebox Legends, thank you!

Quad: Reggie Jackson.

       I mentioned my preference of "quads" over "triplets" in a recent post - the triple being a rookie, game used, and autograph card of one player, the quad splitting the game used facet of the triple in to bat and jersey cards.  I said I would/should make it a feature on the blog.  Well, I have said this kind of thing before ("favorites", "Topps sets", etc.) and not followed through.  This time, I decided to mean it, so I rummaged through my boxes of favorite players looking for some quads and immediately found one, and when I say immediately I mean immediately: first row of the first box I looked.  I dove into my hall of fame box and the first player in there is my very first favorite player, Reggie Jackson.

I knew right away I had multiple bat and jersey cards of Mr. October, and I knew I had his rookie card (more on that in a minute).  Imagine my pleasant surprise when I found I had an old school autograph of his too.  I picked the best looking jersey and bat card and made this quad:

While the jersey is just a white square (the scourge of some jersey card pullers), I like the card and the picture on it, plus it is numbered to /50 and has some shiny.  The bat card is an oldie, from the 2001 UD Legends set.  I really like the baseball stitches burned into the bat piece, an aesthetic touch I wish card companies would do more.  The autograph (which as I said, I forgot I even had) is from the 1995 Upper Deck set.  Back then, Reggie was the face of Upper Deck and it came complete with a numbered COA, I don't know if it was an insert or a mail in redemption kind of thing but it is a pretty awesome card.  Last and certainly not least is my very very off condition 1969 Topps Jackson rookie card.

I once owned a very nice looking Reggie rookie card, but as with a lot of my fancy schmancy old school vintage stuff, I had to sell it on eBay for practical purposes, like paying the rent and food.

This was the second one of these I owned, as I once put together a complete 1969 Topps set.  I sold the set but kept this one.  I deemed it expendable as well, though because I owned the third one, the one with the multiple creases and tape.  I am a fan of extreme off condition cards and this one is a thing of beauty.  I mean look at it...

Seriously, look at it...

Look At It...

LOOK AT IT!!!

Someone loved this card.   They played with it, maybe had it in their pocket for safe keeping.  Somehow, it tore, but they took it upon themselves to tape it together because they liked the card that much.  I cannot for the life of me remember where I got this thing, but goddamn, I love this card.  I find poor condition cards like this fit into John Waters definition of camp (to paraphrase): they cannot be created, they merely exist.  I could never ever make a card like this.  It had to happen back in 1969 organically at the hands of a baseball card loving child.  And now, they are out there to be rediscovered and loved again.  Of all the quads I put together and scanned the other day, this one is by far my favorite and this card is the number one reason why.

Jaybarkerfan's Junk Part 1 - The Draft

       This post was going to cover my recent dealings with Wes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk but it seems there is so much stuff, I am going to have to split it into two parts, Kill Bill style (definitely NOT Twilight style).  Wes recently cleaned house, or at least cleaned card pile, and had all sorts of stuff up for sale, trade, and such.  He also decided to run a trade bait draft, a brilliant solution to get rid of those middle of the road cards - too nice to give away, not substantial enough to sell on eBay, not beloved enough to have been directly traded for.  I decided to buy into this draft since he wisely had a complete preview of all the cards he was going to have up for bid (a most welcome bit of organization) and there seemed to be some stuff I would want.  Part one here is going to cover the draft.

       This was a most deliberate process.  It went round by round via lists we sent by email.  I am surprised it didn't take longer than it did (which was actually quite a while).  As an organizationally challenged person, I appreciate Wes' patience and thoroughness.  It was quite a nice little distraction to see what cards I got and missed on.  In the end, I am quite pleased.  Let's take a look at what came in:

The 1952 Coogan there was my #1 pick.  How can you turn down a such a perfect piece of imperfect vintage cardboard?  While I don't think it was my first choice, it does fit a very specific purpose.  My 1952 Topps page is mostly very well loved cards.  One of them, though, was not.  This specimen will fit right in with the rest of the well-loved original Topps cards and I can move the more handsome card to a toploader or to eBay.  I plan on starting a series of posts highlighting my Topps pages, since these pages cover every set since 1952 (and a lot of them replace the sets I built myself).  You will see the Coogan there.  Also here is a Nolan Ryan insert I didn't have, in fact one I have never heard of...it is from one of Donruss' Spanish language sets.  The two Reggie Jacksons here are wonderful; great contrasting images and uniforms.  Plus, shiny!  The Gary Carter there is actually not the 1978 Topps card, but the 2011 Cards Your Mother Threw Out insert (observant students of fontage will notice the difference).  If my mother ever threw out my baseball cards, I'd disown her.  The rest of the cards are all pretty predictable: a David Wright insert, a 1992 Gold Winner Met, a groovy UD Decade Gaylord Perry and a Allen & Ginter Mickey Mantle.  Well, OK, that last one isn't exactly predictable, but I can't turn down A&G vintage stars, even Yankees.

On to the next nine:

Right off the bat, three Mets inserts of three of my personal favs.  I looked and could not believe I didn't have that Wonder Years Mike Piazza card.  I own the UD Retro Lunchbox of Piazza for crying out loud, but somehow that piece of nouvelle psychedelia missed my collection.  The second row has some Sportflix Cecil Fielder goodness, a Paul Sorrento über-shiny Pinnacle card that I did not have (click here to see why this is important), and a Joey Votto insert from last year for his player page.  The last three there are: a 3D Topps insert of Ubaldo Jimenez - this set is so wonderful, plus it matches will with the Fielder above it.  I have a soft spot for ol' Froot Loops, so I had to snag that Mickey Tettleton insert...after all, how many Mickey Tettleton inserts can there be?  Lastly, I grabbed that Neil Walker Topps Gold card for Robert's Insanity Set, but it turns out it is a number he already has, so it will find a spot in my Rookie Cup collection.  Oh, and these were kind of in drafting order, but I think I mixed them up for aesthetic layout purposes.   I am a slave to my particular fashion.

Last batch:

First card here is a 1998 SPx Finite Frank Thomas.  I was obsessed with this set when it came out.  It was the first all serial numbered set and I fell for it head over heels.  I bought boxes and boxes of it.  It has three levels of shiny to each card and they are numbered accordingly.  This is the "spectrum" level, the highest thus the lowest numbered, this one is numbered to /1750, which in 1998 was pretty damn low.  Plus, the scan doesn't give it its proper blinding due.  Second, there is another Mike Piazza insert I didn't have, as well as a Tom Seaver shiny insert that I didn't have.  In the very middle there is a Carlos Delgado insert which I picked late, just because it is a Met and I am a completist when it comes to having all the Mets.  Also picked late was that 1983 Topps ERA Leaders card.  I am a sucker for league leader cards.  The rest of this scan are minis, all with various destinations.  The Adrian Gonzalez mini is going to Night Owl, since he is more obsessed with minis than anyone ever.  The Reggie and Seaver minis are going right into my player collections.  The last three are Allen and Ginter minis of various years and subject.  I will probably keep them, but the McGehee might go to Thorzol when he has his "Trade Me Anything" posts.  I keep oddball Brewers around for just such emergencies.   

So I picked up 28 cards for about 50 cents each.  How can you beat Seaver and Piazza inserts, 1952 Topps cards, and Allen and Ginter mini inserts for 50 cents a piece?  Point is, you can't.  Thanks again Wes for running your draft and having such marvelous cards to choose from.

Coming tomorrow: Lots from Jaybarkerfan's Junk.  Lots and Lots of Lots.

Manic Monday.

        I have been trying for a few days to sit down and write an answer to the pretty awful story CBS ran last weekend about the "decline" of the hobby.  Here it is, in case you haven't seen it.  There are so many things wrong with this story, I cannot begin to describe them.  Finding that start was part of my problem; I had just a non-stop busy weekend and I have an equally busy week ahead of me (including some actual paid work!).  So, while this might reek of the laziness shown in the CBS story, I am going to pass you off to Night Owl who wrote a better breakdown of this story than I ever could have hoped to do.  I should leave journalism to the actual journalists.  Oh, and here are some awesome 1974 All Star cards, since this is a card blog after all.

I promise some better posts later in the week, but I think that page should hold you over for now.