Love In The Time of Corona.

       Last Monday morning, I went to Costco and Target and it was a very quiet, uneventful trip.  Little did I know that in the next few days, going to the store would become something like a cross between old Woody Woodpecker cartoons where the women kill each other, bridal day at Filene's Basement, and the Road Warrior.  Lucky for me, I am a slight hoarder at all times and don't need soap, sanitizer, or toilet paper any time soon.  Also, I did stop in the card aisle in Target and grabbed some Heritage packs (they had no blasters) and impulsively grabbed a blaster of Star Wars Skywalker Saga cards while looking in vain for Heritage blasters.  This would prove very fortunate and unfortunate but not in the way I thought.  Kind of like how most of our weeks went.

I rarely buy single retail packs of baseball cards because I find all you ever get are base cards and maybe an odd parallel but very rarely do you ever get something of substance.  I figured since all I wanted was some examples of the Heritage, I would just grab 6 packs and go about my business.  These might have been the luckiest six packs of retail cards I ever bought.

One thing I collect in totality is Topps rookie all stars.  I love me some fancy trophies on my baseball cards and I got five of them in these six packs, including two short prints.  The two short prints I got were Pete Alonso and Vlad Guerrero Jr., the two cards I figured I'd have to pay through the nose for on eBay if I ever wanted them, and here I got them in back to back retail packs.

I even got one of the two Alonso league leader cards and three of the postseason cards.  And we are just getting started.

I got five inserts.  That's practically one per pack but it didn't quite come out that way because I got two Tom Seaver Flashbacks stuck together in one pack.  I also got another Flashbacks insert, Rod Carew, and two Then and Now cards - one of them also with Tom Seaver.  Look him up, kids, he was pretty good.  I did get one other base double in the five packs - it was Michael Conforto, a Mets player.  This never happens.  I always get doubles of San Diego Padres or Milwaukee Brewers.

There was one other Met and one other league leader card.  Not too shabby. 

I am pretty sure the 1971 set is in my top five all time designs and the Topps people really nailed the look of it.  The colors, the lower case ee cummings style names, and the random action photos - which were new in '71 - are all here.  Even the random rookie cards and odd position designations are here.  I didn't scan the backs but the backs all look right with the head photos and esoteric write ups. They even have SSPs of the OPC backs, which are some of my favorite OPC variations.  Alas, I did not get one of those.

I also love poses where the hitters are swinging and pointing the bat at your face, I got three of them in three different styles.  I saw that the Alvarez/Aquino rookie card is hot.  I am not one for hot rookies, so if anyone wants to trade for this thing, let me know.

This is the page I ended up piecing together from the five packs, I think it looks great.

I went with just about all posed shots but got a variety and the one action shot is decidedly inactive (I picked a Luke Voit action shot for the vertical example, that's on the back, the back I didn't scan).  I chose a few teams that didn't exist in 1971 just for a little timely juxtaposition.  I was thrilled with my choice to lower myself to retail packs.  I know it will never turn out this good again.  If anyone is putting the set together and has a wantlist, drop me a line and I'll see what I can fill before these go to ebay or Listia.

On the other hand, the Star Wars cards were...underwhelming.  The blaster had 10 packs and 60 cards but no indication on the outside what they looked like; this seems to be on purpose.  The design is very staid.  I prefer a little color and whimsy in my Star Wars cards and all I got here is some stars from a NASA chart or something off of a Battlestar Galactica poster. 

The photos and subjects seem to cover all eight movies, I assume this set was leading into the ninth.  All the cards are vertical and none of the captions are puns or anything.  I am falling asleep just looking at them.

I scanned a second group to continue the monotony.  Not even Natalie Portman can make these more exciting.

Though I gotta say, I do love that middle card, it is a great shot from the climax of the Force Awakens.  Lightsabers and snow, more of that please.  One out of 60 is a very bad ratio.

Each pack had a parallel base card where, oooo pinch me, they changed the color of the thrilling border to a rusty orange or a royal blue.  I suppose the blue is a slight improvement but I got two of those and eight of the rusty orange.

Seriously, the write ups on the front and backs of these cards is more boring than my write up here.

Each pack also had an insert.  These were at least a little more interesting, if slightly repetitive.

Five of them were from the Path of the Jedi set, which were almost exactly the same as the style and substance of the base cards.  I do like that Han Solo card because the highlight of the seventh movie to me was the fact that Harrison Ford didn't mail in his performance as he has in a few of the other movies he's done in his old age (I'm looking at you, Indiana Jones 4 and Blade Runner 2049). So that's 2 out of 60.

The blaster's special insert was a manu-patch and I got A Princess Leia.  I actually have a use for that card so it is staying in my collection.  I might cobble a page of these together but it will hardly find a place of honor in my Star Wars book. 

That was the other Path of the Jedi card, which looks like the other one on the other page.  The best looking card in the whole blaster was the advertisement card with that borderless shot from the first movie.  If anyone wants to use that 10% off code, be my guest.  It really had been an odd week indeed.

Thick.

Help!

I am reaching out to the Card Blogosphere for some advice and perspective.  As most of you who read this blog with any regularity know, one of the areas where I am stubbornly completist is Topps All Star Rookies.  As luck would have it, this year's flagship set has a few inserts sets devoted to this corner of the Topps Universe.  One of them is a Relic collection with manufactured rookie cups embedded in them numbered to /99.  I got a look at these cards and decided they are quite handsome and while it is cost prohibitive for me to complete an entire set of these, I made the decision to at least make a nine pocket page of them.  This weekend, I got bored and went on a little eBay spending spree and bought a good six of them at, on average, about $15 a pop.  The first of those cards arrived today and, well, there is a problem.  They are thick.  Really thick.  I am talking Kim Kardashian twerking at an ice cream social thick. Here, take a look:

The left is obviously NOMAH! but the card on the right providing thickness perspective is Rod Carew.  Yeah, like I said, thick.

There is no way they will fit in a standard nine pocket page.  I tried and tried and no dice.  I even tried a few different kinds of nine pocket pages with absolutely no luck.  I did have a little brain storm; since the issue is size, I tried to slide the cards into a standard 8-card page and while it is certainly not ideal, as you can see, they did fit.





































Here is what I would like some input on...what should I do here? 

a) go with the eight pocket page set up.

b) hold out hope that there is a nine pocket page out there that will fit these.  In fact, if any of you own or know of anything like this that will fit these gargantuanly thick beasts, I will gladly compensate you with cards, cash, or love to obtain one.

c) suck it up and just collect the whole set and give in to my completist instincts.

d) give it up and sell off the ones I bought - keeping the Gary Carter, of course.

e) something else I haven't thought of, but one of you brilliant homo sapiens has.

So there it all is.  Any and all opinions are greatly appreciated.  I mean, this isn't binding arbitration or anything, but my brain is broken from the initial disappointment and I would like to hear what you have to say.  Thanks in advance.

Mail Call: COMC Black Friday.

       Today is the infamous "Black Monday" in NFL coaching circles - the day when poor head coaches find out their (usually poor) fate.  Watching ESPN this morning is like watching a funeral procession, one after another crappy coach after crappy coach is thrown on the fire.  It is schadenfreude at its finest especially when your teams aren't involved.  What better day to check out all my Black Friday booty from COMC (how's that for a segue?) Every year they run a special for free shipping - plus most sellers have kickass sales - so it is the best day of the year to load up on cards.  I nabbed some stuff I have had my eye on for most of the year and broke down and bought a few things I had been aching to have but wanted at my price.

First we'll start with some die cut numbered 2004 eX rookies:

To be honest, I only wanted a page of the base cards and had been striking out in trades or at shows finding any.  As I perused my wantlists, this was the first incomplete page that stood out for some reason.  This set just screams "millennium design" with all its metallic highlights and swoops and blocky modern fonts.  When I searched the site, I saw that these die cut rookies were more readily available (and cheaper) than the base cards.  So I switched gears and nabbed nine of these instead and made this nifty page out of them.  

I also loaded up on some of this year's Mets cards I had not yet added:

In a minor upset, I got many more Zack Wheeler cards than anything else.  That orange refractor is just spectacular, as most Mets cards in orange refractor form are.  That overly ornate die cut Matt Harvey was a must-add as it is so over the top and silly looking, it belongs in 1996.  I also think you could use those cards as shurikens.  I also nabbed a low number shiny 2004 eX rookie of Mets failed prospect Aarom Baldiris.  He deserved to washout just for the silly spelling of his name.  I might own more of his useless cards than any other Mets prospect that never got to the majors (he was big in Japan, though).

I also got some single cards to complete some pages:

I am trying to put together a page of all the Topps Finest and that Livan Hernandez finished off the 2004 page (check my want lists to see if you can help).  I also found that Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds cards are pretty cheap - gee, I wonder why? - and grabbed a couple of those to complete a couple of vague pages.  That Gary Sheffield finishes his page in my retired book; I wanted to get a card for each team he played for and since he only played for eight different teams, I decided on a minor league card to round it out.  The bottom row shows piles of cards I needed to finish two pages I really really wanted to get done.  I suppose it is my love of shiny, but I have wanted to do a page of those 2005 UD Reflections Legends cards for a while.  The other cards were to complete a page of 2001 UD Decade inserts.  I would have done a page for each of the different inserts, but for some odd reason most of the inserts in that set are only 6 total cards and that just doesn't jibe with the Starting Nine theme.  The patchwork page practically works better as a dayglow memorial to 1970's excess and now has a place of honor in my faux vintage book. 

One more card on that last scan deserves to be seen in its rightful place:

I am kind of a sucker for all of the Upper Deck Heroes sets and subsets, so when I saw a couple of years ago that Martin Brodeur had one, I had to have it.  Getting the first 8 was easy enough, but Upper Deck being Upper Deck, the ninth card, the fancy painting checklist card, was severely short printed.  The thing cost $20 or more on ebay if you could find one.  I love #30, don't get me wrong, but this nonsense seemed a bit extreme.  So there sat a hole in the very front page of my hockey binder for a long long time.  I just couldn't/wouldn't give in to short printed extortion.  But as often happens during these kinds of shopping sprees, you get on a roll.  I plugged that card into the search and came back with a few hits, one of them for $8.20 - a 50% sale that would only last Black Friday weekend.  So I sighed, swallowed my pride and bit; it is by far the most expensive card I bought.  I'm sorry but I'm not sorry. 

I filled in holes old and new in my Topps All Star Rookie needs:

I grabbed those two 1964 and the 1963 cards on the super cheap and finally added the 2012 Brett Lawrie which had somehow eluded me.  My modern needs have now been whittled down to (mostly) parallels and inserts.  I have plenty of vintage ones yet to go, though.  Also in this scan are a couple more faux vintage pages finishing cards.  The Eck and Bench cards are from the Shoebox set back at the height of retro reprint mania.  The 2004 retired set page leaves only the 2005 Topps retired page left to be completed. 

A few more odds and ends and some non-baseball cards:

That Bob Gibson finishes off one of the first pages of faux-vintage cards I had made but it had a Cal Ripken card in it, who at the time was technically a current player.  If you are going to have rules about your pages, you have to be a stickler and I just don't like to mix current and retro players (unless I feel like it, of course).  Those top two football cards are from an obscure Collector's Edge set that I had to have a page of just because of its 90's see-thru acetate goodness. The Gene Sykes completes one of my last 1960's football pages (hopefully that post will happen soon) and that Wayne Babych is an OPC hockey card that finishes off that vintage page.  I think those old school hockey cards work so much better in poorly cut Canadian style, don't you?  Finally, the last four cards all have something in common and 64 silver dollars* to the person who figures it out.

*may not be actual silver or dollars

Mail Call: Instant Gratification.

       When I was a kid, somewhere I heard the old adage that you never know until you ask and picked up the old positive affirmation that if you ask, all someone can say is 'no'.  This makes me one of the most annoying kinds of human beings: the kind that asks a lot of questions.  I think my point got lost in all that, I guess what I am saying is, I am not shy about asking for things, not that I am an insistent pest.  Sorry, my intros are rusty.  

I got a package in the mail from Night Owl HQ yesterday.  Because we are constantly shuffling things back and forth, I have no idea if this is in response to stuff I sent or if I now owe him stuff.  Either way, I have a pile for him.  This particular package was full of wonderful things:

You can't really see it in the scan, but trust me, the Harvey and Dickey cards are quite shiny.  The Wright card is a manu-patch card, but this one works nicely, good colors, very fancy intricate patch.  I used to hate these cards, but I have grown to not only accept them but enjoy the ones that look very good.  I still think they are confusing and ruin the value of actual game-used pieces, but I guess we have also learned those "actual game-used" pieces aren't worth the paper their disclaimers are printed on.  The bottom three cards are the ones I was sort of addressing my awful opening paragraph.  Night Owl recently posted about the new Topps Archives packs he picked up.  I requested he set those cards aside for me and we could work out compensation.  He told me that not only did he have a package ready to go out to me, he would put these inside.  The package got here in two days; in the world of blog transactions, that is the very definition of instant gratification.

In my last post, I snarkily addressed Topps' photo choices on vintage/retro cards.  The cards on this scan perfectly illustrate my point.  On the Gypsy Queen Gooden, that is a picture I am certain I have seen before but it is now in painting form, so I suppose that makes it better (as long as they don't use the same picture next year).  The Archives Gooden is not only a photo I have never seen before, it is a damn nice one - full of nuance and intensity (please do this more, Topps).  Conversely, the Seaver is a photo that has been used so many times, I could probably make an entire page of cards using it. The Ted Williams photo has also been used ad nauseum, but it is so iconic, you can almost forgive it here.  Almost.  Also, I can give the Williams card a slight pass because there are no doubt far fewer images of him in the Topps vault than of Seaver.  Plus, since he is dead, I am sure they have to okay the use of his pictures through his licensing company, which I am certain adds a layer of annoyance.  *steps down off his soapbox*

Night Owl not only sent that pile of Mets goodness, he has been perusing my want list:

Those 2010 Upper Deck now complete my page of these cards.  I hope I never have to mention this set again.  The next row has not one but two Rookie All-Stars I can scratch off the list, a pair of parallels at that.  The Opening Day Tavaras card has been especially elusive for me for such a recent card.  I wanted that one greatly because his Topps base card omitted the trophy, and that little cup is the whole point of the collection.  Night Owl's love of 1975 minis is well documented, so for him to give up a couple is surprising.  I have this vision of him in my head hoarding them by the thousands in a bunker under his house.  The Nomo will go on my 1997 Upper Deck page, one that has also been difficult to fill (odd, too, that N.O. would give up a Nomo card).  I never bought any of that set and for some reason I also never see them around.  Four down, five to go. 

Also from the want list:

Three Mets of varying importance, from nothing to everything.  I am praying that a stint in the minors will do Ike some good, considering I could hit .165 in the majors.  The 1964 design this year on the Heritage seems to really do the modern player justice.  They just look good to me, better than the last few years, at least.  And I do so prefer the old school trophy on these cards. 

Final batch from Night Owl:

The top three cards finish my Mets Topps set from 2013 Series 1.  I am slightly disappointed the Opening Day set has white borders, I was so hoping they would give it a green border to differentiate it from the flagship set.  I think the abstract ball field design cries out for green - and not the crazy shiny Emerald pattern they used as a parallel, but a nice muted kelly green.  As always, Night Owl wisely includes a little note in his package.  Each and every one of these cards is of use to me, in case you were wondering.  Thanks Greg!

Also in the mail was an odd thing for me, Yankees cards:

I realized I did not own a single Robinson Cano card and I have a feeling he is not going to be on the Yankees next year, so I won't have to automatically hate him, so when I saw a very cheap lot of 11 cards, I snagged it on eBay. That is a rare sight indeed, a current Yankee with his own 9-pocket page.

I was on a roll and scanned all the cards I got in the mail Tuesday, so here are the rest:

Those top three cards are a lot from Listia I picked up literally for nothing.  I got it just for the Reggie Bush, the other two will end up in a box to be forgotten.  I am slowly but surely becoming a user of that site.  The bottom two are the other 2 Cano cards, which I might actually list on Listia since I have no need for them (unless someone wants them).  The last card there in the middle is a mini refractor of Zack Wheeler.  The Mets have threatened to actually let him pitch in the majors next week, I'll believe it when I see it.  But I figure I should grab his cards now while I can.  I am not sure what the purpose of making that card mini is, though, but I do like the shiny.  Shiny > mini.

Ask and ye shall receive! I think that is what I was going for with the opening.  Sheesh, my brain is so sluggish and tired lately.

Trade With Stackhouse at Tim Wallach blog. aka Goals.

       You gotta have goals.  Long term, short term, midterm, it is always best to have something to aim for.  Not to get into deeper life lessons here, I will specifically apply this concept to a card collection.  Your collection can get out of hand real quick, both in terms of size and scope, if you don't know what you are trying to accomplish with it.  I have narrowed my collection in recent years to a very personal group of criteria.  But not everyone wants to narrow their collections down.  Some people want to expand and grow.  I respect that.  I envy that, in a way.

       There is one collector who has a vision I think we all should envy.  We all have favorite teams and players that we like to collect en masse.  This collector I am speaking of is a fan of Tim Wallach, former third baseman for the Expos and Dodgers.  He has a simple goal: collect all his cards.  And I don't mean one of each of his cards, I mean ALL his cards.  There is a fine line between madness and genius, I believe J Corey Stackhouse straddles this line perfectly. 

After finding his blog and immediately embracing his audacity, I sent him an email praising his insanity and promised him I would comb my collection for every Tim Wallach card I could find.  While I only found 14 of them, it was a nice mix of rookies and oddballs and Stackhouse reciprocated by sending me a nice selection of Mets and Saints cards:

I mean, how can you go wrong with a shiny David Wright and a vintage Gil Hodges?  Short answer: you can't.  And the hit parade continues with more shiny of Mike Pelfrey (that is a refractor, trust me) and Lucas Duda.  I really should collect the entire Mets set of those 2011 Topps Diamond cards.  They bring shiny to a whole new level.  Also here are some nouveau Gary Carters and Tom Seavers - a couple nice additions to two of my favorite players to collect (though I couldn't dream of collection all of their cards).   Plus, I love vague Mets stickers and that Panini is one I do not have.  Sweet.

Wait, there is more:

Stackhouse said he was going to come up with some of my Rookie Cup needs, but he only found one.  One is always enough if you don't have it.  There are a couple more oblong Mets inserts there that I am not sure if I have, but will go in the team book regardless.  Rounding out the package were some recent Saints cards that I did not yet have.  I didn't even know Topps did an Attax for football.  The caption on the Marques Colston insert is "Ringmaster of Offensive Circus" OK, sure.

I will now implore all my readers: please check out Stackhouse's blog.  Please search your collections and help him with his goal.  His chutzpah alone should be an inspiration to us all.  You gotta have goals, even if they are crazy.  Nothing is impossible.  Thanks, Corey!

Trade With Kevin at The Great 1965 Topps Project/Orioles Card "O" the Day.

       There was a good five years where I was obsessed with building vintage Topps sets.  Back in the late 90's, when cards were getting all shiny and game-used, I went back to the future and put 80-90% of my collection dollars towards this end.  I found the hunt to be infinitely better than the payoff, though.  Finding the right starter lot, looking at various star cards, tracking down those last few high numbers...this was the part I enjoyed.  At the end of it all, all I got was binders full of old cards - most of which I couldn't care less about.  I sold all my vintage Topps sets a few years ago and never looked back. 

       I still like the idea of building vintage sets, more than the actual act, and I support anyone who enjoys this, as well.  One of the first, if not the first, card blog I stumbled upon way back in 2008 was The Great 1965 Topps Project.  I don't even remember what I was looking for when I found it, I might have followed a link from somewhere else, honestly, I don't recall.  But when I found Kevin's blog, I liked his concept - he wanted to build a vintage set (guess which one) through the kindness of online strangers and only by trades and donations.  I liked it.  At the time, he was very early in the process.  I found a few 1965s I had laying around and sent them to him.  I found his other site and sent him some Orioles cards.  He sent me some Mets cards.  We became very steady trade partners.  I also printed out his wantlist from the 1965 Topps site and when I went to shows, I would pick up cards for him.  I found the hunt again!  I enjoyed the heck out of it.  Over the last 5 years or so, I have sent tons of cards to Kevin for his 1965 set.  Recently, I noticed he as down to four, and a tough four they were - The Mantle, the Niekro, the Longborg rookie, and the Hunter rookie.  These are a formidable group to finish a set.  I had looked for off condition Mantles for the set for a while with no luck.  Then a few months ago, I found a gentleman who had these four cards at a show in White Plains.  Buying them straight out seemed to go against the spirit of Kevin's set building plan, so I worked some emails with the dealer and worked out a trade for the final four.  I then emailed Kevin that I had tracked down his white whale quad.  He was thrilled to hear I had gotten them for him.  We worked out a theoretical trade for them and I got the joy of completing a vintage set without the letdown of "the end."

Knowing my love of the Giants and Saints, Kevin sent me some:

That Andy Robustelli is a beautiful piece of well-loved vintage.  The other two are pretty nice as well, can't go wrong with Sam Huff and Charley Conerly.

The key pieces of the trade were two vintage Rookie All Stars I thought I would never get around to putting in my collection.

To me, the key to all the All Star Rookies is the Willie McCovey.  It is his rookie card and it is an iconic one at that. And now it is mine.  The Billy Williams is also a tough vintage rookie card and pretty spiffy in its own right.  Now I got one of those too.  They will both find their places of honor in my favorite nook of my collection.  Kevin has also promised me more.  The man is very generous.  Altruism is underrated to say the least.  Thanks Kevin!

Quick Trade with gcrl

      You may think that I have abandoned blogging everyday or perhaps my industrial strength ADD has kicked in and my focus has gone elsewhere.  Well, luckily the answer to both of those is no and no.  The truth is I have been traveling and, surprisingly, actually working more the last couple weeks (yay!).  How do you bloggers with a full time job do it?  I guess blogging is like anything else in this world - if you really want to do it, you find the time.

     Tonight I can't sleep, so here is a quick post about a little (yet awesome) trade with jim of gcrl (the man has a lot of ee cummings in him).  I find his main blog a most excellent read (I am a huge Ron Cey fan), but my trade query regarded his side project, oh my o-pee-chee! (oh mon o-pee-chee!), which is a fantastic salute to one of my own obsessions, the variations on O-Pee-Chee cards.  Now, I had recently found a nearly complete 1986 OPC set amongst my piles.  It was missing six odd cards; I can't figure out if they were pulled out of the set by someone (or even myself once upon a time) or if these really were the actual six cards that helped this set evade completion.  Knowing the cards he had on his site were all his, I figured if anyone in the blogosphere had these six cards, it would be him, or he would know someone who would.  After a quick email exchange, I was tickled to know that he had the dastardly six I needed:

Odd combination, don't you think?  Jim also found a few of my rookie all star needs.  In fact, he emailed me that he had a 1964 Jimmie Hall and I ignored it at first, figuring he had emailed me this information by mistake.  But nope, it was on my wantlist and he had read it and found it for me.  The man knew my wantlist better than me...much like Henry Jones Jr., this is why I write things down, so I don't have to remember.  And once again, it is nice to know the system works!  I hope I can find the time this week to get to the post office to drop his cards in the mail.  Plus, his generosity is being rewarded by an all out insomnia driven search for a few of his nebulous nine.

Jim also put a little note in with the cards, always a wise decision, since sometimes packages get misplaced or worse, get to the bottom of the pile...

...no jim, thank you!

Joy of a Completed Page (or two).

       Someone reads my wantlists! Someone reads my wantlists! I mean, some of you have emailed me saying "nice collection" or "hey! let's trade" but I got some cards in the mail today directly off of my want list.  The system works!

       The package came from old reliable, Night Owl.  This was one of our smaller swaps, as I had sent him a few random Dodgers cards I had found to test a new envelope system.  He reciprocated by sending me a few current Mets (always appreciated) and the following:

Joy of a Completed Page™ #1 2011 Topps Heritage.

He sent eight different cards, but I only needed four. The Ramos, Baily, Konerko, and King Felix found their spots and this page is done.  I now have a page representing every year of Topps Heritage from the beginning.  I built the entire 2001 and 2002 sets back in the day, but sold them long ago.  Those short prints were a real pain in the ass and, from what I have read, they continue to be.  I find this method far more relaxing.  The other ones he sent, Matt Kemp, Whitey Ford, Jon Lester, and Ryan Braun, will all find spots in their respective player collections as I had gaps in each page.  And dig that Konerko card, I believe he is staring into my soul...

Joy of a Completed Page™ #2 1983 Donruss.

This page is nearly 30 years in the making.  Well, to be more precise, about six weeks.  When I decided to organize some of my more basic binders by manufacturer rather than strictly by year, I noticed that I had all the Donruss sets of the 80's represented except for 1982 and 1983.  Most of my cards from this era had long been consolidated (most with extreme prejudice) so I scrambled around to find nine to properly fill the pages.  I only found seven of each.  Enter Greg.  He sent me a pair of '83s, Steve Garvey and George Foster.  I made an executive decision and brought over the Howard Johnson from the Mets binder and replaced him with the Foster.  Now Hojo and Eddie Murray will be in a staring contest for all eternity.

Night Owl also sent over a 2009 Topps Denard Span from my Rookie All Star list, thus completing my 2009 rookie cup needs.  You made my night last night - if only you were a curvy redhead - thanks Greg!

Progress? Eventually.

       There is a room in my house, as I assume there is in many of your houses, that has become "The Slash Room."  In this case, it is the guest/closet/junk/spare/hobby room.  It is a room that seems to draw all the extra crap that doesn't have a place.  It is the room where out-of-towners too cheap to spring for a hotel sleep.  It also is where childish things get banished, things like say, baseball cards.  This is where I spend a great deal of my spare time, in this spare room.  My mission?  To whittle down all my excess cardboard into a manageable and enjoyable collection.  The "small collection" idea has been a work in progress 2+ years running.  Once you could barely walk into this room without nearly killing yourself on a crate full of 800-count boxes, now there has been a lot of headway made. 

There was once about 20 huge boxes and crates, there are now only eight:

I consider this progress.  Those three postal crates have mostly junk wax era complete sets in them, so those will (eventually) be easy to either put into binders, sell, or give away.  The others are full of boxes and shoe boxes.  They are the tougher ones to get through.

See the boxes in the crates here:

Those are the better cards I like organized into teams.  When I trade with you, that is usually where your favorite team's cards come from.  Some of them are packed (Yankees, Red Sox) some of them are pretty skint (Dodgers, Pirates). I am not attached to those cards in the least; they will all leave the roost (once again, eventually). Those three boxes on the right?  That is a bunch of memorabilia I haven't gone through in ages.  Balls, Photos, etc.  I used to have about a dozen of those paper boxes full, so again, I consider this progress.

OK, that is what the stuff I am trying to get rid of looks like, what about the stuff that is staying?  Isn't that more important?  Why, yes it is:

This is one 6-foot tall bookcase from Target full of binders.  Next to it are six shoe boxes full of cards in top loaders.  Eventually, this is all that my collection will consist of.  This amount seems manageable to me.  The black binders are sets.  The old timey binders are mostly labeled by team, sport, or maker.  The bottom shelf was cut off, but that consists of newer binders and just a little empty space to add more.  And why six shoe boxes?  Because eight is too many and four is too few.  They will eventually reside on top of this bookcase.  What's on top of it now?  Don't ask.  And you gotta dig my collection of sports jerseys there.  Yes, I am eternally 10 years old.

I was looking for my Piazza boxes, which are two of my favorites.  One of them was given to me about 25 years ago by my Gramma for Christmas:

It was one of those terrible boxes was full of junk wax stuff and somehow it never got thrown out.  Now, I still have this awful, cheesy, beat-to-hell box...but it reminds me of my grandmother every time I open it.  I wouldn't get rid of it for the world.

As you can see, I keep some very random things in there.  My beloved Rookie All Stars, some smaller sets (some of which are even finished) that may or may not find a binder, and my Mike Piazza game used cards...yes, I have a boatload of them.  No, I am not looking to get rid of any them.  Yet.

The real problem with my organization is...I keep finding more stuff.  Stuff I didn't know I had.  Stuff I thought I already dealt with.


So this box was on top, easy enough to spot.  And I can always pick out my three-row monster box full of Piazza cards, since it is the only three row monster box I own.  But what were these boxes under them?  I took them all down. 

What mysteries await me?  First of all, that red box is a 1989 Fleer Factory set.  No, really.  I love that box because it has Gary Carter on the front.  I might ditch the set and just keep the box.  It somehow made it to the back of this pile.

Let's look inside the Piazza box...

...wow, it is a mess, I have neglected my Piazza collection for a while. I have a whole cigar box full of cards to integrate into this box AND now these cards I just tossed inside.  Ugh.  Gonna be a long night of sorting.

But what of those other boxes?  You must understand, for a few years there I would go to a show, buy a bunch of cards - both dime box type and high end stuff - and it would just be thrown in a larger box waiting to be sorted.  Needless to say, these boxes built up a lot faster than my sorting could get rid of them.

And now I keep finding them!

This thing is full of new stuff, vintage, autographs, ten cent cards, ten dollar cards, hundred dollar cards. I thought I was done finding these...but nope, here's more.

And the 800-count boxes?

Even more unsorted stuff.  If you look, you can already see a 3x5 Darryl Strawberry card.  And team sets. And lord knows what else.

How much is this like archeology?  These boxes were on top of a dresser (see the upper right corner of the first picture), take a good look the layer of dust that was under those boxes:

Just call me the Indiana Jones of sports cards. *whip crack*

Complete Set Sunday: Topps Rookie Cup.

        I promised a few posts ago to reveal one of my collecting obsessions.  Well, that particular oddity is going to require more preparation, so I will play bait and switch and expose a different one:

Topps Rookie All Stars!

My love of baseball cards is obvious...put a shiny little trophy on it....

...my reaction is simple:
 

This is one group of cards I do not keep in binders because most years there are 10 or 11 rookie all stars and only nine pockets on a page, thus ruining the whole visual makeup I like to maintain.  I might change my mind on this eventually, but for now they are all in 150-count cubes for my periodic ogling. 


In 2005, Topps released one of my favorite niche sets off all time, Topps Rookie Cup! (you can tell I love something by my overuse of exclamation points to describe it) It's as though they made this set just for me.  Kind of a crappy design, but I don't care, they all have that fantastic little trophy on it.

I bought this complete set on ebay and it has resided in a place of honor in one of my set binders ever since.  One thing I love about it is that players from "the dark period" (1974, 1979-1986) when they inexplicably didn't put the damn trophy on the cards finally get their hard-earned little golden idols.  If I had any sort of design skills, I would scan and make cards from the dark times with the proper recognition.  I am sure if I look around the interwebs there are plenty of lunatics who have done this, but I have not been that curious or motivated.  Yet.

Then, in 2008, Topps outdid themselves by making a two series insert set for the Rookie All Stars' 50th anniversary with 110 modern and vintage players.  The design mirrors the original 1959 cards, has the original trophy, and is five hundred kinds of wonderful.  I put this set together myself by pack ripping, trades, shows, and COMC.
 
Alas, Topps love affair with the Rookie All Star was short lived and no further sets have followed.  In fact, in 2010, they briefly changed the trophy (for worse) and started to forget to put it on some of the cards like they did in the old days.  2011 brought back the proper cup, but 2012 seems to have the problem of forgotten cups yet again. I could ramble on and on about these cards, but we both have lives.

I have updated the wantlist page with the All Star Rookie cards I don't have.  If you have any I need, shoot me an email and let's make a deal.