#30DBCC Recap of Days 21-30 plus a bonus

Wrapping up with the final ten cards I posted on Twitter as part of the 30 Day Baseball Card Challenge. Thanks to Tony L who adapted a music challenge to something collectors could have fun with. Cards 1 thru 10 were posted here and the next group, 11 to 20, are here.

Day 21: The third segment kicked off with a "card of a rookie I thought I was 'investing' in". I really did very little of this. I didn't go out and buy cards of anyone hoping to cash in. What I did do was put away cards of promising rookies that came in the numerous wax packs I was ripping back in the Junk Wax Era. Mike Marshall (the outfielder, not the doctor/pitcher) came to mind.

Day 22: Card of a common player that eluded me. I had already posted the best example, my Mark Belanger '67 rookie, back on Day 7 as a card I bought in person w/ a story behind it. So I drove off the tracks on this one and went with a 'story' that eluded me. This '59 Colavito card led me down a long and winding path to find the shot it was based on. I finally did.

Day 23: A fave oddball from the 50s. 1954 Red Man Billy Pierce. BP had a card in each of the three red Man issues.

Day 24: A fave oddball from the 60s. I had lots of choices with Orioles team issued things, fool food related cards, etc. But I picked this Boog Powell from 1969's Atlantic Oil game series.

Day 25: A fave oddball from the 70s. (I mislabeled this as Day 24 on Twitter) It's one of many many MLBPA discs and similar items from that decade. From 1977 we have a Pepsi Jim Palmer.

Day 26: A fave oddball from the 80s. One of my favorite Eddie Murray cards is this Drakes Cakes from 1983. I even got a retweet by @Drakes__Cakes. LOL

Day 27: A fave oddball from the 90s or later  Gary Cieradkowski does some great work. His art graces this 2008 Wally Yonamine promo card for a Rob Fitts book. And he has a blog and his own books. Highly recommended.

Day 28: A favorite relic or manufactured relic card. Another category of cards I don't deal with much. I have a couple pages of relics in a binder but I haven't thought about them much. This Babe Ruth bat relic is the best of them although a Mel Ott jersey swatch card I have is cooler looking.

Day 29: A fave pre-1950 card. This was tough. I have some tobacco cards that I love and a few nice cards from the 30s and 40s but in the end my only career contemporary card of Babe Ruth won out. This is a German issued Sanella margarine card from 1932. It's worth posting the back, too.

Day 30: The last day of the challenge asked for your favorite card in your collection. This was the hardest one for me. I cycled through about a dozen cards. I eliminated those that I had been on an earlier day like the '78 Murray, 1961 Wes Covington and the 1960 Mantle All Star. It came down to my '57 Brooks Robinson rookie, my T206 Chief Bender, another card I'll discuss in a bit and this card....

....which in the end is the one card I'd keep if I had to offload my collection. Christy Mathewson is from Factoryville, Pa. I spent some summer vacations there staying with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Al. There isn't much in or around Factoryville. Mostly we sat on their front porch up on that hill and enjoyed the views of valleys and trees. At night my uncles and my Dad would go to the one bar in the area. They would take me and some of my cousins when we were teens and many intense bar shuffleboard games ensued. That's where I learned to appreciate pickled eggs from a jar and Hires root beer from a bottle.

My Uncle Al was probably the only other collector in my extended family. He had a few cards but mostly he collected baseball publications He loved books, guides and magazines. When he passed on some years ago my aunt sent me a box of his stuff. Nothing extraordinary but all of it priceless...to me.

I remember those summer days in the northeast Pennsylvania hills when I look at this card.

Day "31": I couldn't do a baseball card challenge without somehow including the 1959 Topps Bob Gibson I posted at the top. So I added a extra day to the challenge. Here's what I said about this card on my '59 Topps blog years ago:

This is by far the worst conditioned card in my 1959 set. But it's also the one that means the most and the reason I'm filling up a binder with this great group of cards. This Bob Gibson is the only '59 Topps that has survived from my childhood. Besides that, even given the condition it's in ("Poor" would be a generous grade) I love this one. Gibby looks happy to be posing for his rookie card and he's smiling out at us from an outrageously inappropriate pink setting. This is a 'high number' card, note the red and black on white reverse. One day I'll upgrade this card but I'm not in any hurry. This old warhorse of a card will anchor my set for the time being.

I don't remember how the tape got on the back but it doesn't detract from the card in my eyes. Neither do the creases or rounded corners. It had hidden in a copy of the first Beckett Price Guide as a bookmark and sat forgotten in a storage box in my closet. Sorting through the box a couple of summers ago brought Gibby's card back into my hands and the answer to the question I'd been asking myself for some time ("Which vintage set do I want to collect") was answered.

So there are the final cards in the 30 Day BB Card Challenge. I enjoyed posting the on Twitter (and here) and I enjoyed reading other fols' postings. Many are still going on. Tony, great job in putting this together! It forced me and others to dig into boxes and binders we hadn't gone through in awhile. And to think about and appreciate the cards we have in a different way.  It was great fun.