Collections, Near and Far

I'm not even sure what that title means but whatever. This post will be the first of a handful I plan to write to summarize where I stand in terms of my set chases, what I've been picking up, and where I plan to go with collecting in the near and long term.

Let's start here:

Those are 1962 Topps cards and their 'parallel' Green Tint version. I dealt with them previously in detail while I was putting the '62 set together. If you are not familiar with the 'greenies', they are, in a nutshell, the product of the Topps second series being reprinted off-site due to unexpected demand. The story is that the original plates were damaged in transit and had to be re-done. You can check out this post to see what motivated me to just collect a subset of this goofy subset.

A few weeks ago I was paging thru my '62 set and when I got to the back where I had the green 'alts' I got the idea that I could collect the entire group without too much effort. So that's what I'm doing. No hurry. A already had a couple dozen of the 87 cards in the group. I found a few cheap ones on eBay so I'm at about 30.  This will be a 'low and slow' project, kind of like my 1960 Leaf build, only much cheaper.

These are old news to most everyone. Even I'd seen them and I don't see much of the Topps 'on demand' stuff. I bid on this set of 20 Graig Kreindler-painted cards from Topps' 150 Years of Baseball in a charity auction on Net54. The money raised went to a dog rescue organization.

Kreindler is really good. Much better (IMHO) than whomever they have doing the Living Set.

This Tony Gwynn is among my favorites. I like that he's wearing a Tony Gwynn wrist band.

At least I think it's a Tony Gwynn wristband.  Looking at it now it looks more like Bill Buckner.  LOL

I have another small set that I picked up but I'm saving that for a post of its own. So I'll finish with these:

Am I collecting the 1967 set now? Well, I'm not NOT collecting the '67 set. I lucked into some small lots and couldn't pass them up. I'm just going to see what I feel like once my other projects finish up.

If I look at too many of the cool vertical backs I will get hooked for sure!

These backs are damn close to perfect!

More on my ongoing projects and things I've wrapped upcoming next week. I hope everyone out there in blogger-land stays smart and safe. Don't take any chances, I have so few readers as it is. 😒

Brown and Red

First up is another card from a contest I won on Net54.

This 1933 Goudy Dick Coffman gives me about a half dozen from the set. (The best, by far, is this Paul Richards card). Coffman broke in with the Senators in 1927 but was soon traded to the Browns for whom he pitched until he was dealt back to the Senators in June of 1932 for pitcher Carl Fischer.

After that '32 season the Nats and Browns traded the same two pitchers for each other again! Coffman went on to pitch another three years for the Brownies. Finally, in November of 1935, Coffman managed to land in a better situation than toiling for two AL bottom feeders.

He was purchased by the New York Giants and spent three seasons as their #1 bullpen guy. He led the NL in games pitched and saves in 1938. He even garnered a few MVP votes. He pitched (rather unsuccessfully) in both the '36 and '37 World Series' for the Giants against the Yankees.

In 1940 he landed with the Boston Bees and then spent several seasons in the minors before he reappeared in the majors briefly with the Phils in 1945. In '46 he did some pitching and managing in the minors and then was gone from pro ball.

I'm posting an oversized image of the card's back to make it easy to read. The write-up mentions his Washington-St Louis travels and calls him an 'elongated young man, towering(?) 6 feet, 1 1/2 inches'.

Next up is another 1962 'type card' for the back of that set's binder. This is the Venezuelan version of the Wally Post #148. Topps had previously distributed versions of the '59 and '60 set in Venezuela. But the '62 set is the first that has Spanish language write-ups on the back.

Topps, as was their normal MO in these sets, only distributed partial versions in Venezuela. In this case the cards are from the first two series minus #197 and #198 which supposedly don't exist. There are no 'green tint' versions, either.

You can see the differences in the card backs below. Interesting that Topps kept the English wording in the stats block heading and the player position under his name.  This article on the PSA site mentions differences in ink and cardboard color but honestly I'm just not seeing much. Small sample size I suppose.

The 'regular' (US non-green tint) version from my set is on the left, the Venezuelan version on the right. That PSA article is right about one thing, these Venezuelan Topps cards are usually found in pretty brutal condition. I decided on the Post because it was in decent shape and it's among the better poses in the cheap group I was picking from on eBay.

I need to find a green-tint Post and look at them all side-by-side I think.

1962 Topps is complete..or is it?

And there it is, the final card I needed for my 1962 Topps set build. It came from eBay via one of my slew of lowball snipes finally hitting. It's mis-cut (no surprise in this set) and the back has a blob of ink/glue/carbon/gunk/stamping on it. But for the price, I'll take it.

And speaking of the back...in the pre-stathead days, when wins mattered, one of the most fascinating things in the world for me was number-choked backs of team cards like this one. Jack Kralick was 4-1 versus KC but 1-3 against the Yanks? Pistol Pete Ramos lost 20 games? It was the sort of thing we made mental notes of  and used in our Whiffleball tournaments and stoop-ball games.

While it's the last card to be crossed off my needs list, it is NOT the final card that will go into the '62 binder. I have a couple of graded cards that I'm going to break out of their tombs soon. Over and above that is the reason this is going to be a rather long, drawn-out post.

The question of what makes up a 'complete' vintage set is one that pops up from time to time. I've seen it discussed on Twitter, Net54 and on blog posts. I've given it some thought as I build sets as well. Is a 'complete' set a 'master' set with every known corrected error and all the variations? Do you need all inserts, a wrapper? Or is a set 'complete' with one of each card number?

Trying to decide that for the 1962 set is far from simple. It's a fun and kind of crazy set to chase. It contains far more 'off the wall' weirdness than any other set of the era.

While building my 1959 set (first vintage chase) I came up with a 'rule' for myself. That set has no photo variations. But it is chock full of little and not so little errors/variations on the backs...wrong birth years, 'traded to' lines of text, stat anomalies, etc. Some were corrected, others not. I decided then that I would put together the set as the 'ten-year-old CommishBob' would. If it wasn't something I would have noticed as I was opening the pack, or when I was shuffling through my cigar box stash, well I wouldn't worry about it.

But, oh Lord, this 1962 set. Logo/no logo variations, completely different photos for some players, different croppings, green tints, green tints with different croppings, floating heads on corrected team cards, mis-numbered cards, mis-numbered cards with a different photo, mis-numbered cards with a different photo AND green tint, and so on.

Example #1, the above Willie Tasby cards. On the left a card with Tasby's cap logo removed. On the right Tasby with a logo. The 10-year-old CommishBob would have noticed that and put both into his cigar box. So both go into the binder. The same would go for Bob Buhl who had logo'd and non-logo'd caps.

I'd have been mystified by the two different Bill Kunkels. And wanted them both. There are seven or eight cards that show the same player with alternate poses. All come from the 2nd Series (cards 110-196). I won't post them all but here are my two favorites, Wally Moon and Lee Walls. Moon is the only one I remember noticing when these cards were new. Which, now that I think about it, is evidence that we got some of the 'botched' 2nd Series cards in Essex County, New Jersey in the spring of '62.

The story behind these is that Topps farmed out the printing of the series when they got into a crunch. The plates were damaged in transit, some could be salvaged, some not and those were remade. That is also the reason that the 2nd Series has 'green tint' variations. PSA has the story, or at least the most widely accepted version of the story on their website.

Angel team card...no problem. But your friend opens a pack three days later and gets this.....

...Angels team with two floating heads? The hell? This would have been a difficult decision for me as a kid but I'm pretty sure I'd have wanted both versions. So I have them both in the binder now. And no, I don't know who the two floating heads are. I think I had an answer at some point but it's eluding me right now despite my decent google skills.

But those were fairly straightforward and easily addressed issues. More complicated is the Card #139 Hal Reniff/Babe Ruth deal. The Ruth card below is part of the Babe Ruth Special subset in the 2nd Series. It is the 'correct' #139 but not nearly the only one. I'm going to try to sort it out by memory:

1. The 'correct' Ruth Hits 60 (below on left)
2. The Green Tint Ruth Hits 60 which had a lime green field and is cropped differently, the foul pole is visible.
3. Portrait card of Hal Reniff which is numbered #139 but is supposed to be #159 in the checklist. (Center card below)
4. Hal Reniff posed action card, shows green tint. Also mis-numbered as #139 (Shown on right below)
5. The 'correct' Hal Reniff card, his portrait card with the #159. 

Yikes. My sense is that I've have had to collect the Ruth and the three Reniffs (both portraits and the one action pose). So that's what I picked up for the build.

I figured a look at the back of the Ruth/Reniff mess couldn't hurt.

I've saved discussion of the 'green tints' until now. They are an interesting variation. I really don't have a handle on how I would have dealt with them in 1962. I suspect I'd have noted the differences but not cared. After all, the pictures were (except for the previously noted changes) the same. They each have minor cropping differences but I never would have noticed that. Sidebar: I found an interesting page that defines and shows each of the versions of the green tints. Fascinating stuff (to me anyway).

Some of the differences are subtle. The Pumpsie Green (irony noted) for example:

The color variation isn't particularly noticeable until you put the two cards next to each other. The cropping differences can be seen in the upper left corner where the upper deck meets the card border differently. The color of the woodgrain border also varies. I guarantee I never would have noticed that as a kid.

But some of the green tints look like this:

That, my friends, is hard to ignore. But I'm guessing my youthful self would have passed it off as just a 'hey, too much green ink' thing.

And some, like the Bob Nieman cards below, fall somewhere in the middle:

What did I decide? Well, I figured a nine card 'green tint example page' in the back of the binder would take care of it for me. And that's what I've done.

There are also a few checklist variations. But to paraphrase the great sportswriter, Dan Jenkins, the only thing more boring than checklists are checklist variations. I was NOT a checklist marking type as a kid so I would have noticed that the numbers were different or 'wrong' on a checklist but I'd have blown it off.

As with my other set builds, I have added inserts to spice things up. But to me they are just gravy. My set would be 'complete' without the extras.

The stamps are fun but I prefer the 1961 version done in green and brown. To me not every 'advance' means progress!

I had this Gus Triandos Baseball Buck in my Orioles collection. Gus agreed to move to the '62 binder for the cause. Oh, one thing I just now noticed. The text over on the left side ends with "He's an ex-Yankee." So what?

I will add a wrapper at some point. I think it's more of a part of a 'complete' set than the inserts but it is also much more costly. I can wait until I find the right one.

A couple of weeks ago I saw someone mention a 1962 printing plate that they had in their collection. I had never considered that before and thought it might be a nice addition to the '62 build. But I wasn't going to go overboard. i found this example of a common card plate on eBay and picked it up. It has ink residue but I don't mind.

So there it is....the 'Commishbob' version of a complete 1962 Topps baseball set. It's not a 'master set' but it has everything my complete set definition calls for.

The '62 set doesn't get a lot of hobby love. There are too many capless player photos and the wood-grain border isn't to everyone's taste. I've even read comments criticizing the All Star subset which 'too closely' resembles the base cards. Oh, well. But I challenge anyone to come up with flagship set whose opening three binder pages match the 1962 Topps for star power. Check them out:

Good stuff, right? I thought so.

Sometimes You Just Get Lucky

I'm down to one card to complete the Topps 1962 set, the Twins Team card. It's been easily the most challenging of my vintage 'chases'. But it's also been fun and very satisfying. My next-to-last pickup was this Bob Miller card.

Bob here is one of two 'Bob Millers' in the '62 set. This Bob is a.k.a. 'Bob G. Miller'. He was at the end of a decade-spanning career in the majors and found himself as part of the floundering expansion Mets. He had started the season with the Reds but was dealt, along with Cliff Cook, to the Metropolitans about a month into their inaugural season. The trade sent Don Zimmer to the Reds. Cincinnati was at .500 and sitting in 6th place in the NL when the deal went down. They soon ripped off a winning streak, bounced up into third place by June. They spent the whole second half of the season right there in third, looking up at the Dodgers and Giants who had a dogfight for the lead that ended in a playoff.

The Mets, on the other hand, were historically lousy all season. They ended up 40-120, a mark that even the 2018 Orioles couldn't fall to (though not for lack of trying).   :-/   As for Bob here, well it's easy to see why the Reds were OK with moving him. He had pitched in five games to that point and had been manhandled to the tune of an ERA near 22 and a WHIP of over 3. He wasn't as atrocious with the Mets but he wasn't lights out either. 1962 was his last season. The guy who had broke in with the Tigers in 1953 as a big money 'bonus baby' and been a rookie along with Al Kaline hung up his spikes at the age of 26 with a total of six big league wins.

Miller's card, #572, commands a premium. And when I say 'premium' I mean over the usual bump that commons in the short-printed high numbered last series normally get. I know there is a 'Yankee Tax' that is paid when buying cards of guys like Bill Stafford and Rollie Sheldon, but I don't think Mets carry that burden. Maybe 1962 Mets' cards do. I know that the Al Jackson card was oddly elusive and expensive but I chalked that up to it being a rookie card, even an Al Jackson rookie.

Miller's card isn't too tough to find but it regularly lists in the $20-$30 range, even raw and in middling shape. I sucked it up and paid the price on the Rookie Parade cards I needed (they bring up the rear of the set in the 7th Series) but I refused to shell out $25 for a raw Bob G Miller. My solution was to set up a 'bid group' using Auction Sniper and stick a $10 bid on every single Bob G Miller that came along.

I wasn't keeping track but I know I missed out on a couple dozen copies of this card. But I had patience. Bid Grouping has never failed me. And it didn't this time, either. It did take weeks and weeks but I finally had a Miller fall through the cracks! I won this puppy for about a buck and a half. Even with a few dollars for shipping, he was in my binder for under $5.

Check out the back:

I like that it (and other high numbers) references the current baseball season. Here it mentions the trade that brought him to New York. The cartoon (by Jack Davis I think) has a headline entitled 'Major League Performance' which is odd because the subject is a minor league no-hitter Miller threw. But you can also read it as 'hey, this guy had a big-time accomplishment'. Whatever.

In case you were wondering the other Bob Miller in the set was also a New York Met!

Bob L. Miller came from the Cardinals as the Mets' 1st pick in the 1961 expansion draft. He went on to pitch for 17 seasons for nine different clubs. He finished up with his second stint as a Met in 1974. Here is his 1962 Topps card from my binder:

The Bob Millers are only referenced using a middle initial on collectors' checklists and the like. Neither card makes use of it or mentions the fact that there are two guys with that name in the bigs. If Baseball Reference's Bullpen Wiki is to be believed the two Bob Millers were not only 1962 Mets teammates...they were also road trip roommates!

And if you are interested in the Topps '62 set and some of its quirks you should take a glance at this page which shows the 'green tint' variations all in one spot.

I'll hold off on more about my '62 set adventure until the last card is in the binder. I've got that Twins Team card in my sights.

I am not worthy (Pt 2..from Brian) Oh...and Blogger sucks

This is the second of two remarkably similar card packages I received last week. This one came from Brian who pens Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. The blog title alone would be worth 1860 points when hitting a triple word score in Scrabble.

Both Brian and Joe Shlabotnik sent me a substantial stack of very, very nice 1979s, modern Orioles and they both sprinkled in something for a different set I'm working on. Joe sent 1970 Topps Hoops, Brian went with '62 Baseball.

I had sent Brian some 59s for his set build but I gotta tell you that those cards were no match for the beauties he sent my way. Leading off you can check out Lou Clinton. What a sweet card. It's in great shape. In fact, all three of the '62s Brian included are probably two 'grades' better than the majority of what I have in the binder. Let me put it this way...I couldn't afford to collect the set if I was only going after cards as nice as the ones Brian passed on to me.

BTW...Lou Clinton was in right field for Boston on the last day of the 1961 season. He watched Roger Maris' #61 sail over his head and into the rightfield seats at YS.

Phil Regan poses at Yankee Stadium. I always like to imagine I was there the day these photos were taken. Hey, you never know. I was there a lot.

Regan was nicknamed 'The Vulture' by Sandy Koufax during his time as the Dodgers' closer. He managed the Orioles before Dave Johnson and was active as a minor league pitching coach well into his 70s.

Wayne Causey began his career as a light-hitting third baseman with the Orioles in 1955. He struggled to reach the Mendoza line and spent some time in the minors before he re-emerged with the A's in 1961 following a big off-season trade. He had found his hitting stroke and had some respectable years in Kansas City before moving on to the White Sox.

The modern Orioles card Brian sent was an Eddie Murray bat relic. The guy who glued the slice of Eddie's bat onto this card appears to have been hungover. Nonetheless, it fits nicely into my Murray pages in my Orioles star binder.

And finally here is a representative sampling of the '79s I received. Between the stack that came from Joe S. and this one I'm down to just over 100 needs for the set (edit made...never compose a post in the middle of the night).

This is one of my favorite Nolan Ryan cards.

Steve Carlton's BR page is pretty impressive.

Nolan Ryan and James Rodney Richard were on the same Astros staff for half of the 1980 season. Then J.R. was struck down in July.  A quick look at the team's game logs showed that they didn't pitch back-to-back at any point. That would have been unfair to any opposing NL teams.

Mick the Quick. He was with the Rangers by mid-season. Did you realize he had a .295 career average? I sure didn't.

I have no memories of Bud Harrelson as a Phillie. He was a spare part by this time. Nice shades though.

I also have no memories of Steve Yeager wearing a beard. I bet Night Owl does.

I scanned this card of Sixto Lezcano for two reasons. One, he has such a cool name, and two, he looks like someone but I can't put a finger on who it is..

And finally Billie Jean King's brother Randy. It's interesting (I guess) that her Wikipedia page doesn't mention her younger brother. He was a pretty decent reliever for the Giants through the 70s. He pitched for the Astros in 1982. That was a club with a strong staff and lousy hitting. And that was the year before I got married when I lived within walking distance of the Astrodome. I saw quite a bit of boring baseball.

Thanks again, Brian. The cards were all super and very much appreciated.

Oh, I almost forgot...the title. About three months ago I realized I was no longer receiving email notifications of blog comments. I dealt with it for awhile by just checking my past few posts every few days. But then I received an email from someone who had asked a few questions of me on one of my 1959 Topps blog posts and wondered why I hadn't responded. I dug around and flipped a few 'switches' and recently found that I had apparently switched over to Google+ comments...whatever the hell that means. I turned that off and nearly all the recent comments on my blogs disappeared. Add that to the fact that Blogger is unusable on an iPad as far as I can tell and doesn't work well with Firefox and I'm not happy at all.

I'll keep plugging along though but don't be surprised if one day this whole thing gets either blown up or shuffled over to WordPad.