Card Show Potpourri

I hit the hotel card show on Saturday. Having nothing in the works in terms of set building gave me the chance to just schmooze with some dealers and pick through my friend Darryl's cheap vintage boxes and cherry-pick a few things I thought were nice. I went home with about twenty vintage cards. Here are a few of them. And note that my scanner likes to cut off borders and I'm too lazy to re-scan anything at the moment.

Do I collect Dick Allen? Mmmmmmmaybe. I have plenty of his cards, that's for sure. I bought the '64 because I'd given mine away to a friend who was lamenting losing his childhood Phillies collection. I put together the 1964 Topps Phils team set for him. It was really neat to see how much he enjoyed the cards from his favorite Phils club ever.

This '76 is an upgrade to the one in my set.

'75 Luis Tiant. I have this in my '75 set of course but it's also gonna have a spot in my 'cards I like just because' binder.

Not my favorite Gale Sayers card but it helps fill out his page.

Darryl had lots of '69 Topps football in really nice shape. This set is very condition-sensitive and I could use a bunch of upgrades. I don't yet have a list of cards in my set that could be improved upon but here are three I bought for the simple reason that they were nice enough to buy on spec.

Vintage Giants cards remind me of my father.

I think I already had this Elvin Hayes card. He does UH basketball radio color commentary and walks right by us every game. I still haven't asked him to sign anything. I haven't seen anyone else ask either, so I'll wait.

Artis Gilmore came thru Houston when he played for Jacksonville U. He was part of a 7 foot-ish tandem post with a guy named Pembrook Burrows. Both schools were sort of wild, outlaw programs at the time and the games were a blast. Jacksonville made the NCAA final in 1970. Burrows went on to become a Florida highway patrolman and Gilmore had a long pro career and is in the hoops hall.

Darryl pulled out a huge box of 80s/90s cards that were part of a buy he made a few months back. He had promised me some Eddie Murray cards because of a friendly argument we had over Murray's Hall of Fame credentials. I had the mainstream cards of Eddie with the Orioles but few, if any, of him in other teams' gear. Darryl said I could just take anything I wanted.

The box had all the routine Topps, Fleer, Donruss cards and some oddballs as well. I ended up pulling one of each different card even knowing I had many of them already. I'll post a sampling of them.

I wish Upper Deck was still in the card making game. If they were I might still be in the pack buying game.

Back in 1988 I bought a box of those Topps-issued schoolkid folders that were replicas of this Topps card. There were 15 or twenty in the box. Over time, I gave them away to kids at my school I still have two.

1990 Fleer. Junk wax at it's finest.

'92 Topps something or other. Topps Kids?  I don't remember this.

I normally ignore stuff like this but it's actually sort of fun. The back is cute.

Stickers posing as cards. Why?

Another nice Upper Deck Eddie. At this point in his career, Eddie had decided that appearing to have some fun out there wouldn't kill him.

'93 Fleer. I don't even know if this is the regular issue for that year or not. By '93 I was out of the card hobby and close to being out of the fan business as well. I was hanging on by my fingertips and a year or so later the strike/lockout/stoppage came along and stomped on those fingers.

That's it for tonight. This show was the first one I've attended without a want list in hand. TriStar is coming up so I better get to work on something.

Oddball Set Being Oddball

The last time I went to the hotel card show (November?) I found a little unopened cello pack in one of the bins. I don't recall if it was the dollar bin or the quarter bin but either way I figured I shoud pick it up. The top card was this Barry Larkin.

I figured that the Internet's #1 Larkin collector, Chris of the Nachos Grande blog might not have it. Of course when I got home I checked his list and saw that he did indeed own a copy. But it's not a wasted purchase...I'm getting a post out of it.

I didn't pay much attention to the pack again until I decided to clean off my desk last week. From Duracell Batteries this thing just says "I'm a 90s oddball!" Unlicensed by MLB it does carry the MLBPA logo and therefore has any team logos removed. Back then non-MLB approved cards could be issued with the team nicknames.  At some point lawyers got involved and we ended up with the semi-anonymous, city-designated only Donruss/Panini sets we see today.

There were four cards in the pack plus a header card with a checklist. That checklist (it's at the bottom) told me that there were two series of these and that my pack came from Series II. The same four players travel together in each pack which Duracell called 'Sets'. This was set 5 of 6 issued as part of Series II.

A couple of sluggers came in this one. Gary Sheffield....

 ...and José Canseco. Yes, he got the accented 'e'. You don't see that very often, particularly on baseball cards from 1993.

Jack McDowell was also along for the ride.

The backs of my four cards had a portrait photo with capless players or a closely cropped pic that left the logo out of the picture. The stats go back five years.

Here is the header card. The set came free with a Duracell Saver Pack of batteries.

There was a mail-in offer on the back of the header card. I've blown it up a bit for easier reading. Each of the 'sets' is listed.

If I had a choice I'd nab that sweet Set #4. Hard to beat getting two of my PC guys (El Presidenté and Jim Abbott) plus Junior and Ryno!

BTW...I often wondered about the Young America, MN address. Seems like every coupon or redemption was headed that way. I finally checked it out and it's a real town. Wikipedia told me this (among other things):

In 1973, the Dile Corporation moved to Young America, and changed its name to Young America Corporation. They are one of the largest employers in the town, processing rebate, coupon, and other marketing programs for businesses. They receive a great deal of mail, enough that this small town has over 20 zip codes assigned to it. A main one is 55555.

And so one of life's little mysteries is solved thanks to a junk box card purchase.

BTW...if anyone wants these I'll throw them your way. Just say the word.

Pierce-related GQ Minis

Before we made our trip to Chicago Jedi Jeff of 2x3 Heroes sent me a handful of cards. Three of them were 2016 Gypsy Queen minis of White Sox players and they will make it into my Billy Pierce collection. Or at least into the 'Pierce-related' pages I keep in the back of my Pierce binder.

All three display the player in a way that shows off the #19 memorial patch they wore following Pierce's death last July. The Minnie Minoso patch (#9) is visible as well. They re a little hard to see in the scans so I blew up a part of the Rondon card above. Take a look:

I've been trying to find one of those patches since they were used last year. I see plenty of team uni patches for sale on the net but not this one. I poked around every kiosk and team store I could find in Comiskey but they don't seem to be available. I'll keep looking though because sometimes I'm surprised by what turns up on eBay.

Jeff also tossed in a couple of Orioles. This is a 2005 Topps something or other of Boog Powell. Any card with a Topps Rookie trophy is worth having. I'm not sure why the back scanned so poorly though.

Speaking of Boog Powell....here is a headline from ESPN a few weeks back that gave me pause:

Mariners minor leaguer Boog Powell gets 80-game suspension for PEDs

I had no idea there was another Boog Powell in baseball. But there is. And he's in trouble.

Finally here's an SP card of one of those Orioles whose career was totally eclipsed by my 'baseball boycott' of the late 90s. It's Curtis Goodwin and this shiny chromified die-cut beauty just screams '1990s hobby cards'. 

Goodwin stole 22 bases for the '95 Orioles and repeated that number for the '97 Reds but never was able to grab himself a full time job as he bounced around to a handful of other clubs. I learn a lot from these cards of guys I never knew existed.

Thanks again Jeff. I'm on the lookout for a '19' patch for BOTH of us.

Presidents and Junk Wax

Collecting Presidential memorabilia is an expensive hobby for the most part. That's why I confine myself to inexpensive campaign pins, Presidential cards from Topps and other companies and assorted trinkets.

When I saw that Archives had a Presidential Chronicles subset I figured I could find it cheap and I did. It's only 10 cards total but several of those ten are targets in my collection, such as it is.

The JFK and Nixon cards are my favorites of the set. I really feel the pictures Topps chose for these two cards capture the essence of each of them. Kennedy, the charismatic orator, Nixon the thoughtful brooder.

The other cards in the set are Truman, the two Bushes, Jimmy Carter.....

...Hoover, Lincoln (how I wish I could afford some actual Lincoln memorabilia!), Ford and President Obama. The last two are very well represented in my collection.

The back of each card has a one paragraph blurb. You can't call it a 'bio'.

The Kennedy card uses a picture from his speech at Rice University in September of 1962. That day he proposed a large budget for NASA in hopes of having them put a man on the moon. Here's the original photo from Google Images. Looks like it was a beautiful day at Rice Stadium. I've seen many games there and that place hasn't changed a bit in 50 years.

And the Junk Wax I mentioned in the title? The seller used eight 90's era baseball and hoops cards to fill out the thick toploader. I'm sure every one of us has gotten cards orders thru the mail that included extras that the seller used to protect the 'goods'. I've never had this many cards as a 'bonus'. These are the six 'best' cards of the bunch. The Frank Thomas and Karl Malone cards are probably worth a nickel apiece but hey, a Hall of Famer's card is a Hall of Famer's card!