Five Cool Commons

Twitter friend Mark Del Franco tossed up a tweet the other evening asking to see collector's favorite commons. I tossed up my '61 Wes Covington as it's one of my favorite cards, common or otherwise. And I thought that idea would make a good post. I know I really need some motivation to post and I appreciate neat commons from vintage sets, so here we are.

I'm sure I've posted each of these five cards in one form or fashion before, either on this blog or one of my set build blogs. These five are here for different reasons but all are among my favorites.

This '57 Charlie Neal card challenges the '61 Covington for artistic appeal. I just love the Ebbets Field background with the Schaefer Beer ad atop the scoreboard, the fencing above the Gem Blades ad, etc. And don't forget that "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one."

Don Rudolph's 1959 Topps card looks very ordinary, yes?

But here's the cartoon on the back...

You really do want to read about Don Rudolph's 'dancer' wife. Trust me on this. She's the reason this common is so high on my list.


And Wes Covington appears...

That, my friends, is art. The pose, the bat rack, the uniform (those stirrups!!). The perfect baseball card? It has to be in the running.

I was always a fan of the late Elrod Hendricks. He played and lived with joy and a smile on his face. He never turned down an autograph request and loved talking to fans, especially after his playing days when he was on the Orioles' staff.

This card from the 1975 SSPC set captures him perfectly. Seeing his smile makes me smile. I have a signed copy of this card in my Hendricks binder pages but I like the unsigned one just as much. Hard to beat Ellie's zest for baseball.

The best day I've ever spent in a ballpark came in late June 1970. The Yankees-Indians mid-week, afternoon doubleheader was more fun than one could ever hope for. Tony Horton crawling back to the dugout after whiffing on a Steve Hamilton 'Folly Floater', four dingers by Bobby Murcer, a firecracker tossed from the upper deck that landed at home plate and probably shaved a few years off Ray Fosse's life. And the best baseball brawl I've ever witnessed in person. I did a blog post a few years ago centered on this remarkable day which you can see here.

This card of Vada Pinson from Topps' wonderful 1971 set uses a photo taken during the first game of that doubleheader (with a cameo by Thurman Munson). Every time I see this card I'm reminded of the day my best friend and I spent at Yankee Stadium just weeks before my family made our second, and permanent, move to Houston.

So there they are, five commons I love. I'm sure there are many more I could include in a list of commons I treasure but it would take something remarkable to bounce one of these off my list.

I'd love to see other bloggers' lists.

Not bad for $4.01

I'm not an autograph collector per se but I do add them to my collection when I come across ones that fit and are not too costly. Case in point the six Orioles signed items I nabbed for four bucks and a penny on eBay.

Half my 'saved searches' are Orioles related so I guess that's why the listing turned up on my eBay feed (that row of stuff they tempt you with on the bottom of your pages). I'd probably have ignored it but six pieces with a $2 start price caught my eye. I tossed in a small bid and ended up winning. When you look at them they are really not that much of a bargain but the 8x10's will be fine on the walls over my desk at work. I can spend my last year there repping the Birds.

The Frank Robinson photo had a stain but in a cheap from from Dollar Tree it'll hang just fine.

The 1960 Topps Ron Hansen comes from one of my favorite subsets ever. That's 57-year-old gum residue on the front. I've been pretty successful at removing that gunk so I'll give it a whirl. I'll stick this one in my 1960 set after I clean it up a bit.

Ken Singleton was a class act with the Orioles. Signed '83 Donruss Singleton? I have a spot for it.

Here is a slightly abused Orioles team postcard of one of my all time favorites. Ellie was a fan friendly as they come. RIP

Finally a couple of flawed photos. One from Boog Powell.....personalized to someone whose name isn't readable (I'll make believe it's to me) and.....

...my umpteenth Brooks Robinson sig. Looks like the Sharpie was petering out. Oh well.

All in all a decent buy for the price. Hey I spent a dollar more than this on a hanging pack of '17 Topps Series 2 and got nothing I was remotely interested in. When I look at it that way I figure this buy was a real bargain!

Sometimes it's the little things

I've mentioned my previous obsession with collecting postcards issued by the Orioles in days gone by. Recalling those days is one reason I never will criticize anyone else's collecting habits. 

The Orioles have issued postcards since their days in St. Louis. Through the late 1960s the cards were black and white, sometimes with a 'postcard' back, sometimes blank backed. I got my first one sent to me by Brooks Robinson when I wrote to him with my first 'fan letter' to any athlete about 1966 or '67. I bought a full 'team set' at Memorial Stadium around 1975 and that's what got me hooked. I'd write to the team each year and get a price list and order 8x10s and a set of postcards. Most of the cards would be the same as those issued in the previous season with new players added. Sometimes a new card for an established player would be included.

That what really started my in depth collecting habits. Over time I became obsessed with finding every postcard of every player and every variation... and brother were there variations! For example look at the Chico Salmon card at the top and compare it to the one below. His name is not only no longer in (f'd up) quotes but the font size has changed. 

The same sort of thing applies to the two Elrod Hendricks postcards below. And notice how the pictures are cropped ever so slightly differently. You can see it if you look at the piping on his collar. I cataloged all those differences. I used to use a small ruler to measure the distance between the picture and the name. 

It didn't help that a collector out in San Francisco who specialized in team issued postcards (particularly Orioles postcards) issued a thick bound 'checklist' with photocopied examples, updating it every couple of years. There were also guys like Dan Even who traveled the card show circuit selling player postcards. More than once I bought huge stacks of Oriole postcards from him blindly hoping that when I got home and sifted through them I'd find more variations or, even better, completely new cards for my collection. 

Poking around my binders and boxes of Orioles postcards is a lot of fun. I made pencil notations on the back of some with the date of issue if I could determine it. For example both of the large letter examples above I figured to be 1971 cards. I have no idea if that's correct or how I came to that conclusion. In later years I decided that marking the cards was a bad idea so I went with adhesive stickers on the four pocket pages I kept them in. Yesterday, as I flipped through one binder all these little white dots, the now detached stickers, floated out onto the table. Time to start over!

Game 5!!!!

I stayed up far too late to watch Game Four and I'll have to hustle home after work Friday afternoon to see the first pitch of Game Five but hey, how often is this going to happen? I was thinking about Elrod Hendricks tonight. I was thinking how cool it would be to have him still in the Orioles dugout talking to these young kids who are facing post-season pressure for the first time. But it doesn't seem to bother them a bit. They never seem to get too down or too excited. I laughed when Craig Saiger was relaying how the guys in the dugout were pointing the bill of their caps in the direction they wanted the ball to be hit. Is that a Little Leaguers' mojo thing or what?