North Texas Card Show

I woke up early this past Saturday and headed up I-45 through Dallas and on to the North Texas Card Show staged at the Comerica Center in Frisco which is the Dallas Stars' practice facility among other things. It was a four hour trip and was the first time I'd traveled out of town for a card show since the National was held twice in Arlington, Texas in 1986 and 1990.

It was a nice 'medium' sized show, bigger than the hotel meeting room shows I hit all the time but smaller than the TriStar events. About 200 tables I'd say.

They had several former members of the Dallas Cowboys as autograph guests and I had no interest in them but I hadn't remembered that former major leaguer Eddie Robinson was going to be there. He served in the Navy during WWII and then played 13 seasons of baseball in the American League. He played for 7 of the 8 AL teams that existed during his career. He was a favorite of my Yankees fan father who always told me Robinson was under-appreciated as a ballplayer. He was pretty spry for a 98-year-old and I asked him to sign a copy of his book to me. Many years ago I came across one of his game-used gloves that he had signed at some point. I have it in storage and wish I had paid more attention to the show flyer and ads. I would have dug it out and brought it along.

There were several of the major auction houses with booths at the show. I didn't stop at them but I did enjoy the displays that they brought along. First is this beautiful Roy Campanella jersey that was in place near the Heritage Auction booth. Sweet, yes?

But this next display really had me drooling. A complete 1915 Cracker Jack set. Unreal to see it up close.

Just beautiful cards.

Of course, I had to find the card that is my personal white whale, the Chief Bender card.

I spent about four hours circling the floor, minus a Diet Coke break and the time spent with Eddie Robinson. I didn't spend a lot of money but driving up and back in one day kind of forces one to want to come home with something. And I did......here is a quick look:

This very nice 1954 Bowman Jackie Jensen is a fine addition to my rather informal JJ PC.

The same dealer had some very deeply discounted '57s which I snagged. I'm not ready for really begin my pursuit of the set but I pick up cheap cards that I know I need whenever I come across them. This Dodgers' Sluggers is a neat card...even with the wicked creases.

Speaking of Dodgers...I also chose this Duke Snyder. It was in very nice condition for the price.

As was this Red Schoendienst.

I spent most of my show budget filling my 1971 want list. I found several dozen, Here are a few. The Hundley card is a replacement for the one I bought and then lost at the last hotel show.

I also bought a stack of 1960 Leaf gems. I'll have more on these in an upcoming post.

When you entered the show everyone was given a stack of oversized Upper Deck hockey cards. I didn't get a Rangers card but this Joe Thornton is kind of fun. I've been watching a lot of the Stanley Cup playoffs. To say it's the craziest playoff season may be an understatement.

Thornton has played over 1800 NHL games without winning the Cup. That's the most of any player still working this year. I'm hoping he gets his shot.

                                                                          

And as I was sitting at a dealer's table I heard my number called for the hourly door prize. I was awarded a Panini Instant basketball card of this guy:

I enjoy the Rockets but my knowledge of the NBA is pretty limited. When the guy handed me the card he pointed out that it is numbered as #1 and advised me to keep the seal on the holder. Not sure what to say about it other than it's better to win than not win.

By about 4:30 I'd put about 9000 steps on my Fitbit and my back was telling me that it was time to go. Another long drive home has convinced me that I'm no longer built for 8-hour road trips. Next time I'll stay over a day. But it was fun. It's nice to see different dealers is a different venue.

10 Posts, 10 Cards, 10 Books, 10 Songs

I enjoy cards, I enjoy books, I enjoy music. Nothing unique about that as I'm sure plenty of you do as well. Recently I've been going thru my hobby collection as I get ready to downsize it. By 'downsize' I mean organizing the good stuff and getting rid of the clutter. All my remaining junk wax era non-Orioles? Adios. Commons from earlier this decade when I was buying blasters that I opened and immediately boxed up? Toast. The 1600 count boxes of 80s and 90s basketball and hockey that I've sifted through for anything worth keeping? Gone.

Anyway, in scrounging through boxes, binders, and shelves I've come across cards, pics, publications I've intended to put up on here but never have. I thought that I'd remedy that over the next few weeks. And just to make writing these more fun for me I figured I'd pair the memorabilia with books and songs I own and enjoy as well. Because why not? And as I implied they will not all be cards.

My guidelines:

• Only things that have not been posted here will be included
• The elements may or may not be connected
• I'm gonna keep them short

Books and music will be from my shelves so you'll get an idea of my tastes in both. Be warned: I'm pretty 'mainstream' when it comes to my reading and listening.

I'll kick this off with the wonderful 1952 Topps Jackie Jensen.  If anyone would ask me why collectors dig the '52 set I'd just show them this card. I'm not sure what the background shows but I like to think it's the colors of a sunset reflecting on a stadium net. Whatever it actually is makes for a great card.

My copy has some seriously rounded corners but I'm fine with having added it to my Jensen PC.

First book up in the rotation of books is Game Faces by Peter Devereaux (that link takes you to the book on Google Books where you can see sample pages). The book features cards from the tobacco era and ties them to history, culture and the people of the time. You can read it from the beginning or just pick it up and browse through random pages. really good stuff.

I own that Mathewson on the cover, but I've shown it here multiple times.

Today I will tie the song to the card, sort of. It's Jackie Wilson, a much-underappreciated talent who really never gets much mention anymore. My friends and I were fans when we were in school in the mid to late 60s. Here's my favorite Wilson song, (You're Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher.

I hadn't thought about him or the song in a long time. Then, during this last Christmas season, I set a bunch of new presets in my Sirius radio to escape some of the temporary holiday stations. It was playing on an R&B channel and soon it was in my gym playlist. Catchy, right?

I took the plunge

I've been neglecting this little space for a bit but that doesn't mean I've been inactive hobby-wise. Quite the contrary.

At the September monthly card show, I saw a binder of 1961 commons my friend Darryl had behind his table that I hadn't noticed before. I poked through it and saw that there were about 240ish cards, a nice starter set. Darryl being Darryl said he'd give me a really good deal on it and soon I was headed home with my latest vintage chase project. One I had considered but hadn't really committed to until that morning.

Soon after that, I found a chunk of 61s on eBay for a 'can't pass this up' price and I grabbed them knowing that I'd end up with some dupes. On the flip side, the eBay cards looked (and indeed turned out to be) in really nice condition and many of the dupes were just fine as upgrades over those in the binder.

I hadn't really touched it until we returned from vacation late in October and then I dug in. It took me a couple of days to pull the cards from the sheets, sort and collate them and make a want list. I also pulled the '61s I had in my PCs. Unlike a lot of collectors, I don't duplicate cards across various collections except for a few special collections like Billy Pierce, Brooks Robinson, and a few others. It took me another day to track down the '61 Orioles cards I already had. That's a long story with interesting results that I'll save for a separate post.

Last Saturday I took my want list and killed off another 100 or so from my list plus some stars from a collection Darryl had recently picked up. I'm really happy with how this thing is coming along. I have some great memories of these cards. There are some sweet ones among the cards I have in the binder so far. Like the great Wally Moon card that I put up top. Here are a few more:

Roger Maris carries a pwemium, especially a '61 Maris. I have to balance cost and quality. This was a reasonable one that had flaws, but flaws I can live with. The scan makes the creases look worse than they do in the binder page. A low number common might be an upgrade candidate if it carried these scars, but not a Maris.

I dug Chuck Estrada back in his days as an Oriole and loved this card. That trophy!!

League Leader cards with mantle...ouch. Mantle and Maris BOTH? Yikes. I hate paying the price but whatcha gonna do? What I do is buy one with a crease through Rocco C.'s ear.

These next three come from PCs. I had already put the MVP subset together long ago. That took care of a bunch of stars. And I had a seperate Jensen so that one transferred over to this binder.

I had three of this Wes Covington card. This baby elevates the '61 set all by itself. One of the best cards Topps has done.

My Johnny Callison collection was somewhere south of complete so using this '61 in the set binder isn't a big deal. It's another great card though. Maybe not 'Covington great', but great. Nice look at Connie Mack Stadium here.

Roy Face in LA's Memorial Coliseum.

 Here's an oversized look at the back of Callison's card. Full stats (or what passed for full stats back then), three cartoons, a blurb on cards of players with not a lot of stats and, of course, the player's 'vitals'. Couldn't ask for more.

 The manager's cards more or less borrowed the color scheme from the 1960 rookie cards.

Another PC card on permanent loan. Mudcat!!

Another top hat trophy rookie. I had three copies of this Tommy Davis. I can't say why. He seems to show up in cheap vintage boxes and I always bite. At least now one will be put to good use. TD's off-centeredness is very typical of 1961s. Doesn't bother me in the slightest. The only time I even consider it is if I am choosing between two cards for a binder slot. If the corners are equal then I'll use the one with better centering.

Last time I checked I was over 80% complete with the set. If you happen to have any 61s in a box under your bed that you can spare check out my want list at this link or over on the right-hand sidebar.

This chase is going to slow waaaay down as I get into the high numbers. Those can be silly expensive. I'll need patience and lots of luck to finish this one out without killing off my entire hobby budget.

Card Show Cards Pt. 2

Here are the rest of my cheap vintage grabs at Saturday's show. I may have this Jackie Jensen card already but I figured that I could pick it up just in case. Jensen was a great but troubled talent. You can find the abridged version of his backstory on my '59 Topps blog.

Sometimes one great card of a player can inspire me to make it the cornerstone of a PC. That was the case with the 1961 Topps Wes Covington. This '62 is nice but it doesn't compare to the '61.

Early 60s specials were very cool. I don't think I appreciated them back in the day. And I don't remember this '63 Stengel-Woodling card. I saw one Met game at the Polo Grounds. I seem to recall it being against the Phillies but I'm never sure about that.

Anyway I couldn't pass up a Stengel.

Orlando Cepeda was a terrific hitter, and a darn good defensive player as well. But someone will have to convince me that he's a Hall of Fame player. I'm always willing to admit I'm wrong but even the best efforts of my Giants' buddies haven't ever swayed me.

That didn't stop me from picking up this Cepeda. You never know who may need it.

I always thought Rusty Staub, otoh, was under-appreciated. That may be because i got to see some of his best days in Houston. The top hat trophy sure adds a nice touch to a card. Rusty was very young when he started in the bigs and he looks like a high school player on this '64. I have an under-the-radar Staub collection. I don't even look for his cards but when they appear I buy them. It's like collecting by osmosis.

I bought this '61 Bob Lillis for no other reason than I like the combo of colors and the palm tree background.

So that's the lot of the card show goodies. I was able to hit up someone's want list and those went out in the mail on Monday. Today was spent waiting for the 'rain-ageddon'. That never came. And quickly led to a few choice memes.

Jackie Jensen Baseball Instruction Booklet

Even before I researched his '59 Topps card I'd gotten interested in the career of Jackie Jensen. He is a very unique guy, a Navy vet who starred at Cal in baseball and football, was at one time touted as Joe DiMaggio's heir apparent as Yankee centerfielder and retired early due in large part to his fear of flying.

His best days came with the Red Sox and he was the 1958 AL MVP. He won a Gold Glove, made several All Star squads and was garnering MVP votes most seasons.

This little eight page booklet is dated with a 1959 copyright and is part of a series sponsored by Union '76 Oil.

It's very fragile as you can probably tell, I was hesitant in putting it on my scanner but I think it's interesting enough to merit a post. I just opened a part of it and am showing six of the eight pages. Pieces were falling off as I turned the pages.

It fits my in my Jensen PC and my love of publications. I keep meaning to try and find more issues in this series but other things have priority.

1958 Topps Sport Magazine All Stars, American League edition

I finally finished off the AL All Star subset by 'finding' Luis Aparicio. He'd been MIA for a week or so but he turned himself in on Monday night.

There are ten players in each league's set of All Stars so I scanned the position players and then the two pitchers. They'd have looked better presented in 'nine pocket sheet' style but whatcha going to do?

First the manager, the Ol' Perfessor (and his NL friend, Fred Haney)

And the players:

And finally, the pitchers:

My favorite is the Mickey Mantle but I sure like the Jackie Jensen card as well. The Mantle was a card I worked very hard to get, bidding on many of them before I hit on one at a decent price in a condition I could live with. Jensen was a guy I casually collected but didn't know a lot about until I dug into his backstory. I touched on it briefly on my '59 Topps blog.

Tomorrow I'll show the National League All Stars.

Two of my favorite Jackie Jensen cards

Along with the Jackie Jensen and Bob Friend 1958 All Star cards I posted last week I also picked up this '56 Jensen card.

No need for me to sing the praises of the 1956 Topps set. I don't know anyone who doesn't appreciate it. As much as I like the fronts with the two photos it's the three cartoons on the back that make this one so much fun. 

Here is a closer look at the cartoons on the back of the Jensen.

In 1956 Jensen had a line of 20-97-.317 and led the league with 11 triples. It was his best batting average but the only season he had fewer than 100 RBI from 1954 through 1959. 

Below is the 1961 Topps Jensen MVP card. That year Topps had a subset that featured the MVPs from the decade of the 50s. It's a pretty neat group of cards and I have a couple but I'm calling a halt to adding any new 'mini collection pursuits' until I finish off the ones I'm chasing now. 

In 1961 Jensen was making a 'comeback' after having 'retired' prior to the 1960 season. He won back his place as the Red Sox' regular rightfielder but his numbers, while respectable, were way off his previous standard and he hung up his glove for good after that final year.