The Leafs Are In The Bag

There seems to be a point in all of my set chases where I say to myself: "Self, why on earth did you decide to collect this damn thing?" Usually, it's when I'm frustrated with a star card that has eluded me for a while. In the case of the 1960 Leaf set...well, it's hard to point to that one moment. But I can tell you what was behind it...lack of homework.

Don't get me wrong…I love this thing. But there were a few times that I was tempted to pack it in and admit defeat. The 'high numbers' (can cards #'d 73 to 144 really be called high numbers?) are a pain to find and a pain in the wallet when you do find them. I quickly determined that any of the high numbers priced below $20 were a bargain. I grabbed any I could. Some came cheap, as low as $8 if I got lucky. Others ended up costing me closer to $30. Had I looked harder at the set before I was committed to it, I may have bailed. But I stuck with it.

You can read all the particulars of this quirky thing over on the SCD website if you want to. Over here, I'm celebrating finishing it! And an interesting finish it was. A month or two back I returned from one of my extended breaks from the chase and dug into eBay. I found a seller with a bunch of these up for auction. I bid on all I needed but only won one of them.

The day after those auctions closed I found a dealer with a stack of these things, and at reasonable prices. Plus, and sweet Jesus this was great, he was accepting offers. I jumped in and nabbed several at better prices than I had seen in the past. Between those purchases, my eBay win, a BIN or two and a COMC delivery I went from lacking 15ish to needing just four or five. A nice chunk of the haul came in one day:

Inspired by my new gems, a trip back to COMC turned up a Gene Green card and into my basket it went. Then an eBay search led me to this one and even with the 'Yankee tax' I couldn't complain too much.

Meanwhile, I had posted the photo of my 'big delivery haul' on Twitter and something amazing happened. Talmer Curry, an Orioles/Ravens fan who I had never interacted with, reached out to me with word that he had some '60 Leaf high numbers and asked what I needed. Wait, what?

I messaged him back with my needs and low and behold, Talmer asked for my address so he could knock two real toughies off my list! Here's one...

I think that in all the time I had been working on this set I'd only seen one Johnny Callison on eBay and I remember that I was outbid, by a lot. And now here I had this card through the generosity of a stranger. And then there is this other one Talmer sent...

His given name is Barbra O'Neil Chrisley but whatever it is I'm damn sure happy to slide him into one of the last open slots in my binder. Mr. Chrisley is rarely available in the usual places. But he's mine now.

And so it came down to this guy(s). The Two Smiths is another rare one, or at least it seemed to me to be next-to-impossible to find at anything approaching a reasonable price. But I did another in a long line of eBay searches for it and found one that had one low bid at the time. Figuring there was no way it would stay that way I stuck a snipe on it for $60. That's more than a reasonable man should pay for it but I'm rarely reasonable. And I won the last 1960 Leaf I needed for less than $16.

It is a pretty neat card actually. Here's a look at how the back differs from the standard ones.

So that's a wrap. I'll post some others here as I get the chance. There are very few 'stars' but a lot of these guys have fun baseball stories to tell. And some of the cards in my binder do as well. Like my Curt Flood card. The only one I saw for a couple of years is still sitting there on COMC with a $130 price tag. It's not even graded. If I was going to quit on this set I figured it the Flood card was going to do it. But I ended up nabbing a real beauty of a Flood for 1/10th that price.

Little victories like that, and being the recipient of generous gifts like the one from Talmer Curry, make this hobby such fun.

I'm done with this one but not 'finished'. For one thing, I have the Gene Green card at COMC and when I last looked my purchases had a late June expected shipment date. I'm fine with that. It's only cardboard and the folks there have bigger fish to fry, like trying to stay safe while working. My cards will get here when they get here.

And if you read that SCD entry you'll see that there are a couple of variations that I may or may not decide to track down at some point. There are also some prototypes floating around, but they are far out of my range. And finally, there are a couple of cards I would like to upgrade. I have one of two of those on the way already.

But the bottom line is that I have met my goal. I have a set or two on the horizon but I think I'll just sit back for a bit and savor this one.

Here's Johnny (Callison)

I'm 'nickel and dime-ing' my way through my Johnny Callison want list. He hasn't reached Billy Pierce's collection status. In other words I'm not going to go out and try to find every stupid Topps Lineage Canary Diamond sparkle card like I did with BP.

But I am trying to build a solid career-era collection and add will mix in assorted oddball post-career stuff when it's available cheaply. Same as I am doing with Elston Howard and a few others.

And Callison doesn't really have much in the way of Heritage-type cards. Most of them fall into the buyback/re-issue realm and if I have an 'original' I can do without the gold stamped versions.

This came from a Net54 member. Seriously miscut (but signed) '59 Rookie Stars. I love the design.  Part of the appeal of the vintage sets I built were the subsets. The rookie and All-Star cards Topps birthed in those days were just so cool.

But when it came to the '65 Embossed...Topps whiffed. Actually, this Callison bears a decent resemblance to him. But go find the Yaz Embossed. That ain't Yaz.

Here's an example of a post-career card that was easy to add to my PC. 1981 TCMA Go-Go White Sox Callison.

The seller sent it in a Card Saver inside a PWE which is fine by me. But he used a sticker to seal the thing:

Even if you're selling cheap oddballs, do better.

All Dressed Up And...

...nothing to buy.

Next Saturday morning I'll head across Houston to hit the hotel card show. My want list will consist of just one card, the Topps '71 football Joe Greene rookie. One card. I can't remember the last time I haven't printed out multiple sheets of names and card numbers to carry to the show.

Oh, sure. I have multiple needs for my 1960 Leaf and '61 Topps stamp chases. But both of those have reached the point where what I'm lacking is so elusive that I don't need to print new copies. Not to mention the fact that the chances that one of the dealers at the small show having something on the lists are remote.

So why am I going? Well, it's a card show. And I really enjoy talking sports and the hobby with the friends I've made among the dealers. And, despite not wanting to tackle a new set now, I do have a hobby goal or two. I've decided to fill out a couple of my player collections.

I'm going to do a few players at a time. And I won't attempt to be a 'completist' in the fashion of my Billy Pierce collection. I'm going to finish off each player's career-era regular cards and inserts and whatever oddballs fall into my lap.

I'm going to dig into Johnny Callison, Elston Howard, and Dennis Martinez first. All of them have cards in my set binders already but, as with Pierce, I am going to have separate player binders. But enough talk. I actually began my jump into this last week at the previous show. I came away with some Callisons and an Elston Howard card that were mostly upgrades to the ones I already had.

The Phillies were the first NL team I took an interest in and Johnny Callison was my favorite Phils player. My best friend and his father were 'NL guys' and went to a lot of games at Shea and I frequently got to tag along. There's no way to know but I wonder if the picture used on his '66 Topps card was taken on a day we were there.


The '67 set keeps calling out to me. I resist. Callison got a nice Spring Training photo here.

Don't know about the '69. Not enough evidence.

By the early 70s, Callison was a Yankee and I was knee-deep in college stuff and no longer cared all that much.

EDIT: Jon's comment below reminded me that this is an O-Pee-Chee Callison. It was mixed in with a dealer's Topps '73s and for a second got me thinking I had found a bargain. He was selling the cards for 50 cents each and the Topps Callison is short-printed and commands a premium for the most part. Here is the back ('73 backs are fun!) plus a Bob Moose OPC that was in there as well. My Moose collection is pretty much complete, btw.)

/EDIT

I nabbed this '66 Ellie Howard knowing I already had one but it was so nice I figured it would be better than the one I owned. I was right.

Meanwhile, I'm cleaning up the checklists I've had for each of them and actually bindering everything. Once these guys are far enough along the way I'll tackle a couple of others. On my list are Paul Blair, Rusty Staub and some guys from other sports, Connie Hawkins and Rod Gilbert.

This little, low-stress project will give me a reason to continue to go to the small card shows. If I can get organized in the next month I should be able to take care of a lot of my list at the TriStar show in February. We'll see.

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.

TCMA Stars of the 60s

After picking up the TCMA Stars of the 50s set I let the other shoe drop and found their Stars of the 60s follow-up. At least I found Series I. Turns out TCMA issued a Series II a few years later, in 1981. I didn't know that until last night when I was digging for info on this thing.

There obviously isn't as much research on this as there is about mainstream Topps sets. There were 291 cards in this Series I. They are numbered to 293 but a couple of numbers were not issued. Even the number of un-issued cards is a matter of where you check. But I'm not worried about that. For now let's just look at a cross section of the cards.

That, of course, is Albie Pearson up top. I ought to start a PC of the guy since I've got so many of his cards. As I've mentioned before his 1960 card was the first I can recall pulling from packs as a kid.

This Ernie Banks is a nicer photo than the one he got in the 50s Stars version of this thing. I'm guessing Shea Stadium but it may not be. I need Joe Shlabotnik to weigh in here. 

On the whole the pix in this set are better than those in the Stars of the 50s version. Brighter, sharper, more focused images for sure. Cameras improved over time so that probably is to be expected. But more than that it looked to me that TCMA made a concerted effort to improve the printing and/or processing of the photos. 

Jesse Gonder is one of several player who have two cards. He's here as a Brave and as a Met. Let's give TCMA credit for not using the same blurb on the back of both cards.

And speaking of backs....

Here are the backs of a couple of cards and you'll notice the obvious differences. In the set I picked up all of the first 45 or so cards have backs printed with black ink with the set name in large all caps. The rest use green and some don't have the set label at all. I've also seen some of the low numbers printed in green. It makes me wonder if the black ink ones I received were a part of the TCMA 'team' sets of the era.

But either way the bottom line is that there are two back colors and three 'styles'.

I have a soft spot for Chuck Hinton. Back when I was heavily into Strat-O-Matic table baseball he always seemed to outperform his Strat card. Since the Nats and Indians were always a part of my league I saw a lot of him. He has two cards in the set and I scanned his Cleveland card for inclusion later.

Tito Francona is another duel card guy. His two show similar poses. And yes, every card in this set, like the previous one, has all posed photos.

Ron Brand is wearing the seldom seen Astros spring training cap they used the year they changed from being the Colts to the Astros and moved into the Dome. I've seen pics of them wearing this thing as they worked out in the Dome in the days leading up to the first Astros Opening Day.

Johnny Callison is a favorite of mine. Stems from my time as a Phils fan, circa 1963/64. "My" NL team changed pretty regularly.

Above and below are cards that show off the wonderful green/yellow A's unis of the era. I don't think I was a fan back than but these have really grown on me over time. I hadn't reall thought about it previously but are the A's the only team to wear numbers on both sleeves? The Tigers and White Sox usually wore numbers on their right sleeve. Anyway the Athletics have front and back numbers and both sleeves covered. Is that a baseball record?

That's The Hawk of course above and Bobby Del Greco below.

Smoky Burgess showing sleeve and front of jersey numbers. Add the one on the back and you get three. Be honest...you didn't know his first name was "Forrest" did you?

The Mick, Yankee Stadium. All business.

Norm Siebern of the Orioles. I remember my uncle in Baltimore telling me that this Boog Powell kid was going to push Siebern off the O's. He was right.

Leon 'Daddy Wags' Wagner. Too cool for words. And he f'ing knew it.

Donn Clendenon is wearing what we always referred to as a 'patch hat'. We were always baffled by the fact that the Pirates had the same crappy type of cheap looking caps that we got on cap day at Yankee and Shea Stadiums.

On September 1, 1964, pitcher Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese player to play in the major leagues. I remember what a huge deal that was. My best friend and his dad were big Giants guys so we talked about them a lot.

 Gerry Arrigo on one of the very few horizontal cards in Series I of this set. I looked thru online photos of Series II and there are many more of these as well as some of the group shots that we saw in the Stars of the 50s set.

And finally here is the great Bob Gibson. I'm usually a sucker for nostalgic touches like the dark Cards cap he's wearing. Not in this case. The Cards look much better wearing red ones.

I'm going to save the rest of my scans for a second post of these. By the way..if you are interested in picking up this or the earlier set I'd advise not jumping on the first listing you see. The prices on these things are as varied as anything I've come across. I see them with an asking price of over $100. And I see them for as little as $25. I paid under $30 shipped. Do your homework.