Catching Up

I've fallen way behind on posting. Lots of reasons...from lack of inspiration to a complete revamp/remodeling of my hobby room/office. I've also been doing some work on the home network and switching over from Chrome to Firefox. FF, btw, while cleaner and quicker than Chrome, doesn't play well with Blogger. I smell a conspiracy. Off-topic...I haven't used a Mozilla product since their first attempt at a browser (Phoenix) but I was a hardcore Netscape Navigator user back in the day. My school district was an early adopter.

But that up above doesn't mean I haven't been busy when it comes to picking up cards and memorabilia. Most of my new acquisitions are additions to my Billy Pierce and Charles Bender collections.My posts of those guys never get much in the way of readership so I'm in no rush to scan and post them.

One group of cards I do have scanned is my card show haul from April. I followed myusual MO....sifting through the cheap vintage boxes and snatching whatever caught my fancy. Some of these I already owned but who wouldn't want a second copy of the '67 Ed Charles?

So here they are. Starting off with some '82 Kelloggs. I have to admit I'm coming around to seeing past Rickey Henderson's quirks and I'm beginning to appreciate what he did on the field.

Schmidt...best NL third baseman I've ever seen.  ;-)

The Wizard of Oz. I always thought the two-tone cap detracted from this uni. Now I'm not so sure.

Here's the back of Ozzie's card blown up so you can read the teeny font used to describe the drama surrounding his trade to the Cardinals during the winter of '81-'82.

Mike Cuellar, at Shea. I think I've written about the time I sat next to him and Fred Gladdingin at a game in the Astrodome. Both were DL'd and sitting right behind home plate. Cuellar was charting pitches. My Dad and I were in the seats he sometimes got from Shell Oil. They were pretty sweet.

Here's The Glider! I hear Bob Murphy's voice in my head whenever I think of this guy. Love that A's uni.

I have this Elston Howard on my PC but I keep thinking that one day I may chase the  '64 set.

Richie Allen. Why isn't he in the Hall of Fame? I think he belongs.

'67 Boog. Because why not?

'64 Juan Pizzaro. See my remarks on the Elston Howard card. Exactly the same here.

This Palmer wasn't a need but I kind of hate leaving his cards in a bargain box.

Love the '61 Post Cereal cards and I love Wally Moon cards so this was a no-brainer.

And I'll finish up with a pair of 1969 Topps Deckle Edge inserts. I really need to dig thru my cards (and that's the plan for the summer) and pull out what I have of these. I'd bet I'm fairly close to the whole thing.

Richie Allen in his 'Rich Allen' mode.

And a sorta stoned-looking Jerry Koosman.

That's it for now. I'll try to do better next time.

Card Show Stuff

After a series of unavoidable events caused me to miss a few months I finally made a hotel card show in October. I'm not chasing any baseball sets and the one football set I'm building (1964 Philly Gum) wasn't in great supply among the dealers of vintage cards. I was able to add a couple of stars from that set.

So I made do with grabbing some cheap cards that just caught my eye. I'm not sure what attracts me to cards of coaches like this 1954 Topps Ray Blades. But I added it to my stack and I'm glad. Blades was a player I wasn't aware of but in the 1920s he carved out a nice career as an outfielder with the Cardinals. As the back of his card notes Blades hit .342 in 1925 during a string of .300+ seasons. You can check out his SABR bio here.

Blades was one of those baseball 'lifers' who played, coached, managed and scouted for numerous clubs thru several decades. He managed the '39 Cardinals to a second place finish in his first year at the helm but was fired early the next season after the team stumbled early.

When I see these cards of coaches I always wonder if Topps someone else in the checklist originally but had to remove them for some reason.

Here's my first Dom DiMaggio card, a decent 1953 Topps.

Not much to say other than I don't think I was aware of the fact that Dom was four inches shorter than his more famous brother.

I love this 1960 Topps of Ralph Felton. I didn't know him when he played but a quick search showed that he won a national title at Maryland and played 11 seasons of pro football with the Redskins and Bills. He was better known as 'Rass' Felton and opened a grocery after his playing days.

There is something about the 1960 Topps football set that just makes it appear to be a much older set. I can't really explain it but the set strikes me as something from the mid 50s.

George Webster was a terrific player in his day with the Oilers. He was an All American safety at Michigan state but the Oilers made him a linebacker. The story goes that as a rookie in a 1967 exhibition game against the Cowboys he caught Bob Hayes from behind. I was at that game at Rice Stadium but I have no recollection of that. I do remember Hayes made a long catch and run on what was a rainy night.

My scanner didn't do a very good job on this 1970 Kelloggs' 3-D Webster. It's a really neat set. Very underrated.

One of Webster's teammates at Michigan State was Gene Washington. His is a pretty remarkable story of growing up as an athlete in Texas. His home town had no high school that would allow blacks so he took a bus to Baytown, across under the Houston Ship Channel, to all black G. W. Carver High School. He played football and ran track and set records against other black high schools in the Prairie View Interscholastic League. 

He went on to become an All American for the Spartans and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. As for Carver...it's still there in Baytown. It's no longer a 'stepchild' and no longer a high school. I've taught and coached there for nearly 29 years. Gene has visited a few times and is a gracious, soft-spoken gentleman. When I look up from my door at school every day I see a fantastic framed nearly life-sized photo of him in posed action for Michigan State. Next to that are framed banner listing the football, hoops and track state titles the Gene Washington and his schoolmates won while at Carver. 

This is a 1971 Topps Gene Washington game card. It's the spiritual brother of the 1968 Topps baseball game inserts. Pretty neat. I can't believe I never thought to pick it up for my GW collection before this. Washington played seven NFL seasons, all for the Vikings. There is a neat video on the Vikings site. It's part of a documentary done by Gene Washington's daughter chronicling his 'road' to Michigan State and the pros. It's well worth the 10 minutes. 

And finally a Cal Ripken medallion card from one of the Topps issues of 2017.  This was a freebie. One of the regular dealers at the show was ripping mini boxes (probably looking for Aaron Judge cards) and this was some sort of insert. I've bough enough stuff from him that he will sometimes toss Orioles things my way. 

And yes, the medallion appears to be crooked. That's not a scanning error. 

I'm actually closely reading the back for the first time and see that it came out of Update. Likely to be the only card out of that set I'll own. 

I was only mildly disappointed at the lack of vintage football at the show. There are plenty of dealers who carry football cards but they stock mostly new stuff. 

Show Haul II

Here is the second and final installment of 'Stuff from the Hotel Show'. Pales in comparison to what's been posted around the blogs and on Twitter after the National show but that's fine by me. If the National show ever finds its way back down my way I'll hit it up. 

I already have a 1970 Xographs/Kelloggs Brooks card but in case I ever decide to put the set together I'll have one for that binder and my Brooks/Orioles binder. Like the rest of these this came out of the 10 for $6 bin. I used my credit to nab them. 

Xographs evolved into the company that made Sportflics cards a decade and a half later. But those things can't touch the 1970 Kelloggs cards.

Darrell had a huge stack of the '69 Topps Deckle Edge inserts. I wish I had picked up more but I'm certain that they will still be in the bin at his next show.  Topps used this Juan Marichal picture in their 1965 set.

This shot of Brooks is from 1965.

Hawk Harrelson in his A's uni and an airbrushed BoSox cap.

Deckle Edge #4..Luis Tiant. This set was notorious for misprinted cards.

I brought home this much loved 1957 Topps Orioles team card. It was like a homely, sad, lonely puppy at the pound begging for a home. Even though I already have multiples of it I couldn't have slept had I walked away from it.

This is what team cards should always be. Team pic on the front, info on the back. I don't care about Gatorade bath shots from the previous June.

"Pennant Winning Teams: 1944" That would be the Browns. Someone, maybe a kid in Catonsville or Towson, edited the roster on the back using two different pens. One day after I retire and have the time I'm going to do some research and break the code of the red and blue. I thought I had it figured out but Dick Williams' comings and goings with Baltimore complicated things to the point I gave up.

The roster as seen on the back of one of my better examples of this card. Topps dropped a comma before the name of the last player listed, Chuck Diering, making it seem as if he's a bat boy.

Here is the original photo of the '56 Orioles.

I don't have plans to ever chase the Topps World on Wheels set from the early '50s these were hard to pass up.

When I was in Springfield Massachusetts a couple of years ago the hotel we were staying at was hosting a Kaiser-Frazer owners convention. There were some really neat and unusual cars in the lot.

These last two items came from the last hotel show I went to, in June I think. They were stuck in a pocket of my backpack and I didn't remember them until I went thru my bag after last weekend's show. Kelloggs' Presidential stickers. I've read that there was a card set and a sticker set put out by Kelloggs in 1980. But I think the truth is that there were two different sticker sets. Beckett's 2016 Non-Sports catalog is useless in finding any info. It has nothing (but it does had about 35 small print pages devoted to trashy Bench Warmer cards) and I regret wasting my money on it.

Anyway, here are JFK and George Washington.

Everything else I picked up went out in PWEs and such. The next show rolls around at the end of September. I can't wait.

Card Show haul

When I returned from my little Trump-inspired break from this blog I was kind of concerned that I'd have nothing to post. That's not been the case. I have all kinds of stuff. The problem actually is that I just haven't had much time. Not only have these posts been sporatic but I've largely ignored my two active set blogs. 

But I'll try to do better now that my work schedule has hit the 'off season'. These are some of what I picked up a couple of weekends ago at the hotel card show I frequent. Nothing like the fantastic stuff Mark Hoyle nabbed last weekend at a show and showed off on Twitter but whatcha gonna do? 

I bought a handful of  '57s from a bargain box (almost everything I get at shows is from vintage bargain boxes).  Some of the ones I nabbed went out to other collectors already but these are what I kept. 

I never pass up a Harry 'Suitcase' Simpson card. This is probably my third '57 Topps Simpson. One of them went out to a collector. I love this card with it's old Yankee Stadium background. 

Here's another dupe. I had this Juan Pizarro in my PC but for about a quarter I added this one to my stack. I know what you're thinking...'Who the hell has a Juan Pizarro PC?'.  Guilty as charged.

Same thing goes for this '62 Post Brooks Robinson. There is nothing nice about this card other than it being Brooks but for the price I figured I might just pass it on to someone who is looking for a placeholder.

Now these I bought for me. Is there anyone who doesn't love Kelloggs' cards, especially 1970 Kelloggs?  I have a long, convoluted and not all that interesting Joe Pepitone story that I may relate one day. But the bottom line is that he dated a girl who lived down our block when we lived in Nutley, NJ. She ended up as an item in the New York Daily News at one point and was the talk of the neighborhood. Those were fun times.

Rico Petrocelli had a brother who ushered at Yankee Stadium. He told me and my friends he was 'authorized' to sign his brother's autograph. I had a couple of Yankee game programs signed by him. LOL

When my daughter was young and mildly interested in sports she was a Nolan Ryan fan. These two oddballs were a dime each. I bet there is a Nolan collector out there who could use them.

This is a better '69 Bob Moose than I have in my ...errr... Bob Moose PC. I bought it hoping it would be so.

And then there is this Jim 'Mudcat' Grant Topps coin. My dealer friend always has a pile of these coins, always in pretty brutal shape. This is the first time I've spotted a Grant.

As mentioned above the rest of what I bought went out thru the postal system last week. I spent three hours and about $20 total. I resisted an urge to buy a 1970 Topps 'starter' lot and headed out for a Banh Mi and Vietnamese coffee. It was a good day all around.