Cards at the Crossroads

As I contemplate what I'm going to do with this blog I need to catch up with a few generous packages that arrived from a pair of esteemed bloggers over the last couple of weeks. Let's do these in the order they arrived.

First up is a group of cards I received from Joe Shlabotnik. 'Joe' killed some of my 1973 needs, quite a few in fact. I've posted a handful of my favorites. Above and below are two Cleveland relief pitchers, Mike Kilkenny and Steve Mingori. Both are rocking the early 70s sideburns and they look enough alike (at least on these cards) that I wasn't sure that I hadn't discovered a Topps error.

Mingori was on his way to Kansas City in June of '73, and he pitched on their '76 thru '78 division-winning clubs.

Kilkenny was probably just happy to spend the '73 season (at least what there was of it for him) without having to forward his mail. In 1972 he was with four different clubs over the span of  33 days. He began the year with his original team, the Tigers. On May 9 he was dealt to the A's for first-baseman Reggie Sanders. On the 17th the A's traded him to the Padres in a deal that netted them Ollie Brown. Three weeks later the Padres sent him to the Indians for infielder Fred Stanley.

In '73 Kilkenny made just a handful of appearances for Cleveland and gamelogs show he wasn't very effective in any of them. By May 6, just short of a year since his '72 baseball odyssey began, he was out of the majors. He played in the independent Intercounty Baseball League in his native Canada before getting into owning racehorses and being a golf pro. Some of the rabbit holes you travel through while researching the players on these cards are very entertaining.

And here's Yaz. This is a Yastrzemski card that I don't remember seeing much of. He was just at the point of transitioning into more of a first-baseman than an outfielder, but he had plenty of top-level baseball left in him.

Cookie Rojas has what appears to be the batting helmet cart behind him in this spring training photo.When I was coaching we had these carts aplenty, filled with all sorts of equipment and dragged them to the fields every day.

Dave Giusti in what I'm thinking is another ST photo but I've been to McKechnie Field and that doesn't match my memory of it. Of course, this picture was taken 40 some years prior to my visits.

Ralph Garr wearing a Braves uni top I'm still conflicted over after all these years.

The '73s Joe sent helped get me to the point where I need less than 25 to finish the set. Outside of the 1960 Leaf set (which I'm convinced I'll never finish), the '73 set is the last one I'm looking to close out for the foreseeable future. Yes, that means that I'm done with the '57 Topps baseball and '69 Topps football sets. Hallelujah!

In addition to the 73s Joe included a handful of modern Orioles. Cards I'd never otherwise see. Trey Mancini is the closest the O's have to a household name. And that's a stretch.

These two cards came along for the ride from Virginia. The more Presidents cards I receive the more I realize how many different sets there are out there.

These Goudeys are kind of artsy. When I get some time I'm gonna look closer at the Goodwins from 2017 and find any other presidents.

Thanks for these, Joe. As always they are much appreciated.

The other package came from beautiful Upstate New York and the Night Owl. This card of Cardinals' infielder Tommy Edmon was one I asked him to put aside for me. He had opened packs of this Topps '19 issue and Edmon was in one of them. This was the last card I needed to finish off my fantasy baseball binder for 2019.

I'm the 'crazy cat lady' of fantasy baseball. Because I can't say "No" I ended up 'fostering' seven orphaned teams this year. On three different platforms. Yeech. ONE team is usually too much for me to keep up with. Nobody in America was as happy to see the end of the regular season as I was!

And, like Joe, the wise ol' Owl filled up the envelope with modern Orioles...and a note saying how tough it is to find new Orioles to send. Boy, no kidding! When you suck as bad as the O's do Topps has no need to put them into sets. I don't blame Topps a bit.

I really like this fancy-ass John Means card. It immediately won a spot in my fantasy bb binder, booting out the minor league card I had of him previously.

Throwback style Chris Davis.  Looks like he'll be around Charm City for 2020. I'm OK with that.

Manny. Everyone hates him but I'd take him back in a second!

Ced Mullins took a step (or three) back in 2019. I still have hope, tho.

And a nice mini A&G Brooks. I recently got around to putting my Orioles mini cards in tobacco card pages. They look good in pages, much better than shuffling thru them by hand. 

Thank you, Greg. And thanks to both you and Joe for much enjoyment via your excellent blogs.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I really look forward to. Our plan is to spend it at the home of my recently widowed mother-in-law (RIP, Dad) and it has the potential to be a disaster. Let's hope it exceeds my expectations, shall we? And I hope yours is special.

See you somewhere down the road on the flip side.

No Upgrade Needed!

Not long ago Shane, the Shoebox Legend himself, messaged me and asked if I'd be interested in a '61 Juan Marichal rookie which happened to be the last non-high number I lacked in that set. He warned me that it wasn't mint and there was some paper loss on the back. He'd picked it up at an antique store at a good price and thought I could use it until I found a better one.

Well, Shane has never looked through my vintage binders. 😁 If he had he'd have seen that a little back damage never stands between me and an open slot. And that's especially true when I'm down to just the most expensive open slot-fillers.

The Marichal card (and a few friends that came along for the ride) arrived Saturday and I'm happy to report that it's a fine fit in my 1961 set build. The damage is no big deal and the card is really in fine shape. I can think of several cards (I'm looking at you, 1960 Nellie Fox All-Star) that I have in sets with more significant issues than this sweet Marichal.

The fact that for my money (or maybe Shane's?) this is one of the cooler cards in the 1961 set.  Marichal always had a million dollar smile and it's shown off here.

I'm telling you if I had won this card 'flipping leaners' in the schoolyard at St. Mary's in Nutley N.J. in May of 1961 I'd have been thrilled.

 And Marichal finished off a binder page, a really nice binder page at that. He shares the top row with Hank Aaron and Dock Howser, the runner-up for AL RoY in 1961. The sweet Charlie Neal card is gravy.

It comes right before this one which I posted back in January.

Five Hall of Famers, three Rookie Star cards and that mis-numbered error Braves team card within 16 binder slots of each other.

Shane sent along some other cards as well. My most unlikely PC is Bobby Locke. I kicked that one off when I lucked into pulling a signed card in a Heritage pack a few years ago. After that, I added the few Topps cards that were available and some fun oddballs. I also had found a '68 buyback issued in 2015.

Packed with the Marichal were two more buybacks. I'm not sure which stamp was issued in which year but I'm sure I can find out easily enough.  Doh....this first one is a 2017.

This next one is stamped with the 75th-anniversary foil mark so Google tells me it's 2014.

Along with them were a few shiny Orioles. Cards are the only thing associated with the Orioles that does any shining lately.

Schoop will find a place in my fantasy player binder. This one boots out some plain jane Heritage card.

I miss JJ Hardy. And Chris Tillman is not on the Texas Rangers roster. Nor anyone else's as far as I can see. The two guys that came to the O's for Erik Beddard from Seattle in 2008, Tillman and Adam Jones, are without baseball work. Time marches on I guess.

Do I have to give up my Orioles fan club membership when I admit that I have no clue what Luis Matos did?

OK, Google to the rescue again...he played in Charm City for SEVEN SEASONS!! Who knew? Not me!

Soccer cards! Mbappé starred in the 2018 World Cup and plays professionally for Paris Saint-Germain. He's ridiculously talented. Paul Pogba, who did a Manny Machado-like reputation nose-dive over the past year, has had a nice resurgence under the new Man United manager. Thank God.

And this next card has a story, too. It was one of a pair that Shane used as a buffer on the outside of the stack he sent. Kind of like some eBay sellers will do. A 'bonus' with a job to do in a way. Well, this Kendrick went straight from the scanner to my fantasy football baseball (I had the fb one on my desk 😵) binder since I needed a card of him as an Angel to replace the (wrong team) Dodgers card that was in the binder. Yes, I am that anal when it comes to that collection.

Again, Shane...Thanks so much for the most generous trade package. It is appreciated.

You meet the best people in this hobby, yes?

One Project Finished, Many To Go

Over the weekend I avoided the deadly Houston heat as much as possible and spent about 7 hours on a hobby project. Over the last year or two I've wasted countless hours searching for cards of my fantasy players as I picked those players up either in drafts or thru waivers. I wanted a better system than shuffling among small boxes, assorted desk stacks, etc. This was something I felt was long overdue.

I pulled out a couple of 1600 count card storage boxes and made two sets of section dividers using rigid card sleeves and labels. I gathered all my cards of current players. After sorting them into hitter and pitcher stacks I alphabetized each group. My new sorting tray came in handy!

Now that I'm done I won't waste time searching for a card of a player I think I have and maybe, more importantly, I won't end up buying cards of players I already have. I can't tell you how many times I've done that.

OK, so this isn't such an interesting post. And no cards in it!

I'm fixing that with this card of White Sox catcher Omar Narvaez. I liked what I saw of him when I went to see the Sox play the Astros and nabbed him for a couple of my teams. Then I found that he doesn't have any mainstream cardboard.

On eBay I found a Honus Bonus card of him. I had no idea these were real cards. I remember hearing the name of the set somewhere, either on a blog or in a hobby publication but never thought much about it. I assumed (wrongly) that it was some sort of online thing like eTopps or the cards that people chase with phone apps.

Googling told me these were a 2017 issue, was an unlicensed set, the cards were used as some sort of fantasy baseball game, and there is no sign of the brand in 2018. Easy come, easy go.

When the card arrived I saw that sure enough, the back is contest-related.  I got a chuckle out of how they designated his team as 'Chicago (South)'. I figured the Cubs would be 'Chicago (North)'...they are. Curiosity got me to COMC where I saw the Yankees cards were listed as New York (Bronx) and the Mets were 'New York (Queens)'. For some reason, I liked that a lot.

Sooo...happy day. I have a Narvaez card and it even fills one of my preferences...a bit of variety among my fantasy binder cards.

Now that my fantasy baseball cards are in order I'm going to move on to football. Then other projects will be tackled including putting my player collections into binders and doing the same with my non-sports sets. All those are in boxes. Wish me luck.

Topps TBT Faux '59 All Stars

Topps has expanded their Topps Now concept into these mini 'sets' that they release every Thursday and make available for a week. I've looked at them when the emails arrived but never had any inclination to spend the $20 asking price. Some have been very tempting but until this one came along I hadn't thought any was worth the cost, at least in terms of my collection.

This one caught my eye because of my soft spot for the '59 All Star design. The 1959 Topps is my favorite set. But even at that I decided to pass on it. I'd recently bought a few blasters and decided my hobby budget was drained.

So I put it out of my mind, at least for a few days until I found I needed a card of this guy:

Yes, I picked up the St. Louis shortstop in a trade in my fantasy league. A quick eBay check turned up what to me was a surprise...he wasn't on any mainstream card issues. He was in some ridiculously priced minor league sets and I could have bought a custom card from a vendor I know for $7.50 but I always prefer a 'real' card. But this set was still available from Topps and five of the six cards were of guys who I could put into my binder so pulling the trigger was pretty easy. 

It really IS a neat design. 

I had both Lindor and Seagar last season. Each of these cards easily boots their previous run of the mill one out of the binder.

Bogaerts is the only card I didn't have a use for.

The backs are all the same. Here is the Bogaerts back. The card stock is very thick, nothing like the shiny, thin daily Topps Now issues.

I have Thor in my alternate league. He looks like the guy in Outlander in this shot.

Back up top that Arrieta card is the only one of the five that I didn't stick in my fantasy player binder. It'll be tough to knock out his Topps Now that commemorates his no-hitter.

And just checking eBay again today it appears that Diaz has a Topps Now that was issued in the last few days. But it's a horizontal card and those almost never make the binder. When they do it's as a placeholder. Hey, everyone has their own quirks, right?

2016 Topps Stickers

The Target I visited in Dallas last week had packs of 2016 Topps stickers on sale for 74 cents each. I figured 'Why Not?...at the very least I can make a blog post out of them. (Note: They also had Revolver Brewery's Blood and Honey wheat ale on sale but that's for a different kind of post.)

These things were tough to scan because of the bright white borders so I re-did them in album pages and that worked. You get eight in a pack and here is what my pack contained:

Not a bad design. Topps has certainly done worse with various products. Move the players name over to one side, his position to the other and use the space for more photo acreage and you'd have a nice full sized card design. Maybe a Bowman design. 

I'm in a second fantasy league this year. I got roped into an 18 teamer. That means talent is spread pretty extreeeemly thin. My catcher is Carlos Ruiz. I've tried every week to find someone better but it's slim pickings. Never again. To add insult to injury I've made 90+ waiver claims, by far the most in the league. None of the guys I grab are any better than the guys I dump but at least I'm trying. I'm in 10th place and last I looked 8 of the guys in front of me had made less than five moves. Most of those guys aren't even paying attention. It's very humbling.

Here's a look at the back of the sticker. These things are made to be peeled off and stuck in an album so there isn't much point in creating a fancy back for them.

Coco Crisp, whose Wikipedia page instructs us that he is "Not to be confused with Cocoa Krispies." His real name is was Covelli Loyce Crisp. Apparently he's legally changed it to 'Coco Crisp". Man, the things you learn on the 'net!

Clay Buchholz wearing a blue Red Sox jersey. They should never wear these softball tops. Never.

I had Greg Holland on my fantasy team last year, at least until he got hurt. Wade Davis took the closers role and the Royals did OK as I recall.

I saw Beltre's name on ESPN on someone's list of the 'Ten Best Third-baseman Ever'. I'm unqualified to comment on that assessment. My list consists of Brooks Robinson at #1 and every other guy who has ever played third tied for #2.

I don't know Micheal Wacka but that's a fun name. Almost as much fun as 'Coco Crisp'.

I got two team stickers, or is it four? It's really hard to see in the scan but these are two stickers on one backing paper. They can be peeled individually.

And each team sticker has it's own number.

Target had Star Wars sticker packs on sale and I bought one but I am not a Star Wars fan so I'm holding it for when I find someone who is.

A Battle of Wills

I needed a Derek Norris card for my Fantasy Baseball collection. Well, to be honest I wanted a 'Derek Norris as a Padre' card for my Fantasy Baseball collection. I had a Norris card but it was this one:

Wrong team, wrong year and you can't even see Norris' face.

Off On A Tangent Comment: Lots of folks love these kind of cards but I'd rather that a guy's base card at least show me the player in a way I'd recognize. But that's a debate for someone else's blog.

Back to the the Norris '15 Opening Day card. After my fantasy year was over I went through my binder. I looked for any card I could reasonably 'upgrade' from 'placeholder cards' (minor league card, wrong team, die-cut card, etc) to one with the guy's correct team.

I found the Padre Norris card with a "$1.15 BIN or Best Offer" price on eBay. I usually try to limit my fantasy cards to no more than a buck including postage but this was the cheapest one I saw. (Yes, cards are cheaper on COMC and SportsLots but with those I have to wait to buy enough to make the shipping worthwhile). Just for grins I offered the guy $1. He declined and counter-offered with $1.08 (LOL). So here we were, a dealer and I in a showdown over a crummy 2015 card and 7 or 8 cents at stake.

My online poker days are behind me so I just folded to his bluff and paid the $1.08.

I really like how bad ass Norris looks in this shot. Too bad he did nothing for my team in the week or so I had him.