1990 Fleer Cello, Pt. 3

And here's the third and final section of that 1990 Fleer Cello pack. First a look at the sticker. Again, very miscut.

And the trivia contest backs. I actually got all these answers correct. I made many trips up I-45 to see the O's in Arlington Stadium so I know about the early Ranger franchise details. 

Marquis Grissom. He caught the last out of Denny Martinez' perfect game. And, according to Wikipedia..."He sponsors 12 Little League teams and helps fund a home school that provides food and shelter for children without parents."

Willie McGee.  Learn all about him and sign the petition to have his Cardinal number (#51) retired.

The 'League Standout' insert, Jose Canseco. He's a buffoon.

And the back of the buffoon's special card. These don't even look like a part of the same set.

Willie Randolph. The O's didn't bring him back as a coach this year. Too bad, I liked him.

Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson. Is there a record for most different uniforms worn by a Hall of Famer? It's got to belong to this guy.

The rest...

Rick Reed, eventual 'replacement' player and one of the loneliest major leaguers ever.

Matt Williams. He was a big deal in the 1990s. He's the only guy with World Series homers for three different teams.

Jay Tibbs. I won't go 'Chris Berman' on this Oriole. 

Mark Lemke

Gerald Young

Steve Rosenberg

Rick Mahler

Darnell Coles

Keith Comstock

That's it for this cello pack. I'll spare these cards a similar fate to that which the rest of my junk wax was subjected....an unceremonious trip to the landfill. I'll keep them since they are the subject of three posts but to call them 'bait' would be an insult to minnows and bloody chum.

1990 Fleer Cello, Pt. 2

The middle section of my hanging cello pack of 1990 Fleer had Darryl Strawberry on top. 

This was Strawberry's last year as a Met. He moved on the the Dodgers and the Yankees with a year in San Francisco as well. I have absolutely no memories of him as a Giant. None. And not many of him as a Yankee. Baseball wasn't front and center in my life during The Straw's term in pinstripes.

 The sticker is a multi- team deal with four AL clubs. The backs of these things had trivia questions. I scored about 20% correct on them. My scanner sux. But that's not why these stickers have an oddly mis-cut top border. It's because Fleer cut them that way. Or so it seems. All three stickers were like this.

Here a young Tom Glavine. He was coming off a nice 14-8 year but regressed a bit in 1990. In 1991 however, he became The Tom Glavine. He won 62 games from '91-'93.

Astro fans hated Mike Scoscia. I've forgotten why.

A pair of Birds, finally! First here is Bob Milacki. He won 14 games the previous year, led the AL in starts. He never approached that level again.

And Steve Finley. He didn't become a power hitter until he got to San Diego and he discovered ..... sunshine. I guess.

Terry Puhl. 1990 was his last season in Houston. He played a bit for the Royals in '91. He was always very popular as an Astro. He currently is head coach at UH-Victoria and manages the Canadian national team.

Mark McGwire. Other than thinking his is one of the most misspelled superstars' names, and pointing out the fact that he married a former pharmaceutical sales representative, I got nothin'. 

The rest of the pack contained:
Hensley Meulens
Greg Hibbard
Steve Buechele
Jeff Treadway
Shawn Holman
Tom McCarthy
Ron Robinson
and Nelson Santovenia.

I have realized that I have yet to show the backs of this set. Likely because they are so unremarkable. But I'll do it here:

The backs of the base cards are all nearly identical with pinkish/red boxes and blue text. This is Terry Puhl's card:

Basic info, full stats and 'Vital Signs' which includes the same stats for each position player and each pitcher. Here is the back of Glavine's card:

Some players with fewer stat lines, like Glavine, got a 'Did You Know?' box with some background info on the player. I've enlarged the cardback images because they are pretty hard to read otherwise, even in person. 

1990 Fleer Cello Rip, R.I.P

I was digging through boxes in my closet the other day and, among other long forgotten stuff, was a 1990 Fleer cello three pack. 45 cards, 3 logo stickers, one "Limited Edition League Standout"!!!

$1.58 from K-Mart. Not much less than they go for now on eBay! I'm sure I kept it because the front showed Darryl Strawberry and Tony Gwynn. I hoped to someday finance my daughter's and my then newborn twin's college educations with stuff like this. Oh well. At least I got a couple of blog posts out of it.

First, to be clear, there are worse cards designs that the 1990 Fleer. It featured team logos and had consistent team colors. That is to say the players on any team matched each other. The colors didn't necessarily match the teams actual colors. I was o.k. with it. 1990 is really the last year I was interested in cards. The rookie/error card crazes were raging and when Upper Deck hit both nerves with their Ben McDonald 'error', I had had enough. I wasn't going to spend upwards of $70 to complete my Oriole team sets for the year so I quit. 

I cut this baby open today and dug into the contents. Each section had 15 cards and each had a Fleer team logo sticker. One card, in the bottom section (at least in this example) was a 'League Standout' card which was very different from the regular issue cards.

Here's the best of what I got in the top section:

Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. 

A very young Omar Vizquel. I didn't know much about Vizquel and I had no idea he was still playing!!! He's coming off his rookie season of 1989 here. And 23 seasons later he's still up there hacking. Cool.

Sandy Alomar Jr. He played a long time, too. He was in Cleveland by the time this card was issued. 

 The Crime Dog. 19 seasons and almost 500 homers.

 The Dipper. I don't know how he played in the bigs with a grip and swing like that.

 Andres Galarraga. I liked this guy for no reason.

 Glenn Wilson played for the same high school my kids went to. He was born in the town I taught in. In 1985 my man Glenn had 14 homers but led the Phils with 102 RBIs. Mike Schmidt had 33 homers but only 93 RBIs.

 Danny Tartabull, another second generation player.

And a bunch of others of varying notoriety.

Scott Coolbaugh whose card I scanned by mistake. 

Devon White

Ron Hassey

Von Hayes

Bob Kipper

Milt Thompson

Pirates logo sticker

 And this card of two guys I had to look up, Scott Hemond and Mark Gardner. Gardner 99 big league games while Hemond, a first round pick by the A's had a couple of seasons in a platoon role among his seven seasons in the bigs.

I'll post the rest of this soon. But I can tell you it doesn't get better.

Tinker to Evers to Chance

 These are the saddest of possible words:

"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

Tinker and Evers and Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double –

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

That poem, titled Baseball's Sad Lexicon, was penned by New York Express columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, best known by his initials, "F.P.A." in 1912. 

The three T206 cards were among the first truly vintage cards I ever bought. IIRC I got them from a dealer ad in the old "The Trader Speaks" card newsletter, probably in the late 70s or early 80s. I also bought the 'Three Fingers' Brown and had them all in a nice framed display. 

Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance made up three quarters of the Chicago Cubs infield during their 'glory days' of the first decade and a half of the 20th Century. And Brown was their ace.

The three cards are. as you can see, not in mint condition, but the colors are still strong and there are no creases or major flaws in them. One of these days I'd like to get my hands on the T205 Gold Border cards of this trio. Those are pretty nice as well. The examples below are shown on the Library of Congress' baseball card pages. Kind of a fun, if limited, site. 

2011 Topps Gehrig Triple Threads Game Used

I picked up this card at the TriStar card show. It was more than I usually would pay for a card but, otoh, I paid a lot more for a few of my 1959 set.

When you buy something like this there is always a nagging feeling that it might not be legit. But I always look on the bright side of things and I figure that now I have a piece of history. Yankee or no Yankee, Gehrig was a special player. I'm excited to have this one.

The best part of the show was being able to upgrade about 30 of my 1959 set on the cheap. I found one dealer who had a bargain binder for most vintage Topps sets. I dug into the '59 binder and came away with cards in the dollar to a dollar and a half range that were substantially better than some I had.

I have a list of my '59 'upgradeables' that I have prioritized according to condition. #1 priority cards are the worst ones in my set and I look to replace those first. I was able to find 12 of my 15 #1 priority cards at the show.

At the other extreme I found another dealer who had some very nice ungraded '59s but he was asking nearly 'graded' prices for them. I bought one or two from him.

T 206 Charles 'Chief' Bender

Here's my latest T206 acquisition. It's a Chief Bender/no trees and it's a beauty, don't ya think? Except for that missing paper chunk and the stain that mars the back, LOL. But I let the Mr. Mints of the world worry about cardback issues. The front's what counts and this one is really nice. And compared to others that were on eBay this was a bargain. People look at the overall grade and this one got a 'fair' 20 1.5 (whatever all that means) and so the price was lower than some examples that didn't look as nice on the front.

I couldn't get a good scan with the card in the case so I cracked it open and then put it back. I usually don't care about slabbed cards but this one looks better in the case and I wanted to protect it, too. My scanner sort of made the corners look even sharper than they are but for a 102 year old card they were pretty damn good I think. Just the upper left is fuzzy.

I was prompted to find a Bender card by reading his story. He was a pretty interesting guy and excelled at trap shooting, golf, painting, fishing and billiards in addition to his Hall of Fame pitching career. Tom Swift's bio of Bender is very readable. 

Satchel Paige '52 "Topps style"

I figured I wouldn't go out and buy a vintage Paige card anytime soon. But Bob Lemke did a nice job on this one so it'll fill a hole for me for the time being. And fill it nicely indeed.

Thanks again, Bob.