Ending the War

A few months back I made a flurry of buys on eBay and COMC to try and close out this 1962 Civil War News set. I scoured the sites until I had dug up every needed card available in decent shape and at a good price. Then the well went dry but that's to be expected. When you run the same searches day after day for a set like this it doesn't take long to reach a point of diminishing returns.

I jumped back in a couple of weeks ago and in the course of a half hour or so I was able to knock out my wantlist with some pretty sweet cards. I paid a bit more than I had for most of the rest of the set but I tend to do that as I get close to finishing off a goal. 

The General Lee card above looks a bit washed out in the scan for some reason. It's better looking in hand. The original art isn't as vibrant as some of the others for sure.

'Death' and 'Dying' sure pop up on a bunch of these.

Here are a couple more that portray close range gruesomeness.

I remember being fascinated by the idea of a Civil War era submarine. I think I went and found a book about sub and marine warfare of the time in St. Mary's School's meager library.

I was also interested in Stonewall Jackson. I think I still have an old bio of him on my shelves somewhere. I poked around to check on the accuracy of this card. The date on the front is May 10, 1863.

Jackson was shot (yes, by his own men accidentally) on May 2. He died on May 10 and that fact was generally reported on May 13 or thereabouts. So if I was grading this as a history teacher might grade a report I'd give the Topps writer a "C".

So this ends my quest for this really cool (and nostalgia filled) set. I have two upgrades en-route and there may be another card or two that I'll look at eventually but now it's time for a different challenge.

As soon as I post this I'm headed over tot he TriStar show in Houston. It'll be good to get to a show for the first time in months. I won't even mind paying $10 to park and another nine to get in.*

My goal: a 1958 Mantle in 'f/g' shape for the price of a 'poor' one.

*= #alternativefacts. It's gonna piss me off royally to drop most all of a twenty before I even see one table.

The Prodigal BALTIMORE Colt card appears

Back in 2015 I did a long series showcasing the history of BALTIMORE Colts cards and related items. It was the most fun I've had writing this meager blog. Chasing what I needed was a challenge and researching the cards very rewarding. I still lack a few odds and ends and those are listed on a wantlist page linked over in the sidebar.

As I was putting the Colts cards together I had an invaluable tool, a checklist I bought from this company. It was pretty thorough although I found a few small errors which I brought to the attention of the author. As advertised I was sent a free updated list a few weeks ago.

I figured double-checking my cards against the new list would be a good idea. Sure enough, before I even reached the bottom of the first column I hit a snag. My 1955 Bowman Colts group was a card short. I was lacking Tom Keane, card #30.

This card had been left off the original list. I immediately hit eBay and found this copy for $3. And as of Monday all is right with the world, my Colts card collection is back in order.

I love the 'Fake Reverse from Double Wing' play that graces the back of the card. Looks like something we ran at Nutley High in 1965.

Tom Keane attended both Ohio State and West Virginia, played football at both and squeezing a Naval stint in between. From Wikipedia:

Keane was a third round selection and 18th overall pick in the 1948 NFL Draft. He was selected by the Los Angeles Rams. He played four years with the Rams, where he won the 1951 NFL title. He left the Rams to go play a year for the Dallas Texans. Due to injuries, he started one game at quarterback for the Texans. He then played two years with the Baltimore Colts and finally ending his career with the Chicago Cardinals in 1955. During his career he was selected All-Pro twice and played in the 1953 Pro Bowl.

He later went on to coach for many years in the NFL with the Cardinals, Steelers and Dolphins. He was on the staff of the undefeated 1972 Dolphins squad.

Although he is pictured with Baltimore Keane was already with the Cardinals when this card was issued. I'm glad he's on a Colts card though...it's one more look at the wonderful old school logo that just screams BALTIMORE Colts to me. I'm glad the team that uses this team name in Indiana didn't carry over this sweet logo.

Star Wars Stickers...yes, I actually typed that

I bought these last summer on a trip to Dallas for a coaches convention. I was in a Target looking for baseball, or football or anything to rip as I recall. I bought these and a pack of Topps baseball stickers. Why I chose a pack of Star Wars stickers I'll never know. Because it was there I guess. And I think it was marked down. I've already shown the baseball pack.

I know squat about Star Wars other than it's the biggest movie franchise in the US. I saw a couple of the early films but I never really followed the plot line so I was more and more lost as it spun by. No matter. I can appreciate the near universal love it's gotten over the last 40ish years. And watching Carrie Fisher in that outfit was nice even if I didn't know wtf they were all talking about.

Anyway the pack had five stickers. Having scanned this first one but not having it in front of me is a problem because I don't know what it is other than someone or something dragging a sled.

Next...it's Yoda!!!

And then .....Stormtroopers. (<---according to Wikipedia that is the correct spelling) Hard to imagine how much work went into all the costumes for these movies. You've got to be pretty confident that you'll have a hit in order to invest that much. These guys are the coolest things about the movies to me.

Well this was disappointing. A narrative sticker. I suppose if I had the whole set in the album I could follow the story with these but I'd rather have more Carrie Fisher stickers.

This one scanned poorly btw.

This is the best one by far. It's a bigger, sparkly Darth Vader. Pretty cool, no?

All in all not a bad way to spend 79 cents. My wife does academic testing and she uses stickers a lot to bribe kids to behave motivate kids. So these will be put to good use.

I did it anyway

I had promised myself I wouldn't resort to digging through old boxes of hobby 'stuff' to find posting fodder. And I really wasn't intending to do it for this post but here we are.

I went looking for somethings I intended to send out to another blogger and pulled a plastic storage box from my hobby closet. Remarkably what I was looking for was actually in the box! You'd really be impressed by that fact if you saw my hobby closet. But there were also a bunch of cards I hadn't seen in awhile and some of them sparked my interest and immediately I saw a post might come from them. A timely one at that.

There were a boatload of my Pro Set football dupes from '89-'92. I'm posting two from the 1991 set. Up top is the Whitney Houston Anthem card, #350. It shows her National Anthem performance at Super Bowl XXV earlier that year. That was an anthem for the ages. Oddly just this morning I came across a story that ran in USA Today on Thursday concerning that performance. It makes for an interesting read, especially if you remember that goosebump-inducing few minutes.

Next is the '91 Bill Belichick. Back then he didn't look like a guy you'd cross a downtown street to avoid.

1989 Marion Butts for no other reason than the fact that it was the best football card in the box. Oh, and I had Marion Butts for a couple of years in my fantasy league. He seemed to have his best games on the weeks I didn't start him. I always said "Marion Butts makes me nuts."

Now on to a few baseball cards. A K-Mart Cal Ripken from some long forgotten boxed set. Back when we first moved out here there was not much around. A K-Mart served as 'big box' retailer for the area. I bought lots of their boxed sets. I gave away most of the cards but kept the Orioles

Here's brother Billy on his 1992 Stadium Club card. I seem to recall being some sort of charter SC member and getting small boxed sets in the mail. Or maybe I'm imagining that. I know I have SC cards marked Charter Member or words to that effect. This isn't one.

I'm posting this Dave Parker for the same reason I posted the Marion Butts. I think it's the best baseball card I dug out of the box. It's from the 1991 SC set which I think was the first. I have absolutely no recollections of Parker with Milwaukee. He's a Pirate to me, or a Cincinnati Red. But his BR page reveals a very solid season with the Brew Crew in 1990. I hadn't thought about him with the Athletics either until I looked at his page and remembered him playing in the World Series.

I'll show the card back because it includes his awesome 1974 Topps.

"Any Spahn card is a cool Spahn card" ©

I've said that a million times it seems. And even this 1992 Ziplock Spahn fits the bill. Spahnie is all angles,... his cap, nose, grin, and eyebrows. I have no idea where I got this card. There were only 11 different ones issued and supposedly they came on boxes of the plastic bags. Heaven knows we used a lot of sandwich bags back when my kids were in school so it's possible I actually got this from a box.

And one more card....

A 1990 Payne Stewart. He, along with Fred Couples, was a favorite of my sons and me. My boys loved him because he always acknowledged them at the Shell Open. They would stand between the 11th green and 12th tee and wait to say hello to every golfer that passed by. Stewart never failed to smile and high five them no matter where he stood on the leaderboard.

I was a fan because he had (like Couples) an exceptionally smooth, fluid swing. It was something that back in my frequently golfing days I was always trying for but never close to achieving. His affiliation with the NFL also makes this an appropriate card to post on Super Sunday.

Here is a bonus. It's Whitney Houston's Tampa SB performance. It is and always will be the best Anthem performance ever. Enjoy!

Civil War News Nearing Completion

This past week I picked up three more cards from Topps' 1962 Civil War News set. These bring me within reach of completing it this year. I lack three two (wantlist is over in the sidebar) with one or two more that desperately need to be upgraded Set complete as of February 4. Now only upgrades remain to be found.

I've gone on and on about how much I enjoy this set. There is definitely a large measure of nostalgia involved with it. My friends and I loved these when they were issued. This set as well as the Mars Attacks set were as much a part of our childhood as baseball and football cards were.

I've already posted many of the others and did some research into the set's background, artwork and historical inaccuracies and the parallel set put out in England. This link will get you to the previous posts.

Getting down to the final 12 or 15 cards I needed changed my approach to aquiring them. I decided that I'd pay a bit more for those I needed than I had for the bulk of them. I think my average cost per card was under $3.These were five dollars each but they are in better condition than

As with many of the cards these feature some pretty graphic artwork. Card #48 Smashing the Enemy (above) features Union soldiers being vaporized by Confederate cannons at close range. And as with many of the cards the details are 'close' but not exact. The actual battle was fought on May 16, 1863 not July 4th as stated twice on the card. And the hill involved was Champion Hill, not 'Champions'. This page at civilwar.org is has a lot of information.

On the other hand the Topps writers got the Battle of Cedar Creek right, at least as far as the date is concerned.

But the cardback doesn't really reflect what is written about the fight on that same civilwar.org.

I don't really make annual formal 'goals' for my hobby endeavours but I'd love to finish this thing off sooner rather than later.

Super Bowl Opening Night

I was gifted with some tickets (Thanks, Texans) to the quasi-official opening event of Excess Super Bowl Week a.k.a. Super Bowl Opening Night. So Monday evening my lovely and patient wife and I traipsed down to Minute Maid Park in downtown Houston to see what used to be known simply as 'Media Day'.  The NFL, in all it's wisdom (read: greed), saw a way to turn an overblown press conference into a money making event. Imagine that.

I really had no clue as to what it would entail until we got into the building.  I saw immediately that one of my stated goals would be impossible to fulfill. No, I didn't want to snuggle with Tom Brady. Rather I've been interested in what the new center field configuration of the park would look like. The old 'Tal's Hill' has been removed for more seating and a concession options. But the large stage and curtain stretched nearly from foul pole to foul pole. No way for me to peek behind the curtain.

I'll mention here that I went there reppin' my BALTIMORE Colts. I tweeted this shot and it was posted on the video board. They showed it about the same time that in-house host Scott Hansen of NFL RedZone fame was ragging on the many Cowboy fans in attendance. 

The set up was pretty ingenious. A big stage with 11 podiums arranged in front of it. Players sat at the podiums and answered (mostly inane) questions. Six of the players were shown on huge video boards flanking the stage. They switched up who was being shown from time to time. Two more video boards were broadcasting the NFL Network feed and Hansen's in-house ramblings with floor interviews by Ladanian Tomlinson.

The Falcons were featured for an hour and then, following a ceremony with the captains and coaches from both teams, there was a concert by a group I've never heard of.

It's not often you get to see the world's worst dressed rich guy wearing a tie. These two shots are from the web. We were no where near close enough to take them.

After the intermission concert they rolled out the Patriots for an hour of interviews. My wife and I had had enough by the time the Pats here herded onstage so we headed for the doors. Another concert and fireworks were scheduled to conclude the evening but we were home by then.

Our tickets were for seats in the mezzanine and had a $30 price listed on them. I'd have been rather unhappy had I paid $60 for what was delivered. Besides the privilege of hearing some dork ask Matt Ryan if he has ever considered changing his nickname from "Matty Ice" to "Matty Ice-cream" (I only wish I was making that up) we each received a drawstring backpack with 'stuff' inside. We got men's grooming samples, a towel, and Snickers bars among the swag.

We were also given this 'radio'. It was pretty ingenious actually. It was to be used to hear your selected interviews. You could slip it over either ear. Each player or coach that was featured on a video board also had their interview broadcast on a numbered channel. You tuned your radio to hear whichever one interested you. The NFL Network and Hansen's chatter had channels as well.

As far as I've been able to figure the radio is useless now that the event is over. I tried it at home for laughs and only heard static. I've since employed skills I've learned breaking graded cards out of slabs and snapped the radio off the cord. I now have a SB51 lanyard.

The goody bag also had packs of Panini NFL cards. I don't think these were retail packs. And I'm pretty sure these were not cards that were sold at retail either but my knowledge of current football cards is nearly nil.

The cards are pretty sweet actually. Each pack had five and they were all shiny and pretty. Each pack had a couple of current players....

...and a legendary player in this design.

Each pack also had a Gridiron Kings card and a Legends of the Shield card. I used to collect Marcus Allen pretty casually so the card I posted at the top of the post was appreciated.

Overall it was an interesting experience. Not one I'd do again though. Especially not for $30 a ticket.

Morning Joe

What you see above is the result of an artistic attempt by someone (me) without even the tiniest bit of artistic/graphic talent who is limited to the use of MSPaint and MSPublisher. 😩 If you don't catch the reference then you (inexplicably) don't read The Shlabotnik Report, one of the more fun card related blogs around. 

'Joe' does terrific customs and includes them as 'prizes' in his equally awesome custom cereal boxes. It's a unique and fun project that I really enjoy. His most recent edition came this past Sunday but there are plenty more which you can find all along his feed. You can see all his custom cards grouped together here and here. Fun stuff, no?

Anyway as I returned to blogging recently I moaned that I had very little new material. I mentioned that I might have to dig through some old boxes to find things long hidden away. I've done that before. But rather than be subjected to my posting about yellowing 1984 All Star ballots and various crappy K-Mart boxed sets Joe sent me a PWE with more interesting cards. And for that I thank him. And I'll show them off here.

First up...a 1979 O-Pee-Chee Doug DeCinces. DeCinces, the one time heir apparent to Brooks Robinson in Baltimore, had a nice career with the Orioles and Angels from 1973 thru 1987. 

I have a straight run of all the main stream Orioles cards from 1954 to 1990 (Topps, Bowman, Fleer, etc). But I love adding this type of 'variation'. I have a few OPCs from back in the day but not this '79 DeCinces. It goes in the back of my Orioles '75-'79 binder.

Next up...three Bowmans. First is a 2016 Chris Davis. Davis is one of those guys who just looks cool on a baseball card. That's weird I know but every Davis card I have is pretty sharp. Even the ones with less than stellar designs. I happen to like this Bowman design more than the '16 Topps.

This Trey Mancini Bowman is also a 2016. Must be from a differnt set though as it has a different design. I have absolutely no insight into the machinations that lie behind modern sets. It's a welcome card anyway. Mancini made a splash at the end of the 2016 season for Baltimore. He got called up in mid-September and hit a homer in his first three starts. He's only the third player in history to do that. I'm not sure he's going to have a spot on the O's opening day roster though.

Chance Sisco, seen here on another '16 Bowman, is the Orioles catcher 'of the future', or so I'm told. If, as has been whispered, Matt Wieters resigns with Baltimore and splits catching/DH duties with Wellington Castillo, then Sisco is sure to end up with another season at AAA or lower.

Joe put a few Donruss in the envelope and these two represent the 'Alpha and Omega' of modern Donruss efforts. That Manny Machado is not nearly as obviously a unlicensed card. The Ripken photo was been altered with thick black lines covering much of the orange of his uni. But it still goes into the Ripken section of my Orioles stars binder. (Manny has a slot, too)

Adam Jones Diamond King. Another card altered to exclude logos and colors but it's actually a pretty cool card overall. Diamond Kings featured artwork (then done by Dick Perez) back in the day and I guess they still do.

2002 Jerry Hairston. Hairston's tenure with the Orioles (1998-2004) fell within my self-imposed exile from baseball. He was still playing as a semi-regular with the Dodgers as late as 2013. Live and learn.

Finally, a card of Rafael de Silva from his Man U time. He's since moved on to play in France. I don't have nearly enough Manchester United cards. Kind of a weird shot. Looks like he's doing the mannequin challenge. Happy to add it to my rather slim soccer binder.

There you have it. Cards from Joe Shlabotnik that prevented, at least for a time, my dragging out some dusty 80's material. Thanks, Joe!!