Card Show Highlights

I can't remember the last time I visited a major card show on a Friday. But summer break opens up opportunities and I'm glad I chose to go to the Houston TriStar summer show yesterday. In a mild surprise nearly all the dealers were set up and ready to go when the doors opened at 3, or at least soon thereafter. One real benefit is that there were no autograph guests scheduled when I was there so the place had the quiet, laid back feel of a hotel show. No blaring announcements of the next signature guests and no lines of guys holding boxed footballs and framed jerseys snaking through the aisles. 

I found some things I was looking for but the best part by far was coming across a table manned by two Negro League veterans. Dennis 'Bose' Biddle has written a book and does much traveling on behalf of the effort to preserve Negro League Baseball history. He, like my daughter is doing now, had a career as a social worker. Interesting guy who says he is the youngest living veteran of the Negro Leagues. That's a claim that is not without a bit of controversy.  

Ray Knox was a soft-spoken gentleman who spent several years in the NAL. He's from Evanston, Illinois and played for the Chicago American Giants and New Orleans Eagles. 

It was fun talking to them. They were not selling items but rather exchanging them for donations to Mr. Biddle's organization. I came away with the cards and this signed baseball. 

We took a couple of pictures but they didn't come out well.

The rest of the three hours I was there was devoted to two goals....finding some trade package items and finding inexpensive 1970 cards for my set build. Mission accomplished in both areas. Ironically I got the 1970 cards from my dealer friend Darrell who sold me the starter lot in the first place. I could have waited until his hotel show next Saturday and saved myself the parking and admission fees at TriStar but I'd have missed out on meeting Bose Biddle and Ray Knox.

I also raided Darrell's cheap non-sports box and came up with some neat stuff. I have a nice little collection of baseball Exhibit cards. I remember getting some from vending machines on the Coney Island boardwalk when I was a kid.

But the following items were new to me. They are Fortune Telling Exhibit cards from 1935. The idea was simple. Put in a coin and the Exhibit Supply Company laid your whole life out on a postcard sized piece of cardboard.

 Weird, right? But interesting enough to spend fifty cents on. here is the ext from both as it is hard to read otherwise.

I'd never seen these Kelloggs' Presidents 'stickers' from 1980. I snatched up all the ones Darrell had. Not much info out there on these. Supposedly there was a card set and a sticker set. 

They are pretty small (see below) so I blew up the reverse of one. Hell I could barely read the thing in hand so this helps me as well. LOL

Here is the U.S. Grant next to the Topps Grover Cleveland I bought (it's a dupe I find).

I grabbed a stary shiny Batman card for my Batman binder. I have no idea what it is other than it comes from some DC sponsored set but hey, it's Batman!

I also found a few 1960 Leaf cards. I may try to finish this set off one day. It's not real popular and the cards can be found pretty cheaply. It holds a certain charm for me though. I remember having some of these back when they were new but I don;t recall how I ended up with them. I suspect my folks just grabbed 'baseball cards' at Korvette's to go in Easter baskets or as stocking stuffers.

So the show was worth the trip. I seriously doubt I'll go back tomorrow even with my Father's Day 'kitchen pass'. I'll save my leftover cash for the hotel show next Saturday.

Gavin's Trade Package:..a doozy (Reposted?)

Note: I'm not sure what I did wrong previously but this post showed up as being published back on June 9. I hope this re-publishing effort works.

I've had a couple of four envelopes come my way and each has had something very cool inside. Today I'll post envelope #2. This is from Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown.

Gavin send three modern and new-to-me Elston Howard cards my way. Hard for me to pick a favorite from these but the more I see of this Panini 2014 Classics set the more I think I should buy it. It's dirt cheap and looks like fun.

This Archives reprises his '56 Topps card. The action picture part of the '56s are always fun to research and.....

.....Getty Images produced this 1955 shot of Ellie. This has to be the same play from a different angle.

BTW..that is Billy Hoeft scoring. Although Getty lists the pic as being created on August 1, 1955 the actual date of the game is August 6. The boxscore shows that Hoeft walked with two outs in the 6th and then scored this run on a double by Harvey Kuenn. Hoeft went on to beat the Yanks 7-5.

The third Ellie card is a Fleer Greats of the Game. My scanner HATED this card but I made it work. I always defeat my scanner!

Next is a 2003 Topps Earl Weaver card. I've never seen one of these before and it's one of if not the best post-career card of Earl. Most of the ones I've come across use pictures that were taken while he was suffering a serious case of heartburn.

Matt Wieters....on a Topps card...wearing that weird All Star game gear...OK! This goes on my Wieters page. Notice I didn't say binder. I barely have enough Wieters cards to fill a nine pocket sheet never mind a binder
.

Speaking of catchers...I have to be getting close to the full Orioles team set of this Hometown Heroes from Panini. I'll have to look into it. What's interesting about this one of Rick Dempsey is that they left the orange trim on his chest protector intact. It makes it look more Oriole-ish and less 'unlicensed'. 

At this point in the package things took a turn for the surreal.

Apparently I'm the only memorabilia blogger who had never heard of the Confex Baseball Enquirer set. Every one of you people has done a post about one card or the set and somehow none of them penetrated my consciousness.

But now I own the Billy Ripken from that 1992 set.

We know it's Billy Ripken although his name appears nowhere on the card.

So now I know what the Confex set is. These next two stopped me in my tracks. These are 1/1's and are way better than the phony 1/1's I see for sale on eBay. Check our Gavin's Billy Pierce custom:

Neat, right? It reminds me of those Beehive photos of NHL players that were popular way back when.

I love how Gavin made the reverse resemble the back of a picture frame.

Great stuff....it's a cool addition to my Billy Pierce collection. 

And then there was this:

Batman! A sketch card Gavin did for my project. He spilled the beans on this one over on his blog but it's certainly worth showing here.

Gavin's sketch will take a spot in the top row of my Batman Sketch Card sheets along with my two commissioned cards. I've been pretty quiet about it lately but that project isn't dead, far from it. My original goal of nine crads is far behind me. I'm nearing 27 now.

Back to Gavin's card. It;s signed and inscribed on the back.

All in all it was a great (and unique!) package that took me very much by surprise.

Thanks again Gavin!

Birds from an Owl

I've been very fortunate to have 'met' so many generous fellow bloggers over the years I've been doing this. Three of them hit me up with envelopes that arrived over the past few days. I'm going to post them in order received. The first is from Night Owl.

He packed the envelope with Orioles from recent-ish releases because he knows that's the only way I ever come across any. My luck at pulling Birds from packs whas seen a slight uptick this year but it's still pretty abysmal.

First I'll mention Topps Bunt and the Manny Machado card up top. Bunt is no doubt my favorite 2017 Topps baseball set. I really like the 'beam of light from heaven' effect. OTOH... those one color 'parallels'? Pfffft.

No way is this card as nice as the regular version. And get off my lawn dammit.

Back to Night Owl's envelope.

O's need "Crush" Davis to actually do some crushing. I saw the Orioles lose three straight in Houston over Memorial Day weekend. It was not very memorable. It marked the third straight year I've sat through an Astros sweep of the Orioles. Not fun. And as I type this the O's are getting their second consecutive ass kicking in Yankee Stadium. Oy vey.

I didn't know '1975 minis' of current players were a thing. Happy to have this colorful one of Manny Machado. NO also sent the Crush A&G mini which I scanned with the Machado for scale.

I had a couple Of Orioles Hometown Heroes but not any of these. These are like the lovechild of '65 Topps and their '58 All Star cards. Would they be better if they were licensed?  Sure but whatcha gonna do? This is my second favorite Panini effort behind the '14 Classics set.

Bundy and Gausman...two of the guilty parties.

Is Moose available?

We finish up with three Orioles stars, and Ben McDonald. I wonder if he's available. He couldn't do any worse than the guys the O's are throwing out there these days. 

Flipping through my Orioles binders is a good way to avoid facing the reality of terrible real life baseball. Putting these in pages will be good therapy. Thanks, Greg!!

That Reggie Guy

It occurred to me tonite that I had failed to scan and post this card that came from my '17 Archives blaster. Topps gets a big tip of the cap for using this Reggie Jackson photo. I've seen it on 'concept cards' before but not as a real release. Maybe I'm mis-remembering here.

But either way I really, really liked this one and wanted to give it it's due before I put these things to bed.

'17 Archives...One and Done

OK, technically it's Two and Done since I bought a blaster and a single pack but what the heck. Nothing much to say about these that hasn't already been said a thousand times on better blogs so I'll keep it short. The collation in my blaster sucked. Bigly. I got 19 dupes. In a seven pack blaster. That's ridiculous! So any thoughts I might have had about buying more...gone.

The designs are fine. I liked the 1960 design in 1960. And the year they had it in Heritage. This is cool as well.

The orange Rookie Star cards are just as cool as the originals. One of my favorites.

I noticed that the Bregman RS card is on thinner stock than the other faux 1960s. Dunno why.

1960 card backs were awesome. Loved the Season's Highlights.

I got two Jeters. (shrug)

Same Bregman photo shows up in the '59 Bazooka-style cards.

Some sort of new/old design insert thing.

Coins!! I like these.

The '93 design is pretty nice on these. Congrats to Topps for not recycling the same old tired photos of the long ago guys. And stop the presses! I got an Oriole!!

I think Night Owl made the point about them going to the '82 well once too often. Yup. That Whitey Ford tho. He had one of the coolest cards in last year's Stadium Club and of the ones I got in this Archives blaster his is again the best card. Nice of them to do a Pettitte card with him not in a NYY uni.

Those are the highlights of my 2017 Archives venture. Blaster and a pack ran me $26+tax. This is me thinking about this.