A Good Week For Batman

I've added to my Batman sketch card collection with a couple of beauties I found and won via eBay. The artist, William Rivera, is awfully good, and very prolific! It's crazy how sometimes scans will make the piece being scanned look better. Not here. These two cards are far nicer in hand than they look in these pics.

And then yesterday I was at my old school helping during state testing days and an old friend and colleague gifted me with some terrific Batman display items. Again, a lousy pic of some really cool stuff. 

The action figure is about a foot tall. And I'm about at the point where I'm going to have to have a dedicated Batman display shelf. I'll have to get Alfred on that ASAP!

Thanks to my friend Harry for the Batman items. He's an artist and he's already contributed sketch cards he did especially for me. It's nice to have folks looking out for you, even when you're retired.

T'was a Nice Night for Baseball

Time do some more catching up with long overdue 'thank you' posts for cards I've received over the past month. 

Back in April, I met up with Bru, author of the Remember the Astrodome blog (and Twitter mainstay) at a college game on the campus of the University of Houston. Bru's Texas Aggies took on my Cougars under a beautiful sky and the game itself was close and well played. The Coogs won but I would have enjoyed myself just as much had the score been reversed because, well, good baseball, good weather, and the even better company makes things just about perfect.

We talked baseball in general and the hobby in particular. The icing on the cake was Bru handing me a nice surprise package of cards. The card stack featured some of his 'homeBru' customs. Now I make cards but they are just printed out on photo paper and stuck in my fantasy player binder. They are not presentable by any stretch of the imagination. OTOH Bru's cards are real cards... cardboard stock, two-sided printing, the whole nine yards.

The Scipio Spinks card was my favorite (maybe) but it was was just one of several fun ones. BTW, these are from his 'Accidental Mini' collection. Somehow the printer made these smaller than standard but that just adds to them I think. Spinks had one of the best names ever. And apparently, he is the Houston-area scout for the Diamondbacks. I bet I've seen him at UH games and never realized it. There are usually scouts with radar guns in the seats behind home plate.

A quick look at some of the others including the now DL'd Jose Altuve, fan fave, George Springer and Alex Bregman and my favorite Astro, Orbit.

I had to use a photo of those rather than a scan because the bright white borders sent my scanner into a meltdown of epic proportions!

Bru included a very nice throwback Joe Morgan.

This next one was a real doozy. The Astros put this set out under unknown (to me) circumstances in 1967. I recently found an uncut sheet of the set at a card show but this single Cuellar is a perfect fit in my Cuellar PC.

Exhibit #1 in the case for full bios/stats on the backs of cards:

In 1960 Cuellar split his season between Havana, Cuba and Jersey City, New Jersey. Think about that for a bit.

Dylan Bundy...Destiny's Child Baltimore version.

And next, we have a couple of shiny Adam Jones cards. I've said all I'm gonna say about AJ.

These next two cards are fun. Nice to see Topps show some old school guys, not in the usual photos. 

That's Joe Nolan warming up a pitcher in the background of Jim Palmer's card.  

The final piece of Bru's gift package was this ticket from Game 2 of 1983 AL League Championship game. The Orioles won that one 4-0 behind Mike Boddicker's nifty five-hitter. Looking at the play-by-play of that one gives you some idea of how baseball has changed. Boddicker hit Greg Luzinski to lead off the top of the ninth leading by those four runs. Tom Paciorek (of the University of Houston!) followed with a single and then those two guys moved up on a ground out. After getting Mike Squires to bounce one back to him for the second out, Boddicker walked Jerry Hairston to load the bases. Just how many pitching changes would we have seen in  2018 playoff game under those same circumstances? Make it a 2017 Astros game and you'd be watching at least 20 trips to the mound by Brian McCann.  Anyway, in 1983, Joe Altobelli let Boddicker figure it out on his own and he whiffed Julio Cruz and the Orioles evened up the best-of-five at a game each.

At that point I began making tentative plans to head to Baltimore from here in Houston for the World Series. This ticket makes a great companion for my '83 World Series tickets.

So, as noted, it was a fun night all around. Thanks again, Marc. Let's do it again!

Catching Up

I'm a bit 😎 ok..really far behind in posting some stuff I've received over the past month or so from other bloggers, both in the mail and in person. Time to fix that.

I can always count on Joe Shlabotnik to remind me that, for better or for worse, I'm an Orioles fan. And these days it's for worse but that's OK. I'm far enough along in life to realize that the outcome of games isn't all that important. The sun still rises every day. But enough schmaltz, let's look at cards.

I was happy for Chris Davis when he finally got the huge monkey off his back last month. He handled the whole hitless streak about as well as any player could. He seems like a very good guy and it's nice to see that he's even begun to swing the bat better and have some luck as well. He deserves it.

Nothing says 90s baseball card like gold foil. That's actually the front of the Norm Charlton card.  The 'Online' bit reminds me of my mother-in-law who uses that term for everything internet-related. As in "Can you come over and see why my online isn't working?" and "Can I see the online on my phone?" Hmmmm.

I had no idea who Bryan Bass was but his card has some nice bronze foil. It's from 2001 but UD was still in 90s mode.  BTW...Bass was a prospect out of Florida who banged around the Orioles chain for about seven years. His career, which began in 2001, came entirely during my time away from paying attention to baseball.

Speaking of my time away from baseball...

I came in at the end of Brian Roberts' career.  I had seen him play in Baltimore in 2005 in my first trip to Camden Yards and it was a 'who are these guys?' night.

Joe included some really great cards of recently and not-so-recently departed Orioles...

Has anyone gone from good guy to dispised as quickly as Manny Machado?  That's OK, I'm still a Machado guy.

I watched a bit of an Arizona game the other day. Looked odd with Adam Jones in that terrible dark gray uniform.

With modern card designs that mimic old designs nowadays, I frequently have to turn them over to see if they are actually older cards. This Leaf Eddie Murray is original.

Well, obviously this Heritage one is modern.

Did Topps sue UD over this.....

Either way, UD did a nice job of mimicking the '71 design.


There were plenty more baseball cards in Joe's envelope but let's skip to hockey and another of my teams that is in a rough patch, the New York Rangers.

I don't think I've scanned cards that were partially clear plastic before. These two Upper Deck cards didn't scan half bad but they are much nicer in hand.

And let's wrap it up with the most fun card in the bunch...it's my favorite mascot, Orbit!

All that adds up to about a third of what Joe sent. I'm getting some stuff together for a return and I'll try not to procrastinate much longer.

North Texas Card Show

I woke up early this past Saturday and headed up I-45 through Dallas and on to the North Texas Card Show staged at the Comerica Center in Frisco which is the Dallas Stars' practice facility among other things. It was a four hour trip and was the first time I'd traveled out of town for a card show since the National was held twice in Arlington, Texas in 1986 and 1990.

It was a nice 'medium' sized show, bigger than the hotel meeting room shows I hit all the time but smaller than the TriStar events. About 200 tables I'd say.

They had several former members of the Dallas Cowboys as autograph guests and I had no interest in them but I hadn't remembered that former major leaguer Eddie Robinson was going to be there. He served in the Navy during WWII and then played 13 seasons of baseball in the American League. He played for 7 of the 8 AL teams that existed during his career. He was a favorite of my Yankees fan father who always told me Robinson was under-appreciated as a ballplayer. He was pretty spry for a 98-year-old and I asked him to sign a copy of his book to me. Many years ago I came across one of his game-used gloves that he had signed at some point. I have it in storage and wish I had paid more attention to the show flyer and ads. I would have dug it out and brought it along.

There were several of the major auction houses with booths at the show. I didn't stop at them but I did enjoy the displays that they brought along. First is this beautiful Roy Campanella jersey that was in place near the Heritage Auction booth. Sweet, yes?

But this next display really had me drooling. A complete 1915 Cracker Jack set. Unreal to see it up close.

Just beautiful cards.

Of course, I had to find the card that is my personal white whale, the Chief Bender card.

I spent about four hours circling the floor, minus a Diet Coke break and the time spent with Eddie Robinson. I didn't spend a lot of money but driving up and back in one day kind of forces one to want to come home with something. And I did......here is a quick look:

This very nice 1954 Bowman Jackie Jensen is a fine addition to my rather informal JJ PC.

The same dealer had some very deeply discounted '57s which I snagged. I'm not ready for really begin my pursuit of the set but I pick up cheap cards that I know I need whenever I come across them. This Dodgers' Sluggers is a neat card...even with the wicked creases.

Speaking of Dodgers...I also chose this Duke Snyder. It was in very nice condition for the price.

As was this Red Schoendienst.

I spent most of my show budget filling my 1971 want list. I found several dozen, Here are a few. The Hundley card is a replacement for the one I bought and then lost at the last hotel show.

I also bought a stack of 1960 Leaf gems. I'll have more on these in an upcoming post.

When you entered the show everyone was given a stack of oversized Upper Deck hockey cards. I didn't get a Rangers card but this Joe Thornton is kind of fun. I've been watching a lot of the Stanley Cup playoffs. To say it's the craziest playoff season may be an understatement.

Thornton has played over 1800 NHL games without winning the Cup. That's the most of any player still working this year. I'm hoping he gets his shot.

                                                                          

And as I was sitting at a dealer's table I heard my number called for the hourly door prize. I was awarded a Panini Instant basketball card of this guy:

I enjoy the Rockets but my knowledge of the NBA is pretty limited. When the guy handed me the card he pointed out that it is numbered as #1 and advised me to keep the seal on the holder. Not sure what to say about it other than it's better to win than not win.

By about 4:30 I'd put about 9000 steps on my Fitbit and my back was telling me that it was time to go. Another long drive home has convinced me that I'm no longer built for 8-hour road trips. Next time I'll stay over a day. But it was fun. It's nice to see different dealers is a different venue.