Billy Pierce Phone Card

Remember phone cards? For awhile these things were part of the memorabilia landscape. I had a couple of Oriole phone cards. You could usually find them at shows on the same tables where you found Broder cards and Bammers. I still see them for sale from time to time, mostly in ethnic grocer stores and aimed at those wishing to phone folks back in the old country. In my neck of the woods that means Mexico and Central America. I think they work by keying in a number found of the back which equates to the way one would pump coins into a pay phone. You kids may need to ask someone what the hell all that means. Pay phones? WTH?

My fiend Mike McKay recently tipped me to this Billy Pierce phone card. As you can see below on the packaging this was a New Comiskey Park giveaway in 1996. The card was placed into the middle of a foldout with some of that gummy glue.

These two scans are the front and back of the folder:

Minnie Minoso and Nellie Fox were the two other Sox old-timers that were honored with a $5 card. Here is the complete center of the foldout with the phone card attached:

I picked this one up on eBay and it came in the original sealed plastic packaging. It's another in my ever growing collection of oddball Pierce items. A big thanks to Mike for bringing this to my attention. I'm not sure how it managed to evade on of my numerous 'saved searches' revolving around Billy Pierce.

Guys On The Phone

Over the past few weeks Bob Lemke has been featuring cards from niche collections he created from the huge cache of mostly 1990's cards he acquired through his work at Krause Publications. I made a comment on one of his posts and mentioned that I had collected a few off beat collections as well. One of those was cards featuring athletes 'on the phone'... players using sideline and dugout phones and headsets.

Bob replied that he had a very similar collection scheduled for a post on September 2 so I thought it would be fun to dig my 'phone guys' out and present them here on the same day. And here we are.

Most of the 40 or so cards in this little collection of mine are of NFL players shown on 1990 era Pro Set and Topps cards. But there are quite a few more off-the-wall cards included. I'd forgotten about some of them.

Some of the cards show Hall-of-Famers possibly talking to their brokers. Cal Ripken for example, on a big ass early cell phone. I remember being amazed at these contraptions. They were (to me) the second generation cell phones as they followed the 'phone in a bag' things that I remember a buddy carrying around the golf course.

A few more HOF guys using electronic stuff during games.  Brett was still years away from sexting pix of his well, junk to female reporters. He quite possibly was engaged in an intimate conversation with Phyllis George.

More football players including Dan Pastorini likely scrounging up a date with a runway model. He was cool that way.

And a couple more 49ers. Maybe communication was the key to their glory days.

The NBA Hoops set featured all the draft picks on the phone. They were either taking 'the call' from the team that drafted them of dialing mom with the good news.

And I somehow had added a few oddball cards along the way. I have no idea where I came across this card of boxer Bill Castillo. But I would be willing to bet he didn't 'dial' that call!

And finally we have Michaelangelo calling in a pizza order. I know this card was originally in my kids' binder. They loved the TMNTs.

Also in their binder was this card. No phone but .......

... I never minded watching that show with them!!

It was Inevitable

Back in the 80s there was a time when the question hobby wonks asked wasn't 'When is the next card show?" but rather "Which of the four shows around here this weekend will I go to?"

And when you went to the show you had chosen you could always figure on one table down every aisle being loaded down with three (and only three) different items:

#1) Bammers!

These are the 'beanie baby' style teddy bears you still see around with player names and numbers on the back. Here's a peek at a few pics I found on the 'net:

I still see this junk on tables at shows from time to time. Usually one sad Bammer perched on a box of unopened 1984 Donruss.

#2) 'Perma Graphics' Credit Cards/Phone Cards

These are just what they sound like. Plastic 'credit card' type cards with player pix and such. Some were pretty high quality and many had uniforms showing and team logos as well. I guess that meant they were either an authorized/licensed product (I believe the Perma Graphics Company had an agreement with Topps) or they were skirting the rules. The ones that were 'phone cards' were just that, supposedly loaded with long distance call minutes you could use by keying in the serial number found on the back. The next person I find that used a phone card to make a phone call will be the first one I have found. Sing out if you ever used one.

I never saw the attraction to these but they were pretty popular so I guess someone was buying them. I have a Jim Palmer example someplace but I can't get my hands on it at the moment so I will post these from the 'net:

#3) Broders

Rob Broder and his father produced untold numbers of unlicensed cards in the 1980s and into the 1990s. They were cheap, attractive, and definitely 'grey' market items. Broder was the producer of many of them but the term was applied to many similar issues of the day. I remember dealers with stacks and stacks of them. They went for a buck or so apiece. There were different 'series' and 'sets', some dedicated to one players or one team. When you are using photos you take yourself from the stands and don't have to worry about paying fees to players or leagues the possibilities are endless.

I remember "dealers" calling them 'private' sets, and 'promo' cards. Unlike Bammers and phone/credit cards I actually have examples of these in my collection. I have one honest-to-God Broder Ripken:

And a couple of Broder-wannabes, a Ripken and a Murray:

And some other non-Broder Murray and Ripken Broders:

You'll see these referred to as 'Broder-type"...which is sort of like store brand cheese loaf being referred to as 'Velveeta-type' cheese. It's an imitation of a fraud.

When you found the Bammer-credit card/Broder "dealers" table you knew you had found a guy whose knowledge of the hobby was limited to how to make a buck selling crap and whose knowledge of baseball was limited to what player held the interest of all the 11-year-olds in the room.

On the road again Part 2

I finished opening the Leaf 2016 Babe Ruth blaster box. To my surprise it had perfect collation. I received the complete base set, 1-80 and the two ten card subsets, Quotables and Career Achievements. Nice. I didn't pull a stadium seat or Ruth bat relic but that's OK. I found a cheap stadium seat card from the set on eBay and that'll serve as my 'insert example'.

It's a fun set to shuffle through. Lots of interesting pics of The babe. I am still relying on my phone camera so you'l have to excuse the pics. I'll just show a few. When I get home this will go into a binder.

There were several cards of Ruth with kids, his and others:

Wow, I need to take better pix with my phone. Anyway there were pic of Ruth messing around with other sports including these:

Gimmicky/publicity pictures:

But the best cards, of course, show the Babe in uniform on the baseball diamond. I chose some of my favorites for these two shots:

It's a neat set, especially considering I pretty much got it for free. I'm looking forward to seeing it in binder pages.

Oh, and I also opened the Sage college football jumbo pack. Here are the 'highlights':

My White Whale

The other day Fuji stated his 2013 hobby goals and asked for ours. I replied and yammered on for a bit and then I remembered that I was in the process of a post about the one card I'd love to find, if only I could. It's a card I've never seen and if it's what I think it is, it's not even a 'real' card, at least as far as how I think of 'cards'. Anyway if I could find one thing in 2013 that would really make me feel like I accomplished a goal this would be it. So, on to my 'white whale'.

I see the expression 'White Whale' from time to time on hobby blogs. Taken from Melville's Moby Dick novel it can be loosely defined in the hobby as an elusive and probably unobtainable card that one never quits looking for. At least that's my interpretation. And I have one. First the background:

I've written several times in the past about my football card collection that encompasses every player I've ever 'owned' in my fantasy league for the past 33 seasons. I had the idea to collect those guys in the late 1980s, maybe or early 1990s. Most were easy to find. I had a list of all 'my' players and I took it to card shows and shops and pretty quickly was able to cross off the list guys like Warren Moon, Bert Jones, and Marcus Allen. I already had a lot of those players on a card anyway. Within a couple of years I had about 90% of  my list knocked off and all that was left were cards of guys who had never been in Topps sets. That slowed me down somewhat. I know I hunted through hobby publications and scoured checklists hoping to find cards of players like Kyle Mackey and Ed Luther.

Then two things happened at about the same time. Someone thought up eBay, and I found this book. It was about the size of the Omaha phone book and had just as small print. Great resource that listed an amazing amount of odd sets. It proved invaluable.

Now I was able to look up my missing players and know for sure if there was an available card. Then it was a matter of scouring eBay and the hobby publications to find that card or set. In several cases I bought a complete 'police' or regional food issue set to get one player. I was able to knock out quite a few that way. 

I was also able to find out which players had never been on a card. I made up some using my really crappy graphic skills in MS Paint and then Publisher. I tracked down some of the players and wrote nice notes or emails asking for signatures. That's how I got to know former Giant Stacy Robinson. He worked for the NFLPA and was super nice in sending me his home address and phone number(!) and returning my request with a note and assorted swag. I discovered Kyle Mackey was coaching high school football just a county or two from my home. Too bad he never responded to my note. I was tempted to attend a game but I would have felt like a stalker. 

So my hunt had narrowed until, in about 2005, only one actual listed card was left. The 1978 Colts Team Issue #9 Randy Burke. I'd never seen the set and eBay/Google searches were dead ends. I had pictured it as something akin to the standard sized sets that teams gave out or sold at concession stands. But I did see a ton of these.....

But it never occurred to me that those were the referenced 'cards'. I always thought of those things as 'picture pack' photos. The type that used to be sold in sets inside an envelope at Manny's Baseball Land across from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Or through the mail from the teams souvenir department.

But then a couple of years ago I found this book thru the Google online book library and damn if they didn't have the set listed. With  full description.

Sure enough the set consists of 5x7 photos. The description fits them exactly. 

So now I know what I've been searching for. With the dozens and dozens of Colt photos I've found on eBay I know it's just a matter of time before good ol' Randy Burke shows up. And I'll harpoon my white whale.

Meanwhile, I'll make do with this homemade card. I made it using a picture I bought from the Baltimore Sun. Jeez, I ought to invest in a graphics program and a good paper cutter before I attempt this again.

One last note. I've been able to track Randy Burke to his job in sales and marketing at a Lexington, Kentucky television station (he played at UK). But at this point I am determined that nothing other than his 1978 Colts Team Issue #9 'card' will do for my collection. Wish me luck.

R.I.P. Larry DeMartini. You put together a heck of a book. Thanks!

LBJ 'Stuff' from the LBJ Library & Museum

Over the Christmas break my wife and I took a trip over to Austin to listen to some live music (Austin is a great town for that) and to visit the recently refurbished LBJ Library & Museum on the University of Texas campus. We'd been to the place many times in the past and although it's always interesting (I've mentioned many times my interest in LBJ) we both felt it was time for them to make some changes and last year they did just that. The re-opening was in early December and we had heard good things.

Indeed the Museum is greatly improved with some wonderful memorabilia and displays invoking the life of the former President and particularly the decade of the 60's when he served as President. If you have an interest in that rather remarkable decade or know someone who does it's a worthwhile trip for sure. It had always been free to the public but they have started charging for admission. But since we arrived at 3 p.m.  they waived the $8 and asked for a donation instead. We went back the next day and did the same.

First have a look at a Topps 1972 card of Johnson from their U.S. Presidents set. I picked this up online a few weeks ago. I had been unaware of it until I happened upon it somehow. 

This is an older brochure from the Museum. I picked up new ones but damned if I can find them right now.

One really fun thing to do is pick up these 'phone' receivers they have scattered among the displays. You can listen to some recently declassified phone conversations that were taped by the presidential staff. Fascinating stuff, especially those that give you a taste of Johnson giving a friend or adversary a bit of his ....ahem... persuasive tone.

Below are a few items I picked up in the gift shop. First, a couple of 1960 Kennedy/Johnson campaign pieces. A pretty neat place in and of itself. I think I had the lapel pin already but for $1 I grabbed another one to display. . In those days my folks were serious Democrats and we were a 'Kennedy Catholic' household. That changed over the years and by the early/mid 70s my parents were consistently voting Republican. 

1968 Hubert H. Humphrey campaign button, also from the gift shop. He was LBJ's vice president. Back in those heady days Humphrey was a hero of mine for his liberal stances on social issues. I've wondered how this country would have been different if he had defeated Dick Nixon in 1968. I was surprised to find that when I googled 'HHH' the first pages returned were about some dipshit wrestler that went by that moniker. Sweet Jesus, have we come to that?

1968 George Romney (Mitt's Dad) campaign button. See, they are an open minded museum. G. Romney didn't win the Republican nomination. Richard Nixon did and we all know how that turned out.