All Dressed Up And...

...nothing to buy.

Next Saturday morning I'll head across Houston to hit the hotel card show. My want list will consist of just one card, the Topps '71 football Joe Greene rookie. One card. I can't remember the last time I haven't printed out multiple sheets of names and card numbers to carry to the show.

Oh, sure. I have multiple needs for my 1960 Leaf and '61 Topps stamp chases. But both of those have reached the point where what I'm lacking is so elusive that I don't need to print new copies. Not to mention the fact that the chances that one of the dealers at the small show having something on the lists are remote.

So why am I going? Well, it's a card show. And I really enjoy talking sports and the hobby with the friends I've made among the dealers. And, despite not wanting to tackle a new set now, I do have a hobby goal or two. I've decided to fill out a couple of my player collections.

I'm going to do a few players at a time. And I won't attempt to be a 'completist' in the fashion of my Billy Pierce collection. I'm going to finish off each player's career-era regular cards and inserts and whatever oddballs fall into my lap.

I'm going to dig into Johnny Callison, Elston Howard, and Dennis Martinez first. All of them have cards in my set binders already but, as with Pierce, I am going to have separate player binders. But enough talk. I actually began my jump into this last week at the previous show. I came away with some Callisons and an Elston Howard card that were mostly upgrades to the ones I already had.

The Phillies were the first NL team I took an interest in and Johnny Callison was my favorite Phils player. My best friend and his father were 'NL guys' and went to a lot of games at Shea and I frequently got to tag along. There's no way to know but I wonder if the picture used on his '66 Topps card was taken on a day we were there.


The '67 set keeps calling out to me. I resist. Callison got a nice Spring Training photo here.

Don't know about the '69. Not enough evidence.

By the early 70s, Callison was a Yankee and I was knee-deep in college stuff and no longer cared all that much.

EDIT: Jon's comment below reminded me that this is an O-Pee-Chee Callison. It was mixed in with a dealer's Topps '73s and for a second got me thinking I had found a bargain. He was selling the cards for 50 cents each and the Topps Callison is short-printed and commands a premium for the most part. Here is the back ('73 backs are fun!) plus a Bob Moose OPC that was in there as well. My Moose collection is pretty much complete, btw.)

/EDIT

I nabbed this '66 Ellie Howard knowing I already had one but it was so nice I figured it would be better than the one I owned. I was right.

Meanwhile, I'm cleaning up the checklists I've had for each of them and actually bindering everything. Once these guys are far enough along the way I'll tackle a couple of others. On my list are Paul Blair, Rusty Staub and some guys from other sports, Connie Hawkins and Rod Gilbert.

This little, low-stress project will give me a reason to continue to go to the small card shows. If I can get organized in the next month I should be able to take care of a lot of my list at the TriStar show in February. We'll see.

Pages of Talent

One of the really fun things about putting together smaller vintage sets like the '57 Topps is the incredible concentration of amazing players that get grouped together on binder pages. If collecting encased, graded cards is your thing, that's fine. But for me there is nothing like flipping through a set and just seeing stars on top of stars.


The first two pages in this wonderful set are perfect examples. Here's the very first one:

Teddy Ballgame, Yogi, Aparicio, all Hall of Famers. Plus some really talented 'other guys'....Sal Maglie, Don Mossi (a blogger favorite!), Dale 'Eight Straight Dinger Games' Long and one of my Dad's favorites, Hector Lopez. BTW... I'm looking to upgrade that Maglie.

And when you turn that page you're faced with this...

Willie Mays, Robin Roberts, Don Drysdale the underrated Dick Groat and three, count 'em, three Orioles!!  Here's something I bet you didn't know...Groat is the color guy on Pitt Panther basketball broadcasts.

I bit deeper into the binder comes this one...

...Bob 😒 Clemente, Gil Hodges, Jim Piersall and Lindy McDaniel. Those bottom three cards are all beauties, yes? And don't overlook George Crowe. He had an interesting and accomplished life. His SABR bio is well worth the time it takes to read it.

OK, so this last page doesn't have the star power of the other three but I'm including it because it holds the cards of three players I love, Warren Spahn, Moe Drabowsky and Ellie Howard. Not to mention a great card of Larry Doby.

As I zero in on the last couple of dozen cards I need to finish off this set it's really becoming a favorite. I didn't appreciate it nearly as much going in as I do now. I'm really glad I took it on.

No Regrets

OK, maybe a few. But at least it was cheap. I threw down a 'throwaway' bid on this Elston Howard 'book' never figuring I would win. I actually had forgotten about it until I got invoiced.

That's the 'inside'. I've never had anything along these lines before.


Here is the 'outside'.

I normally ignore relics and stuff along those lines. Who knows if these things are real? But to tell you the truth the picture is kind of cool and the overall look of the thing is sort of old-timey and Yankee Stadium-ish. I collect career-era Elston Howard cards but sometimes something like this is a way to spice things up. Too bad there is no real way to store this thing in my binder.  

By using that photo Panini allows you to ignore the fact that they can't use logos. So, bottom line, I'm fine with winning it but I wouldn't have cared if I hadn't. I probably wouldn't have even thought about it.

My First IP Signature

A year ago I posted my story of meeting Elston Howard and his signing photos for my best friend and I. When I posted that I was still trying to locate the photo. I came across it last month along with some cards I had given up on. But that story will hold for now. I just wanted to post my Howard photo tonight.

I used my picture editor to crop out much of the very wide border this picture had.  It is actually about 11"x14" but the photo itself is maybe 7"x10".

You have to look really closely to see the inscription and signature. It's faded quite a bit over time. Yes, he signed it to 'Bobby Andrews' which is what I went by growing up.

Even cropping the inscription and blowing it up doesn't help much. but there it is. Looks like a pencil sig but it's actually done in black ink. And it is one of my few really meaningful autographs.

I'm very happy that I finally found it.

Newest Card Show Pickups

It's a little difficult to concentrate on cards and such these days given the fact that this country has gone to hell in a handbasket but I'm gonna give it a shot. Maybe doing a blog post is what I need.

I went to the hotel card show a couple of Saturdays back Darrell has changed locations for the West Houston show and it was a welcome surprise to see the room he's booked. Space to breathe! How nice. And more dealers table as well.

I had a couple of goals at the show. One was to scrounge the cheap vintage boxes for 1962 Topps baseball. The other was to help out a couple of blogging friends with their current needs.  To one extent or another, I managed to accomplish both. Plus I was able to nab a few cards that fall into the 'Just Because' category. Those are the ones I'll post here.

I might as well just call the 1972 Kelloggs set a collecting goal. I found a couple more at the show. The best of which is this Vida Blue.

I'm also calling myself an official Dick Allen collector. I mean why the hell not? I love this '74 card. Both front....

....and back:

"Dick likes to listen to stereo music." Awesome!

This is probably my third or fourth Brooks Robinson Deckle Edge. None of them are centered correctly. The bottom edge of this one does have the deckled edge but my scanner refused to acknowledge that fact. 

I'm not sure if I already had this '66 Elston Howard card. That's a problem that will rectify itself once I finish my grand scheme to re-organize. My hobby room/office is now completely re-done with shelves and bookcases. I made a bulk purchase of binders and pages. Now the real work begins.

This 1958 Jackie Jensen All-Star is an upgrade to the one I have in my '58 set. I'll do a fifty cent '58 card upgrade anytime.

I'm sure I've mentioned previously how much time I wasted as a kid studying the backs of these things. I loved seeing who hit what against whom. I don't know why for sure but it fascinated me no end. For example, I see that Jensen has a nice '57 versus the A's. in 19 games he smacked 6 homers, had 20 RBIs and hit .324.

A 1964 World Series subset card with Koufax will always jump out of the box and into my pile.

I don't have much Ali stuff outside on my autographed SI cover to I pick up cheap stuff when I find it. Like this '83 Olympic card.

I picked up a bulk starter lot of 1975 Topps cards recently because it was dirt cheap. But it was all commons so I bought these starts for a buck apiece. I'm not sure I'll ever get around to really pursuing the '75 set because I have several other things on my list but you never pass up stars for a dollar.

I found a few football cards as well. I bought this 1954 Bowman Buddy Young because I figured it might be an upgrade to the one in my Colts collection. It isn't but it's still a nice card to have a dupe of.

'Crazy Legs' Hirsch from 1956 because it's tough to pass up something like this.

This '59 Lenny Moore IS an upgrade. So I feel vindicated.

Back to a baseball card. this is one of those cards I just can't pass up even though it was two bucks and I'll never even try to complete the '53 Bowman set. I just thought it was a beauty of a card. I've been trying to find one of those Browns caps for a long time but I never can locate one to fit my huge head. I've got a nice gray and brown version but it's not the same.

Man, just look at this card. It's art.

Here's the back. I don't think I've ever really noticed that Bowman made room for kids to fill in 'this year' stats below the player's career numbers.

And finally here's my favorite card from the show. From out of the quarter box comes this 1975 Topps Seattle SuperSonics team card. Yup, that's Bill Russell on the tarmac. This card jumps immediately to the list of my favorite hoops cards. 

I don't know many of these guys but that's Slick Watts with the headband above Russ. Tom Burleson is (I think) the tall guy at the bottom of the stairs. Jim Fox is two guys to Burleson's right with John Brisker in between them. I think that's Spencer Haywood at the bottom of the stairs but I wouldn't bet on it.

All in all another fun show. Next up is the July TriStar extravaganza. That one should be great for working on want-lists.

Catching Up

I've fallen way behind on posting. Lots of reasons...from lack of inspiration to a complete revamp/remodeling of my hobby room/office. I've also been doing some work on the home network and switching over from Chrome to Firefox. FF, btw, while cleaner and quicker than Chrome, doesn't play well with Blogger. I smell a conspiracy. Off-topic...I haven't used a Mozilla product since their first attempt at a browser (Phoenix) but I was a hardcore Netscape Navigator user back in the day. My school district was an early adopter.

But that up above doesn't mean I haven't been busy when it comes to picking up cards and memorabilia. Most of my new acquisitions are additions to my Billy Pierce and Charles Bender collections.My posts of those guys never get much in the way of readership so I'm in no rush to scan and post them.

One group of cards I do have scanned is my card show haul from April. I followed myusual MO....sifting through the cheap vintage boxes and snatching whatever caught my fancy. Some of these I already owned but who wouldn't want a second copy of the '67 Ed Charles?

So here they are. Starting off with some '82 Kelloggs. I have to admit I'm coming around to seeing past Rickey Henderson's quirks and I'm beginning to appreciate what he did on the field.

Schmidt...best NL third baseman I've ever seen.  ;-)

The Wizard of Oz. I always thought the two-tone cap detracted from this uni. Now I'm not so sure.

Here's the back of Ozzie's card blown up so you can read the teeny font used to describe the drama surrounding his trade to the Cardinals during the winter of '81-'82.

Mike Cuellar, at Shea. I think I've written about the time I sat next to him and Fred Gladdingin at a game in the Astrodome. Both were DL'd and sitting right behind home plate. Cuellar was charting pitches. My Dad and I were in the seats he sometimes got from Shell Oil. They were pretty sweet.

Here's The Glider! I hear Bob Murphy's voice in my head whenever I think of this guy. Love that A's uni.

I have this Elston Howard on my PC but I keep thinking that one day I may chase the  '64 set.

Richie Allen. Why isn't he in the Hall of Fame? I think he belongs.

'67 Boog. Because why not?

'64 Juan Pizzaro. See my remarks on the Elston Howard card. Exactly the same here.

This Palmer wasn't a need but I kind of hate leaving his cards in a bargain box.

Love the '61 Post Cereal cards and I love Wally Moon cards so this was a no-brainer.

And I'll finish up with a pair of 1969 Topps Deckle Edge inserts. I really need to dig thru my cards (and that's the plan for the summer) and pull out what I have of these. I'd bet I'm fairly close to the whole thing.

Richie Allen in his 'Rich Allen' mode.

And a sorta stoned-looking Jerry Koosman.

That's it for now. I'll try to do better next time.

Since I'm Up

Watching the rain and live coverage of rescued flood victims being staged at my local WalMart I might as well post something.

I picked up this Salada Elston Howard coin not long ago. One of those 'what the heck' bids that I made and forgot about until I got the email saying I had won.

Nice addition to my Elston Howard PC. I hate leaving it in the holder but these things, like the metal Topps coins, get 'worn' pretty easily otherwise.

Our storm status is unchanged btw. It's rained most of the night but it hasn't been heavy so the water is not pooling on my block. The end of this rain may be in sight. then it'll just be a matter of not having any of the rising tributaries affect us.

I saw today that this will end up as the single largest rain event in US history.

And on Tuesday the alleged potus is coming. Haven't we suffered enough?

Finally...
Love these two pics. Can't say enough about the first responders and hundreds of volunteers who have saved lives here.

Elston Howard: A new PC

I don't intend for this blog to be Yankee-centric but I have had this post queued up for awhile. A few weeks ago I got this Elston Howard Panini card from a card show dealer's box of 25 or 50 cent cards (I forget which now). Panini stuff is hit-or-miss for me but I liked this one so I picked it up.

I've told this Elston Howard story previously over on my '59 Topps blog many moons ago:

He had opened Elston Howard Travel in my hometown of Nutley, New Jersey. When it opened my best friend and I would walk by daily hoping for a glimpse of a major leaguer. One day a woman waved us in to the offices and told us to come by that weekend. Sure enough Elston was there and he signed pictures for us. Probably my first in person autograph and definitely our first off the field encounter with an athlete.

I'm currently going through my boxes to find that photo. I know I have it as I've seen it within the last year or so. Back to this card...there are (of course!) 'hit' versions that I've seen on eBay which have bat pieces and such. Those do nothing for me.

I've always had a casual Howard collection. By 'casual' I mean that if I come across one of his cards that I think I need I buy it. No modern set cards but career era stuff from Topps, Post etc. Sometimes that leads to me having dupes because I'm too lazy to actually checklist my casual PCs like Ellie, Johnny Callison and Bob Moose. 

One of my favorites is this one from the '64 Topps Giants set. 

Before I get too deep into his cards here is a really cool (to me) piece I found on eBay and added to my collection. These type of key chain good luck pieces were popular back in the day. 

I'm posting an oversize shot of the back because it's a bit hard to read otherwise.

Here are a few more of my favorite Elston Howard cards from my binder:

1957 Topps. I love this card.

Both '62s, this All Star and regular cards:

And here are the three from the sets I've completed/blogged:

His 1958. A beauty.

His 1960 card...why they have him capless is a Topps mystery.

Finally his 1959. I've upgraded this one once so I have one for my PC binder but this one that fills the slot in my '59 set could still use an upgrade.

And just the other day some Twitter-ites were celebrating National Doughnut Day. A baseball related site posted this:

Elston is credited with inventing it. The Wikipedia page for this has some interesting insights as well as links to scientific studies that delve into whether or not it does what it is clams...increase bat speed.

Here is a pic of the back of the box I found on the net.

And finally a variation of the box. Due to that '59 Topps card I associate Ellie and the color light blue. This box therefore is cooler.

Yet another box variation. This one has a red doughnut.which I don't think is what originally came in the box.

Mark Hoyle is another Howard collector based on Howard's contributions to the Impossible Dream Red Sox in 1967.  Every once in awhile Mark rides his Segway through the 20-acre warehouse that houses his collection and returns with a Howard piece to post on Twitter. His collection puts my PC to shame!  But I'll keep digging though.