Cards at the Crossroads

As I contemplate what I'm going to do with this blog I need to catch up with a few generous packages that arrived from a pair of esteemed bloggers over the last couple of weeks. Let's do these in the order they arrived.

First up is a group of cards I received from Joe Shlabotnik. 'Joe' killed some of my 1973 needs, quite a few in fact. I've posted a handful of my favorites. Above and below are two Cleveland relief pitchers, Mike Kilkenny and Steve Mingori. Both are rocking the early 70s sideburns and they look enough alike (at least on these cards) that I wasn't sure that I hadn't discovered a Topps error.

Mingori was on his way to Kansas City in June of '73, and he pitched on their '76 thru '78 division-winning clubs.

Kilkenny was probably just happy to spend the '73 season (at least what there was of it for him) without having to forward his mail. In 1972 he was with four different clubs over the span of  33 days. He began the year with his original team, the Tigers. On May 9 he was dealt to the A's for first-baseman Reggie Sanders. On the 17th the A's traded him to the Padres in a deal that netted them Ollie Brown. Three weeks later the Padres sent him to the Indians for infielder Fred Stanley.

In '73 Kilkenny made just a handful of appearances for Cleveland and gamelogs show he wasn't very effective in any of them. By May 6, just short of a year since his '72 baseball odyssey began, he was out of the majors. He played in the independent Intercounty Baseball League in his native Canada before getting into owning racehorses and being a golf pro. Some of the rabbit holes you travel through while researching the players on these cards are very entertaining.

And here's Yaz. This is a Yastrzemski card that I don't remember seeing much of. He was just at the point of transitioning into more of a first-baseman than an outfielder, but he had plenty of top-level baseball left in him.

Cookie Rojas has what appears to be the batting helmet cart behind him in this spring training photo.When I was coaching we had these carts aplenty, filled with all sorts of equipment and dragged them to the fields every day.

Dave Giusti in what I'm thinking is another ST photo but I've been to McKechnie Field and that doesn't match my memory of it. Of course, this picture was taken 40 some years prior to my visits.

Ralph Garr wearing a Braves uni top I'm still conflicted over after all these years.

The '73s Joe sent helped get me to the point where I need less than 25 to finish the set. Outside of the 1960 Leaf set (which I'm convinced I'll never finish), the '73 set is the last one I'm looking to close out for the foreseeable future. Yes, that means that I'm done with the '57 Topps baseball and '69 Topps football sets. Hallelujah!

In addition to the 73s Joe included a handful of modern Orioles. Cards I'd never otherwise see. Trey Mancini is the closest the O's have to a household name. And that's a stretch.

These two cards came along for the ride from Virginia. The more Presidents cards I receive the more I realize how many different sets there are out there.

These Goudeys are kind of artsy. When I get some time I'm gonna look closer at the Goodwins from 2017 and find any other presidents.

Thanks for these, Joe. As always they are much appreciated.

The other package came from beautiful Upstate New York and the Night Owl. This card of Cardinals' infielder Tommy Edmon was one I asked him to put aside for me. He had opened packs of this Topps '19 issue and Edmon was in one of them. This was the last card I needed to finish off my fantasy baseball binder for 2019.

I'm the 'crazy cat lady' of fantasy baseball. Because I can't say "No" I ended up 'fostering' seven orphaned teams this year. On three different platforms. Yeech. ONE team is usually too much for me to keep up with. Nobody in America was as happy to see the end of the regular season as I was!

And, like Joe, the wise ol' Owl filled up the envelope with modern Orioles...and a note saying how tough it is to find new Orioles to send. Boy, no kidding! When you suck as bad as the O's do Topps has no need to put them into sets. I don't blame Topps a bit.

I really like this fancy-ass John Means card. It immediately won a spot in my fantasy bb binder, booting out the minor league card I had of him previously.

Throwback style Chris Davis.  Looks like he'll be around Charm City for 2020. I'm OK with that.

Manny. Everyone hates him but I'd take him back in a second!

Ced Mullins took a step (or three) back in 2019. I still have hope, tho.

And a nice mini A&G Brooks. I recently got around to putting my Orioles mini cards in tobacco card pages. They look good in pages, much better than shuffling thru them by hand. 

Thank you, Greg. And thanks to both you and Joe for much enjoyment via your excellent blogs.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I really look forward to. Our plan is to spend it at the home of my recently widowed mother-in-law (RIP, Dad) and it has the potential to be a disaster. Let's hope it exceeds my expectations, shall we? And I hope yours is special.

See you somewhere down the road on the flip side.

Collection Status...Part Two

Last week I posted about my progress with my primary set projects. I'll take a little time today to focus on the rest of what I'm working on these days. Public Service Announcement: Slabbed cards in this post will be freed as long as I have a binder page that will fix properly. (That's a PSA..get it? PSA? The grading company. Hell, never mind)

Player Collections, etc.  Nothing new on the Billy Pierce front. I add some oddball items from time to time but the 'White Whales', like his '59 Bazooka card, remain beyond the range of my harpoon.  I do grab vintage of him from cheap card boxes at shows. I just think I hate seeing him in quarter boxes, so undignified! LOL

My PC/Orioles Stars binder has fallen into disrepair lately. That'll get re-done in the next few months. Meanwhile, I discover fun stuff like this Dennis Martinez card by reading other blogs (thanks, Fuji!). It was pretty cheap on eBay and it just showed up.

Likewise, my University of Houston alum cards were put up in a box when I turned my hobby room into a nursery! After all these years I will re-binder them and fill in some gaps, next year probably.

Small/Oddball Sets I recently came across a box I had put away that continued a load of stuff like small Orioles sets, TCMA team sets, 1980s era Kmart and similar 33-card boxed sets, etc, etc. Some of those need to be bindered, many will just get broken up into teams and sent to fellow bloggers. Some will get burned in the fire pit.

Houston Aeros Over the last few years I've pulled this one on and off the 'back burner' of my collecting. Aeros games were fun, cheap entertainment back in the day. My friends and I made it to lots of them, particularly at the old Sam Houston Coliseum in downtown Houston.

A few years ago I decided to collect their team sets from the few companies making WHA cards back then. I already owned the Howe cards so finding the rest wasn't hard. I have all the base Aeros cards from the various O-Pee-Chee sets. I have a couple of the Quaker Oats cards and a few of the 75/76 team issued set. Those latter two sets are very tough.

I also add a few 'retro' set Aeros when I come across them cheap, mostly Gordie Howe cards on which he is shown with Houston.

More hockey...once I finish going through my boxes of stuff and sort out the Rangers I have I may try to finish some team sets.

Non-Sports Cards This covers so much that I will break it down, mostly for my benefit. I think I need to re-assess where I'm going with these. 😏

Batman I have the three original Topps 1966 Batman sets, red, blue and black bat. There are dozens of modern Batman sets and I have a handful. I made it a point to buy the boxed sets that were associated with the first Batman movies. I am nearing 50 Batman sketch cards. Every few months I'll remember to check for cheap sketch cards on eBay. I added this one for a few bucks some time back. I have no current 'goals' when it comes to my Batman collecting.

More or less related to this... my Civil War News set has long been finished. Once in a while I find an upgrade. Topps continues to add to the Mars Attacks franchise. I have several of the reprint/update/continuation sets from this franchise. 


Presidents I finished off a couple of JFK sets in the past two years and am currently working on the '64 Topps LBJ/Goldwater set. I have exactly half of the 66 cards and little hope of finishing it anytime soon. They don't pop up often for sale/auction online.

My vintage Topps/Bowman presidents cards are in a small box, unorganized. That needs fixing. I also have several oddball sets of Presidents/famous historical figures which need bindering. My hodgepodge of oddball & modern presidential cards (Panini, European etc) also needs sorting.

Entertainment My pursuit of the Topps Soupy Sales set has been very slow. Once I found that each card has different possible backs (Topps flipped the sheets in the middle of the press run apparently) I backed off. I need to figure out what I have and what I need which is tough with the cards being unnumbered and the backs being unrelated to the fronts. Ugh.

I continue to add actress and actor cards, from the old tobacco sets thru 'fan' sets of the 50s and 60s. I bought a small lot of Exhibit cards of actresses recently. There is no goal or checklist for this stuff. I just pick up what I like when I find it at reasonable prices.

I came across some boxes of Stranger Things 1 & 2 packs really cheap. My wife and I really enjoy that series, so I bought the boxes. They are under my desk, waiting for a rainy day. 

Baltimore Colts Collection  I still lack some Fleer Super Bowl cards but those are not a priority. I do come across oddball and retro cards here and there.

I have a lot of new postcards and publications but I'm sticking mainly to cards with this post. Those will have to wait for another day.

Happy Presidents Day

If you have the day off I hope you are enjoying it. Here are a few presidential items I have in my collection.

😄

Show Haul II

Here is the second and final installment of 'Stuff from the Hotel Show'. Pales in comparison to what's been posted around the blogs and on Twitter after the National show but that's fine by me. If the National show ever finds its way back down my way I'll hit it up. 

I already have a 1970 Xographs/Kelloggs Brooks card but in case I ever decide to put the set together I'll have one for that binder and my Brooks/Orioles binder. Like the rest of these this came out of the 10 for $6 bin. I used my credit to nab them. 

Xographs evolved into the company that made Sportflics cards a decade and a half later. But those things can't touch the 1970 Kelloggs cards.

Darrell had a huge stack of the '69 Topps Deckle Edge inserts. I wish I had picked up more but I'm certain that they will still be in the bin at his next show.  Topps used this Juan Marichal picture in their 1965 set.

This shot of Brooks is from 1965.

Hawk Harrelson in his A's uni and an airbrushed BoSox cap.

Deckle Edge #4..Luis Tiant. This set was notorious for misprinted cards.

I brought home this much loved 1957 Topps Orioles team card. It was like a homely, sad, lonely puppy at the pound begging for a home. Even though I already have multiples of it I couldn't have slept had I walked away from it.

This is what team cards should always be. Team pic on the front, info on the back. I don't care about Gatorade bath shots from the previous June.

"Pennant Winning Teams: 1944" That would be the Browns. Someone, maybe a kid in Catonsville or Towson, edited the roster on the back using two different pens. One day after I retire and have the time I'm going to do some research and break the code of the red and blue. I thought I had it figured out but Dick Williams' comings and goings with Baltimore complicated things to the point I gave up.

The roster as seen on the back of one of my better examples of this card. Topps dropped a comma before the name of the last player listed, Chuck Diering, making it seem as if he's a bat boy.

Here is the original photo of the '56 Orioles.

I don't have plans to ever chase the Topps World on Wheels set from the early '50s these were hard to pass up.

When I was in Springfield Massachusetts a couple of years ago the hotel we were staying at was hosting a Kaiser-Frazer owners convention. There were some really neat and unusual cars in the lot.

These last two items came from the last hotel show I went to, in June I think. They were stuck in a pocket of my backpack and I didn't remember them until I went thru my bag after last weekend's show. Kelloggs' Presidential stickers. I've read that there was a card set and a sticker set put out by Kelloggs in 1980. But I think the truth is that there were two different sticker sets. Beckett's 2016 Non-Sports catalog is useless in finding any info. It has nothing (but it does had about 35 small print pages devoted to trashy Bench Warmer cards) and I regret wasting my money on it.

Anyway, here are JFK and George Washington.

Everything else I picked up went out in PWEs and such. The next show rolls around at the end of September. I can't wait.