Oddball Rusty Staub Items

I've been trying to fill in a few inexpensive gaps in my player collections recently. I had found a TCMA Cardinals card on eBay but I hate buying something for a few nickels and spending twice as much on shipping. So I dug through the dealer's listings and came up with enough Staub items to make the buy worthwhile.

Nothing earth-shattering here. Just a few oddballs and a Topps that I already had but I may need to fill a set chase hole at some point.

By far my favorite piece is the team-issued, signed postcard above. The seller called it a J.D. McCarthy/team issue. It has a blank back which lends credence to the theory that it was team issued. Most of the McCarthys that he provided to players had a postcard back and a small name box on the front.

Next up is a 1978 Whiffle Ball disc. The MLBPA got a lot of mileage out of the license for this design. EDIT...looks very much like the WB disc photo is the same as the postcard.

1969 Milton Bradley game card. Not much to these. that photo of Rusty looks like something that was taken while he was in high school. Pull out the dice and lets play!

Here is a 1991 WIZ Entertainment Center card which was part of a Shea Stadium promotion that ran that year. Apparently, all 450 players who had been with the team up to that point were part of this. They were issued in perforated sheets of 10 cards each.

The WIZ is long gone as a retail outlet. You can read about it here. A couple of sites discuss the reference to it in a Seinfeld episode.

Finally, we have a 1968 Topps Staub. I had one already but there may come a time (way, waaaaaay down the road) that I turn my stack of '68s into a set. It's one of my least favorite Topps sets so I doubt it'll be any time soon. Dig Rusty's flaming red hair!

He was coming off one of his best seasons. The '67 club was the first Astros team I was familiar with and it remains my favorite. Looks like I need to take a closer look at my PCs and update the checklists. It's not like I don't have the time.

Wrapping One Show, Ready For Another

With about a week to go until the Houston TriStar Winter Show, I thought I'd finish posting my meager takings from the last hotel show I attended.

First up, a handful of oddball Rusty Staub cards. I'm buying Rusty stuff without a checklist which is a little like driving around at night with your lights off...you rely a lot on memory.

Swell Gum:

Pacific:

TCMA (from the 12-card All-Time Expos set.

But I was positive that those were new to me.

Unlike this Charles Bender 1913 National Game card. I have a really nice one that is in a slab that I blogged previously. This one was a cheapie. You can never have too many of these, right?

'77 Topps Cloth Sticker Lee May:

I found a small stack of these things and bought a few to pass on to some other bloggers. I didn't realize that I already had one of these. Jim Palmer is the other Orioles guy in the set. I wanted to find a Staub but no luck.

Billy Pierce 1959 Baseball Thrills subset card. I had this one but used it for my '59 build.

1987 Fleer Akeem Olajuwon sticker card. Yes, he was Akeem before he was Hakeem. I have some funny Olajuwon stories from his days at UH but I'll save them for when I have a cool piece to show with them. All I'll say now is that if he crashes a soccer game you are playing in... don't get in the way of one of his shots.

I haven't shown much (anything?) of the '61 Fleer football set. Most because nobody would read it. But I'm almost done with it and I wasn't even half trying. As with the Houston college player photo I had on here recently, this pic has the UH practice fields as the location and the surrounding neighborhood as the background.

'87 Donruss Murray. Part of the bunch of Murray cards that I was gifted at the show. I always liked this design. This is probably the last set that I paid attention to before I lost interest in the hobby a few years later.

1960 Lenny Moore. I had this in my Colts collection but I just love this card. One of these days I might try to chase this set.

Finally a pair of Arm & Hammer Orioles cards from the 1930s. I'm shown the backs in XL so they can be read.

The TriStar show is next weekend. Brooks Robinson is a guest on Sunday. I may take my son to reprise this shot from 20ish years ago:

 Brooks and Brooks!

Lesson Learned (again)

I've been a 'stealth' Rusty Staub collector for a while. Along with pitcher Don Wilson, Staub was a player I enjoyed watching and rooted for when I first came to Houston in the late 60s. I continued to follow his career through his time with the Expos and, to some extent, the Mets and Tigers.

I don't actively track down his cards. I don't have a Staub checklist like I do for guys like Billy Pierce, Johnny Callison, and Mike Cuellar. But I used to put stick Staub's cards in one of my 'star' binders when I found one in my stash. And over the last few years I've added them in fits and starts, mostly from show bargain bins.

Now I don't chase autographs particularly but I like having one example in my player collections. It occurred to me that I had no signed Staub card. A month or so ago I decided to rectify that. I found this 2004 Fleer Greats card on eBay for a nice price and picked it up. I didn't pay much attention to it other than the fact that it was an 'authorized' signature card so I figured it was legit.

What I didn't figure is that it was a sticker autograph. I don't have anything against sticker autographs but if I'm going to just have one signed card of a player I'd rather it be an 'on card' one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I guess I could have looked closer at the photo in the listing but I'm pretty quick on the trigger sometimes. This was one of those times. And besides...I did look at the text on the back and it didn't raise any red flags. Here's my scan of the back:

And here is a closer look at the key section of the back just in case, like me, you have aging eyes:

Notice that it says "PERSONALLY AUTOGRAPHED". Well, if we are going to get technical the sticker was personally autographed. The card? Nope. Here's the graph and blown up it's pretty obvious that it's a sticker.

It's not the end of the world. After all, it is a pretty attractive card. This is neither the first nor last time I'll buy or bid without looking at the small print as it were. So I'll quit kvetching over a first world problem and go stick it in my binder now.

Card Show Cards Pt. 2

Here are the rest of my cheap vintage grabs at Saturday's show. I may have this Jackie Jensen card already but I figured that I could pick it up just in case. Jensen was a great but troubled talent. You can find the abridged version of his backstory on my '59 Topps blog.

Sometimes one great card of a player can inspire me to make it the cornerstone of a PC. That was the case with the 1961 Topps Wes Covington. This '62 is nice but it doesn't compare to the '61.

Early 60s specials were very cool. I don't think I appreciated them back in the day. And I don't remember this '63 Stengel-Woodling card. I saw one Met game at the Polo Grounds. I seem to recall it being against the Phillies but I'm never sure about that.

Anyway I couldn't pass up a Stengel.

Orlando Cepeda was a terrific hitter, and a darn good defensive player as well. But someone will have to convince me that he's a Hall of Fame player. I'm always willing to admit I'm wrong but even the best efforts of my Giants' buddies haven't ever swayed me.

That didn't stop me from picking up this Cepeda. You never know who may need it.

I always thought Rusty Staub, otoh, was under-appreciated. That may be because i got to see some of his best days in Houston. The top hat trophy sure adds a nice touch to a card. Rusty was very young when he started in the bigs and he looks like a high school player on this '64. I have an under-the-radar Staub collection. I don't even look for his cards but when they appear I buy them. It's like collecting by osmosis.

I bought this '61 Bob Lillis for no other reason than I like the combo of colors and the palm tree background.

So that's the lot of the card show goodies. I was able to hit up someone's want list and those went out in the mail on Monday. Today was spent waiting for the 'rain-ageddon'. That never came. And quickly led to a few choice memes.