Musing about my five collecting interests: All things Orioles and BALTIMORE Colts, 50's Baseball, team publications, Japanese cards and even some football and hockey.
You might find some beautiful women, soccer stuff, presidential pins and life advice from time to time. I don't charge extra for any of those.
On Monday I received this Koufax from the Topps Project 2020 effort from Justin, a friend I met a couple of years ago through Net54. He's a Red Sox guy and this was paired with a Ted Williams card he wanted and he was kind enough to send it to me knowing I do enjoy Koufax cards.
To be honest, I don't keep up with what Topps is doing with this project and the Topps Now cards. The card back tells me that 20 artists did twenty cards. I've seen a couple here and there on blogs and many of those were pretty abstract. This card, however, is close enough to the original to be recognizable. And since the iconic '55 Koufax is one of my favorite cards ever, it's a very welcome addition to my collection.
The artist is Lawrence Atoigue and I'm guessing he's done or is doing, 19 other cards for this project if I'm following the description correctly. From what I saw on their page the 20 artists are doing their own versions of the same cards. From what I saw this is one of the better Koufax'.
I may go check some of the other ones out. I think keeping it in the holder is probably for the best so it won't go into the binder. But my original '55 Sandy is in a slab as well so they can keep each other company in my box of graded cards.
Thanks again, Justin. It was very nice of you to have had me in mind for this. You've inspired me to actually read my emails from Topps!
My wife is off performing 'nursing' duties for my father-in-law who is having some health issues. I'm home watching movies and listing to music and doing a consolidation of boxes and a culling of 'stuff'. Here are some random items I've come across in the last few days. Just because.
Signed 3x7 Tadder photo of Elliott Maddox, a Oriole in 1977 between stints with the two New York teams.
Sandy Koufax oversized card from TCMA circa 1982. Oh, those windbreaker-under-the-jersey days!
1979 Topps Larry Hisle comic. I think these came with gum, not inserted into cards. Why I have this I can't really say. But I'm going to put it in the back of my '79 binder.
I love this next card, even though I shouldn't. First year Donruss Reggie. I like this set and I don't care who knows it.
Philly Gum King Hill. One of the best football names ever. He's holding 'The Duke'. We would have sold our grandmothers to the cannibals to own one of those back then.
I've been on a St. Louis Browns kick since our trip up there this past July. Here is Satchel Paige from a 1977 TCMA/Renata Gallaso set.
I have a bunch of Pokemon cards in a box for no reason. They came from my sons and from kids at my school who defied my rules about keeping 'toys' in their backpacks. Next time I'm out at my school I'm going to drop these off if i find out they are still a thing. I'll check the next time I'm at Target. They have all sorts of crappy stuff next to their sports cards. Maybe Pokemon is part of that.
Hey.. he's called 'Kadabra'...I get it now. If you pair him with 'Abra' you get 12 zillion Power Ups.
Upper Deck Football Legends set is awesome. I have the base set and
some extras like this signed card on one of my favorite players, Tommy
McDonald.
1990s Bagwell from something called Impact. This I'm sure came from the boxes of stuff my boys left behind.
This card of The Dream needs to go into my University of Houston binder. I also need to blog my 'buying fried chicken for Hakeem' story one of these days.
Lastly, and perhaps most randomly... a Gardner's 1984 Robin Yount. The back is the same as the '84 Topps, I think. From a very brief Google look it seems Gardner's sold out to Bimbo some time back and is now gone as a brand name. truth is I can't imagine where this came from.
That's it for now. You simply wouldn't believe the amount of odds and ends i have stashed around here. Time to clean it all up!
I hate spending more for postage than I do for the card I'm buying and because of that I find myself buying 'add-ons' to make my transactions 'worthwhile'. I can't recall what I was picking up or where when I grabbed these '86 Sports Design Products cards.
These have popped up on other folks blogs from time to time. They use photos from the collection of J.D. McCarthy who did postcards for sale to fans and players over the course of several decades. I love old McCarthy postcards and have quite a few in my various collections. Hobby icon Bob Lemke purchased the McCarthy archives and was in the process of cataloging it when he passed away about a year ago. So we may never see much more of that huge treasure trove of photos any time soon.
These are obviously a riff on the 1969 Topps cards. At least the fronts are. The backs are spare and look pretty amateurish compared to the front side. These remind me of the sorts of cards I'd see alongside Broders, Bammers and phone cards back when card shows attracted lots of 'dealers' looking to cash in on the sports card/memorabilia boom.
I think the seller had most of the set available but I just grabbed these because they struck my fancy. I don't have a favorite but I sure do like this shot of Sandy Koufax.
Just to slide a bit off-track I found a postcard that would seem to be from this same photo session. It's a McCarthy postcard. You can see his logo in the lower left corner. He used that on most of his postcards but not all of them.
Back to the cards at hand..... aren't those stirrups on Roberto Clemente grand?
I add Whitey Ford cards to my collection from time to time because he was a favorite of my father. And because I saw him pitch more times than I could count. I can't decide if this shot comes from his playing days or not. Ford had a couple of stints as a coach with the Yankees and I know he spent a lot of spring training time with the team after his retirement.
Looks like Yaz' picture was taken on the same day as Ford's. Maybe McCarthy drove from Ft. Lauderdale to Winter Haven one day in the mid-60s.
This last one, listed as #1 in the set's checklist is a bit different in that there only the rounded frame mirrors the '69 Topps theme. If you clicked on the Wrigley Wax blog link above you saw that the other duel player card in this set, Banks/Hodges, uses this same design. This one shows J.D. McCarthy himself posing with Ted Williams. I'd never seen McCarthy in a photo so I added this to my 'stack'.
There isn't much online concerning this set. Sports Designs put out a two part set in the years prior to this one. It used artwork by Doug West. It was featured in a couple of posts on The Oddball Card Collector blog.
For those interested here is the SDP/McCarthy checklist:
1 J.D. McCarthy / Ted Williams
2 Lou Brock
3 Carl Yastrzemski
4 Mickey Mantle
5 Roger Maris
6 Walter Alston
7 Ernie Banks
8 Billy Williams
9 Hank Aaron
10 Brooks Robinson
11 Joe DiMaggio
12 Casey Stengel
13 Juan Marichal
14 Jim Bunning
15 Matty Alou
16 Eddie Mathews
17 Sandy Koufax
18 Roberto Clemente
19 Gil Hodges / Ernie Banks
20 Duke Snider
21 Robin Roberts
22 Willie Mays
23 Willie Stargell
24 Whitey Ford
I was buying a few football cards from an eBay dealer and needed to pick another card to qualify for free shipping. I can always use another Koufax so I nabbed this for two bucks I think. But the free shipping deal made it free. It's a 'refractor' which is a term I've never tried to understand when it comes to cards. To me it's just 'shiny'. Other than that I don't have much to say about it. Other than...
....it's warped as a mother. Look at this thing. Every chrome-y Bowman I have (which isn't a lot) is pretty much as warped as this one.
Can't they make these things so that they lay flat?
One of my hobby quirks is that some cards are better if they are not perfect. Case in point...Post Cereal cards. Back in the day my friends and I ate a lot of Alpha Bits, Rice Krinkles and whatever it was that they called their version of Frosted Flakes (Frosted Post Toasties?).
There were families with six or so boys that lived at either end the street back then (heavily Catholic town) and we all collected and traded these. And we all did terrible jobs of cutting up the boxes. After I bought this Koufax recently the seller messaged me to say that he had failed to mention a crease that ran thru the card in his description. He offered to cancel the sale if I wanted to. Cancel it? Hell, no. Send that puppy my way!
The other thing I don't do is binder these or my Jello cards. I keep them in a stack in a shoe box on the top shelf of my hobby closet. (I'd prefer a cigar box but I haven't had one of those around is ages.) I love shuffling thru them when I'm feeling old and need a shot of nostalgia. Like this week when I got my official Medicare card in the mail from the SSA.
Speaking of Medicare... when they showed Sandy at the World Series recently my first thought was "He looks like he could still give 'em and inning or two...and he might have to". He also looks remarkably like my father. Even my wife mentioned it.
Anyway, here he is at the World Series. The best lefty I've ever seen.
One of the best things about the TCMA sets is that co-founder Mike Aronstein was able to tap into a big stash of pictures taken by free lance photographers. So many of the cards have unique photos. If you are tired of Topps' overuse of the same couple of Jackie Robinson pics you understand the attraction of these cards.
For example here we have Roberto Clemente. Have you ever seen this picture? Neither have I, until I found this set. I believe it was taken at the Polo Grounds but I'd listen to arguments.
Jim Bouton at Yankee Stadium. As a kid going to games there I was always interested in the flags that flew above the roof. They were displayed in the order of the current standings. Like stirrups they are a detail of the game that I miss.
Whenever a set has a card of Vic Power I'll scan and post it because I just like typing the name Vic Power.
Mooooose!
Sandy Koufax at the Polo Grounds. Again, a different pic than we usually see on cards.
Milt Pappas wearing my favorite Orioles jersey. In fact that whole early 60s uniform set for the Birds was sweet.
Speaking of sweet unis here is Eddie Kasko wearing the classic Colt 45s outfit in a photo that just reeks of Arizona spring training.
I'm a sucker for nice pics of players in Milwaukee Braves unis and for pics of players posing in the Polo Grounds. Denny Lemaster hits on both.
Tony Horton just looks too young to be a major leaguer in this shot. At first glance I was certain that Horton was posing in Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The seating area certainly resembles the upper stands at the old place but the light standards are wrong. But in any case Horton is one of the most fascinating characters in the game's history. And he wasn't seen on a ton of cards.
I love this card of Bobby Richardson. He was one of my father's favorites and despite the fact that he played for the Yankees I always gave him a lot of respect. From all accounts he's a prince of a guy still.
Here is what may be the most TCMA-ish card in the set. Larry Jackson lounges against a brick wall.
Stu Miller won 23 games out of the bullpen for the Orioles in 1965/66. Over those two seasons he had an ERA of about 2.00 and a WHIP of under 1.0 and was 7th in MVP voting in '65. He won a Series ring in '66 and never even had to warm up.
Mudcat Grant. Do yourself a favor. Watch this video of him singing at the memorial service for Harmon Killebrew in 2011. He's accompanied on guitar by Tony Oliva's son.
You're welcome.
One of the more under appreciated players I saw as a kid was Vada Pinson. I casually collect his cards. I'm glad to have this one.
Johnny Podres at the Polo Grounds. Just a nice card.
Hoyt Wilhelm. Not a whole lot of pitchers make All Star teams 17 seasons apart.
'Hector's Pup' is what my father called Hector Lopez. I guess it came from the expression that went along the lines of "I haven't _____ since Hector was a pup!" meaning a long time ago. Why my father called him that I don't know. I never asked.
Don Larsen in another 1965 Astros spring training photo. We know it's '65 since that was the only year he spent the spring with Houston. He was 35 years old but seemed older than that.
Hank Aaron at Shea Stadium. The Braves, like the Orioles, didn't have their city on their road unis for quite some time.
And finally Chuck Hinton, my old Start-O-Matic hero, in his Cleveland garb at Yankee Stadium. He played six seasons for the Indians but stuck a season (1968) with the Angels right in the middle of them.
I had forgotten until I looked him up on Baseball Reference that he was originally signed by the Orioles who lost him to the Washington Senators in the 1960 expansion draft. He made the 1964 AL All Star team as a Senator and got to play a couple of innings in left field at Shea in relief of Harmon Killebrew.
Last night I won an auction for a nearly complete Series II piece of this set. It lacks nine cards which will give me something to chase. When I looked at the checklist I discovered that Series II contains the multi-player cards that were lacking in this 291 card Series I. It arrives next week. At that point I'm calling a hobby 'timeout' and will organize and page/binder the entire TCMA run of sets I've picked up.
Last week I was buying a Civil War News card on COMC. It was in great shape and very cheap and upgraded a terrible one in my binder. But the $4.00 shipping made me want to get a bit more into my cart to make it more palatable. I hate paying as much for shipping as I do for a card so I dug up a few 2017's.
I haven't read many (any?) positive comments about this '17 Topps subset. But I like them. I think they are sharp looking. Sure there is some wasted space but at least there isn't any 'fog' or ESPN-esque graphics. I know there are several different categories within this group of cards...Legends... Mother's Day.. Jackie Robinson Day, etc. but I'm not interested enough to investigate.
I'd seen the Frank Robinson Legends card on another blog. I don't have many cards of him with the Indians and I always sort of liked the 'caveman' feel the Indians' wordmark at that time. It's just ugly enough to be cool.
Koufax. Dude worked his ass off on the mound.
Jim Palmer. I've seen this photo before. He and...
...Brooksie are my go-to guys when it comes to buying 'pieces' of sets. That's what happens when you name your sons after ballplayers. When you find a card set you like you go look for Brooks and Palmer in it.
That's it, nothing earth-shattering today. Posting cards, finishing the workday and heading off to watch some college baseball.
