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.
Angus, a frequent commenter*, football fan and blogger (Cleveland Browns-centric Dawg Day Cards) recently knocked two items off my much neglected Baltimore Colts needs list.
These Topps 1969 inserts called "4 in 1's" are actually stamps which were intended to be separated and placed in the appropriate team folder. They are 'stamps' rather than 'stickers' in that they have moisture (spit!) activated glue on the reverse rather that a peel-and-stick system like the Fleer stickers everyone has stacks of from the 80s.
There were ten Colts issued and many, if not all, use photos that were also used on the 1969 regular issue cards. I think a couple used photos from earlier Topps sets but right now I'm too busy to verify this. You can see more of these in this post from my Baltimore Colts history series.
Johnny Unitas graced the cover of the album which was the same size as the 4 player 'cards', the standard 2" x 3". EDIT:I found this article with more detail on these including a few variations.
Despite of the fact he was the album cover boy (or maybe because of that) he was not one of the two 'Colts Stars' that were featured in the little album's centerfold.
Angus' swell gift inspired me to go find my final needed stamp card (Willie Richardson) and I snagged it recently. Slowly chipping away at my Colts list will be a fun retirement project.
Angus helped stuff the envelope with this Ray May Action Packed card which I didn't have. Since it was from a 1990s set I hadn't gone after it. But it does picture a BALTIMORE Colt and is intended as a salute to an honor he won with them so I can happily add it to my binder in the miscellaneous Colts card section.
Man, my scanner did a terrible job on this one. Silver foil+embossed surface=multiple attempts to get a usable image. LOL
Angus, thanks so much for the cards, for reading and remarking, and for cranking up your blog again. Maybe the cards I have headed your way will help in a small way to brighten up a lousy Browns season.
Being the sucker for Billy Pierce items that I am I couldn't pass up making an offer on this bobblehead of him issued as a giveaway by the Joliet JackHammers in 2007.
Like a lot of these this one bears only a passing resemblance to the player it represents. It could just as easily be a bobble of my uncle Ralph in his younger days. The JackHammers were in existence from 2002 through 2010 as part of the independent Northern League. They were a favorite of fellow Pierce collector Jedi Jeff of 2x3 Heroes blogging fame. They morphed into the Joliet Slammers in 2011.
The uniform with the 'C' and the cap with the 'white sock' is what happens when a minor league team creates an unlicensed bobblehead.
On the plus side Billy did sign the cap (sort of):
Anyway, for all it's flaws it's a welcome part of my Pierce collection. The fact that I had no idea it existed until I stumbled across the eBay listing makes it that much better. Now I need to decide who he bumps from my shelves or if I need to add another shelf. I think another shelf is the way to go.
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?
I keep a spreadsheet which tracks my publications collection. For years I had the 1958 Orioles Media Guide marked off and assumed I only needed those from 1954 and 1956. A year or so I was rearranging my shelving and discovered that I lacked the '58 and added it to my want-list and eBay saved searches.
I was able to land one in pretty decent shape a month ago for about what I'd expected to pay. These are not things of beauty. And they are nowhere close to being as comprehensive as modern guides but they sure are fun to collect. the first few seasons the Orioles labeled them as 'Spring Training Guides' and the cartoon covers reflected that. But into the 60s the idea of a media guide to be used throughout the season evolved.
Anyway this one is 24 pages counting both covers.
The pages I scanned are self-explanatory. Staff listings, schedules, basic franchise info and records, etc.
The Spring Training schedule includes just the Giants, Cubs and Indians as only four clubs were training in Arizona in 1958. The Orioles played three games against the Reds in Baltimore before the regular season started.
The Orioles 40 man:
The player bios were mostly stats and basic info. I'm always interested in ticket prices from back in the day. The best seat in Memorial Stadium in '58 would have set you back $2.75!
The schedules back then always had some quirks. Nowadays you'll never see a one day series as the Orioles played on May 30 against the Red Sox. Without looking it up I'm guessing that's a Memorial Day doubleheader. The BoSox played a single game in Baltimore in August as well.
And there are a couple of 'split' weekends when the Orioles host different teams on Sunday than they do on Saturday (May 3/4, July 12/13, Aug 23/24). They have a couple of road weekends like that, too. Crazy, right?
Now my quest is actually down to two guides. I'm prepared to pay whatever it takes for the '54 guide. The '56 is less expensive and I'll snag that one soon enough.
A couple of unexpected things happened here in the last 36 hours or so. First of all I got a surprise (but very welcome) envelope from my friend Mike McKay of Chicago. He had picked up a box of the holiday Topps set which I have since learned come only from WalMart stores in blasters. Mike forwarded the Orioles he got in his box. Pretty much the three biggest names on the team, Chris Davis, Manny Machado and Adam Jones.
They are a pretty neat item. But if I was a team 'complete-ist' I might be annoyed with Topps adding to my needs list so late in the year. Then again I think the days of collecting every card from your team (or player) is long gone. I dunno how everyone else feels about these but I think the addition of the little snowflakes is kind of cool (pun intended).
The other thing that kind of snuck up on us down here in Houston was snow. I woke up this morning to a nice layer of the white stuff covering everything except the street in my neighborhood. As I expected Facebook is full of Houston folks screaming that it's the first time we've ever seen snow but you know how that is. It doesn't happen all that often but we've had the white stuff here every few years as long as I can remember.
Here are the other cards from the 'snow set' that Mike sent. Thanks, again, Mike!
The Adam Jones card makes it appear he's trying to catch some of the flakes with a diving effort. I wonder if that was intended.
Here's something that won't interest many (any? LOL) but it sure made me happy. The 1972 Sunoco Stamps Baltimore Colts issue was part of a semi-national gas station premium that featured 24 players from each NFL team plus an album.
The initial group of 24 Colts was easy to find in a lot on eBay, as was the album. What was much more difficult were the two 'new player' stickers which were what amounted to an update to the original group.
Back in October I found a seller who had these things. I sent him an offer for the two Colts and then the listing disappeared. But the seller contacted me and said he'd relist them for the price I offered and that was that. It was all sort of weird but in the end I picked up what amounted to a pair of minor 'white whales'.
Yes, the two new player stickers actually have 'NEW PLAYER' printed on the bottom. Here is the post from early 2015 in which I included these things as part of my Baltimore Colts Card History series. Below are a couple of the regular issue stickers.
Social media can be an awful place, but I didn't have to tell you that, did I? I have Facebook and Twitter accounts but sometimes you just have to walk away from them for a bit. At least I do. But there is some upside to them too, if you know how to filter the garbage.
For example a couple of months ago I saw posted a shot of the great Bears runningback, Gale Sayers. It reminded me that one of my hobby goals has been to pick up the Sayers rookie card out of the 1966 Philly Gum set. It's been a card I've wanted but wasn't going to overpay for. Nor was I going to buy a terrible copy just to say I had it. A couple of weeks after I started looking I found this one on eBay.
It's flawed but still very collectible. Any Philly Gum card you come across is likely to be flawed. That company had some real issues with quality control but there is no disputing the fact that their cards are classics.
Oddly my new scanner hated my copy and gave it what looks like a 'diamond cut' but in hand that's not the case. The fact that it's off center can't detract from the awesomeness of this thing. That's Soldier Field in the background, pre-renovation Soldier Field to be exact.
As for Sayers...he's right up there among the most exciting players I've ever seen.. His career lasted essentially five seasons but when he was on the field he was the center of everyone's attention. He came out of college with a nickname that would truly define his career, the Kansas Comet. And like a comet he was brilliant and flashed past us all too quickly.
The cardback has an obvious flaw, that burn-like mark but I'm just happy to have been able to find one in decent shape that didn't break my budget. While doing my searches I also came across a nice copy of the 1970 Sayers Topps Super. These are very affordable so I nabbed one as well.
Here is the back:
Topps slightly modified the back of their regular '70 Sayers card for the back of the Super. Here is the flagship Topps card's back.
And back to the 'side topic' at hand, social media. I went looking on YouTube for some Sayers highlights. The best one I could find was pretty impressive. But to my surprise (and consternation) it's set to some music that contains "N Bombs" which made me glad I wasn't doing the search while I was at work. So I found another one to include here. Well worth watching even with the less than superb quality ...and you can experience the Staples Singers to boot. Check out his run at about 1:50 against the Baltimore Colts. LOL at my team.
I mentioned how tough Philly Gum cards can be to find in good shape. Here's the perfect example. PSA graded this one as an 8 despite the ragged cuts you can see along the sides. Everything is relative.
EDIT, EDIT, EDIT!!!
Within a few hours of my posting this Jedi Jeff, author of 2x3 Heroes and a knowledgeable Chicago guy posted a comment to this entry asking me about the stadium background on the Sayers card. His contention is that the pic was likely not taken at Soldier Field as I stated but rather Kezar Stadium, them home of the SF 49ers.
Now I had spent some time prior to posting doing some googling and felt pretty sure the the shot was from Soldier Field but Jeff had me doubting myself. I love old stadiums and poking around the 'net to find the origin of shots used in the Topps baseball sets I've blogged was always a treat. And sometimes I was challenged by a reader and found myself to be way off base.
I decided to go down this rabbit hole and see where it took me. I based my statement on the scoreboard partially visible behind Sayers. To me it matched the old scoreboard at Soldier Field. The following are the best shots I could find.
I clipped the scoreboard from the racing pic and part of the card. It looked like this:
Looks pretty close. Note the 'legs' that hold up the scoreboard and the position of the flagpole.
Here is a picture of Kezar Stadium from the 1950s:
It's hard to see but the scoreboard doesn't look the same. But that's not exactly a deal breaker. Scoreboards come and go. But look closer at the pic above. Note where the ramps are in the area around the far end of the stadium. Here is a closer cropped look:
They are up near the very top of the stands. The ramps in Soldier Field were farther down, near the middle of the stands.
And it's certainly wouldn't hold up as evidence in court but this really neat piece of artwork sure looks like a match for the scoreboard in the card.
BTW...this Soldier Field rendering is one of many done by artist Gary Chanko. He is featured semi-regularly on the UniWatch blog and there is a Flickr site with all his scoreboard art. Very much worth the click!
And finally there is one more fact to deal with. Jeff pointed out that the Bears didn't use Soldier Field as a permanent home in until later. The Bears' site itself claims their home to have been Wrigley Field until 1970. But that's not entirely true. While Jeff's link to Wikipedia has them spending the 1965 season at Wrigley the 1964 season was played at Soldier Field.
So I'm going to stand by my original feeling that the 1966 Gale Sayers rookie uses a picture taken at Soldier Field. What say you jury of my peers?
