Mystery cards!

A few days ago a PWE arrived, and I put the emphasis on 'plain'. 😊 There was no return label or written addy. The postmark was running off the top of the envelope but I could make out a bit of it, and it read OSE, CA. But I knew cards were inside it, you can always tell.

Popping it open revealed shiny things, mostly Orioles from various and sundry sets from earlier in the last decade. Back before Topps had the only license. There was also no clue as to the sender but I suspected that the OSE, CA meant the cards were from San Jose, California, and that meant Fuji. Either that or they came from my wife's 92ish-year-old uncle and that seemed pretty unlikely.

So, wanting to confirm the sender (a thank you note to someone who hasn't sent anything would be dumb), I consulted the oracle of hobby mysteries, my Magic 8-Ball.

I asked the ball who sent the PWE. Got the answer:

Yup, I figured as much. And here they are (the ones that scanned decently, anyway):

Nick Markakis which signifies 10 games with 3+ hits by featuring the number '5'. I don't understand but I like the card anyway. The irony of it referring to Atlanta isn't lost on me.

Upper Deck 'X' card of Nick.

Upper Deck sure was fixated on 'X', yes?

Next up is a Fleer card from 2007 that has embossed gold and is sparkly...it's channeling the 90s.

I'll never understand how Machado wasn't an Orioles lifer. OK, I actually do know why but I don't have to like it, do I?

Cal, shiny.

Cal, textured (and tinted).

I saw someone online wearing a shirt that read "Davis Got A Hit!". I was going to seek one out but wearing it here in Houston would just draw quizzical looks.

That was referring to this, of course.

A couple of Miggy cards. In a fun coincidence, he was the subject of a story on The Athletic's site yesterday. Apparently, he wants to get back into baseball as the Athletics' hitting coach. If you have access to the article it's an entertaining read.

Melvin Mora was an Oriole whose career I completely missed. And I missed the Topps Total sets as well. It was a nice idea and something I wish they still did. But I do realize why it won't happen.

When you look at the 'Similar Batters' listing for Javy Lopez on Baseball-Reference the top name is Roy Campenella. Just sayin'.

I have no idea why Jake Arrieta is wearing a blue uni top on this card. But it's from 2008 which is two years before he made the majors so I'm guessing the photo is from the Futures Game or something like that.

And finally, this is a clear plastic Magglio Ordonez. He wasn't an Oriole at any point so I figure Fuji was using this to fill space in the folded 9-pocket or he wants to see me try to use it as a credit card somewhere. It's unique, that's for sure.

So, thanks Fuji! I hope the fall brings you a more normal teaching experience. All my friends in the business told me that the past spring semester was no fun at all.

In the near term, I hope we all get to enjoy some baseball. I'm not holding my breath though.

I'm Still Here

But I haven't really had much going on hobby-wise, at least when it comes to picking up new 'stuff'. I've been plowing through the 1960 set and writing as many posts as I can. I'm set through July and into August I think.

I finally dug into a project I've been mulling for quite some time. The 1960 'colors' breakdown. With two main colors plus two (or more) text colors the combinations mount up fast. But I'm still tinkering with the spreadsheet so it'll be a few days before that gets posted.

Meanwhile, enjoy a football card from my 'These Need to Be Put In The Right Binder' box.

I posted my new(ish) 1986 Topps football set a few weeks back. Topps was putting 1000 Yard Club insert cards into packs back then and I bought the '86 group through SportsLots. (My "SportsLots is the worst designed card-selling website ever!" rant can wait)

I also picked up a signed Eric Dickerson from that insert set. I ought to hate Dickerson, he used to absolutely kill my Houston Cougars and I'm no fan of the SMU program. But ED was a ton of fun to watch.

Here's the card:

And the back:

They did versions of this insert through much of the 80s. 


Kind of surprising that the backs were colored so differently than the regular cards:

Then again, it's Topps, so maybe not.

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.

Nostalgia Is A Helluva Drug!

Everyone that reads card blogs, frequents card-related forums, or checks out the various hobby publications has seen these lines many, many times:

"That's the first set I remember (collected/opened packs of, etc)!"

"I loved that set growing up!"

"My father (or older brother) had that set"

And so on. If I had a buck for every time I've read those, I'd own a '52 Mantle. Heck, If I had a buck for every time I've said something along those lines I'd own the whole '52 Topps set. No doubt nostalgia for things that bring back fond memories drives a segment of this hobby. For me, it drives about 90% of what I collect. What I collected and enjoyed as a kid is largely what I collect today.


Which brings me to this latest Net54 purchase of mine. I sprung for some cheap Challenge The Yankees cards. I wrote about this game previously, particularly in this rundown of all the card/dice/electronic baseball games I've owned through the years.

Challenge The Yankees was the simplest of them all. You rolled the two dice and read the results off the hitters' card. Who the pitcher was made absolutely no difference. Hank Aaron's chance of a homer was the same against Marshall Bridges as it was against Whitey Ford. But that didn't matter to my friends and I. We liked it more than the Cadaco All-Star Baseball game of the era that used a spinner. Dice never 'landed on a line' like the spinner could, which always led to 'debates'.

There were some cards to pull when you rolled a 'ground ball' result and some other enhancements. But for the most part, it was just you, the dice, and the player cards. 

CTY was issued in both 1964 and 1965. Many of the same players appeared both years but the rosters did change a bit. I had the '64 edition. I remember that the aforementioned Marshall Bridges was included.

The players' cards were all the same format for both editions. The Yankees had blue at the top.

The Yankees of this era liked catcher/outfielders. Johnny Blanchard, an aging Yogi Berra, and Elston Howard all fit that mold in the early 60s.

After the days of Joe Dimaggio and Allie Reynolds, my father latched on to some of the lesser Yankee regulars. He was a Hector Lopez guy.

The All-Stars were green.

A few years back someone tried to revive the Challenge The Yankees game with a crowdsourced edition through Indiegogo. I backed the project but it failed to make the minimum, and we were refunded. I was pretty disappointed. Sports Collectors Daily had a story about the game and the folks behind the attempted re-boot. The rosters from both editions of the game are at the bottom.

The cards of some of the star players from the game, Mickey Mantle in particular, can get pretty pricey. My originals are long gone. These 'commons' will serve to remind me of the hours I spent with my father and my friends playing this (and the other) baseball board games.

Follow-Up on TCMA Cardinals '40s set

Boy, was I ever wrong.

Monday I posted the TCMA '42-'46 Cardinals set. Near the end, I noted that the set had been reissued in 1983. Based on what I knew of TCMA and what I had seen of the cards online (or thought I had seen) I assumed that two versions were basically the same. Not so.

Here is the Buddy Blattner card from the '83 version of the set:

And Ray Sanders:

The player's name and position are now rendered in black in a slightly narrower (and cleaner to my eye) font.

The bigger difference is on the reverse...

The '83s were printed on gray cardboard. Each player gets a summary paragraph dealing with his career with an emphasis on the '42 thru '46 seasons. The stats are much more presentable than the typewritten ones of the earlier version. There is no comparison, the '83s look much more professional.

The difference in the shades of gray between the two '83s above is a scanner thing, they look the same in hand. Note that the copyright is updated and the cards are now numbered.

Ken Burkhart's card was one I had in the 'red cardinal' version and I thought I had found the regular version. But the card I acquired turned out to be the '83:

This leaves me with the '75 variation and the '83 non-variation. Scanning them together allowed me to notice that I had assumed the '73s were 'standard' sized. Nope, they are about 5/32nds taller than standard. The '83s are exactly 2.5 x 3.5, the size card we know today.

I also picked up the second of the two different 3-player specials that featured Stan Musial, Mgr Billy Southworth and a third player. Johnny Hopp in one, Ray Sanders in the other. '83 w/Sanders on top, '75 w/Hopp on the bottom.

TCMA moved the text to the side, bordered the photo, and added the era/team designation that the player cards have. The reverse is also different in style.

So I have ended up with a mixed set. LOL...I may poke around and try to find '75 versions of them all and keep the '83 in the back pages like I do with my '62 Green Tints. Or not.

It was kind of fun discovering these things. TCMA was a weird and wonderful company.

TCMA Cardinals, 40s Version

Last week I posted the oddball Gashouse Gang TCMA set from 1974 that was given to me by a dealer a few years back at the hotel show I attend frequently. The majority of the cards in my 'brown bag gift' were also from a Cardinals-related set issued by TCMA. This one was done originally in 1975 and it commemorates the Cardinals club from 1942 through 1946.

St. Louis was the toast of the National League during that span. They took home four league titles and won World Series championships over the Yankees in '42 and Red Sox in 1946.

Their rosters back then were dotted with stars and Hall of Famers, particularly among their everyday players. The '75 TCMA set is much larger than the Gashouse Gang edition, both in terms of card size and checklist size. These (mostly) black and white cards are standard size. I was wrong...they are slightly 'taller' than standard card size. See the follow-up post for more. The checklist stands at 61 plus a couple of variations which we will deal with in a bit.

The Stan Musial card at the top is my favorite of the bunch. I always like bat rack photos used on cards and, well, it's Stan The Man! Next up is shortstop Marty Marion, a four-time All-Star and 1944's MVP. Marion and I share the nickname, 'Slats'. I don't know how Marion earned it and I'm sure not telling how I did.

The regular, single-player cards have the same style of typewritten stat backs as was seen in the '74 set. These carry four seasons of basic numbers for players who were with the Cards for all four seasons. Players have no stats for the years they were elsewhere.

Another fun card is that of infielder Frank Angelo Joseph Crespi, aka 'Creepy' Crespi. That is one of the great names in baseball history. Crespi is an interesting guy. He was the Cards' starting second baseman in 1941 but lost his job to Jimmy Brown in '42. He still got into over 90 games and scored a run in the '42 Series.

Crespi declined a military deferment that he was entitled to as sole supporter of his elderly mother. He said, "I don't think I'm too good to fight for the things I've always enjoyed." Crespi entered the Army in '43 and ended up breaking his leg three(!) times during his military service (though not in combat). The first break came while playing on an Army ball club in Kansas. The second break came as a result of a training accident. The third, well, he apparently was racing other patients in his wheelchair and wrecked. 😧

He never returned to baseball. After numerous attempts to qualify for a big-league pension, he finally gave up and continued his post-baseball work in the financial offices at McDonald-Douglas. Many years later it was determined that Crespi had never officially retired and was credited with time on the DL. He got his pension.

Terry Moore roamed center for the Cards when he wasn't serving with Uncle Sam. He was a four-time All-Star.

Joe Garagiola played was platoon catcher for the Cards and a hometown favorite. He debuted in 1946.

Harry 'The Hat' Walker was familiar to me from his days as the manager of the Astros.

Red Schoendienst spent almost seven decades in baseball in one capacity or another before he passed at the age of 95 a few years back.

Pepper Martin had been an integral part of the cards of the 30s and returned to the team in 1944 as a stopgap infielder due to the shortage of players during WWII. He hit pretty well that year at the age of 40 but didn't get into the Series.

Enos Slaughter was another long time baseball guy who won four titles, two in St. Louis and two with the Yankees. He was known for his hustle and for scoring the winning run in the last game of the '46 Series. He was also (allegedly, and along with Terry Moore) behind an attempt to keep Jackie Robinson off major league diamonds.

Like the previous set, there are oversized cards, two in this case. One shows the team in 1942.

The back has the story of their exploits.

The other shows old Sportsman's Park and has a list of the players who were members of the Cards in this era who were not included among the cards.

Four multi-player cards are part of the set. All have World Series notes on the back. Musial is shown on two similar cards. Here is one of them.

Notice anything odd about that last card? It's the inked red cardinal on Johnny Beazley's jersey. There is another version which shows the bird without the red coloring. I'm lacking that one.

The other 'red bird' variation' is Kem Burkhart's card. His 'normal' card is headed my way at some point from COMC.

There is another variation which I haven't seen. It is a 'missing name' Lon Warneke. I haven't seen it available anywhere but It's listed on the checklist at the Trading Card Database site.

The last 'variation' is supposedly one involving Ernie White's card. 

The 'variation' is listed simply as just that, 'variation'. I've looked at a bunch of White cards over the last month or so and I'll be damned if I can figure out what the notation is supposed to indicate. The  best I can figure is a difference in how the name/team/position is situated in relationship to the photo. To tell the truth, I think I'm probably just imagining that.

This is really a more fun set than the Gashouse Gang issue. 'Fun' as in 'easier to figure out' and keep straight. I have, or will have some time in the near future, the thing finished except for the three variations I've noted. So the bottom line is I have every card.

Oh, I forgot to mention one detail. This set was 're-issued' by TCMA in 1983. Since there are no telltale markings or even cardboard color differences in the ones I have I really don't know if any I own are from the reprints. One eBay seller had his listed as '75s and '83s, but they looked identical down to the amount of wear and in every other way. If TCMA just rolled the presses in 1983 using the same original 1975 sheets there wouldn't be any difference anyway.

UPDATE--A few '83 'remakes' have arrived, and they have several significant differences. I'll get them posted in a follow-up to this soon.