Pick me a player #1

I did a count on my keepers today.  I have 137 different players in my keepers with at least 10 cards.  The players are listed below.  In an effort to get myself posting more consistently, I invite the first commenter on this post to choose one of the players below and I will post 5 of the most interesting cards I have of that player to be the subject of another blog post.  Then on that post, the first commenter can pick another player and when I get around to it, I will post 5 cards of that player, and so on.  I won't post these more than a couple of times a week max, but it should hopefully get me going again, and posts with more actual content will be right around the corner, right?  We'll see.

So who will be my first commenter/player picker on this post???  Additional comments are welcome, but only the first one will be the player featured on the next post.

Aaron Judge

Adley Rutschman

Adrian Beltre

Al Kaline

Albert Belle

Albert Pujols

Alex Rodriguez

Andre Dawson

Andruw Jones

Babe Ruth

Barry Bonds

Barry Larkin

Bo Bichette

Bo Jackson

Bob Gibson

Bobby Witt Jr.

Boog Powell

Brooks Robinson

Bryce Harper

Buster Posey

Byron Buxton

Cal Ripken Jr.

Carl Yastrzemski

Carlton Fisk

Chase Utley

Chipper Jones

Clayton Kershaw

Cody Bellinger

Corbin Carroll

Corey Seager

Dale Murphy

Darryl Strawberry

Dave Parker

David Ortiz

David Wright

Dennis Eckersley

Derek Jeter

Don Mattingly

Don Mossi

Duke Snider

Dwight Gooden

Eddie Murray

Edgar Martinez

Eric Davis

Felix Hernandez

Fernando Tatis Jr.

Francisco Lindor

Frank Robinson

Frank Thomas

Freddie Freeman

Gary Carter

George Brett

Greg Maddux

Gunnar Henderson

Hank Aaron

Harmon Killebrew

Ichiro Suzuki

Ivan Rodriguez

Jacob DeGrom

Jeff Bagwell

Jim Palmer

Jim Rice

Jim Thome

Joe Mauer

Joe Morgan

Joey Votto

John Smoltz

Johnny Bench

Jose Altuve

Jose Canseco

Juan Gonzalez

Juan Soto

Julio Rodriguez

Justin Verlander

Ken Griffey Jr.

Kirby Puckett

Lou Brock

Luis Arraez

Manny Machado

Manny Ramirez

Mariano Rivera

Max Scherzer

Mickey Mantle

Miguel Cabrera

Mike Piazza

Mike Schmidt

Mike Trout

Mookie Betts

Nolan Arenado

Nolan Ryan

Ozzie Smith

Paul Goldschmidt

Paul Molitor

Pedro Martinez

Pete Alonso

Pete Rose

Phil Niekro

Randy Johnson

Reggie Jackson

Rickey Henderson

Roberto Alomar

Roberto Clemente

Robin Yount

Rod Carew

Roger Clemens

Rollie Fingers

Ronald Acuna Jr.

Ryne Sandberg

Salvador Perez

Sammy Sosa

Sandy Koufax

Scott Rolen

Shohei Ohtani

Stan Musial

Stephen Strasburg

Steve Carlton

Steve Garvey

Ted Williams

Thurman Munson

Todd Helton

Tom Glavine

Tom Seaver

Tony Gwynn

Vladimir Guerrero

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Wade Boggs

Warren Spahn

Will Clark

Willie Mays

Willie McCovey

Willie Stargell

Xander Bogaerts

Yadier Molina

Yogi Berra

Yordan Alvarez

Zack Greinke

I got some Mo(re)

 At the most recent card show, three distinct things of interest happened.  Here they are

1. I found the only basketball card in an entire dime box of baseball cards, and it ended up being the only card I bought.  That's pretty unusual, because, while I do collect basketball cards, I always hit baseball first, as they are my priority.  So to go through a whole baseball dime box and only buy the one basketball card in there was quite a trip.  Here is the card I bought:

Mr. McClung is not even really an NBA player.  But I do really like this card, from 2023/24 Topps G-League.  I think it is the first I have ever seen of him in person.  He definitely added back into the recent dunk contests some of the same feelings of excitement that I used to get waaaay back when Spud, Dominique and Michael were in it.  I appreciate that, as many of the years since then have been kind of duds.  Not all of them of course, but maybe more meh years than good ones.

2. Out of the blue, one of my favorite dealers asked everyone at his table, "anyone like Gregg Jeffries?".  We all looked at each other, and I finally said, 'I remember liking him back in the day'.  He reached under the table and pulled out this:

And gave it to me on the spot for free.  I have no idea what it's history is, but it looks and feels legit.  Not exactly sure what I will do with it, but as a pack rat kind of collector, it's pretty cool!

3. I made a stack

The same dealer always wants you to make a stack and then he will give you a price.  I don't like doing that, I like knowing the prices up front.  But this time, I made a small stack of about 10 cards, and hoped for a good price.  I was hoping for less than $20, and when he offered $10, I happily took it.  

I'll only show 2 cards, the ones I found most interesting.  This first one may or may not even be a card, I am not sure.  What is shown in the picture is card sized, but whatever is in it, is somewhat smaller, but feels like it's probably a mini card.  Does anyone know what this is?

Here is the back...

I'm betting this is not anything valuable, but it is fun and was cheap.  Any assistance in identifying it would be appreciated.  And I guess any advice on if I should open it.  I am leaning toward opening it.

And the other card I got in the stack, and the reason I feel like it was a good deal:

Mariano RC!!  Not a reprint, and as far as I can tell, a legit copy, not a fake or anything.  To get this, along with 9 other cards for $10 was great!!

So it has been a long time since I posted.  I do have some posts I hope to make soonish, and several lined up around the holidays.  Hopefully I can get off my lazy butt and get er done!

Big trip, big cards

 I was recently out of town for 9 days in the Denver area.  Just another excuse for not posting often!  I was coaching my 14u travel softball team in the biggest softball tournament in the country.  There were about 1100 teams there in total, about 200 of them in our 14u division.  We didn't win, but we really didn't expect to.  We are 'Washington Good', not California, Texas, Georgia good.  We ended up playing 10 games and if they actually awarded places after the top 3, we estimate that we probably were about 45-50th.  Pretty great for us.

I got sunburned and tired.  Too much heat and too many thunderstorms.  One of them, on July 3rd, was awesome.  Over 2 hours of constant lightning in the dark.  It definitely beat the fireworks on the next evening.

Anyway, this will be the last of my posts about 25 cent oversized crap.  As before, everything in this post cost me 25 cents.  These are Pinnacle Zenith 8x10s.  Very large, kind of pretty.  These first 2 are the Dufex parallel.

And here is a non-Dufex for comparison...  The Dodgers cards are a little oversized, but not huge, and snuck into this scan for comparison purposes.

More Dufex, steroids edition!!

Oops, I just noticed that the Bonds is cropped too much.  Sorry.  The McGwire was a need for me, and the others are just kind of awesome.  I won't miss the quarters.

And to finish off the lot, I was able to grab some 1964 Topps Giants!  Yes, that is 7 copies of the Al Kaline.  Do I need 7?  Probably not, but HOFers from 1964 for 25 cents will not be passed up.

Then I got three All Star 3rd basemen

And finally, my favorite 25 cent card of the entire lot.....

.......

 Yay!  64 Topps Giant Hank Aaron!  Obviously in rough shape, it has a pinhole in the top just into the border.  Don't care.  I wish I could spend quarters like that every day.

That's the end of that.  I hope I can keep blogging.  Seems like a lot of us are having a hard time with that.  I will try!

Coming back after the back

 I'm back again, after a minute.  This time, the main thing that has kept me from blogging has been back problems.  This stems from an injury I had over 20 years ago that caused nerve damage in my neck, throat and back.  I guess I need to do a better job of preventative exercise, because this time was not a lot of fun.  Thankfully, I am feeling better!

But let's get back with another post showing some more of the oversized stuff I got for a quarter per item.  Starting with some 1980 Topps Supers!  I actually already had this complete set, but that didn't stop me from grabbing these big names, especially since they all came in oversized top loaders.  Those gotta be over a quarter each on their own!

Normal size Sandy for a size reference...

Next, I grabbed these

Three of these are from the 1987 Smokey Bear's Fire Prevention Team set.  The Joyner is also from 1987, but seems to be from a different set.  These are 4x6 inches, and feel like postcards.  I think I picked up duplicates of the Garvey and Canseco.

I didn't know what to make of these guys, but I grabbed the big names.

They are 3.5x5.5 inches, good stock and a slightly glossy finish on the fronts.  The backs are blank.  It turns out that they are from a set called "1980 An Exhibit Card Hall of Fame Reprints".  I used COMC.com to try and figure out what they are, and once I got them on the screen, I was surprised for how much people were trying to get for them.  Most all of the ones I grabbed are priced at over $40, and several over $60.  I wish I had grabbed more, because there definitely were at least 30 more in the stacks.

And last for today, these Linnett Superstars from 1976.  I don't know much about these, but I am happy to have them!  They are about 4x6.

All of mine have backs that show off either 'Sailing Ships' or 'Great Cars of the World'.  Seems like strange stuff to pair with baseball players, but still pretty cool!

Oversized 2 - no theme

 With as many items as I recently purchased from some bins of oversized collectibles, there is bound to be a lot of random.  This post is kind of a catch all for some of that randomness.

First are some MJs.  The scan doesn't make these look oversized, but they are.  They are each 3.5x5.  So not huge, but a pain to store anyways.

The Rare Air in the lower right is my favorite here, and if COMC.com is to be believed (hint: it isn't), then the card is worth a decent amount.  The Jumbo version of the card, which this one is, lists there for $70.  Silly COMC.  Like all the rest of these oversized items, I paid a quarter for it.

Since the previous scan was hard to tell the card size in, I decided to add a standard sized card to some of the rest of the scans for reference.  So here is a cool Derek Jeter 'Super Chrome Jumbo', contrasted with a normal sized Koufax.

This one is a 1994 Upper Deck 'Jumbo Checklist' featuring The Kid.  Pretty big, and it has a very glossy finish.  I actually grabbed 3 of this card.

These say 1991 Tuff Stuff on the backs.  They are sort of postcard like.  Just kind of fun.

OK, I apologize for this scan.  If you can't tell, the top portion of this scan is an envelope that contains 8 decent quality photos from the 1998 Dodgers.  Most of the photos are kind of boring, but the Piazza in the bottom part of the scan isn't bad at all.

8 photos for 25 cents, nice!

Oversized 1 - Mostly postcards

 All right, here is the first post specifically about the oversized pile o' junk I picked up for .25 per item.  Today, we are showing mostly postcards....

These first four postcards are all artwork by Michael J. Taylor for Legends Sports Memorabilia.

The Musial and Jackson are from 1991 and the Erving and Bench are from 1992.  Beautiful postcards that I enjoy.  I think the Reggie might be my fave, love the grin.

And here we have four more postcards from a 1978 series called "Great Baseball Players of the Past".

This postcard series was edited by Bert Sugar, he of the perpetual unlit cigar.  I wouldn't have known he got into baseball, as he was far better known as a boxing aficionado.

It's hard not to pick the Babe Ruth as my favorite of this four.

Then we have some from random sources.  The Mattingly is by TCMA, who we all know and love from their card sets in the 70s and 80s.  The Robinson was produced by Barry Cola who also did numerous card sets.  And the two Orioles look like they are a promotion to raise money for the University of Maryland Pediatric center.  

The Mattingly is my favorite here, he looks young.  That one is from 1985.

And we finish the postcards with three more from the "Great Baseball Players of the Past" series, and a bonus Kent Hrbek caricature. 

Top honors here go to the Rogers Hornsby, I always liked his weird back leg kick pictured here.

A couple of bonuses this post...These big ol basketball stars are from the 1976/77 set.  Not a set I see a lot of.

And finally, I really only grabbed these 2 matchboxes for the oversized holders they came in, but once I looked at them, they are pretty cool!  Looks like they are both from around the WW2 times.  I'm glad I parted with quarters for them!

More to come!

Show report - quarters and foreshadowing

 I made it to a card show last weekend after missing the previous show.  It was an ok show as these things go, definitely a little sparse.  But I did find one guy that had a large section of 'everything for a quarter'.  Probably 10-12 large boxes of cards, more football than anything, but I found some baseball.

The boxes of cards were pretty good, if not awesome.  Here are a few of my finds.

Black foil, red foil and sepia versions of HOFers were in my quarter wheelhouse.  And the Henderson RC was one I hadn't seen before so I scooped it up as well.  It turned out that it is a wrapper redemption, and actually sells in the $6-10 range.  Sweet!

But what I ended up staying at the table for were three large bins of oversized stuff, still 25 cents for each item.  Now we all know that there is a reason that people sometimes sell oversized stuff for cheap.  It's hard to store, right?  So many of us, including me, often stay away from it.  But this time, there wasn't much else to look at, and so I dug through.  And I ended up happy that I did.  I bought over 90 items from those bins!

I'm not going to show much here, but expect several posts with my hard to store finds.  Here's a quick taste!

An uncut, perforated panel with all of the 'Row' variations from 1997/98 Flair Showcase.  Yes, Row 3, Row 2, Row 1 and the hard to find Row 0!  I have no idea what I am going to do with this thing, but it is sure cool!

And then here are 3 uncut box bottoms, one from 87 Donruss and 2 from 86 Topps.

So silly, but I will have more in the coming days!

theMick.com

 Here is a recent card show pickup.  Not a super special card, but not bad either.  It is from 2011 Gypsy Queen.  It's not the front of the card that I want to talk about today though.  

It's the back.  Or more precisely, the text on the back:

I am both a numbers guy and a 'check your facts' guy, so pretty immediately, this sentence caught on my brain.  For two reasons...

Issue 1. Those first few distances listed, 734, 656, 650 etc.  Now the lengths of long home runs have always been tough to get real agreement on, but if you Google it, you don't see numbers in the 600s.  Some that pop up include Joey Meyer - 587, Josh Gibson - 580, Babe Ruth - 578, and yes, Mantle at 565.  But this says Mantle hit 6(!) longer than any of those!  I went to themick.com as it is cited on the card as the source of this claim, and yes, that Mantle centric site does indeed claim these numbers, along with the stories of each of them.  Some questionable math is cited to get that 734 number, and the others are only semi-supported.

Issue 2. Let's add up those numbers... 734 + 656 + 650 + 643 + 630 + 620 + 565 + 550 + 535 + 530 = 6113 feet.  That IS a long way, but it is NOT 2.83 miles.  1 mile is 5280 feet.  So these numbers add up to 1.16 miles, not 2.83.  

What a weird card!!  I wonder if I could get a fact checking job with Topps.  Or maybe one of you awesome readers can fact check my fact checking?  Did I get it wrong?

High numbers mess

 

While visiting my brother in Boise a few weeks ago, he insisted that we buy some baseball cards.  We went down to a store called Scheels, which is kind of a crazy store.  So much stuff.  Outdoor and sporting gear mostly.  It's a huge place, with statues of both famous people and generic athletes all over the parking lot.  Impressive, kind of.  There wasn't actually a dedicated sports cards section, but in multiple spots around the store, there were displays with blasters of various stuff.  Unfortunately, not much in the way of baseball, but we found some 2024 Topps Heritage High Numbers.

Now first, it was a fun rip, especially since it was with my brother.  Brought back memories of waaay to far back to mention, ripping packs together.  But as you will see, High Numbers is a bit of a mess.  

First, the box guaranteed 3 Green parallels.  It took a bit to figure out which ones were the green parallels, but they ended up being the 3 on the top of this pic:

The others are single color parallels, I guess.  Part of the reason for our confusion was that the backs of the 'Green' parallels say 'White Border' in tiny, tiny text.  Even more confusing, the Chapman and Pfaadt above also say 'White Border' on the back.  Close up scan:

The trademark/copyright text at the bottom of the back of the cards is even smaller.  I couldn't even make it out clearly with a magnifying glass.  Like size -1 font!  These next few are SPs and #d chrome cards, plus a mini.

And lastly, a few rookies.  I seem to have been having good luck with rookies lately.

One more lame thing about 2024 High Numbers.  Baseballcardpedia.com says that since it was released extremely late, more than a month following the release of 2025 Topps Series One, that they regard Heritage High Number as a 2025 product for rookie card purposes, rather than a '2024' set.  I don't know if that will catch on, but according to them, the above cards aren't even RCs. 

Come on Topps!!