How to reach a milestone

OK, so this post starts out talking about some simple MLB history, but I am going to try to tie it in to my collection, so hopefully it will be worth the wait.

Growing up, I loved baseball statistics and history, and one of the first things that caught my eye was the 3000 hit club.  At that point, it was a pretty exclusive club, with only 15 players ever to have accomplished the feat.  And one of my favorites, Rod Carew, was getting awfully close.

At that point, the only type of hits that had been a player's 3000th were singles and doubles.

Since that day in the early 80's, 17 more players have joined the club.  Out of those 17, Ichiro and Paul Molitor's 3000th were triples.  And Wade Boggs, Arod and Jeter knocked the ball out of the park for their big hit!  Here's the list:

Player	3,000th hit
Pete Rose	Single
Ty Cobb	Single
Hank Aaron	Single
Tris Speaker	Single
Carl Yastrzemski	Single
Eddie Collins	Single
Willie Mays	Single
Eddie Murray	Single
Albert Pujols	Single
Cal Ripken Jr.	Single
George Brett	Single
Paul Waner	Single
Robin Yount	Single
Tony Gwynn	Single
Dave Winfield	Single
Craig Biggio	Single
Rod Carew	Single
Lou Brock	Single
Cap Anson	Single
Stan Musial	Double
Honus Wagner	Double
Nap Lajoie	Double
Adrián Beltré	Double
Rickey Henderson	Double
Rafael Palmeiro	Double
Al Kaline	Double
Roberto Clemente	Double
Paul Molitor	Triple
Ichiro Suzuki	Triple
Derek Jeter	Home run
Alex Rodriguez	Home run
Wade Boggs	Home run

And here is a cool pic of all of the current members of the club

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So I am also coming up on a big (for me) milestone in my collection.  Not quite 3000 hits, but I am pretty sure I will never get to 3000, so 1000 will have to do...

With recent additions from Jeremy over at Topps Cards That Never Were. I am up to 989 unique Mark McGwires.  1000 is in sight!!  And that got me wondering, what will the 1000th be?  Will it be a base card (single)?  Or a parallel or common insert (double)?  Or a serial numbered/refractor/rare insert (triple)?  Or could I be like Wade Boggs, and have the unlikeliest event, a relic or auto card (HOME RUN!)?

Another thought.  Craig Biggio got hit 3000th hit, a single to the outfield.  Must have been quite a rush, because he just kept on trucking and got thrown out at 2nd, going for a double.  Talk about your buzz kill!!  So in card terms would that be like getting a 1985 Topps Tiffany McGwire RC, but it has a huge crease in it and a mustache drawn on Mark's face????  Hilarious!!

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Now of course, none of that really matters.  At all.  I'll be super glad with whatever card gets me to 1000!  And no matter how much the rest of the blogging community doesn't want to read any more posts about Mark 'Roid Boy' McGwire, you can bet I will be posting when it happens.

1000 McGwires is 1000 McGwires. And 3000 hits is 3000 hits.

3000 hits get's you into the Hall of Fame.  All 1000 McGwires gets me is 8th place on the McGwire's collections over at TCDB.com (for some reason, this link takes a while to load).  But to me, its pretty exciting!  Wish me luck!

And though I am not soliciting you to send me McGwires, I am always interested in trading for anything not already marked on my TCDB list.  Thanks for reading!

Diamond Nine #7

The rules:

9ish cards are up for grabs.  Free!  Just claim what you want.  If you like it, claim it and I will send it out within a few days in a PWE.  (I'm cheap, PWE's all the way!)  Or if you like, I'd be glad to hold your stack until you have a few claimed.

First come in the comments, first served.  You will have to shoot me your mailing address the first time you claim something.

Today's cards:

Top 6 are refractors, Zimmerman is an X-Fractor, LaRoche is /564, Southard is /50

Bottom 3 are #'d, Escobar /1960, Hernandez /250, Kent /2003



And 3 bonus cards...

Lance Niekro (Joe's kid!) /999, and the other 2 cards, I don't even know what they are.  They look like refractors, but are not labeled as such.  They are 2013 Bowman Chrome.

Claim away!

Trade that never was

Jeremy over at Topps Cards that Never Were reached out to me for a trade.  First trade since I've been back! We both poked around the other's wantlists and packages flew!

First thing up was what I am thinking is a staple of trades with Jeremy... some Topps Cards that Never Were!!

McGwire had the Olympic card in 85 Topps and his 'First Topps Card' from his MLB days was 1987, so this 86 fills the gap!  I'm choosing to believe that it would have been the 86 Traded set that this came from.  Pretty awesome!

The Mossi came from carefully looking over my wantlist.  As you will see later in the post, Jeremy is thorough.  Mossi is one of my favorites mainly due to those ears.  I would never call anyone names (a disney flying elephant), but he is sporting some Grade A flappers on the sides of his head!

For some reason, Topps didn't make a Mossi card in 1965.  He did only pitch 40 innings with a 2.93 ERA in 64, so maybe they thought he was done.  But they made his last playing years card the next year in 66.  So Jeremy filled the gap again!  Impressive attention to detail, and I appreciate it!!

Jeremy also hit most of the other areas of my wantlists:

2 beautiful Diamond Kings that I needed.  The Ramirez gets me closer to the base set and the Jeter is the Studio version, numbered /250!  Another need for sure!

Next up are 10 needed cards for my 2001 Archives Reserve set!  The Archives Reserve set might be a weird one for me to collect, but I'm going to keep at it!

The bulk of the package was filled with Mark McGwires.  Now I know that McGwire turns off a lot of the bloggers out there, but I am pretty in to his cards regardless of the fact that I definitely consider steroids cheating.  Jeremy knocked 37!! McGwires off my list.  I would have sworn I had a lot of these, but I guess I not!  Jeremy really knows how to work with a TCDB list!  And those 37 are getting me close to a big milestone that I will post about soon.

And last, but not least, check out this crazy Pete Rose Gold Game Used card!!  Wow.  Some incredible cards get made out there, huh?

So a wonderful package, every card straight off of my wantlists.  Incredible, I gotta say.  Thanks Jeremy!

Diamond Nine #6

The rules:

9ish cards are up for grabs.  Free!  Just claim what you want.  If you like it, claim it and I will send it out within a few days in a PWE.  (I'm cheap, PWE's all the way!)  Or if you like, I'd be glad to hold your stack until you have a few claimed.

First come in the comments, first served.  You will have to shoot me your mailing address the first time you claim something.

Today's cards are a little different than usual.  We've done mostly refractors and serial numbered.  Change up!

Claim away.

Diamond Nine #5

The rules:

9ish cards are up for grabs.  Free!  Just claim what you want.  If you like it, claim it and I will send it out within a few days in a PWE.  (I'm cheap, PWE's all the way!)  Or if you like, I'd be glad to hold your stack until you have a few claimed.

First come in the comments, first served.  You will have to shoot me your mailing address the first time you claim something.

Today's cards:

Top 6 are refractors, the Upton is #d /564

The bottom 3 are all serial numbered:
Sanchez /100
Ka'Aihue /560
Drew /75

Struggle of an Omnivore - and cards from Rod

I've been working hard on my wantlists.  But it is a slow process.  You see...

I am not a team collector.
I'm not really a player collector, with the exception of Mark McGwire.
I'm not really a set collector, with the main exception being Diamond Kings.

And those three ways of collecting, those focused collecting strategies, might make creating wantlists easier.  I say might, because I really don't know the trials that those collectors go through when making their wantlists.  Might be a lot harder, really.  What do I know.

But I do know that making my wantlist is hard.  Making it useful to people who want to trade with me is hard.

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Current progress...

I was able to get a LOT of my Diamond Kings needs put down here.  But since the Diamond Kings needs are basically set collecting, I figure that is why I was able to get that part done.

I used tcdb.com to track the McGwires I currently have.  And that is great and useful!!  But it was a slog to get them all entered.  And I don't know that I'll work up the energy to add in the rest of my collection any time soon.

Then there is my main wantlists page.  It definitely has cards I want on it.  But most of them are big ticket items, or rare at least.  Not the most useful for trading.

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And here is where Rod from Padrographs comes in.  I'm sure you all know about his free card giveaways.  Heck, they inspired my Diamond Nine giveaway series.  Here are a couple of cards that I claimed from him recently.

Thanks Rod!!

Now if you look at my wantlists page, you won't see a single reference to Ozzie Smith or Cal Ripken outside of their RC's.  You definitely won't see any reference to the insert or parallel sets that these 2 cards come from.  But these two cards would definitely be cards I want.

I guess I'm a Baseball Card omnivore.  I want a little of everything.  I'm really a fan of the game and it's history.  There are some players I don't like, but a lot more that I do like.  And even more players that I remember a story about, or remember seeing them do something great, or admire their accomplishments.  And so when I see a card of one of those MANY players, I might just want it. That is the fan aspect of my collecting.

I like em all!

Then there is the racoon aspect of my collecting.  You know, when a racoon see's something shiny or something that catches it's eye, it just has to go grab it?  Yeah, cool looking cards are definitely on my radar too.  And I am really jonesing for some great photography!  I've seen pics of the recent Stadium Clum photography (the last couple of years especially), and I would love to get a ton of that, just for the pics!

Gotta have that DoubleFractorDieCut!

And then there's the rookie card thing.  Growing up, the best card of a player was always his rookie card. And being an omnivore, I probably wouldn't turn down a rookie card that I don't already have. Especially from the old days when each player only had one or two rookie cards.

Rookies!  Everywhere!

So I hope this helps anyone who would want to trade with me.  At least a little.

Questions, I'd love to hear anyone's opinion on:
1. What could I do to my current wantlists page to make it more useful?
2. What are some examples of wantlists on other blogs that you like?
3. Are you a card omnivore?  What do you do to trade effectively? How do you avoid getting stacks of dupes and junk wax piled high?

Diamond Nine #4

The rules:

9ish cards are up for grabs.  Free!  Just claim what you want.  If you like it, claim it and I will send it out within a few days in a PWE.  (I'm cheap, PWE's all the way!)  Or if you like, I'd be glad to hold your stack until you have a few claimed.

First come in the comments, first served.  You will have to shoot me your mailing address the first time you claim something.

Today's cards:

Top 3 are refractors, the Perez is numbered /699 and the Abreu is /25!  How'd that get in the giveaway pile!

The next 6 are all numbered:
James /55 jeez, must be low number day...
Barrett /100
Drabek /50
Parra /250
Jones /2013
Schlereth/Steele /1500

I kind of wish I'd spread those low numbered ones out a bit, but oh well.  Claim away!

McGwire and Sosa get divorced

I've been gone a while, so you might not know or remember that I am a big Mark Mcgwire collector.  I'm always on the lookout for Big Macs I don't have, but since I have over 900 unique McGwires, it's getting a little tougher.

So when I get a chance to knock more than a couple off of my list at one time, I try to go for it!

This time, it was all Ebay's fault.  I don't really buy on Ebay much.  Or anywhere really, because I am cheap.  But Ebay sent me a $5 off code for anything that is at least $5.01.  So I went in search of McGwires that were just over $5.  I had a few that I was watching, when this caught my eye:

A 70 card set of Mac and Sosa!

I jumped on my tcdb.com McGwire checklist and found that out of the 37 cards in the set featuring McGwire, I only had 14 of them.  For only $1 ($6 minus the $5 from Ebay) I could add 23 cards to my Big Mac total!!  Score!

And even better, included in the set was this non-McGwire, non-Sosa card:

But the cost was breaking up the set.  I didn't lose a lot of sleep over it, but there is a somewhat sour taste in my mouth at the idea of breaking up an entire set just for the cards of one player.  Even if that player is on over half of the cards in the set.

McGwire and Sosa, joined in history by the great home run chase and the steroid scandal.  Now split up by me.  I wonder if they would lose any sleep over that?

Diamond Nine #3

The rules:

9ish cards are up for grabs.  Free!  Just claim what you want.  If you like it, claim it and I will send it out within a few days in a PWE.  (I'm cheap, PWE's all the way!)  Or if you like, I'd be glad to hold your stack until you have a few claimed.

First come in the comments, first served.  You will have to shoot me your mailing address the first time you claim something.

Today we go in a slightly weird direction...

OK, so no serial numbers or refractors today.

The top 4 are popouts.  You can pop out around the player and turn the card into a standup thingy.  For your desk or something.

The 3 circular ones are from some restaurant we don't have where I am from, King-B.

And the bottom 4 are temporary tattoos.  Since lots of you are social distancing, seems like the perfect time to put a ballplayer on your arm!  The bigger ones have instructions on the back, the little two don't, they seem older.  Wonder if they'd even work?

Cards I should throw out... but I wont?

One of the things I would really like to do is downsize my collection.  It's not huge, at least in relation to some of the truly massive sorting projects I see on some blogs out there.  But I have a lot of cards I don't want.  I have several boxes of Baseball, Basketball and even a little football that I want to sell as dime boxes at a local show if we ever get back to having card shows.  Or maybe I'll make them nickel boxes!  Penny boxes?  I just want to get rid of them, but I'd like to get something out of them after storing them for all these years!

So yeah, if I am wanting to sell them in penny boxes, they aren't that great of cards.  I know that, that's part of why they are hard to get rid of.  Plus, selling cards in penny boxes probably won't even get me my table fee back!

But I have other cards that are even less 'valuable'.  Cards that when your Mom threw them out, you never even cared.  Or maybe even noticed.

Who cares!!

But every time I come across them, I never even consider tossing them.  I don't want to do a psychological deep dive into my collecting psyche, because I might find some really disturbing stuff in there.  So I'll just say that I keep them because I am a sentimental sports sucker.

OK, so after all that buildup, you probably just want to see the junk.  Right.  Fine.

Here are some of the cards I am talking about...

What?  Those aren't even cards, they're stickers!  Well they are card shaped and sports themed, so they check all the boxes in my collector's heart.

So what do you think?  Am I sick?  Professional help?  I don't even have a clue where I got these, but I'm pretty sure I won't ever toss them out.  Even the duplicates.  I think I had a daydream about using the stickers to decorate something... like I'm a scrapbooker or something.

But that's not all.  I got other sports too!  At least these aren't stickers...

For some reason I love these.  These were one of the first 'high end' basketball releases, though now they are considered junk wax.  But at the time, they were a step towards the gaudiness of the 90's basketball scene.  And I guess there's enough nostalgia there for me.  Nice design, in my opinion.  I love seeing the older logo's and the teams that have changed names or cities (Sonics, Bullets).

OK, this post has gone on long enough.  But I got one more, this time Football!

OK, I REALLY have no idea where I would have gotten these.  I only slightly collect football, and only stars really.  These look like they are from a Pacific set though, and they even have variations!

Each team has one card number, in the case of the Rams above, its card #28.  But they each have a variation with the team helmet and another with some team uniform and gear.  Now those gotta be worth a ton on the open market, right????

So anyway, I guess the point of this post is to let you into the mind of crazy a little.  I have a hunch that the crazy mind is a common theme among many of us card collectors.  Maybe you don't have my particular brand of crazy, but if you have your own, share it!!

Diamond Nine #2

The rules:

9 cards are up for grabs.  Free!  Just claim what you want.  If you like it, claim it and I will send it out within a few days in a PWE.  (I'm cheap, PWE's all the way!)  Or if you like, I'd be glad to hold your stack until you have a few claimed.

First come in the comments, first served.  You will have to shoot me your mailing address the first time you claim something.

Here's today's stuff!

Top 3 are refractors, the Blash is #'d / and the Diamond is #'d out of /199

The bottom 6 are #'d, here are the ones where the numbering isn't showing:

Vernon Wells = /500
Tony Campana =  /60
Roberto Novoa = /100

Diamond Nine #1

What the heck is the Diamond Nine?

It's the new giveaway here on the blog!!

Every day or two (or three?  We'll see.) I'll be putting 9 cards up for grabs.  Free!  Just like Rod at Padrographs and maybe others?  Just claim what you want.  It's that simple.  If something grabs your fancy because you collect that team, or that set, or that player, or if you just like the look of the card.  Doesn't matter, if you like it, claim it and I will send it out within a few days in a PWE.  (I'm cheap, PWE's all the way!)

Don't be greedy and grab all 9 just to grab them, but if you like 2, 3, 4 or whatever of them, feel free.  First come in the comments, first served.  You will have to shoot me your mailing address the first time you claim something, or I'll send your cards to the South Pole.

Diamond Nine will usually include Serial #'d and Refractors from the big pile that I have built up.  Sometimes some vintage-ish stuff.  Parallels and inserts.  It'll probably evolve over time.  Should be fun!!

Here's the first ever Diamond Nine!  Comment away!

Top row is refractors

The rest are #'d.  Here are the numbers for those that have serial #'s on the back of the card:

Ike Davis: /399

Jake Peavy: /999

Miguel Olivo: /2007

Email addresses to kmattson2002atyahoodotcom

End radio silence - a Covid based resurrection!

Hello folks!!  I can't imagine anyone has this blog still on their radar, but with all the staying at home mania sweeping the nation, I've felt the need to start back up here.  It's been....

6 years????  I just checked, and I haven't posted in 6 years?  Amazing.

Well, I will be posting a bit more often than that going forward.  I hope to use this as an outlet for the tedium, but also as a way to drum up some trades.  Who doesn't like trades?  And if I actually get people reading this thing a little, I will probably jump on the 'Free cards Friday', or BFG bandwagon that I see a few places like:

Padrographs
and
Johnny's Trading Spot

Probably others too!  If you know of them let me know.


All of the wantlists and project pages are out of date, but I will work on getting them up to speed asap!

Please comment so I know if anyone is still reading!



And just so you get a taste of what I was doing when I decided to write this post:

I read on Fuji's blog that Jordan cards are all the rage right now.  So I grabbed my Basketball 'for trade' box and pulled out all of my Jordan's.  That is only about 1/3 of them, and I have a few pretty nice ones mixed in with all the more common ones.  Something to do!