From Johnny and gcrl

Well, from the lack of posting recently, its obvious I have been busy.  The main thing was a 10 day (!!) work trip.  Longest I have ever had.  I have been trying to read some blogs and comment, but there has been no time for posting.  However, being away that long allowed some mail to pile up!

First up, I have been the happy recipient of several PWE packages from Johnny over the last few weeks, each with an excellent variety. 

PWE1

4 cards of HOFers, a RC of an underappreciated young stud and more!  The Brett especially is a nice looking card.

PWE2

Nice stuff.  I wouldn't have expected a vintagey Carlton in these deliveries!  And the Betts is a card I need for an upcoming project (*tease), so nice bonus there!
 

PWE3

Lots of stuff could probably be said about these cards (like Scherzer's exertion face), but I can't think of anything but my first Lindor RC!!  Thanks a ton, Johnny!

Also, gcrl decided I needed a sweet little pick me up out of nowhere!  I always say I would love older refractors, but rarely get them.  These three were very welcome!  In fact the Billingsley was a need for my 2011 Topps Chrome Refractors set build that will never finish.

Thanks a bunch gcrl!!

And hopefully I will get back to some actual posts soon!

Just three cards

 I decided not to bore you with a ton of cards from the card show.  Here are my favorite three.  All three from 50 cent boxes.

This is an unnecessary Prizm type that I had missed.  But for 50 cents of this HOFer "Black and White Checker Prizm" came home with me!!  It's less blue in person.  My scanner really isn't great.

Speaking of scanner issues, this Verlander isn't so pink as the scan. It's a deeper red.  But it's beautiful!  I really like the effect and would be interested in others (Prizms only!) from this set. The set is 2013 Panini Select En Fuego Prizms

And now for the find of the show, and just in time, since the man just hit #700!!

Yep, that's right, a Pujols rookie year card for fiddy cents!!  And what's up with me not reading any "Congrats to Albert" posts on the blogs out there?!?!  Just kidding, write whatever you wanna write.  But I do love the Cardinals 1B/DH!  I hope to do a tribute post at some point and show off the cards I have of him.

Shh, don't say free... three more stamps

 Happy September!   

I have three stamps to use today.  That means giveaway time!  The first three commenters to claim cards will be rewarded by me using one of my stamps on them.  Just pick up to 4 of the cards below and I will ship them out to you.  If I don't have your address (or you think I might not have it) then shoot it to my email.  The email can be found in my profile on the sidebar.

Today's cards aren't much, but what do you expect for free??

Available cards (first three commenters!):

The Kemp is numbered /1960

Vintage, modern, non-sport, monstrosities and more!

 The most recent card show I attended resulted in me acquiring, shall we say, an eclectic bunch of cards.  Let's jump right in:  

The "Pressed Into Service" cards in the top row are commemorating non-pitchers putting in time on the mound.  Very cool!  Some of the position players I collect pitching!  These aren't worth much at all, but certainly have a place in my collection.  Out of the 10 card set, these three are the ones I would want the most.  The Stan Musial from this set isn't bad, but he isn't pitching in the photo, so not as good.  20 cents apiece.

The weird, rounded corner broder type cards in the middle row are fun.  I am sure I have seen them before, but who knows where.  Fun enough.

And three shiny Kershaws round out the scan.  Seems like I have been finding lots of funky Kershaws lately.

Byron Buxton rookie year insert.  Ripken reading a comic book.  Rogers Hornsby serial numbered Diamond King.  Yogi Berra insert.  And a Juan Soto RC??  Talk about an eclectic bunch of cards!

The Soto was in a dollar box.  When I got it home, I realized it is the Black version which seems to carry a little bit of a premium.  Cool.  I wonder when I will get my first Soto as a Padre card?

I grabbed all of these vintagey cards.  Turned out I already had all but the Cepeda and Bunning.  The Bunning is a sort of high number, so that's cool.

Remember all the Kemp RCs I have been getting at shows lately?  Well I did get a few more (not pictured), but the "Kemp highlight" of the day was when a dealer saw me coming and pulled me aside.  He said "I got something for you" and proceeded to rummage through his stuff for about 5 minutes.  Then he pulled out this:

Sweet, a Kemp auto!  Not certified, and possibly a fake, but who would fake a Kemp auto?  Comparing online, it looks to me like its probably legit.  Most likely a hurried in person signing.  But hey, for free, I was very happy to take it!

What the heck are these???  Well, they are obviously some strangely conceived set of Ken Griffey Jr. from 1989.  They kind of look and feel like photographs.  No borders and a little smoother than most cards would feel.  Here is how the backs look.

I got 14 of the 16 cards in this strange set.

Now for something totally off the wall!!

What in the world is that???  Well first, how I got it...

The same dealer that gave me the Kemp RC has had this monstrosity in his 'higher end' cards for several months.  I always take a look at it, but since it is an obvious fake mess, that's as far as it has gone.  Well this time, I had a stack I wanted him to price for me, and I grabbed this Trout as well.  His eyes lit up and said, "Oh, you want that thing?"  I quickly assured him that I didn't really want it (assuming he was wanting actual money for it), but that I was interested in how much he would charge if someone was.  He replied that if I paid $10 for the stack, he would throw it in.  Since I would have been willing to pay that for the stack anyway, I took it!

Anyway, let's look closer at this beast.  On the front, I think we have parts of a 2021 Topps Chrome card, some refractory border and probably an old holo sticker from 80s Fleer?  Not sure where the pic of Trout himself comes from, maybe one of you do.  The shiny plastic thingies by Trout definitely add to the effect!

For the back, they used the back of a 2018 Optic card.  Then marked it 1 of 1 and signed it, I assume the creator's signature?  And of course, slammed it in a HUGE one touch holder.

And even more, the one touch holder has been sealed with some sort of sticky, sparkly stuff.  Take a look:

I'm sure I could break it open, but I decided not to.  Now this thing takes up way too much space with all my other Trout Keepers!

OK, this post has gone on long enough, but it was that kind of show!  Last up are some non-sports.  These are from the 1966 Topps Batman series.

I got around 25 of these cards.  So so condition, but kind of fun.  Anyone interested in trading for these?

Here are a couple of the backs:

I wish all card shows were as entertaining as this one.  Thanks for reading!

Another show report

 Here are a bunch of scans from a recent card show!  Very random, but I will try to give some color...

This first scan was from several different dealers and different price points.  The Niekro was a dollar and the bottom row was 'probably?' 50 cents.  The rest were dimes.  Don Mossi for a dime!  Numbered LaSorda for a dime (even if it's an ugly card)!  Fun stuff.  The Fred Lynn reminds me of the first All Star game I really paid attention to.  I was rooting for the NL, but Lynn hit a grand slam, and the AL rolled.  Good times.  The old timers Rice is cool, and the Miggy is numbered /45.

Now some randomness:

Yep.  I'm not really a Pirates fan, but I still paid dimes for these.  Guess that's what happens when old oddballs fall into my lap!

Speaking of dimes, I found a small dime box with a bunch of brand new youngsters.  Check these out.

Yep, Julio Rodriguez and Wander Franco for a dime.  But I am probably more excited about the others.  I don't often get to add semi-hot rookies to my collection until after the hotness has worn off.

The next three cards, I grabbed for dimes just on a whim as I sped through the boxes.  Didn't realize it, but they appear to be box bottoms.  Blank backs.

I'm going to transition to my basketball purchases, and this awesome dime box find is a perfect way to do it!  When I saw this card for sale, it made me laugh, and the dealer got my dime.  Pretty funny, but I do feel bad for poor Amed Rosario who has 'transitioned' into LeBron.

I only grabbed about 20 basketball cards, all from 20 cent boxes, but many of them turned out to be great deals!  Quite a few of the cards in this scan seem to sell in the "few dollars" range, not the 20 cent range.  I really had to work for these though, the vast majority of the cards in these 20 cent boxes were pretty junky.

At most card shows, I get into a bit of a feeding frenzy in the cheap cards, and buy some dupes by mistake.  Here are the dupes I grabbed this show.  And yes, the Niekro from the first scan was one of them.  

Why don't we reward any of you who have slogged through this mess of a post by offering these 6 dupes up to you readers**.  Claim in the comments!  Also, please take more than one, I'd rather not use 6 stamps to get these out to you!  I'm a cheapskate!

Let the people know!

 One great thing about all the card blogs out there is that if you let people know what you collect, they will often find it for you. Really, that's what wantlists and '10 most wanted' widgets are all about.  

Well, the same thing happens in other card collecting areas, be it Twitter, Facebook, Forums, TCDB.com or whatever.  Getting the knowledge of what you want out there is rewarding.  And it happened to me, most recently at a card show.

I have been trying to get to the local card show as often as I can the last few months.  Digging through dime boxes!!  And over the last 4 shows, I have told at least 4-5 fellow collectors and dealers that I will take any Shawn Kemp RCs that I can find.  As long as they are cheap!  And I usually find at least one or two a show.

Well, all that talking really paid off this last show.  On my way in, one friend grabbed me and handed me 4 Kemp RCs, 2 Fleer and 2 Hoops.  Free!  Jackpot!  Then, at the first table (I always go to the same 2 tables as soon as I can), I found 2 more Fleer.  At the second table, the dealer mentioned that he had seen at least a few Kemps in his dime boxes and I should see if I could find them.  OK, I'd rather he had pulled them out for me, but for dimes, hey, that's what I come for.  I ended up finding 12!  Took me quite a while, but worth it.

Another show acquaintance came by and said he saw a few at a table down the way, so I headed that way.  These ended up being quarters, really the most I will usually spend, but I went for it and got 11 more.  While I was there, another guy mentioned that he saw a graded Kemp RC for cheap at another table, so I made my way that direction.  Didn't end up buying that, but I appreciated the help from a fellow collector.

And finally, on my way out, I stopped to talk to a guy I see most shows who was going through a stack.  And of course, there were Kemps in there!  Another 11, wow.  Unfortunately, the guy didn't want to let them go for anything less than 50 cents each, but at this point, I was in a Kemp feeding frenzy, so I bought them.

By now, I assume you either think I am crazy, or just stopped reading a while ago.  But here was my Kemp RC haul for a single day:

27 Fleer, 10 Hoops, 3 Skybox

My current collection totals for each brand:

71 fleer

111 hoops

51 skybox

Total: 233 Shawn Kemp RCs

Too Many Elliptical Breakdowns

 I need to do a catch up on incoming cards from awesome bloggers!  I received cards from three different bloggers, for three different reasons. One was contest winnings, one was a trade and one was just a RAK!

Elliptical Man - RAK

I posted about how I liked Spud Webb, and BOOM, 4 days later, these three Spuds showed up in the Mail.  Now that's nice!

Thanks Brendan!

Gavin - Contest winnings

Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown has been holding contests most of the summer where you have to guess the serial number of a card.  Since that is basically a game of luck, and not skill, I figured I had a chance, and yep, I won!!  Here are the cards I won:

I enjoy (and want) all older refractors, and the 2004 Topps Chrome refractors are especially nice, especially the Black.  The cool Griffey Mega Metal is a Gavin custom, and I knew I had to have it!  The Munson is a Burger King version, always appreciated, and the Dawson is from the 2003 Topps Retired set.  Thanks a bunch Gavin!

But that's not all.  In true Gavin fashion, he added another custom!!!  An awesome Griffey, front and back scanned to show the attention to detail (the back scan has the back of the other Griffey custom for comparison).

Dennis - Trade

And last but not least, Dennis from Too Many Verlanders put up a 1991 Topps Desert Shield card for trade, and I pounced on it!  I sent him some more Verlanders to make sure his blog name stays accurate, and he sent both the Desert Shield card as well as a sweet numbered Randy Johnson Diamond Kings card (in keeping with MY blog name).  Thanks a ton for the trade Dennis!

Luzinski steals the show

 A recent card show produced with better than usual dime boxes!  Every card in the first three scans was in a dime box.  Don't believe me?  I'm not lying!

Ooooooh, shiny!  In fact, that Kershaw on the left scanned so shiny that I had to double check the actual card.  It's not quite that bright in hand, but still awesome.  These were such great finds, I had to double check that I was really looking through dime boxes. 

More

2007 and 2008 Moments and Milestones.   What a couple of weirdly conceived sets.  But for dimes, I will not be leaving these in the box!

More!

Oddballs galore.  Just a lot of fun here.  I usually strongly prefer Eddie Murray in an Orioles uniform, but this Indians copy might be my favorite of this bunch.

Ok, end of the dime box bonanza.  Obviously, I grabbed far more dime cards than those shown, many of which were just as good as the ones I decided to scan.

Here are some I grabbed from various other places.  Some were in quarter boxes, some in 50 cent boxes and some from a stack I built at one table that I paid for in bulk.  More on that further down!

OK, back to that stack from one of my favorite dealers.  It took me about a half hour, but I built a stack of around 25-30 cards from his stock.  I'm pretty sure that the Brett, Sabathia and O'Neill refractor in the last scan were in the stack.  And the main card I was interested in was this one:

Sweet card!!  It had a price tag of $15 on it, which might be fair, but I am a notorious cheapskate, and wouldn't pay that much for it.  I carted the stack of cards over to the dealer and asked how much for all of them, hoping for one of his bulk discounts.  I told him I really wanted the Luzinski, which at the time, I thought was a mistake.  But he hemmed and hawed for a minute before saying, "buy the Luzinski at full price and I'll throw in the rest".  Yahtzee!

Gotta love those good quality dealers.  I guess that's why I keep going back to him!

I stumbled across three stamps...

 Don't expect a ton of these, but I have to do something other than just show off my new cards, right?

So as the title says, I have three stamps I found in a pile of stuff I was going through.  So I decided to use them on a quick giveaway.  The first three commenters to claim cards will be rewarded by me using one of my stamps on them.  Just pick up to 3 of the cards below and I will ship them out to you.  If I don't have your address (or you think I might not have it) then shoot it to my email.  The email can be found in my profile on the sidebar.

Available cards:

The Scherzer isn't as rainbow-y as it looks in the scan, but still shiny.  The Schwarber is a refractor.

That ain't Spud Webb!

 My son recently threw a few bucks in my PayPal account, which I never use anymore.  It was a really small amount, so I decided to throw those 'free dollars' away on some random Ebay stuff.  Being only a couple of inches from being a dwarf myself (that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I have always been short), I decided to grab cards of some short NBAers!

Here is what I brought home...

Muggsy RC!!  I think this is a card I would gladly take as many copies of as I could get.  Such a cool player.  And the other card is at least short (being a sticker).  But it isn't what I purchased!  I bought and paid for the Spud Webb from the same sticker set (1986/87 Canasta if you are interested).  And yet Dr. J showed up.  I guess I won't complain.  But if you have any cool Spuds send them my way!

Owl delivery

 I've been thinking that we need a pre-defined widget to drop into our blogs that makes the excuses why we haven't posted in so long.  Something like this:

I mean seriously, I have taken unannounced long breaks from blogging numerous times, and every time I come back, I whine about how life has been hard, or work has taken so much of my time or whatever.  Not that those things aren't real, but nobody comes to my blog wanting to hear my sob story, right?

Anyway, I am back and hope to get back to normal posting times.  I have some content lined up, unfortunately, a lot of it is just "look at what I got" posts.  I will be trying to mix in some "Flash Freebies" as well.  And I definitely want to get some more PWE drafts going, but probably not until September.

------------------------------------------------------------------

On to the post!  As you have probably seen on numerous other blogs, Night Owl has recently blasted out twenty 250 card packages to some of his lucky readers.  This is my report!  In the interest of getting this post out there, I only have three pics, but there were so many fun and interesting cards in the box that didn't make it in here.  

I chose these 9 cards as some of my favorites in the package:

Yay!  Stars, oddballs, cool photos, early Prizm and of course, The Chicken!

There were also a ton of young-ish players in there, lots of rookies.

And the cards I have shown were exactly the kinds of cards I would have expected from the great Owl.  Fun and variety.  What I did not expect was this great card straight off my wants!

Woohoo!!  Thanks a ton Greg!!

Anyway, I don't feel like this post has done Night Owls delivery justice, but hey, at least I posted again!

Closet box dimes

 So I have a 3000 count box of cards that I have been holding on to for a long time, thinking that if I ever do a card show, I might put it out as a dime box.  But it's been sitting in my closet for years, and I don't really know if I will ever do a card show.

Anyway, I needed something to write a quick post about, so I grabbed a small handful of cards (turned out to be 51 cards in the handful) out of the middle of the third row of the box to look at.  I grabbed one card of each player in the handful to show here, 27 unique players:

I chose the 'most interesting' card of a player if there were more than one.  For example, I think there were 4 Barry Bonds in the handful.  The HoloGRFX card in the scan was the most interesting.

You can tell the box has been sitting around for a while, because there's nothing new in there!

So from this small sample size, what do you think?  How would I do with this type of selection in a dime box?  What card(s) would you pay a dime for in this selection?  What card(s) do you think would never get bought?

Missed four Dodgers

 My last post covered some finds from a recent card show, but when I was putting all the cards away, I came across a few more that I wanted to show.

There is a dealer who is a 'bad condition' collector that often has a table at these shows.  He collects all the older sets, and will take any condition as long as he has every card.  And often he upgrades one of his cards, so he has a box of truly horrible condition vintage for cheap!  Sometimes I think it is overpriced, sometimes good deals, but it's the only way I am likely to get some of these cards, so it's usually worth a look.

Anyway, I didn't find much this time, but what I did find had 3 things in common. 1. They were truly hammered.  2. they were dirt cheap.  And 3. they were, by some cosmic coincidence, all Dodgers.  Here they are:

They were all 10 cents except one, but I can't remember which one was a quarter.  Doesn't matter though, does it?  Drysdale sure looks snazzy, doesn't he?

Cheap and fun

 I picked up around 225 cards at the card show last week.  The vast majority were dimes, but there were a few .25, .50 and even one $3 card in there!

Here are about 30 of the 225 cards I picked up.

1. Todd Van Poppel - TVP was a big, big name in the hobby for about 4 months in the early 90s.  Wasting a dime on this one for nostalgia was worth it.

2. Jose Canseco - total proof that Canseco's muscles were all natural!

3. Albert Pujols - My 1st Dodger's card of Pujols!!  Numbered too, soo cool for a dime.  I also grabbed several other Dodgers Pujols cards at this show.

4. Ichiro/Pete Rose - Strange design for a card, but Rose and Ichiro were both monster players.  I like it.

5. Harmon Killebrew - #d /99, seemed like it was misplaced in a dime box.  

6. Clayton Kershaw - Topps Tek are weird to me, but an insert of a beast like Kershaw wasn't making it past me.

7. Miguel Cabrera - OK, this one was 50 cents I believe, but a nice, thick, strange die cut like this is right up my alley!

8. Adrian Beltre - another weird, thick die cut.

9. Joe DiMaggio - another 50 center, this die cut is as awesome as the others.  I wish they had used a different color in the background, but oh well.

All kinds of oddballs!  All dimes, as you might expect, but well worth it to me.  About half of these are numbered on the back to some number, usually 5000-10000 or so.

I had never seen the sets that the Glavine, Ryan and both Pucketts are from before.  And the others are pretty cool too.

10 cards in a bag for a dime.  Sweet!  As you can see, the set is still sealed in the bag.  I'm considering setting them free.  It's not like this set is going to be worth big bucks any time soon, and I think I would rather just enjoy the cards.  Back in the mid 80s, Clemens was my brother's favorite player, while Gooden was probably mine.  Good nostalgia set!

I've seen this card around, but never had a copy.  Just too cute to pass up.

I probably grabbed about 50 'young guys' cards for cheap just to have them someday when these guys have grown up.  A few highlights:

I know Kyle Tucker has been around for a while, but I threw him in this batch of young guys.  I thought the sepia RC and the relic card of his were steals at a dime!  I believe the Glasnow is #d /99.

And the only card I spent more than 50 cents on...

A Dr. J RC!!  Well, not really his RC, but from his rookie year.  This set me back $3.  Fun card!