Diamond Giveaway Orders 2-4: By the Numbers

Wow, where does the time go?  Life distracted me I guess.  It wasn’t for bad things for once at least though, so no worries.  Just beautiful distraction… Anyway, my last three orders of Diamond Giveaway cards have arrived.  So,  here’s a quick breakdown by year.

1960: 3- 13 Wally Post (Keeper), 60 Gus Triandos (Keeper), 241 Albie Pearson (Keeper).  Condition: Acceptable.  All three are a bit off-center & have a lil edge wear/corner dingage.  Triandos is scratched up & might be my worst condition ’60 so far, but I know it could’ve been much, much worse.

1964: 1- 372 Howie Koplitz. Condition: Similar to the two better ’60s.  By far the worst problem is centering, so I can’t complain.

1965: 1- 270 Milt Pappas (Keeper).  Condtion: Decently loved.  Bit of creasing, well worn edges, maybe a lil weathered(?).  Worst condition so far, but again, I’m not grading too harshly.

1966: 5- 8 Floyd Robinson, 49 Woody Woodward, 192 Vic Power (Keeper), 283 Jim Perry, 393 George Brunet.  Condition: Woody is the best by far, reasonably well centered & only relatively minor corner dingage.  Floyd & Vic have maybe a similar level of issues, but in different ways, and the last two… well, they kinda suck.  Perry seems to be stained & has a crease running the length horizontally near the bottom.  Brunet is stained, pretty creased up, has well-worn corners, & is centered worse than everyone amongst the ’66s, save Vic Power.  Brunet is by far the worst condition card now.

1967: 8- 27 Bob Saverine, 71 Camilo Pascual, 107 Joel Horlen, 117 Darrell Brandon, 145 Larry Brown, 269 Don  Nottebart, 291 Jim Hannan, 416 Roger Repoz.  Condition: Mostly great!  Repoz is the only legitimately bad one.  Horlen & Nottebart are a little more worn than the rest, Hannan is stained, & Larry Brown is hilariously off-center.  The other three are very nice though, and overall these guys are worlds better than the ’66s.

1968: 2- 28 Ted Uhlaender, 336 John Purdin. Condition: Uhlaender is pretty rough, but Purdin would probably grade out decently.  Not much damage and near perfect centering.  Very nice if you need him for the set or something.

1969: 11- 14 Al McBean, 129 Bill McCool, 154 Jim Britton, 158 Joe Gibbon, 264 Bill Landis, 281 Ted Kubiak, 316 Hal Lanier, 322 Jose Vidal, 337 Marty Martinez, 374 Bob Tillman, 474 Tom Murphy.  Condition: McBean is by far the most damaged.  A few others or worn or weathered, but not much creasing going on.   Tillman & Marty Mart have centering issues, but minimal damage, the former have almost none at all.

1970: 1- 52 Bruce Dal Canton.  Condition: Absolutely beat to hell.  Gives the awesome ’53 Hank Sauer Heartbreaking Cards sent me out of nowhere recently a run for it’s money, without the charm of being from the early ’50s.

1971: 2- 48 Dave Baldwin, 505 Ollie Brown.  Condition:  Pretty nice for ’71s, especially Ollie.  Dave has scratches across his face, though to a much lesser extent than the Triandos & somewhat rough corners, but nice centering.  Ollie isn’t quite centered as well, but is easily my 2nd best conditioned ’71 (after a super off-center but virtually undamaged Hoyt Wilhelm).

1972: 3- 73 Steve Huntz, 240 Dick Allen (Keeper), 258 Randy Hundley (Keeper).  Condition: No complaints.  Huntz is easily the worst, & mostly just looks a little weathered and feels kinda… weird.  Filmy, I guess?  On both sides.  Allen & Hundley don’t have much wrong with them.

1973: 3- 88 Mickey Stanley, 310 Dick Allen (Keeper), 444 Ken Brett.  Condition: Mickey’s seen better days.  Very rough.  Allen looks a little weathered & is off-center, but doesn’t seem to be that beat up or anything.  Ken’s in pretty decent shape.

1974: 2- 22 Cy Acosta, 528 Bill Bonham.  Condition: Cy is a little rough, particularly the corners, but is well-centered.  Bonham is noice.

1975: 5- 283 Steve Foucault, 301 Dave Roberts, 305 Jim Colborn, 579 Skip Pitlock, 588 Rick Auerbach.  Condition: Foucault & Colborn are the roughest, Pitlock is a lil scruffy, the other two are fine.

1976: 8- 12 Richie Zisk, 15 George Scott (Keeper), 227 Oscar Zamora, 351 Randy Hundley (Keeper), 359 Rick Reuschel, 391 Jerry Hairston, 455 Dick Allen (Keeper), 545 Sparky Lyle.  Condition: Nothing too bad.  Just some dinged corners mostly.  Sparky has this slight… tear(?), on the lower left edge, but it isn’t something I’m going to lose it over.

1978: 3- 93 Bobby Cox MGR, Henry Cruz, 380 Ted Simmons. Condition: Cruz is a little beat up, but again, nothing too severe here.  Most of my other ’78s are in worse condition than the Simmons & Cox at least.

1979: 3- 145 Rick Rhoden, 216 Wilbur Wood, 720 Expos Prospects (Jerry Fry/Jerry Pirtle/Scott Sanderson.  Condition: Looks like just the slightest of corner dingage here.  I have game-used that have come out of the pack looking worse.

1980: 1- 117 Dock Ellis (Keeper).  Condition: We’re in the ’80s now.  Expecting better than… multiple poke spots(… The hell?), and weird scuffy/stainy lines.

1981: 1- 310 Vida Blue.  Condition: Scratchiness by the hat in bottom left, lil edge wear on bottom, & a dinged corner.  Pfft.

1982: 1- 721 Greg Luzinski In Action.  Condition: Not quite perfect.  Meh, close enough.

1983: 1- 177 Harold Baines (Was going to be a keeper, might just be trash).  Condition: Crap.  Creases, scuffiness, corner wear, a lil warpiness?  WTF?!  I’m actually kind of genuinely pissed off by this card.  It’s seriously one of the more beat up cards in the entire lot.  You couldn’t get ahold of an ’83 semistar less beat up than this?!  C’mon, man!

1984: 3- 171 Frank Robinson MGR (Keeper), 276 Angels Batting/Pitching Leaders Rod Carew/Geoff Zahn (Keeper), 390 Tim Raines All-Star (Keeper).  Condition: Best shape of any of the ’80s cards so far, though none are quite minty fresh.

1986: 2- 254 Ozzie Guillen RC (Keeper), 760 Andre Dawson (Keeper).  Condition.  Ozzie is in line with the ’84s and thus good enough, but Hawk is somewhere between Luzinski & Vida Blue…

2011 Diamond Die-Cuts: 4- DDC-16 Justin Upton (Keeper), DDC-60 David Wright, DDC-94 Marlon Bryd, DDC-119 Kurt Suzuki.  Condition: Nothing wrong here I guess.

N/A: 1- 1975 Dock Ellis.  The only card I didn’t get.  We’ll see how it looks whenever it gets here.

Overall Grade:  The condition of the ’60s & ’70s mostly met or exceeded expectations, and only the 1970 the Bruce Dal Canton was probably unacceptably awful.  But I was expecting a lot better of the ’80s stuff.  I give the overall condition a B-.  That Harold Baines hurt bad.

I think I got all my keepers labeled.  Most of the rest is up for trade.  Sorry about the lack of pictures.  I’ll try to get them all scanned and posted before the week is out (no guarantees of course).  Thanks for stopping by!

Happy trails to you…

Diamond Gallery #1: Fresh Vintage Sox (and Other Things)

So my first Diamond Giveaway order arrived, and while it was mostly Die-Cuts, I did pick up a little vintage this time too.  Have a look, won’t you?

1969 Topps ’68 HR Leaders Frank Howard/Willie Horton/Hawk Harrelson..

The back..

The card is beat to heck all over, easily the worst of the bunch.  Yet for some reason all the creases & things are easy to miss at first glance if you aren’t paying attention.  Also a previous owner of this card underlined all the Orioles on the back of the card, which is amusing and gives the card an interesting character and backstory that I’ll likely never know.  I picked this up for my dad, a big longtime White Sox fan, because Hawk is the longtime television voice of the team (and gets an undeserved bad wrap, in my rarely humble opinion).

1969 Bill Melton RC..

The back..

The bottom corners on this are a little worn, and the entire top edge is rough.  Also intended for my dad, but currently sitting in the one of the rookie pages in my random keeper binder just because I’m bringing back so much Diamond Giveaway White Sox stuff for him.  More on those later in this post and future posts as well.  Also another card back cartoon showing how easy players have it today.  Even the lowliest major leaguer doesn’t need to work for an engineering firm in the offseason.  If anything, they’d be doing local commercial endorsements for it today.

He doesn’t care too much whether or not I get these for him, but the jolly fat man does enjoy them once he has them.  So I pick him cool (and very cheap) White Sox cards when I come across or occasionally pull them.  He’s got a shelf with some no-name prospect that never did anything auto, Ron Kittle & Darryl Boston autos, a Luis Aparicio stadium seat relic, a ’70 Topps Aparicio & ’78 Wilbur Wood, and a couple recent shinier cards.  Also that Gordon Beckham Topps Heritage auto still hangs out there.

1975 Topps ’52 MVPs Bobby Shantz/Hank Sauer..

The back..

This one’s for me.  One of my first ever vintage cards was a 1961(I think?) Hank Sauer MVP card, so he holds a special place in my collecting heart.  The card is a little rough around pretty much all the edges and corners, but considering the shape my other ’75s are in (the couple minis I own notwithstanding), this one isn’t really that bad at all.  The walks per 9 innings and total bases were probably still relatively deep statistical measures of greatness in 1975.  The former may still be.

1976 JR Richard..

The back..

Great card of a guy that didn’t play real long, but was so damn good while he did.  Definitely should have tried to pick up another card or two of JR.  The cartoon tidbit is rather interesting as well.  Good on ya, New York Press.  Minimal damage on the card, but it doesn’t look or feel very sturdy (basically the opposite of the clearly loved but still structurally sound ’75).

1977 Beltin’ Bill..

The back..

Man did Bill age fast or what?  He looks like he’s still in high school on his RC, then less than 10 years later he’s a grizzled old vet with a halfhearted pornstache and perm just playing out the string.  You can almost see the wheels in his head turning, wondering what became of his once promising career.  And now that I’ve depressed everyone, this card is in pretty decent shape.  I’m also open to dealing for more Bill Meltons and JR Richards (and Richie/Dick Allen, but that’s another post entirely) if you got ’em and don’t need ’em.

’78 George Foster..

Or Geroge, as one of the many Diamond Giveaway typos referred to him.  Not much to say about this suh-weet card other than that it’s condition is fine and I knew I was bringing it back the second it ended up in my port.  Those sideburns are badassss.

Fisk In Action..

The back..

What an outstanding photo.  I knew I had to get this one when I saw it too.  Also for dad, it will look GREAT with his little collection.  One card did get back ordered, and that was a ’71 Bill Melton.  So if it takes awhile, let’s hope it looks okay whenever it decides to come.

And with that, we’re done for now.  As ever, thanks for stopping by!  We’ll check

Next time, Gadget…