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…

Vintage Frank!

1973 version. Definitely a Dodgers uni, and I'm pretty sure they're playing the Phillies..

This is why I said these cards deserved their own post.  I’m not that hardcore into vintage cards, cuz I’m usually too poor to partake (this also precludes me from high end cards mostly too), but seriously, Frank Robinson.  For less than $3 combined.  I don’t even need to say anything else.  Just enjoy…

1958 youngling version..

And the back..

That is all… Thank you.

Million Card Giveaway Haul

Forgot about this until I saw them amongst some undownloaded scannage still sitting in my inbox.  Here’s what I ended up with:

1983 Cubs Team Leaders Leon Durham/Fergie Jenkins, 1984 Ge(J)orge Bell, 1985 Ryne Sandberg, 1972 Roger Freed, 1960 Al Schroll, 1976 Davy Lopes

Pretty nice haul considering how little I had to work with.  No complaints about condition either.  Only the ’60 and ’72 had any damage, but except for a certain 1965 card from a recent-ish trade and some pack fresh ’83s, I don’t know that I’ve ever even seen anything from before the junk wax era that was minty fresh.  Hell, a lot of current cards don’t even seem to come out of the pack minty fresh.  So yeah, these are fine, even centered nicely.  Davy Lopes is only has the slightest corner ding, otherwise he’s in perfect condition.

I didn’t have much luck with the MCG, either pulling them from packs, or turning them into vintage once on the site.  In fact, I’ve already pulled more Diamond Giveaway chances than I pulled MCGs all of last year, and with better vintage success (close to 50%).  Freed and Schroll were the only two pre-1975 cards from the MCG I scored myself without have to trade for.  Schroll was was great to get myself as a Cubs fan, but he was the only pre-1970 card I hit at all.  I’ve already somewhat duplicated the vintage Cubs feat this year, hitting a 1970 Don Young, that I will most likely be keeping, and hit have hit two pre-1970 cards (both ’69s, one I traded for a ’67) so far.

I really enjoy the idea of these “giveaways”.  They definitely haven’t perfected it, but it’s a fun way to score some random vintage cards (and other goodies), and really, who can argue with random vintage (and other goodies)?

The backs..

Freed and Lopes are available for trade.  Seeya.

Vintagevintagevintagevintage, its… VINTAGE.

Flea Market Finds #5: 25-card $1 Grab Bag Pack

Here be the first of the two 25-card $1 grab bag pack things.  This be the football version.  Here’s the pack in order (accomplishments via Pro-Football-Reference):

1970 topps Ernie Koy (1x Pro Bowl), Roy Jefferson (3x Pro Bowl; 1x First-Team All-Pro), Dan Abramowicz (1x First-Team All-Pro), Don Herrmann, 1968 topps Gino Cappelletti (5x Pro Bowl; 3 double-letters in one name!), Carl Kammerer, Earl Gros, '70 Tim Rossovich (1x Pro Bowl), Chuck Howley (6x Pro Bowl; 5x First-Team All-Pro; 1x Super Bowl MVP)

Vintage, it’s all vintage!

1970 topps David Lee (1x First-Team All-Pro), Dave Osborn (1x Pro Bowl), Jon Morris (7x Pro Bowl; 1x First-Team All-Pro), Jerry Smith (2x Pro Bowl; 1x First-Team All-Pro), 1968 topps Sam Baker (4x Pro Bowl), ’70 Les Josephson (1x Pro Bowl), ’68 EJ Holub (5x Pro Bowl; 2x First-Team All-Pro), 1971 topps Greg Landry (1x Pro Blowl), ’70 Dennis Partee

1970 topps Bill Munson, 1971 topps Floyd Little (5x Pro Bowl; 1x First-Team All-Pro; Hall of Fame class of 2010), 2010 topps Peyton Manning (11x Pro Bowl; 5x First-Team All-Pro; 1x Super Bowl MVP; 4x NFL MVP; 1x Offensive Player of the Year), 1994 Upper Deck Troy Aikman (6x Pro Bowl; 1x Super Bowl MVP; Hall of Fame Class of 2006), 1990 Fleer All-Pro Joe Montana(8x Pro Bowl;3x First-Team All-Pro; 3x Super Bowl MVP; 2x NFL MVP; 1x Offensive Player of the Year; Hall of Fame class of 2000), Jerry Rice (13x Pro Bowl; 10x First-Team All-Pro; 1x Super Bowl MVP; 2x Offensive Player of the Year; all-time leader in rec/rec. yds/rec. TDs/TDs/yds from scrimmage/all-purpose yds; Hall of Fame class of 2010), Barry Sanders (10x Pro Bowl; 6x First-Team All-Pro; 1x NFL MVP; 2x Offensive Player of the Year; 1989 Offensive Rookie of the Year; Hall of Fame Class of 2004)

Vintage Hall of Famer!  Yes, this was basically the best $1 grab bag pack thing ever.  Pretty much puts that McDonald’s dollar menu commercial to shame, eh?

Also, 1994 Upper Deck football is pretty.

Pretty much everything but the Jerry Rice is available for trade.

That’s it for this one.  So long, and thanks for stopping by!

Until our next…

Flea Market Finds #2: First Binder Page

Heya, card blog homies!  Here is the first binder page from my glorious afternoon at the flea market:

1987 Clemens All-Star, 1987 Bo Jackson, ???? Daryle Lamonica, 1983 topps George Brett, 1983 topps Joe Montana (Record Breaker), 1970 topps Bob Brown, Jackie Smith, 1968 topps John Hadl, 1970 topps Ben Davidson

Why purchased: Very early career Montana (close as I’ll likely get to his rookie anytime soon); Hall of Famer (Jackie Smith); Daryle Lamonica card I have no idea about; Vintage!

Keepers: Just Montana for the time being.  The rest are available.

Notes: I actually already own the Bo and George Brett, both pulled from packs myself, but they are cool cards either way.

It appears Bob Brown is also a Hall of Famer as well.  Very cool. 🙂

All the non-Hall of Fame football players on the page (Davidson, Hadl, Lamonica) made First Team All-Pro at least once (Lamonica twice), and have 14 Pro Bowl selections between them.  Oddly, Hadl and his loonytunes stats has the most Pro Bowls with six.

Seriously, I have no idea what the Lamonica card is supposed to be.  The back is very similar looking to the Deckle Edge baseball cards, so I assume it is from the late-’60s as well, but I dunno.  Also, it is beat to hell.  None of the vintage I picked up was in perfect condition, but very few were that bad.

All the binder pics were taken by my ridiculously expensive webcam.  They didn’t come out perfectly, but pretty nice for any webcam at 800×600, methinks.  Also, I haven’t tinkered with any settings, so it may yet be able to be further improved.

Mind-Blowing Statistics: John Hadl had 33503 career passing yards, but only completed 50.4% of his passes and had more interceptions (268) than touchdowns (244).  Looking at his stats year-by-year is even crazier.  It’s hard to fathom how he was allowed to start long enough to put up such impressive yards and touchdown numbers, while being so… so bad, to put it bluntly.  I’d just chalk it up to different eras and less emphasis on statistics in the past, but it’s pretty hard to ignore those numbers.

Jackie Smith’s best year was in 1967, when he caught 56 passes for 1205 yards, good for 21.5(!) yards-per-catch.  He also had receiving 9 touchdowns, more than doubling any other season of his career.  But forget about that.  He went for 21.5 yards-per-catch.  With over 1200 receiving yards.  As a tight end.  The guys that are specifically paid to be deep threats these days are rarely able to put up numbers like that.  He also put up an impressive by any standard 16.5 YPC for his career on nearly 8000 receiving yards.

That’s it for page one.  Thanks for stopping by!  There’s much more vintage to come, but next time we’ll be making a stop in junk wax country.  But it will be a fun (and rookie-laden) trip, I promise.

Until our next…

Flea Market Finds #1: Overview

Heyas.  Been a long time, huh?  Nothing’s really changed since last we chatted, except for getting a few more of the sketch cards from the previous post finished (and a few new ones drawn up), and a seriously loudass person moving in upstairs pushing me to the end of my rope with this lousy place.  Seriously, if anyone knows of a halfway decent place with no noise problems to speak of that falls within my modest price range, I’m so effing outta here.

Ah, but that’s not why you called.  I happen to have some fun stuff I’m getting prepared to blog about.  For the past several months, they’ve been holding a small monthly flea market at the shell of our once thriving mall.  I asked my dad if they had any cards when the parents made it out there at the beginning of the year, and he said they did, but didn’t elaborate.  So I’ve been wanting to go ever since, to see what was there myself.

On Saturday, I finally made it out there.  I wasn’t expecting much, but I had $23 with me just in case.  And am I ever glad I did.  There was a guy there with cards.  He didn’t bring the whole card shop (of which he apparently owns one nearby, according to the business card), but he had a very nice selection of cards to peruse.  He had cards available ranging from the late ’60s to within the past couple years, in baseball, basketball, and football.

He seemed to be an old school Beckett-adhering type, but his cards were priced to move.  He mentioned to another person there that wandered by that his philosophy was that if a kid saw a cool card they liked, they should be able to afford it, which sounds like an awesome philosophy to me.  As such, the vast majority of his singles were $1, and almost everything on up seemed to be reasonably priced (I think I spotted a Felix Pie auto for $50 in the one little bunch hits behind glass, but that is easily forgivable when pretty much everything else was so reasonable).

He was also willing to deal, as you’ll soon see.  So I picked out a few singles I liked (9 in total, I believe), all but one marked $1 or $1.50 (the two of which he gave me for $1), and two random 25 card grab packs for $1 apiece that had interesting cards showing.  Then I came to the side of the table where he had several binders laid out, each with about a dozen pages full of cards in them.  They were marked $1 per page, or $10 for a whole binder.  As it happened, I managed to find a dozen random pages I like from the various binders.  So he stuck them all in one of the binders, and gave it to me for $7!

So yeah, I spent all $23 I came armed with.  In total, I ended up with about 170 cards, the vast majority of which I very much like.  Needless to say, I completely obliterated the number of cards and enjoyment I would’ve gotten out of your average blaster (+ maybe one $1.59 pack), and will be heading out there again next month.  There were many things I had to leave behind this time.

Anyway, the binder pages will make up the vast majority of the posts to follow in this little series.  I’ll go over them card-by-card, one or two pages at a time, because there is just so much random coolness in each page.

I’ll also be getting a few packages sent out over the course of this month, and a few of the cards from the flea market may even find their way into some of them.

1/3 of of one of the most iconic basketball cards of all time, and a small preview of the craziness to come...

Flea Market > Blaster.  It is a fundamental truth.

The fun has only just begun…

COMC Order #3

Now we segue out of vintage with a little last hurrah and into something a little… smaller, with this here quickie post.

1969 topps Deckle Edge Jim Fregosi, Maury Wills, and Jerry Koosman proving vintage never goes out of style.

Ah, wonderful affordable vintage.  I am slowly putting together this set.  I believe this brings me to five now, with Kessinger and Santo.  It’s a good one to collect if you aren’t concerned about condition.  Even the best players won’t set you back that much, and there are lots of big names of the day and Hall of Famers to be had.  The set is only 33 cards (plus a couple different player-same card number variations, proving topps has been pulling that s*** since at least the late-1960s!), so there isn’t a lot to track down.

Not quite minis in an official sense, but the slightly smaller than average size makes for a handy transition to the minis portion of our program, which we will start to cover in the next Check Out My Cards post.

PS: Still no winner in the contest yet. Go down a few posts and keep guessing!

Until our next…

COMC Order #2

Vintage 2: Son of The Search for Curly’s Electric Boogaloo Returns

Yeah, let that sweet vintage goodness wash over you and cleanse your soul...

These are all Hall of Famers (except the card-sharing Downing and the Cobra, who is fairly close to Hall-worthy), and they are all keepers this time.

Is that ’72 not glorious?  1047 wins represented on that card!  And those two early-mid ’80s Carews probably don’t qualify as vintage yet, but they’re getting way too close for comfort.  That is depressing, because I will become vintage only one year later.  Not cool, man, not cool. 😦

On that disheartening note, the next post will be short, in more ways than one, as we somewhat seamlessly segue out of vintage and into the next section.

Oh, and Merry Christmas and Happy Universal Non-Denominational Holiday Celebration to all!

Now I have a machine gun.  Ho-ho-ho…

COMC Order #1

Check out my cards had a shipping special over Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend.  10¢ a card.  So I picked up the 77 cards I’d been storing up since about March, for $7.70 instead of over $22.  Well, I had mid-50s, but the $15 I saved on shipping allowed me to pick up about 21 more cards for immediate shipment.  And a few days ago I finally got it all scanned.  So let us check them out, one scan of one section at a time.

First up, we’ll start with vintage, cuz… why not?

1960 topps Gernert, Hobbie and Cunningham AS, 1971 topps Hoyt Wilhelm, 1975-76 New York Nets (featuring Dr. J), 1968 beat up & used Yaz checklist & Manny Sanguillen rookie, and a couple Gaylord Perry's from the latter half of the '70s..

Just stare at them for awhile.  They aren’t all the greatest of players or in the best of shape, but doesn’t staring at old cards just make you feel good?  Doesn’t it just relax you and somewhat put your mind at ease, if only for the moment?

Speaking of condition, the Wilhelm is in spectacular shape, impossibly awful centering aside.  Smooth surface, four sharp corners, and no creases at all.  Can’t ask for more of a ’71.  Only the first five are keepers, Yaz and the bottom row are available for trade.

PS: Nobody has guessed the card right yet.  Everyone that guessed may try again (on that post plz).  We’ll go until someone gets it right.

Until or next…

Wordless Wednesday: When Cartoons and Vintage Baseball Meet

Notice anything familiar about the design on these Pachuco Bros. sketch cards I did for Breygent's recently released set? Also, who are these Pachuco Bros. guys? I can't find anything on the internets about them...

The countdown continues…