Joy of a Completed Set: 1957 Topps!

I never owned a 1957 Topps card during my original stint as a card collector in the early 90s, with my modest smattering of vintage not stretching back further than 1969 or so. The first 1957 Topps card I acquired was a year or two after I had returned to the hobby, scoring myself a beat-up, miscut Mickey Mantle for $54 in November 2013. Over a decade later, October 18, 2024, I acquired my last 1957 Topps card, coincidentally also a Yankees outfielder, and between those 2 purchases, I tracked down the other 405 cards in the 407-card set. Yep, 1957 Topps is in the books!

My "setbuild bookend" cards are fittingly off-center towards each other. Tony Kubek isn't a big name today, but he won the AL ROY that year, and add to that the "Yankee tax", and his high-numbered rookie card shook out to being my final need, settling for this one.

Fulls stats, write-up, and a comic.. it's a solid card back design. (BTW, Happy Birthday, Mickey Mantle!)

After the Kubek rookie arrived, I queued up a playlist of Billboard's Hot 100 for the year 1957, and thumbed through the cards to confirm they're all there. When they started counting bananas in "Day-O", it nearly threw me off as I mentally checked off card numbers, lol. Then my heart nearly sank when #156 Gus Triandos wasn't in its place, but thankfully ol' Gus had just been misfiled a couple cards back.

All cards were accounted for, happy to report. The set is in a box, not binder-- apologies to you purists out there-- but I've got several graded cards in there anyways. I'm no "slab bro" or anything, but I plan to keep them encased for safety.

Billy Pierce is my highest-graded card at PSA 7, and turned out to be the only dupe that slipped into my set, also finding a creased raw copy in the box during my verification process. Pierce's upgrade and the PSA 6 Wally Post were scored in a trade with Chris the Collector in 2019. Luis Aparicio (previous pic) was a contest win, I believe, but I think the rest of these slabs were purchases. For a while I was trying to get big names in graded form just to be careful in regards to counterfeits. Not sure I'd bother quite as much today, but no regrets.

My set is a basic "one of each card number" set, not a master set. There are unnumbered checklists (with variations) and contest cards that I don't really have interest in. Same for the one error variation and a "lucky penny keychain offer" card. As it stands, I just have the one above contest card as a representative for the unnumbered appendix stuff. I've thrown the other stuff on my TCDB wantlist just in case, as I wouldn't mind trading for them, but I don't want to pay big bucks for boring cards that are only expensive today because kids back in '57 understandably threw them away with the wrappers most of the time.

Some more big cards that are too good for just a penny sleeve's protection. Another quirk of my set is that the Duke Snider is a buyback auto from 2004 Topps Originals. But hey, that's a real 1957 Topps card, so I count it. If I were one to grade cards, I'd be very curious what that Brooks Robinson rookie I lucked into would score. It seems pretty sharp for one of the top cards in the checklist, and isn't very representative of my set as a whole. For instance..

Consecutively near the front of the set at #8 and 9 are these well-loved specimens. There are several beaters in my set, can't deny. Looks like I've got 155 cards currently logged in a status of "upgrade would be nice" on my spreadsheet. Sure, I wouldn't mind upgrading them someday, but I'm also totally fine if that day never comes. I can truthfully make the claim that I've completed a set of 1957 Topps Baseball, and that's enough for me!

And an even bigger big-picture collecting goal for me wraps up now too: I've now completed my original vintage setbuilding goal of my personal "holy trinity" of favorite sets, one from each decade of the Topps golden era. First for me was 1973 Topps (started circa 11/28/2013, finished  9/26/2015-- my 1st ever completed full-sized set), then came 1965 Topps (kicked off 8/14/2015 and completed 1/7/2018). And now finally, I've completed my trifecta of personal favorites with 1957. 

The Mantle was originally purchased as part of my little Mickey Mantle PC-- no intention to ever complete the set at the time. But soon thereafter I started attending the local monthly card show and would always grab '57s when I found them in the sub-dollar bins. The earliest post I found with the "1957 Topps" label on my blog is a card show recap from August 2015: "I was especially happy to score the two 57s. That's a definite 'maybe someday I'll work on completing that set' dream set for me." 

Hey, dreams do come true! :) It's also kind of neat how I tried to keep track of the source of each card on the spreadsheet, helping to tell the story of how this particular set came together... via trades, card shows, and online purchases. As for the cards themselves, I love the "non-design" of the set and how for the first time Topps let the photograph be the card without much bells or whistles getting in the way. The set makes for terrific snapshots into the game at the time.

I hit the '57 wantlist hard for the next few years at the monthly card show, as longtime readers might recall-- (post titled "Wanna see more '57 Topps pickups? Too bad, here they are anyway" lol). Then when covid hit, I stopped going to the card show, and haven't been inspired to return since. Now here in 2024 I realized if I was gonna finish the set, I'd need to get more proactive and start picking off needs at COMC and eBay. And so I did, and a few months later, here we are. I'm glad I did the heavy lifting before the pandemic pumped up vintage prices. It's safe to say this will remain as my oldest completed set from here on out. I have half-hearted whims of pursuing 1959 Topps someday if prices drop or my ship comes in, but besides that, I still have 1964 Topps stalled at 76% and would like to complete that one eventually before my collecting career wraps up. But my focus is jumping back up to the 70s now, aiming to complete a run of that decade's flagship Topps sets. The pesky high-numbers of 1972 Topps, in particular, are currently in my crosshairs. In fact...

The final 1957 card was won from a Greg Morris auction, and if you're familiar with that seller, you know if you win one card from him you should try to snag a few more cards within the next few days before you pay because it's a flat shipping cost for all cards won within a week or something. I scored a bunch of '72 needs, including the 4 highlights above (Finally have the real Ron Cey rookie card!). From my experience, you want to find his auctions that end in the middle of the night (like these)-- his auctions ending in the afternoon/evening seem to end higher (than they probably should) with last minute bids, which I guess makes sense, but something I should try to keep in mind when bidding on his stuff. People might overpay a bit since they know it's still an ok deal with the combined shipping considered, plus he's a trusted vintage dealer not some rando who might try to slip you a fake or try funny business regarding condition issues.

But yeah, before I expanded to include all of the 70s, my longterm vintage collecting goal was completing the '57/'65/'73 trifecta of my favorite sets, so it's a great feeling to wrap that up. Thanks for following along, folks!

Catching up

Lots to blog about but I just haven't gotten the urge to type much lately. However, my guilt won't let me go too long without acknowledging cards received from a fellow cardblogger, so let's check out what John Miller surprised me with recently.

Photo came out blurry, but here are a bunch of Gavins. Mr. Williams has the biggest start of his life tonight for Cleveland. Good luck to him, but it's looking like it will be a Yankees vs. Dodgers World Series where I'm not sure who I'd root against hardest. The curse of rooting for the underdog is all the pain of defeat you have to deal with. By the way, did you notice my Padres bowed out of the playoffs in embarrassing fashion? Sad fact: I have never in my life seen a championship by a sports team I actively followed and rooted for. Granted I've really only followed the Padres (and Chargers for a while in the 90s-00s). I'm not saying it's gonna eat me up on my deathbed to have been a Lifelong Loser as a sports fan, but man, it sucks. I hate sports!

Here we go, some nonsport ladies. Sorry again for the blurry picture. I took these at night and my phone's camera needs natural light, I guess.

Lastly from John is a nice bunch of Dick Allen cards (and a tiny Ken Caminiti, too). I already had most of these, but there were enough needs to help push me back to being the #1 ranked Dick Allen collector on TCDB for the moment (Woo!). And that encouraged me to snag a few cheap refractor parallels of that Chome Anniversary card in the lower right.. so that should help pad my lead a little when they show up.

Thanks, Johnny! I'll be getting a return your way soon hopefully.

Now for some recent photographs to fill out the post.

I complain about my camera, but happy to see it capture the supermoon halo or whatever you call it from last night. That's a lense flare below it.

My dog Ruby wants nothing more than to get a catfriend, but the local felines want nothing to do with her. Excitedly lunging at them to play/chase probably isn't the best strategy, but she doesn't get that. There's one Siamese that isn't afraid to get close, but it's more of a "bully" situation, and I'm wary of the claws coming out, so I've got to keep some space between them. I snapped this pic when the cat was following behind us but Ruby didn't seem to notice.

And here's a selfie from a recent walk with a nice view.

Ok, let's hope this post helped "break the seal" and I get more frequent blogs posted to close out the year. Gotta hit the annual Vintage Frankenset post soon, plus a major setbuild of mine is coming to a close with the final card currently out-for-delivery. Oh, and I've got a bunch of new cardart stuff I want to show off. So yeah, lots to talk about soon. Thanks as always for stopping by.

Gavins from Dennis

My buddy Dennis of the blog Too Many Verlanders surprised me with a nice mailer of cards this past week. The majority were guys named Gavin, so this post will also function as an abbreviated "pro athletes named Gavin" annual update for 2024, though last year I said I wouldn't continue doing it since there are a lot of Gavins out there now compared to when I started paying attention to the 2 or 3 there were ten years ago.

Gavin Williams' stats this season haven't been that great following his strong debut last year, though injuries have played a part. Cleveland secured a playoff spot, so hopefully Gavin gets a chance to shine in October. Cool bunch of cards here with a 1st Bowman refractor, insert Topps RC, and a couple Panini relic RCs.

Gavin Lux has set his career high for games played this season, and I think he had a hot streak going for a while, though overall his numbers are still around replacement level. Suiting up for the juggernaut Dodgers, he's likely to play plenty of postseason baseball. While I of course hope my Padres pull it out, Ohtani is having a season for the ages and it wouldn't surprise anyone if they just kept rolling.

Dennis didn't send me any Gavin Stone cards, but he's another Gavin on the Dodgers to mention. He pitched well this year, highlighted by a complete game shutout, though manager Dave Roberts recently said he's very unlikely to pitch again this year due to shoulder discomfort. Bummer.

Like with Lux, Gavin Sheets has gotten a lot of playing time this year and hasn't quite had the breakout his team had been hoping for. The sad-sack White Sox and their lame owner are having an historically bad season, so there's no 2024 postseason experience awaiting this Gavin. 

Always love a "cracked ice" parallel or whatever they're calling them these days.

Gavin Cross had a strong year for KC's AA team, knocking 15 dingers with 30 stolen bases in 101 games. Wishing him the best of luck cracking the bigs in the next year or two.

There are several other Gavins in the minors today, too many for me to want to cover here, but best of luck to all of them making the show. Turns out my local-ish minor league team, the Hillsboro Hops, had a pair of Gavins on their roster this season. I should have maybe tried to see a game and perhaps gotten autoGavs of those guys, but alas. I didn't see any in-person baseball this year, sad to say, not even the local collegiate summer league Portland Pickles. Oh well, maybe next year.

My biggest football PC gets a couple cards larger thanks to this pair. Since the late Gavin Escobar, there haven't been any NFL Gavin cards released, as far as I can tell. There was one Gavin (Gavin Heslop) who played 3 games for the Seahawks in 2021 but didn't seem to get any cards out of it.

And here's a Gavin Cecchini auto, plus cards from his brother Garin, who I sorta also passively collect. lol

And some non-Gavin content from Dennis to round things out. There was actually a little stack of '92 Leaf black gold, but only Brady Anderson was a need. Believe it or not, I'm only a dozen cards short of the finish line there.

Thanks a lot, Dennis! Cool stuff. I'll do my best to scrape together a decent return for you soon.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Keepers From Rod

Well jeez I got distracted and meant to whip up this post last month, but yeah let's quickly bust out some incoming highlights. 

The big lot of cards from Rod last month helped me add many new cards to my PCs of active players, especially current and recent Padres.

Six player stacks here, including 2024 Topps team set variations for all except Soto because of course he's not with San Diego any longer. The superfluous shiny parallel is kinda cool, though.

Jackson Merrill has San Diego feeling good about the future. He might have a shot at the ROY if Paul Skenes doesn't have too many more quality starts down the stretch.

Bobby Witt, Jr. is another young stud I don't have much from, so it's great to add an early card of his.

And while my Jose Altuve PC has been largely neglected since the Astros cheating scandal, I was still stoked to find a nice card of his within the boxes.. the variation on the right.

It's my first of those "Golden Mirror" variations I've been hearing about for a while. Pretty cool.

There were plenty more cards I could feature from that lot, but I might have to call it good here or maybe do a follow-up post with more later. The other few hundred cards are still in sorting triage of "non-active keepers", "decent cards for trade", and "for cardart". But then Rod stopped by last weekend for another handoff...

Only 1 standard-sized card this time-- the Dylan Cease no-hitter Topps Now card (sweet!)-- but some other cool stuff like unused tickets from the 1984 postseason (wow!) and a set of 1974 McDonald's disc-cards in the original plastic display ball case (!!!).

Here's a neat bit of Padres randomness: A letter from Jerry Coleman to a guy named Mike apologizing for losing the stuff he sent in to be signed.

I had a couple Tim Flannery cardart things for Rod so he didn't leave empty-handed. He helped further encourage my creativity with cards by giving me some fancy paper to work with and a rotary cutter tool that's already come in handy. 

Thanks again to Rod for the cool stuff, and have a great weekend, everybody.

Some photographs I've been meaning to post

I've given the reusable grocery bag full of cards from Rod a first pass, but still have another round or two of sorting before I snap pics of some highlights (lots of good stuff!), but in the meantime, here's a post of photos from the past couple months or so.

I know it's been a long time since Rod last dropped off cards on me.. because back in May he asked if I was going to be around one weekend to receive some cards, but sadly that was the weekend I was out at the coast for a family getaway. And it wasn't until just recently that Rod was finally able to swing by again, and so it was a glorious card-show-comes-to-me type extravaganza several months in the making. But anyways, back in May, I was a little upset with myself that I forgot to take my customary beach photo of my wallet card being dipped into the Pacific Ocean, but at least I grabbed this shot with the water in the background as we were starting the drive home.

Now here's some cute wildlife photography, mostly bunnies and my dog..

This bird spent a few minutes in my Mark Fidrych Memorial Bird Feeder recently, and seemed to really be giving a thoughtful look to the faded '77 Fidrych rookie that graces the feeder, and I had to try grabbing a photo.

I wore my Card Belt the other day, not to brag. :) They're all the rage, with a player wearing one during All-Star Game festivities or something. (Thanks again, Bob!)

The annual free concert in our neighborhood park was a good one this year, with local cover band Covered Structure performing for a solid turnout. I only caught a few songs during a dog walk, but they sounded great. Highlights included "elderly woman behind the counter in a small town" by Pearl Jam and the Fleetwood Mac favorite "Dreams".

Our neighbors across from our backyard aren't coming back, and so an estate sale was held at their house. I didn't go the first 2 days, but I stopped in on the last day. The final-day deal was $20 for whatever you could fit into a paper grocery bag. I got a nice bag full of stuff I can use. No cards/sports stuff, but some crafty stuff that I have cardart plans for. Also some other household stuff and yard stuff and a hanging shelf thing. I grabbed some tea and kitchen stuff, too, along with snapping this above pic. It was cool to see the inside of a house I see the outside of everyday (and to see my house from a new perspective). What's odd is we rarely saw the elderly couple who lived there. They seemed nice enough the rare times we noticed them about, but it must've been a seldom-used second home for them or something. I gotta admit it was nice having a mostly-empty neighboring house. Hopefully whoever moves in there next is cool and quiet. 

Speaking of old people dying, let's squeeze in at least one card photo before ending the post. Sad about Bob Newhart passing, but like I said recently about Willie Mays, I think he got the most out of life that one can get. Score the man a 10/10 in life fullness, right? A few years back (back at the old house) I was hankering a certified autograph of Bob the comedy legend, and ended up settling for this reasonably priced check cut-auto from Leaf with the intention of making a custom overlay for it, though I haven't gotten around to that yet, so here it is with a sparkly background to help it out instead for now. RIP, Mr. Newhart.

Welp, back to sorting the cards from Rod. Thanks for reading!

Some cards I've been meaning to post

With this pair of notable former Dodgers, my 2004 Chrome Black setbuild is down to just 20 cards remaining.

My longterm dream of putting together a run of Topps playing days Mantles sorta faded away with the covid boom, so now I'm pivoting to a frankenset of vintage and refractor reprints filling in the gaps where I don't have the original. Hopefully I finish that someday and get a blog post out of it. After these shiny revisions from '96, my current needs are 1952, 1953, 1956, 1960, 1961, 1962, and 1967.

Baby Dave Winfield. The '73 is a WTHB custom.

1970 Topps is probably the vintage design that benefits the most from refractorification.

Turns out Mr. Show is in my baseball card collection.

My ARMS is on the cusp of 75% complete, with 122 cards remaining.

A couple recent Topps Retired auto pickups.

I also got a Parker Posey autograph.

I know I just showed that Jim Abbott, but turns out it completed the 2-card Angels team set for me, meaning I've got an excuse to show off the Nolan Ryan I bought in Hawaii years ago.

Bob at Best Bubble has been generous with me lately, first was a package with a couple Gavins and a couple girls..

..and a bunch of 1992 Leaf black gold. Some big name, too! And then more recently, a ton more of these showed up from him in a pair of flat-rate boxes.. and when the dust settled, I'm left with just 21 missing cards to finish the parallel set. Nice!

Also a new Gavin for my collection-- I believe the first basketballing Gavin I've got-- plus some PC guys and many duplicate "bubble" cards from Bob's collection, some of which I plan to do crafty cardart stuff to and then send back to Bob.

Plus a stack of Glow Stars and several more gals.

Big thanks, Bob! Much appreciated.

That'll do it for today. Thanks for reading. Sorry I haven't posted for about a month, but I should be back with more cards to show off soon. (Padrographs Rod dropped off a few hundred various cards this past weekend that I'm excited to check out.)