Mr. Jones and Me. Custom TTM success with an awesome note!

Oh man, this was a sweeeet TTM return for me.

I can't really explain it, but I was nervous about this one. It was way back in January when Padrographs Rod hooked me up with the elusive mailing address.. and it took me until the middle of August to finally get around to making the request, though it was high on my to-do list that whole time.

Chris Jones has been an enigmatic figure in my collection for a while now, sort of my personal Moonlight Graham. He was only the second person from my high school to play in the major leagues. And the first (Mike Reinbach) passed away many years ago, so Mr. Jones is by default the reigning patriarch of the Guys From Granite fraternity. The fact that "Chris Jones" is a very common name only further clouds the enigmatic nature of the situation, as searching for his cards is not easy, and googling him is pretty much a waste of time as 99% of the results will be for the other baseball player named Chris Jones (who debuted with the Reds in 1991), or maybe the other few guys with that name who've played in the minors over the past few years (or the football or soccer players who also have that name).

I just wanted it to be perfect. You never know how a TTM request will be received.. especially when customs are involved. I've heard about some old-timers who are like, "This is a FAKE CARD! I wasn't paid for the use of my likeness with this! Grumble grumble!" Worst case scenario is upsetting the guy.

Another concern of mine was the weather. Yeah, seems funny, but my customs are susceptible to the ink running when they get a little damp. I figured mid August would be safe, but lol, the day before this return came in, it rained. Thankfully it was dry the day the mailman dropped the return envelope off for me.

But enough lead-in, let's get to it!

Boom, if I may say so myself. Chris never got a real MLB card, so I made my own using the only photo I've ever seen of him not in a minor league uniform. I colorized the b&w pic and put it in a 1987 Donruss design (which might look familiar if you read my post from last month about 87D customs).

I sent 4 copies of this custom, and in my note I asked for one signed in return and said he could keep the extras, which he did. (I also sent a fine-tip red Sharpie for him to sign with [and keep].. an advanced TTM move I've only done once before.. for when you really want it to turn out well and not risk a crappy ballpoint pen or dried-out Sharpie ruining your request). I also mentioned how we both went to Granite Hills High School, and then Grossmont CC and SDSU (I nearly asked him which elementary school he went to, curious if our scholastic paths mirror back that far, though I resisted, thinking it might be creepy to do so).. and mentioned how collecting cards of players who went to my high school is a way I connect with my hometown after moving away a decade ago.

I think the back turned out pretty good, too! I take pride in my custom backs, gotta admit. Helps me stand out from other custom card makers who don't bother with the backs. But really it's just my OCD on the matter, as a blank-backed card feels incomplete to me. This is not only a rated rookie (that never was) but also a sunset card with full career stats. Turns out Chris read it and gave me props in a great note he included in his return...

Transcribing for posterity, he says:

Hey Gavin
Thanks so much for the cards. You did your homework on the career highlights. I didn't even remember that Nolan R. was pitching the game of my debut. I do remember that being on the same team as he was my greatest memory in the ML. Such a great guy as well as HOF no brainer. Take care and thanks again.
Chris  --->
That picture was in spring training during an intersquad game on deck to face Vida Blue. Nice game face! I ended up punching out looking on a 3-2 slider. Nice!

Wow! I've received nice little notes with my custom TTM requests before (including from Vida Blue himself!) but this takes the cake. I couldn't have dreamt of a better reply. This epitomises the greatness of the hobby for me and what it's all about.

Chris even wrote "Go Eagles!" on the back on the return envelope, a reference to our shared Granite Hills heritage.

Oh man, I'm so very happy with this return! While I wouldn't expect it to have big value on the secondary market, this signed card is now easily in the inner circle of best cards in my collection, right up there with my Trout autos and vintage Mantles.

Again, huge thanks to Mr. Jones for making my day by taking the time to sign and return my card and write that wonderful return note. And big thanks also to Rod as well as Brian at ABC Unlimited, the autograph dealer who kindly supplied the address. Much appreciated!

Tim Blackwell's mustache is a sight to behold

Wow, that's a hell of a mustache!

Tim Blackwell didn't have the same MLB success as the likes of Bill Buckner or Rollie Fingers, so he might not often be brought up in the discussion of baseball's best mustaches, but he damn well should be.

He was a backup catcher in the mid 70s through early 80s. Despite debuting with 44 games for the '74 Red Sox, his mainstream rookie card wasn't until 1978 Topps, though he does have a 1976 SSPC card, which I suppose can be thought of as his true rookie. But looks like he's got an oddball from 1975 Red Sox Herald. So maybe that's his true rookie. Whatever. I need both of those cards. I also still need several of his Topps, Fleer, and Donruss cards. I've probably got 3 or 4 more of his Topps cards sitting in sets, but didn't dig them out for this post (since they're not particularly expensive, I'd like to get dupes for the PC).

But while I still need many of his mainstream cards (hoping trader buddies can help me out there), I hit his minor league cards hard in the couple oddball-heavy orders I made a while back.

Tim's last season as a player was 1983, then he went right into coaching the next year.

Here we see Smokey the Bear giving Tim a citation for the overgrown dried brush underneath his nose. Talk about a fire hazard!

Here are some cards from the early 90s. His most successful year was 1991, leading the Columbia Mets to a Sally League title with a lineup featuring Fernando Vina and Butch Huskey.

Here are some cards from the late 90s. A touch of grey in the old pushbroom, but still just as majestic as ever.

However, the dawning of the new millennium would bring change...

No!! The soup strainer is gone! Tragic.

Besides the very impressive Mr. Tickles, another thing I like about Tim is he's a hometown hero of mine. Like myself, he was born in San Diego and considers El Cajon his hometown (according to the back of many of his minor league cards, at least). He's also a fellow alum of Grossmont College. Very cool.

Nice that he was able to spend a season at home with the San Diego Surf Dawgs as pitching coach in 2006. The Surf Dawgs were a short-lived independent team that featured Jose Canseco as a gimmick for one game, and the previous season had Rickey Henderson as a regular at the tail end of his career. Looks like Tim retired after the 2008 season.

Anyways, fun dude to collect. Please let me know if you've got any Tim Blackwell cards available for trade not pictured here. Thanks!

picking up local guys.. um, their cards, I mean

Nothing like collecting cards of guys who walked the same halls between classes as you. I personally like focusing on guys from my high school who went pro, but sometimes dabble with cards from guys who attended the same university and community college. Here's an update of some of my recent pickups.

After Tony Gwynn, no San Diego State alum had a more distinguished MLB career than Mark Grace (ok, maybe Graig Nettles). I've never really bothered to collect Grace before, but with so many Cubs fans in my trading circle these days, I keep an eye out for good Cubbie trading fodder, and that's how I came into these 2 hits. But now I'm thinking I'll hang onto them for representation in my SDSU minicollection (unless of course a Cubs fan wants to make me a crazy trade offer I'd be stupid to refuse [Looking at you, Twitch, and the Corey Seager /10 auto you recently pulled.. lol].) The Diamond King dual relic is /25 and the Tools of the Trade auto/relic is #'d 3/5. Like Gwynn, Grace is originally from the LA area, but came down to San Diego to get his learn on. Of course he'd go on to several standout seasons with the Cubs, collecting the most hits (1,754) of any player in the 1990s. He capped off his career with 3 years on the Diamondbacks, helping them win it all in 2001 over the Yankees.

These three autos are from my latest COMC order. Even if I don't go full-on player collector on these guys, I figured I'd at least score an auto from each of them.

Sean O'Sullivan went to Valhalla High School, which is the arch rival of my high school, so maybe it's no surprise I haven't started collecting his cards before this one. But hey, he did also go to Grossmont College just a few years after me, so I suppose that earns him a small place in my collection (Plus, this Just Minors auto was only $1.37). He's spent his career bouncing between AAA and the majors for several teams, including a stint with our hometown Padres in 2013, and most recently with the Red Sox last year. Looks like he'll pitch in Korea in 2017, signing a one-year deal with the Nexen Heroes of the KBO League.

Joe Kennedy is a guy I mentioned in a previous post when I got a Christmas Eve Card of him, and discovering he was a local guy is what helped jumpstart my Guys From Grossmont minicollection. He went to El Cajon Valley High School, which is where my best friend graduated from, so it's ok in my book. He was at Grossmont during the same time as me.. Hmm, wonder if I had any classes with him. He went on to pitch in 222 major league games between 2001 and 2007 before dying suddenly from heart disease.

Quintin Berry completes this auto trio. Like the previous two guys, he's never made a huge impact in the game, but was good enough to bounce around on a few major league rosters. He went to Morse High School, which also boasts Adam Jones (his classmate and friend), Sam Horn, and Mark McLemore as alumni. Berry played one season at Grossmont before transferring to SDSU where he got to play under Tony Gwynn. In 2012, he played 94 games for the Tigers as a rookie, but hasn't had anywhere near that much playing time since, though he did get a ring with Boston the next year. Looks like he'll begin the 2017 season with the Twins' AAA club.

Here's a page worth of Mike Jacobs cards from my latest Just Commons order. Mike graduated from Hilltop High School in Chula Vista and spent one year at Grossmont College before being drafted by the Mets in 1999. I shared a story on the blog before about how I'm pretty sure I had a class with him at Grossmont. He had some solid major league seasons in the late '00s, and played in Mexico these past couple years. He retired after the 2016 season and took a job managing in the Marlins organization, the team with which he hit the majority of his 100 career home runs. Anyways, I already had 2 or 3 autos of the guy, but wanted to round out the PC with a few more base cards, and these were just about a buck all total.

Ok, now we're getting closer to home for me. Casey Craig was drafted by the Mariners in 2003 out of good ol' Granite Hills High School. He put up solid numbers in A-ball, but sputtered out in AA and was done after 6 years in the minors. Bowman included him in 2006, though he had no autograph card produced, whether with Bowman or anybody else, as far as I can tell. So I had to settle for uncertified to add his signature to my collection. Well, actually it did come with a Letter of Authenticity...

..but I don't think this really adds any value or anything so I'll just throw it away rather than try to store it in my collection somewhere.

This is the Marcus Giles 2008 UD Spectrum "Retrospectrum Swatches" yellow printing plate. Normally, unless I'm rainbowing a card, I don't go after printing plates that much.. especially yellow, since they're typically faint and don't look great. But I couldn't resist adding another 1/1 of my former classmate for under $8 shipped. Plus it's my first plate of a relic, which is kinda weird and something you don't see often.

We close today with the grandfather of Guys From Granite, Mike Reinbach, the first grad from my high school to play in the majors thanks to a brief stint with Baltimore in 1974. The vast majority of his cards come from his time in Japan. The recent pickup here is the card on the right. When it popped up on eBay, it looked very familiar so I assumed I already had it. But before dismissing the auction as one I didn't need to bother with, I double-checked my PC, and sure enough, there was the familiar photo... but wait! White text on the bottom? Tighter crop? Yep, it's actually a different card. Different number on the back and everything. So I went after it and was able to score it at a decent price (the dinged corner probably helped keep the top bid down, but doesn't bother me much.)

So there's an update to my minicollection(s) of local dudes who went to at least one of the same schools as me. Thanks for reading!

Gary Carter and the rise of the Christmas Eve Cards

Back around Christmastime, I posted announcing a new niche minicollection I intended to grow in 2017: Christmas Eve Cards (any card serial numbered 12/24). They're sort of like harder to come by relatives of 12/25 cards, not only because there's one less produced, but because card companies rarely use 24 as a print run for parallels. We're off to a good start this year already, recently landing a new "best card" for this little group:

Gotta love Gary Carter. His pure love for the game always shined through. HOFer, 11-time All-Star, Expos legend, key part of the '86 Champion Mets. Looks like he was filled with the holiday spirit, finishing with 1225 career RBI. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I'd like to believe it was his subtle nod to ol' Kris Kringle, calling it quits once he reached that magical number. Haha, no, I'm kidding of course.. a deeply religious man, his RBI total was clearly a tribute to the Baby Jesus.

Normally I'm not a fan of stickergraphs, but this one can be forgiven by the fact that this auto card wouldn't be possible otherwise. It's from 2014 Topps Tribute. Gary sadly lost his battle with brain cancer in early 2012, well before this card could have gone into production. Topps must've had a few sheets of signed stickers from him still on hand, as they included Gary Carter autos in a couple products that year. Looks like that was the last year you could have pulled his auto, without resorting to cut signatures.

And I think I like this style of auto sticker-- holographic scroll effect-- better than the "clear piece of scotch tape" style that is used more often these days. You're not fooling anybody with that.

So that's a nice crown jewel of my Xmas Eve cards, but I also went on COMC to score some more. Unfortunately they don't make it easy for you to search by specific serial numbers (How I would love to be able to just type in "12/24" or "12/25" and see everything available with that serial number, but that doesn't work). However, you can do a search and then sort it by print run.. 1/1s through unnumbered cards. I know that Donruss/Panini Elite often has gold parallels numbered to 24, so I did a search for that product line, made my way to the /24 cards, and picked up a few that were #'d 12/24 and reasonably priced. Let's check 'em out...

Elvin Hayes is a HOFer who got his professional start with the San Diego Rockets (How am I from San Diego and didn't know that the Houston Rockets started as an expansion team in San Diego? In my defense, they were only there for a few years and had moved to Houston before I was born.) though he had most of his success with the Bullets. This card commemorates the neat fact that Elvin played 50,000 minutes in his career.. not "over 50,000" or "about 50,000" but exactly 50,000. It's a little hard to see, but dangling out of his shorts is the 12/24 serial number.

Speaking of sports teams leaving San Diego (***grr.. fucking Chargers ownership***), I was happy to see QB Philip Rivers in my search results, a guy I kinda collect despite my conflicting feelings about the Chargers these past few years. At this point, the team is dead to me, but I'm mainly a player-collector after all is said and done, so whatever. I'm just thankful my interest in football has majorly deteriorated since I moved out of San Diego, otherwise this turn of events would sting a lot more. But anyways, yeah, this is a sweet 12/24 card.

Here are a couple more football pickups. Trent Green is a name that's vaguely familiar to me as a casual football fan. He was originally drafted by the Chargers, then went on to get a Super Bowl ring with the Rams (though their championship run was largely due to his backup Kurt Warner filling in). Trent then had a couple Pro Bowl seasons with the Chiefs.
As for Derrick Ross, he's bounced around with 10 teams since this 2006 RC came out. He's currently with the arena Jacksonville Sharks.

Back to basketball, Tyler Hansbrough was a big deal at UNC, leading the Tar Heels to the 2009 NCAA championship, and has since played for the Pacers, Raptors, and Hornets. Ömer Aşık helped Turkey win the silver medal at the 2010 FIBA World Championship, and currently plays in the NBA with the New Orleans Pelicans. Quentin Richardson played with various NBA teams from 2000 through 2013 and is currently director of player development for the Detroit Pistons.

We'll close today back with baseball. You might have noticed that most of these Elite cards are diecut into wacky shapes. This one might be the oddest of them all. It's just... why? But it's shiny and proudly features an extra thick "12/24" foil pressing, so I frickin' love it! Googling Joe Kennedy will give you a ton of results for The Kennedy Joe Kennedy. But narrowing the search down to baseball, I can tell you that this Joe.. oh man, he died from a heart issue in 2007 at 28. That's sad. Turns out he was from my old stomping grounds of East County San Diego, and is a Guy From Grossmont, attending the same JC as me, Grossmont College. So this card hits 2 of my narrowest niche minicollections. Wow.

So yeah, there you have a bunch of cards numbered 12/24. Great to add to this fun stack of mine, and interesting to learn about these players that I otherwise wouldn't be likely to seek out for my collection.