Incoming Cards™

All is not well at Baseball Card Breakdown HQ, with my dog Ruby getting a serious injury in a dust-up after she playfully surprised a mean dog at the park. Not life-threatening, but there's a pretty nasty gash on her side, now stitched up with a tube. It'll likely be a rough couple weeks of healing but she should be back to her over-the-top self soon. I'm pretty exhausted from all the stress and hours waiting at the emergency vet the other day, but glad that day is in the rearview now.

I've been meaning to do another one of those posts where I get around to showing off some incoming cards I've gotten recently, specifically non-purchases this time. (The post title is joke referencing Penny Sleeve's latest post.) So let's do that while I keep one eye on the dog (We try to give her plenty of time not in the Cone of Shame, but that means we need to make sure she doesn't mess with the area or get into any trouble otherwise).

When the Diamond King ran a quick contest where he'd try shopping for some cards for you at an upcoming card show, I tried to keep my entry comment request simple, asking for refractors of notable players or cheap star cards for cardart if I won.

Lucky me, my name came out on top and before long I received a pair of PWEs with my winnings.

Really nice selection of shiny stars, heavy on Padres. And here's a better look at that center Khris Davis...

Christmas Card! Kevin mentioned this was one he had set aside for me for a while.

The non-refractors were way better than I was expecting. I needed the Jim Palmer for my '76 setbuild, and the others are all nice PC additions. I think only the Betts is a dupe for me, so maybe that one'll get defaced in the name of art at some point.

Big thanks, Kevin! I really enjoyed these!

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Looks like Zippy Zappy is still working on slimming down his collection, as I got another recent package from him.

Three baseball autos, a couple cards of a lovely lady, and a hockey printing plate. Not too often somebody drops a random 1/1 on you!

Some little Star Wars canisters from Japan (once containing cookies?) along with sleeves n' such (not pictured) that I'll find a use for.

Thanks again as always, Kenny! I hope you keep mailing me random cool shit for years to come. lol

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John Miller surprised me with a nice bunch of cards a week or so back.

A nice group of Gavins here.

Big Brian Giles lot. I should sort out the PC one of these days and enter it into TCDB as I bet I'd be a contender for the top spot with so much help from traders like John over the years.

Love whenever I can add to the Caminiti collection.

A few other highlights from the package. Thank you, John! Always appreciated! I need to find some Braves for you or at least make some more bubble customs for you and Bob like I've been meaning to.

Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Kevin, Kenny, and John for the cards.

Checking where I rank with some lesser-collected PC guys

Got a few more cards from my big shipment to document on the blog today. These here are non-HOF "fan favorite" type guys from the past.. Generally players that aren't chased by many collectors out there. It's fun to go after oddballs and whatnot from them, and maybe even take a run at completing their full run of cards, or at least trying to build the #1 PC for a guy on TCDB.

Starting alphabetically with Dick Allen-- not exactly an obscure name, but still-- here are a couple smaller-than-standard cards. That side-eyein' 2009 Goodwin Champions is one of my all-time favorites.. I've got at least a couple other versions of it, including the auto which had been a white whale of mine for a few years, and am happy to snag the black bordered mini of it now. 1990 Target All-Time Dodgers is a familiar set to me after seeing gcrl cover the whole thing on his blog a few years back, plus occasional appearances on Night Owl Cards. Sucks they couldn't have found a picture of Dick from this Dodger days to use on the card. That out of place White Sox uniform is worthy of young Richie's side-eye.

At the time of this post, Crash's #1 collector on TCDB is user "theFalcon" with 84, with the 2nd most being 61 cards. I haven't added up all my DA's or entered them into the site, but I'm probably somewhere between those two. TCDB lists 325 total cards for him... many of which are just from this year, with Dick being included in '21 Heritage and getting multiple Project 70 cards, too (none of which I've pulled the trigger on, though nice to see him getting some hobby love).

UPDATE: I clawed my way into 2nd place with 62 cards, though I had to resort to counting a couple Kellogg's cards that are currently stored in setbuilds not the player collection, if you wanna get technical about it-- but whatever, I own the cards. I'd probably be around 70 cards if I counted more set stuff like that. 

BTW, I already owned the above two cards, dang it! Good thing I'm trying to keep better track of my collection now. Oh well, I'll add the dupes to the "for trade/sale" inventory I've been meaning to build up on TCDB to hopefully see more trade action.

Rod Beck has 414 total cards listed. These are 3 cheap parallels I probably needed.

1995 Upper Deck - Electric Diamond Silver

1995 Score - Hall of Gold

1997 Donruss Limited - Limited Exposure (with John Wetteland on the other side)

Shooter's top collector on TCDB is user "bronnerea" with 164 cards. I can't top that, but think I'd have a shot at being in the top 10 were I to check in mine to the site.

Ken Caminiti is a guy I have a lot of cards of, but still probably wouldn't crack the top 10 on TCDB ("Expos1990" rules comfortably with 597 cards.. probably over 3 times as many as me). Ken's represented in this order by a thick, leathery insert (1997 Topps Stadium Club Patent Leather --pretty sure I saw one of these get a thumbs-up on Fuji's blog and had to grab one for myself) plus a couple $1 buybacks. And if it's buybacks of notable Padres sluggers you're into, well have I got a group of cards to show you...

A half dozen boughten-back Nate Colbert cards. Not too far from a full career Topps run of buybacks, but his high-numbered '67 rookie stars card and high-numbered '72 (and corresponding In Action) make that an unlikely project to ever complete.

And some more Colberts for my semi-supercollection. Looks like I went on a little shopping spree with Nate in mind on 4/11/2020, as all 12 of these cards were bought on the same day. Some of these weren't good deals ($5+ each for the Ty Cobb back mini and the TCMA? Geez), but just wanted to basically snag anything on the site that I didn't already have.

I think I'd have a good chance of being #1 for Nate Colbert on TCDB. Oh yeah, I just looked it up and the top spot is only 31 cards. I think I could beat that, though then again a lot of my cards of him are proof cards that wouldn't be on the TCDB checklist. But yeah, I should enter in my PC one of these days.

UPDATE: Ok, I did. 

Woo! #1 by a wide margin. Most of the above buybacks plus the APBA "card" aren't listed, so my actual number would be even greater if those were added in.

Dave Henderson is a PC I really enjoy adding to, but he's a relatively recent addition to my crew, so doubt I'd rank too highly on TCDB ("DaClyde" is first with 248 cards, followed by "bronnerea" with 175).. I still need most of his junky base cards (attn: trader buds). A pair of tiffany cards are among the parallels I grabbed this time around. I don't regard 1989 Bowman very highly.. but 1989 Bowman Tiffany? For whatever reason, I love it! Being glossy and printed on high quality cardstock somehow excuses it for the audacity of being oversized and not printing the player's name on the front. The weird by-team stats breakdown thing is still on the back, but at least it's easier to read on bright stock. lol

COMC damaged the Bill Madlock foldy, so I went ahead and folded it as intended by the design. I got it specifically because it was the only card of Mad Dog pictured on the Texas Rangers I didn't have. I might have a shot at the top 10 on TCDB for Madlock, but doubt I'd be too near the top ("bronnerea" repeats as king here with 154).

The Maas and Scioscia cards are imported from the north.

Just wanted to find a couple PC guys cheap as an excuse to add Canadian 1990 Fleer cards to my collection. ("Ptd. in Canada" on the bottom.) Feels like that's some mythic set that I hear about a lot but had never actually seen in-hand before.

Also in the photo, a look at the damage on the Madlock. It was in a long top loader, but it had been cranked pretty hard somehow in packaging and managed to damage the card within it. At least it only cost me $1 so I didn't make a stink about it. But yeah, not cool, COMC.

Mike Sharperson might be a really random player for me to collect, but I decided to build up a collection of his cards after remembering liking him back in my early days as a baseball fan and card collector circa '90-92 which really happened to be his only good seasons. Besides those 3 years, he was mostly on the roster for depth, spending the majority of his time in AAA with occasional promotions to the big league club. He was on the verge of making his Padre debut in 1996 spelling a hurt Ken Caminiti, but was fatally injured in a car wreck on the way to the airport.

TCDB lists 104 total cards with the top collector being "bronnerea" again with 70. It'll be a while till I'm anywhere near that, but enjoy picking up some oddities like these. (The '89 Bowman and middle '91 Topps are tiffany.) Still need most of his junky cards, but I'd rather get those in trade then have to buy them.

I also scored a few needs for my Dan Walters PC, mostly minor league issues. The most expensive of these was the 1989/red one ($3.20), which sadly is another victim of COMC's employee damaging the card during packaging. You can see the top left corner got jacked up. And by context of the package contents, it was clearly damaged during packaging, not already damaged before the fact nor damaged in transit. Boo. I know those guys are rushing to catch up on their backlog, but wish they'd be more careful with the cards.

Dan Walters is yet another player featured in this post whose life was cut short. I don't consciously decide to collect guys who die before reaching old age, but perhaps on some level my heart goes out to them. Collecting their cards might be like my way of paying tribute.. and/or a reminder that life is precious and I should take the time to appreciate every day I wake up in good health.

Walters has just 42 cards listed on TCDB, with ol' "bronnerea" ranked the #1 collector with 26 of them. That guy must either have a huge collection, or we just happen to share a few favorite retired players. I might be able to challenge him on this one, as I think I've got around 20-30 Dan Walters cards.

UPDATE: I've got 24 cards. So close! Good for 2nd; in striking distance of 1st.

One thing that bugs me about TCDB is the arbitrary way cards are assigned to players.

Per TCDB's checklist, the card on the left is considered a Dick Allen card, yet the card on the right isn't considered a Dan Walters card. I suppose "My collection, my rules" doesn't apply when you're using somebody else's website (and the site's many users have plenty of room to edit as they see fit).

Last guy for today is Marcus Giles...

That's an impressive page-worth of refractor goodness, eh!

As I've mentioned plenty of times on the blog, I grew up with Marcus, in the same grade as him at the same school from elementary through community college. So it's cool to collect a former classmate of mine. Like, check it out, a guy in my high school P.E. class is sharing a card with Ken Griffey Jr!-- How cool is that? Plus it's a good excuse for me to add some fun parallels from years that I wasn't actively collecting. And despite three strong seasons in his career, he was never a huge star, so his cards usually don't run me too much cash.

TCDB user "bravefan1" has a commanding lead for the top spot with 143 Marcus Giles cards, but I could probably challenge that total if I added my PC to the site. Too lazy to do that right now-- beautiful Memorial Day weekend over here-- but remind me another day. lol

Post Office Appreciation Post

I send out stuff through the United States Postal Service as a main duty of my job (data DVD archives), so I'm very interested in how the current situation there works out. The USPS says they'll likely go tits-up soon without a bailout type of situation from the government, but the jackasses currently in charge are flipping them the bird and would rather see the private sector take over (which would most likely mean significant increases to the postage rates we pay today).

If the post office goes away, my job could go away, too-- and more importantly (j/k): trading online would likely dry up! Ouch!

Let's hope it doesn't come to that, as trading is a great way to get cards you want, and re-home cards you don't want with someone who does want them.

Buying cards online would become more expensive too. Buying one card at a time would become cost-prohibitive unless maybe we're talking about like a high-dollar card. But for any card under $10 or so, it just wouldn't make sense. We're looking at nearly every physical-good online transaction having the price significantly bumped up.

Anyways.. I'm not trying to get political here.. but if you're a card collector, you've got to be rooting for the postal service in this fight.

I've received 3 trades in the mail over the past week which I'll now show off here.

Always fun finding a brand new trading partner. Jay over at the young Card Hemorrhage blog (great name) posted about ripping some Heritage and pulled this relic card that didn't really fit his collection, so I inquired about a trade. Rhys Hoskins is a young guy I like to collect. He had a bit of a sophmore slump last year, but I was expecting to see his numbers back up in 2020 (or whenever they start playing again). I don't often get too excited over relics, but I thought this card looked sharp, and I love the pinstripe on the swatch. So I sorted my Vlads and McCoveys (a pair of players Jay and I both collect), and sent him over my dupes.

Some bonus Heritage made its way into the envelope too. That Chrome Xander is pretty sweet.

Thanks, Jay! Pleasure trading with you and I hope we end up doing so much trading that I'm eventually able to spell "Hemorrhage" correctly on the first try. :)

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Then I did a little trade with Chris at Nachos Grande. I claimed the "trade stack" he had going on this blog, mainly because I was interested in the Wee-Pee's Wacky Packages. I'm a big Pee-Wee Herman fan and figured I could use the parody card in the collection. There was another card or two in the stack I could probably use too, but mainly just wanted that one. But then since we were going to exchange cards anyways, we expanded the trade a little. I love the shiny 2011 Topps.. it's a "Hope Diamond" parallel, which is basically a blue version of the cognac parallel, and numbered out of 60 on the back. As you can imagine, I don't have many of them in my parallel frankenset, but happy to score any I can. And I recently added those Pinnacle Cooperstown Card inserts to my Black Gold wantlist. Looks like Chris (a big-time Larkin collector) had a dupe to spare.

Chris also had some Votto and F. Robby cards available for me.

Thanks, Chris! I'm ashamed to admit I haven't mailed your cards out yet but I will do that very soon.

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And then I was surprised by a PWE from Jeremy at Topps Cards That Never Were. Very cool '85 Topps Ken Caminiti USA custom he made a while back. I had been planning to print off one for my PC but hadn't gotten around to it yet. So Jeremy helped me out there. He said he used an online colorization site with a B&W photo, which explains why Ken's arms and hands might look a bit off. But looks pretty good for the most part. Fun addition to the Cami PC. And the shiny Gwynn is a nice add too.

Thanks, Jeremy! Much appreciated.

And thanks again to Jay and Chris, and all the postal workers out there during this crazy time. Sure is a bright spot of any day when neat stuff like this shows up in the mailbox.

See y'all next time.

Home Displays

With many of us cooped up at home waiting for the coronavirus stuff to shake out, there's been some trends on social media with collectors sharing favorite parts of their collection.

I figured I'd do a post of the baseball/cards displays I've got up around the house.

Under our stockpile of wrapping paper and empty gift boxes, I've got some displays down in the basement in the little room with my drum set (I'm not much of a drummer, but I like to pound away for a few minutes from time to time). This Ken Caminiti display helps remind me of the glorious years 1996 and 1998 when the Padres were actually good. Also reminds me to not do hard drugs. Or steroids, unless prescribed by a licensed doctor.

The signed ball and wood plaque I got together for $5 at a card show a couple years back. Swapped out the Astros base card that came with it for the Donruss autograph. The jumbo Zenith dufex makes for a nice backdrop.

A couple of you readers might remember back when I did a post or two about making card stands out of LEGO? Well, I've got only one in use at the moment, and it's with this Julio Franco auto from '96 Leaf Signatures.

Might not look like much, but I love this Dave Winfield display. The signed postcard came from my close childhood buddy Chris who had been in little league with Dave's son a couple years earlier and got the autograph in-person. The '74 Topps rookie might be the 1st card I bought as an adult after leaving the hobby years earlier.

This one is in a part of the basement without good lighting, so it's a blurry photo. But that's a signed Steve Garvey flat along with a selection of Topps/OPC cards. This one came to me from the generous Padrographs Rod. He said he got the signature in person, and that Garvey said it was an unused shot for a bank ad or something along those lines. I have a lingering intention to perhaps swap out some of the cards someday, giving it more of a personal touch for me, but I've yet to bother getting around to it.

Another blurry one. This is the "1988 WS Game 1" display I've got. Bought it on eBay with the Kirk Gibson signed whatever-you-call-it ("Gateway cachet") on the top. The cards were originally 2004 Topps Retired autos, but I've since swapped them out with different cards of the same players. Posted about it back in the early days of this blog.

Another blurry basement one. We've got green LED Christmas lights up down there, which explains the green tint on this wooden plaque containing a signed Reggie Jackson 8x10. Got this for Christmas one year as a kid circa 1991.

Here's where I took a break to ride my bike to the post office to drop a couple things in the mail. My first time being out in the world since Thursday. Nice to get some fresh air, I suppose. First time I've ridden my bike in probably 3 or 4 years.

For the curious, here's my drum set. Above that...

Mystery Science Theater 3000 autograph display I put together recently. I need to do a real post on this at some point.

I recently started putting together a Glow-In-The-Dark Stuff shelf. Still plenty of stuff to add, but here are a few things. I envision this being chock-full of glowing stuff. Everything pictured here glows, at least in one little part of it. We will likely be moving soon, so the shelf may never achieve its promised greatness. Hopefully the next place has a similar shelf I can use for this idea.

Here it is glowing.

Here's a selection of wall in my card room with some cool stuff on display. My wife did the dog drawing to celebrate once when Annie got a bath.

Another corner of the room features my Goonies display, a Dick Allen white whale, and my framed Carrie Fisher TTM return.

Little Rod Beck frame.

This isn't baseball/card related, but here's a framed Decemberists gig poster I grabbed from the Casbah after their show there 4/6/04.

Guess that's about it as far as stuff on display in my house that anyone might care to see.

Thanks for reading and I hope you're all doing ok during this developing crisis!

No Name on Front

No Name on Front cards are some of the coolest error cards out there, I'd say.

There was recently some talk on Twitter of an eBay seller with a nice selection of 1992 Topps cards with no names on the front. I thought the cards looked great.. a fresh spin on an old classic. Just a simple, elegant frame around a photo. They were just a buck each plus flat $3 shipping, so I grabbed a few guys I collect. If you don't recognize him out of his Red Sox uni, that's Dwight Evans above.

Caminiti, Joyner, Templeton, and Maas here. What these cards are are Gold parallels missing the gold foil. Turns out this is the same seller from whom I bought a few proof cards back in 2017.. she must have either worked at Topps in the 90s (or perhaps at the print shop Topps used?) or have a close associate who did. She has thousands of backdoored stuff like this in her eBay store. (In fact, I just placed another order of stuff from her while working on this post!)

They have regular backs. You can tell they're Gold parallels by the logo in the background of the stats box.

While I'm talking about NNOF cards, I figured I'd include a couple others I've got, such as this 2014 Bowman Draft card of Gavin LaValley that's missing the foil, and therefore the name. Nice unofficial variation for that rainbow.

Of course the best known example of a no-name error is the 1990 Topps Frank Thomas. I'd love to pick one up someday when I've got 4-figures to burn on a baseball card, but for now I'm content with official reprints. These are both from 2010 Topps.

One is the standard Cards Your Mom Threw Out insert, and the other is the more scarce original back reprint. The latter is probably my favorite reprint in my collection... love it!

That's it for today. Thanks for swinging by.