temporarily owning a Ted Williams autograph

Welp, it was fun while it lasted. I got a raise last week (and it was retroactive back several weeks, meaning a fat paycheck catching up) and I wanted to celebrate with picking up a big card. After poking around a few options, I decided to pull the trigger on this Ted Williams put out by Upper Deck in 1994. It's one of his few certified auto cards out there. He also has that signed checklist card in 1992 UD, but as I've mentioned in the past, I'm not really into art cards, plus that one is more expensive for some reason. So I went with this one featuring real photos.

But yeah, when it arrived, my eye was drawn to an indentation by Ted's cheek that I just couldn't get over. From the photo in the listing, I assumed it was a piece of dust or just a stray mark on the case or something. But in hand, nope, it's definitely a mark on the card itself. Like someone had put a piece of paper on the card and dotted an "i" with a strong point. Bummer!

If I had gotten a killer deal on it, I may have sucked it up and kept it. But no, it wasn't a killer deal. And the seller offered free returns, so I didn't have to fight about it. Just painlessly send it back thru eBay. Didn't even need to pay for return shipping.

Farewell, Ted. Perhaps I'll snag another one of these someday, but now I'm not in a rush and will likely put some time between it rather than try finding another one right away.

I've got a couple other ideas I'm thinking about as a celebratory pickup. Stay tuned.

Card Show Cleanout!

December's Mall 205 card show was on the 1st of the month, which is considerate of them, keeping it as far away from Christmas as possible. It was a good one for me. In a rare move, I turned my pockets inside out and spent every last cent on my person to score one last big card. But we'll save that for later in the post.

I reluctantly decided recently that I want to try going to go for a full decade run of 70s Topps flagship, and so that means mainly 1970 and 1972 Topps to worry about (I've already completed '71 and '73). I got my foot in the door with this lot of minor stars and mid-numbers (looked for numbers over 400). Most of these were priced at 50¢, though the Woodie Fryman (high-number) and Teddy Ballgame up top were $2 and $4 respectively, but Lyle the dealer gave me a good rounded-down total.

Decent lot of '72s with minor stars and a bunch of mid-numbers, priced at 50¢ each with a few 25¢ too. Hopefully my setbuild will be into double-digits percent-complete after I add these in.

I already had the vast majority of '57s I checked against my list, but ended up with a trio of additions. The two on the right are from the toughest series, always rewarding to knock off.

More vintage set needs and upgrades. That Cookie Rojas card sure is a sweet double dip.

Just call this one Star Wars Episode IV because it's A New Hoyt for my PC! It's offcenter enough to where I wouldn't mind upgrading at some point, but the price was right to snag this '61 from the $4 box along with the '70 Ted Williams. Hell, the cheapest one on COMC right now is $40, so 90% off that price looks like a pretty sweet deal.

OPC and Kellogg's here, for the heck of it.

Picked a few oddballs out of Lyle's quarterbox. Gwynn Star, Greg Vaughn minor league, Kirby trio, and a pair of Glassos.

Harvey Haddix is a guy who when I come across while thumbing through "commons" I'll usually throw on my stack. Don Mossi is another classic character along those lines. And the Post Zimmer is a nice addition my PC of The Gerbil.

Lyle is probably the oldest regular dealer at the show, pushing 80 or so. I'm not normally much of a "social" guy when I'm digging for cards, especially with the younger, hit-driven dealers focused on the latest big rookie or whatever, but Lyle is a fun guy to chat with.

During my dig, he was jailbreaking a couple PSA graded Clemente cards out of their cases and was beaming with his results. I congratulated him on his efforts. "I just don't deal with that [graded] stuff," he says. He's old-school and I respect that.

Then he was going through some new stuff he recently scored and found an old b&w postcard from his neighborhood, and it really knocked him on his ass. "These are my family! Not blood-related, but still my family." It was sweet to see the old guy be so moved with finding a random postcard featuring a school football team from his small hometown.

As I was finishing up at his table, he pulled out a slabbed Mantle that was next on the jailbreaking block. But unlike the PSA cards, this one was slabbed by BVG, featuring a thicker case, harder to free a card from than the PSA cases. "Oh well, I've done enough for today. I'll deal with this one another day." And he put it in his case.

When I was done going through his boxes, I gave him the numbers and he worked out the math. I had probably about $75-priced worth of cards by he told me $50 would be good. I happily agreed and reaching for my wallet asked just out of curiosity, "What would you ask for that Mantle? ..to save you the trouble."

In my mind I'd probably be agreeable with $100 or less, even though I knew I didn't have that much on me and might have to scrabble. He looked it up in an old price guide and gave the card a once-over and after a moment said... "$80." I replied I could probably be good with that and dug out all the cash I had on me.. the rest of the money I had set aside for the card show, and anything else that was in my wallet, including my "emergency money" holed away in there. I came up with only $70 (in addition to the $50 already pulled out).. asked it that was ok with him.. and after a brief misunderstanding-- he initially thought I was offering $70 TOTAL for the Mantle plus the other stack of cards I had already picked out-- we shook on the deal.

.

.


.

Boom! I haven't added a new vintage Mantle base card to my PC in a few years. This is a very nice add, to be sure. I think this is my 2nd earliest Mick behind a beat-up '57. It's my first graded base card of his (also got a slabbed '65 League Leader). As I always say, I don't concern myself much with the grades, but I do appreciate the peace of mind knowing that the card is authenticated. This card could probably fetch around twice as much on eBay, so I'm pretty happy with the deal.

It's in excellent shape with really the only thing I can see keeping it down in "very good" territory is a minor crease in the upper right that serendipitously happens to run along the top of Yankee Stadium. You really couldn't ask for a better crease.

Clean back.
When I returned to the hobby a few years ago, I sort of made a collecting goal for myself to pick up a vintage Mantle each year, with an eventual goal of completing his flagship Topps/Bowman run (though the '52 Topps wouldn't be likely). Well, I've sort of fallen away from that goal, but this pickup helps me take another step forward. I've got a nice 4-year run going here now with 63, 64, 65, and 66. I also have 68 and 69, so hey, that's over half the decade of the 60s down! Maybe I'll finish off the 60s Topps Mantles in a few more years.

I think this is the biggest card show pickup for me of 2018, and will also fittingly stand as my last card show pickup of the year. Very happy with it.


But wait, this post isn't over.

Before my big haul at Lyle's table, I also dropped an Andrew Jackson at Bill's bins.

Most of what he had out was football. I stocked up on trade fodder for SCC (bunch of NY Giants) plus some other tradable teams (a few Browns for Angus, though sadly came up short with Redskins for GCA). And hey, that Barry Larkin refractor (1998 Donruss Collections - Prized Collections #PC20) is $11+ on COMC, so was a steal for what I paid for it. Maybe Nachos Grande or Dennis wants to call dibs on it?

I don't do much football these days, but if that's what's readily available, I'll take a look, and probably end up with a few cards for myself. Here we've got.. numbered Faulk/Warner, Ricky Williams rookie, Tom Brady oddball mini, Goff draft parallel, Namath rookie reprint.

Some older stuff too. Well, the Elway and Montana rookies are 2001 Archives reprints, but the rest are legit. These were 3 for a dollar.

After the vintage haul at Lyle's table, this modern baseball stuff from Bill isn't all that interesting, but still some decent cards here.

I tried to get a gif of these sweet lenticular Jerry Rice and Barry Sanders cards going buckwild in the window with the light going through them, but I didn't work, sorry to say. (The photo app on my phone has updated and no longer works the same way it once did.) Trust me when I say these things scramble like a piece of plastic possessed.

And a final football card that looks awesome in hand, this Ricky Williams card with the cool beaded background that glistens in the light.

That's my haul from the December 2018 card show. I'm pretty happy with it!
Thanks for reading.

1957 Ted Williams!

I was out the other day, about to see that play my friends were in when I saw a tweet from Raz about an eBay coupon for 20% off a purchase $25+. I only had a little while till it expired (and the play started), so I rushed to find something to use it on. Last time I caught wind of a similar coupon code, I snagged myself a 1957 Topps Hank Aaron. This time I returned to the '57 well, first taking a look at Yogi and Pee-Wee before ultimately deciding on a Ted Williams.

I went with a graded specimen just because of concern over counterfeits (or as they're often known on eBay, "artificially-aged reprint that doesn't say it's a reprint", like that makes it ok), so at least now I can be reasonably assured it's real.

This was definitely a big one to check off my '57 setbuild. While I consider it a long-term project, not expecting to finish it anytime soon, I've made good strides in the past week thanks to this and a few nice card show pickups I featured the other day Currently 22.54% complete, with 94 out of 417 cards. Plus I'm in trade discussions with a fellow blogger that could knock off several more needs, not to count my chickens before they hatch.

Anyways, Ted is the first card in the set, so that makes it a bit more condition sensitive. This one is well-loved, for sure, as well as being off-center, but still looks nice enough. I wouldn't rule out upgrading it someday down the line, but serves my purpose just fine for now.

I believe this is the first time I bought a card on eBay through my phone. But yeah, worked fine. While I would have liked more time to research it, looking at completed auctions, factoring in the 20% discount that's not reflected, it's easily the cheapest sold PSA 2 '57 Ted that shows up, so I think I got a good deal on it.

As for the man, what can you say? Perhaps the greatest all-around hitter in the history of the game. On top of that, a war hero and world-class outdoorsman. Just an all-time badass.

This is my first playing-days Ted Williams card not counting one from the Fleer set dedicated only to him. Definitely a great one to pick up. Very nice addition to my collection, and a key card checked off the '57 set I'm working on.

A couple bad blasters

Wow, I wasn't expecting so many congratulatory comments on my last post, but thanks, guys! To clarify, we've been together for 10 years as a couple, not a wedding anniversary, but still.

In contrast, I only got 2 congratulatory comments on my recent post regarding a guy from my high school getting called up to the major leagues, a much more impressive feat and one that fills me with more pride than any dumb relationship ever could. Come on, guys, get your priorities in order!

Nah, I'm just messing. Now here's a post I originally planned for the eclipse day last week, but it was derailed by rage and I couldn't bring myself to type about it till I cooled off.

I took today off work, playing it safe in case of any eclipse shenanigans (bad traffic, the apocalypse, etc.), though seems like everything went smoothly. Still, it was a good excuse to take a day off.
I didn't buy any packs/boxes at the card show the other day. But then later that day, my wife asked me if I needed anything from Amazon, and I ended up throwing a couple Panini blasters into the order. You can get them cheaper on eBay, but I had some Amazon credit to burn.
I haven't ripped any 2017 Panini products yet. Picked up a blaster of Optic and a blaster of Diamond Kings. Maybe I'll hit something decent. Let's check it out...

I opened the Optic box first and it was a disaster. About 75% of the cards had a badly dinged corner.. the lower right corner for vertical cards, or upper right for this one horizontal card. The box wasn't crushed or anything, so I'm blaming Panini's production process, not a damaged-in-transit issue. I would have liked this Altuve a lot, but the dinged corner just bums me out. It's worse than it looks in the picture.

These 2 refractors were probably the highlights for me. Kirby and Renfroe. Not happy about the Kirby being so off-center. The corner ding on these 2 isn't as bad as some of the other cards, but still noticeable.

A couple Rizzo DKs. You can't really tell by the picture, but they're definitely dinged.

Some more guys I collect. The top row is dinged, while the bottom row are ok.

Actually, the Miggy has a bonus flaw.. yippy. A weird indentation in the middle of the card.

Needless to say, I don't plan on buying anymore 2017 Optic. My blaster netted me zero hits, zero numbered parallels, and dozens of damaged cards. Very unhappy with it.

Will I have better luck with the 2017 Diamond Kings blaster?

Well, at least the cards weren't damaged! The Ted Williams insert is kinda cool, I guess. The closest thing I pulled to a hit was the framed Bill Dickey. But even that isn't numbered. And nobody collects Bill Dickey.

A few guys I collect, but a largely forgettable blaster.

Too bad I've lost my enthusiasm for collecting Anthony Rizzo lately, as I pulled 4 cards of him from this pair of blasters.

One reason collectors bother with logoless Panini baseball cards is because they usually give you good value and solid chances to pull hits. But after these two blasters, I feel like I'm done with Panini. Couldn't even have pulled one goddamn card #'d /999 or something? Even if the Optic cards weren't damaged, I'd still be disappointed with the purchase. Throw in the damage and I'm downright pissed about it.

It's kind of cool that in the future I can remember the exact day I decided to stop buying Panini products (at least for a good while) because it was the day of the total solar eclipse.

2016 Topps Triple Threads box break

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas Day. Mine was very nice. Finally saw Rogue One.. I really liked it. Then a great dinner with the in-laws and popped in Scrooged on dvd.. classic. I got some awesome gifts including my first smartphone (Google Pixel), nice noise-canceling headphones, and of course cards.

This post wraps up my trilogy of holiday box breaks. First there was 2016 The Mint (including an incredible pair of Trouts), then 2015 Tier One (with a David Wright /5 auto), and now we close with 2016 Triple Threads.

This is my first time breaking any Triple Threads. The fact the autos are mostly stickergraphs is a turnoff for me. If I'm spending a lot on a box of cards, those autos better be on-card. But this showed up in Dave & Adam's Black Friday sale at a decent price, and I thought it could be a fun break, so I went ahead and added it to my xmas wishlist.

My in-laws were nice enough to put it under the tree for me. So here we are. Let's see what I got!

Mini-box #1 had some solid base cards. David Wright on the blog back-to-back days.

Ooh, here's a nice hit. Jorge Soler triple relic auto. And the signature is on-card! And all 3 relics swatches look different, too, which is a definite plus. It's #'d 40/99. Soler was a key role-player on the WS Champion Cubs team this year, though earlier this month he was traded to the Royals for Wade Davis, as Chicago needed to fill their closer vacancy with Chapman defecting back to New York. Here's hoping Jorge flourishes down in KC.

Speaking of switching teams, Taijuan Walker was sent to the Diamondbacks in the Jean Segura trade last month. This is a decent looking relic, #'d 32/36.

The parallels in the first minibox were excellent and both dudes I collect. Kris Bryant #/250 and Ted Williams #/150.

Mini-box #2 had base cards of a couple guys I collect, Big Unit and Pooh Holes.

Again, I did well with the parallels. Mike Trout #/340 and Freddie Freeman #/250.

Oh, for fuck's sake! If you remember my break yesterday of Tier One, I pulled a 1/1 auto of busted pitcher Alex Cobb. Well, now here's a 1/25 relic/stickergraph to go with it. Looks like I'm being forced into becoming an Alex Cobb supercollector. Though honestly I'd be fine going the rest of my life without ever pulling another Alex Cobb card.

Boom.. here's the hit of the box (or at least right up there with the Soler auto), a triple relic of 3 HOF Orioles: Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken, and Jim Palmer. The swatches aren't too exciting in their plainness, but it's fine. Numbered 25/36, this will likely go in the Steady Eddie PC, with all due respect to Cal and Jim.


So there was that box. Not too shabby.. though if it was my hard-earned $150 on the line rather than a gift, I might be a bit let down by it. But yeah, some #'d parallels of guys I collect, a hell of a Jorge Soler card, and a HOF triple relic.. solid box. But now my high-end box breaking days are over, for about 12 months, anyways.


The day after Christmas is an exciting day in our house because it marks the beginning of The Festival of Lightsabers, which is where we watch a Star Wars movie every day between Christmas and New Years. Got an early start this year with Rogue One in 3D on Christmas, and will slide right into A New Hope tonight, then maybe "flashback" to Attack of the Clones tomorrow, followed by Revenge of the Sith (skipping Phantom Menace this year), before jumping back to Empire, Jedi, and the Force Awakens (which I just got on BluRay for xmas). (Update: RIP Carrie Fisher.. that fuckin sucks!) Speaking of Disney, I also got the DuckTales redux PlayStation 3 game which I'm excited about, as the NES original is an all-time favorite of mine. Fun times.

Thanks for stopping by! And to paraphrase Tiny Tim, may the force be with us, everyone.

Vintage 1965 Clemente! (trade roundup)

I'm back after a few days off stressing about finishing my taxes and some changes at work. Let's round up the recent trades that've come in.

Recently a guy emailed me saying he found my blog while looking for pictures from the Simpsons softball team episode. He mentioned he noticed I had 1965 Topps Roberto (Bob) Clemente atop my current wantlist, and that he happened to have one and was willing to sell it. I'm sure I don't have to tell you fellow bloggers out there that card solicitation emails from strangers are generally bad news and it's usually best to ignore or politely decline and point them to eBay for their card-selling needs. But John seemed like a good guy and I definitely wanted that card, so I asked if he'd be interested in trading instead, and offered up one of my Simpsons custom sets in exchange. He happily agreed and a few days later this baby arrived:

Very happy to land this card! Not only is Clemente among my all-time favorite guys to collect, but 1965 Topps is also a favorite and a set I'm building. So this is definitely a card I needed.

Love it! Thanks again, John. Your cards are on the way.

-   -  -  -- - ------o

Next up is a nice surprise envelope Mark Hoyle. I still had been meaning to mail him out some cards to thank him for the previous PWE he sent my way, but dang it, he lapped me! But don't worry, I just put an envelope in the mail, with another one hopefully on its heels in the next day or two.

These are great! Looks like Mark acquired a White Sox deck and was kind enough to shoot me these three. Hoyt Wilhelm, Dick Allen, and Minnie Minoso, three of my favorite old-timers to collect. I don't know much about these playing cards, though I've seen them mentioned on the blogs before and if I weren't so lazy, I'd look up them up.

Many guys I collect among this lot of 2016 Heritage Then & Now inserts.
Big thanks, Mark!

Mr. Hoyle still doesn't have a blog, but he has started showing off some of his collection on Twitter, so that's a start!

-   -  -  -- - ------o

From not enough blog, to too much blog.. Next up is a fat envelope from Tony Burbs at Wrigley Roster Jenga. I love his blog, but my browser does not. When I visit it, my computer slows down, the page takes a while to load, and has even crashed my browser on rare occasions. Speaking of an overload of awesome (that's a good segue, right?), he sent me a nice bunch of cards...

I just showed off my Pedro PC a couple weeks ago, and that post is already paying dividends in the form of these three needs. That crazy thing in the middle can barely be called a card, as it's thin and clear, reminding me of my school days with teachers using overhead projectors.

Here it is on top of real cardboard:

So yeah, it's weird but a cool addition to the collection.

Some legends. I got many of those 100 Years of Wrigley inserts thanks to having the Cubs in a Series 1 group break, but since this Stan Musial is actually a Cardinals card, it didn't get funneled into my haul. So it's nice to get it in trade.
Hoyt makes his second appearance of the post.. I've seen that photo on other cards before, but the teal border really makes this one pop.
And Teddy Ballgame is always a welcome sight.

And we close with a great lot of active guys (plus Marcus Giles, represented by a cool minor league card). I think that Trout's an SP, isn't it? Very cool. Happy to get the Sale and Mookies as well.

Big thanks, Tony! I'll get some Cubs sent out your way soon. Please let me know of anything in particular you'd like that I could send you.


Thanks again to John, Mark, and Tony for the wonderful cards. Hey, did you notice there were zero Padres cards in this trade roundup? That's a rarity, for sure. And with how the team has been playing this season, I'm totally fine with this.

See ya'll next time!

A trade with postal complications and a sprarkle SP from down the street

Due to a backlog of posts I want to write and limited time to write them, I've been doing weekly trade roundup posts for the past several weeks, grouping trades together instead of dedicated separate posts to every card mailing that comes in. But this past week was pretty plentiful with substantial maildays, so I'm thinking I'll split it up into a couple posts.

A month or so ago, I posted about some teams in my tradeboxes that were becoming unwieldy due to the fact that I rarely if ever trade with collectors of those teams. Reader Josh Bob graciously expressed interest in the box of A's cards I was looking to clear out, and we eventually worked out a bigger trade around it.

Here's the cream of the crop I got from Josh. Love the Mookie Betts auto. It's a stickergraph, but on the plus side, it's numbered /225. I've reasonably bulked up my Betts PC over the offseason and am hoping for a big year for him. The Al Oliver second-year card is a nice addition to that PC and had been on my Desperate Dozen wantlist for some time. And while I don't feel one way or the other about Gaby Sanchez, this autograph gets me one letter closer to my goal of spelling out BASEBALL CARD BREAKDOWN in letter patch cards. I can currently spell A CARD.

The Giles Bros. make an appearance, including a gold Marcus.

Some more Padres I collect. I believe these were all needs for me.

Gotta have my Gwynn. That 83 Topps reprint is a 2016 Berger's Best insert. Nice to see Tony get the nod to represent that classic set over other iconic rookie cards they could have gone with, such as the Boggs, Sandberg, and Strawberry.

Josh also included several more assorted Padres not pictured, but lets close it out with these few more highlights. Mitch Canham is a guy I bought a cheap auto of at the recent card show. In the comments of that post, Tony L. pointed out that Canham was a 1st round of the Padres out of Oregon State University. Despite these ties, I don't have much desire to collect his cards, though this is a great looking Sterling card featuring catchers gear. It was funny to receive this card in a trade just days after finding out who the guy was.
Also pictured is a Josh Bard refractor, another 1990 UD Marquis Grissom (!), and a Kershaw.

Big thanks, Josh!
I sent him a Priority Mail box stuffed with A's and a Simspons custom set, and while shipping Priority Mail usually means you can rest easy and be confident it'll arrive within 3 days, this has been a strange one. Check this out..

Josh lives in in the Boston area. The package I sent from Portland traveled cross-country to Rhode Island.. then came back to Portland (just to the post office, not returned to me).. then back across the country to Boston! The hell?! As of drafting this post, it still hasn't been delivered, with the "Priority Mail 2-Day" service stretching over a week now. Hopefully it finally arrives in the next day or two, no worse for the wear! I've had packages inexplicably go through Hawaii on their way to me, but I think this is the first instance I've been involved with where a package has crisscrossed the country like that.
(UPDATE: Looks like it has now finally been delivered and was worth the wait. Josh emailed, "I'm in shock! ... This made me want to start a blog just to tell people how awesome you are as a trade partner!" Haha, nice! Do it!)


In contrast to that package racking up frequent flyer mileage, the other trade package I'm featuring in this post came from just a few blocks away. I had been building a little stack of cards for fellow Portland resident, Kerry from Cards on Cards throughout 2015, and sent them off in a holiday surprise PWE. He recently hit me back with a great batch of cards..

Here are a couple Matt Kemp cards. And take a closer look at that boring old 2015 Topps Update card on the left.. specifically around the helmet region.. it's the Sparkle SP! Very nice! It's the first sparkle SP in my collection (--that I'm aware of.. I've probably thumbed through a couple and not realized it. I would have missed this one were it not for Kerry's post-it. I doubt anyone is sad to see that line of variations discontinued in 2016.) And that blue Chrome refractor is a great looking card as well. My Kemp Kard Kollection (wait, maybe that's not wise alliteration to use) has really grown in the past few months. I've picked up an auto and a "1/1 blank back" that I don't think I've shown off yet. And in part 2 of this week's trade roundup, we'll see some additional impressive Kemp cards traders have kindly passed on to me.

Mickey Mantle in the house.

As a Cardinals fan, Kerry had some Musial dupes to share. Love that diecut!

Some more legends of yesteryear.

Always love adding to the Ted Williams PC.

Here are a few active guys I collect. Great stuff.

Another 1990 UD Marquis! It's definitely time for me to page the stack I've got built up and see where my total is these days.

While I'm not a big basketball collector, there are a few guys I like picking up cards of, and Kerry hit a bunch of them.

Finally, here's a Mickey Mantle that I forgot to include in the photo with the other Mantles. Wow, nice looking card! It's cards like these that make you wish Topps and the Mantle Estate would hammer out a new licensing agreement. Sure, most of the Mantle cards Topps put out over the past decade or two are kinda pointless and forgettable, but then occasionally you get a winner like this 2008 Stadium Club card.

Big thanks for the trade, Kerry!