Big Ol' Trade Post

Hey, here are a bunch of cool cards that I've received over the past couple weeks from friendly collector folk.

Holy heck, check this out! Giancarlo Stanton 2010 Topps Chrome rookie refractor autograph! It may be off-center and have some surface scratches, but still a "big card" and not the caliber of card that typically shows up in your mailbox without some wheeling and dealing beforehand.

But yeah, the incredible Matthew Scott has been working on his big, mostly-Pirates collection and decided Giancarlo didn't really have a place. He asked if I was still collecting him. Yep! Maybe not with as much fervor since his trade to the Yankees, but still definitely a guy I collect. And this rookie auto is a nice crown jewel for my Stanton PC.

Numbered 104/499. Sweet! While I'm not rooting for the Yankees, generally speaking, I do hope Stanton has himself a great comeback season.


And if that RC auto wasn't a big enough boom on its own, along with it was this..

Wow! This 2013 Topps "Chasing History" auto ain't nothing to sneeze at either! The number of Giancarlo Stanton autographs in my collection tripled thanks to this mailing.

Bob Walk the Plank is still on hiatus for the most part, so you guys didn't get to see all the neat Pirates I mailed him a while back unless maybe you caught some highlights on Twitter. But yeah, I always try to sniff out good Pirates cards for Matt (and some left over for my other Bucco trader buds), and will hope to gather more for him before too long. Huge thanks again, Matt!

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Friend o' the blog Alex T. and I have been back to our routine where I help him out with some custom card projects and he returns the favor with cards. Here's a nice run from Mark Fidrych's playing days, including a pair of rookies.

And a couple Upper Deck factory sets! I already got '91 UD just a couple months ago from The Diamond King, but Alex had the '90 set I needed plus a '91 he didn't need and since there was room in the flat-rate box, he offered to throw it in for the heck of it. If anyone needs it, I'd be willing to sell it for just a smidge above the postage cost (or a trade equivalent). Otherwise maybe I'll open up the wrap and raid it for my many PCs; there are probably a few that are lacking '91 UD cards, believe it or not. But yeah, I'm excited about the 1990 set. I ripped a fair amount of that in my first year as a collector, but never came anywhere near completing it. I really need to thumb through this set sometime soon and let the familiar cards take me back to those days.

Alex surprised me with this Padres batting practice jersey. There's no name on the back, and he says it's unlikely to be player-worn (sorry I'm too lazy to relay the full background story he shared), but still cool. Size XL, it's too big for me, but if/when the Padres win the World Series, I might have to don this anyways. (I'll probably have filled out enough to fit into it by then, lol.)

Alex's collection has a focus on minor league cards. He knows I collect Tim Blackwell and so he hooked me up with some team sets featuring that marvelous mustache. Even if I already have some of these singles, it's pretty cool to have the full team sets, too.

A nice lot of early 90s black gold!

Here's a sealed '92 Topps pack with a multiplayer "Top Prospects" card showing on top that features a couple guys I collect, Ryan Klesko and Dave Staton. Neat!

Some more cards highlighted by a Dick Allen oddball I needed and the classic Bevacqua bubble card from 1976 Topps.

Alex was downright apologetic for including these customs he had made through a Topps promotion a few years back, but I think they're awesome. I already have a little minicollection of bloggers' cards going, so it's easy to stretch that into including blog-readers' cards too. Made sure to get his approval before posting them for privacy concerns.

Then if all that wasn't enough for the little project he had me working on (several copies of a custom minor league card for a friend of his), he sent a nice PWE on top of it shortly thereafter...

Another oddity for my Tim Blackwell PC, a Floyd auto I didn't have, a Templeton oddball I needed, and a pair of Rafael Garcia signed oddballs sponsored by Carta Blanca, a mexican beer (one of which intended for Rod if he has any interest). Also known as Ralph Garcia, he pitched in a few games for the Padres in the early 70s and is in the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame.

Thanks, Alex! Good stuff! I'll drop your customs in the mail by the end of the week.

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Here's another PWE full of '88 Fleer needs from reader David G., our third light swap along these lines. A cool thing about getting cards from David is he uses magazine cologne ads to wrap them in, so the cards come out smelling lovely and you get a bonus air freshener! Thanks, David! I'll send you back some Cardinals soon.

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Brett the Hoyt Wilhelm superfan graciously offered to send me a copy of Hoyt's 2020 Topps insert.. heck yeah! Always love adding new Hoyts to the PC. Thanks, Brett!

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And here's the last one for today. It's a package from Bob at the Best Bubble.

Big lot of pack-fresh 1976 Topps! These needs take me up to 36% complete with the set. Funny thing, these cards are all found around the back end of the set. So if you look at my '76 Topps wantlist, you'll see my haves are pretty sparse at first, but I'm in better shape once you hit #400.

More late 70s Topps needs including a few solid names. I'm really close with '79 Topps now, down to just 6 more needs to finish the set:
6 Strikeout Leaders - J.R. Richard / Nolan Ryan
115 Nolan Ryan
313 Dyar Miller (Dyar Miller?!)
369A Bump Willis (Blue Jays error variation)
412 Hank Aaron / Hack Wilson ATL RBI
610 Mike Schmidt (this one looks to be set aside for me already)

And still a ways to go with '78 Topps, but those few needs take me past 81% complete. Not too bad.

I've already got most of these Gavins, but at least a couple I didn't have. I just looked into what Gavin Cecchini is up to these days. He had gone to spring training with the Arizona Diamondbacks on a minor league deal, but they released him a month or so ago. And before that he had moved to Australia to play baseball there, but then fled the country after the crazy brushfires decimated much of the continent. Not sure what's next for him, but wish him the best of luck.

Finally, Bob threw in a few ladies on cardboard. Always a nice touch.

Thanks, Bob! I'll try to round up a return package for you soon, but you might need to have some patience...

Gonna be a busy rest of July for me. Between the usual work craziness, and now trying to raise a tiny puppy who needs constant supervision, and plus my close friend from way back is going to be in town staying with us next week. So it'll likely be a while till I'm able to spend much quality time with cards.

Oh, I also got a nice box of cards dropped on my doorstep last week by Padrographs Rod, but this post is already pretty long, and I still need to sort that stuff out a bit, so I'll save that for another day.

Thanks for reading!

Joy of a purchased complete set: 1976 SSPC

A small number of cards of the 1976 SSPC set have entered my collection over the years. I always thought they were kinda neat vintage oddballs, but only recently did I decide to go after the set, inspired by the love it gets from fellow bloggers such as Night Owl. (Full disclosure, I haven't read N.O.'s Beckett Vintage article.) I ended up buying a complete set on eBay a week or two ago. It's the first time I've bought a complete vintage set rather than build it, but since this set was never released in packs (only via mail order as a complete set or team sets), it seemed to be the way to go.

A large percentage of the photos in this set are from Shea Stadium. Apparently, the photographer didn't have any stadium credentials, but he was a former Mets bat boy who was friendly with the security guards, so they let him sneak in and I guess he was able to talk his way into having many players pose for him. The Yankees also played at Shea in 1975, as Yankee Stadium was being renovated, so the photographer was able to shoot players from both leagues there.

The set was not licensed by either MLB or the players union.

There are a handful of candid shots, like Johnny Bench in the batting cage.

But the majority are posed.

You might be thinking these cards would look great signed. But many of the featured players were upset they were never compensated for their inclusion in the set, and so they will often refuse to sign these cards.

The vast majority of the cards are vertical, but there's this nutty horizontal one (plus some combo card checklists near the end).

This Bill Buckner features one of the very few in-game photos.

Among the favorites are an early George Brett card and the only sunset card Harmon Killebrew got, as Topps never acknowledged his short-term-stop swan song in KC.

This set reminds me of another favorite of mine, 1957 Topps, with its "non design" letting the photo take over the full card. They nicknamed it the "Pure Card" set.

Though really, the lineage can be traced back to 1953 Bowman. Maybe someday down the line I'll go after '53 Bowman and attempt to complete the trifecta.

SSPC stands for Sports Stars Publishing Co.

It's an offshoot of TCMA.

Topps sued them over this set, and then it was back to doing minor league sets and occasional all-time great sets.

Lots of 70s hair.

Bullpen cart?!

Infamous 7 consecutive Orioles cards featuring mops.

There's some confusion over the date of this set because the cards are copyrighted 1975 on the back, though they actually came out in early 1976, and were always officially referred to as a 1976 set by the company. The back of the Fred Lynn card, for instance, mentions he won the AL ROY and MVP for the 1975 season.

This Tim Blackwell rookie was among the most exciting new cards for me to add to my collection. He didn't get his first Topps card until the 1978 set.

The backs don't have stat boxes, but feature solid write-ups, notably by Keith Olbermann, a teenager at the time. I remember that tidbit kinda blew my mind the first time I learned it.

This set kinda breaks your heart that Topps had such a monopoly back then. At least this set came out, but damn it, there should have been many more along these lines in the years post-Bowman and pre-Donruss/Fleer.

As far as condition, the photos have some printing-flaw specks here and there. The backs sometimes brown a bit. It's rare that a card has perfect centering. The set I bought was just fine for my purposes. A few less-than-mint corners, but only two commons compelled me to snag replacements on COMC due to creases.

Almost wish the set didn't come together until a few months later so that we may have gotten Reggie as an Oriole.

Eckersley is the only "HOF RC" in the set, a fact that-- coupled with it being unauthorized-- generally keeps the cost of the set among the cheapest major baseball card sets from the 70s.

Funky fresh!

These checklists are great!

Interesting note here: The negatives for the set were stolen and led to a bootlegged "illegal reprint" set popping up a few years later. You can tell the difference because the original pressing has "Nolan" on card 593, whereas the bootlegged set has "Noland" instead, an error that was caught and corrected on the original printing plates, but snuck by in the stolen negatives. So neither print run of the set was authorized, but the latter was even less authorized! I thought about tracking down the error variation, but after learning the backstory of it not being an original part of the set, I probably won't bother unless I find it cheap. Hell, I could just print a custom of it if I wanted.. I'd just be making a bootleg of a bootleg, what's the difference. LOL.

So there are a few highlights. Fun set!
Thanks for reading.