Laundry Day on Sentimental Sundays

Time for another trip down memory lane.

Here're some treasured cards from my childhood collection in the early 90s, three players with their '87 Donruss and Topps cards paired up. I was especially proud of the Bo cards back then. They sure were hot for a while. I never had much '87 Fleer back then, as it seemed to command a premium. Poor Rafael Palmeiro really shat away an excellent career right at the end there with the PED stuff. Funny how Barry Larkin wasn't bestowed with the fancy Rated Rookie or Future Stars logos, yet he's the only one out of them that Cooperstown came calling for when all was said and done.

More Bo. I've featured this old Bo Jackson shirt on my blog before. (Looking it up, wow, it was just my 6th post ever, back in 2013, and it's a downer of a post for me now because it also talks about hiking in Punchbowl Falls, which was decimated by a fire started by a punk-ass teen this past summer.) I've had the shirt since middle school in the early 90s and still wore it several times a year (as a sleep shirt). Alas, that ever-expanding big ol' rip across the chest means this isn't viable as clothing anymore. Just wanted to take a last pic for posterity before it officially crosses over to being a rag for the twilight of its life. Pretty sure it holds the longevity record for anything in my wardrobe, as far as things that I wore with any regularity, at least.

More old clothing. These shorts are from high school, circa 1994, and I still wear them (as PJ bottoms in the summertime). That rip by the elastic keeps getting bigger, but it's probably got another year or two left in it. The origins of this go back to when I briefly tried out for the Granite Hills football team. I was among the fastest sprinters on the track team, so the football coach talked me into giving football a try. I think I lasted 2 tryout practices before giving up. I just didn't have the size, endurance, and hands for it. Oh well, at least I gave it a shot, and I've gotten my money's worth out of these shorts that were mandatory for attending football practice.

Jumping to toys, here's a little dragon clip thing. I named this guy "Googlebobber" as a kid; this was years before Google was a thing. Just a dumb little clip toy, but man, I loved that thing!

And I also really loved these Wacky Wall Walkers! I got these as prizes in cereal back in the 80s. It was like pulling a gold nugget out of the box! Just so awesome to a kid back then. For anybody who isn't familiar with these little octopus-like guys, they're made out of semi-sticky plastic, and you're supposed to throw them against a wall and marvel as they slowly crawl down to the floor.

Wait, they glow in the dark?! Even better! I had forgotten that detail over the years, but that was probably another reason I loved these things so much, since I've always been nuts for glow-in-the-dark stuff.

Let's see if they still wackily walk down walls...

Welp, not so much. Haha.

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

Dwight Evans PC

I rarely have the foresight to plan posts in advance, such as doing a PC post for a guy on his birthday. Today is no exception, but hey, yesterday was Dwight Evans' 66th. He's objectively HOF-worthy, but is kinda under the radar these days. He's a guy I really like collecting, but don't have that many of his cards. So maybe this post will inspire readers to fill some holes for me.

Last weekend, I splurged on a couple nice 2003 Retired autos, both the base, then the refractor, and received them in consecutive maildays this week. Great looking cards!

Here're my Dewey cards from the 70s. The rookie card has some kid's name written on the back, but still nice to have a copy in the PC (also have another one in my '73 set). I'm missing '75 and '79 Topps.

Topps cards from the 80s and up. Lots of cards I'm missing here.

Donruss and Leaf.

Fleer and Score.

 

An Upper Deck and some oddballs.

Here's a good one to end on, a 2004 Team Topps Legends auto I picked up a few years back.

I'd definitely be happy to receive any Dwight Evans cards not pictured here in trade. Thanks!

I'm finally out of Prizm!

With the break I'm featuring today, I've officially depleted my Black Friday stockpile of boxes from last year. I'm very happy with how the plan turned out, and proud that I had the restraint to stick to the schedule I came up with. I really enjoyed having a box waiting for me every month. It's nice to have something to look forward to, ya know? I fully intend to keep it going and replenish my supply this coming Black Friday, assuming I can find enough quality deals to make it financially feasible.

One product I will not be likely to purchase more of, however, is 2014 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks. I snatched up several of these boxes last year on sale for less than the price of a blaster each, with the main draw being 3 or 4 on-card prospect autos per box. But now you can bet I'm frickin' sick of these cards and I'm relieved to be done with the boxes. Let's check out what the final box had for me:

Solid showing of autos, with a base, purple (/149), and 2 blue mojo (/75), but no marquee players really jumping out.
Josh Morgan is an infielder in the Rangers organization. He turns 22 later this month and has so far hit .291 as a pro.
Isan Diaz is a 21-year old middle infielder currently in Milwaukee's system. He only hit .222 this past season in the Carolina Leauge, though he did crank 13 taters.
Erick Fedde made his big league debut with the Nats this past season, though the 3 starts he got weren't pretty. Hopefully he can build off that next year.
Jake Stinnett has shown signs of brilliance, including a stint in AA this year giving up just 1 run in 9 games. Could become a valuable arm for the Cubs in the next couple years.

I've now opened nearly a dozen boxes of this stuff, and I'm bummed I never pulled autos of the 2 big names available in the set: Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber. I also didn't pull anything very low numbered (would have loved a "black finite parallel" [superfractor] of anybody).. they must have printed up a ton of this stuff. Oh well.

My colored refractors included Ross Kivett (currently out of affiliated ball), Justus Sheffield (one of the Yankees' top pitching prospects), and ol' Rusney Castillo (stuck in AAA purgatory with his big contract).

As far as the regular refractors in the box, well there's Erick Fedde again. The Minors Gold insert of Joc Pederson is kinda nice in that it's a known guy rather than a "who?" guy. I know the value of Joc's cards has plummeted from their peak of 2 or 3 years ago, but he did just have an impressive World Series performance, batting .333 with 3 ding-dongs in a losing cause, so maybe that'll bump his collectability up a little.

So there you are, hopefully the final break of 2014 Prizm Draft you'll ever see on my blog. Thanks for putting up with it! Have a great weekend, everybody.

Fulfilling the prophesy with Collecting Cutch

Wow, hell of a Series, huh?! Congratulations to the 2017 World Champion Astros. During Game 7, I was compelled to dig out what George Springer cards I could find in my collection. I'm sure there are a few more left to uncover in there as well. I knew I had that 2015 Stadium Club Crystal Ball card-like-thing, but having a gold parallel of his 1st Bowman Card was a pleasant surprise. I might have to start up a little PC for the reigning World Series MVP. As you probably heard, his 5 dingers tied Reggie ('77) and Utley ('09) for the record. Seems like a good dude, too.

Switching gears...
I'm always looking out for good deals on interesting Pirates cards, because you never know when Bob Walk will strike, and I like to be ready with return fire. But a while back, I caught wind that Brian at Collecting Cutch considered Charlie Morton one of his top PC guys. I took a look in my Pirates booty, and sure enough, I had a 1/1 Charlie Morton mini snagged during a Topps Vault sale. Brian has been generous with me in the past, so I surprised him with it plus a couple McCutchen customs I had been meaning to toss his way.

But where it gets impressive is what Brian wrote about the cards I sent in a blog post dated September 12, 2017:

Wow! Nice prediction there, Brian! As we know, Houston did in fact win the 2017 World Series these several weeks later. And wouldn't you know it, Charlie Morton was on the mound picking up the win as he closed out Game 7. Congrats on that!

Anyways, here are some cards he sent me in return.

The star of the show was this gorgeous Dave Winfield bat relic. This is a double bulls-eye for my collection, because not only is Winfield one of my top PC guys, but I'm also slowly working on an Archives Reserve Master Set. Very happy to have this fall into my ARMS!

Big Dave makes another appearance, this time on his classic '76 Topps card. Cool Padres prospect auto, too. I'm not familiar with Kyle Gaedele, but let's look him up. Well, he topped out at AA, then had a solid 2016 for an Independent team, and apparently didn't play anywhere in 2017.

A few other miscellaneous Padres along for the ride.

And a few more cards, highlighted by a nice trio of Cutches.

Thanks, Brian!

He told me there's also one more card with my name on it, a sweet Padres Pantheon card that didn't arrive in time for inclusion in this package, so that should hopefully show up soon. Plus I won another recent contest of his, so I'm also looking forward to that prize arriving. Generous guy, that Collecting Cutch!

Brouhaha of a trade

Excited for Game 7 tonight! While I'd love to stay neutral and not go through the emotional rollercoaster, I'd be lying if I said my rooting interests haven't manifested themselves as strongly pro-Houston this series. But someone really living and dying on every pitch is Bru from Remember The Astrodome. I was happy when he recently reached out to me about some cards wanted to send my way. I hadn't traded with him nor any other Astros fan in a year or two, so I had plenty of fodder in my tradebox to thin out. He hooked me up with a great flat-rate box of cardboard.

Let's start off with a nice lot of '64 Topps. Always love seeing vintage needs in trade packages! Now that I've nearly put my 1965 set to bed, my vintage setbuilding focus is turning to 1964 and 1957. These above get me passed 45% complete with '64. And these are all high-ish numbers too, so all the more appreciated.

Yes! A brick of 1980 Topps commons probably wouldn't excite many collectors these days, but I was thrilled to see this in the box. I was really wanting one more lot like this before I sat down and collated what '80 Topps I've got so far, and was hoping to do it sooner rather than later, so this was perfect. I've now got a longbox of about 600 unsorted cards from the set, though I'm sure that number will shrink down considerably once I pull out the dupes. But still, that puts me in a good place to start getting serious about hammering out this set. Expect a wantlist to pop up before long.

A blank mini?? Ha, no, it's another 2017 Ginter Constellations mini. Sweet!

There it is in action.

In case you were wondering which dipper this is, it's the little one. That checks off another for me from this 10-card insert set, nearly half complete now.

Ok, here's the Bru "haha." I should have known better, but a while back I posted saying something like if I came across a complete set of 1990 Topps at a card show for $5 or less, I'd probably buy it. I stressed that this wasn't an invitation to send me any '90 Topps cards, as they're not worth the postage. But hey, Bru had some room in the flat-rate box, so here's a stack of them. That little son of a gun!

LOL, but no, big thanks for the trade, Bru. I'll be dropping a nice selection of Astros on you shortly, though I want to make it clear that any return you get from me is only for the '64s, '80s, and the Ursa Minor mini. I will never trade for 1990 Topps. Never!

Wrapping up my 2016 Ginter X trilogy

I didn't make a spooky Halloween post this year, but here are some black cards on an orange background, so that's kinda festive, right?

These are the highlights from my third/final 2016 Allen & Ginter X box. Well no, the far-and-away highlight was the Griffey auto redemption. But here're the other notable cards from that break.

Modern dudes I collect.

Old-timers.

Prominent rookies.

SPs, highlighted by a Trea Turner RC.

Minis. Chen and Zimmerman are SPs.


After bustin' this box, I collated the cards along with the other 2 boxes I bought of the stuff. And man, the collation was great! I came away with the complete base set (1-300) with minimal doubles and no triples. Topps has gotten a lot of crap in recent years for not "shuffling" the cards in their boxes very well, often giving collectors deja vu ripping the nearly the same exact packs/blasters/boxes. So I was very happy that all 3 of my boxes were unique enough to each other to not have that issue.

I also compiled over half of the SPs, pulling 27 of 50 (with no dupes). I'm thinking I would like to go ahead and try to complete the full 350-card set, so I made a wantlist.

2016 Ginter X Needs (SPs):
301 Tyson Ross
302 Trevor Brown
303 Wei-Yin Chen
306 Yu Darvish
308 Andy Pettitte
309 Yasmany Tomas
311 Welington Castillo
312 Carlos Beltran (found this one cheap on COMC, so I snagged it there)
314 Starlin Castro
316 Ryan Weber
317 Yordano Ventura
318 Pedro Severino
321 Nick Castellanos
323 Victor Martinez
327 Raul Mondesi
329 Andre Ethier
332 Yan Gomes
335 Shawn Tolleson
336 Tom Murphy
339 Salvador Perez
341 Richie Shaffer
344 Ryan Zimmerman
349 Travis d'Arnaud

If you have any of these available, please hit me up for a trade!

I'm not going to bother trying to complete the mini set. I'll pick out PC guys to keep, but the rest of the minis I pulled are available for trade.

Thanks for reading and Happy Halloween!

The Wonder Years, The Wizard, Jenny Lewis, and Rilo Kiley

Here's a big Rocktober post about how one of my favorite bands is linked to one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite TV shows.. and how I've got a few autographs from them to show off.

I recently finished binge watching The Wonder Years on Netflix. It was leaving the streaming service shortly, and I cranked out about 3 seasons I had left within a month or so, marathoning the series' last 5 episodes in the final evening the show was available, just wrapping it up under the wire. (I had "With a Little Help From My Friends" stuck in my head for several days, let me tell you!) It was a show I enjoyed as a kid during its original run, and it was nice to revisit, even if it pissed me off a little sometimes (specifically Kevin Arnold's poor choices, but hey, that's all part of growing up, I guess.)

As I often do when a show or movie really connects with me, I took to eBay to see if there were any autograph cards available, to possibly get some representation in my card collection. As far as I can tell, Fred Savage doesn't have any cards on the market, or at least nothing readily available. But I did find an interesting glossy 8x10 promo photo with his signature on it, and ended up winning the auction for a decent price.

Man, I love this! As a kid in the late 80s, a large chunk of my life was spent playing the original Nintendo Entertainment System. In 1989, a film called The Wizard came out that was little more than a glorified Nintendo commercial (specifically to build hype for impending release of Super Mario Bros. 3), but my friends and I loved it. I remember we saw it in a renovated theater that used to be a XXX theater (The Pussycat Theater), and we thought it was pretty great. I rewatched it again a few months ago, and while it's not exactly a cinematic masterpiece, I still really enjoyed it on a sentimental level.

This glossy photo of the main cast members is not only signed by Fred Savage, but also Beau Bridges and Christian Slater. Of course with things like this, you gotta have some faith that it's authentic, but I feel confident about this being legit. I mean, if you were gonna forge signatures on this, it'd be dumb not to go ahead and finish 'er off with Luke Edwards and Jenny Lewis, right?

But hey, guess what, I also have Jenny Lewis' autograph...

Pierre de Reeder, Blake Sennett, Jason Boesel, and in the lower right, Jenny Lewis

I was a huge fan of Rilo Kiley in the '00s (and I still am, but not as obsessive as I used to be). How I got into the band was, around 2001, I spent some time on NES message boards (yeah, before I was nostalgic for baseball cards, I was nostalgic for old video games), and through them, I learned that "the girl from The Wizard has a band now."

I checked out some mp3s I could find, and really liked what I heard. I ended up buying the 2 CDs they had available at the time, of which Take Offs and Landings was my favorite. Then their next album The Execution of All Things (2002) really put them on the map. I made a little fansite for the band and ended up as a moderator on a big Rilo Kiley fan message board. At its height, the forum had hundreds of active users and was a really great fan community. I made a lot of cool online friends there. One of the other regulars on there was a sassy teenager in Portland. After three or four years of being an online acquaintance of hers (she was 19 by then), I drunkenly flirted with her in a PM once. And here we are 10 years later and she's my wife.

(This song mentions baseball cards!)

So yeah, for that alone, Rilo Kiley will always be a big part of my life and shaped how things turned out for me. I saw them live many times, and after one show, got the band to sign the above CD, and even snagged one of Jenny's guitar picks from the floor of the stage.

The band went their separate ways later in that decade, and the message board shriveled and died. Needing a new "online community" to get involved in, I wandered around a bit and eventually discovered the cardsphere and got back into the hobby.

While Jenny Lewis was the main focus of Rilo Kiley, the core of the band also included guitarist and sometimes-vocalist Blake Sennett. His other band, The Elected, was another favorite of mine. I saw them live a few times and got his autograph after a show once:

Nice personalization! That's their second CD. My wife (back before she was my wife) got their first CD signed:

The signatures are on the inside of the booklet, so not exactly ideal for displaying, but still pretty cool.

Funny thing about Blake Sennett is that he (under the name Blake Soper), like Jenny Lewis, was also a child actor in the 80s. In fact, he worked with both Savage Brothers, as he had parts on Boy Meets World and.. wait for it.. The Wonder Years!


And circling this post back onto the topic of The Wonder Years, while I wasn't able to find a Fred Savage auto card, I discovered that Danica McKellar ("Winnie") did have a few stickergraphs out there. I scored one on eBay and then kicked it up with a simple custom overlay:

Oh, that's a nice card! Little Winnie is all grown up!

The original card looks something like this. --Which is fine, but I like it better with my overlay.

Thanks a bunch for reading and have a great week!