Just some more 2003 Topps Retired autos

Not a lot of words in today's post.

R.I.P. Tommy Lasorda. :( 

This was one of my favorite pickups of last year.

Tony Oliva is my latest 2003 Retired addition.

Alt photo. Refraction overload!

Great ballplayer when healthy.

Jose Cruz, Sr. looking good in a sunbeam.

Impressive career.

Greg "The Bull" Luzinski.

Twice runner-up for NL MVP: 1975 (to Joe Morgan) and 1977 (to George Foster).

Last one for today, Darrell Evans.

The Bill James Handbook 2019 rates Darrell Evans 7th on his list of "The 25 Best Players Who Are Not in the Hall of Fame."

Thanks for reading.

Vintage Frankenset Page 2

Y'all ready for this? Vintage Frankenset Page 2!

To refresh your memory, this is a collecting project of mine with the following parameters:

• pre-1981 triopoly
• no flagship Topps baseball allowed
• must fit in a standard top-loader

Attempting to put together a frankenset of 333 cards using these guidelines. And while this isn't actually a bindered project, I'm parsing them out in 9-card increments as if they were paged as a standard set. More background on this can be found at the Page 1 post.

I like it! Well-rounded "page" with all 4 major North American sports represented, plus 3 wide-ranging non-sport subjects.

Let's take a closer look at each of these.

10 1974-75 Topps #10 Pete Maravich

Basketball great Pistol Pete Maravich leads off the group. This card was among an incredible little cache of vintage basketball stars I stumbled upon in the sub-dollar bins at a card show a couple years ago (like the Bill Bradley at #2). Another such Maravich pops up later at card #55.

11 1977 Topps Patches Cloth Stickers #11 Steve Carlton

At first glance, this might violate my "no flagship Topps baseball" rule, but nope, it's an oddball sticker printed on cloth. Lefty adds some additional star power to this group.

12 1975-76 O-Pee-Chee #12 Ivan Boldirev

Gotta admit I'm not familiar with Ivan Boldirev, but snagged this on Sportlots recently because I had an opening at card #12 and wanted a vintage hockey card for the page.

13 1934 Gallaher Champions of Screen & Stage #13 Claudette Colbert

Lucky #13 in the frankenset goes to actress Claudette Colbert. She might not be well remembered today, but she's the only actress to ever star in three films nominated for the Best Motion Picture Oscar in the same year. Respect!

14 1933 Dwight's Soda Useful Birds of America Series 6 #14 Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

Full disclosure, I'm not certain this card is actually from 1933. Looks like a version of the card originally came out in 1918 and was later redone in 1933, though my copy-- another random card show pickup-- doesn't exactly match any I've found on COMC (it's close to the '33 pressing but with slightly different back). But whatever, it's No. 14 and was surely printed before 1981, so it works. "For the good of all, do not destroy the birds."

15 1948 Leaf #15 Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice

Here's another card I recently bought specifically for the frankenset. Slot #15 was open and I wanted a football card for this page, plus I wanted to work a 1948 Leaf card into my collection without breaking the bank. Love Choo Choo here with the colorful front. Justice was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and played in the NFL for few years.

16 1954 Bowman #16 Jim Wilson

Here's the first of several Bowman baseball cards in the frankenset. Probably picked it up at a card show years back. Hard for me to pass up old Bowman cards when I come across them for a buck or less. Love the industrial background. I'm not very familiar with Jim Wilson, but he was an All-Star 3 times, '54-'56. Oh, and a fellow San Diego State alum!

17 1911 Wills Celebrated Ships #17 The "Britannia"

This dickensian RMS Britannia tobacco mini from 1911 is the second-oldest card currently in the frankenset (There's a card from 1910 at #107). Not sure where I got it, but likely another card show discount bin score.

18 1960 Fleer #18 Heinie Manush

Check out my Heinie, guys. Not a lot of Fleer in the frankenset yet (I've got a few '63 Fleer cards, but those numbers were all bested by other cards.. an inherent frustration with any frankenset.)

That wraps up page 2. I feel good about this group of cards and don't see a need to swap out any of these, though I suppose none are iron-clad locked-in were a challenger to really knock my socks off. I know the low numbers of any frankenset can get competitive.

I've also completed page 3 recently, so expect a post on that one of these days. But after that, I've got plenty of holes. If anyone can help out with vintage cards for this project, the lowest numbers currently open are 29, 30, 34, and 45.

I've also swapped out a couple cards from page 1 since that post, so let's quickly revisit that group.

6 1974-75 O-Pee-Chee WHA #6 Bryan Campbell

I had an unnumbered baseball card as a placeholder for the sixth slot, but wanted a true #6 to swap in and add some variety. Bryan Campbell here completes the quadfecta of major North American sports for the page. Grabbed this from Sportlots recently. I didn't realize there was a different Blazers sports team besides those of the Trail variety. Looks like the team only lasted a couple seasons.

8 1979 Topps Burger King - New York Yankees #8

Might look like a standard '79 Topps card to the untrained eye, but nope, it's a Burger King oddball. El Tiante's corresponding flagship issue features him on the Red Sox, so this functions as a traded/update card. Got this one in a recent trade with Bo (I already had one in my Tiant PC). It bumps out the author playing card I couldn't find much info on. I could see further upgrading #8 to an older, less-Toppsy card in the future, but this works fine for now.

That's it for today. Thanks for reading.

a vintage advantage

Expect to see plenty of vintage on this blog in 2021 as my interest in current cards continues to wane (I don't plan to attempt ripping much if any current product this year). I've revived my goal of completing a page of each vintage Topps baseball set, and I've been filling out my new vintage (non-flagship) frankenset. Plus I've also got a few vintage setbuilds in varying stages of advancement, and sometimes I just pick up random singles for PCs or whatever. Such as...

Check it out! I hadn't picked up a playing-days Clemente in a while, and when I saw this '62 Post with a low opening bid, I took a run at it. The first four cards in this post were from the same seller, taking advantage of combined shipping. Not in perfect condition, but just right for my collection.

Clean back, too.

And here's a '61 Post Willie Mays. I threw bids on a handful of cards from the seller and this was another that I ended up with after the dust settled. Again, not in mint condition, but considering the fair price, works just fine for me. Helps kick up my little PC of the Say Hey Kid.

Some light pencil marks on the back that I've resisted the urge to try taking an eraser to.

I also snagged this '60 for my Minnie Minoso collection.

Looks good.

Here's the main card I was after from the seller. Bobby Richardson was one of the few notable rookie cards missing from my 1957 Topps setbuild. Took me a while to find one that looked ok in the price range I was hoping for, but I'm happy with this one.

Just barely makes it out of my personal "upgrade needed" threshold. It's from the toughest series of '57, so you can't be too choosy unless you really want to pay up.

Here are a couple more rookie cards of All-Stars that I needed for my set. Chris the Collector surprised me with this pair recently.

Thanks again, Chris! Very much appreciated!

About half my recent Sportlots box order was vintage cards, including a couple more '57 needs plus Don Larsen for my '64 build. It's been slow going, but I'm nearing 80% complete with both. Doubt I'll complete either this year.. maybe in 2022.

A more realistic goal for me this year would be to finish off at least one of the 70s sets I've got in the works. Thanks to these from Sportlots, I now have only 29 cards left on my 1974 wantlist, though the remaining cards are pretty much all HOFers and "Washington" Padres variations (the latter of which I've been considering cutting bait on). The Red Sox checklist finishes all of those red-bordered inserts for me, though I'd like to upgrade many of them from marked on the back to unmarked.

My 1978 build is a bit further out, with 131 cards still remaining after checking in these four. As always, please check out my wantlists and get in touch if you think you might be able to help me out with anything in trade. Thanks

The Changing of the Wallet Card

Oh yeah, can't forget about my annual Wallet Card update. 

This particular Tony Gwynn 1990 Topps All-Star had the inauspicious honor of being my 2020 wallet card. The "before" pic can be found at the end of last year's wallet card update. Despite spending so much time at home-- and therefore not having a wallet on my person very often-- it still took a lot of wear.

It wasn't all pocket purgatory for Wallet Gwynn; he got some time in the sun...

The only #walletcard photos I recall taking in 2020 were during my Hawaiian vacation in February back before everything went to shit, sharing three such pics in my big post recapping the trip.

Here's one I didn't include in that post since the card came out dark. Man, that vacation is going to go down as one of the best weeks of my life. Good times indeed. Riding that high really helped my wife and I get through the following rough days of last spring.

Here's how the updated binder page looks. My plan is to get through 3 more years to finish the page, then I'll likely either stop doing Wallet Card or pick a "ride or die" card to stick with in perpetuity. Or perhaps I'll keep having a card each year, but pick a different player for a new page. Guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Drumroll for 2021's lucky dupe...

Yep, I'm continuing the trend with an All-Star card from 1990, but giving Donruss its first turn in my wallet. I've always liked this card a lot since back then, more so than Tony's relatively drab base card in the set.

This dupe already has some dinged corners, so it doesn't hurt me too bad to sacrifice it to getting royally roughed up. Also, you can see it's the corrected variation ("All-Star Game Performance"), not the "Recent Performance" error, which I wouldn't be able to bring myself to destroy, even if those are only worth about 18¢ a pop these days.

Good luck to 90D AS Gwynn in his role as my wallet card for the year 2021. Let's make it a great year!

-  - --o

I was planning to end the post there, but hey, I just got a Sportlots box order in that completed my 1990 Donruss base set, and so might as well tack that onto this post and make it a full-on celebration of that red-headed setchild.

These were the last cards I needed for the main set, the Bonus MVP inserts, and Yaz puzzle. Feels nice to wrap those up, though narrowly missing finishing in its 30th anniversary year which had been my penciled-in goal (and why I bothered to buy these "junk" cards rather than patiently wait for them to eventually trickle in from trades.. buying them on Sportlots in early December, but the "box order" ended up taking a little longer than I was expecting thanks to holiday mail slowage).

Technically I'm not finished with '90 Donruss yet, as I'd still like to complete the Grand Slammer inserts (which were available via cello packs and factory sets, but weren't in wax packs). I still need #6 Will Clark and #12 Bo Jackson.

And someday I'd like to complement this red set with the two blue 1990 Donruss Baseball's Best sets and the green '90 Donruss The Rookies set, I suppose. I'm not going to bother hunting down all the many errors/variations of 1990 Donruss, but wouldn't mind adding the Juan Gonzalez reverse negative (I feel like I might have one buried in my collection somewhere).

I know 1990 Donruss isn't exactly beloved by collectors, but seeing as that year was my introduction to the hobby, I've got a soft spot for cards I was wide-eyed rippin' that summer.