Gavins from Dennis

My buddy Dennis of the blog Too Many Verlanders surprised me with a nice mailer of cards this past week. The majority were guys named Gavin, so this post will also function as an abbreviated "pro athletes named Gavin" annual update for 2024, though last year I said I wouldn't continue doing it since there are a lot of Gavins out there now compared to when I started paying attention to the 2 or 3 there were ten years ago.

Gavin Williams' stats this season haven't been that great following his strong debut last year, though injuries have played a part. Cleveland secured a playoff spot, so hopefully Gavin gets a chance to shine in October. Cool bunch of cards here with a 1st Bowman refractor, insert Topps RC, and a couple Panini relic RCs.

Gavin Lux has set his career high for games played this season, and I think he had a hot streak going for a while, though overall his numbers are still around replacement level. Suiting up for the juggernaut Dodgers, he's likely to play plenty of postseason baseball. While I of course hope my Padres pull it out, Ohtani is having a season for the ages and it wouldn't surprise anyone if they just kept rolling.

Dennis didn't send me any Gavin Stone cards, but he's another Gavin on the Dodgers to mention. He pitched well this year, highlighted by a complete game shutout, though manager Dave Roberts recently said he's very unlikely to pitch again this year due to shoulder discomfort. Bummer.

Like with Lux, Gavin Sheets has gotten a lot of playing time this year and hasn't quite had the breakout his team had been hoping for. The sad-sack White Sox and their lame owner are having an historically bad season, so there's no 2024 postseason experience awaiting this Gavin. 

Always love a "cracked ice" parallel or whatever they're calling them these days.

Gavin Cross had a strong year for KC's AA team, knocking 15 dingers with 30 stolen bases in 101 games. Wishing him the best of luck cracking the bigs in the next year or two.

There are several other Gavins in the minors today, too many for me to want to cover here, but best of luck to all of them making the show. Turns out my local-ish minor league team, the Hillsboro Hops, had a pair of Gavins on their roster this season. I should have maybe tried to see a game and perhaps gotten autoGavs of those guys, but alas. I didn't see any in-person baseball this year, sad to say, not even the local collegiate summer league Portland Pickles. Oh well, maybe next year.

My biggest football PC gets a couple cards larger thanks to this pair. Since the late Gavin Escobar, there haven't been any NFL Gavin cards released, as far as I can tell. There was one Gavin (Gavin Heslop) who played 3 games for the Seahawks in 2021 but didn't seem to get any cards out of it.

And here's a Gavin Cecchini auto, plus cards from his brother Garin, who I sorta also passively collect. lol

And some non-Gavin content from Dennis to round things out. There was actually a little stack of '92 Leaf black gold, but only Brady Anderson was a need. Believe it or not, I'm only a dozen cards short of the finish line there.

Thanks a lot, Dennis! Cool stuff. I'll do my best to scrape together a decent return for you soon.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Keepers From Rod

Well jeez I got distracted and meant to whip up this post last month, but yeah let's quickly bust out some incoming highlights. 

The big lot of cards from Rod last month helped me add many new cards to my PCs of active players, especially current and recent Padres.

Six player stacks here, including 2024 Topps team set variations for all except Soto because of course he's not with San Diego any longer. The superfluous shiny parallel is kinda cool, though.

Jackson Merrill has San Diego feeling good about the future. He might have a shot at the ROY if Paul Skenes doesn't have too many more quality starts down the stretch.

Bobby Witt, Jr. is another young stud I don't have much from, so it's great to add an early card of his.

And while my Jose Altuve PC has been largely neglected since the Astros cheating scandal, I was still stoked to find a nice card of his within the boxes.. the variation on the right.

It's my first of those "Golden Mirror" variations I've been hearing about for a while. Pretty cool.

There were plenty more cards I could feature from that lot, but I might have to call it good here or maybe do a follow-up post with more later. The other few hundred cards are still in sorting triage of "non-active keepers", "decent cards for trade", and "for cardart". But then Rod stopped by last weekend for another handoff...

Only 1 standard-sized card this time-- the Dylan Cease no-hitter Topps Now card (sweet!)-- but some other cool stuff like unused tickets from the 1984 postseason (wow!) and a set of 1974 McDonald's disc-cards in the original plastic display ball case (!!!).

Here's a neat bit of Padres randomness: A letter from Jerry Coleman to a guy named Mike apologizing for losing the stuff he sent in to be signed.

I had a couple Tim Flannery cardart things for Rod so he didn't leave empty-handed. He helped further encourage my creativity with cards by giving me some fancy paper to work with and a rotary cutter tool that's already come in handy. 

Thanks again to Rod for the cool stuff, and have a great weekend, everybody.

Some photographs I've been meaning to post

I've given the reusable grocery bag full of cards from Rod a first pass, but still have another round or two of sorting before I snap pics of some highlights (lots of good stuff!), but in the meantime, here's a post of photos from the past couple months or so.

I know it's been a long time since Rod last dropped off cards on me.. because back in May he asked if I was going to be around one weekend to receive some cards, but sadly that was the weekend I was out at the coast for a family getaway. And it wasn't until just recently that Rod was finally able to swing by again, and so it was a glorious card-show-comes-to-me type extravaganza several months in the making. But anyways, back in May, I was a little upset with myself that I forgot to take my customary beach photo of my wallet card being dipped into the Pacific Ocean, but at least I grabbed this shot with the water in the background as we were starting the drive home.

Now here's some cute wildlife photography, mostly bunnies and my dog..

This bird spent a few minutes in my Mark Fidrych Memorial Bird Feeder recently, and seemed to really be giving a thoughtful look to the faded '77 Fidrych rookie that graces the feeder, and I had to try grabbing a photo.

I wore my Card Belt the other day, not to brag. :) They're all the rage, with a player wearing one during All-Star Game festivities or something. (Thanks again, Bob!)

The annual free concert in our neighborhood park was a good one this year, with local cover band Covered Structure performing for a solid turnout. I only caught a few songs during a dog walk, but they sounded great. Highlights included "elderly woman behind the counter in a small town" by Pearl Jam and the Fleetwood Mac favorite "Dreams".

Our neighbors across from our backyard aren't coming back, and so an estate sale was held at their house. I didn't go the first 2 days, but I stopped in on the last day. The final-day deal was $20 for whatever you could fit into a paper grocery bag. I got a nice bag full of stuff I can use. No cards/sports stuff, but some crafty stuff that I have cardart plans for. Also some other household stuff and yard stuff and a hanging shelf thing. I grabbed some tea and kitchen stuff, too, along with snapping this above pic. It was cool to see the inside of a house I see the outside of everyday (and to see my house from a new perspective). What's odd is we rarely saw the elderly couple who lived there. They seemed nice enough the rare times we noticed them about, but it must've been a seldom-used second home for them or something. I gotta admit it was nice having a mostly-empty neighboring house. Hopefully whoever moves in there next is cool and quiet. 

Speaking of old people dying, let's squeeze in at least one card photo before ending the post. Sad about Bob Newhart passing, but like I said recently about Willie Mays, I think he got the most out of life that one can get. Score the man a 10/10 in life fullness, right? A few years back (back at the old house) I was hankering a certified autograph of Bob the comedy legend, and ended up settling for this reasonably priced check cut-auto from Leaf with the intention of making a custom overlay for it, though I haven't gotten around to that yet, so here it is with a sparkly background to help it out instead for now. RIP, Mr. Newhart.

Welp, back to sorting the cards from Rod. Thanks for reading!

Some cards I've been meaning to post

With this pair of notable former Dodgers, my 2004 Chrome Black setbuild is down to just 20 cards remaining.

My longterm dream of putting together a run of Topps playing days Mantles sorta faded away with the covid boom, so now I'm pivoting to a frankenset of vintage and refractor reprints filling in the gaps where I don't have the original. Hopefully I finish that someday and get a blog post out of it. After these shiny revisions from '96, my current needs are 1952, 1953, 1956, 1960, 1961, 1962, and 1967.

Baby Dave Winfield. The '73 is a WTHB custom.

1970 Topps is probably the vintage design that benefits the most from refractorification.

Turns out Mr. Show is in my baseball card collection.

My ARMS is on the cusp of 75% complete, with 122 cards remaining.

A couple recent Topps Retired auto pickups.

I also got a Parker Posey autograph.

I know I just showed that Jim Abbott, but turns out it completed the 2-card Angels team set for me, meaning I've got an excuse to show off the Nolan Ryan I bought in Hawaii years ago.

Bob at Best Bubble has been generous with me lately, first was a package with a couple Gavins and a couple girls..

..and a bunch of 1992 Leaf black gold. Some big name, too! And then more recently, a ton more of these showed up from him in a pair of flat-rate boxes.. and when the dust settled, I'm left with just 21 missing cards to finish the parallel set. Nice!

Also a new Gavin for my collection-- I believe the first basketballing Gavin I've got-- plus some PC guys and many duplicate "bubble" cards from Bob's collection, some of which I plan to do crafty cardart stuff to and then send back to Bob.

Plus a stack of Glow Stars and several more gals.

Big thanks, Bob! Much appreciated.

That'll do it for today. Thanks for reading. Sorry I haven't posted for about a month, but I should be back with more cards to show off soon. (Padrographs Rod dropped off a few hundred various cards this past weekend that I'm excited to check out.)

2003 Topps Retired check-in (surprise Part 2)

Yep, more of these shiny cards from a simpler time! 

Reggie Jackson is pretty cool. He was my first "top guy I collect" back in the day and he's still one of my better PCs. This photo in direct sunlight brings out the scratches on the case, but still a nice looking card. And...

It's the Christmas Card! Holly jolly Jackson.

Reggie's former A's teammate Vida Blue is up next. It's a base auto that popped up on COMC cheap enough for me to snag, but I'm still hoping to find a refractor parallel one day.

It's crazy that Vida's 24 wins in 1971 didn't lead the league (thanks to Mickey Lolich's 25).

The last 2003 Topps Retired auto to feature today is a Kent Tekulve refractor I was happy to score a while back.

He pitched in a lot of games, including leading the league for the eventual champs in '79. 

Like Reggie and Vida, Teke also happens to be a solid "PC guy" in my collection. In fact, I've now completed the full Tekulve rainbow for this set:

They didn't include printing plates in '03 Retired (though '04 and '05 had plates included for both base and auto cards), so that's a true finished rainbow, not to brag! :)

The foundation work I mentioned in the previous post went just fine-- thanks for the well-wishes in the comments-- and it's nice to have the cardroom level. It was an expensive job, but in somewhat of a cosmic rebate, just this morning I noticed a thick roll of blue tape in the bushes near where the guys were working. Must have fallen back there and gotten overlooked. But yeah, it was kind of like finding hidden treasure for me because I use plenty of this stuff packing up cards and in various other household situations. Usually I reuse tape I receive from others, rationing it out carefully as needed, but now I can be a high-rolling blue-taper, snapping off endless blue without a care in the world! lol

Thanks for reading. Hope you're all keeping cool this hot weekend. Supposed to top out at 103° for us in Portland.

2003 Topps Retired check-in

My card collection is being taken up a notch today. Literally. The side of my house with the cardroom has been slowly sinking a tiny bit since we moved in nearly 4 years ago, and today the foundation is being worked on to secure the house and raise it back up a little. It's been a nagging concern of mine for a while now, so I'm glad it's being taken care of. But yeah, another expensive adventure in homeownership.

Anyways, here are some 2003 Topps Retired autographs I've picked up over the last while.

Sad that Orlando Cepeda passed away. Time marches on and we just keep losing stars from that classic 50s-70s era of baseball, and it's a bummer. But at least they live on in our collections.

"Last off the line" here, with number 25/25. Nice shot of his career stats. You can see a couple big injures leaving their mark.

Quick tangent, back in my early fascination with "Christmas Cards", I featured Orlando Cepeda's 2004 Retired 12/25 refractor auto in a blog series and gave it its own silly photoshop:

Rest in Peace, Baby Bull.

My "setbuild" of 2003-05 Topps Retired autographs leans strongly to the refractors, but I'll snag a base auto if the price is right, and that's what happened when this Bo Jackson popped up with a better buy-it-now price than I can remember seeing. I'll still hope to score a refractor someday, but it's a beautiful card even without the extra shine.

The rainbow behind Tug McGraw lets you know this one is a refractor. Love the smiley face Tug liked to add to his signature.

Last one for today is Jim Piersall, proudly refracting.

And it's the Christmas Card!

Thanks for stopping by.