Bob Uecker autograph

Congrats to the Red Sox on bringing home the 2018 World Series championship trophy. I was rooting for them to beat LA, though out of the final four, I had been hoping for the Brewers to win it all.

Milwaukee's terrific 2018 season just drove home how much of a national treasure Bob Uecker is. I wanted to pick up a certified auto card of his, but dang gumit, there are none! It's a tragedy he doesn't have any pack-certified auto cards out there. Not sure if the card companies haven't bothered asking, or if he just turns down all inquiries. Seems like a great way to make a chunk of change signing your name over and over for a few hours, but if he's not interested, fair enough.

Apart from his playing-days cards, he's only got a handful of oddballs out there and a pair of reprints in 2001 Topps Archives. Not many cards and no certified autos.

So anyways, that means it's time for me to take matters into my own hands. I kept an eye on eBay and ended up winning a beautiful slabbed Beckett-certified signed index card. But since index cards are boring, it was up to me to spice it up with a custom overlay. My time to shine!

Since it was a 3x5" index card and came in a big slab, I had more room to work with compared to a standard baseball card. And so I wanted to take advantage of that and hit a few major aspects of his career. At the upper corners you've got a couple photos from his days as a cut-up backup catcher, borrowed from baseball cards. Anchoring the bottom is a recent shot of him as broadcaster for the Brewers, flanked by his best-known acting roles, Indians broadcaster Harry Doyle in Major League on the left and George Owens in Mr. Belvedere on the right. Gotta admit I watched a lot of that sitcom as a kid in the mid 80s before I cared about baseball, so I had to even squeeze Mr. Belvedere himself (Christopher Hewett) into the mix. If I really wanted to go nuts, I could have included photos from his time messing around with WWF wrestlers, or one of his many times chatting with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, or even his memorable beer ads.

Here's a clearer shot of it outside of the sleeve.

For scale, here's the undressed index card along with the rest of my collection of "Mr. Baseball" which is really just the two aforementioned '01 Archives reprints plus the only vintage card I've got from him, plucked from my 1965 Topps complete set. One of these days, I'll focus on picking up more of his cards, most importantly his '64 Topps, which I need for my in-progress setbuild.

I'm very happy with how this turned out. He's one of baseball's all-time classic characters. Just a very funny and interesting guy. Here's an informative little article I found called 17 things you might not know about Bob Uecker.

Definitely gonna have to display this badboy for a while! Gives me a big smile everytime see it.

Thanks for swinging by.

1953 Topps Satchel Paige!

It's "white whale week" here on Baseball Card Breakdown. I've recently landed a 3 or 4 cards I've been after for a while that've kicked up my collection and am excited to show them off to y'all.

Here's a gorgeous card I've wanted for a long time... 1953 Topps Satchel Paige! When that eBay 10% off coupon made the rounds the other day, I put this card in my crosshairs and decided on this one. As always, I don't care much about the grade, but sprung for a slabbed specimen for peace of mind that it was authentic.

The '53 Topps set sure has some beautiful cards. (I still don't care about the Living Set at all, though.)

Man, I'm just head over heels for this card! Great to welcome it into my collection.

Thanks for reading and have a great week, everybody!

Spousal Pack Attack

My special lady and I have been a couple for over a decade. About halfway through that time, I got hooked on the cardboard mistress again. My wife's basically been a neutral observer since.. not exactly encouraging my card-collecting habit, but not discouraging it either (apart from, you know, not wanting me to spend obscene amounts of money on cards or accumulate Hoarders-levels of cards upon cards.)

But she has never bought me cards before.  Until today.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she doesn't come home with unwanted packs of Series One and blasters of stuff I have little interest in like year-old Opening Day and Donruss, making me feign a smile and force out an insincere "Thanks, Baby!" She's not into card collecting, and that's totally cool.

Last night, we went out to a fancy family dinner to celebrate he brother's birthday. I figured the World Series game would be over by the time we got home, but lo and behold it was tied in the 10th, so I turned it on. It ended up being the longest postseason game of all time. I watched the second half of that monster and was exhausted by the time it finally ended. I couldn't imagine being on the East Coast and watching the whole thing from first pitch. My wife watched a couple innings and was asleep on the couch for a couple more before going to bed.

Anyways, she was going to hit the grocery store this morning.. like, early, before I'm up. We got a store coupon for $10 off when you spend $40. So I was thinking cards are a good way to quickly jack up the checkout total. So I gave her a list and some pics of blasters she could grab for me if she needed help getting into the threshold. My top choice was a blaster of 2018 Update, just because I haven't opened any of that yet and wanted to take a look. But she surprised me with hanger packs of Heritage High Numbers and Topps Chrome, both of which were on my list, figuring they'd be likely to have them in stock.

I had this pair of packs waiting for me when I woke up. So after all that unnecessary backstory, let's rip these packs and see if my wife has a magic touch for picking cards, or if it'll just end up being a stack of cards added to my "for trade" boxes.

Here's pack 1 of Chrome.

Pack 2.

Pack 3 gets interesting with a Jose Abreu blue refractor /150 plus a base refractor of Chris Taylor.

The pink refractor pack had another Taylor, plus Tim Beckham and Wil Myers.

So yeah, not an incredible bunch of cards, but a few I could use. Glad to pull a numbered parallel of a guy I kinda collect in the blue Abreu.

Now let's check out the HHN...

I'm not going to show all the base cards, but here are some dudes I collect. Cool. But the what saved the purchase was the inserts...

I dig those Transogram "Collector's Cards" or whatever they call them, and was happy to pull Ichiro. But take a look at that Willie McCovey! I had never even seen any of these before, and was a bit perplexed when I came to it. Turns out it's a 1969 Bazooka All-Time Greats insert, apparently an "SP"-type pull. The cheapest of this one on COMC right now is $38.99, though from looking on eBay, they typically sell for around $15. McCovey is a PC guy for me, it's a pretty sweet pull.

So there you have it. Big thanks to my lovely wife for the cards. A few solid additions for my collection, with the rare McCovey mini being the clear highlight.

The Turrdog takes a big bite out of my 74-85 wants

I've been lucky enough to have been approached with several substantial trades over the past few weeks, punching my wantlists square in their face. I've done a few mutually beneficial trades with Jeffrey, The Turrdog in the past, and this one might be the best. I had a couple HOF autos available for his collection, and he hit me back with lots of good cards for my mid-70s thru mid-80s setbuilds.

The Joy of a Completed Set: 1985 Donruss! This Lee Smith was the final card I needed to put '85 Donruss to bed. The A-Team and Knight Rider pic up top is to honor that time in the mid 80s when black & red was synonymous with badass.

Don't F with 1985 Donruss.

I feel like I'm not cool enough to have the complete set. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm intimidated by it. I have to comb my hair and brush my teeth before I can even look through the cards. I'm worried it may laugh at me or maybe even beat me up. I just hope it accepts me and will let me hang out with it sometimes.

Lee Smith is back again among these nice additions to my '84 Donruss setbuild too. It's a cool set, but not on the same badass level as the following year's offering. I already had the Mattingly, so Carter and Strawberry here pretty much take care of all the big rookies! But there are still several more cards I need, so please check out my wantlist if you can help me out.

I've finished 1982 Topps but there were 4 cards I wanted to upgrade because my copies are a tad creased or whatever.. and thanks to these 3, all I need is a good Jack Morris to have this set finished finished. Ironically I was the one who creased the Jack Morris.. I was blow-drying some wax off the front, but not being careful enough in my wiping and creased it. Lesson learned: small, circular wipes, or from the inside to the outside. Not big up and down wipes.. that's asking for trouble.

A lone '77 Topps for my young setbuild there. I've got another stack of '77s on the way, so that set should be off and running soon.

Nice stack of '79s! I'm not "officially" building this set yet (meaning I haven't worked up a have/wantlist yet) but great to get my foot in the door with it. Some good ones here in this starter lot, for sure.

Nice stack of 1976! Looking forward to updated my wants with these soon and see where I'm at.

Super happy with this lot of '75s!

Finally, the pièce de résistance, a big-ass lot of 1974 Topps! This is going to cut down the wantlist in a major way. There are likely bigger names in here than Willie Horton and Davey Lopes, but I was in a rush taking these photos this morning before work and haven't had a chance to go through them all yet.

Huge thanks, Turrdog! This was a hell of a trade and I very much appreciate you doing so much damage to my set needs!

And thanks to the rest of you for reading. Have a great World Series weekend!

"Don't Cry" (Original) [Guns N' Randoms]

I wasn't exactly crying over this purchase, but this is an instance of where I was browsing eBay one night after a few drinks and ending up bidding on a card, and woke up to having won it. It's a fine looking Tony Gwynn card that I didn't have. 1992 Bowman is one of the more scarce mainstream sets from the overproduction era, adding some mystique to it. Still though, I didn't really need to go spending a few bucks on a graded copy when I would have been perfectly content with a raw copy from COMC for 42 cents. But oh well.

I had been wanting to score an auto to cap off my Gary Sheffield PC, and hey, a Padres auto popped up.. didn't think I'd ever see that, but that's a cool thing about buyback autos. Landed this one for a good price. I liked Gary as a kid in San Diego, and probably felt like crying when he got traded away to the Marlins. But it definitely worked out for the best, as we got Trevor Hoffman in return, who proceeded to have a Hall of Fame career as a dominant closer. Gary had himself a very fine career as well, but a reputation as an asshole and murmurs of admitted PED use tends to keep his name out of HOF discussion.

Back to the card, I always assumed Topps stamped the buybacks after they were signed, though here it definitely appears Gary signed on top of the stamp, so I guess not. But still, cool card for me.

Snagged another cheap Bill Madlock auto for the PC. It's from 2018 Archives. I finally got my pair of hobby boxes delivered today, so expect a recap of those soon. I might cry if I end up pulling this card as one of my four promised autos.

Here's one that I can't really think of working in the "crying" theme of the post.. I was just stoked to add an auto to my burgeoning Rhys Hoskins PC. Gotta love the Rated Rookie logo, though the uniform logos are missed. I think his signature looks great here.

I had been wanting a Yoenis Cespedes auto for a while. This one looked nice and was a good price with combined shipping from the same seller as the Rhys. 11/25 isn't nearly as cool as 12/25, but still much better than 13/25. Cespedes Family BBQ is one of the better baseball Twitter accounts out there, and perhaps their love for Yoenis rubbed off on me. Hopefully he has a full, healthy season sometime. Hard not to cry when he keeps ending up on the DL.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading.

Triad of the PWE

I received three PWEs full of cards over the past few days. Let's take a look.

This first one is from GCA, packing a punch with sweet vintage 1954 Topps Hoyt Wilhelm. While I overpaid for a copy a few card shows back, I'm still very happy with this. I've got several open pockets in the '54 Topps page of my Flagship Binder, and this will be a fantastic addition there.

Greg also kindly kept a lookout for cards on my wantlist during a recent card show, and ended up scoring 3 of the Sandlot inserts I needed. Thanks, GCA! Now I'm just Hercules away from completion......

-   -  - ---o

Next up is Dimebox Nick...

Boom.. that's a big doggie! Thanks to Greg and Nick, I've finished the (non-auto card) Sandlot inserts from 2018 Archives. Now I just need a few of the coins (from blasters) and the Karen Allen auto (from hobby boxes) and I'll be done. (There are also parallels for everything, but I'm not bothering with those. If there were refractor parallels, then yes, I would likely hunt them down.)

The streak of this post showing nothing but Sandlot and Wilhelm cards continues with this pair of oddball Hoyt needs.

Nick also threw in some assorted Padres.

Love the Eric Lauer /99 green shimmer parallel. I feel like I've got a dozen different versions of that Hunter Renfroe RC, but needed the metallic snowflake.

Some future stars and hot rookies. I think that Judge is my first card from the 2018 Baseball Card Day promotion.

Thanks, Nick! I'll get a return out to you soon. As for your dad being interested in another round of music customs, sure just shoot over the details and a reasonable selection of cards from my wantlist (older the better) and we can make it happen!

-  - - --o

Last up today is what I believe is my first time trading with Matt from Diamond Jesters.

The '78 base cards are from Matt's neat Time Travel Trading series, but the Nolan record breaker was an awesome surprise. Great to check these off my setbuild (though the Ivie is in just rough enough condition to where I'll probably hold out for a better copy. He's got some surface wear that he appears to be upset about.)

And a few from the don't-call-it-junk period. Mr. Haverkamp narrowly beat Matt to knocking the Minton off my '87 Fleer Update quest the other day, but it's the thought that counts. And always love adding new Kirby and Dewy. It is a strange feeling to be excited over receiving '90 and '91 Donruss cards in the mail here in 2018, but no, I legitimately was! Needed 'em both for the PC!

Closing out with some modern cards, including a pair of Hosmer, a Snell RC, and George Springer staring into space.

Thanks for the trade, Matt! And thanks again to Greg and Nick, too.

1994 Carolina League 50th Anniversary All-Time Set

I've been emailing with Alex T. (the reader who kindly traded me the George Brett and Robin Yount rookie cards recently). He's an interesting dude whose collection is focused on older minor league sets. This post will take a look at a set Alex gave me a tip on: 1994 Carolina League 50th Anniversary All-Time Set (sometimes also referred to as being from 1995). As many of the cards in the customs revue from my last post show, I get a kick out of seeing my favorite players in unfamiliar uniforms. This set features several PC guys of mine in their minor league duds. Right up my alley! Luckily there was one for auction on eBay for a solid price and I ended up winning as the lone bidder.

Young Yaz and Stretch.

Carew and Bench. So weird seeing Bench in anything other than a Reds uniform.

Speaking of strange sights.. Howbout Teke without his trademark glasses?! Also here are li'l Dave Parker, Barry Bonds, and Ron Gant.

And the rest. I'm torn between keeping the set intact or perhaps trading off the non-PC guys.

Solid, simple backs with stats and an occasional highlight mentioned. Including nicknames is a nice touch.

So there you go. A fun minor league set with a few big names.

old customs trade bait

I've recently sorted out the pile of my customs that had been getting out of hand. Some of these are from back in 2015 when I first got into creating and printing out fun cards. I would sometimes end up making more than I needed back then. I try my best to share customs with my trade buddies who would get a kick out of them, but I'm not great at recordkeeping. Say, for example, I made a Kris Bryant card, I'd give a copy to all the Cubs fans I trade with on a regular basis. But I'm pretty bad with remembering who I sent it to, so sometimes I leave someone out or accidentally end up sending a second copy to somebody.

Anyways, I would like to thin out my supply of surplus custom cards. In this post, I'll show photos of what I've got hanging around. Don't be shy.. please speak up for anything you'd like! If I've traded with you before, I can set it/them aside for you and throw them in with the next trade package I send you. And if we haven't traded before, maybe something here will spark a first trade.. so get in touch and we can swing a little deal.

As for my usual spiel: I generally try to get my customs as close to "real" cards as I can (look, size, feel), but at the end of the day, these are homemade cards and aren't perfect. These are for fun, not intended to have monetary value. Generally speaking, I have no problem "reissuing/reprinting" my old customs when I run out and need more. There was a time when I occasionally sold them, but now they're strictly trade-only. I don't put a lot of "value" in these cards, but between the time and supplies that go into the process, I don't exactly want to just give them away, you know? But just trade me a little something and I'll be happy.

So here we go. Again, just let me know in the comments (or via email or Twitter) if you'd be interested in having anything here thrown in with a trade from me!

Ted Williams minor league Goudey style custom, available in both "reprint style" and artificially aged "vintage style".

Not sure why I made so many of this Mattingly Goudey custom! Again, available in new and vintage wear. Please take one or two of these off my hands if it's something you'd be into.

More Mattingly customs! What can I say, I trade a lot with Yankees fans, and Donny Baseball usually goes over well as a bonus surprise.

Some extra Inauthentic Autographs from Ghostbusters stars.

Lovely ladies. It's a shame that Carrie Fisher auto card is destined to never be signed. This is an extra/backup I made. I did have a TTM "success" with one of these.

Bill Murray

Misc.

Lots of Kris Bryant.

Wade Boggs customs, including some made for TTM requests. He used to be a good signer, but I think I heard he hasn't been so good lately, unfortunately.

More Simpsons cards.

The great Vin Scully. (Update: I hate that the Dodgers just won the pennant. But hey, if i have to frame it in a positive light, I'm happy for Vin Scully.)

Hostess and whatnot.

Not sure why I made so many of that Mike Reinbach card, as he's a pretty obscure dude I collect.

Some "aged" minis.

Lots more minis.

Pretty Girls.

That'll do it. Again, if you want any of these to make their way into the next trade package/PWE I send your way, just say the word!