Joy of a Completed Set: 1992 Leaf Black Gold

[Such a gut punch to lose Rickey unexpectedly. I figured he'd outlive us all.]

Here's a post I already had just about ready to go. Yep, I recently completed a set of 1992 Leaf Gold.. a.k.a. Black Gold. Took me a few years to accumulate them all, but wasn't too tough thanks to how overproduced baseball cards were back then. The gray-bordered base set doesn't do much for me, but with a black border and some gold foil, the design and photos come together to create works of art! I'm traditionally a "box guy", but this is the first full-size set that I've been compelled to page into a binder since returning to the hobby. (As a kid I paged up 1991 Classic Minors for some reason [so jam-packed with potential at the time!], but I think that's it other than maybe a few smaller sets like 1986 Donruss The Rookies and 1991 Upper Deck Final Edition.)

The final card to get was Griffey Jr, no big surprise, and I'm pretty sure that was the only card that cost me over a buck.

Here's another solid page I snapped a pic of. This was "my era", when baseball was a major part of my life as a kid and I'd pour over the Sunday sports section page where they listed everybody's stats up to that point.

Unlike the majority of handbuilt setbuilds I've undertaken, 1992 Leaf is a product I personally ripped a few packs of when it was new. So I suppose it makes it more personal for me since I felt the first-hand thrill of pulling a nice Gold parallel from a pack back when there was actually some buzz around it. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that I would one day own a complete set of the parallels, I'd blow my young mind.. but of course I'd probably have more interesting things to tell myself. But still, it would be cool.

It's tricky photographing the foil, but one quirk with the set I'd like to touch on is how a small percentage of these cards have transitioned from black gold to "black silver". Here's a closer look:

I'd estimate maybe about 2% of these cards (counting my full set and another half-set of dupes) have had their gold foil become silver somehow. The backs of these cards also seem to have a weird splotchy fading thing going on:

"Silver" splotchiness on the right. ^

I'm pretty sure these didn't come out of the pack like this, but rather were unintentionally altered somehow over the decades since they were manufactured. Perhaps someone out there can explain what's going on? Like.. I'd love to know how to make "1992 Leaf Black Silver" cards as something new in my cardart arsenal, fitting in along with my creamy 1991 Fleers and "distressed wood" '87 Topps. I don't think sun exposure causes it, though I've currently got a dupe common in a sunny spot as an experiment. I'm guessing it's caused by oxidation or something a bit over my head like that. Elevation? Exposure to extreme temperatures, maybe? I should throw a card in the oven for a few minutes and see it anything interesting happens. Does this ever happen with early Topps Gold parallels too? Please speak up in the comments if you've got any leads regarding the mystery of 1992 Leaf gold foil somehow turning silver sometimes.

My completed set isn't in perfect condition. I've upgraded a couple bad offenders, but for the most part the cards are in good-enough shape. Sometimes there might be a minor issue with centering or dinged corners, but the most common defect that can torpedo the eye appeal of these cards is when the gold foil has chipped off a bit.

I didn't come across any card that was completely without foil, but some had been ravaged pretty bad in that regard. The Dave Martinez dupe above barely has foil on the right-hand side. I wish I knew a method to safely remove the foil from these cards because, again, that could allow for some new "cardart parallels" like I like to make.

Despite completing the set, and wanting for no specific upgrades, I'm not actually done hunting down these black gold beauties. Yep that's right, I've decided to work up an appendix with the preview cards. Identified by the "of 33" numbering on the back, these were distributed in two-card packs to dealers who ordered 1992 Donruss factory sets directly from Donruss. They look similar, but typically use a different photo than the standard issue. I'm about a quarter of the way there with the previews, with 8 of 33 acquired. Gotta admit that most of those 8 were just found among the regular cards, sort of like when you're working on a vintage Topps set and you end up with a couple OPC cards trying to sneak in.

So yeah, if you had gotten into the habit of setting aside bulk stacks of 1992 Leaf Black Gold for me, you no longer need to do so. Shoutout to John Miller for sending me many of these. By the way, I've finished designing a custom 9-card "Series 2" of bubble gum bubble cards a couple months back, but my printer crapped out when I went to print them. But good news: I'm getting a new printer for my birthday, and so John and Bob can expect mailings from me around the new year.

As I say, I've ended up with a ton of dupes, probably half a set worth, so if anyone reading would like a "starter lot" of '92 Leaf black gold, just let me know. But it's ok if I end up with a bunch of dupes because I can use the extras for cardart:

Leaf Gold gold leaf. Kinda like a meta palindrome of a parallel! I have a stack of stars and fan favorite dupes I'd like to make into this remix, but so far I've only gotten around to a few.

Thanks for stopping by and happy holidays, all!

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.)

Trip to Greece

My wife and I went to Greece last month. My original "live journaling" draft of this post was really just a bunch of complaining leading up to the trip-- hey, I'm a homebody who doesn't like to leave the house if I can help it-- but it turned out to be a very nice vacation so I'm going to delete the intro bitching and just share some pictures I took. A few incoming baseball cards are at the end, too.

We made it to Athens after a super long day of traveling-- basically a "double stuff'd" day for us flying into tomorrow. We stayed in a small, but nice enough room in the city. Lots of honking during the day, but walking distance to historic Greek sites like the above pic.

After 3 days in Athens, we took a ferry over to the island of Naxos. This cat, the apparent reincarnation of Hitler, gave me an inauspicious greeting, violently regurgitating moments after this photo was taken. But overall, the feral kitties were cool and my wife tried to befriend them all. 

After I die of probably a heart attack in a few years, I totally expect her to promptly enter "crazy cat lady" territory. (Only reason we don't have a cat is I'm allergict [sic]).

Had really nice beach day in Naxos. Hell, I even popped off my shirt and ventured out a bit. (No sunburns for me for the trip, thankfully, though my wife did get a little too much sun one day.)

Gorgeous sunset viewing from the roof of our hotel in Naxos.

Naxos was my wife's favorite of our vacation's 3 or 4 legs. The only thing that ruined it for me was an annoying barking dog who lived across the way who did no favors to our already-wacked sleep schedule.

One day we took a bus tour up into the hills to check out some more sights. It was a hot one, nearly 90 degrees American. Got some awesome caramel ice cream in a small town, checked out an ancient olive oil pressing place, watched some pottery get made, hit another nice beach. Another highlight was seeing a couple donkeys hanging out. I mean, I know there are donkeys back in the states, but still..

Just a little off-center on the wallet card photo with this Naxos landmark known as Apollo Temple's entrance (Portara).

Of course I gotta do the traditional dipping-of-the-wallet-card in any body of water I encounter in my travels. Aegean Sea here.

After that we took another ferry over to Santorini, another Greek island.

Our place in Santorini had a personal hot tub in the back balcony. That was pretty swanky. Wallet card Tony didn't get dipped, but makes an appearance nonetheless.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the trip, I was just getting out after a soak, looking up at the skyline of illuminated church towers when all of a sudden everything flickered and went dark. Cool, surreal moment.

The power came back on after an hour or so. We had some downloaded Simpsons episodes on a iPad to help wait out the outage. Then later in the wee hours of the morning, my bad luck with neighbors disrupting peaceful sleep continued yet again, when the occupants of the room next door cranked up loud music for a while. groan.

My wife is more of the food photographer, occasionally snapping pics before we'd dig in, but the one food I photographed was this calzone I got for lunch one day. I'll keep fond memories in my heart for years to come of "the terrific calzoné I had back in the old country." Sure, that might be more of an Italian thing, but whatever. Had some nice baklava, too, and a little ouzo. Did I mention the winery tour in Santorini? That was a lot of fun. Chatted with some fellow American couples there via cruise. They had to rush back to the ship after the last stop, but lucky for us, our hotel was a 5 minute walk up the road so we were able to hang back and take our time.

Here's one last beach pic from when we were killing time on our last day in Santorini before a short flight back to Athens where we spent one last night in Greece in a weird airbnb type place (I was expecting a standard hotel room, but it was more like somebody's house who wasn't there) that only had one little trash can (in the bathroom)-- Oh yeah, one crazy thing about Greece is the plumbing isn't great so people don't flush their TP but rather throw it away. God bless the U.S.A!

Then the next morning we took a crazy taxi ride to the airport-- and btw, I'm really glad we didn't end up renting a car because the roads are often insane. Big old flight back to DC then a short layover and a big flight back to Portland. That must have literally been the longest day of my life, packing several hours onto the standard 24.

Now I've been home over a week and finally back to a decent sleep schedule. Honestly I'm fine not traveling again for the rest of my life other than the occasional trip to Hawaii (and we'll probably hit Canada at some point since I've got a passport now and it's not too far), but maybe my wife'll be able to talk me into another overseas vacation one of these years.

-  - --o

Now let's squeeze in some incoming cards.

I got a nice PWE from gcrl shortly before my trip that I wasn't able to mention yet. Here we've got some vintage set needs for me plus a pink mini Ryan Helsley RC which is of interest to me because...

it's a Christmas Card!

Great stuff.. thank you, my friend! I hope my return was sufficient. (I really need to build up my trade fodder).

-   - - --o

When I came home, I didn't have too much of a "mailhold mailday" bonanza to dive into, but I think I received a couple small eBay pickups and one box from Best Bubble Bob which was pretty neat.

Thanks to this lot of 1992 Leaf Black Gold, I've passed 75% complete with my parallel setbuild. I've never been much of a binder guy, but I might have to page up the set eventually. Damn near every card is a work of art in that black and gold frame.

Bob knows the Four G's to my heart/collection-- Gwynns, girls, glow-in-the-darks, and Gavins.

Even a miscut Pee-Wee card. I've ripped a lot of this 1988 set and can't recall seeing one so off center, making it a great addition to my "super OCD master set" of this product where any excuse to consider a card "unique" works.

Uncut magazine cards! Lots of good ones here. Tempted to cut this into separate cards.

Finally, a sealed San Diego Chicken board game from the early 80s. That'll kick my little PC of the legendary mascot up a notch!

If I had kids (or if there were cards in it), I'd be tempted to open it up and give it a go, but as it stands I'll plan to leave it in "collectable" condition.

pic from eBay

The star of the game are the little rubber chickens, which I had to find a picture of for curiosity's sake.

Thank you, Bob! I was already in your debt and now I'll really need to work up a respectable return soon.

That'll wrap up this long post. Thanks for reading!

Trades and heads up on my new Trade Bait page

Time to catch up on some incoming cards. 

Let's kick off with my first trade with Hal, whom I became familiar with via Twitter a couple years ago. At the time, he lived pretty close to me, but by the time we finally got around to swapping cards, he had moved out of state.. bummer! Could have been nice to meet in person and save some postage. But better late than never, right?

These '72 Topps needs helped me reach the 80% complete milestone with the set. My goal from earlier in the year to finish it during its 50th anniversary is going to come up well short, but I'll keep on plugging away, and who knows, maybe this time next year I'll be wrapping it up..?

Thanks, Hal! Once I get more cards logged into TCDB you might need, I hope we can trade some more.

-  - -o

Speaking of TCDB, here's a little trade I was able to hammer out on there with a user who goes by DyeHardFan.

I was targeting that Dave Stieb ATFF refractor (if you have any ATFF refractors available for trade, I'm your guy), and got some cognac on the side.

Thanks, Ian!

-  - -o

Next up is a package from Bob at Best Bubble.

Wow, that's a big lot of 1992 Leaf black gold! I mentioned recently that I was shelving much of my "early 90s black gold" pursuits in favor of focusing on this parallel setbuild. Still love the look of these. I figured this was a blind bulk lot sure to have several dupes for me, but no, turned out to be all needs! Very nice of Bob to go through my wantlist for this set.

It wasn't all '92 Leaf, though, as Bob also sent along a black refractor and some ladies.

I'd been wanting one of these Batman Returns glowing stickers since I found out about them while putting together my big list of glowing trading cards, so I was thrilled to see Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman here.

I still haven't hit Bob back from his previous package, so I'm deeper in his debt now. I'll have to start planning a 2023 edition of the Bubble Gum Baseball custom set I did earlier this year.

Thanks, Bob!

-  - -o

Now on the topic of trading and not knowing what to send back...

Seeing as I haven't gone to a card show or ripped unopened product since pre-covid times, it has become harder and harder for me to find cards to make fitting returns for people who kindly send me stuff. Logging more of my available cards into TCDB is one thing I've been trying to do lately. And another is putting together a place on the blog to feature interesting trade bait. To that end... Presenting: 

The Baseball Card Breakdown Trade Bait Page

Lots of autograph cards up so far, and some customs and other stuff. I'm hoping to add more soon, though December is always crazy, so who knows. But yeah, check it out and maybe we can work out a trade.