It's been a while since I've secured a new 2004 Retired refractor. Whenever it happens, I slam my hand down on a nearby red button that sounds an alarm ringing throughout my block and I yell "WE GOT ONE!!" at the top of my lungs, as my wife and dog excitedly dash into the room and we jump up and down for an ecstatic moment before falling into a joyous dogpile. Or at least that's what happens in my mind. In reality I just click a couple buttons quickly with a furrowed brow and then raise a satisfied smile once the transaction is confirmed.
Back in May, I got lucky with a double dose thanks to Hammer and the Duke.. but all was quiet on the western front since then. I consider this my #1 collecting goal and these rare occasions that I get closer to completing the '04 refractor set are probably the biggest kick I get from the hobby.
Dave Parker here takes me into the home stretch, bringing my countdown into single digits. Just 9 more of these beauties left to track down. Plus Cobra is a guy I like/collect, so that makes it an even better pickup for me. Put him in the hall, I say!
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.
It's nice when there's a contest and they throw a pity prize to the person who came in last. It's happened to me 2 or 3 times, the most recent of which was the BCS tournament contest over at Cards on Cards. I don't follow college sports at all, so I really just made some random picks hoping for a little beginners' luck. Didn't work out for me! But hey, I did end up with a nice last place prize.
Kerry is a fellow Portlander.. in fact, we've got a big meetup planned for tomorrow with a few other guys that I'm calling Cardblogger Con NW '18. Hell, we might set the Guinness Book record for most card bloggers together in one room. I'm sure I'll recap it in a future post. But Kerry wanted to give me my prize right away, so sent me this one through the mail.
Always love the double-whammy of sets-I'm-working-on / guys-I-collect. The Perez is from '83 Traded.
Random autos are always cool; Terrell Wade made it up to the majors in the late 90s for 61 games, mostly with the Braves, getting out with a career ERA a shade under 4.00. Kazuo Uzuki never made the majors because he is imaginary.
Kazuo Uzuki is the subject of a baseball card issued by Topps as an April Fools' Day hoax. The card was released on February 6, 2008 of a supposed high school superstar named Kazuo "The Uzi" Uzuki. In Japanese, Kazuo Uzuki means "the first son of April." The person actually depicted on the card was a New York University law student named Sensen Lin.
He is listed as 5'11" and 165 lbs and could supposedly throw a 104 mph pitch. According to the card, Uzuki would be the first Japanese player to go straight from high school in Japan into professional baseball in the United States.
Pretty neat. I've heard the story, but never had the card.
Some '18 Heritage including a Hoskins.. nice!
A bunch more dudes I collect.
And 1986 is well represented.
Some nice '84s.
And '87s. Oh cool, I didn't even realize the Cobra was OPC until typing up this post.
Great looking trio of cards here.
And the rest! Good stuff.
And some unopened packs. Nice! I'll save these for a rainy day (ie, when I need something to post about.. or just get the itch to rip) and probably do pack skirmishes with them.
Big thanks, Kerry! Much appreciated. I'll have a decent little stack for you at the pending meetup.
This post will try to cram together a few themes.. still showing off my pickups from yesterday's card show. Plus it's Sunday and I've been trying to keep doing Sentimental Sundays posts. Plus all this month I've been featuring notable stuff from my music collection.
Most of the cards in my latest card show haul are from the past few years, though I did pick up a few cards from the 90s too, so let's check those out today.
Gotta admit I'm fascinated with "cards" that are actually CD-ROMs. I've shown off some Upper Deck Powerdeck examples before, but this is my first of Donruss' attempt, apparently called VXP 1.0 (not a very catchy name). It's from 1997.
I popped in the CD to check it out on an old laptop that could handle abnormally shaped discs like this. Similar to the Powerdeck cards, there's a nice highlight video. There's apparently also a little trivia game called "Swings & Misses" but I didn't install it. The "card" is a bit taller than a standard card, closer to '89 Bowman, but still pretty much fits fine with the rest of my Big Hurt PC.
Speaking of oddly shaped CDs, check this out...
The Flaming Lips are one of the most creative/weird bands around. Not only are they known for putting out sometimes-strange music, they also sometimes release it in strange forms. This is a funky shaped CD single that came out in 1996 for their song "This Here Giraffe".
Fun band. I caught them live once in 2000. BTW, I've got several Flaming Lips CDs available to a good home, along with lots of other 90s alt rock stuff. Check out my post from last week for more info.
I kind of don't want to go buckwild with my modest Jeff Bagwell PC, though I do pick up a neat card for cheap once in a while, and maybe someday I'll eventually get him into my Hundred Card Club. This isn't a standard 1992 Leaf Black Gold card, but rather a "Preview" version that's a bit more scarce.
Speaking of Killer B's from the 90s, the Breeders were pretty big in the 90s, specifically for the "Cannonball" song that was all over MTV circa 1993/1994. I was a big fan of theirs. Though I didn't see them live in the 90s, I did eventually catch them in early 2002, and got Kim Deal's autograph after the show...
That was a thrill. Also caught them again many years later (2013) in Portland. Kim Deal was also in one of my other favorite bands, the Pixies.
Here's a Babe Ruth "500 Home Run Club" card from 1994 Ted Williams Card Company. I just thought it was kind of cool thanks to a texture that almost feels like cloth, so I threw it on my stack.
Speaking of cloth, here's likely the most unique item in my CD collection. It's one-of-a-kind, in fact! Back in 2007, I went to a show by an artist called Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and one of the opening bands was a fun group from Canada called Greenbelt Collective. I hadn't heard of them before, but enjoyed their set so much that after the show I bought a CD. One of their moms sewed up a whole bunch of special CD cases, all very different (the album is called Our Homes, so that's why the case is a house). I liked the blue and orange of this particular one, so picked it out of the available options.
Love that album, and really appreciate the personal touch of a hand-sewn CD case.
Only one card from the 80s in my quarterbox haul from yesterday, that being a 1982 OPC of badass Dave Parker.
Speaking of Cobra..
COBRA!!!!!! Time for the toys part of this Sentimental Sundays post. I was big into GI Joe as a kid in the 80s. These are a couple Cobra bad guys I managed to hang onto over the years. Still in pretty good condition!
1998 Fleer Sports Illustrated Then & Now - Extra Edition parallel #90
I don't pick up every Tony Gwynn card I come across, as that would be overwhelming. But once in a while, I'll grab one that catches my eye.. and a good way to catch my eye is to be serial numbered. This one even has cameos on the back of Killebrew, Brock, and Brooks.
Tony was definitely one of the good ones.
And continuing with GI Joe, here are some good guys. The submarine dude is from my childhood collection (remember playing in the tub with him), but I think the other 3 were actually picked up many years later, in a trade for CDs or something. I haven't taken the plunge of buying old toys on eBay, though there are lots of stuff I'd get a kick out of picking up... Maybe someday down the line if/when money and space are less of an issue.
Last card of the post. This 1997 Upper Deck UD3 seemed pretty neat.. it's got a "bat" textured surface, plus a shiny foil inset photo.
And to pair up the card with this item.. well, um, it's orange like the Orioles colors. And uh, Steady Eddie kept his HOF career in cruise control on the highway of life. Whatever. These little digital games sure were a lot of fun back then, though compared to today's video games, it was the equivalent of hitting a rock with a stick. I'm tempted to find a battery to put in this thing to see if it still works.
That's all for today. Hope you enjoyed these blasts from the past. Thanks for reading!
Three trades arrived in the past week or so. Let's take a look.
First up is from Jeffery a.k.a. The Turrdog. He was the only contestant in my Big Fun Game I wasn't familiar with. Turns out he's a pretty cool guy and sent me a nice "thank you" package even before his prize arrived!
Kicking off with some tasty vintage, here's a Rusty Staub I needed for my '64 Topps setbuild. And the Jim Katt (sic) is a nice upgrade over the "tape stains on the corners" copy I previously had in my '65 Topps setbuild. The rest are sharp upgrades for PCs.
Jeff also hit some more modern needs of mine, including a couple for my Marquis Mania project, and my first real card of the Vogelmoster in his new Mariners duds.
Thanks a lot, man! Very appreciated. Glad to hear you're happy with your prize and the bonus cards I sent. (Turns out he's a big Mattingly collector, so I gave him a bunch of Mattingly customs in addition to the Andre Dawson auto he came away with in the game.)
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Next up is another package from a happy Big Fun Game player. (I definitely don't want anyone who won a prize to feel obligated to send me anything in return, though I'm obviously not going to turn down cards! haha) This time Brian from Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary hooked me up with some good stuff.
Awesome trio of Dave Winfield cards, including a couple oddballs featuring photos from his amateur days as a two-way player, plus a sweet bat chip with him in his Padres uniform.
Speaking of oddballs and Padres, these are cool. Brian, could you shed some light on that Bip? It seems to be a thin piece of metal, similar to a printing plate, but it's a bit oversized and blank on the back. Well, whatever it is, it's a welcomed addition to my Bip PC. (Update: apparently a backdoored black printing plate from 1994 Leaf. NICE!) The Nate Colbert scratch off is aces, as well!
Now onto the Paul Molitor portion of the post. Nonchalantly snuck into my Molitor PC post was the announcement for the Big Fun Game, but the other take away from that post was I was just a handful of cards away from my goal of having 100 different Paul Molitor cards. Brian answered the call and dug up several dupes from his collection he could share with me. Some great stuff here!
And more! Thanks so much, Brian! Hopefully by the time you read this, you'll have received the Tony Oliva auto you snagged in the game, plus the healthy dose of bonus Twins I threw in. And hopefully there are a few needs in there for ya.
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But credit where's it's due, the trader who gets the props for getting Molly into my Hundred Card Club is ol' Johnny Miller who quickly shot me over a couple PWEs.
John helped fill some glaring "overproduction era" cards I was missing.
John and Brian only overlapped on one card, the Pinnacle with the gold pyramid bottom. No coincidence it's the only Twins-era card from John, I'm sure. So yeah, the PC is now comfortably over 100 cards, giving me some sense of accomplishment there.
Big thanks, John! I feel bad because he's sent me like 4 or 5 card mailings since the last one I sent him. But rest assured, I'm almost done with that project I've been working on for him, and will be sure to go big with a return package to balance the scales soon.
And speaking of mailings, I mailed out BFG prize packages today for Matt Prigge and Corky. That means I'm still just working on the packages for Nick, Bo, Wes, and John. Soon!
Well, thanks for reading and have a great near-holiday weekend!
It's been a very lucky past two or three months for me for winning contests on the cardsphere. First I won a Cardboard Hogs contest by default. Then I won 2x3 Heroes blogoversary contest by figuring out his cryptic clues. More recently, I got into jaybarkerfan's Big Fun Game thanks to the randomizer (and then John Miller's similar game). Then I came in 2nd place in a Summer of '74 contest, but 1st place winner Tony L. graciously deferred his prize to me. And the other day I found out my suggestion was selected as the winner for Collecting Cutch's "name my new segment" contest. Nice! (I'll be balancing out the karma with a couple big contest of my own coming up shortly.)
Here's the grand prize from the Collecting Cutch contest, a great looking relic #'d 18/27. This is an awesome addition to my McCutchen PC. "Cutch 22" works on a couple levels, as it's a pun on "catch 22" and 22 is his jersey number.
Brian didn't just stop there, though, including a bunch of sweet bonus cards for me...
If you've ever checked out the Collecting Cutch blog, you know Brian's got an insane Andrew McCutchen collection. I collect him too, but on a much more modest level, and here's a nice lot for my PC. Cutch has been struggling the past couple years, apparently falling victim to the Samson complex, as it seems his mojo was in his dreads. But he's a good guy and I still collect him. Hopefully he can turn things around.
You don't see too many oddballs these days, thanks in large part to legal bullshit, so it was cool to be surprised with these police cards.
I like these motivational sayings on the back.. a step up from the old "Stay in school" and "Say no to drugs" you get on similar cards back in the day.
Love this sparkly Conforto RC!
Some more dudes I collect.
Xander in the house!
A few cards for the Mike Trout PC.
A couple reprint/ads of HOF RCs.
Ooh.. A Padre prospect auto. Michael Kelly is still in the San Diego organization, currently putting up solid numbers in AA.
And let's wrap things up with an auto of the Cobra himself, Dave Parker!
