The Pre-Covid19 Card Collector

I've been a bad blogger lately, not posting much by my standards, and not reading as many card blogs as usual either. Sitting out contests, free-card giveaways, and bat-arounds. Just been riding lowkey on the hobby lately, I guess. I half-joked on Twitter recently...

You know how there are "pre-war card collectors"? I'm thinking about becoming a pre-covid19 collector. Kinda done with 2020 cards. Seems like a good cutoff point. Not into all the $20-per online cards and recon missions for Bowman blasters in the wild hunting for 17-year olds.

And I try not to be too much of a Rob Manfred hater, but really feels like the current sport known as Major League Baseball keeps getting further and further away from the game I fell in love with 30 years ago. And when we start seeing games again finally, it'll be further still. Perhaps painfully so.

It feels good to just kind of draw the line and "set free" baseball and baseball cards to go do their thing without me being too emotionally invested over it from here on out.

No baseball season this year? Fine, whatever.
Constant overpriced gimmicks from Topps? Hey, good for everybody who's into that stuff, but I'll hang back.
Extreme hype over the latest hot prospect? Best of luck to the kid, but I don't really care.

And sure, this is mostly just talk from me, I know. If/when the Padres finally see dividends from their young talent and sniff playoff contention, I'll probably get excited and watch some games. And I'll still collect new cards of my favorite active players (in that I won't, like, forbid traders from sending me current cards).. but for the most part, I'm going to half-assedly try to confine my collection to be pre-2020 cards.

Anyways, this is really just yet another "look what I got" post, so here are some recent pickups. All older stuff, though.. which I suppose goes along with my intention of not messing with current cards much anymore.

Basically I want the hobby to remind me of "the good ol' days".. carefree days of childhood. Reggie Jackson was my first real "PC guy" as a kid. I still have the Reggie cards I accumulated back then, and have added a bunch since returning to the hobby as an adult. He's not really a priority these days, as I consider the PC "good enough" as it stands without worrying about the endless stream of post-career cards. But once in a while a card'll catch my eye, such as when I saw this 1970 Topps Super on another blog recently. Had to track down one for myself. Great shot of the young slugger grabbing a heaping helping of lumber at the old Yankee Stadium.

The back is basically the same as his flagship '70 Topps card, but here's a pic. I believe this is my first 1970 Topps Super card, though I already had a couple 1971 Supers so I knew what I was getting into.

The other main guy I collected as a kid, at least for a while, was Garry Templeton. I've explained why before, and I'm always conflicted about ever repeating myself on this blog. Probably over 99% of readers either don't remember or don't care about hearing it again, but I'm always concerned there'll be one reader with a sharp memory saying to himself, "Oh great, Gavin is explaining why he collected Garry Templeton again.. [eyeroll]" But yeah, I was a kid in San Diego just getting into baseball/collecting. My good buddy Doug was already collecting the obvious choice (Gwynn), so I didn't want to copy him and looked elsewhere. Garry Templeton was the Padres' captain at the time and longest-tenured on the squad. Plus he had a fun name that reminded me of Charlotte's Web. So yeah, while my peers were collecting flashy guys like Strawberry and Canseco, I took the road less traveled. haha

This '76 Tulsa Oilers minor league team issue is Garry's very first card. I had been after it for a couple years, finally scoring it at a solid price a little while ago. It's not quite as awesome as the first card I landed from this set, but still pretty cool.

The back. Wow, .401.. impressive.

Garry hit .321 for Tulsa in 1976 before getting the call to St. Louis in August. Tulsa has been in the news lately, apparently a rough place for black people, historically. I wonder how Garry enjoyed his time there. Allow me to take a moment to say #BlackLivesMatter. Racism is fucking stupid.
There's my soapbox statement, lol.

Sneaking in a modern card, here's Kris Bryant's 2015 Stadium Club RC. This was on my Desperate Double Dozen wantlist for a long time. It got to the point where I didn't even care that much about owning the card anymore, but I was just looking for some closure, so I gave up waiting for anybody to trade it to me and took a look for it on eBay and ended up winning this one for a few bucks. Done and done.

Switching to non-sports, I was pretty excited to score this Axl Rose rookie-- at least I think it's his earliest trading card.. correct me if I'm wrong.

It's a promo for the 1991 Brockum Rock Cards set, though funny enough neither he nor Guns N' Roses ended up having a card in the actual set. For better or worse, I consider GNR an all-time favorite band of mine. And especially since I've started my 1991 MusiCards blog last year, I've been more interested in music cards.

Yeah, in general, I've really been enjoying opening my card collection up to non-sports cards in recent years.. again, using cards as a way of reconnecting with stuff I loved as a kid.. first with Ghostbusters cards, Goonies cards, then Pee-Wee Herman cards (post forthcoming), and more recently MST3K cards (post also forthcoming) and music cards.


Let's close today with a really old card..

My interest in old-timey aviation is pretty much limited to Howard Hughes (post forthcoming later this week, hopefully), but I ended up stumbling upon this neat "playing days" Amelia Earhart card and had to pull the trigger.

1936 Carreras Famous Airmen & Airwomen #25. She has at least a couple earlier cards, so no "rookie card" top-loader for this one, but still super cool to have an Amelia Earhart card that was printed before her tragic disappearance the following year.


In conclusion..

Love this quote from the otherwise terrible Topps-produced Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987). Like this guy stuck in a bad movie, I'm deciding to leave mankind to its folly and retire here. Into this world of memories.


...I mean, not really.. But I think it's best if I try to focus on pre-2020 cards and stop worrying about the current state of things.
Thanks for stopping by.

No Name on Front

No Name on Front cards are some of the coolest error cards out there, I'd say.

There was recently some talk on Twitter of an eBay seller with a nice selection of 1992 Topps cards with no names on the front. I thought the cards looked great.. a fresh spin on an old classic. Just a simple, elegant frame around a photo. They were just a buck each plus flat $3 shipping, so I grabbed a few guys I collect. If you don't recognize him out of his Red Sox uni, that's Dwight Evans above.

Caminiti, Joyner, Templeton, and Maas here. What these cards are are Gold parallels missing the gold foil. Turns out this is the same seller from whom I bought a few proof cards back in 2017.. she must have either worked at Topps in the 90s (or perhaps at the print shop Topps used?) or have a close associate who did. She has thousands of backdoored stuff like this in her eBay store. (In fact, I just placed another order of stuff from her while working on this post!)

They have regular backs. You can tell they're Gold parallels by the logo in the background of the stats box.

While I'm talking about NNOF cards, I figured I'd include a couple others I've got, such as this 2014 Bowman Draft card of Gavin LaValley that's missing the foil, and therefore the name. Nice unofficial variation for that rainbow.

Of course the best known example of a no-name error is the 1990 Topps Frank Thomas. I'd love to pick one up someday when I've got 4-figures to burn on a baseball card, but for now I'm content with official reprints. These are both from 2010 Topps.

One is the standard Cards Your Mom Threw Out insert, and the other is the more scarce original back reprint. The latter is probably my favorite reprint in my collection... love it!

That's it for today. Thanks for swinging by.

a trade to forget (redacted)

I kinda want to just bite my tongue about this one and let it die, but I've already alluded to this recent trade drama and a few readers were interested in the juicy details. So here we go.

There's a well-known woman in the Twitter card collecting community. She seems pretty cool and her cheap card sales are popular. I know she had gotten into some drama here are there butting heads with certain members of the "cardboard mafia", but she generally seems to get along with most people. I'm all for diversity in the hobby, so I think it's great when there's a new collector on the scene who isn't a middle-aged white guy (no offense to us middle-aged white guys.) So yeah, I was a fan of hers going in, for sure.

It was way back in mid August while I was on vacation in New Hampshire when I was checking Twitter and saw a tweet of hers showing off a Garry Templeton 1/1 auto she pulled from a box of 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes. She made a comment along the lines of "cool to pull a 1/1, but too bad it's somebody I never heard of." I perked up a commented that'd I'd be very interested in trading for it. I've told the story before, but as a kid in San Diego getting into baseball for the first time in 1990, I decided Templeton would be my #1 guy (My pal Doug already chose Tony Gwynn and I didn't want to copy him, lol.) Garry was the longest-tenured Padre at that point and seemed like a good dude to collect. It didn't last long for me, though, as I eventually lost interest and moved on to collecting Reggie Jackson as my top guy. After returning to the hobby as an adult, I started up a little Templeton player-collection for sentimental reasons, and have gotten it respectable over the past 2 or 3 years with a couple hits and some scare oddballs. So yeah, a 1/1 auto would make a nice highlight to the PC.

So once I returned home, I messaged her a nice selection of Miguel Sano (her #1 guy) cards. Autos, rookies, #'d parallels... good stuff! The next day, I sent her a little nudge message since I didn't hear back.

"Hey sorry I saw this earlier and forgot to reply! Yeah it's been crazy busy on Twitter notifications today! I'm just going to finish watering the lawn and I'll get back with you"

A week later, nothing. The frustration was just starting.

Another week passes. I tried nudging her again to see if she'd go for the trade. I offered up some more cards that might be of interest.

"Hey there! My apologies I must have read your last message when I was out and about and forgot to reply! Yeah that's a good trade"

Ok, so let's fucking exchange addresses and make this fucking deal happen already then!

TWO more weeks pass, with me nudging here a few times. At this point I'm feeling like a douche bugging her. If she doesn't want to trade, that's her right, she can tell me to fuck off. Some acceptable excuses would be:
1) I want more in exchange
2) I want to keep the card
3) I want to trade it to someone else
4) I don't like you

.. all worthy answers, but no, she wouldn't give me an answer. 

Then I remembered she had a dramatic moment on twitter when she came out as gay (which I thought was super cool and brave, as I can't think of any other openly-gay card collectors). I figured I'd offer a couple dupes from my Pride PC for her, figuring she'd appreciate them. I've got a small number of signed cards from Sean Conroy, the first-ever openly gay active pro baseball player, and while it wasn't an easy decision, figured it'd be nice to let her have one. I also had an extra David Denson (1st opening gay player in affiliated ball) card for her. All the Sano cards PLUS this and more Twins stuff. Still no reply. Several more days go by and I offer up a Byron Buxton auto that I pulled from a Christmas gift box a couple years back. I figure she's a Twins fan, she might go for it. No reply.

At this point, I show her a screen grab of the receipt of when I bought a /25 Templeton auto from the same set for less than $5 shipped.. so if her hang up sealing the deal is that the card is worth a ton, well.. it's not. Maybe $30 at auction, would be my guess. Let's be honest, Garry Templeton was not a great player. He had some good years, and I like him from his Padres tenure, but he's essentially a "common" player.

FINALLY she got back to me, blaming Twitter for not alerting her to new messages (...er, ok). And seemed to say send me whatever and I'll send you the Templeton.

She finally gave me her address, and I gave her mine and it seemed like we would finally have a happy ending to this ordeal.

Over the month-and-a-half that I was trying to work out a deal with her, I offered up many cards. It was like, "howbout this? no? well, howbout this?" And when she gave me her address, I went ahead and rounded up some of the cards that I'd think she'd like, though she never really told me what she wanted.

A few days later, the Garry Templeton card arrived!

Woo! Like pulling teeth! But we finally got it. Woo!!

I tweeted a "mailday" tweet, excitedly thanking her for the trade. She didn't even bother to "fav" the tweet. Seems like it's trader courtesy to at least like (if not RT) a post that thanks you for an interaction, right?

But no, didn't hear from her until a day later: "I got the package today, but there was no Buxton auto in it?"

WTF? She never expressed ANY interest in the Buxton but was now giving me shit for omitting it?
No "Thank you." No "thanks for the trade" or nothing. I was furious. I gave her a shitton of nice Sano cards (w/ 2 autos!).. he was a guy I once semi-collected,, plus a treasured Sean Conroy custom auto that he personally signed for me and I wouldn't have given up besides the fact that I thought she would appreciate it. Plus a graded Mauer card. I have no doubt that my side of the trade was AT LEAST as good as what I was getting back, probably much more. But no, she had to make me feel like I was screwing her in the deal.

Trying to stay positive, I replied, "Oh, sorry. Didn't seem like you were interested in the Buxton so I left it out. I figured the package was strong enough without it. But if you disagree, I could send the Buxton separately. Always my goal to make my trade partners happy! Just let me know."

A few days later, she responded with an "It is what it is" message. *fart noise*

Needless to say, I don't plan to ever deal with her again. I think it's cool that she raises money for charity (if she actually does end up giving that money to charity; after getting jerked around by her for over a month, at this point I don't have a lot of faith in her), so I encourage people to get involved in her dime-card sales. But I would warn against trading with her. SUCH a fucking headache. Frustrated the fuck out of me! Those are the kinds of trades that I hate. If you want to trade, facilitate a trade. If not, just say no. Now I can't even really enjoy the card thanks to the negative memories attached to it. But oh well.

Thanks for reading!

Mama Kin (Guns N' Randoms)

I haven't done a "Guns N' Randoms" post in a while, where I clear off some cards from my sorting table so I can file them away, and title the post after a GNR song, going roughly in chronological order. I think the reason for the delay is the next song up "Mama Kin" (Aerosmith cover) doesn't lend itself well to a title for cards. I mean, yeah, there's a prominent fellow cardblogger named Kin Kinsley, and it would make a solid title for a trade post featuring cards from him, but unfortunately I don't recall ever trading with him and I can't wait indefinitely for that to happen.

The opening lyrics are "It ain't easy, livin' like a gypsy" so maybe I should feature some Gypsy Queen cards or something? Nah.

The best I can muster is that "Mama Kin" doesn't sound too far from "Templeton."

Keep in touch with Templeton
Tell him where you've gone and been
Livin' out your fantasy
Sleeping late and smoking tea

As if this post hadn't scared off enough prospective readers already, I'm leading off with a trio of overproduction-era cards. Somebody alert Blogger to prepare backup servers ASAP because the imminent traffic surge on this post may cause a system failure!!

But check it out, these aren't (quite) junk after all. They're Tiffany/Glossy versions I picked up to spice up my Garry Templeton PC.

And another off-the-beaten-path Templeton, this a shiny gold sticker from 1981.

A blogger I can't recall now was talking highly of Boys of Summer inserts from Score. Prone to peer pressure, I went looking for a cheap example I could fit into my collection. I settled on Bret Boone since he's almost a guy I collect thanks to being from my neck of the woods not to mention he played a few solid season in San Diego. While the steamy mirage thing is kind cool, honestly this 1994 design doesn't do much for me and I'm second-guessing this $1 purchase. The 1993 design is pretty hot though (pun intended), featuring a big, bright sun behind the player. I'll have to keep an eye out for one of those, especially the Piazza, Pedro, or Klesko.

I love adding cards of the late, great Ken Caminiti, especially from his short-term stops, and especially hits. He only played 54 games with the Rangers, so he doesn't have many cards with them, making this bat relic even cooler in my eyes.

The 2018 Margot auto was an add-on buy with a recent eBay win. He hasn't been great this year but figures to stick as the Padres center fielder for the long haul. He's still only 23.

Another 23 year old Friar, Franmil Reyes was tearing up PCL pitching earlier this season, and was called up for a brief stint in San Diego but is now back in AAA (Update: just recalled again). He has very little cardboard on the market at the moment. I picked up this 2014 Bowman Chrome mini refractor on COMC a while back.

Speaking of Bowman Chrome refractors, time to ride the wave! I'm a sucker for these wave refractors.

I especially dig 2015 Bowman Chrome, on the left there. Continuing from what I was talking about in yesterday's comments regarding how it's nearly always a design mistake to use foil for the player name.. I think that's one reason why collectors seem to agree that the Chrome version of a design typically looks better than the standard/flagship/paper. Chrome cards never have foil. In this example, 2015 Bowman (standard) kinda sucks because it's often hard to read the foil names. But the Chrome version looks great, one of my favorite designs of the past few years of any product. The moral of the story is card companies should refrain from using foil for player names. Logos and borders? Sure, fine. But not names!

Anyways, I was looking at cheap colored parallels from 2015 Bowman Chrome on COMC, and among the sea of unknowns, I found this blue wave Matt Chapman. A little surprised to find a solid card like this of the A's starting 3rd baseman for just 65 cents. Maybe one day I'll work on a parallel frankenset of 2015 Bowman Chrome since I dig them so much, but I think I need to put some other collecting projects to bed first.

The 2013 red wave David Holmberg was $1.25, which might seem like a lot to pay for a card of a guy I don't collect, who was released by the lowly Orioles in spring training, currently struggling with Colorado's Triple-A team? Well...

Christmas Card!
Not that I go around paying over a dollar for just any card stamped 12/25, but a neat looking refractor? Sure, probably.

Let's close the post with this, a solid lot of '64 Topps needs from COMC. Just looking for good deals on cards that hopefully weren't too beat up. Some of these I wouldn't mind upgrading someday, but good enough for now. I also focused on high-numbers, trying to cross off a few more from the pesky last series. I'm scratching at the door of 2⁄3 complete with this set now. Probably won't wrap it up by the end of the year (especially with me being distracted by my '57 Topps project), but maybe sometime before the decade's out if I keep at it.

Well, thanks for reading, and always remember:

It ain't easy, livin' like ya want to
And it's so hard to find peace of mind
The way I see it, you've got to say shit
But don't forget to drop me a line

Nice Boys (Guns N' Randoms)

Some more random pickups I've been meaning to show off.

Scored another Hoyt Wilhelm hit with this neat old-timey jersey relic #/50. Grabbed it for a few bucks in the same big order that landed me the Yaz rookie (most of the cards in this post are from that order).

And some minor league oddball Hoyts! Not from his playing days, of course, but there's one paying tribute to greats from the history of the Minneapolis Millers (1978 Halsey Hall Recalls), and a couple cards from his coaching career. That middle card (1979 West Haven Yankees TCMA)... wow, what a bizarre photo. Did Elmer Fudd just blast his beak off? Not sure what's going on there. I checked, and it seems all copies of the card are like this. The card with the group shot (1982 Nashville Sounds Team Issue) also features Johnny Oates (his first managerial card) and Eddie Napoleon.

Included a shot of the backs in case anyone's interested. I wonder if any of those Arby's Tennessee locations are still in business.

Minor league cards of a couple notable Padres of the past, Bruce Bochy and Nate Colbert.

I also gave a big boost to my Eric Owens PC, throwing a bunch of draft pick and minor league cards into my cart.

The last 2 in this batch are especially neat because they're imported cards from his stints playing winter ball in Venezuela.

I believe the Mud Hens issue is Eric's "sunset card" as that was his last hurrah in affiliated ball. He played a little in Mexico the following year before going into coaching. He made it back to the big leagues as assistant hitting coach for the Blue Jays in 2015 and 2016.

We close today with a cool assortment of Garry Templeton oddballs. Love the 1981 Perma-Graphic Credit Card. While I generally shy away from oversized cards, I was happy to score one of those original Sportscaster cards. When I was a kid, I had some similar cards, but I think they were of planes and ships. Nice to take me back to my carefree boyhood days.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.