Everything's Coming Up Gavin!

Today is Gavin Floyd's 35th birthday. Happy Birthday, Gavin! I've got a pretty legit PC of the guy. Pretty sure 7 printing plates is the most I have for any one player (probably only rivaled by Gavin LaValley's 4 or 5). Got a bunch of autos, too.

I thought I'd use the special day of arguably the sports world's most successful Gavin as reason to post some other new Gavin cards I picked up recently, mostly from my recent Burbank Sportscards order.

Here are a couple new names to the Greatest Gavins minicollection.
Gavin Jackson was a light-hitting middle infielder who made it all the way up to AAA-Pawtucket in the late 90s, but never made the Show.
Gavin Wright was a speedy outfielder who topped out at AA in the Astros chain in the early 00s.

Here are a couple familiar names from the overproduction era.
Gavin Baugh was on a 2-player rookie card in 1993 Topps, though he never made it out of A-ball. This is my first card of him besides '93 Topps and its variations.
Scott Erickson is an honorary Gavin (his middle name), and I don't really collect the guy, but this neat minor league card popped up in a search and it was cheap, so I went ahead and added it to my order.

Can't believe I paid a little over a buck for it, but a 1992 Quebec Pee-Wee Tournament hockey card was quirky enough for me to pull the trigger on this Gavin Kevin card. I don't think he ever went pro or anything, so this could very well be a 1-card completed master player collection.
Jerrell Gavins might be pushing the boundaries of my collection (last-name-Gavin guys are skirting the line as it is, but a plural last name Gavin?!), but I went ahead and got this in my latest COMC order. He's currently a defensive back for the Ottawa Redblacks in the CFL.

More last name Gavins, with Dave and Tom.
I already had a different Dave Gavin card, so this brings the PC to 3; pretty good for a guy with just a brief minor league career in the late 80s.
Tom Gavin had an even shorter career. After a nice debut in 1990 with rookie league Elizabethton, he was done after a weak 1991 with A-Visalia.

I also picked up a 1983 Galasso T-206 Reprint of Gavvy Cravath. Funny the reprint has a typo (Crayath). I think this is the first reprint of a supervintage card I've added to my collection of which I already owned the original...

...which is a good excuse to show off this rounded-corners beauty again.

Oh, and 2018 is looking like a big year for my Gavin LaValley supercollection...

Yep, according to Gavin LaValley's Instagram, he's gonna have autos in 2018 Bowman (Thanks for the heads-up, Zippy). I'm still undecided if I'll take the expensive plunge of trying in earnest to rainbow these, or play it fiscally responsible and just try to land a few deals here and there. Probably the latter. Though I'll keep an eye on the low-numbered parallels, and if they're not too pricey, who knows. Really depends on what the market is on these. His only prior Bowman card was back in 2014 Bowman Draft, and he didn't have an auto in that product, so these will be his first licensed autos.

But yeah, nice to see him getting some love in Bowman this year. Also very happy that the autos are on-card, not stickers. It'll be fun adding a few of these to the PC soon. I'm curious if he'll have a base card in the set too. And what about Pro Debut and Heritage Minors? Hmm.

a random post of odds and ends

I did it! Posted every day of August 2015. I think it's just the 2nd or 3rd time in the history of Baseball Card Breakdown I've posted every day of a month, and the first time this year. Just another dumb "endurance goal" of mine.

Now I'm going to try going the other way. While I don't think I could bare not posting for an entire month, my goal is to not post back-to-back days for all of September 2015. So I'll still be posting, but not quite as frequently.. more like every-other-day or every three days.

Anyways, let's wrap up some loose ends with various scans that I've had sitting around.

This was from a Tony L. trade a while back that I forgot to include in the posts for our last couple trades. Mickey Mantle minor league card! And it's uncut! Score!

Random tangent: Yesterday I picked up a dead raven near the side of my driveway and threw it in the trash. It was gross. But I didn't want it to stay there and get run over.. then it would become really gross. Hope I wasn't supposed to call Animal Control or anything. Just a crow that had lived out its life.

This is a jumbo sized Bill Madlock card I won on Listia a while back. What's going on in the stands? Was it Free Slinky give-away day at the ballpark? Or was the stadium overrun with weird sea anemone space aliens that day?

My Gavvy Cravath collection picked up another card here with this reprint of a Cracker Jack card. Someday I'd like to get an original, but I'm sure they're not cheap. This one was from a recent Just Commons order where I picked up a bunch of 1973 Topps needs and the 2 Travis Taijeron cards from the other day.

This '79 Glenn Burke got thrown in my cart in a recent Sportlots order. Part of a little "Pride" minicollection of mine, joining a couple autos of other guys I showed off last year.

This Willie McCovey was in the same Sportlots order. At only 18¢, I was expecting it to be beat to hell. It's actually in pretty decent shape for that price, though I'd still ideally like to upgrade someday.

So, yeah, as I've been saying, I've been making a big push to finish off 1973 Topps, and have been picking off cards here and there in orders on Just Commons and Sportlots. When the dust clears, I should be standing at about a dozen cards shy of completion. This next card was an eBay purchase, just a couple bucks shipped:

1973 Topps #20 Stan Bahnsen border variation

With this card, I've completed all the variations in the set (Well, I'm sure there are countless color variations and weird little other things that could be counted, but I'm ignoring them and considering my variation quest compete). This is an excellent specimen, with not only a pronounced gap in the left border, but also a partial gap on the right, exposing some bonus chalkline. Pretty cool! I've seen copies of this card with a small left gap and a smaller left gap, (and corrected copies with no gap), but this is the only one I've ever seen that also has a right gap. Scarce!

Bru sent these the other day! Awesome! In hindsight, I should have been better at tracking who/where I receive 1990 UD Marquis Grissom cards from, like how the Tim Wallach guy is good about keeping records. Each one is appreciated, I assure you!

Random tangent: I've been renting through Seinfeld on dvd from Netflix (unfortunately it's not on streaming) but my progress has been stopped in its tracks by Season 8 discs 1 and 2 always on "Very Long Wait". Do any of you readers own Seinfeld Season 8 on dvd and would be willing to let me borrow discs 1 and 2? I'm thinking we could build a card trade around it. I would take very good care of your discs and send them back to you within a couple weeks, along with some cool cards for you to make it worth your while. Please let me know! I loved Seinfeld back when it was originally on. Then got burned out on reruns in syndication years ago. And recently have had a Seinfeld renaissance watching through the series again.

The last bit of randomness for today is a cheap Listia win I stumbled into. This probably could have gotten lumped in with my latest girlie card post, but I didn't think of it. It's a couple bits of reel from an original film copy of The House Bunny. I've always had a celebrity crush on Anna Faris, and Emma Stone too for that matter. So I guess this is kind of a cool little item for me, though not really something I'd normally collect. But for a nominal amount of Listia credits, I'm happy to pick it up.

Anyways, thanks for reading.

A Supervintage Gavin! (kinda)

I love working on my Greatest Gavins minicollection, which is what I call my wide umbrella of Gavin cards. From common guys like Gavin Floyd, to lesser known minor leaguers named Gavin, to odd stuff like Garbage Pail Kids and celebrities named Gavin, not to mention athletes in sports I otherwise don't collect much such as hockey and soccer.. anything Gavin-related is welcomed. It makes for an eclectic grouping of cards all held together by a shared relatively-uncommon name my parents liked enough to bestow upon me.

But one avenue of collecting that didn't intersect with this minicollection was vintage. The name Gavin just didn't really catch on-- especially in North America-- until the past few decades.

But then I became aware of turn of the century ballplayer Gavvy Cravath.

Gavvy Cravath!

Sure, the name Gavvy isn't exactly Gavin, but it's close enough for me to go ahead and let Mr. Cravath into the hallowed halls of my Greatest Gavins. After all, I've been "Gav" countless times in my life.. and have even answered to Gavy once or twice, I'm sure.

The story goes Clifford Carlton Cravath got the nickname Gavy after he once cracked a line drive that struck a seagull ("gaviota" in Spanish). Sportswriters at the time intentionally misspellt it as Gavvy with two Vs to emphasize that it rhymed with Savvy, not Davy. So again, not a true Gavin, but I'm giving him a pass here due to my enthusiasm for adding a vintage guy to this minicollection.

He also gets bonus cool points for my collection because Gavvy was the first baseball player from the San Diego area to ever play in the major leagues! He was from Escondido, while I grew up 30 miles south in El Cajon. So yeah, he's a prime candidate for me to collect.

In addition to the cool name and hometown, turns out Gavvy had quite the career. For a time, he was the quickest player in major league history to reach 100 home runs, and was known as the modern era career Home Run Champ before Babe Ruth came along. He didn't get a shot at being an everyday player in the bigs till he was 30, otherwise he'd probably be in the Hall today.

After brief stints on the Red Sox, White Sox, and Senators, the Phillies bought his contract in 1912 and he went on to have several outstanding seasons with the team, leading the league in many offensive categories. After nearly winning the triple crown in 1913 (1st in HR and RBI, 2nd in AVG), he was runner-up to the NL MVP award, finishing ahead of big names like Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner in the voting.

For more info, here's his Wikipedia entry. Here's his stats at baseball-reference. Also check his minor league numbers to see he put up some strong numbers in his early years (PCL MVP in 1907, American Association batting titles and home run crowns in 1910 and 1911), plus stuck around a couple years after his major league career ended, not hanging them up until he was in his 40s. Later became a judge. He was known as an easy-going guy and lived to the ripe old age of 82.

Ok, so now that we're acquainted with Gavvy, let's take a look at the card that triumphantly enshrines him into my collection:

1909-11 T206 PIEDMONT 350 GAVVY CRAVATH PSA 2 MC

Earlier this year, Zippy Zappy graciously welcomed me into the T206 Club. Now I've doubled up my membership thanks to this beauty. I wanted a graded copy chiefly because otherwise his first name isn't present anywhere. And a grade of "2" is pretty good for a card that's well over a century old! Cost me a blaster and a half, which seems reasonable. So I'm very happy with this pickup.

From looking on eBay, he doesn't have many other widely available cards from his playing days, though there is a 1915 Cracker Jack card, 1912 E270-1 Colgan's disc, and a 1920 W519 stamp. I'll have to keep an eye out for reasonably priced specimens.

Additionally, he has a handful of cheap modern cards along the lines of Conlon cards, Galasso cards, and reprints. In fact, I just picked up a couple on Sportlots.

Should be a fun guy to collect!