Topps Retired Triad - The Wizard Rises

Topps Retired Triad is a new feature here where I show off 3 cards from my Topps Retired collection. Today's selections are all 2005 refractor autos.

Check out this Ozzie Smith refractor auto! I love this card, especially considering I'm a Padres fan. Just beautiful!

Sure would have been cool if San Diego had been able to keep him for more of his career.

Charlie Hough is tough enough!

That's a long career! Not quite Phil Niekro, number-wise, but still an impressive run for the fellow knuckleballer.

Denny McLain closes us out for today. Looks great!

Not a long career-- especially following Old Man Hough-- but a few nice seasons, including an extraordinary 1968.

Bunny update: It was a nice day and I spotted this cutie sunbathing for a moment before munching down on some grass.

How I spent my eBay bucks: Reggie and Ozzie

I had a lot of eBay Bucks waiting for me in April after splurging in the first quarter of 2019, with the certified Roberto Clemente autograph being the biggest one. In case you're not aware, eBay Bucks is a promotional program on the auction site where you opt in to earn a percentage (usually 1%, but sometimes there are limited time offers for a larger percentage) and they add up, then at the end of each quarter they give you the "store credit" to use within a month.

April started slowly for me, without much catching my eye to throw my credit on-- almost got a little worried for a while there-- but I eventually found enough cards to spend my Bucks on (and then some). So get ready for a string of posts featuring my eBay Bucks-aided pickups.

Isn't this a pretty Reggie!?! It wasn't long ago I picked up the base version of this 2003 Topps Retired Reggie Jackson auto. But I had a longing for the refractor parallel. This one popped up at auction for a low opening bid and the thing where you can make an offer. I made a competitive offer-- it didn't get accepted-- after an hour or so, somebody else made a low bid and the "best offer" was negated. But joke's on the seller, as after the weeklong auction ended, I was the top bidder, and the winning bid was significantly less than the "best offer" I made back when the listing was new. Works for me!

As I've mentioned before, Reggie was my #1 guy to collect as a kid in the early 90s-- big personality, Naked Gun, legendary dude. Fun to get a new "best card" of him in my collection.

Here's an alternate pic of the refraction.. a bit more of a "sunset" feel (more red spectrum).

I also snagged another Topps Retired auto recently...

Ozzie Smith! This 2005 Topp Retired card is my first Padres autograph of him. It's an unnumbered base auto, but the print run on his "group" was only 70, I believe. Didn't cost me much over the price of a blaster. Would love to score a refractor version some day, but this is fine for now. (The other Ozzie auto in my collection is his 2004 Retired refractor.)

The seller had a few other Retired autos up for auction. I bid on some but ended up being the second-highest bidder on the rest. Oh well-- this was the one I really wanted.

That's all for this post, but I'll show off more of my April eBay pickups soon.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Gone to the dogs

My spare time for card/blog activities has been cut down significantly over the past week due to us dog-sitting an energetic puppy for a work friend.

But one dog I always have time for is the Turrdog. He collects HOF autographs and his ears perked up when I posted the other day that I had a Dennis Eckersley auto available. Didn't take us long to hash out another successful trade.

Here are some big dogs! Awesome pair of Padres rookie cards.. probably San Diego's most desirable cards of the 70s (unless you wanna count that guy sneaking onto Mike Schmidt's rookie card). While I already had copies of Ozzie Smith and Dave Winfield's rookies, it's great to get an extra of each so I can dedicate one to the respective PC and another to the ongoing setbuilds of '74 and '79 Topps.

Jeffery also noticed I recently added all the vintage Kellogg's sets to my "maybe someday" list of collecting projects I'd like to work on.. and gave me a nice lot the beautiful initial offering from 1970. My favorite has got to be the Dick Allen, which I believe I needed for the PC.

Also a nice trio of HOFers from the '74 Kellogg's set.

Yeah, if anybody else has old Kellogg's cards available, I'd be down to take them. At this point, I don't mind cracking or curling.

And lastly, my 1982 Topps set can now be put to bed. I had already completed it, but this was the last card I felt I needed an upgrade to consider it 100% good. (Well, actually there are still a few variations I'd like to eventually add, but are less of a priority: George Foster All-Star card with a signature erroneously on it, Tom Seaver All-Star card with text differences on back, and Pascual Perez with no position listed on front.)

Thanks, Turrdog! Hope the Eck arrived safe and sound.


Circling back now to the canine situation (The card stuff is done, so you don't need to keep reading if you don't care about pups)... the dog we're watching is named Mia and she can be a handful.

While Mia is a sweetheart most of the time, having her for the past week her really helped us appreciate what a chill, good girl our Annie is. It's been a long week for Annie, as Mia's always trying to wrestle with her, and playing with her toys, and stealing her food. Annie doesn't mind a little playing now and then, but not nearly as frequently as Mia tries to rile her up into it.

I would describe Mia as a mix between Scooby Doo and a squirrel.

Her owners did warn us that she once chewed up a big fat Stephen King novel. Of course I was instantly concerned about my card collection, and have been careful to keep the door to that room shut while she was on the prowl. But thankfully she's been good and only chewing on toys and the blankets she brought with her.

But yeah, keeping the peace between dogs and other extra pet-care stuff has been exhausting. Plus she sometimes barks/whines/is-otherwise-noisy in the morning, so I haven't been getting great sleep lately. I don't know how folks with multiple dogs do it, much less parents with kids. Hats off to y'all.

So I've fallen a little behind in my blog reading and writing-- all these Reminiscence Bump posts being batted around are great, but they're generally long and require some quality reading time so I can't knock them out of my reading queue very quickly. And I haven't had a chance to start working on a draft of my own, but probably soon. I had some big plans for the blog that I haven't gotten to (such as my long-delayed Shipping Tips post plus kicking around a card-draft/contest idea).

Mia's owners are picking her up momentarily, as of press time, so things can return to normal shortly. I'm sure Annie will be happy to be the undisputed queen pup of the house again, though they seemed to get along a little better with each passing day. Annie happened to have a dentist appointment scheduled for today (she's had teeth issues in the past). When they were doing a health check when she first arrived, the vet thought they detected a heart murmur, and said they'd do some scans and see if there was a problem. They'd have more info at the end of the day.

This made for a very fucking stressful day for my wife and I! Our last dog was taken away from us much too soon from cancer, and we're really needing a long run with this one.

But I'm happy to report that I've been informed her teeth and heart both looked perfect upon further inspection. I'm typing this up at the end of the work day, but I'll be hugging her extra tight tonight when I get home. The poor girl was probably just a little stressed out from the chaos at home. We might need to reconsider dog-sitting again unless it's an old, mellow pooch.

Anyways.. thanks for reading!

Trade Recapitation

Got a few nice trades packages from the past week or so to show off.

Ozzie Smith rookie bringing the boom! Story behind this is an Ozzie collector came across my old Simpsons customs being talked about on Reddit and got in touch asking if he could buy copies of the two Wizard cards in the little set. I don't sell my customs, but told him I'm up for trade offers, and specifically I could use an Ozzie RC if he happened to have an extra. Lucky for us both, he did have a poor condition copy he'd be willing to part with. That was fine with me, and we swung a quick trade. It's miscut and has some wrinkles, but I'm happy to refill this hole in my collection. (I used to have a '79 Ozzie, but had to give it up in order to seal a big trade with Matt Prigge last year that netted me a nice Carlos Correa auto.)

Thanks again for the trade, Benjamin!

-  - - ---o

Next up is a quick swap with notable reader Mark Hoyle knocking off a bunch of my remaining 1982 Topps needs.

Thanks, Mark! Hope you like what I sent you back (should arrive any day now).

-  - - --o

Chris the Collector is next up.

Seven cards now checked off my '84 Donruss setbuild. Much appreciated!

Also a Dick Williams and Steve Lyons. Jedi Jeff gave me a heads-up on the '89 Fleer card a while ago and so I put it on my wantlist. Check the batting gloves. Figured this would make a solid card for my "We Didn't Start The Fire" binder for the Psycho entry.

Thanks, Chris! I'll hit you back with a return soon.

-  - - --o

Next we have a surprise Stealing Home package. I was happy to be included in his latest wave of outgoing cardboard.

Nice Goldy lot highlighted by a blue parallel.

A couple Bryants and a Fernando.

But the most impressive card of the package was this Wil Myers commemorative not-a-patch. I've cooled on collecting White Queso in the past year or two, but still like getting hits or numbered cards of his in trade. (UPDATE: he hit a couple three taters today!)

Thanks, man! I'll round up some Dodgers to send your way shortly.

-   - ---o

Last one for the week, a trade with reader TSHenson, who seems to be the most active Indians collector on the cardsphere these days.

Some Didis including a gold parallel, neat Judge insert, a Gavin, and a glow-in-the-dark Utley.

Cool Marquis selection to boost the PC.

But the real star of Tim's package was an impressive lot of 1982 Topps, featuring a bunch of big names I needed. Thanks to him and Hoyle, I'm down to single-digits left to put this set to bed:

66 Howe/Ryan TL
200 Brett
450 Bosley
496 Grubb
549 Brett AS
582 Luis Pujols
586 Fingers IA
610 Rickey Henderson
754 Joe Morgan

Thanks a lot, Tim! I've got a bunch of solid Indians rounded up for you and I'll drop them in the mail very soon.


Thanks again to all my trading pals. If anyone else wants to trade, take a look at my wantlist and get in touch. Thanks!

Bonus Content! In my continuing quest to get attention on Twitter, I've made another card gif. This one may be one of my best, if I say so myself...

The great Satchel Paige would be celebrating a birthday today, were we lucky enough that he was still with us. Love to get a look at his incredible windup!

p.s. Unsolicited plug, but the "boom" background on the top Ozzie pic is a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Shredded Wheat. Picked up a couple boxes for a great close-out price and it's pretty good stuff!

recent customs n' such

Here are a few cards of my own making that I've whipped up recently.

Credit goes to Gio at WTHB for the inspiration for this custom. He posted a version of this '78 "dream card" (feasibly squeezing Ozzie Smith and Lou Whitaker onto the iconic Paul Molitor/Alan Trammell rookie) that made me want to print out a copy of my own. I ended up putting my own spin on it with some alterations, but still have to give him credit for the great idea.

I even gave it a full back too.

I made this "1971" Barry Larkin a while back as a surprise bonus to throw in a trade with a Reds collector. I like making customs that I can get good mileage out of, giving copies to multiple trader buddies. Like with this one, Reds fans might get a kick out of it, plus I could also send one to Dennis (University of Michigan guy) and another to Jedi Jeff (double play photo).

A pair of cards I made for Julie a couple months or so ago. I may have posted these already, but they're pretty cool, so here they are again.

While I didn't make this song nor this image, I put the two together and uploaded it to YouTube per request by somebody on the Calamine facebook page looking for this song (coincidentally also by a woman named Julie), a rare demo version of "More Sad Robots". It's a good one, if you like sparse, desolate music best listened to in the dark late at night.

I made a couple 1970 Kellogg's style cards, including a Hoyt Wilhelm "that should have been" (he was not included in the cereal set that year, and his '70 Topps card with the Braves was a logoless airbrush job) and a 1/1 Willinghammer for Wes. These obviously don't have the "3D effect" of the originals, but are otherwise similar to the cards from 1970. I even tried to "curl" the Hoyt copy I sent to Dimebox Nick to give it some pseudo-authenticity, but I'm not sure it got the point across. haha

Looking into it, I've only found a couple real cards where Hoyt is featured in a Braves uniform: 1971 Topps oddball "Baseball's Greatest Moments" (want!) and 2001 Topps American Pie (have!). His 1971 OPC card lists him as a Brave, but he's pictured as a Cub.

If you're a Rick & Morty fan, you're probably aware that Cryptozoic Rick & Morty Season 1 cards were released earlier this week. I love the show and seriously considered picking up a box, but the prices were nearly $200 for a hobby box that promised you a sketch card and maybe an auto or second sketch card. I ultimately decided I didn't like that price-per-value and decided to just make my own sketchcard, saving myself a couple C-notes. Here's Morty freaking out over a predicament he finds himself in. While it obviously isn't on par with the artistic quality of officially released sketchcards, can't beat it for the price! LOL. And being one of my sketchcards, you know there's a pretty good chance it glows in the dark...

Turned out pretty decent! Looks sort of like Munch's The Scream. I should do more Rick & Morty sketchcards if I think of it. I suck at drawing actual people, but if I stick to cartoons and robots, my results aren't too bad.

So there are some recent creative endeavors of mine. (Legal disclaimer: None of this stuff is for sale; just made for myself and/or as gifts for a very small number of my collector friends.)
Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

card show haul conclusion

Here's the rest of my January 2018 card show haul.

Between card shows and COMC orders, I've picked up a few of these 2005 Leaf Sportscasters inserts lately. I just think they're neat. This Piazza is #'d 17/30 on the back. Seemed like a good deal at 50 cents.

Turns out I've already got these 2 checked off on my 2011 Topps parallel frankenset, but hey, I also collect both these players, so to the respective PCs they'll go.

I was just talking about '97 Fleer Soaring Stars inserts yesterday, and how I'm bummed the glow-in-the-dark parallels turned out to be a myth(understanding). Gotta admit I picked up this pair mainly in a hail mary that maybe they glew [sic]. But no, these do not glow. Oh well, still cool cards, and again, I have PCs for both these guys, so they'll have a home in my collection.

Some non-hits from high-end products.

I hate these cards and regret buying them. But to the PCs they'll go.

Above is a card reminding everyone of the regretful trading away of Ozzie Smith by the Padres. At the time, it didn't seem so bad. Garry Templeton could play a solid short and hit .300. But Garry's numbers declined in San Diego, while Ozzie became a legend in St. Louis.

I'm pretty sure I already have that 1972 HR leaders card, but at just 50 cents, figured I'd grab a dupe since I collect both Stargell and Aaron.

That Optic is my first 2017 Mickey Mantle card. Weird that he's no longer a Topps property.
I've already got a certified autograph of Dale Scott, but was excited to find this signed 1990 T&M Umpires card in the 50 cent bins. Wikipedia is telling me he just recently retired from umpiring due to concussion concerns. All the best in the next chapter of your life, Dale!

Some funky 90s stuff. The Klesko is a Player's Private Issue parallel and has a serial number "346" on the back (not sure what the print-run was there). Oh wait, I looked it up: "The print run on these cards is 999, but a couple things should be noted. First, the first 100 cards were sent to the players themselves, hence the name of the parallel. Second, it was announced after the 1996 season that Topps destroyed a whopping 400 sets, leaving 499 left in circulation." (source)
Then there's a Griffey lenticular card from '95 and a Griffey PowerDeck cd-rom from '99. I should pop that in and check out the highlight reel one of these days.

Hard for me to pass up cheap, serial-numbered Rated Rookies, even if these dudes have cooled off considerably since their top-prospect days.

Here's the last group for today, featuring a couple 2017 Gold Label cards. Before I put the Yoan Moncada on my stack, I strained my eyes for like a minute trying to read the tiny text on the front that says what "class" the card is. When I determined that it's Class 3 (a tough pull) I decided to pull the trigger.

So I think that's it for this show's haul, not including cards I picked up as trade bait. I'll probably put up a trade bait post in the next few days (would love to get a flurry of trades going before the 1/21 increase in postage rates), so check back for that.

my new best Padres relic card + Day 3 of 12

Brian from Collecting Cutch recently sent me over this awesome quad relic featuring 4 all-time Padres greats. Love it! It's diecut and has a Mount Rushmore motif going on. Gwynn, Winfield, Ozzie, and Garvey. Hard to argue with any of those choices. Bummer Garvey couldn't have joined the other 3 in Cooperstown, but he fell short in the recent Modern Era vote. Lame.

I collect all these guys, though when it comes to sorting this card, I think Tony pretty much always takes priority for any multi-player cards he's featured on, so it'll go in the Gwynn PC.

2016 Panini Pantheon Metropolis Monuments. It's numbered 90/99. I'm tempted to draw in little "SD" logos on their caps.. only on the penny sleeve, of course.
Big thanks, man!

Another nice card was also included in the package, a contest win, but I'll save that one for another post still in the works.

-  - - -- ---o

12 Days of Christmas Cards & Beermas - Day 3

Speaking of San Diego, Padrographs Rod got the extra contest entries available in yesterday's post when he correctly pointed out that Adam Jones, Don Larsen, and Kevin Mitchell all went to high school in San Diego. Congrats, Rod!

Oh, cool.. I didn't know what Day 3's Beermas beer would be when I started drafting this post, but coincidentally, it's from a San Diego brewery.

The card is the second consecutive Archives Signature Christmas Eve auto in this series of blog posts. Good ol' Charlie Hayes. He doesn't have anything to do with San Diego, though, so he kind of ruins the theme of this post. lol. My lasting memory of him is celebrating after catching the popup that ended the 1996 World Series. That's a great defining moment of an otherwise respectable-but-unremarkable career. Squinting now at the gold stamp on the card, looks like this was from 2017's "Postseason Edition" of the product, which makes sense. The card is a 1994 Topps Stadium Club Golden Rainbow parallel, I believe. Looks like you can score an error against Hayes for the C in his signature falling off the card, but I'm not too concerned with that, I just like the 12/24 numbering. And it was cheap, with my winning bid being less than the shipping fee. Gotta feel for whoever paid probably around $60 to open the 1-card box and ended up with this. But hey, it's found a loving home now, so the story has a happy ending, I guess.

And the backs. The beer is City of the Dead by Modern Times Beer. 7.5% ABV. Though I'm originally from San Diego, I'm not all that familiar with Modern Times. Looking forward to it, though. Strangely, while I'm not a coffee drinker, I really like beers with a rich coffee taste to them. Throw in some chocolate flavors and then you've really got something. Check back for my thoughts on it after I drink it later tonight.

UPDATE: This was really good. Very smooth. Rich, but not too heavy. Definitely a strong coffee flavor.

That'll do it for this post. I can't think of any "contest bonus entry" question right now, but I will say I intend to award a bonus entry to anyone who commented on all 12 posts in this series once we wrap things up. Hell, you might even earn a consolation PWE even if you don't win the grand prize. So don't be shy!
Got any fun plans for the weekend?