Topps Retired Triad - Kiner, Pedro, and the Pepitones

Here are 3 more cards I've picked up in recent months. These all happen to be 2005 Topps Retired refractor autos.

Ralph Kiner is best known for his tenure on the Pirates, so a Cubs auto is a bit off the beaten path. Looks great.

He only played for a decade, but had quite the impressive peak, leading the league in homers his first 7 years. Took a while, but eventually got voted into the Hall by the BBWAA in 1975.

Gotta love this Pedro Guerrero! The 1981 World Series co-MVP has had some health scares in recent years, but thankfully seems to be doing better these days.

That lifetime .300 batting average is satisfying. His rough final season nearly dropped it below the big three-oh-oh, but he hung 'em up just in time.

I did the math on his career batting average. If you're interested, it comes to 0.300074183976261. I'm relieved that it wasn't rounded up from like 0.2997 or something.. That just wouldn't be as pleasing from an OCD perspective.

Here's smilin' Joe Pepitone to close us out for the day. Fun name, colorful character.. he's semi-star from the past that I semi-collect. I eventually pulled the trigger on this card that had been loitering on eBay for a while.

No red stats on the back of Joe's card, but as the blurb mentions, he was a 3-time All-Star and 3-time Gold Glove winner. Not too shabby for the Brooklyn native.

My Pepi & The Pepitones minicollection is looking good, including autographs from 3 different people with that last name. (No relation?) The bottom card was signed in-person by comedian Eddie Pepitone after a stand-up show of his that my wife and I attended. I felt like a goober asking, but he was totally cool about it and humored my quirky request.

Apart from a book signed by author Lena Pepitone, there don't seem to be any other Pepitones out there for me to track down, as far as celebrity/athlete autographs.. but you never know. I'll keep an eye out.

I have Curb Your Enthusiasm to thank for my interest in all things Pepitone. Just finished watching the latest season last night. And I re-watched the earlier seasons over the previous few months. (It's available to stream on HBO and Amazon Prime.) Great show, though sometimes uncomfortable to watch Larry's ill-advised choices.. but usually ends up being pretty funny.

Thanks for swinging by my blog.

Thanksgiving on Easter

I got a bunch of cards over the past week from generous trader buddies.

First up are some cards Padrographs Rod kindly handed off to me at the card show last weekend.

Sharp looking Yelich insert and/or parallel from 2019 Donruss! He's been crushing it again this year. Of course every time I hear about him hitting a homerun, it just bums me out because he went homerless on the day I entered in a "Topps Home Run Challenge" code for him earlier in the season. LOL

More 2019 Donruss.

GQ in the house.

Cool to see the tarot cards back for another year.

740 home runs between these two legends of the game. Ok, maybe Joe Pepitone isn't quite a legend, but still a neat name from back in the day. Before getting this custom from Rod, I wasn't aware Pepitone was ever in the Padres organization. Turns out his MLB career ended in 1973, but he attempted a comeback in 1976 with San Diego, but wrapped up his career after 13 games in AAA.

Padrographs! Especially cool to get that iconic Tim Flannery surfboard card with a signature. I know Rod was on a quest to get a few of those signed for a binder project, so he must have ended up with an extra.

Rod's stack of cards concludes with this imported Brian Giles. Very cool addition to my PC of the best baseball player to come out of my hometown. 2006 Konami cards are tough to find these days-- only one card from this set is currently available on COMC (Mark Teixeira).

Awesome stuff.. thanks, Rod!

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Speaking of additions to my Brian Giles collection, gcrl surprised me with a one-card PWE featuring this cool Cracker Jack auto.

Much appreciated.. thanks, Jim!

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Another one-card PWE, Mike at Wax Pack Hero got in touch letting me know he had a card on my Double Dozen and would be happy to send it over in exchange for checking out his blog and adding it to my blogroll. Sounds like a good deal to me!

This is a card I wanted because it's a perfect upgrade for my We Didn't Start The Fire binder for the "Moon Shot" entry. (I still need a good Woodstock card and unfortunately the Woodstock card in this same insert set doesn't say "Woodstock" on the front, so it's not ideal.)

Thanks again, Mike!

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Last up today is a mailer from cardsphere treasure Dimebox Nick. Nick's note mentioned he hadn't sent me anything in a while, but by my records, he sent me a nice package just back in January that I still haven't hit him back for, so I'll have to dig up a decent return for him soon.

The Brian Giles theme continues with a pair of cards here, plus little bro, Marcus. Kevin Maas minor league cards always make my heart sing.

Gwynn and some oddballs. Very nice.

2019 cards on good cardstock.

More '19 Donruss and some older stuff. The '70 cards of a couple top guys-I-collect are Canadian imports.. Ya down wit' OPC? Yeah, you know me!

Today's top sluggers. Bummer to see Judge back on the DL (or "IL" as it's been changed to this year, which I'm not happy about because I keep getting confused thinking players are going to Illinois.)

Sweet '19 parallels/inserts.

I've still yet to rip any 2019 cards-- fighting the urge to buy retail (or hobby, for that matter)-- so I appreciate the PC needs I get from guys like Nick and Rod. Young stud Juan Soto shown here in both original and Opening Day flavor.

Springer and Snell.

Fan favorites gone too soon, Kirby Puckett and Rod Beck.

Been a while since I've gotten new cards to add to my 2011 Topps parallel frankenset. All 3 of these were needs. The trio has gotten me past the 600-card threshold, though I'm still not to 50% complete yet. Geez!

BTW, did you see where recently the Mike Trout 1/1 canary parallel (yellow diamond) was just recently pulled from an old pack of 2011 Update? Wow, that's a modern card that's right up there with the T206 Honus, if you ask me.

Last card from Nick is a Nomar. The real story here is on the back..

12/25!

This Christmas Card wraps up my Thanksgiving on Easter.
Very cool. Thanks again, Nick!


Thanks for reading, everybody, and Happy Easter! 🐣

Joe and the Pepitones

Not to brag, but I have the autograph of three different guys whose last name is Pepitone. It's a fun name!

The big one is Joe Pepitone. Despite it being a stickergraph, love this nickname inscription.

A Brooklyn native, Pepi had a solid career, playing with the Yankees in the 60s, then the early 70s with the Cubs. Seems like a colorful character. His interviews are often amusing and he gets mentioned in Ball Four a few times.

Nick Pepitone had a decent collegiate career at Tulane University, but didn't turn pro. Looks like he's from Texas. Not sure if he's any relation to Joe. I think I must've picked this card up at a card show from the 7-for-$5 bins a while back.

And thirdly we have actor/comedian Eddie Pepitone's signature on a Joe Pepitone reprint. He was gracious enough to go along with my goofy request when I met him after his performance at a stand-up comedy show. I talked about it in post when I first got it, four years ago.

So there you have all 3 cards in my "Pepitone auto" minicollection. I'll be on the lookout for any other Pepitones.

Speaking of fun names, here's a non-Pepitone bonus card for the post...

Spanky!

September Card Show Haul

Very rewarding card show today! I had kinda been getting in a rut of spending all, or nearly all, of my time at the table space of my usual guy, Bill. This time, I mixed it up and bypassed his bins completely.

Also notable is that I bumped into a couple people I know while at the show. First Rod from the Padrographs blog said hi for a moment and apologized that he didn't think to bring any cards for me. A little later, a former co-worker of mine happened to be passing through the mall with her family and we chatted briefly before her youngins dragged her off. This might not be a big deal to you more social guys out there, but it's a rare occurance for me to run into people I know.

Anyways, back to the cards. Here's a nice overview photo of my haul. A couple boxes to rip, and some good progress on vintage sets I'm working on.. but that stuff will have to wait for another day to write about, and today I'll just try to cover the rest. I will say that lots of cards were from nickel boxes, ranging up to a couple cards from a 75¢ box. Only two big ones from 1971 Topps were over that.. the last two "big money" cards I needed from the set (but again, I'll do a separate post for my vintage setbuilds once I get my spreadsheets updated).

Cubs tradebait is in high demand for me thanks to a bunch of Cubbie collectors I've been trading with lately. Nothing too amazing here, but the slabbed Grace RC and the OPC Tommy Davis are kinda cool. Speak up if you want any of these.

Some cheap Griffeys, including a bunch of Pepsi cards. SCC, do you need any of these?

Vintage tradebait. Love that Dick Allen.. I need to check if that's an upgrade for me or not.

A bunch of nice vintage keepers for me. Minoso! Pepitone! D. Williams! B. Williams! Perez! Gamble! Tiant!

More tradebait. The Doc and Keith are #'d /1000 on the back.

More keepers for me, with a bunch of shiny 89UD-style cards and some gold. Lots of Fred McGriff here.

More cards. Sorry some of these photos aren't great. I will buy any/all 90UD Marquis Grissom for a quarter or less.. this one was 15¢. That Matt Harvey card in the lower left confuses me.. it's a 2016 reprint with a buyback stamp?

Picked up a few cheap football cards that caught my eye.

Even a basketball card.. love those colorful wave refractor type things.

And the rest. I think the Chris Speier is an upgrade for my 73 set. That gloriously miscut Walter Johnson will probably end up with Jedi Jeff. The Pirates auto will likely go to Matt Scott.

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

Trade with $30 a Week Habit

I hadn't traded with Robert from $30 a Week Habit in probably a couple years, so I dropped him an email seeing if he'd be down to swap some cards, and he was kind enough to give me his new address and send me a bunch of good stuff.

The headliner of the package might've been a sweet lot of 45 cards to put toward my 2011 Topps parallel frankenset, highlighted by a beautiful Mickey Mantle orange refractor. Some other big names in here too, such as Chipper Jones and Todd Helton. Up to 16.82% complete with this monster.

The shiny continues with a great looking Wayne Gretzky Holographix card, as Robert hits me with a pair of Great Ones and a pair of LaDainian cards.

Pepitone! Robert is in the homestretch with his 1964 Topps set, and looks like he had a couple dupes I needed for my set, bringing me up to 28.52% complete. Very appreciated!

Jim Thome is a guy I've PC'ed on and off since pulling his first Upper Deck card from a pack as a kid, but only recently went ahead and put him on my wantlist, hoping to get him into my Hundred Card Club one of these days. Robert also collects him and had some nice dupes to send my way.

Wrapping up with a gold Klesko. I love the fat foil serial numbering on the back that you don't really see much anymore these days.

Big thanks for the trade, Robert! I rounded up a respectable return package for you today that I think you'll like, and will put it in the mail very soon.