Maybe the last Incoming Cardboard Post before the move

Time for another Incoming Cardboard Post (or ICP, as my ninjas call it) showing off cards that've made their way to me since I last did one of these, that weren't purchases and didn't already get their own post.

Two or 3 weeks ago I was showing off the 1970 Topps Willie Mays that Daniel surprised me with, and a friendly Twitter guy named Todd at @Bookman30022 saw that and offered up a Rod Carew if I needed it, and I happily took him up on the offer, with the sweet Batting Leaders card getting in on the action too. Not wanting to be too big of a mooch, I was able to get him to share his wantlists with me so I could send him a thank-you. Thanks again, Todd!

Mr. Carew turns 75 today, assuming I get this post published by the end of the day here on the west coast.

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I called dibs on this 1963 Fleer Jim Kaat that Jon graciously offered up for an anniversary giveaway event at A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts. I dig this vintage kinda-oddball set and don't have many cards from it. A welcomed addition to my Kaat PC. I'm gonna post that one song I like again in celebration.

Thanks, Jon! Very nice of you. Keep up the great work on your blog!

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Here's a big trade I did with reader Oren V. a couple weeks back.

The key card coming my way in the deal was this Kris Bryant RC black parallel #'d /64. It's not his base rookie (#616), but still, this All-Star Game rookie from 2015 Topps Update is pretty nice. Sparkles had a down, injury-plagued 2020, but he's still in his 20s and will most likely bounce back to being one of the best in the game. That said, I feel like my PC of his has achieved "good" status now with the addition of this low-numbered rookie, and have now "retired" him off my main wantlist.

Here are a pair of solid players that I've missed in MLB this season-type-thing of 2020. Puig couldn't quite escape free agency, while Jones had a just-ok season in Osaka. Gotta mention that the red Puig is numbered 1/50.

A couple parallels of dudes I collect round out the package. Right on. Kershaw just threw a postseason gem.. good for him. (Still rooting against the Dodgers, though.)

Thanks for the great first trade, Oren! Hope to do it again sometime.

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Last one for today...

Padres, baby! Won a postseason game for the first time in a long time tonight. With recent injuries decimating the starting rotation, they're probably not going to get too far, but they're getting their cuts in! I hope to witness a whole bunch more quality seasons from Fernando Tatis, Jr. He's a real fun player and really good.

The fella from Once A Cub pulled this Topps Now parallel numbered 12/25 and thought of me. Aw yeah! He kindly let me dig up a few Cubs cards to send his way for it. A Christmas Card of a top tier PC guy of mine? A double-bullseye, as I say. Don't get much better than that!

Thanks again, man! Big hit for my collection.

And thanks again to everybody who's brightened my day with cards recently.

Heads up to my trader-buddies that I'm moving around the middle of October. I'll likely send out a mass email to my frequent trade partners with the new address once I'm good to go in the new house.

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

Plucking cards from my original collection for set needs

It's late, but I figured I'd try getting out one last post in 2018 to bring up my total for the year to an even 270. Glad to see my posting was up a bit this year from 2016 (254) and 2017 (257). It wasn't always easy, but still managed to get out several posts per week. Go me!

This is sort of a Sentimental Sundays post (ok, it's Monday, but I took the day off work, so feels like a Sunday). I went through an old shoe box of cards from back before my full-fledged return to the hobby, and picked out some old cards from sets I'm working on. Could "past me" help out with some of my in-progress setbuilds? Let's check them out (plus I can use this post as documentation of my old collection and not feel so bad for "cheating on it" by taking out cards and integrating them into my current collection).

Woo.. 3-for-3 here, needing all these '72 Topps HOFers. I'm now up to 7% complete with this recently-begun quest. Got the pair of Killers back in 2005 in one of my first forays into buying cards on eBay ($0.99 + $0.95 s&h).

Needed half of these 1975 Topps cards: Seaver (scored this one in 2011 from a guy named Will, who's an accomplished musician) and Ryan/Carlton (which was a cherished highlight of my collection from the early 90s... think it was an LCS pickup, though might have been a trade with a classmate). Already had the Carew and Rookie Infielders. 58.64% complete.

Looks like I needed all three of these 1976 Topps. That Hammer sunset card is nice one to check off! I believe that was another eBay pickup sticking my toe in the water with baseball cards between stretches of full-on collecting. Now at 27.4% complete here.

1978 Topps-- some solid names among these rookies. I always liked multi-player rookie cards and the eternal promise they seem to possess. Needed the top 2, had the bottom 2.

"Hall Rating" leaders for this group:
Lou Whitaker 145
Dale Murphy 87
Lance Parrish 80
Jack Morris 77

Card Savers and yellowed top loaders are not a part of my collection besides sentimental remnants among these "pre-return to the hobby" cards of mine. Had the '74 Gibson, but this is an upgrade. Needed the '77 Fisk... hell of a card.

1979 Topps. Needed the Alan Trammell 2nd-Year and Bob Welch rookie, but already had the Cardinals Prospects. 30.81% complete

Ending the post with some Donruss. I haven't made a wantlist for '83 Donruss yet, but I'll put this pair of rookies with the few cards I've rounded up so far. Looks like I've already got the '84 Viola.


With some luck, perhaps I'll complete one or two of these sets in 2019. Thanks to past-me for the help. As always, if you want to lend a hand, take a look at my wantlist and let me know.

Happy New Year, everybody!

1994 Carolina League 50th Anniversary All-Time Set

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.

Mad Hits like Rod Carew

Quick post for some Topps Retired additions.

Rod Carew is one of the game's all-time best hitters. Nuff Said. I already had his 2004 Retired refractor, and now I'm happy to add the 2005 counterpart.

I hope Judson doesn't read this post, or he might be overcome with jealousy, as he's the cardsphere's premiere Rusty Greer supercollector. I had never even seen any version of this card before, which is saying a lot because as I've mentioned before, I'm constantly searching out Topps Retired autos. So when it popped up for a fair Buy It Now price, I jumped at it. Turns out Rusty doesn't have a base card in the set, only an auto. The base auto has a print run of 70, and per usual the refractors are /25. So even if you went all Tim Wallach Collector and tried to get every card produced of his in the product, the total would be 99 cards. (70 base autos, 25 refractor autos, and 4 auto printing plates).

The USPS put on a clinic of ineptitude with getting me this card. It left its origin in Iowa and for some reason bumped around Southern California for a few days (Santa Barbara, Santa Clarita, and LA) before making its way up to Portland, first going to a nearby but wrong post office, then back to the distribution center and finally to my local post office and being successfully delivered today.

Anyways, Greer had an impressive career and endeared himself as a Texas Rangers fan favorite, though injuries forced him to hang them up early.

Switching things up, this isn't a Retired refractor, but rather a regular 2005 Topps Chrome black refractor auto. I'm a little bummed Topps went with white card for their autos in 2005 Retired rather than black used in 2004, as the black just looks a little cooler to me. I have no recollection of Cesar Ramos' tenure on the Padres, but he put together a respectable 8-year MLB career, mostly with the Rays. He spent 2017 in AAA with the Phillies org. Picked up this card recently due to my love for black refractors. Just cost me $2.25 shipped. /200.

Speaking of black refractors, this is how it's done! I already had one of the 25 refractor autos of 2004 Topps Retired Jim Piersall (I've got the Christmas Card, no less!), but when this other one popped up at a fair price plus "best offer" option, I went ahead and made an offer and ended up getting it. I suppose it's trade bait (feel free to make me an offer), or perhaps I'll try to flip it for a profit. Or maybe I'll put it in my "We Didn't Start The Fire" binder, upgrading the Piersall card currently in there for the "Psycho" slot.

That's it for today. Thanks for stopping by!

don't look a gift hobby box in the mouth

Time to close out my 2017 holiday haul. These 2 boxes are courtesy of my in-laws.

2016 Topps Tier One. This is the Asia Edition, which as far as I can tell is the same as the US Edition, but for some unknown reason is in a slightly different box and can be found for a few bucks cheaper than its US counterpart.

Corey Kluber is very good. He just won his 2nd Cy Young.

Richie Shaffer spent all of 2017 in AAA for the Indians org. On the plus side, he cranked 30 taters down there, but on the minus side, his average was .227. And unless Jackée is involved, 227 is not good.

The 3rd and final card of the box is a Kolten Wong relic. Welp, it's always a plus when the swatch isn't plain white or grey. He had a solid 2017 season. I seem to end up with decent Kolten cards from time to time, but can't bring myself to formally start a PC. This'll likely end up with Kerry from Cards on Cards. He recently hooked me up with a nice package of cardboard (post forthcoming), so it's nice to pull decent redbirds to hit him back with.

And here's another box of 2016 Legacies of Baseball. You may recall from a few days ago that I got a box of this stuff from my mom and pulled a Trout 1/1. This box here is from my mother-in-law. While normally I wouldn't ask for 2 of the same product at the same time, well nothing else in the desired price range really grabbed me. I considered asking for some Panini stuff, but ultimately stuck with good ol' licensed Topps.

Hey, Sonny Gray is pretty decent. Perhaps he'll become a big star on the Yankees. Sure seems to have a lot of A's autos on the market, though.

Hard to complain about pulling an Al Kaline. Numbered 14/99. I don't collect him these days, but I'm sure this'll come in handy next time I need to throw a little oomph into a trade package for a Tigers fan.

Hey, here's a guy I collect, Hall of Famer Rod Carew. These Vault Metals ingots are pretty cool in-hand. Probably wouldn't make a good wallet card, though. But I guess if somebody stabbed you in the ass, it could save your life.

Last time I flipped one of these around, I was surprised with a beautiful "1/1" numbering. How would I fare this time?...

Meh, the /135 pressings are the "base" versions, so while I'm not complaining about the player selection, this isn't a big hit.

But you know what, I'm just glad that I haven't hit a Henry Owens card yet. That's the biggest risk when opening 2016 high-end boxes from Topps. For some reason, they really flooded the market with him, in all products, high-end no exception. Despite respectable numbers in the minors, he always seemed to choke in his Big League opportunities, and even loyal Red Sox collectors grew sick of the guy and don't especially want his cards.

So yeah, GOOD THING i haven't pulled any cards of his in this box breaking spree, right?

Ok, now let's take a look at the final card of my 2017 holiday haul:

Goddamn it!!

So close to escaping with no Henry Owens "hits". Not the best way to end things. Oh well. Still fun to open boxes like these, especially when it's not my hard-earned money on the line. Big thanks to my mother-in-law for indulging my xmas list requests, even if it turns out I would have been better off with the cash equivalent. The Kluber auto was nice. And the metallic Carew, too. Over all, the best pull from my birthday/xmas boxes was clearly the metal Trout 1/1. So at least there was that! And some other solid pulls to go along with it. Add to that the intangible anticipation and thrill of the rip, and I'd call the experience a success overall. The damn fool I am will probably ask for more boxes along these lines next year. At least I stayed away from those expensive 1-card boxes like Topps Dynasty. That's when pulling a Henry Owens really hurts. At least he has 3 other decent cards to soften the blow this time.

Not only do my in-laws graciously gift me with expensive boxes of baseball cards for Christmas, but they have also fallen into the tradition of hitting me with a six-pack of assorted craft beer for my birthday each year. So it's like the 12 Days of Beermas typically gets extended to nearly 3 weeks. Nice haul this year, selected by my father-in-law. I'm excited for these, though some of them will have to wait a while to get drinken (sic) because I said I'm gonna have a sober January, and I'll stick to that.

Thanks for reading and I hope you all had a nice holiday!

Cody Bellinger custom and my shameful past

Cody Bellinger is the hot NL rookie of 2017, right up there with the AL's Aaron Judge. But while Judge has plenty of cardboard out there and has been included in most 2017 sets, Bellinger has relatively slim pickins to chase on the market right now. The situation is reminiscent of Puig-mania a few years ago. And like with Puig, I'm sure card companies are going to flood the market with Bellinger cards in late-season sets such as Topps Update and hit us over the head with him in 2018. But I got impatient, so I made my own card of him...

I'm pretty happy with how this faux 1989 Upper Deck card turned out. Using the template I first whipped up for a Vin Scully custom, it didn't take me too long. Even with me being a Padre fan compelled to hate the Dodgers, as a baseball fan, I still love to see a rookie come out of nowhere to take the game by storm. So it's nice to have a card of his now, even if it's not quite real.

Last year, I probably would have tried to sell a few of these to make a few bucks to spend on supplies and cards. But after some hot water last year, I'm done with selling customs. Now I'll just make one copy for myself, and perhaps a couple extras to give to friends. I gotta say it was fun trying to be an entrepreneur. There was even a brief moment back then where I got excited thinking maybe I could make a living off customs if I cranked out enough. How great would it be to quit my dayjob and just work from home creating and mailing cards?! But no, I'll keep on the straight and narrow and stick to making money at my real job.

Howabout a bonus custom for today's post. This next one wasn't made by me, though I did suggest it at The Shlabotnik Report and he executed perfectly...

Baseball card quiz: one of these is a fake 1982 Rod Carew card. Can you spot the impostor?

Oh hey, by the way, ketchupman36 has put up a recap of the big prize he won from my 1000th Post contest, so check that out if you missed it.

I know I said I'm no Dodgers fan, but I was going through some old photos last night (my aunt just passed away and I wanted to find a nice picture of us) and found this incriminating shot of me from 1981. (Yes, I kinda look like a little girl in that pic.) I remember that little suitcase thing. It eventually ripped apart and I cut out the Dodgers logo to tape on my wall along with other typical crap kids have on their walls. At the time of this photo, I probably couldn't name any baseball player beside Babe Ruth and maybe Mickey Mantle, so I think I can be forgiven for naively betraying my local San Diego Padres. But still.

Anywho.. Thanks for stopping by!