Incomings and Outgoings

Got some incoming cards to round up into a post.

I did a quick swap of unofficial cards with reader David B. who fancied a copy of the Willie Stargell - Braves custom I made recently. In return, I got this pair of old school customs somebody made circa 1970. David didn't have a ton of background into on them, but he had bought a larger lot with several of them on eBay in 2021. The person who originally made them must've gotten pictures from a periodical or book, affixing them onto cardboard and turning them into cards, or close enough. They're just a hair too big to fit in a standard top-loader.

Looks they had been intended to have stats on the back, but the data entry must've ended up being too tedious-- you couldn't just copy & paste back then-- so that section got a purple overhaul instead. But yeah, happy to spice up my Wampum and Hoot PCs with these.

Thanks for the trade, David! Fun stuff.

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I fielded my first trade request on TCDB in quite a while, which is mostly my fault because I haven't added squat to my FT/FS cards there in a long time. But apparently I had a few '72 Topps on there (that I had forgotten about-- in fact I've got a couple different '72 "starter lots" from my dupes that I've been meaning to put on eBay), and a friendly guy with the username aint56cool needed one, offering this pair of 1970 Topps. I gotta admit I haven't been tracking my '70 setbuild on TCDB, I just blanketly added all the semi/high numbers to my wants a couple years back since I needed most of them. And I did in fact need these two. Now just 310 cards left to go. Maybe by the time my retirement benefits kick in, assuming I live that long, I can use that 401k to finance landing a Nolan Ryan and Johnny Bench. lol

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Next up is a surprise mailing I received from Japan.

Imported fresh! Love the early Darvish, and always down for an attractive lady on a trading card.

Zippy Zappy didn't include a note this time, but I'm assuming these were some leftover stragglers from the tail end of his through-the-mail autograph acquiring activity, with his budding Rockies fandom apparent with his lot of fellas. You may recall ZZ decided to tighten up his collection a while back before escaping America, jettisoning his non-personalized TTM returns, much of which has been entrusted to me. Happy to add these to the hoard.

Thanks as always, Zippy!

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Ok, those were the "incomings", now for the "outgoings".

The Mark Fidrych Memorial Bird Feeder (a.k.a. The Bird Birdfeeder) has closed for the time being after about 2 years serving neighborhood feathered friends. Squirrels had occasionally been a nuisance in the feeder, but a recent late night rat sighting forced the closure, as I don't want to be supporting unwanted rodents on my property. I'm hoping to "reopen the restaurant" at some point, perhaps in a different spot. Anyways, the above card was the featured entertainment for the birds to enjoy while they ate. It's faded in the sun somewhat, but there's still some yellow hanging on.

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Sad to hear Val Kilmer passed away the other day, though I know his health had been in the toilet for the past several years. He did a lot of great work, from his early quirky films to the big-budget stuff. I watched his documentary a couple years back and he really was a fascinating dude. Anyways, this above Ginter auto is a cherished piece of my collection, scored in a blogger trade back in 2016. (Bubba, are you still out there?)

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Now an update on my "latest art drop".. the silhouette cards from my previous post. Happy to report I sold out the Rickey Henderson cards within 48 hours! Interest was not nearly as robust with the other two featured athletes, however. So far I've moved just one Bo Jackson and zero Jordans.. kinda surprising to me, as I think they're super cool, but that's just how it goes sometimes. (Update: just sold 4 more Bo cards to one guy but don't feel like rewriting this paragraph.) Both Jordan listings had a weird thing where the listing didn't show up on the site until a day later, despite showing as active on my end. Not sure if that was a technical hiccup, or if perhaps listings mentioning 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan have a higher rate of getting flagged for moderation since counterfeits are so rampant with that card. But anyways, they're available now and we'll see if folks eventually start coming around to them. 

But my takeaway is that the market for Rickey cardart/custom stuff is strong, which is cool with me. I already had more Rickey stuff in the works anyways, so I'll continue that route, and spend less time on making new Bo and Jordan cards. (I also have plans for more subjects-- already made a Tim Flannery '88 Fleer silhouette card for Rod, plus a few Barry Bonds ideas for my guy who buys most Bonds cardart I whip up. [Though he passed on the pair of Christmas tree ornament cards. Maybe he doesn't celebrate? Fair enough!])

Also, the glowing cards did well-- they seemed to be among the quickest Rickeys to go, and the first Bo sale was a glower-- so I'll likely focus on more g.i.t.d. cards, which are my personal favorite anyway.

In fact, here's a sneak peek of my latest finished item with the lights out...

I'm still coming up with new ideas, as well as sitting on some good ideas that have been brewing on the backburner for years, so even if you don't dig the silhouette vibe, your boy Gav has more tricks up his sleeve, don't you fret. Thanks for following along!

Cardboard Digest

Dang, looks like I let a month go by without a post here. This'll be a rambling post to catch up.

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I got a great holiday/b-day mailing from Dennis at Too Many Verlanders a few days ago.

Leading off with a pair of kicked-up reprints, both needs from sets I'm hoping to complete before my collecting career wraps (aka death). The Pudge is only my 3rd out of the 1993 Upper Deck 5th Anniversary insert set that's 15 cards deep, so I've got a ways to go. I proudly had that original Ivan RC as a kid, so this black-bordered remix hits a little extra hard. 

As one of the more plentiful hits in 2001 Topps Archives Reserve, the Paul Blair auto is one I had been eyeing for years waiting for just the right deal, so how perfect was for it to just show up from a hobby bud. My ARMS (Archives Reserve Master Set) now sits at an even 74% complete.

Dennis ensured the mailing had a strong dose of yuletide cheer, tossing it this pair of shiny ornament cards.

Also plenty of Gavins included, including some deluxe Lux and a big fuzzy swatch once worn by the late Gavin Escobar. 

(BTW, it doesn't look like I'll get to my annual "Gavins in Baseball" post this year.. There are too many of them now!)

Thank you, Dennis! Much appreciated.

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Bob at Best Bubble again hit me with another terrific batch of cards.

There were a couple ladies on cardboard that I forgot to snap a pic of, but the star of the show were these 1972 Topps needs. Still chugging along there thanks to fine folks such as Bob. Thank you again, sir!

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Here's something else that just arrived.

Jon from Penny Sleeves surprised me with a motherload of glowing beanies (1999 Ty Beanie Babies IV - Glow in the Dark Stickers). The stack contained at least one of 24 of the set's 25 stickers, plus several dupes (glowing dupes being keepers for me because I love them that damn much). And the one not included (Clubby) was one of the few I already had (..from a trade with Jon earlier in the year). Very happy to have completed the set now. Thanks so much, Jon! 

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I think that catches me up with incoming cards to tip my cap about. 

My wife managed to drag my lazy ass out of the house this past weekend. It was a showing of the Muppet Christmas Carol with the score performed live by the Oregon Symphony. Hard to believe, but it was my first concert since early 2020, before covid hit.

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I recently had to retire this old car CDR of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs. I don't drive a lot these days, but have a rotation of a dozen discs or so in there to listen to. After about 25 years in action, it's started skipping pretty bad on "Stairway" thanks to the outer edge of the CDR getting worn down. I lost most of my old school car cdrs in a flood-type situation a decade ago, but this Zep best-of was one of the few that survived that ordeal. Farewell, old friend.

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A few years back, I did a post listing 10 whales of mine, and I'm excited to finally land another one off that hallowed list. (Though it's not anything that would excite most collectors.) Behold:

Chris D. Jones here was the second player from my high school to crack the majors. Sadly, he didn't get any cards from his brief MLB career, with this rare postcard being his lone collectable representation in a big league uniform. (I did, however, make a Giants custom that had a lovely TTM success.) I'm not exactly sure if this is the 1985 original or the 1987 rerelease.. but regardless, this is the first example I've ever seen, thanks to somebody breaking up a big collection of Astros postcards on ebay. So yeah, that was perhaps the top whale for my Guys From Granite collection. A nice hobby win for me to close out the year on!

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I don't think I'll be writing a separate Guys From Granite annual update post this year. But I can give you a quick recap since there are only 2 active guys.

Trenton Brooks was having a nice year at AAA Las Vegas before heading to the Giant's AAA team in Sacramento. Fingers crossed 2024 is the year he makes his MLB debut. (Oh man, if he starts getting Topps cards, that means I would have to start collecting [rainbowing?!] modern cards again! Ah jeez!!)

Dillan Shrum had a decent season at AA in the Royals chain. Hope he makes it up to Triple A in '24.

Good luck, Trenton and Dillan! You do Granite Hills proud.

-  - --o

Now here's what I've been up to lately on the #cardart front.

Fun craftin' up "junk wax superfractors" for a bit but got bored of gold so now I've been working other colors into the mix too. Neat, right?

Thanks for reading, Happy Holidays, and big thanks again to Dennis, Bob, and Jon for the cards.

yuletide trades

Here's a post with some cards I've received from fellow collectors recently.

Bru from Remember the Astrodome remembered his ol' pal Gav, and sent me over some cards for the first time in a couple years. 

The holiday PWE was chockful of Padre cards from the last couple years, and I haven't been buying new product or trading much during that time, so they were all extra fresh feeling.

Thank you, Bru! Working on some Astros return-fire for you.

-o-

Next up is a TCDB trade with Art (username "AAARRT"). I think this was the first trade ever done on the site that I initiated. The scattered trades I've done there prior were all proposed by the other guy, as far as I can remember. I was looking for someone to help me with the cards Topps gave Dick Allen this year, and Art had most of them available. I looked at his wants and was able to come up with a brick of 2017 Heritage needs for him. He could not have been more pleasant to deal with.

The Flashback insert is cool. There are no parallels or anything, though if there were I'd likely chase them. The "Then & Now" Heritage cards don't do a ton for me, nor does the Ginter, but glad to see Topps including him after basically no new Dick Allen cards from them since the days of All-Time Fan Favorites. You can see the same photo for Ginter was used with the Carlos Santana card. I wish they would have used the shot from the Luke Voit-shared card featuring a big smile whilst having a catch. (They did also use that photo in this year's A&G, but for a rip card [#/99], which I'm keeping an eye out for.) I will probably eventually go after the various Ginter parallels/minis, but between the design and the photo, I'm not inspired to hit the rainbowing very hard on this one. But cool that Dick ALLEN finally has his first Allen & Ginter card. (Matt Ginter, another PC guy of mine [who I happen to know turns the big 44 tomorrow] never got an A&G card, sadly.) Still also need Dick's Ginter X card for this year, but as a 301+ high number "SP", he's not included in the Chrome version of Ginter (that only covers 1-300 of the this year's standard A&G checklist). Oh, he also supposedly has coin "relics" in Heritage, though I don't think any have surfaced yet. My rainbow of his '21 Archives card has been coming along, but I'll wait for a future post for an update there.

I also got a few recent Juan Soto cards for the PC, including an example of Topps' foolish choice of reprinting their autograph cards, causing a lot of confusion for uninformed collectors.

The top card of the trade with Art was this numbered Jake Cronenworth RC. I don't have much of him in my collection yet.

And a few more cards included in the deal or thrown in as a surprise bonus. Thanks for the trade, Art, if you're reading.

-o-

And here's another TCDB trade I initiated.

I'm working on those Cards That Never Were from 2021 Topps Update. I was looking who had my needs available, which led me to another friendly guy (username "Johnsogr") whom I was able to dig up some vintage needs for. I asked for the Leaf Black Gold to round out the PWE (He had some other good ones I needed for my parallel setbuild, like Bagwell and Nolan Ryan, but I didn't want to over-ask, so stuck with "commons" I like/collect.) The guy kindly threw in the '72 Topps card that was on my limited TCDB wantlist as a surprise bonus.

I really should do more trading on TCDB now that it's slowed down so much on the blogs. A lot of my old trade partners just aren't trading much anymore, and those that are still going strong with trading have already traded with me so often in recent years that I don't have much left they want since I haven't been ripping packs or going to the monthly card show since the Beforetimes.

-o-

Finally for today is a package from Dennis from Too Many Verlanders that just showed up (like literally hasn't been delivered yet as I draft this paragraph, but Informed Delivery has informed me a tracking number from Ann Arbor to me is Out For Delivery and so I want to get it into this post as a last-minute edition before publishing). He's good about sending out a holiday blast of card mailings most years, a great tradition to be a part of. I had thoughts of doing similar this year, clearing out some of my cards "set aside for trader buddies" (some of which have been set aside for several years at this point), but the time and energy wasn't there for me this year. I'm hopeful of some January activity on that front, though.

Feast your eyes on all that Gavin-used cloth!

Plus some Cecchini Brothers and black gold. Thank you, Dennis! I've got something set aside for you I'll get headed your way soon.

Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays, everybody!

mid December card revue

It's that time of year when free time and energy are in short supply. But I want to blog, so I'll try to keep it short and post some cards I've been meaning to give a moment in the spotlight.

I've had a little PC going for Tim Anderson for a few years now, but apparently I hadn't thumbed through my White Sox tradeables in even longer, because when I finally did the other day (looking for cards for a trade offer that fell flat), I found a bunch of his cards that I didn't realize I had, including these above highlights. While having a well-organized collection is nice, I'm sure, it's also fun to occasionally stumble upon cards you forgot you had.

-o-

And speaking of forgetting about certain cards, when I posted my Yu Darvish PC last month, I neglected to include my lone 1/1 of him. I used to occasionally pull the trigger on the "blank back" gimmicks that Topps Vault sells on eBay.

Nothing too exciting, but hey, I can truthfully say I own a Yu Darvish 1/1. I looked it up, and this set me back $5.97 in a big Topps Vault order that also included similar 2017 Holiday blank backs for Christian Yelich and Dinelson Lamet, along with old signed Topps contracts for Matt Ginter and Marcus Giles. While Topps Vault still sells blank back cards like this for newer sets, looks like their supply of contracts has dried up, as it's been a while since I've seen the account offer any for sale. (To read more about these contracts, check my big post from 2015.)

-o-

Check out these awesome customs I got from Gregory at the Nine Pockets blog! Love 'em! Thanks for the generosity, Greg! If you missed out on the giveaway, he sells them at a very fair price too.

-o-

Shiny parallels from Topps Pristine and All-Time Fan Favorites are super cool. It might be anachronistic, to use a fancy word, but I love refractors of old timers who played before shiny cards were a thing. (Well ok, Charlie Hough pitched so long, he actually made it into the refractor era and was included in the inaugural refractor class of '93 Finest [and also had a '94 Finest card]) But yeah, sometimes I take a look at what's available and might pull the trigger if one catches my eye for a decent price like the above did. The Bucky is a gold die-cut refractor, though calling it die-cut just because they gave it slightly bumpy edges feels like a stretch.

-o-

And one last shiny old-timer to close out the post...

Looks like a previous owner was so proud of this Bert Blyleven 2003 Topps Retired refractor auto that they displayed it in the sun for too long, and the signature is now considerably faded. But hey, it wasn't too pricey so I figured I'd take a flier on it. I hear Bert is a dependable TTM signer (with fee), so I'm planning to send this in for a new coat of ink and hope he's gracious enough to fulfill the odd request. But I'll wait until the new year when the post office settles down from the holiday surge. For now my question is: should I try to get off the remnants of the original auto? A little rubbing alcohol maybe? I should probably do a test run on a Chrome "junk auto" first to make sure it doesn't otherwise damage the card.

Nice career. The year this card came out, Bert received 29.2% of the vote for his Hall of Fame candidacy. He eventually made it to the magic number of votes in 2011.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope your December isn't stressing you out too much!

1992 Classic Minor League set break (and lamenting the lack of ladies on the blogs)

I won a sealed factory set of 1992 Classic Best Minor League Baseball Cards from Julie way back in January. I exercised some patience, but finally ripped into it last night, deciding to raid it for my PCs and dump the remainder in the spirit of tightening up my collection a bit.

These are the big 3 of the set, no doubt. Jeter, Piazza, and Chipper.

A few of the other guys who went on to solid careers.

These 4 were all PC needs for me.

Giving you a look at the backs and a few of the more quirky names in the set.

Classic snuck in 3 MLB stars. I often see that Griffey at the card show whilst digging through bins and for a second I'm like, "minor league Griffey card!" then I notice the "1992" and I'm like, "hey, Junior was already an established star by that point. 👎"
The Nolan Ryan is a nice card.. and one I don't recall seeing before.
The Mike Schmidt card is a bit of a head-scratcher. It has nothing to do with minor leagues. He had "a minor league card" in the previous Classic Minors set (the only such throwback in 1991 Classic Minors), so I guess I understand them not wanting to repeat themselves, but still wanted to milk their association with him. So we get a card commemorating his 500th home run from a few years earlier. The back features the full box score of the game, yet neglects giving the date. (Google tells me it was Apr 18, 1987.)

And an artist's rendering of one of the Schmidt photos (see 500th HR card) is used on every checklist. As a player collector, I feel like I should include these in my Schmidt PC and count them towards my goal of 100 unique cards of the guy.. but I don't necessarily feel good about that. Kind of like breaking up a no-hitter in the 9th with a bunt. Or losing the popular vote but still getting elected.

Anyways, there are some highlights from the set. But yeah, the gist of the cards are guys I've never heard of. Any team collectors out there (who also collect minor league affiliate cards), feel free to get in touch regarding trades. But do it ASAP, because I'm currently loading up a big box of cards to dump on Billy, and the majority of this set will likely end up in there.
Red Sox trader buddies... do you need/want the Sox from this set?
Same question to Cubs collectors. And Braves? Brewers? Pirates? Let me know.

Big thanks again to Julie for surprising me with this set as the prize for losing a contest of hers. Very nice of her to do.

On a side note...
It's a bummer that Julie hasn't been seen around the cardsphere for quite a while now (7 months since a new post on A Cracked Bat, and I don't recall her commenting anywhere since then either). I hope things are going well with her and she makes a comeback soon. And thinking about women cardbloggers... it's kind of depressing. The lady from Portugal (Hobby Cards Europe) hasn't posted much in the past several months. Caitlin, the young collector from Canada, seems to have gotten run off the blogs for reasons I'm not privy to. Funner Here, the cardblog run by a female Phillies fan, is completely dead and gone now. A Cardboard Problem isn't updated very often anymore (though Sooz is active on Twitter, with #CardChat being a cool weekly social event she runs). But yeah, it sucks that the cardsphere is such a sausage party these days. Even Fashion Shoes hasn't been around lately! (ok, that one was a joke.) I'd love to see more diversity around these parts.. gender, race, age, etc. But what can you do? I don't really have any suggestions other than to say collecting cards is fun, and it's made even better by being part of a community who shares your interest. So start a blog if you haven't already! Even if you're a middle-aged white guy.. but especially if you aren't!
 👯👱👳👵👶👸😎
(Have you noticed Blogger now has an "insert special characters" button on the blog compose page? LOL. These are fun. I hope the faces are actually showing up for everybody, not displaying as plain squares or whatever.)

Ok, enough rambling.
Thanks for stopping by!

Blurring the lines between contest winnings and trades

I seem to have settled on a weekly trade roundup post every Tuesday or Wednesday. Maybe Monday would make more sense, but I typically fall behind with blog reading over the weekend and then end up spending my free time Monday trying to catch up, so often I'm unable to get a post of my own off on Mondays.

Let's get going with this week's roundup...
It was just about three weeks ago that I showed off some cards sent to me from Jeff Jones (with the Jedd Gyroko auto Christmas Card being the big highlight). I figured Jeff was just starting up another blind trade, and so I scrounged up a return bunch of Braves soon thereafter. But then I realized that what Jeff sent was actually my prize for being a winner in his Super Bowl contest. So I had actually begun a new trade circuit rather than completed an old one. Rather than simply accept the cards I sent as a "thanks for the contest" gift (which would have been completely fine), Jeff was quick to shoot another batch of cards my way. Nice guy!

Check out this great lot of 1979 Kellogg's! A bunch of guys I collect in there.

Colin Rea made the club after a solid spring training, but that's all I really feel like saying about the Padres right now. I caught an inning or so of their opener against the Dodgers and it was painful. Looks like it's gonna be a long, depressing season for San Diego fans. Again.

Also included here is another 2011 Topps parallel for my frankenset, an awesome minor league Giancarlo, and BOOM a Gavin Escobar auto #'d /299, plus it pictures him in a SDSU Aztecs uniform with logos left intact.. nice!

Thanks again, Jeff!

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Next up..
Fuji was a lucky winner in my big 700th Post contest a while back. He was so happy with the prize package, that he decided to surprise me with a mailing of cards to say thanks. That's some cardsphere generosity, right there! He obviously didn't have to do that, but I'm not one to turn down cards.

This quartet of autos kicks off the package with a bang. Love the Kevin Kouzmanoff auto. His might be my most impressive passive PC, meaning I've accumulated a pretty sweet Kooz collection without really trying.
Mark Loretta is another Padres fan favorite guy.
I had to look him up, but Walker Weickel is a big right-hander the Padres drafted out of high school in 2012 (55th overall) who has been creeping his way up through the minor leagues with mixed success.
And of course, a Fuji auto, this one in the style of 2015 Topps. These are always cool to get, though I must admit it's a dupe for me. Would it be weird to send out another blogger's personal card in a trade package? LOL. Maybe eBay?

Here we've got a couple neat dufex cards, a Target parallel, and a Gwynn diecut.

And some more Gwynns and other Padres of the past and present. That's a cool looking McGriff I don't think I had yet.

Great stuff. Thanks again, Fuji!

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Here's a funny one. I recently won a contest from Sport Card Collectors (remember the Game of Thrones Hobbit 1/1 art card).. well, soon after that, SCC surprised me with a "thanks for winning my contest" bonus PWE! Ha, ok, maybe that wasn't the purpose of it, but that's what it felt like. Maybe it was a consolation prize because I came in 2nd in his subsequent contest. Can you imagine if I won two of his contests back-to-back in such a short time span? He might have to lay a lifetime ban on me! Haha, no, what kind of prick would do something like that?

This tight 4-card blast featured a gold theme to it, with 3 gold parallels, plus a red one. I think the Wil Myers is my favorite here, though the Headley #'d /199 is pretty sweet.

Very cool.. thanks, SCC! I'll drop a few Yankees and/or NY Giants your way soon.

-    -    - - - - -- ---o

Finally for today..
This one doesn't have anything to do with a contest. A Darryl Strawberry supercollector named Eric found out about the Darryl cards included in my Simpsons custom set and he got in touch to inquire if I had any other Strawberry customs kicking around he might be able to procure. It turns out I did have a spare magnet card from a while back. Eric was down for that, and we quickly agreed on an easy trade.

Some top guys I collect here, with most of these being needs for me.. Gaylord Perry, Dick Williams, Dwight Evans, and Bill Madlock.

So many Julio Franco cards! I must have cracked 100 different cards by this point. I need to sort out all I got and weed out dupes.

And we close with the main card of the trade.. the elusive 1984 Donruss Tony Gwynn. This may have been the final card I was missing from Tony's mainstream/flagship runs. I need to do another big sort to check what I'm missing (yeah, I'm definitely not one of those guys who keeps good records of his collection), though I think now I've got all the main base cards from his career. That's a quite a milestone for me, though probably something I should have accomplished long ago seeing as Tony's my all-time favorite player.

Thanks again, Eric!