Set Completion Carousel

I wanted to jog through a couple sets that I've recently completed, as well as a couple other sets I've started with help from near-complete starters.

Joy of a Completed Set: 1988 Fleer

It was way back during that innocent summer of 2019 that I got a partial set of 1988 Fleer from my buddy (Padrographs) Rod. Took me a few years piecing together the couple dozen or so missing cards, but I've now finally made that partial set into a complete set. (#188 Denny Martinez was the final card thanks to an accounting mistake on my part.) That gives me a 3-year run of Fleer, 1986 through 1988. I've also got '84, '90, and '92 complete. So I'm in the market for complete or near-complete sets of Fleer from '81, '82, '83, '85, '89, '91, and '93, working towards a goal Fleer Baseball run of '81 through '93 (when I stopped collecting as a kid). And I think the only Fleer Update set I've got is 1987, but I'd like to get more of those complementary sets, too.

I should salute '88 Fleer at least a little here, but what more can you say about '88 Fleer? I do like the set, especially for the checklist more than the design. You get some key rookie cards that some other companies missed out on, such as Edgar Martinez and Ron Gant, and the rookie duos with Mark Grace, and deeper cuts like Jeff King and John Burkett. Also endearing is the Reggie Jackson final tribute, his only real base card that year. While they printed a ton of the stuff, '88 Fleer still seems relatively scarce compared to the other mainstream baseball cards of 1988. Like, I'm not sure it's the best set from that year, but it at least feels less junky than Topps and Donruss, right?

Coincidentally, here's another set from 1988 that I've been trying to finish since I was at my old place (which is how I keep track of things these days-- And this month marks 5 years in the new house, so it's been a while)...

Joy of a (2nd) Completed Set: 1988 Topps Pee-Wee's Playhouse

I overpaid a bit for this oversized card the other day, but it was the final card I needed to complete a second master set of 1988 Topps Pee-Wee's Playhouse several years in the making. The story there is I ended up buying 3 boxes of the stuff (well, one was a partial box) to build my first master set and I ended up with enough dupes that it made sense to go ahead and take that second set to the finish line. Man, such a frustrating set to build! If you're thinking of going after the set, I'd warn you the boxes have horrible collation. Particular singles can be hard to find and tricky to search for. You're better off buying a completed set on eBay. Or hey, I don't intend to hang on to my second master set, so if anybody wants to trade, let me know. Master sets (159 cards including variations) seem to be going for around $150 on eBay. Along those lines, I also have a second near-master set of 1991 MusiCards available with all the variations and most of the promos that I should try to sell or trade one of these days.

New partial set to work on: Will's Cigarettes 1926 Wonders of The Past

I saw this neat tobacco mini set in a post by Nick Vossbrink back in 2020 and then set an ebay search for a cheap set. Finally a near-complete set (46/50) popped up and I scored it for just under $8 shipped. Really beautiful images on these century-old cards. I've seen at least one of these wonders in person thanks to my trip to Greece a couple years ago. Hopefully shouldn't be too hard to track down the 4 missing cards. Looking forward to paging these up.

1926 Wills Wonders of the Past needs:

14 Easter Island

42 The Colosseum

43 Trajan's Forum, Rome

44 Tombs by the Appian Way

New partial set to work on: 2004 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites

I haven't been documenting my progress on the blog much, but these past few years I've been building all 3 refractor parallel sets to the Topps All-Time Fan Favorites trilogy (just 14 needs remaining). A bulk lot on ebay included one refractor I needed plus a partial 2004 base set, and I ended up with it for a solid price. While I'm mainly interested in the refractors, hey, the base cards are cool too. Might as well work on completing that.

2004 ATFF needs:

31 Ralph Kiner

35 Willie McGee

47 Bret Saberhagen

61 Mike Scott

93 Darren Daulton

94 Harold Reynolds

96 Pete Incaviglia

105 Cal Ripken Jr.

Only the Ripken might be relatively-pricey out of those names, so that's not bad.

One bonus tale of closure to go out on. Maybe you remember back in February I got a bunch more cool stuff from Rod including a near-complete minor league teams set of 1986 ProCards Phoenix Firebirds. The trainer card (Cliff Shidawara) got pulled for Fuji's consideration, but no worries as I was able to land a replacement on COMC for a buck. So now I've got that full team set to enter as overkill for my Chris D. Jones supercollection that already included the single.

Thanks for swinging by, folks. Hope you're enjoying playoff baseball. I've got the deciding Cubs/Brewers game on as I type. With the Padres out, I'm rooting for whoever's gone the longest without winning (so, not the Dodgers). I'd love to see a first-time champ this year.

The card show comes to me

Saturday was a first for me, having not one but two fellow cardbloggers hand-deliver boxes of cards to my door. How great is that?! First was Kevin from The Diamond King who was down in my neck of the woods Saturday morning for the local card show. Then in the afternoon, Rod from Padrographs dropped off another box while I was out walking Ruby. Plus I received one eBay pick up in Saturday's mail, one that happens to be a triple-bullseye for my collection: Christmas Card of a PC guy in my #1 set, 2004 Topps Retired refractors (and it was cheap). Oh, happy day!

Starting off the recap with a royal visit from The Diamond King. This came about because I had been working up a few neat Mark McGwire cardart things with the intention of putting them on eBay for my continuing side-hustle trying to generate enough income to where my wife won't hound me to find another real job quite yet, and generate enough walks to the post office to keep my crazy dog tired. Since Kevin is a big McGwire collector, I figured I'd check if he was interested in trading me for any of them. I know cardart ain't for everybody, so I try not to force it on folks if they don't want it, but I feel guilty if I don't at least offer my buddies dibs on anything they might like of their top PC guys.

Anyways, he was agreeable to trade and a few days later brought me over some great stuff. I think the only other time Kevin and I met in person was when he dropped off cards back at my old house, and we moved in 2020, so it's been a few years. Nice to see him again and have a little chat over cards.

The bulk of what he had for me was a nice lot of Kellogg's for my long-term collecting goal of putting together a run of those classic cereal cards. Excited to check these off my wants.

He also had a bunch of supervintage he offered me since he knows I'm into old stuff like that, with the caveat that who knows if this stuff is legit or perhaps reprints or even counterfeits. Sometimes you just find random stuff digging through cards at a card show and you roll the dice on card that might be something or might not. But yeah, regardless, these are neat additions to the pre-war randomness in my collection, hopefully working a few of them into my Vintage Frankenset project.

I've never been hunting and only went fishing a couple times in my youth, but I can still appreciate the interesting artwork on this series. The last card is "Ratting" and features a young lady swinging a stick at a rat.

Nice minicollection hits for me here.. The top cards are both 12/25 and the bottom lucky lady is 1/3. Love the green ink! Ryan Shamrock is a ring name for Alicia Webb, a.k.a. Symphony, who had a brief pro wrestling career around the turn of the millennium.

Some modern cards of my Padres.

I hope Trout has a good comeback season. The first card seems to be an oddball from 2021.

Some favorites of the past. The '75 Thurman was a need for my setbuild Kevin had just picked up for me at the card show. What a guy! I also needed the Reggie image variation for my 2011 Topps parallel frankenset.

Kevin had a big stack of serial numbered cards for a future giveaway and was kind enough to let me go through and cherry-pick out some PC guys of mine, heavy on the Kris Bryant.

Thanks again, Kevin! Great to swing the in-person exchange with you. Hope we can do it again before too long.

-  - --o

While Ruby and I were out on a nice little hike around the local golf course, Rod was popping by with a box of cards to leave at my doorstep. Sorry I missed him, but excited to thumb through the stack of cards he had available for me.

Love to score cards of the various hot young players that don't make it into my collection much these days since I don't rip new stuff or hit the card show anymore.

There were a few hundred cards in the box, mostly from Rod's recent box busting extravaganza probably, with a big chunk of them fitting into my collection like the PC additions above.

Oh buddy.. glow-in-the-dark dinosaur sticker. Rod is a champ always looking out for glowing stuff for me!

Big thanks, Rod! Always a blast getting cards from you. I hope I catch you next time.

-   - - --o

And then here's that sweet eBay win that came in to really round out the day...

Vida Blue! It's a weird photo choice, but still!

This is an "upgrade" to the 22/25 refractor I already had. Lucky for me the seller botched the listing a bit and I ended up getting this one cheaper than I expected.

There are a total of 76 cards in the 2004 Topps Retired autographs. Of those 12/25 "Christmas Cards" in existence, I've now got 11 of them. That's over 14% of the Christmas Cards in 2004 Retired (which is "the set" my collection is built around, basically). So that's kinda cool!

Thanks for reading and have a great week.

coVIdNTAGE

 Time to show off the vintage from my big COMCOVID shipment.

I miss finding pre-Topps beaters for cheap at the card show. This well-loved pair of 1950 Bowman cards each ran me a buck-something. Love the artwork on these!

Bob Scheffing and Willie "Puddin' Head" Jones. Sure, in a perfect world I'd love to have these in EX/NM or whatever, but I don't mind wear on really old cards. Adds to the character. These cards lived. Kids in the 50s shoved these pieces of cardboard into their pockets, played with them down by the schoolyard, and at least in the case of the Jones, apparently ran them through the wash.

These non-sport tobacco minis were each under a dollar.

1968 Brooke Bond History of the Motor Car #48 -1967 Ferrari P4, 4 Litres

1925 Wills Life in the Tree Tops #28 Young Kestrels

I wanna say I saw some of these History of the Motor Car cards on somebody's blog, and went out to find one for myself. This was a year ago, before I started doing my Vintage Frankenset, so that didn't play a factor, but serendipitously I had an opening at #48, so this Ferrari will be pulling into a parking spot there.

Sadly the same can't be said for the Young Kestrels or above 1950 Bowman cards, as their numbers are already filled, but I suppose you can never have enough old-ass cards, right? Pulled the trigger on the 1925 Kestrels back in September 2019 for 75¢ from COMC seller MashingDingers, who I recognize as a Twitter acquaintance of mine (who has expressed an interest in writing a guest post, so who knows, might be a Baseball Card Breakdown collaborator at some point), but I don't think I bought it because it was from him, but probably just trying to find the oldest/cheapest card available that caught my eye.

I wanted to pick up some more Pumpsie Green cards and did just that by grabbing his '61 and '62 Topps. I remember reading his SABR bio while waiting at the vet during the final days my previous pup Annie's life, so there's an additional emotional component towards getting a little PC going for him, the first black player for the Red Sox.

Here's an unassuming 1969 Topps card that I heard about and had to score myself a copy. The highlight of this Mel Queen card is the back..

Both pitching and batting stats! Seems like Topps is usually too lazy to make a special back like this for 2-way players, so the extra effort is appreciated.

Lastly for this post, I picked up a couple cards for vintage sets I'm building. Bob Purkey is a nice semi-high number I found a good deal on for my '64 Topps set that's just over ¾ of the way complete, but one of the cards in this shipment I was most excited about is this particular Gene Baker for my '57 Topps set that's also inching towards 80% complete.

According to TCDB, 1957 Topps #176 Gene Baker is the only card in the set with error and corrected variations listed. As for which variation this one is..? Welp, it's actually a "missing link" between the two! Check it out:

The variation involves a printing flaw with the player name on back. Apparently some of the pressings had a bit too much red ink or something, flooding the last letter of text in the player's first and last name. "EUGENE W. BAKER" became "EUGENF W. BAKEP". I found a curious copy on COMC where the troublesome letters in question are not at their full errored state, but also not quite their fully formed correct versions either. The last E in Eugene has a shorter bottom compared to the top, and the R in Baker has a noticeably thinner tail.

The corrected variation is common and typically sells for under 5 bucks in average condition. I paid $1.25 for mine last fall. In researching around for this post, all recent completed listings on eBay show the error selling for comfortably in triple digits... except for one that sold for "just" $57, but in my opinion it's a fake. Take a look:

Really looks like some dipshit used a red pen to obscure the R in an attempt to increase the value of his 1957 Topps common. You can tell the coloring seems just a little off right there. And notice how the last E in Eugene is conspicuously full. If it was an authentic error variation, both the R and that E should have been affected (Correct me if I'm wrong, but they sure seem to go hand-in-hand). Yep, pretty sure this particular "error" card was faked. Lame. I feel bad for whoever bought it.

Anyways, I don't intend to drop $100+ on the error card-- no offence to Gene Baker who was an All-Star in '55 with the Cubs and got a ring as a bench guy on the 1960 Pirates-- but I'm glad to score what might be an even scarcer variation. What do you guys think, should mine be added to TCDB as a 3rd variation for the card, or would that just piss people off and I should continue to appreciate it as a printing-flaw oddity, not a true variation?

Thanks for swinging by and going down this Baker street with me.

Howard Hughes PC

In these days of being extra careful not to catch a nasty disease, Howard Hughes' later antics of "meticulous hand-washing" and "social distancing" aren't looking quite so crazy in hindsight. LOL. He wouldn't have missed a beat here in 2020!

Howard Hughes is an interest of mine thanks to being a link to connect with my late grandfather, who-- as a young amateur pilot himself decades ago-- admired Hughes' aviation feats and innovation. Before succumbing to mental issues, Hughes was one of the most famous, rich people in the world, known for his fast planes and titillating films.

My grampa was born on this day 105 years ago, so I planned this post as a little birthday celebration of showing off my Howard Hughes PC.

Let's kick off with a fresh-off-the-presses custom nine-card set I just put together.

We'll take a closer look at each card in a second, but here's how the set presents in a page. I like it! As you can see, I mostly wanted an excuse to make cards out of neat old movie posters that caught my eye.

Hell's Angels was probably his biggest hit film. I haven't seen it. Actually, don't think I've seen any of the movies Howard put out.. but I'll look to rectify that soon. Regardless, pretty cool looking artwork.

Another fun, if somewhat naughty one.

I wrote the backs, mostly paraphrasing/plagiarizing Wikipedia (Man, I wish Wikipedia was a thing back when I was in school! Writing reports would have been so much easier!). If you spot any typos, please keep them to yourself because I don't want to have to re-print anything. lol

This one might be my favorite! Love that image of rocketeers shooting over the Statue of Liberty or whatever. Looks really neat.

TIME Magazine cover deserved a card. I printed 2 copies of the set, by the way, with one currently paged and the other sleeved.

Jet Pilot was a flop of a film, but I liked the John Wayne poster.

I've seen the Al Pacino Scarface, but still need to watch the original sometime.

A nice photo of the man inside the Spruce Goose and a quick bio on the back. I often forget he and I share a birthday.. another decent excuse to collect his cards.

Then the 9th card wraps up his enduring legacy.

And so there's that! For the record, my grandfather was a devout Catholic and hopelessly devoted to my grandmother all his life, in contrast to Howard Hughes who was known as a womanizer and wasn't afraid to bend the rules to get what he wanted. Not sure if Grampa was a fan of Howard's films, but he was probably really just interested in the aviation scenes, if so. I never had the chance to talk to him about Hughes, as far as I remember, but what spurred on this "player collection" of mine is when we found this among his possessions after he'd passed...

My grandfather would have been about 23 years old when he got this program signed at a Chicago appearance by Hughes and his flight crew circa 1938. Probably the crown jewel of all my collectibles, especially given the personal connection.. but even if not, a Howard Hughes autograph that's confidently legit is something special.

I talked about this item more back in a 2015 post, so I won't rehash it too much now.

I've already got an idea for a "Series 2" of my Howard Hughes Collection custom set (a second page, that is), which I envision will include a card-sized reprint of this autographed program, plus individual cards for each person who signed it. (And I guess I'll fill up the rest of the 9 slots with more movie poster art or whatever grabs me.) But that's a project for another day.

Now onto some other stuff.

Rookie card! 1936 Goudey History of Aviation (R65) #1 Howard Hughes. Might be a stretch calling this a "card" as it's bigger than a CD cover and about as thick as a magazine page. But still very cool.

He's got another card in this same set, which I also picked up not too long after the other one..

Cool piece of vintage aviation art.

Unlike his other "playing days" cards, this 1939 Churchman's Kings of Speed tobacco card is quite affordable. Ran me just $5.46 delivered in a PWE.

According to the TCDB, I'm left with just one vintage whale to track down to complete my career-era Howard Hughes card collection...

1936 Heinz Famous Aviators 1st Series #7 Howard Hughes

Really nice looking old card. I hope to track one down someday. Other highlights from this set include Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. These 3 big names can get a bit pricey, but looks like the less familiar names in the 25-card set are readily available on eBay, so that's a good sign. I'll just have to have some patience.

The last card I've got to show off today is an ugly mother. It's a "relic" card featuring a clipping from a vintage newspaper article about Hughes. Really a poorly designed card covering up much of his face, but whatever.. wasn't too expensive. It allows me to be able to say I've got a Howard Hughes trifecta (using a loose definition).. owning his rookie card, an autograph, and a relic card. Winging Atlantic, alright.

I also have a few cards in my COMC inventory that I'll be requesting shipment on one of these days once COMC starts having more staff in the office and gets orders shipped out without the huge delays they're working with currently.

These pending PC additions include:
1985 LIFE Remembers #81
1991 Face to Face: The Famous Celebrity Guessing Game Cards #243 (gold)
1991 Face to Face: The Famous Celebrity Guessing Game Cards (purple)
1994-2001 Grolier Story of America #22-3
1995 Anngar International Who's Who? Game Cards

So eventually I'll have to do a follow-up post to this one with those cards plus the "series 2" custom set once I make that. Not sure if that'll be a year from today or sooner.. but someday!

I've also got his card in the 2002 Topps American Pie set, #106, but other than these, I'd be interested in any Howard Hughes cards/memorabilia I don't have.

Thanks for reading! Happy Birthday to my grampa up in heaven, and happy wedding anniversary to my wife and I. Six years today.. not too shabby.
See you next time.