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Wanna see some cards from a couple Sportlots orders that arrived yesterday?
(No? Screw you, here they are anyways!)
Let's do it, bitch.
Rod Beck! Embossed. Electric. Rainbow. Red. Cubs. Baby. Remember that season of Eastbound & Down where Kenny Powers has to take care of a baby? I'm pretty sure it was based on that baseball card at the end there. I should mention that each card featured in this post was the 18¢ Sportlots minimum, plus shipping from 2 sellers.
Giancarlo "The Man" Stanton! How's your vision, buddy? Hoping for a strong 2015. How many fingers am I holding up? Giancarlo? Hey, over here!
At the rate I've been picking up Goldschmidt cards lately, he'll be inducted into my 50 Card Club pretty soon.. and 100 Card Club by the end of the year.
Story time!!! So the other day I found out Mike Jacobs here attended Grossmont Community College in El Cajon in the late 90s just like me. You might know I collect players who went to my high school, and while Jacobs didn't attend my high school, going to the same JC as me-- at the same time, no less-- is probably grounds for PCing, too.
So I figured I'd pick up a few of his cards in this Sportlots order, even though I never gave him a second thought before. He looks really familiar in that Bowman card. In fact, I've got a suspicion that I had a class with him. It was an "Introduction to Baseball" class, taught by the manager of the school's baseball team.. obviously an "easy A" elective specifically created to boost the GPAs of athletes, and as you can imagine, much of the baseball team was in that class. I was a baseball nut, so I took the class, too, along with a few other non-athletes who just liked baseball and wanted an easy A. I may have ended up with a B, but that's because the class was early in the morning ("early" for me at the time, anyways) and I only showed up about half the time. (The following semester I tried to try out for the team, but it didn't go my way, and my dreams of being a ballplayer fell on their sword. Still bums me out to think about. I coulda been a star.) Anyways, the class dealt with the rules of baseball and history and stuff like that. Well, one of the questions on a quiz was about cities with a ballclub, and one of the choices was Tampa Bay, and one of the jocks scoffed, "Haha, Tampa Bay?!" And one of the smarter jocks had to explain to him that, yes, Tampa Bay did recently get an expansion team. I thought that was hilarious, and was my first realization that just because a guy is good at playing baseball doesn't mean that he knows shit about the big picture of the game. Anyways, I'm not saying that I'm 100% positive that the clueless jock from the story was Mike Jacobs... but it might've been. Definitely might've been. I'd put a couple bucks on it being him.
A couple Gavin Floyd cards. Hey, I just now while drafting this, just this very second found out he recently signed with the Cleveland Indians for 2015. Woot! (or should I say, "Woo woo woo woo [places hand intermittently over mouth while making these noises in a racially insensitive manner, but I don't mean it in a racist way. I love Native Americans. Seriously, I'd rather not celebrate Columbus Day.]) Good luck for a successful 2015 season, Gavin! Coincidentally, that minor league card on the left looks like it could easily be an Indians card with some quick logo photoshopping.
Should I pick up a few more Wilhelm cards?
Eh, couldn't Hoyt! Pun credit: Stealing Home of Some Trait Bait, Some of the Time. Seriously man, when was the last time you posted any trade bait? Your blog title is false advertising! :P
Bip in Blue! Love those blue "baseball's best (or whatever they're called)" '90 Donruss cards. It makes me wonder.. If the flagship set of '90 Donruss was blue, and a less-common sideset was red.. would I be as enchanted by the red (and conversely as blahed by the blue)?
Probably, yeah. Definitely!
And if a fire at Topps in early 1988 resulted in 95% of the printrun of '88 Topps being destroyed, causing the set to be much more scarce, I'd probably love that set. But as it stands, I think it's shit.
The Felix Fermin and '06 Bowman checklist weren't part of either order, but were thrown in as bonus front-and-back protective cards. Definitely appreciate when sellers/traders do this, and try to do the same myself whenever I can. (If you get a trade package from me, there will likely be junk wax bookending the cards.) Sometimes people think these are the "real cards" from me and I feel distraught about it when they show them in their "trade recap" posts. I mean, if by some miracle you need them, GREAT!, but hell, I pretty much expect you to throw them away.
Someday I may try to scrape together 1991 Stadium Club, so I guess it's a cool bonus card to get. (It's a bittersweet set for me thanks to buying it on eBay a couple years back, noticing much of the key cards were damaged, and returning it for a refund, eating the return shipping cost.) As for the checklist, well, Tom at Angels In Order has been on a checklist collecting kick lately (!!! somebody wants checklists!!!), so maybe I can get a trade going with him to unload a few checklists, including this one.
As for other cards not pictured.. well, there were a couple each for 2 upcoming "Guys From Granite" posts, so you'll have to stay tuned for those.
Also, the 2 Sportlots sellers responsible for all the cards in this post have something in common: they were the only sellers left on Sportlots that had 10+ copies available of Marquis Grissom 1990 Upper Deck #9. I cleaned them both out. I'll need to do a Marquis Mania post one of these days to update that project. I've got a fat stack of that card waiting to be paged.
That's it for today. Keep it real, yo. Does anybody bother reading the hidden text? I hope so!
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
A young Gerbil tops this week's recap
It's time once again for the Baseball Card Breakdown Weekly Wednesday (W)roundup.
I haven't been doing a whole lot of trading lately, though I've been active on Listia, so that sort of feels like trading. I keep on selling cards from my trade boxes (mostly football cards from a pennybox I bought at a card show a couple months ago), and then spending the proceeds on cool cards for my collection.
Here's my big score for the week...
Don Zimmer 1955 Bowman rookie card. It's in rough shape, but not too pricey, so I'm ok with it. Zim is a guy I've sort of started collecting over the past year. As I've said before, being a Padres fan doesn't allow for many vintage cards (pre-1969) to go after. So pre-Padres cards of prominent future-Padres is a decent solution for team-minded vintage collecting. And Zimmer fits into that group thanks to beginning his managerial career with San Diego in 1972-1973. And beyond that, he's just such an iconic baseball lifer who's fun to collect, and inexpensive for a "household name" from that era. This card features a rare photo from before he was bitten by a radioactive gerbil that morphed him into an adorable man-gerbil hybrid. In the offseason, I can picture Gerbil-Man in full costume fighting crime and promoting youth baseball in the inner-city. He was a good one.
Gaylord Perry is another oldtimer-turned-Padre. I had his 73 Topps card already, but picked up another for my setbuild. (I could've sworn I also won an autographed copy of this card on Listia a couple years back, but it's gone missing. I hope it turns up someday.) The Jim Hickman was another set need. It's a high number (#565). I'm approaching the homestretch with this set, currently at 86.55% complete.
Seems like one of the very few Padres-era cards of his I was missing, but didn't have Roberto Alomar's 1988 Fleer Update rookie, so put in a bid and won it cheap. Expect Robbie to be a mainstay on these Listia roundups until I finally crack 100 of his cards.
Love adding new Jerry Coleman cards to my collection. This also came with a similar Bill Dickey I don't need. Unfortunately they came from a clueless seller who threw the cards loose in an envelope, so of course corners were dinged in shipment. Oh well. (BTW, I'm really excited about another card of The Colonel I won recently.. look for it in next week's roundup.)
Paul Goldschmidt 2004 Topps AS camo #'d 55/99. Sweet.
Classic looking Mike Trout card. Set me back just 391 credits.
Doug Flutie is pretty cool. This card is #'d /1999 and cost me 495 credits. "Zone of their own" rhymes. I should start a minicollection comprised of subsets/insert sets that have a rhyming name.(No, I shouldn't! But someone should. Nick? John Miller?) "Call to the Hall" and the like. Now I'm trying to think of more. "Bringers of Dingers" isn't a real insert set (according to an eBay search I just did), but it should be. You guys should make up some fake rhyming insert names of your own in the comments below. Panini will be all over them.
Not pictured: David Ortiz lot of 15 cards. Sorry, I filed them away before scanning. I needed nearly all of them, so that was nice. Included were a couple sparkly cards and a couple numbered cards. The seller was delayed on sending and made up for it by including several more Red Sox.. very cool of him. Some of them I could use, and the rest will be headed to Hoyle. I'm now up to 85 different Big Papi cards. Just 15 more to knock him off my wantlist and into the Hundred Card Club.
Now for the part where I guilt you for not reading everything I post, also known as the webtraffic roundup.
A phantom card haunts this week's Listia recap [1/7] 78 views. Pretty good.
Chris Jones, but not that Chris Jones (Guys from Granite) [1/9] 44 views. If you skipped this post, you should at least scroll down to the "fake cards" because the photoshopping is so bad they're good for a laugh.
Sock Card ain't no game [1/12] 55 views. A gripping, spine-tingling story from my childhood about the time I stole a baseball card. I'm thinking about turning it into a screenplay.
Surprise Hoyling [1/13] 38 views. Recap of a nice package of cards from Mark Hoyle.
And the charts.
So, not a bad week, but a sharp dropoff from the Wallet Card hype the week prior. Perhaps Wallet Card will end up being the Simpsons to my Tracey Ullman Show. By that I mean it will grow in popularity and go on for a very long time.. Long after the origins are forgotten and gone. But hey, if that ends up being my blog's legacy, I'm ok with that!
Anyways, here's my second-favorite gerbil hero behind Gerbil-Man: Lemmiwinks.
I haven't been doing a whole lot of trading lately, though I've been active on Listia, so that sort of feels like trading. I keep on selling cards from my trade boxes (mostly football cards from a pennybox I bought at a card show a couple months ago), and then spending the proceeds on cool cards for my collection.
Here's my big score for the week...
Don Zimmer 1955 Bowman rookie card. It's in rough shape, but not too pricey, so I'm ok with it. Zim is a guy I've sort of started collecting over the past year. As I've said before, being a Padres fan doesn't allow for many vintage cards (pre-1969) to go after. So pre-Padres cards of prominent future-Padres is a decent solution for team-minded vintage collecting. And Zimmer fits into that group thanks to beginning his managerial career with San Diego in 1972-1973. And beyond that, he's just such an iconic baseball lifer who's fun to collect, and inexpensive for a "household name" from that era. This card features a rare photo from before he was bitten by a radioactive gerbil that morphed him into an adorable man-gerbil hybrid. In the offseason, I can picture Gerbil-Man in full costume fighting crime and promoting youth baseball in the inner-city. He was a good one.
Gaylord Perry is another oldtimer-turned-Padre. I had his 73 Topps card already, but picked up another for my setbuild. (I could've sworn I also won an autographed copy of this card on Listia a couple years back, but it's gone missing. I hope it turns up someday.) The Jim Hickman was another set need. It's a high number (#565). I'm approaching the homestretch with this set, currently at 86.55% complete.
Seems like one of the very few Padres-era cards of his I was missing, but didn't have Roberto Alomar's 1988 Fleer Update rookie, so put in a bid and won it cheap. Expect Robbie to be a mainstay on these Listia roundups until I finally crack 100 of his cards.
Love adding new Jerry Coleman cards to my collection. This also came with a similar Bill Dickey I don't need. Unfortunately they came from a clueless seller who threw the cards loose in an envelope, so of course corners were dinged in shipment. Oh well. (BTW, I'm really excited about another card of The Colonel I won recently.. look for it in next week's roundup.)
Paul Goldschmidt 2004 Topps AS camo #'d 55/99. Sweet.
Classic looking Mike Trout card. Set me back just 391 credits.
Doug Flutie is pretty cool. This card is #'d /1999 and cost me 495 credits. "Zone of their own" rhymes. I should start a minicollection comprised of subsets/insert sets that have a rhyming name.(No, I shouldn't! But someone should. Nick? John Miller?) "Call to the Hall" and the like. Now I'm trying to think of more. "Bringers of Dingers" isn't a real insert set (according to an eBay search I just did), but it should be. You guys should make up some fake rhyming insert names of your own in the comments below. Panini will be all over them.
Not pictured: David Ortiz lot of 15 cards. Sorry, I filed them away before scanning. I needed nearly all of them, so that was nice. Included were a couple sparkly cards and a couple numbered cards. The seller was delayed on sending and made up for it by including several more Red Sox.. very cool of him. Some of them I could use, and the rest will be headed to Hoyle. I'm now up to 85 different Big Papi cards. Just 15 more to knock him off my wantlist and into the Hundred Card Club.
Now for the part where I guilt you for not reading everything I post, also known as the webtraffic roundup.
A phantom card haunts this week's Listia recap [1/7] 78 views. Pretty good.
Chris Jones, but not that Chris Jones (Guys from Granite) [1/9] 44 views. If you skipped this post, you should at least scroll down to the "fake cards" because the photoshopping is so bad they're good for a laugh.
Sock Card ain't no game [1/12] 55 views. A gripping, spine-tingling story from my childhood about the time I stole a baseball card. I'm thinking about turning it into a screenplay.
Surprise Hoyling [1/13] 38 views. Recap of a nice package of cards from Mark Hoyle.
And the charts.
So, not a bad week, but a sharp dropoff from the Wallet Card hype the week prior. Perhaps Wallet Card will end up being the Simpsons to my Tracey Ullman Show. By that I mean it will grow in popularity and go on for a very long time.. Long after the origins are forgotten and gone. But hey, if that ends up being my blog's legacy, I'm ok with that!
Anyways, here's my second-favorite gerbil hero behind Gerbil-Man: Lemmiwinks.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Surprise Hoyling
Generous trader Mark Hoyle recently bought a big lot of misc 80s Donruss oddballs. Being the Red Sox collector he is, he plucked the Boston cards for himself and distributed the other cards out to lucky trade partners. I was the beneficiary of one such surprise Hoyling hitting several of my PCs.
These Donruss Big-Un's (not the real name, sadly) are super-sized cards.
I love the backs of these earlier ('83/'84) cards with all the stats they jammed on there. You don't really see defensive stats on the back of baseball cards these days. And a full-color photo on a cardback was pretty much unheard of at the time, right? Too bad they regressed, and the '86 backs aren't anything special (not pictured).
Padres contingent.
Of course Mark, the vintage maestro, snuck in a couple cool 72s. (Hey Mark, there's another good name for your blog when you finally start it: The Vintage Maestro.)
The package was rounded out with a few early 90s cards, all guys nominated for the Hundred Card Club (in other words, players on my wantlist-- as are most of the guys in this post), but are all pretty far away from induction at the moment. I believe all 4 of these were needs, so that was nice.
Thanks again, Mark! I'll shoot you out some more Red Sox pretty soon.
These Donruss Big-Un's (not the real name, sadly) are super-sized cards.
I love the backs of these earlier ('83/'84) cards with all the stats they jammed on there. You don't really see defensive stats on the back of baseball cards these days. And a full-color photo on a cardback was pretty much unheard of at the time, right? Too bad they regressed, and the '86 backs aren't anything special (not pictured).
Padres contingent.
Here are some Leaf-Donruss All Star Stand-ups. Can't wait till I get a dupe of one of these so I can pop it up without feeling bad for ruining it.
Of course Mark, the vintage maestro, snuck in a couple cool 72s. (Hey Mark, there's another good name for your blog when you finally start it: The Vintage Maestro.)
The package was rounded out with a few early 90s cards, all guys nominated for the Hundred Card Club (in other words, players on my wantlist-- as are most of the guys in this post), but are all pretty far away from induction at the moment. I believe all 4 of these were needs, so that was nice.
Thanks again, Mark! I'll shoot you out some more Red Sox pretty soon.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Sock Card ain't no game
Sock Card! It's like Extreme Wallet Card! Put a card in your sock everyday for a year. If you make it an entire year and your card is still recognizable, you get crowned Sock Card Champion.
Haha. Just kidding, obviously. Can you imagine?! Nobody should put a card in his or her sock. That's kinda gross and probably uncomfortable. But today's post is a little story about an ill-gotten baseball card from my youth. My first sock card.
I was reminded of this incident while rambling in the hidden text snuck into my recent Chris Jones post, and so I figured I'd confess all these years later get a post out of it. I was a pretty good kid, all things considered, but you know, "boys will be boys" and I got into my share of trouble here and there.
My mom's old college roommate Kathy lived in Tucson, and when I was a kid our families would alternate visiting each other every couple years or so. Her sons Nick and Ben were a little younger than me, but they were pretty cool to hang out with. Lots of fun memories running around and playing with them. I still remember the first time I ever played Super Mario Bros. 3 was at their house.
Here's the 3 of us kids in Old Tucson in the mid '80s. I'm in the back, Ben's behind the wheel, with Nick riding shotgun. Note my Padres hat. #bringbackbrown
Anyways, when they were out in the San Diego area visiting us, they'd usually get together for a dinner party with other friends of theirs in Leucadia, which is a pretty swanky little beach community in Encinitas, a suburb of San Diego, and sometimes I'd get to tag along.
The Leucadia family was a couple with a boy around my age and a little girl, but honestly I don't remember their names at all. What I do remember is their awesome house. It was huge, with a big yard area with a pool. Always a lot of fun adventuring around the place.
Here are some photos of their living room, taken some December in the late '80s:
The kid in the upper left is the victim of our story. Again, I forget his name. Mike? Bobby? Something like that. (I even called my mom just now to ask if she remembered. She said his mom's name was Sue, but she couldn't remember the boy's name.) He wasn't really a friend, but rather a friend-of-a-friend that I saw once every few years growing up.
I remember being pretty envious of him, not just for the awesome house he lived in, but he also had tons of cool stuff. He had a Sega Genesis back when it was still pretty new, and I remember being blown away by how cool it was. I specifically recall marveling at the graphics and sound on Fantasia and some Shinobi (ninja) game. (I'm somewhat of an old-school video game nerd, so these are things that stick out in my memories.)
A photo from the fateful day in question! That's me in the back with Nick and Ben.
In December 1991, I was in the height of both my "awkward stage" (see previous photo) and my baseball card collecting obsession. Nick, Ben, and I were once again in Leucadia all hanging out and being awed by all Bobby/Mike's cool stuff, and among the toys, video games, and whatnot was a shoebox or two of random baseball cards. I looked through them and was instantly enthralled by a Reggie Jackson card I had never seen before. Reggie was the #1 guy I collected back then. I had to have that card! Bobby-Mike seemed indifferent about it, and just shrugged off how interested I was in it, much to my chagrin.
Now, this is the part I'm not proud of, but later in the evening, I think during a game of hide-&-seek or something, I made my way back to the card stash and grabbed the Reggie. I guess I thought slipping it in my pocket would be too obvious, so I put it in my sock against my ankle. It stayed there for the rest of the night till I eventually took it out after I got back home. Not surprisingly, it got pretty creased up. Not sure what I was thinking.
Here it is again:
Reggie seems to be judging me. "I know what you did. Not cool, kid. Not cool."
I felt kinda bad, and given the chance to go back in time, I definitely wouldn't do it over again, but it hasn't exactly haunted me all these years, since it wasn't a valuable card or one he cared about at all. Honestly, I bet he never even noticed it was missing. Still, though, it was wrong and I regret doing it. I've never stolen a card before or since. (Well, there was "finding" some 1990 Post cards once when my buddy Doug and I were poking around at a daycare that we happened to stumble upon unlocked afterhours one evening. But that's another story.)
I never had a chance to go back to that house in Luecadia. Kathy, the mom of my friends Nick and Ben, got cancer maybe 2 or 3 years later and passed away suddenly. Really sad. I lost touch with Nick and Ben after that, being it was back in the days before the internet. I've tried looking them up online since then to reconnect, but no luck. If anybody out there knows brothers Nicholas Matson and Benjamin Matson from Tucson, ask 'em to drop me a line.
Who knows, maybe that kid I stole the Reggie card from will stumble upon this post someday. I owe you a 1986 Topps Quaker Chewy Granola Bars Reggie Jackson card, man! It's worth about 50¢ in decent shape today. My roughed-up copy has the value of maybe a penny or two, but it's got a lot of history for me, so I'll keep hanging onto it (unless that kid finds me and wants it back.. but I don't see that happening.)
So that's the story of the time I stole a baseball card. Not my proudest moment, but I guess it's good to come clean. Anybody else want to share shameful card-theft stories of their own down in the comments?
Enough about sock cards; back to wallet cards. Here's Wallet Gwynn hanging out on the wagon trail.
This was taken at a great restaurant I ate at last Saturday night. We have a routine nearly every weekend of getting together with the in-laws for grocery shopping and dinner. So I'm lucky enough to get to eat at a lot of nice restaurants, with somebody else picking up the check. For the several months out of the year when it's cold and rainy, there's not much fun stuff to do in Portland besides eat good food and drink good beer, so don't be surprised if much of my wallet card photos are from restaurants.
Anyways, the place was called Stormbreaker Brewing and it was excellent. I had a baltic porter to drink, and the wife and I split the flank steak. The "pickle jar" was a great appetizer that everybody seemed to like. Turns out it's got a dog-friendly section outside, so we'll definitely have to go back there with the pooch when the weather's better.
Here are a couple more wallet card photos that seem to explain the origin of the place's name.
Haha. Just kidding, obviously. Can you imagine?! Nobody should put a card in his or her sock. That's kinda gross and probably uncomfortable. But today's post is a little story about an ill-gotten baseball card from my youth. My first sock card.
I was reminded of this incident while rambling in the hidden text snuck into my recent Chris Jones post, and so I figured I'd confess all these years later get a post out of it. I was a pretty good kid, all things considered, but you know, "boys will be boys" and I got into my share of trouble here and there.
My mom's old college roommate Kathy lived in Tucson, and when I was a kid our families would alternate visiting each other every couple years or so. Her sons Nick and Ben were a little younger than me, but they were pretty cool to hang out with. Lots of fun memories running around and playing with them. I still remember the first time I ever played Super Mario Bros. 3 was at their house.
Here's the 3 of us kids in Old Tucson in the mid '80s. I'm in the back, Ben's behind the wheel, with Nick riding shotgun. Note my Padres hat. #bringbackbrown
Anyways, when they were out in the San Diego area visiting us, they'd usually get together for a dinner party with other friends of theirs in Leucadia, which is a pretty swanky little beach community in Encinitas, a suburb of San Diego, and sometimes I'd get to tag along.
The Leucadia family was a couple with a boy around my age and a little girl, but honestly I don't remember their names at all. What I do remember is their awesome house. It was huge, with a big yard area with a pool. Always a lot of fun adventuring around the place.
Here are some photos of their living room, taken some December in the late '80s:
The kid in the upper left is the victim of our story. Again, I forget his name. Mike? Bobby? Something like that. (I even called my mom just now to ask if she remembered. She said his mom's name was Sue, but she couldn't remember the boy's name.) He wasn't really a friend, but rather a friend-of-a-friend that I saw once every few years growing up.
I remember being pretty envious of him, not just for the awesome house he lived in, but he also had tons of cool stuff. He had a Sega Genesis back when it was still pretty new, and I remember being blown away by how cool it was. I specifically recall marveling at the graphics and sound on Fantasia and some Shinobi (ninja) game. (I'm somewhat of an old-school video game nerd, so these are things that stick out in my memories.)
A photo from the fateful day in question! That's me in the back with Nick and Ben.
In December 1991, I was in the height of both my "awkward stage" (see previous photo) and my baseball card collecting obsession. Nick, Ben, and I were once again in Leucadia all hanging out and being awed by all Bobby/Mike's cool stuff, and among the toys, video games, and whatnot was a shoebox or two of random baseball cards. I looked through them and was instantly enthralled by a Reggie Jackson card I had never seen before. Reggie was the #1 guy I collected back then. I had to have that card! Bobby-Mike seemed indifferent about it, and just shrugged off how interested I was in it, much to my chagrin.
Now, this is the part I'm not proud of, but later in the evening, I think during a game of hide-&-seek or something, I made my way back to the card stash and grabbed the Reggie. I guess I thought slipping it in my pocket would be too obvious, so I put it in my sock against my ankle. It stayed there for the rest of the night till I eventually took it out after I got back home. Not surprisingly, it got pretty creased up. Not sure what I was thinking.
Here it is again:
Reggie seems to be judging me. "I know what you did. Not cool, kid. Not cool."
I felt kinda bad, and given the chance to go back in time, I definitely wouldn't do it over again, but it hasn't exactly haunted me all these years, since it wasn't a valuable card or one he cared about at all. Honestly, I bet he never even noticed it was missing. Still, though, it was wrong and I regret doing it. I've never stolen a card before or since. (Well, there was "finding" some 1990 Post cards once when my buddy Doug and I were poking around at a daycare that we happened to stumble upon unlocked afterhours one evening. But that's another story.)
I never had a chance to go back to that house in Luecadia. Kathy, the mom of my friends Nick and Ben, got cancer maybe 2 or 3 years later and passed away suddenly. Really sad. I lost touch with Nick and Ben after that, being it was back in the days before the internet. I've tried looking them up online since then to reconnect, but no luck. If anybody out there knows brothers Nicholas Matson and Benjamin Matson from Tucson, ask 'em to drop me a line.
Who knows, maybe that kid I stole the Reggie card from will stumble upon this post someday. I owe you a 1986 Topps Quaker Chewy Granola Bars Reggie Jackson card, man! It's worth about 50¢ in decent shape today. My roughed-up copy has the value of maybe a penny or two, but it's got a lot of history for me, so I'll keep hanging onto it (unless that kid finds me and wants it back.. but I don't see that happening.)
So that's the story of the time I stole a baseball card. Not my proudest moment, but I guess it's good to come clean. Anybody else want to share shameful card-theft stories of their own down in the comments?
Enough about sock cards; back to wallet cards. Here's Wallet Gwynn hanging out on the wagon trail.
This was taken at a great restaurant I ate at last Saturday night. We have a routine nearly every weekend of getting together with the in-laws for grocery shopping and dinner. So I'm lucky enough to get to eat at a lot of nice restaurants, with somebody else picking up the check. For the several months out of the year when it's cold and rainy, there's not much fun stuff to do in Portland besides eat good food and drink good beer, so don't be surprised if much of my wallet card photos are from restaurants.
Anyways, the place was called Stormbreaker Brewing and it was excellent. I had a baltic porter to drink, and the wife and I split the flank steak. The "pickle jar" was a great appetizer that everybody seemed to like. Turns out it's got a dog-friendly section outside, so we'll definitely have to go back there with the pooch when the weather's better.
Here are a couple more wallet card photos that seem to explain the origin of the place's name.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Chris Jones, but not that Chris Jones (Guys from Granite)
There have been 7 graduates from my high school to play in the major leagues (Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California representing!) I've managed to obtain at least a couple cards from them all. I'm tipping my cap to each of them in this recurring Guys From Granite series. We're counting them down in ascending order by career games played, working our way to the most successful GHHS Eagle. This is part 3 of 7.
CHRIS JONES
Chris Jones is a very popular name. There have been several guys named Chris Jones to make a name for themselves in the world, but the ballplayer who went to Granite Hills was a white guy who played in the 80s, not to be confused with the better-known Chris Jones who played in the 90s, or the minor leaguer currently pitching in the Orioles organization.
Christopher Dale Jones was born in 1957 in Los Angeles. He went from Granite Hills to Grossmont College (Community College) to San Diego State, a path I myself would follow a couple decades later (I wonder if he also went to my middle school and elementary school?) Grossmont College is often ranked among the best community colleges in the nation, if I recall, and much cheaper than a 4-year university (I can remember paying just $11 per credit in the 90s, though those days are long gone now), so it makes sense to knock out a few general courses there before moving on to the big time.
Anyways, Chris was drafted by the Houston Astros in the 25th round of the 1979 amateur draft. He had been drafted by the Orioles a couple years earlier, but didn't sign. Chris was a left-handed outfielder known for his defense. Speed was a big part of his game, swiping 40 stolen bases in 1980 (A ball) and 37 in 1981 (AA). Looks like he missed a lot of time in '82 and '83, likely to injuries, but bounced back for strong seasons in '84 and '85 with AAA Tucson.
Chris was called up to action in Houston in the middle of the 1985 season, picking up 5 hits in 25 at-bats with the Astros. He was mostly used as a late-inning defensive replacement or pinch runner, as evidenced by his appearing in 31 games, yet with only 28 plate appearances to show for it. Nolan Ryan was the winning pitcher in Chris' debut. That must've been cool to have Nolan Ryan as a teammate.
The Astros cut him loose after the season, however, and he wound up with the Giants. He only got into 3 games with San Francisco in 1986, with a lone at-bat. In his final MLB game-- a win over his former team-- he pinch-ran for Bob Melvin and got his only stolen base in the bigs. So I guess that's ending on a high note, at least. He was at AAA Phoenix for most of 1986 (.291) and all of 1987 (.257) before calling it a career.
Not sure where life lead him after hanging up his cleats. Chris was a bit before my time and I wasn't familiar with him until researching guys from Granite, so I don't have any personal memories or anecdotes about him. But it's pretty cool he made the majors, even if his career was shortlived.
Cards
Despite his major league service, this Chris Jones never got a baseball card from one of the big 3 companies of the time. He does have a few minor league cards and a couple major league postcards, however. With so many different athletes named "Chris Jones" it's a pain to search for his cards. But I believe this to be a somewhat complete checklist:
x 1982 Tucson Toros TCMA #2 Chris Jones
x 1983 Tucson Toros TCMA #19 Chris Jones
x 1984 Tucson Toros Cramer #52 Chris Jones
o 1985 Astros Postcards #12 Chris Jones
x 1985 Tucson Toros Cramer #51 Chris Jones
x 1986 Phoenix Firebirds ProCards #12 Chris Jones
o 1987 Astros 1983-85 Postcard Rerelease #13 Chris Jones
x 1987 Phoenix Firebirds ProCards #78 Chris Jones
o 1988 San Diego State Aztecs All-Time Greats #10 Chris Jones
o 1989 San Diego State All-Time Greats #9 Chris Jones
Here are scans of the cards I have.
This one above is my favorite.. nice picture, good design, and ridiculous back, with the Budweiser ad, and the warning to not get caught in a pickle with your car.
[HT] Poor "Cris"(?) couldn't get out of Arizona.. going from Tucson to Phoenix. At least that's somewhat close to his home in San Diego. I made the trip from San Diego to Tucson a few times in the 80s, too. It's a long drive, but you can make it in a day. I was just a kid, but my mom's old college roommate lived there with her two sons who were just a bit younger than me and we'd visit them for a few days once every 2 or 3 years. Had some great times with Nick and Ben.. Super Mario 3, G.I. Joes, getting into trouble as boys do. The only baseball card I ever stole was from one of their friends, but that's a shameful story for another day (it wasn't that bad).
If you have any cards (or postcards) of this guy not pictured here, feel free to get in touch with me about a trade. Thanks!
Autograph
Nope.
Chris Jones is the only major leaguer from my high school I've yet to acquire an autograph from. Of course it's hard to search, since Chris Jones is a popular name and the search results are always for the other Chris Joneses. But I'll try to keep an eye out. If you can help me out with his auto, or perhaps have a line on a mailing address for former major leaguer Chris Dale Jones b. 1957 that I could try for a TTM, please let me know.
Fake cards
Hey, before we wrap up this post, let's go ahead and crudely photoshop up some Chris D. Jones cards that never were...
Ha, these are definitely not my best Photoshop work, but I was rushing to whip them up before work this morning. I couldn't find any pics of him in a major league uniform, so made due with butchering his minor league card photos.
Thanks for reading. Next time on "Guys from Granite" we'll take a look at the only Granite Hills Eagle to ever pitch in the bigs.
Guys From Granite countdown
8. Preface (minor leaguers)
7. Mike Reinbach
6. John Barnes
5. Chris Jones
4. (coming soon)
3. (coming soon)
2. (coming soon)
1. (coming soon)
CHRIS JONES
Chris Jones is a very popular name. There have been several guys named Chris Jones to make a name for themselves in the world, but the ballplayer who went to Granite Hills was a white guy who played in the 80s, not to be confused with the better-known Chris Jones who played in the 90s, or the minor leaguer currently pitching in the Orioles organization.
Christopher Dale Jones was born in 1957 in Los Angeles. He went from Granite Hills to Grossmont College (Community College) to San Diego State, a path I myself would follow a couple decades later (I wonder if he also went to my middle school and elementary school?) Grossmont College is often ranked among the best community colleges in the nation, if I recall, and much cheaper than a 4-year university (I can remember paying just $11 per credit in the 90s, though those days are long gone now), so it makes sense to knock out a few general courses there before moving on to the big time.
Anyways, Chris was drafted by the Houston Astros in the 25th round of the 1979 amateur draft. He had been drafted by the Orioles a couple years earlier, but didn't sign. Chris was a left-handed outfielder known for his defense. Speed was a big part of his game, swiping 40 stolen bases in 1980 (A ball) and 37 in 1981 (AA). Looks like he missed a lot of time in '82 and '83, likely to injuries, but bounced back for strong seasons in '84 and '85 with AAA Tucson.
Chris was called up to action in Houston in the middle of the 1985 season, picking up 5 hits in 25 at-bats with the Astros. He was mostly used as a late-inning defensive replacement or pinch runner, as evidenced by his appearing in 31 games, yet with only 28 plate appearances to show for it. Nolan Ryan was the winning pitcher in Chris' debut. That must've been cool to have Nolan Ryan as a teammate.
The Astros cut him loose after the season, however, and he wound up with the Giants. He only got into 3 games with San Francisco in 1986, with a lone at-bat. In his final MLB game-- a win over his former team-- he pinch-ran for Bob Melvin and got his only stolen base in the bigs. So I guess that's ending on a high note, at least. He was at AAA Phoenix for most of 1986 (.291) and all of 1987 (.257) before calling it a career.
Not sure where life lead him after hanging up his cleats. Chris was a bit before my time and I wasn't familiar with him until researching guys from Granite, so I don't have any personal memories or anecdotes about him. But it's pretty cool he made the majors, even if his career was shortlived.
Cards
Despite his major league service, this Chris Jones never got a baseball card from one of the big 3 companies of the time. He does have a few minor league cards and a couple major league postcards, however. With so many different athletes named "Chris Jones" it's a pain to search for his cards. But I believe this to be a somewhat complete checklist:
x 1982 Tucson Toros TCMA #2 Chris Jones
x 1983 Tucson Toros TCMA #19 Chris Jones
x 1984 Tucson Toros Cramer #52 Chris Jones
o 1985 Astros Postcards #12 Chris Jones
x 1985 Tucson Toros Cramer #51 Chris Jones
x 1986 Phoenix Firebirds ProCards #12 Chris Jones
o 1987 Astros 1983-85 Postcard Rerelease #13 Chris Jones
x 1987 Phoenix Firebirds ProCards #78 Chris Jones
o 1988 San Diego State Aztecs All-Time Greats #10 Chris Jones
o 1989 San Diego State All-Time Greats #9 Chris Jones
Here are scans of the cards I have.
This one above is my favorite.. nice picture, good design, and ridiculous back, with the Budweiser ad, and the warning to not get caught in a pickle with your car.
[HT] Poor "Cris"(?) couldn't get out of Arizona.. going from Tucson to Phoenix. At least that's somewhat close to his home in San Diego. I made the trip from San Diego to Tucson a few times in the 80s, too. It's a long drive, but you can make it in a day. I was just a kid, but my mom's old college roommate lived there with her two sons who were just a bit younger than me and we'd visit them for a few days once every 2 or 3 years. Had some great times with Nick and Ben.. Super Mario 3, G.I. Joes, getting into trouble as boys do. The only baseball card I ever stole was from one of their friends, but that's a shameful story for another day (it wasn't that bad).
If you have any cards (or postcards) of this guy not pictured here, feel free to get in touch with me about a trade. Thanks!
Autograph
Nope.
Chris Jones is the only major leaguer from my high school I've yet to acquire an autograph from. Of course it's hard to search, since Chris Jones is a popular name and the search results are always for the other Chris Joneses. But I'll try to keep an eye out. If you can help me out with his auto, or perhaps have a line on a mailing address for former major leaguer Chris Dale Jones b. 1957 that I could try for a TTM, please let me know.
Fake cards
Hey, before we wrap up this post, let's go ahead and crudely photoshop up some Chris D. Jones cards that never were...
Ha, these are definitely not my best Photoshop work, but I was rushing to whip them up before work this morning. I couldn't find any pics of him in a major league uniform, so made due with butchering his minor league card photos.
Thanks for reading. Next time on "Guys from Granite" we'll take a look at the only Granite Hills Eagle to ever pitch in the bigs.
Guys From Granite countdown
8. Preface (minor leaguers)
7. Mike Reinbach
6. John Barnes
5. Chris Jones
4. (coming soon)
3. (coming soon)
2. (coming soon)
1. (coming soon)
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
A phantom card haunts this week's Listia recap
It's a g-g-g-ghost!!
This week's Listia winnings roundup kicks off with a couple weird cards.
They were separate auctions by the same seller, and he must be a heavy smoker because they reeked out of the package.
The Mantle is an American Sports Monthly oddball from 1991. I probably overpaid for it (8084 credits; didn't notice the chewed up upper-left corner at the time), but I'm a sucker for a cool looking Mickey Mantle card in a hard case.
As for that Roberto Alomar card... well, it has a Shyamalanian twist to it. It was a bit cheaper than the Mick, but in the same neighborhood. It's from the by-gone days of companies trying to trick people into thinking precious metal was actually involved in the production of sportscards, like a couple cents' worth of gold leaf (or more likely, gold-colored foil) somehow turns a piece of cardboard into something to keep in a safe deposit box. This one is a fully-licensed release from a manufacturer called Authentic Images, and the set is apparently called Team Gold 1998. It's serial numbered 471/1000. As you can see, it comes in its own special screw-down hard case and the card seems to feature cool see-through acetate.
But wait.. What's the twist?
There is no card! The company just printed up these special hard cases. There's nothing inside. It's all just printed directly on the case. I had never heard of such a thing! Blew my friggin' mind.
Here's the back:
The stats box not matching up with the border of where the card should go gave it away.
But whatever, it's kind of a cool oddity for my collection, so I'm ok with it, even though the auction didn't mention it being a phantom card. But man, that's crazy, right? Anybody hear of these things? Maybe I should put a card in that case.
LOL, what is the point of the small text noting "Image on this side is reversed"? Like some dumb kid is going to think it's a reverse negative error or something?
By the way, 471 is the exact number of games Roberto played as a member of the Cleveland Indians. That means I own the "total games as Cleveland Indian eBay 1/1" copy of this
Here's another Robbie.. a much, much cheaper one. You see, I'm in the home stretch of getting him into my Hundred Card Club (I'm at about 75 different cards now.. and yes, I'm counting that case as a card, even though you and I both know there's no card), so I've started the push to knock him off my wantlist sometime soon by being more active with picking up his cards. And before you go shipping a brick of his cards to me in trade, please know that I already have most of his common junk-era cards (ie, from his time on the Padres and Blue Jays). I could really use more of his later-career cards, though.
And as for the Frank Thomas, it was cheap and neat looking, so I threw in a bid and ending up winning easily. 1987 Fleer will always be a "hotshit" set to me, just from how sought-after it was when I collected as a kid.
I just showed a few new Gavin Escobar pickups yesterday, now here's another one. Again, the Aztecs uni is appreciated.
Closing out this week's Listia haul are 3 shiny Goldschmidts from 3 separate auctions. I really like these cards. I should have aligned them in the reverse order, documenting a swing.. oh well.
Onto the webtraffic. It was a very successful week here on the Breakdown.
2015 State of the Blog [1/1] 76 views. Obligatory year-end/start post about goals, plans, and whatnot.
The game of Wallet Card [1/2] 576 views. 46 comments! Very popular post. It's funny, I wasn't planning on posting anything that day, but then I looked through my unpublished drafts and found this "travel card" rough idea I had back around November. I was upset with myself for forgetting about it because I wanted to start promptly on January 1st. But early January is good enough. I tweaked it a little, changed the name, and threw in the contest aspect to encourage others to participate. And yeah, it took off!
Wallet Card rules retraction [1/4] 113 views. The only rule is there are no rules.
Revamping my wantlist for '15 [1/5] 53 views. The Hundred Card Club concept might not have had the same reaching impact as Wallet Card, but I'm pretty excited about it.
Some cards I bought recently [1/6] 52 views. Nice response for a few cards I got off eBay the other day.
Those "t.co" sites atop the lists must be the shortened Twitter redirect link to the Wallet Card post.
I hope your 2015 has been going well so far. Maybe I'm jinxing myself, but it's been a week and I still haven't mistakenly written "2014" yet. Proud of myself.
Ok, I'll leave you today with what you've all be clamoring for! Both of my recent Alomar pickups intertwined as one:
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