Another '59, and is the Niekro an accidental upgrade?

Took a couple of evenings away from the blog, was getting a bit tough writing after 10PM each night.  I have had a couple of cards I wanted to show for a few days and here's my chance.

Both of the cards on this post are from the same eBay seller.  I grabbed the Francona for $4, not bad really and the card is in nice condition.  The other card I'm going to show was a card that I thought I didn't have originally and finding it for $1.50 was stupendous.

A 1971 Topps Phil Niekro that I was stoked to find in nice shape for so cheap was fantastic.  Then I took a look at the original one I have in the collection...

Outside of the coloring on the left hand side of the card, I believe the photo on this card has more of a skin tone than the first picture, so now I'm not so sure.  I'll think on it a bit before I decide, unless someone gives me a compelling argument on either card in the comments.  

33 cards left for the '59 set.  We're getting there.

Robert

 

coming through as promised

Posting cards from the 1970 Topps set that I've acquired recently got blog reader, and fellow TCDB member Mark Z. to reach out and offer some less than mint cards for the set build.

My main thing so far with the vintage football cards that come by?  No writing.   No paper loss.

These 4 cards fit the bill.

You can easily see the crimp on the lower left hand corner of the Gene Washington card, and on the top right of the Dave Wilcox card, it looks like it was folded over a little, kind of like what happens after a time when you use a trading card for a book mark. 

Even with the poorly attempted scan here, the Tom Beier is easily the best of the 4 cards.  There actually is a top border on the card, and if I had to rate the condition, it would probably go EX-MT.  Now Gale Gillingham is another story.  When I showed the cards to the Mrs. this morning, she thought the exact same thing that I did, it looks like it was bit by a dog.  In a couple of places!!

So for extra writing credit, I was curious about the Tom Beier card because he's wearing a Dolphins uniform and is listed on the 49ers, so off to Football Reference we go.

Tom only played 2 seasons in the NFL, 1967 & 1969, with the Dolphins.  He was taken in the 10th round of the draft, and in his 2 NFL seasons he had 2 INT's and 2 fumble recoveries as a safety/defensive back.  It took a little bit of digging to find out that Tom was traded to the 49ers on April 30th, 1970 only to be released by them that year and not to play again.

These 4 bring the set build to 47%, almost half way now!  Thank you very much Mark for the cards, they are appreciated!!

Robert

Starting from scratch

Most of the focus lately on the blog has been vintage.  Vintage football here, vintage baseball there, and maybe an old hockey card or two shows up once in a while.

Most of the newer stuff has been pushed to the side for the most part, until I decided to start grabbing a few Allen & Ginter cards to try and finish off the 2013 set.  

Then, I thought to myself "I haven't even looked at the 2022 A&G set at all".  So I looked around on eBay a bit, and decided it was time to get the set started.  But I've been putting a lot of money down on Sportlots, COMC, and some other vintage eBay purchases.   Need to cut back on card expenditures a little.

So I decided not to buy any packs, no single card purchases of any kind for this set.  I'm going to do it the hard way. 

Start from scratch.  See if I can trade for the whole thing.  350 cards to go.  I also liked one of the insert sets I came upon and decided I'll go after that 50 card set...

I really like the look of these, and no doubt it's full of star names so none of the cards should be hard to find.  I traded for these from fellow TCDB user Charles for some 2016 A&G inserts, 5 for 5.  

The last insert I went after was the Baseball Equipment for the Ages from the 2018 set, and I still have it near by and I do look at it from time to time.  

I'm also going to try and keep posting as I get these inbound.  You know, try and keep this little run of posting I've been on going.  

0 for 350 on the base, 5 for 50 on the inserts.   Stick around, hopefully we can have some fun with this.

Robert

The Baker

I couldn't find a card of a Butcher (although Garth Butcher comes to mind) and a candlestick maker (Chandler is the proper term, anyone have any cards of Matthew Perry?), but I did get a card from a TCDB trade recently from Ed Sekula (been a long time since trades) that features a Baker...

This was a rare one for one trade.  Normally most people don't partake in something so small but a couple of $2-3 cards went each way, so I thought it was a well thought out trade.  

Good luck Baker in Tampa Bay this year.  You're only following a legend in the Big Sombrero. 

636 transactions completed now.  With the run I'm on, should hit 650 very soon.

Robert

The first part of the madness

Over the past couple of weeks, including last weeks manic run, I hit up a dozen trades on the TCDB site.  Don't know why, but apparently when I'm in the mood to trade, it just comes flowing out.  I actually mailed out 6 trades in one day; I had to carry them all on a walk to the post office in a Barnes and Noble book bag (there were 2 bubble mailers).  

I made a trade with Richard, 5 for 5.  It came from Canada in less than 2 weeks, which has been the norm lately.  

Another John Olerud card starts the trade off:

Don't know if I've ever seen or picked up an Oh Henry release from 1995, but this card was very light and the picture looks as if it was added to the card after production.  If you look at the card at a different angle. it almost looks as if it is photoshopped.  Card #335 for the Olerud collection is in hand, just 28 more and I'll have the same total as his 1993 batting average....

A pair of 2014 A&G needs knocked off the list.  More Blue Jays no less!  Both of them are now part of the Blue Jays Level of Excellence after Bautista was added to the group last weekend.  Coming along slowly, this set still isn't 60% done.  Not getting a whole lot of trade offers with cards from the set as part of them.

Two more to finish it off, Andrew McCutchen's base card from the 2017 Bunt set, and a rarely seen on this blog a 2007-08 OPC Card featuring Chuck Kobasew of the Bruins.  Still 90 something to go from this set, which has been in the works since I bought packs of it back when it was released in 2007.  No big hurry.  

Thank you for the trade Richard.  Part of the reason that the writing fire has been rekindled a bit in me the last few days.  

Robert