Tubthumping

Sometimes the inspiration for a post comes from a comment on the blog.   Take a couple of quick pictures and voila!  Post is born.   Thank you to everyone's favorite Lost Collector AJ, I took to heart his comment on my raiding the stash post from this past Wednesday and decided to write a bit about "the tub".  It's just a plastic tub that I bought at Target several months ago for about 3 bucks, largely because my pack stash had been beginning to grow and I wanted somewhere a little larger to store the packs.

So there's the width of the tub, enough for 2 packs, and as you can see there's plenty of jumbo packs in there.  Why would I limit the pack size to just 8 or 10 cards?  Go big or stay home!

It holds about 5 packs across so there's plenty of room for all sorts of different packs.  I usually keep the tub at the bottom of my bookshelf for easy access for days like last Wednesday when I really wanted something to tear open.

Lots of fun inside, as you can see, as I don't limit myself to one or two sports.  There is even a Hoops Jumbo pack down below, along with 75 other packs inside.  Upper Deck Hockey, 3 different years of A&G, some Heritage, Opening Day, MVP hockey, Gallery baseball, Donruss Football, all kinds of fun just waiting to be had.

The original thought on this came about when I saw a few other bloggers over the years mention having pack stashes.  I've also seen some pretty good displays on twitter as well (a few featuring peg boards!), and thought with hurricanes potentially taking a day or 2 to subside here in the south, that a stash would be just the thing.

It kind of grew from there....

I've kind of slowed down adding to it recently, as I push towards finishing the sets I'm working on by buying singles.  Maybe as the pandemic begins to ease its hold on the world and new sets start to trickle onto shelves I'll get the bug again to buy more packs.  For now, fun is always at hand if needed.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Out of the blue--stateside

In the middle of a heavy rainfall late yesterday afternoon I popped out to the mailbox to ensure that any potential card packages inside didn't get wet.   I have just under a handful of trades on the go, and was hoping that I might get one or 2 of those in yesterday.

I actually got 3 PWE's from 2 fellow bloggers, neither of which I had any idea that they were coming.  Gotta love the surprises!!

The first one was from everyone's favorite Night Owl, Greg.  He had sent me an envelope not too long ago, so getting this was a very nice surprise.

A couple of mid 90's Leafs to add to the collection.  I do have the collection and a want list posted on the TCDB, but probably don't do a good enough job of advertising it to the masses.  The collection I have is just over 800 cards total, with a good mix of older cards along with the 90's and newer stuff.  Always looking for Leafs, so these are a welcome sight.

Moving on to the vintage portion, 1 each from the 70 and 71 sets came my way.  The Bobby Wine card taught me that I need to check my want lists that I have on the blog soon, as I have him marked as in hand on the TCDB, but had his card on the want list on the blog.  Need to fix that.

Joe Moeller's '71 Topps card is no doubt a duplicate in the vast sea of Dodgers cards there in Upstate New York, but is most certainly welcome here in the deep south.  I'm thinking that '71 may be the last of the 68-72 Topps run that I will complete, as I only have just over a third of the set in hand, and am in no hurry to work on it.  That desire may grow a bit next year, we'll see.

Now these '72s are beauties, not just because they are in nice shape, there's also

•  Joe Ferguson's card is his rookie card, and a great catchers shot even if it is posed
•  They are both in the high numbered card range (Ferguson is 616, Team Card is 522)

I have very little in the way of cards above the 400's in hand, so seeing these was extra special.  I'm a little farther along with the '72 set, but at just under 54% done, there's a long hill to climb.  No worries though...

Within a week's time, I went from needing 2 Nolan Ryan cards for the '78 set to needing none.  Immediately upon looking at the K leaders card I was struck that Niekro was the NL league leader.  I looked at the back and had to see the names he left in the dust:

1.  Niekro 262
2.  J.R. Richard 214
3.  Rogers 206
4.  Carlton 198
5.  Seaver 196

Now I know the knuckleball can be a tough pitch to hit, but Phil left those other strikeout artists in the dust during the '77 season!!

The Tommy Lasorda card is one that I know I saw on the Owl's blog a couple months back and had asked Greg if he had an extra copy lying around.   Voila!!

The '78 set want list is rapidly dropping, now down to just 48 cards to go.  When I started the year, I needed 79 cards, so I'd say progress is going rather well.  Maybe my ebay shopping in the next couple of weeks will net me the Molitor/Trammell RC, and then it'll be all down hill from there.

Greg, thank you for the PWE, the cards are really appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Battery

When going through the last 5 cards of my recent eBay order from The Battersbox, the first thing that came to mind was the two cards below featuring one heckuva battery.

For most of the sets I'm working on now, I've progressed to the point where I'm picking up cards in the $1-$5 range, of which these two certainly fall into.  When scanning these I thought for a moment and wondered if Seaver ever pitched to Carter, hence the battery title of this post.

First thought, Carter played for the Mets in the 80's, I couldn't remember if Seaver did the same.  Sure enough, Seaver was in Shea in '83, but of the 5 catchers that played for the Mets that season, Carter wasn't one of them.  Carter didn't start his Mets career until '85.  The only other way they could have been a battery is in the All Star Game, and sure enough Seaver pitched in the 2nd inning of the '81 ASG, giving up a HR to Ken Singleton.  Carter was the starting catcher for the NL in the game, which the NL won 5-4.

These two cards dropped the want list for '78 down to 50 cards, which is even lower now.  You'll see why on tomorrow's post.

These three '72 Topps cards round out the envelope, no catchers here to support the pitching of Jim Lonborg.  I believe these 3 cards cost me just under $5 total, Nowhere near as close to finishing '72 as I am '78, but I've made nice progress so far this year, nearing the 54% completion mark.  Completion this year is out, possibly by the end of 2021 if all goes well.  A lot of high numbers that are pricey is something that will likely hold me back, similar to the '64 set I completed a few years back.

I've kind of taken to going after singles on eBay for the time being, as I can acquire them relatively quickly, compared to COMC which has been my other go to for singles.  The bigger change, especially mentally, is grasping that I pretty much have very few cards on my baseball want lists right now that I can buy cheaply.  This is OK, as I know that I'm moving towards putting together some sets that I'll appreciate for a long time to come.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Don't forget about me

Putting a task together of building the sets between 1968 and 1986 has taken up most of my time, and card budget.  I've made pretty good headway with a lot of those sets, finishing a few of them and getting close on 3 or 4 others.   I've enjoyed putting them together, but have kind of put aside one set that I worked hard on for quite a while.

1959 Topps.  Great looking set, one of the best of the early years of Topps in my opinion.  This week while surfing eBay I decided to start grabbing a few cards to try and knock off some of the $2-$3 needs that have been on the list for quite a long time.

Jackie Jensen is card #400 in the set, usually reserved for a bigger star, so I took a quick look at the stats on the back.  Jackie had quite a solid season in '58, 35 HR and 122 RBI's for the Red Sox, while hitting .286.  '58 was the 4th season out of the past 5 that he'd drove in over 100 (just missing in '56 with 97 RBI's), and his numbers earned him the AL MVP award.

Smoky Burgess was right in the middle of an 18 year career in 1959, and had been acquired by the Pirates as part of a 7 player trade that saw slugger Frank Thomas head to the Redlegs.

 
The other 2 cards I bought were a pair of Yankees, which cost a bit more than commons, not unusual for older sets.  The Virgil Trucks card is actually his sunset card, as his career came to end in '58, pitching 41 games at the ripe old age of 41.  Art Ditmar was right in the middle of a 9 season career, playing 3 more seasons in the Bronx before finishing his career with 2 seasons in KC.

4 cards off of the want list drops the set down to 91 cards to go, and it was nice to get a few of these in hand at the same time. One day I'll finish this set, but there's a lot of cards, and $$ left to go.

Just have to remember not to forget about the set....

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Royals for Royals (and a Yankee and a Mariner)

Knocked off a few more wants with a recent trade with Matthew (TCDB ID: jmswyo), and outside of a pair of player collection cards, nothing but KC Royals went in the mail.  I'm sure if John Olerud or Andrew McCutchen had played for the Royals, I'm sure those cards would have went in my direction as well!

This trade was so easy, I decided to limit it to just one scan.

Right in the middle of the scan, a bit of 2017 A&G help   The Cain is a SP, and I now have 26 out of the 50 short prints from the set, and that's with 145 total cards left on that want list.

Bat rack card aficionados I'm sure have the Bob Oliver card from 1970 Topps in their collections. If they don't, or worse if they weren't aware of it, it may have become part of an updated want list.  The Steve Busby card for '78 Topps drops that want list to 50 cards, as I received a couple of star cards from that set today from a recent eBay purchase, which you'll see in the next few days.

Any cards that help out player collections are always welcome, and I believe that the McCutchen card you see above is the first one that I own that features him in pinstripes.  I don't know what to make of the Olerud in the Topps 205 design from 2003; I think the design is OK but it doesn't really wow me.  I actually like it better looking at it in hand than on the scan.

Still, it's a half dozen cards from a great trade partner, thank you very much Matthew they are appreciated!  Look forward to our next trade.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert