The Human Vacuum Cleaner and other cards from the Commish

One thing that the "What's Next?" tournament has given me is the opportunity to deal with other collectors/bloggers that I haven't had an opportunity to talk to in the past.   One of those is Commishbob, who runs the Five Tool Collector blog.  If you don't follow it, I suggest you do, because Bob has recently posted a great variety of cards, including flag and plane cards (which were fabulous), along with a few Baltimore Orioles from his collection.  Bob also has a retired vintage blog, '59 Topps:  one f/g card at a time, which was one of the first vintage card sets that I started following.   Bob has lobbied for the '59 set in the tournament a couple of times on his "retired" blog, which is really appreciated here. 

Bob sent me an email last week asking for my address, because he had a few cards he felt would be good additions to my collection. 

He hit so many want lists, it's tough to start somewhere. Let's start with another piece to the SNI puzzle, Miguel Tejada.

A shiny and colorful way to start off, no?  Miguel is serial # 1252, and is the 37th Astro card for the set.  The SNI is down to 249 cards remaining, and the Tigers still are the team with the lowest number of cards for the set (33).

What would a package that arrives at my house be without a few Blue Jays inside.   Here's a card that I've never seen before.

I can only recall a couple of Al Oliver cards in my Blue Jays collection, so this is a welcome addition.  I took a little digging, but I found out that this is from the Woolworth's Topps set, a 33 card release in 1986.  Oliver is the only Jay featured, making this one of the easiest set completions that I've had. 

A bit of the old and new here.  I was just able to put together a Dave Stieb page for the Jays collection, so this card will have to wait.  When I first saw the 2012 Opening Day Stars card of Jose Bautista, I thought that I already owned it.   Wrong again!!  Another great add to the collection.

A couple of more jersey cards to add to the collection!!  I'm realizing that Vernon Wells has a boat load of jersey cards, many of which I saw at the National a couple of weeks ago.  It was amazing how fast the star of J.P. Arencibia fell in Toronto, and it doesn't appear to be rising at all down in Texas.  Not hitting your weight will do that for you.  

Bob didn't hesitate to knock off cards from my 60's want lists as well.

2 each from the '62 and '68 sets was a great start...

The '68 and '62 sets both have a very long way to go for completion, but each are 2 cards closer now.   I regret not hunting for a few '62s at the National, since I still am 21 cards away from my goal of 30% completion by the end of the year.  Hopefully I can rectify that when the monthly mall show returns in September (at least I hope it returns).

Finally, as the post title indicated, the best card of the bunch, Brooks Robinson.

A fantastic card!!  It's in great shape, an absolute beauty for my '64 set.  I didn't even have to pry it out of Bob's hands!  This card brings me down to 113 left to go for the set, and now I have a little more hope that I can get that number below 100 by year's end.

If you haven't voted yet for this week's match between 76T and 67T, please take a moment and leave  a comment on the post (67 is out to an early lead, but that could change by week's end).

Bob, thank you very much for the cards, they are greatly appreciated!!!

thanks for reading, Robert