It is a pretty darn good community

For the longest time, I have posted and bragged about the TCDB community.  I've made hundreds of trades, probably a couple of really good trade partners along the way and watched a lot of good things happen to the site via the input of many of the users.

It's happened to me once before on the site, but I was still surprised when I received an envelope totally out of the blue the other day from another Robert (TCDB bkim) who sent a couple of birthday cards my way.

A couple of player collections were increased by 1 and I especially enjoyed the Ichiro card as it's an early one from his career, a 2003 Topps #100.  

What's great is people don't have to do this, my birthday could come and go and nothing could have come my way and I would have been fine with that.  But it's little things such as this which make me talk about the site constantly, and sometimes go a hunting/trading expeditions when I have extra time off.

Thank you for the birthday cards Robert, they are really appreciated!

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Old reliable

So over the weekend I received another envelope from one of my steady trade partners on the TCDB website, Al.  (TCDB ID: tucha)  It's always easy to remember where a regular trade partner lives, especially one who lives in the great white north.

I did have to check how many times Al and I have traded, because it's now almost a monthly deal with the 2 of us.   This was our 6th(!) trade on the site and every one of them has gone smoothly (yes, he's addressed them all to Sunrise and they're here, no issues).

He must have got a big score on '81 Topps football, because that has been the main part of each of the last two trades.  

The top 3 cards of the first scan are the only hockey cards that were part of the trade, featuring another set that I've not focused on at all for quite a long time, the 02-03 Heritage set, based on the famous 66-67 Topps set (which is not a cheap one to build).  

The '81 Topps FB set is coming along quite nicely, I have about 40% in house and about 75 more in a Sportlots box that I'm building.  Apparently I'm still chopping off parts of borders with the new flatbed scanner, but none the less I'm still happy with it and when I get it figured out I'll be a scanning fool.

I saw the picture featuring Keith Wright of the Browns in the lower center; was it wrong of me to think he looked a bit like Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High?

What I like about the '79 and '81 Topps football sets so far is the size, 528 cards allowed Topps to feature more players that I'd never heard of such as Wright.  A lot of punters/kickers and defensive players I'm sure made the set that likely wouldn't have if it was 396 or even 264 cards.  

Thank you for another great trade Al, I'm sure that there'll be more over time.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Hey Canada Post!! Sunrise is where the Panthers play

If I had written the title to be TCDB Trade 481, I probably wouldn't get many views.  But this is a story that is worth telling.

First up, I'll start at the beginning.  Back in JULY, when I was trading quite a bit, I offered up a trade to Jesse (TCDB ID:  doogie_13) hopefully exchanging hockey cards both ways.  Jesse countered back as he couldn't locate one of the cards (not uncommon in the TCDB world), and we moved forward.  

Both of us marked our packages sent on July 17th, which was the day after the trade.  This is where the fun begins.

 

Knowing that trades across the Canadian border can take up to 4 weeks sometimes, I knew that there could be some time involved.

August 19th rolls around, Jesse was concerned and sent me a quick note on the site, asking me if the cards had arrived yet.  I replied that they hadn't and wasn't truly upset because I had another envelope (1 of 3 in that trade) that hadn't arrived yet (and that one still hasn't!) and would wait patiently.

I marked the trade as unfinished on September the 18th, as 2 months had gone by and I wasn't expecting anything to arrive, we all know how the PO can get, right?!

Jesse messaged me on October 5th, saying that the PO had finally returned the envelope to him, marking it with "insufficient address".  Now I've had probably 3 dozen trades back and forth from Canada, all using the same "Sunrise" city designation.   Never a problem.  I've even traded once before with Jesse, no problem.

Jesse went to the PO the next day and they told him "they don't recognize Sunrise as a place", so he had to address it to Ft. Lauderdale.

HEY CANADA POST!!   You're in Canada right?  Hockey is your national game right?   The Florida Panthers of the National Hockey League play in SUNRISE, not Fort Lauderdale.   On a good day, I can walk to the rink where the Panthers play in 30 minutes.  Drive there in 5 mins.

To get to Ft. Lauderdale, I would have to drive through a couple of other suburbs.  

The cards that I have displayed in this post arrived this past Tuesday, and I'm grateful to Jesse for letting me know about the whole postal mess up.  

Jesse, thank you very much for the trade and all the follow up!!  It's traders such as yourself which made the TCDB site such a great place to trade.

Enjoy the hobby, despite the post office!

Robert

Overdue Thanks: Day 2

 

Let's start the post with some oversized Bowman cards from 1989, which includes a very young looking Todd Stottlemyre, lefty John Cerutti (gone too soon from our world), 2 thirds of the best outfield in baseball in the mid 80's (Barfield and Bell), and a catcher who will probably remain the longest serving catcher behind the plate for the Jays, Ernie Whitt.  

These cards, and several handfuls of other Blue Jays come from fellow blogger and twitter collector Jay, known to a lot of people as the owner of the Card Hemorrhage blog.  Jay was quite generous to send a bunch of Jays this way.

A pair of '91 cards that for some reason when I saw them in pile linked together for me.  The smile on Stottlemyre's face when loading the milk crate full of baseballs, then Gruber in the next photo getting brushed back by a pitch just kept catching my eye as I went through the pile.  It looks even better with the pair of cards scanned together.

I managed to put together a page of pitchers with starters Clancy, Hentgen, Sanchez and Stroman, a pair of swing men in Cerutti and Musselman, closers Ward and Osuna and Gaviglio I don't know much about to really slot him in anywhere.  

I actually had a harder time putting together the rest of the diamond (outside of catcher where there was 5 to choose from).  Not a bad outfield, Hernandez and Carter to go with Anthony Alford.  The infield corners are strong with Gruber and Olerud (RC!), while up the middle was Tomas Perez at short and Joe Panik at 2nd, with Ed Sprague as the DH.  The yellow parallel Panik is my first one of those and it reminds me of the gold, only a little stronger shade to tell the difference.

Even though I have most of the cards already, it's always fun looking through a stack and seeing if I can put together some stuff for a post.   Thank you very much Jay for the cards, they are appreciated!

Keep on enjoying the hobby!

Robert

Overdue Thanks: Day 1

I've been lagging so far behind in posting until the past couple of weeks, so it's time to get some appreciation out to the peeps that have been great in sending me cards over the past while.   First up is fellow Twitter card lover Mike (@ugxtall88) who sent me a nice little package of cards that hit a few collection areas.

Half a dozen mask cards start us off.  I had totally forgotten about the mask frankenset, and the 5 Pinnacle mask cards should certainly help with that overdue project.  The Terry Sawchuk card is also a welcome sight and will fit right into my Maple Leafs collection.

Can't say that I've ever seen a 73-74 card, either OPC or Topps, in as nice shape as this Paul Henderson card.  It will be a very nice upgrade to the Topps version that I already have in the Leafs collection.

More potential mask cards, this time in diecut form from the 2003-04 Atomic set.  Actually while writing this post I looked again at the back and these are McDonald's cards, which I had no idea were released.  These look even better in hand; I'll have to do some research to see if this was a goalie only set and if not what other players I could find....

A fair part of the package was some older early 90's Blue Jays cards which I've showed off in the earlier years of the blog.  I noticed these 3 Members Only parallels right away though as cards I know I don't have in the collection, so M.A.C. are a welcome addition to the home.

Another great add was the Starling Marte serial #/d/99 Topps Finest parallel on display here.  Love the green parallel cards, which a good portion of this collection features.  That little collection is approaching 140 cards now, in part to some generosity such as this from Mike and other collectors out there.

I love a lot of the personalized cards and add-ins that people send in packages like this, and Mike's 1-day contract signee card is certainly a great and unique add.  It's nice to see the personal side of people when they send things such as this in their packages.

I can certainly say this, he's signed more baseball contracts than I have!!  

Thank you for the cards Mike, they are appreciated, and this thank you is quite overdue.   I have a couple more thank yous to get to very soon here on the blog.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

TCDB Trade #480: 1 Lewis was all it took

A few weeks ago I bought quite a few cards at a card show (duh) from a football dealer.  Just decided to throw a bunch of parallels and numbered cards into a pile at a quarter a piece.   Sounds like a typical card show for me right?

Well, little did I realize that one of those cards would turn into a dozen cards for my wide receiver collections.  

For a quarter, I added to my pile a Ray Lewis teal parallel from 2020 Chronicles.  Someone who wanted it for his Ray Lewis collection offered me 5 cards for it originally and as you can imagine I didn't pass that up.

Here are 4 of the 5 cards that John (TCDB ID: ravensray52) offered.

 

All of them shiny, definitely won't complain about these.  The one card he couldn't find was a 2012 RC of  T.Y., he felt bad and said he would send me 7 other cards that he had off of my want list.  I said not to worry, that things happen and I did appreciate him letting me know.  His next reply struck me as kind of funny...

"no worries, you're the only Hilton collector I have encountered so I know they will go to a good home"

So these 8 cards have come to a good home!

I can honestly say I love hearing this kind of stuff from other collectors, as I like to make lopsided trades from time to time with other set builders because I know they appreciate it.  Moving cards from trade boxes to other peoples collections is a beautiful thing, which is one of the main reasons I enjoy the TCDB site so much.

Thank you for the trade John, it is appreciated!!

Keep on enjoying the hobby!

Robert

Check out some cards: Finally

The order wasn't big, just 55 cards (4 of which have been shown in a previous post), but waiting over 3 months to get them was a bit tortuous.  But finally receiving them has shown me one thing that I've known for a while but is more evident now...

I've got way too much going on.   Nobody's fault but my own.  

Let's see what we have now in the house...

 

All 20 cards here from the 2012 and 2019 Allen & Ginter sets are short prints.  Both sets are nearing completion; 2019 needs just 5 more SPs, and 2012 has a list of 46 with a dozen SPs.  More sets that are nearing completion to come here in this post.

Nice cheap pickup on the Saquon Barkley RC here, just $2.50.  The Prestige set is down to 12 cards, and I'm hoping to get that done soon.   The '86 Topps set has come together quite nicely and quickly, with the set only needing 3 cards to complete.   Two of them are RCs featuring great players Steve Young and Reggie White.  

The hockey contingent above are all sets on The next 10 list.  Top scan is the 02-03 Vintage Set which has nothing but SP stars and checklists left to go.  22 cards might cost me a bit.  

2018-19 OPC is next.  14 to go.  Short printed rookie cards (9), 4 season highlight cards and the Pittsburgh Penguin team checklist is all that's left.  A few of the RC's are overpriced.  Might have to bite the bullet and get it done.

2013-14 Panini Prizm has 27 to go.   A few bigger name RC's are on the list, finishing this set will be a bit pricey but it is doable.  It's time to focus on these 3 in the coming weeks and get them out of the way.

Poor Dave Balon.  Might that be the ugliest card ever, photoshop wise?  74 cards left in this set, it's been fun picking up reasonably priced commons/semistars recently, but it's time to put this aside and focus on a lot of other sets that are closer to completion finished.

I keep saying that, but it's too tempting to keep grabbing cards from other pursuits.  

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

TCDB Trades 477 & 478: 1 for 1 and many for many

Two trades on one post today, largely because I didn't want to do a one card post.  The first trade is with TCDB user BLWinborn40 who offered me a 1 for 1 trade.   I don't do very many of these, but the Ichiro card featured a great photo of him getting ready for a pitch, so I didn't refuse:

 

The many for many trade was with someone a lot of you may know from the Twitter world, Steve (@cardboardjones) accepted a big trade that I offered.   I sent him a ton of 2007 Topps football cards since I love helping out fellow set builders, and he sent me back a nice lot of '79 and '81 Topps football cards

The '79 portion was smaller, only 8 cards, but there are some names that you may remember on this scan, especially all those in the middle row.  I wouldn't be upset if the Tampa Bay Buccaneers brought back the creamsicle colored uniforms that a pair of players are displaying in the top row.  

I like the design of the '81 set, it reminds me of a wind sock on the top of the goalpost.  You can't change the past, but think of how much better these older Topps sets would have looked if they had been able to use the team logos on the helmets.  I'm curious as to why this was the case, they used the team names on the cards, why no logos?  I'm sure that there was a reason for this, would love to know what it was.

These two sets are coming along nicely, both are approaching the 1/3 mark.  With both sets being 528 cards, there are still a lot of numbers on the want lists, which need to be updated here on the blog.

Thank you for the trade Steve, it is appreciated!

Enjoy the hobby

Robert

6 out of the Next 10: 2019 Donruss

It has been quite a while since I've been able to write a completed set post, several months is probably how long.  

I don't know if I can call it a problem, or just my frugality/cheapness, but the 4 remaining sets that I have on the Next 10 left are giving me issues.

2018 Panini Prestige, I'm running into issues finding some of the cards anywhere.

2002-03 Upper Deck Vintage hockey, same issue as Prestige

2018-19 OPC hockey, cards are still overpriced for the rookies I still need.  Trying hard not to bite the bullet.

2013-14 Panini Prizm hockey might be the only set of the 4 that I can complete in the near future without gasping every time I put a card into an online cart.

These 4 cards were part of my long awaited COMC order, which took 3 months and 10 days to arrive.  It's a good thing my 55 card order didn't bog down the system...

The Drew Lock RC was the most expensive at $2.25, Bosa was just under $2 and the other 2 were under $1, all 4 prices I could easily justify paying.  

I have a lot of incoming cards that I want to get on the blog, so this 10 day run of posts that I'm on will probably continue for a little longer.

Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing....

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

TCDB #476: OPC for OPC

I've made a lot of trades over the past 3-4 years on the TCDB site, but I don't recall a trade where I traded the exact amount of cards along with the exact same set with a fellow trader.

This was a quick and easy trade with Clark (TCDB ID:  Themissionsguy) where 8 cards from the 2020-21 OPC set that I needed came here while 8 for the same set went out west.

Yes, a little crooked on the scanning but still good to be trading regularly again and getting cards in for the multitude of sets on the go.  

Two cards on this group have a couple of stories in the league this year.   Sergei Bobrovsky up in the top left is the current #1 goalie for the Panthers, but has young Spencer Knight right behind him to take the job if he falters at any point this season.

Alex Ovechkin comes into the season with 730 goals which is 6th all time; if he gets 37 this season he finishes the season 3rd, 1 ahead of Jaromir Jagr.  That would still leave him 127 behind Gretzky for the all time league lead.  

Thank you Clark for the cards, they are appreciated!

Enjoy the hobby

Robert

#'s 5 and 475

Part of me trying to get back on the writing on a regular basis trail is working on posts, no matter how quick and painless (painful?).  Trade posts from the TCDB are going to help, especially now that I have quite a few trades on the go.  Having these trades going is a welcome change after I had written last Saturday about how trading had kind of dried up, then all of a sudden I made a few offers and had a few others come in.

This quick 2 card inbound trade is from fellow Floridian Justin, adding 1 each to a set and a player collection.

I'm still having trouble with chrome cards on the new scanner, you'll have to trust me that this 2000 Tribe-unal insert card looks really nice in hand.  640 Thome cards in the house now, this is the first card I've added to the collection in probably a few months.

This is the just 5th emerald card from the 2008 UD Baseball Heroes set that I have, but like a lot of sets that I have currently on the go, there's really no hurry for this one.   For those who don't know I'm putting together 3 of the parallel sets from '08 Heroes, Black, Emerald and Red, more as a fun thing than any serious pursuit.  I definitely will not turn them down in a trade if they're a part!

Thank you for the trade Justin, it is appreciated.  Just 25 to go to reach 500 on TCDB.

Enjoy the hobby

Robert

It's time to put up or shut up

While visions of World Series victories are dancing through the heads of many collectors, or long bombs to wide open receivers dominate the Fantasy Football hopes of others, today is my time. 

Today is the start of the 50th season of hockey that I'll be able to remember watching either on TV or live in person, and I'm praying that my beloved Maple Leafs finally start to make some progress with the great core of players that they have.

As has become custom over the past few years, the Leafs are starting their season against their Forever Rivals, les Canadiens.   I will be glued to the TV for sure to see how this years team has changed, hopefully for the good.  

There is a lot of talk around the media for Leafs Nation that the team will be broken up if there is no progression this year.  Progression = winning a playoff series for the first time since 2004.  They've had their chances over the past few years, especially last year having a 3-1 series lead against the Canadiens only to watch it evaporate.

For those of you who have Amazon Prime and have watched the various All or Nothing series that featured several NFL teams, there is an All or Nothing out featuring the Leafs now.   Needless to say, I watched 2 episodes the day it came out, and the other 3 the next day.  (Sheldon Keefe loves F-bombs quite a lot)  I enjoyed it very much, not just because it was the Leafs, but it gave me a look into the highs and lows that NHL teams experience, along with a lot of the comradery there is in the locker room.

Go Leafs Go!!

Enjoy the NHL season everyone, 

Robert

50 cents just wouldn't do

So this past Sunday I hit a show that was in Port St. Lucie, FL, which is about 90 minutes north of where I live.  I've been to the PSL area several times in the past, as the wife and I have some good friends who live there.  I was looking forward to try and get to this show for a few months, but things didn't work out until this weekend.

It's located in the Baron Real Estate facility, which has a room that doubles as the St. Lucie Mets convention center.  It is a real nice room, my guess is there was 40 tables there which was perfect as there wasn't any crowding.  

I decided to write about the 2nd table I hit as the first table took up the most time and provided me the most cards, which I will save for later this week.

My buddy Chris and I were almost ready to head out when I spotted a table that had a box of 50 cent cards.  I became a bit curious and spotted this card almost right away as I began to flip....

I had this one memorized, as John Stallworth was one of only 9 cards remaining on my '86 Topps football want list.  I wasn't really seeing anything in the box that I wanted right away, but I wanted to bring this card home to get it off the list.   So I kept flipping and found a page worth of '81 Topps.

I originally thought these were '82s, but that set has the pennant logo on the bottom of the card, so this was my mistake.  I wound up only needing 3 of the 9 cards pictured here (Stabler, DeBerg and 49ers team leaders) so it wasn't a total loss, but I wound up spending $5 at the table because I didn't want to spend just 50 cents.

This was a really good show though and I've asked the wife if we could combine it with visits to our friend up in Port St. Lucie in the future.  Here's hoping!

Enjoy the hobby

Robert

Watch and buy

I'm a big fan of the saying "watch and learn".  It's a mantra that I have lived by a lot during my life.  I've kind of adapted the saying a bit when it comes to my card collecting habits, especially when I hit the eBay site.

"Watch and buy" is what I have used quite a bit when it comes to buying cards on the giant online marketplace.  

What I like to do is search for lots of cards.  Big starter sets, sometimes duplicates of sets that I already own just to add to the trade fodder pile if needed.  Here's the latest watch and buy post which may change my collecting habits for the near future.

I came across on 80 card auction for a 1970 Topps football starter lot.  I was quite interested as the lot included a few names I knew such as Bob Griese, Alan Page and Bubba Smith.

Now, I know very little about football sets pre 1979.  But this lot was intriguing as I do want to learn about the older sets and reading the description of the auction had me very hopeful about this seller.   Here's the description...

"Up for sale is a 1970 Topps Football 80 card lot. Cards have wear to them and most would be low grades in the good to excellent range. Nice lot for a set builder that is not too concerned with only collecting top condition cards. Please use the pictures to help judge the condition of the card. The cards pictured are the cards you get. Shipping out by 1st class mail with tracking. I ship within one business day." 

It was almost as if he was saying "this lot is for you Robert"  The 80 card lot was priced at $39.99 plus shipping/tax.   I wasn't completely sure if I wanted the lot but my curiosity was piqued.   So I put the auction on the watch list.

2 days later I woke up to an email.   The seller had offered me 20% off the price, knocking it down to $32 plus shipping/tax.   It didn't take me long to hit the accept offer button.

I now know I love this set, just seeing all these old cards arrive.  The seller did not lie, the cards are in the G-EX range, he did ship the cards the next day and the cards showed up 3 business days later.

The backs of the cards are just as attractive to me as the front.

Orange/pink backs, similar to a pair of '60s baseball sets (64 & 69 Topps) which I really like.  Most of the cards that I got in the lot are similar to the Woody Peoples as they have a bio and no stats (Woody was an Offensive Guard, so that makes sense).  Many of you older collectors like me will remember Bob Trumpy as a broadcaster for NBC for many years.  This is actually his rookie card, even though 1970 would be his 3rd season in the league.

Just 2 of the cards from the lot had the rub a coin over the blank space on the back and I'm quite curious as to how many there are that have this feature.  

The seller, separately from the well secured 1970 lot, included a 5 card "thank you" inside the box, which was very surprising.

The top 4 blue/red cards are from the '71 Topps set, while the bottom card is from the '75 Topps set (which I'm sure everyone already figured out from the banner).  What a great add to what I thought was already a great deal.  

Lots more for me to talk about regarding the early 70's Topps sets, but I'll save that for another post.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

the excitement for this set is starting to build

I'm going to guess it's been about 3 years since I decided to start building the 71-72 OPC hockey set, largely started because I really liked the look of it and also because I found a reasonably cheap Phil Esposito after buying a fair number of commons to start the set.

To be honest, with all the other set builds I have on the go right now, finishing the '71-72 was a bit of a dream as the pandemic started.   I've surprised myself with how I've progressed since last March as 57 cards have been knocked off the want list, including the 7 on this post.

This lot I bought off of a eBay seller in Canada and were all priced in Canadian $, so I got a bit of a break there as well.  Notice half of the lot is goalies, usually a little more pricey than your average forward and defenseman, but not from this seller.   I did pretty well, paying about $20 for all 7 cards, including an all star card of one the goaltending pioneers

I nabbed the Jacques Plante card for just under $5 US, a bargain even though its a little bit on the dirty side.  (Found a Plante video on YouTube featuring him as a Leaf, not a good night for the Wings)

The set is over 70% done now with the 264 card size for the set being a definite advantage.  Still quite a few expensive RCs and a couple of checklists which are crazy high priced to go, but I can see this set getting completed some time hopefully in 2022.  

Ken Dryden, Guy Lafleur and Marcel Dionne be damned.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

trading has slowed down a bit

When I say a bit, I mean a lot.   I only completed 3 trades in September, one of the slowest months I can remember.  A lot of it was a bit of card malaise as sitting in an office chair for a couple of weeks last month was torture as I struggled with a bad back.

Things have picked up a bit lately on the trade front and I recently finished a quick trade with Eric (TCDB ID: Hebron Reds Fan) to nab a few cards.

I sent off a few Reds cards from various Heritage sets and in return I received a 5 count of 1979 Topps football, a set which is coming along quite nicely.  Along with those I bumped up the John Olerud PC by 1 with a 2005 Fleer base card.

Mustache here, no mustache there:  The two cards that grabbed me right away were the Ken Anderson card that features him with no stache, which is the only way that I remember him during his playing days with the Bengals.

The other card is the Vikings Team Leaders card, featuring the normally clean shaven Ahmad Rashad with a mustache, a pretty good looking one to boot.  Another thing I noticed about that card are the offensive leaders with kind of small season totals of rushing and receiving yards.   Off to the football reference website!

Teams were playing 16 games in a season in 1978, the first season after the bump from 14 games.  The Vikings finished first in the NFC Central division with a 8-7-1 (they were tied with the Packers, but had the tiebreaker with a win and a tie vs. the Packers).  Fran Tarkenton was the QB for all 16 games and threw for over 3400 yards, which was spread around 5 different receivers who caught 45+ passes each.  Their passing offense was ranked 2nd in the league, only behind Air Coryell and the Chargers.

The rushing offense was a different story, ranking dead last in the league at just over 1500 yards, less than half of what the New England Patriots had.

We are certainly spoiled in modern times with the amount of offense that teams put up compared to 40 years ago!! 

By the way, despite the Vikings name on the card of Paul Krause, that shirt certainly doesn't look purple, does it?  Looks more of a Giants blue compared to Stu Voigt right above him.

Great lot of cards, thank you for the trade Eric!

Enjoy the hobby, 

Robert

300's, 400's & 500's

The title kind of describes my thought process now when looking for singles on eBay for sets in the '68-72 Topps era.  

The 1-299 range I'm mostly done with except for higher dollar cards which I pick off here and there when I feel the urge to do so.

But # 300 and up in each of the above sets still have a lot of commons to grab, which is where I'm at when hunting online.

This week's baseball portion of my eBay purchase was an 8 count of '69 Topps singles, all of which are in really nice condition.

The 300-399 portion was half of the order, all around $1-$1.50.  I have quite a few of the Rookie Stars cards from each set to grab, so I've been purposely trying to find reasonably priced copies when I do try to buy.

Another Rookie Stars card, and a very nice Rod Carew All Star card which I'm ashamed to admit is only the 2nd All Star card I've bought from the set (the only other being Tommy Helms) and if I can find more like Carew at just $3.50, I'll be fortunate.

I own just 19 cards that are higher in number than Ron Davis' #553 featured here, so I certainly have a long way to go in finishing the set.  Aside from the high number problem, the set is slowly coming along as I'm now 380 cards in, or just over 57% done.  

The only way that this set will get done quickly is if I sit down and just focus on this one and nothing else.   There's not a chance that this will happen, unless this becomes the final set that I ever try to build.

You all know that there's no chance of that happening as well.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Sometimes I wonder where did the Phungo?

Life has been really busy, work, home, friends have all taken up a good portion of my life lately.  I've wanted to write posts for the past 10 days, but I've found many other things to take up my free time.  Tonight I said to the wife for the first time in a long time, "I'm going to go write a post".   No objections from her as she knows I really haven't done that much recently.

Fellow blogger, but to me more well known as twitter regular @phungo (blog here) was very generous to me recently and sent me a half dozen cards which could be described as well loved in a couple of different ways.

First up, I get to add to the Blue Jays hits and autos list, something I haven't done in quite a while...

2007 SP Rookie Edition Adam Lind autograph.  Sadly, this was the best I could do with the scan as the foil didn't show up at all until I brought the light setting to max level.  None the less, it's a great add for the Jays collection and I'm going to guess that brings the Adam Lind auto total to about half a dozen.

These 2 all star cards from the '59 Topps set took me right back to a handful of '64 Topps high numbers that I bought a few years ago.  Those '64s had rounded corners, while these as you can plainly see have the corners cut off like someone put them into a scrapbook.  Maybe one day I'll replace them, but for now they work quite well.

This Maz high number card is also well loved with a crease in the lower left, as well as what appears to be a youngster teething on the upper right hand corner of the card.  Honestly, I think this is good enough for me to keep and not worry about replacing down the road.

Of the handful of '59s, this easily is the most gorgeous of the group.  Another of the high numbers that I need for the set, the Infield Power card featuring the Red Sox infield is very generous and much appreciated.  

Through the laundry?  Maybe.   Taped to a book or wall?  Possibly as there is a bit of paper loss on the back.

Two of the greatest sluggers in Braves history?   Damn straight!  The scan certainly does do this card justice; the card is well loved and has certainly seen better days.

I probably will try to replace the card down the line, unless my frugality gets in the way, but the gesture of sending one of the big dollar cards I have left on my want list is certainly not lost.  Even in the condition it is in, the card certainly brought one of those "holy shit" comments from my lips.

Paul, thank you very much for the cards, they are really appreciated!  Still need to find some rookie cup cards for you...

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert