Cards from a fan that doesn't live in an attic

I could sit here all damn night, and would never be able to come up with a catchy post title for this one.  I received an email a couple of weeks back from Jeff over at the brand new blog Fan-Attic Sports Cards.  Jeff obviously had read a few posts of mine that portrayed a love of anything blue and white, and dug up a few cards for me, which of course are always welcome.

While the bulk of the package is '92 Topps (I'm still wondering how in the world I needed so many of those cards...), I found 15 others for your perusal, which will be counted down 5-4-3-2-1 style.

Let's start with 5 cards from 1992 Donruss, which is another set that I couldn't believe I needed so many of:

Love the CTV Sports banner in the background of the Kelly Gruber card, even more interesting is that Kelly is wearing a road uniform, which means a US ball park was kind enough to let the Canadians post their banner. (I'm thinking maybe Detroit?)

How about 4 cards of one of the greatest Jays ever, Roberto Alomar:

The '93 Upper Deck card (upper right) is a great shot, even the back of the card has a great photo of Robbie hitting in the batting cage wearing a headband.  Maybe if I ever get off my ass and put together a greatest Blue Jays cards countdown, that one will be there for sure.

Not to be outdone, the Blue and White purveyors of puck were represented as well.

Gilles Thibaudeau?  Man, that is a guy that I had completely forgotten about.  Gilles was one of those players that was too good for the AHL, but just not good enough to make a career for himself in the NHL. 90-91  was his final NHL season; Gilles would play 9 more years after that in Switzerland, where he actually had quite the career by scoring 435 points in 332 Swiss League games.

How about 2 cards from a set I completed not too long ago, 1986 Topps.

Every other Cliff Johnson card I've featured shows him with a mean/angry look on his face, so this card is a nice change.  I truly believe that #37 should be the next number sent to the rafters of the Skydome, because Dave Stieb has easily been the franchise's best pitcher of the first 35 seasons.  Yep, better than Halladay, Guzman, or any of the other guys that came and went from 77-12.

Let's see how well this last card scanned...

Sandy kicked around for quite a while in the bigs, a lot longer than I ever remembered.  2004 was the last season that he appeared in a major league game, even though he was signed by teams up until his retirement after the 2007 season.  While researching Sandy's stats, the Baseball Reference website pulled up a little tidbit for me, Sandy has 4 major league seasons to his credit with less than 25 ABs.  Check out the link to see the stats for Paul Hoover, who has the distinction of 6 major league seasons with less than 25 ABs.  (I thought I had too much time on my hands....wow!)

Jeff, thank you very much for the cards, they were really appreciated!! 

Thanks for reading, Robert

Common card of the day: Mike Beard

Mike Beard is missing something, though I just can't figure out what...

Gotta love a gently used '76 Topps card.

Thanks for looking, Robert

Common card of the day: Tim Thomas

Oh how the mighty have fallen....well sort of.  Enjoy your career on the Island Tim

thanks for looking, Robert

I still have a lot of catching up to do

Over the past few weekends, I've said it many times and it still hasn't happened.

"I'm going to get this mess cleaned up this weekend".   Yea right.

I always end up finding something else to do.  Housework.  Groceries.  Stare at the TV and yell at the Leafs.  It's real easy to find any kind of excuse not to work on the land mine that is my collection right now. 

One of the many projects that I want to get started is the cataloging of my 2 player collections, Joe Sakic and Jim Thome.  Thome's collection of 25 cards should not be that difficult. My Joe Sakic collection, of which I have at least 10x more, is going to be a little bit more of a task.

I was fortunate to pick up a handful of Joe Sakic cards during my trip to the "new" LCS a few weekends back, and I've finally resolved to at least write a few words about them.

This first card is probably my favorite of the five that I bought:

This 2003-04 Victory Freshman Flashback insert is one of only 3 cards (Joe's OPC/Topps RC's being the other 2) that feature Joe wearing the #88 on his Nordiques jersey.  I could be wrong and there might be other cards that feature Joe with the double snowmen, but for now this is a great find for me. 

This next card still strikes me as odd when I look at it.

It's kind of hard to see from the scan, but that extra area around the top of the card is indeed a border, quite a large one as a matter of fact.  I originally thought that this was an early 90's insert card, but upon further review, it turns out that it is actually card #55 in the 92-93 OPC set. 

The final card is one that I really like as well, it features Joe in the middle of a faceoff win:

That is card #54 from 06-07 Upper Deck, a set that I have never bought one pack of.  Someday, that will change as well, as this design is one that I really like, and as usual the Upper Deck photography is top notch.  Yes, I am grading the set on only one card, but in the end I only have to answer to myself. 

My frenzy of Heritage buying the past couple of weeks has only added to the clutter, and for me to ever hope of catching up with the madness that I call a collection, I'm probably going to have to sit down and write a list of the things I need to do.

Maybe slowing down would be a good start...

Thanks for reading, Robert

Common card of the day: Tim 'Rock' Raines

Great shot of Tim making contact....

6 straight seasons of 70+ steals, 2nd in ROY voting to Fernando Mania, 2600+ hits, .294 average.  I think it's time for Tim to be in the HOF.  (just my opinion)

thanks for looking, Robert

Common card of the day: Oscar Gamble

I had to look twice, but there are actually four players pictured on this card.

Great stuff indeed

Thanks for looking, Robert

You just never know what you'll get on Twitter

I enjoy Twitter.   I'm not a big tweeter, but I enjoy certain hockey/football insiders that get the inside scoop on all the happenings in the sports world that I care to know about.

I also follow a few of the card bloggers/case breakers out there as well.  A lot of the conversations that I've seen on Twitter regarding card related issues have kept me entertained, as well as informed.  Twitter is where I learned that Topps had its' exclusive license with MLB extended until the year 2020 (which is a conversation for a later date, I still have to process what this means to the hobby, and to me). 

Twitter is also where I won something.

Yes, you read that correctly.  I awoke to an email from Twitter last week stating that I had won a prize from one of the many card breakers that I follow. 

Well alrighty then!!!

Saturday I come home from running errands to a brown envelope in my mailbox.  Less than a week from providing my address to receiving my prize, from Canada no less.

Now, it's not a card that features the blue and white of my beloved Maple Leafs, but for free, this is still a pretty damn good card.

A dual jersey of P.K. Subban and Josh Gorges from 2012-13 SP Game Used.  Yes, it features a couple of players from the Evil Empire of hockey (at least from where I sit), but I still can appreciate the card design.  It helps that at least one of the swatches isn't white as well.

It reminded me that I'm overdue to run a contest here as well.  I plan to do one at the beginning of April, so stay tuned for that.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Common card of the day: Wally Szczerbiak

Found in a sea of baseball/hockey cards.  I figured what the hell, let's go outside the norm.  Then I started to type his last name and regretted it instantly.

thanks for looking, Robert

Compare and contrast

Whenever I see those two words together, I get the shivers.  Compare and contrast were the buzzwords for my high school English teachers when they wanted me to write a load of b.s. about a book that we were reading.   My whole problem was, I could never grasp just how to do it.

Likely because I spent too much time in 1st period English trying to look up the skirts of the beautiful young ladies that sat across from me in class.    Memories....

While going through the blasters (yes, I said blasters plural...) of 2013 Heritage I've bought recently, I came across one card that hit me right away.

Card #200, Clayton Kershaw of the LA Dodgers.  Now before you go out of your mind thinking that I'm turning into another Dodger blogger, don't hit that panic button just yet.  There are plenty of other great people out there that can take care of the Brooklyn side just fine.

What hit me about the card is the comparison to the #200 card of the '64 set, one Mr. Sandy Koufax.

Both players had great seasons prior to the release of the card (Kershaw's W-L record aside), and were/are star left handers for the Dodgers.  The only contrast really between the 2 players is that Koufax was part of the 1963 World Series champion team, while Kershaw's 2012 Dodger squad finished 2 games from a wild card spot, and 8 games out of first.

While I'm sure that Topps had known for a least a year that Kershaw was going to be #200 in the set to make the comparison to the '64 set a lot more tolerable, I thought about the other cards in the set and how they compared to each other.

I'm sure I'll be able to find a few other card #'s in the set that will be either as close as the Kershaw-Koufax pairing, or as far apart as the sun and the moon. 

Now only if high school English had more cards, maybe compare and contrast would have meant a lot more to me....

Thanks for reading, Robert

Common card of the day: Al Leiter

A little wearing of the green for all the fine Irishmen/women reading today.  Happy St. Patrick's Day to all!

Thanks for looking, Robert

Moving the Heritage & Flagship inserts/parallels

As you may know, I'm not a big insert collector.  Parallels in certain circumstances, yes, but not inserts. 

I've tried to keep them moving as quickly as I can, just to keep a little room around for other cards.

So, without further adieu, let's get the party started, and see how many of these beauties we can move out in the next couple of weeks.

Let's start with flagship:

The calling card inserts look really nice,but I'm sure that there are fans of these three who would enjoy these cards much more than I. 

The chasing history inserts is an interesting idea, but there's no place for them in my collection.  Help me find them a good home.

A couple of chasing the dream inserts.  I'm sure that there are some team collectors that would be interested.

The Emerald Green parallels are of a couple of stiffs who will never amount to a hill of beans.  The '72 mini looks a little fishy to me.  Cardinals fans might enjoy the camo and cut to the chase cards.  I'm not sure if there are any Yankees fans left out there, but if there are one of them might like the Pettitte.

On to Heritage.  Let's start with the Blue Parallels, which in my opinion look kind of snappy.

Again, nothing but stiffs here.

How about a black backed base card....close your eyes because this one features two guys who just won't do anything for your fantasy team.

Neither of these guys are from Venezuela, but the card is...supposedly

I kind of like the New Age Performers insert, probably one of the few times over the years of Heritage that I have enjoyed the design.  I already have the R.A. Dickey NAP card for my Jays collection (thank you Pat)

The News Flashbacks are an insert set that I wouldn't miss if they ever stopped producing them.

Here are some more various inserts from Heritage for your consideration:

Those Trout and Jeter guys just keep popping up, don't they??

Finally, a couple of chrome goodies.

I've had good luck with the refractors, I've hit 3 so far, 2 of which were numbers I needed for the serial insanity set. 

So there you have, trade bait from the first quarter of 2013.  Let me know what you would like to trade for in the comments, and if you're just wanting to do a 1 for 1 or 2 for 2 trade, if you prefer the plain white envelope method of shipping.

Looking forward to hearing from you, Robert

Common card of the day: Ed Kea

Now just imagine if his parents would have named him Ian.

He could have signed everything  I. Kea.  (insert groan here)

Thanks for looking, Robert