The new math mixed with a bit of the past

I recently completed a trade with Ryan from "O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog.  From the package that I received from Ryan, I do believe that he is a purveyor of the new math, because when I was a kid...

12=81 would be an equation that would have been marked wrong on any of my math tests. 

For trading purposes, however, Ryan saw fit to make that equation work.  While I was able to knock a few cards from his '12 Series 2 want list, Ryan knocked a whole bunch of cards off of a couple of my lists, and threw in a few Chrome Blue Jays just for fun.

Ryan first sent me a bunch of '86 Topps, you know the set that the blogosphere is trying to prove to me that you can complete without ever having bought a pack of....

Some random cards from the stack....

Blue Jay fans will remember this pair, because back in the '85 season, Bell charged the mound and kicked  Kison after Kison hit him with a pitch.  George Bell was a helluva player for the Jays, but he was as loose a cannon as you were going to find on a baseball field. 

They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words.  How about a scan is worth 10,000 hits?

A Rose between two Hall of Famers

How about 3 more classic players from the 80's? 

Ozzie Smith hits that HR in '85 that prompts Jack Buck's call "Go crazy folks, go crazy".  Speaking of crazy, how about Reggie's relationship with Billy Martin in the 70's?  Or, maybe a crazy stat for you...Ron Guidry in 1983 pitched 21(!) complete games.  James Shields of the Rays last year pitched 11 complete games, which was the first time that a pitcher hit double digits for complete games since 1999 (Randy Johnson, 12 for Arizona).

To top it off, Ryan sent me a couple of GQ Variations + some Chrome Blue Jay goodness

The Chromes are an absolutely wicked temptation that I must resist this year in order to complete a still long laundry list of other sets that I have on the go.  I've only bought one rack pack for myself so far, and that's where it will stay.   The variation cards for GQ were unexpected but greatly appreciated.

Ryan, thank you very much for the trade, the great lot of cards are really more than expected, and of course very welcome as well.

Thanks for reading, Robert

eBay Masterpieces?

Kind of like an oxymoron, huh?  Come on, you all know what an oxymoron is.  A figure of speech in which contradictory words appear with one another.

Bitter Sweet
Jumbo Shrimp
Free Love (I have Dan Fielding on Night Court to thank for that one...)

All kidding aside, I had some good luck last week picking up some more of the SPs to get closer to finishing the 2008 UD Masterpieces set.

6 more off the books, leaving me with only 8 to go!

4 of the 6 were from a seller that I've dealt with before, great people in the great state of Alaska!  Since they combine shipping, I decided to pickup a little something extra for myself in the process. 

Roy Halladay '07 Masterpieces for less than $4 shipped!  You betcha...

LOL, I kind of cut the top part of the card off, but rest assured it's in great shape.  An even better surprise with this seller from Alaska is when I requested the total shipping...it was $0! 

I'm hoping to knock the Masterpieces set off of my Fab Five list soon...8 SPs can't be that tough to track down...can they?

Thanks for reading, Robert

You'll have to excuse my friend, he's a little slow...

As promised a few days back, here's my "rant" about Allen & Ginter.  It's a rant against myself. 

The rant against myself is the inspiration for the post title.  I'm "the friend", and yea, I'm a little slow (but you knew that already, didn't you??).   There's a video for you at the end of the post to look at, once you see it you'll remember the line.

I was on the way to work the other day, and finally started thinking about how I felt about A&G this year, when it dawned on me.

Topps has released two "vintage" sets, with exactly the same specs.

300 cards.  50 SPs/Variations.  Basically the same, but different.  Grasping at straws I guess.  It seems that Topps has the idea that more sets like these are good for the collector.  Why didn't this dawn on me last year you ask?  Well, I was late to the GQ gravy train, and didn't bother even buying a pack of that release.  If I had become serious about collecting again about 6 months earlier, this post wouldn't have come to be, because I probably wouldn't have tried to collect both last year.

Now that I've realized this, I say to myself "why in the world am I going to collect both this year"?  Not going to happen my friends.  Since I'm closer to completing the Gypsy Queen set, I'm going to scrub the attempt to collect the A&G set. 

That means I have a bunch of cards up for trade for those who are looking to complete the set.  Among those are 18 of the SPs. 

Need em?  Got em?  If you're looking for any of these, please leave a comment, I'll be sure to get back to you as quick as possible.  I'll even try not to be slow...

 Enjoy the video, and thanks for reading, Robert

I've never had the surgery, but now at least I have his card

I wonder if Tommy John should trademark his name.  How many times have we heard over the past several years that this pitcher or that pitcher has had "Tommy John" surgery.  The commentators don't even call it ligament replacement surgery anymore. 

Now, I have a very young Tommy John to look at, card wise at least.  While hunting on eBay, I found John's RC and was able to pick it up for $7 + shipping.  When I received the card, it was much better than I expected.

Outside of the centering issue, the card is in awesome condition.  The corners are good, the original gloss is still there, no creases or markings of any kind.  A great pickup as far as I'm concerned. 

thanks for reading, Robert

Blue Jay Monday: 2012 Triple Play Brett Lawrie

Once again I took the opportunity of a Blue Jay Monday to not randomly select a card to discuss.  During the August group break over at Colbey's Cardboard Collections, there were a few A&G cards that he needed that I was able to send to him.  In return, he threw in a few extra Blue Jays on top of the group break haul, and one of the extra cards he sent me was none other than this.

Panini Triple Play #85, Toronto's Brett Lawrie.  Of course, you have seen many reviews of these cards on many other blogs as I have.  To be honest, I didn't know what to think about this product after seeing all the posts. 

To be honest, I'm OK with it.  I'm not floored by it, nor am I repulsed by it either.  Panini took as much liberty as they could with what limited ability they have to release a baseball product without licensing. 

The black bar with the brand logo and the player name is rather big, but in this case why the hell not?  It's not as if the extra space is taking away from something that is relevant on the card; it is a drawing after all.  The maple leafs (oops) on the red background is a cool touch as well.

The back has the same drawing, a nice little write up (Great White North!  anyone else hear the McKenzie brothers?) and a little trivia for those of us who like to brush up on our baseball knowledge. 

Will I collect this set?  No, that's not happening.  Will I turn my nose up at any Blue Jays from this set that come my way?

Absolutely not.  Thank you Colbey for the extras, great stuff!  Thank you as well for the TSC break in August, there were a lot of great cards in there for me.

Take off you hosers, Robert

How's it going, eh?

Sakic Sunday: The Pro Set Legacy

A little over 20 years ago, a new company hit the card landscape, and offered the collector yet another choice in the exploding world we all know as card collecting.

Pro Set came to town.  Boy, was it riddled with errors.

The hockey set came to pass as one of the most talked about sets ever, because of the 100+ errors that were spotted on the cards.  Names spelled wrong, incorrect jersey numbers, wrong birth dates, stats that were someone else's, etc etc.  If Pro Set could make the error, it did.

What's the old saying though?  There's no such thing as bad publicity?  These errors, along with the novelty of being a new product, gave Pro Set a brief lift in the early 90's.  Problem was, the company couldn't capitalize on their new found publicity, and wound up dying out within a few years.

Every time I look through the Sakic collection I have, I see these Pro Set cards, and it brings back memories of me in college (the first time) ripping through pack after pack of these cards.  I'll be damned if I know where all those cards are now though...

1991-92, the cards were a little better, still not good enough though to make a dent into the titans that were Topps and Upper Deck.

I would have to say that they are middle of the road...nothing exciting about the cards, but nothing really bad about the design either.  The borderless design was different at the time, so they had that going for them, but that's about it.  What surprised me about these 2 particular cards when I took them out of their pages is this:

Both the cards that I own are in French. I don't have an English version of either of these cards.  I know that my PC of Joe has been lacking in more recent years, but this realization today let me know that the early years of Sakic's card history are not complete for me either.

At least I've got a couple of months to get a list together before I hit the hockey Expo in Toronto in early November.  Everything in my collection can't be big hits bought off of eBay, right?

By the way, the old Nordiques uniforms on the card on the left?  I have a feeling we may be seeing them for real within a couple of years...

Thanks for reading, Robert

Other things that I collect: Pucks

Imagine that, a Canadian that collects pucks.   Well I'll be....

Honestly, I don't have a great collection of pucks, for the simple fact that storage/display can be a little bit difficult in a house that's small.  However, there are some that I do have that I find quite interesting.  Such as:

The Youngstown Steelhounds were a CHL franchise from 2005-2008 that played their home games at the Covelli Center in Y-town.  Their games were a fun and cheaper alternative to NHL games, and closer to where I live than Pittsburgh.  The team was coached their last 2 seasons by former NHL tough guy Kevin Kaminski.  Kaminski brought some success to the Steel Valley, as the team during his 2 seasons behind the bench had winning percentages of .609 and .648.  Sadly, the team folded after the 07-08 season (the CHL formally states that they were kicked out) because of a dispute with the league over travel expenses.

Not all pucks are black by the way...

The Panthers had these up for grabs on March 17th, 2011 for their game against the Maple Leafs.  I actually wasn't the first to spot these pucks, my wife actually saw them and suggested that I pick one up.

Needless to say, the Leafs lost that night 4-0 to the Panthers.

Finally, I found this puck in of all places, an antique store in southern Ontario.

For the love of all things great and good in this world, if you're going to put a sticky back price tag on a puck, put the tag on the edge of the puck, not on the face.  You can see the backing of the tag on the red part of the Maple Leaf, frustrating to no end for sure.  I always did like the logo for the 2000 NHL all star game, and I wanna say I picked up the puck for around $5, which I didn't think was too bad.

One of the best banners I've seen on a blog belongs to Jim at Puttin' on the Foil.  Jim's banner is a collection of pucks from the WHA back in the 70's.  I loved most of those logos, there's even a puck with the old Michigan Stags logo, which has to be very tough to find in good condition.

I have a pretty good feeling with the NHL lockout all but a reality, I'm going to have to find something to do to get my hockey fix this year.  I'm about 90 minutes either way from the Erie Otters of the OHL (Canadian Major Junior), or the Wheeling Nailers of the ECHL (lower level farm club of the Pittsburgh Penguins).  I'm sure that I'll be able to enhance my puck collections there.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Other things that I collect: Casino Chips

I thought I'd change things up just a little this weekend, and show a couple of other collections that I have.  Outside of my baseball/hockey card collection, probably my favorite collection would be my casino chips.  This started off and on about 20 years ago when I was working in the casino industry, and naturally when one works in a casino, one invariably ends up playing in a casino.

I had never even thought about collecting chips until I spied a co-worker putting one in his pocket one day while we were at Turning Stone Casino, which is just east of Syracuse, NY.  I asked him why he was putting it away, and he told me that he collected chips from casinos.  I thought that this was a great idea for a collection, and pretty cheap as well, so off I went.

While I don't actively pursue new chips for my collection currently, I still have chips from about 40 different casinos in my collection.  Some of them were personally obtained, some of them were picked up at casinos for me by friends.  The picture that you see below is a frame that my wife bought me for Christmas a few years back, which houses 35 of my favorite chips.  If you look close enough, there are various denominations in there.  Mostly $1 chips, a $2.50 chip and several $5 chips are in the display case. 

 

I also have other chips that are "loose", not housed in any display case or covering.  I keep these handy just in case I get the urge to keep my hands busy with something else besides cards. 

The Hard Rock chip on the left is from one of my favorite casinos, which I frequent on each trip down to South Florida.  The Binion's chip in the center is the last chip from $80 I lost at a poker table on my honeymoon.  That chip will always be a reminder that I played in one of the most famous poker rooms in the world, and the 4 hours I spent in there will always be remembered.  I've never been to Bally's in Las Vegas, but I just wanted to show one example of a chip that made its way home to me from one of my very generous co-workers.

Maybe one day I'll pickup some more chips, but this is one hobby that is secondary to card collecting for me.  With the proliferation of new casinos opening everywhere (hopefully in the county where I live before too long as well), there should always be a new supply of interesting new chips to look at and collect.

thanks for reading, Robert