Week in review: Spent a little bit more than one week's budget

When card shows come around, I tend to let loose.  After all, if I only took $30 to a show to spend on the sets I'm currently working on, I wouldn't get very far.  So I spend a little bit more, load up on cards, and try to spend the next few weeks playing catch up by spending less.

Being able to spend a little more money allows me to make purchases like the following:

Love the sleeveless jerseys.  I wouldn't mind seeing more of those around baseball

Ron Willis looks kind of spaced out

I wonder how Dave Ricketts was able to wear those glasses under his catchers mask.

The majority of these cards were either 50 or 75 cents.  The Don Sutton at the bottom was $1 because of the crease that you can plainly see dividing his face in half. 

My favorite card of the bunch?  3rd scan, top left corner, Ted Savage.   Love the old school bear cub logo on the sleeve.   A close 2nd is the Bob Rodgers in the last scan. 

These 28 cards brought me to a total of 98 cards owned for the '68 set.  Exactly 500 to go!  I only need another 22 more cards to hit the goal of having 20% of the set owned by years end.  The '68 is a little more wallet friendly than the '62, so I am likely going to be pursuing this set a little more vigorously.  The burlap design is also growing on me quickly as I obtain more cards.

Total amount spent this week:  $90

I only spent $60 of that at the show, the other $30 was spent in a moment of weakness at Wal Mart last weekend on a bunch of cards encased in metal.  Another bad habit I'll describe in tomorrow's post.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Three thousand nine hundred ninety nine---4000

OK, the hard work (if you can call it that) is finally paying off. 

The Blue Jays collection has finally hit the 4000 mark.

Here's # 3999 for you:

1994 Donruss Special Edition Joe Carter #86. 

And now.   Finally.   The moment you've all been waiting for.   The milestone card, the 4000th Blue Jay card in my collection.

Drum roll please.

OK OK so it isn't a beautiful autograph/jersey/limited parallel card. 

What Blue Jays fan can't get excited over Duane Ward!!  Every card collector loves 1988 Fleer!!   Come on, you gotta be down with that!!

Oh well, at least it made me smile....

Thanks for following gang, see you at the 5000 card plateau.

Robert

Reaching back to the 70's

Blog reader Mark H. reached out to me recently to say that he had a few cards to send my way.  Who am I to say no?  I sent off my address and today I received a couple of great PWE's with some great cardboard inside.

Last year a large portion of my posts were dedicated to finishing off the first baseball set I ever collected as a young lad, '77 Topps.   For some strange reason, while putting together the set I never bothered to grab the Jays singles for a team set.

Mark started to rectify that for me...

When I was 10, I never noticed how bad the airbrushing really was.  They were the Blue Jays, and that's all I cared about.  Interesting little tidbit about the rookies card in the upper right corner.  You can see that the Jays are represented by Leon Hooten, only Hooten never pitched a game for the Blue Jays, or anyone for that matter after 1974!!  If you look below him, Mark Lemongello actually did pitch for the Blue Jays, in 1979 after they acquired him from the Astros as part of a trade that sent catcher Alan Ashby the other way.   Mark only pitched one season in Toronto, while Ashby went on to play 11 solid seasons in an Astros uniform.

How about a couple of Blue Jays who earned rookie cups in the '78 set?

Jerry Garvin was a 1st round pick of the Minnesota Twins in the '74 draft, and was the 4th overall pick in the expansion draft.  I remember him for his high leg kick, and his uncanny ability to pick runners off of first base.  One could argue that he may have been rushed by the Jays, starting his career at age 21.  He wound up lasting 6 years and was done by age 26.

Bob Bailor was picked 2nd in the expansion draft, and was probably one of the most popular players of the team in 1977, hitting .310 while playing shortstop along with all 3 outfield positions.  Bob spent 5 years in Toronto, never again generating the success he had in his rookie season, before being traded to the Mets for Roy Lee Jackson.

The two '79 Topps cards in the envelope represent two players at different ends of the spectrum.

Rick Bosetti was another popular player for the Jays in the early days.  You ask any Jays fan what they remember the most about Bosetti, and you'll get the same response from almost all of them.

Basket catches.  Rick made a habit of catching fly balls using the basket catch technique, which most coaches frown upon.  Toronto fans ate it up.  Bosetti was also the first Jays player to play in all 162 games in a season, doing so in 1979.  He also made a career in politics for himself after he finished his baseball career, becoming the mayor of his hometown of Redding, CA.

Don Kirkwood, well that's a different story.  I would probably be lying if I said that I remember him pitching for the Blue Jays, because frankly, I don't.   Looking at his stats, I see why.  Don only pitched in 16 games for Toronto in 1978, and never pitched again after that. It's pretty sad that he spent the entire '78 season in Toronto, and yet Topps had to airbrush the hat and jersey for a '79 card.

There are plenty more to show off from the 2 PWE's, but I'll save them for another post.

Thank you for the cards Mark, much appreciated!

thanks for reading, Robert

Two for the price of 1 and a quarter

Pat did it again.  Out of the blue, 2 envelopes arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

Oddly enough, instead of the usual pair of PWE's that Pat sends me, I received a bubble mailer and a PWE.

Sorry Pat, I have to say this.  Remember, this statement is coming from the guy who claims insanity on a regular basis.

A bubble mailer and a PWE on the same day?

I know, I know.  Never look a gift horse in the mouth, especially one that has been very generous to me as Pat has been.  None the less, this prompted an interesting conversation between me and the Mrs.

Near as we could figure out, Pat mailed out the bubble mailer full of these...

  
And realized later that he forgot to include these...

My scanning skills hard at work

See, I knew that getting that Blue Jays list up early would pay dividends!!  These 5 cards complete my 1990 Blue Jays team set.   Nice!

So, for the price of one bubble mailer plus a postage stamp (which is a little less than a quarter of a bubble mailer), I have one team set completed, and I'm now down to 5 cards for the 2014 Topps Series 1 set.  (40,171,179,197,280)

Pat, as always, thank you very much!   The cards really are appreciated.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Spoils of the show--1964 Topps OR playing off of the wise one's post

I do read my fair share of blogs, but my favorite is the Night Owl.  After all, his blog is the reason I started my own slice of insanity nearly 3 years ago.  I can remember saying to myself, "if he can do it, why can't I?"

Holy shit was I wrong....

His post tonight was quite an interesting read for me.  Success=boring?  Really?

Maybe I'm having the wrong kind of success lately, because I've actually been enjoying my recent success in acquiring cards for my collection.  Now I wonder if I'm collecting the wrong way.

Hmmmmm

I picked up 17 more cards towards the 1964 Topps set I'm building at the monthly card show.

These 6 got me off to a good start, especially the Jerry Lumpe card.  His hair looks like mine when I let it grow out....yikes!!

These next 6 brought my total # of cards for the set over the 400 mark.  Success!

OK, maybe success is a relative term.  Maybe it means different things to different people.  It could be that success is just celebrated in different ways.

Now I'm wondering if I was successful at all on Saturday.  Nothing special I'm guessing about these 4 cards...

 

These cards are part of the semi-high numbers portion of the set, so maybe it's a success that I was able to pick them up on the cheap.

Maybe I should define success like the The 3 Stooges, they knew how to get things done...

OK, so that wasn't very successful.

You know what, I think I have it figured out.  I'll just follow the lead of N.O.'s favorite team.  They knew how to celebrate success.

To recap.  I have no back story.  I have no interesting anecdotes.

I borrowed Greg's idea.   I borrowed Greg's team. 

Hey, it helped me manufacture another post this evening.

SUCCESS!!

thanks for reading (and the idea), Robert

Spoils of the show--1962 Topps

It felt good yesterday.  I hadn't been to a card show in a couple of months, and I can say that I've missed the experience.   I enjoy sitting at a table in front of a half dozen boxes of 50's and 60's vintage, just poring through the cards, looking at all the history in what has to be the greatest two decades of baseball history (my opinion).

It's even better when I sit in front of those boxes and stick to the plan.  1964.  1962.  1968.  1973.  Yes, I bought cards from each of those 4 sets, and I loved every minute of it.

I even resisted picking up a 50 count box of 58's for $15 (something I'm sure I'll regret down the road).  But I felt I had to stick to what I've been building.  Trying not to blow my budget completely out of the water before some very big shows that are coming over the next few months. 

In the end I did quite well, and wound up with some decent cards.   Today I thought that I'd show off the 1962 Topps cards that I purchased.   I only bought 7, but that's 7 closer to my goal of 30% by the end of the year.  I only need 26 more to accomplish that.

This card is my favorite, #37 in the set.  The Tribe Hill Trio consists of :

• Barry Latman, who had a 13-5 record in '61 with 45 appearances and 5 saves.  Barry also started 18 games and had an ERA of 4.02.  Barry made the AL all star team in '61 as well.
• Dick Stigman, who actually wound up pitching for Minnesota in 1962, and leading the AL in winning percentage with a 12-5 record.  
• Jim Perry, who you may or may not know as the older brother of Gaylord Perry.  Jim had the longest career of the 3 hurlers, pitching for 4 teams over a 17 year span.  Perry won 20 games in back to back seasons, which included a 24 win, Cy Young award campaign with the Twins in 1970.

Another multi player card that I bought with this AL hitting leaders card, #51.

Horribly centered, but still cheap at $1, this came home happily.  What's great is on the back the card lists the top 50 qualifiers for the batting title, which remarkably sees the 50th best qualifying average drop to .248!

The league leader, Norm Cash, had a great season.  .361 average, led the AL in hits, average, on base percentage and OPS.  Norm also hit 41 HR and 132 RBI's, and yet with all those stats, he only finished fourth in MVP voting.  Care to guess who the top 3 were?  Answer at the end...

Finishing 9th in the AL batting race that year was Terry's dad...

Yes, I had a thing for off center cards yesterday, but at 50 cents, I couldn't pass this up.  Until looking up his stats, I had no idea that Francona was born just 30 miles to the south of where I live, in Aliquippa, PA.  You might know Aliquippa as the home to a more famous football player, Mike Ditka.  I found it interesting that Tito was traded for the same player twice (Larry Doby).

This next guy managed two thirds of the players in the question I posed about the MVP race in 1961.

Yep, off center again.

Herb Score was never the same after being hit in the face by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald in 1957.  Herb only pitched 4 games in 1962 before retiring and becoming a broadcaster, eventually being inducted into the Ohio broadcaster's HOF in 1998.
Jim Pagliaroni had a decent 11 year career with 4 teams, including the Seattle Pilots in 1969, which would be his last season in the bigs.
Don Blasingame also had a solid career in baseball, playing for 5 teams over 12 seasons, including a couple of years with the Reds in the early 60's.

Norm Cash finished 4th in the MVP voting, having a career year only to be overshadowed by

1. Roger Maris' 61 Homers
2. Mickey Mantle and his 54 Homers, .317 average
3. Jim Gentile, who surprisingly came 3rd ahead of Cash even though he surpassed him in only 1 category (Gentile had 46 HRs)

A great bunch of cards, mostly cheap, but it's 7 closer to the 30% goal.   I'm sure I'll get there.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sakic Sunday: I didn't have any Pro Set?

The early 90's for hockey collectors was an exciting time.  The market had exploded from the dominance of Topps/OPC, and new sets were coming out.   One of those new sets was Pro Set.  Man, did I buy a lot of that stuff back then.  

I found it hard to believe that for my Joe Sakic PC that I didn't have one Pro Set card.   I changed that this week with my Sportlots purchases.

The 90-91 set (the first two cards on the left) may have been riddled with errors, but it was fun, it was colorful, and it was cheap.  If I remember correctly, 99 cents a pack for 15 cards was the going rate.  Pro Set tried hard to keep up with the technological and set design advances of Upper Deck, Score and Parkhurst, but in the end only lasted 3 seasons. 

3 more older cards that feature Sakic in his Nordiques uniform, and again 3 more cards that I was surprised I didn't have.  I bought quite a lot of these 3 products as well, especially the OPC Premier on the right.  I had to check, but I only had the Topps Premier version of the 93-94 card. 

Finally, 3 cards featuring him in an Avalanche uniform.  The card on the right is the base card from the Playoff One on One challenge game.   I never did learn how to play the game, but did buy a few packs back in the day. 

Still a ways to go to hit the 425 card goal for Sakic; these 9 bring the current total to 320.  There's still so many base cards and parallels that I need, that piling on to Sportlots purchases like I did last weekend should help to put a dent into that total quickly. 

Honestly, it was just nice to be able to update the "have" list for this PC, I hadn't done that in over 4 months.

Thanks for reading, Robert

This pile is a lot more manageable

You've read my posts lately talking about the piles of Blue Jay cards that I've been sorting through.  I've typed the word "piles" so much lately that I think I'm starting to become the king of hemorrhoids. 

Don't get me wrong, the giant envelopes full of cards that I've received recently are appreciated.  But the PWE I received today from Marcus at all the way to the backstop was the kind of break I needed.

4 cards, all Blue Jays, easy to add to the spreadsheet.

A couple of 2014 Topps parallels start this off:

I wonder if DeRosa knows that the Bills aren't coming to play in Toronto this year.  Redmond did well as a part time starter for the Jays last year, and has a chance to become a full time starter with the club this year.

 

The Jays probably should have checked Scott Brow's birth certificate before drafting him, because he sure doesn't look like he's at least 18 years old on this card (actually, he was 25).  Brow only pitched in parts of 3 seasons with the Jays in the mid 90's, and then finished up his career with the Diamondbacks in 1998.

Finally, this Vinnie Chulk 2006 green parallel was a great find.  I didn't even know that there were multiple parallels of this set (a quick eBay search and I found other different colored parallels as well).   It makes your head spin just how many cards UD printed in 2006, because there are 1250 cards in the set, and with parallels #'d out of 50, 99 and 299 (that I know of), the printing presses probably worked a lot of overtime back then.  Still this is a cool card to add to the Jays collection.

Marcus, thank you very much for the PWE!!  Totally unexpected and appreciated!

Thanks for reading, Robert