Week in review: Chipped away at a lot of items

I guess I'd have to say that the best part of this week is that I minimized the card purchases, both online and in the stores.  I only spent $3 online and did all right; Justin (Twitter ID: @Jloza330) sent me some cards that hit a couple of want lists....

Justin saw my tweet about knocking off the Judge and Trout greens, so he sent me a message to let me know he had these 4.  $3  and these 4 were in my hands, and he generously also sent me this Andrew McCutchen rookie reprint

This is the sapphire version from the 2013 Bowman set, and it goes along with the Jim Thome sapphire rookie version I have from that year as well. 

Speaking of Jim Thome, I also picked up one of his older cards from a TCDB trade with regular partner John (TCDB ID:herkojerko).  Not only did I get the Fleer '94 card, but he sent a couple of Ichiro's as well.

Gotta love the '19 Archives version, using the '75 design.  I think it looks great, and it does a good job on the back as well, even if it doesn't have all of his stats.  The cartoon quiz I also found interesting, so I'll share it with you. 

How many .400 hitters played for a 1st place team?  Answer at the end of the post.

I've also developed a soft spot for the Diamond Kings cards for my player collections so I was glad to get this year's Ichiro also.

Not only did I get those 3 from John, I nabbed a trio of well loved '78s as well.

Yep, they don't look too bad via the scan, but John's grading on them was a bit tough, they are actually better than I expected.  The scan didn't pick it up very well, but there is a "33" to the left of George Mitterwald's name.   Uniform # maybe?  Nope, George played from 74-77 with the Cubs and wore the #15.  There's no telling why that 33 is there. 

Didn't even make it to half of the weekly budget this week, I spent just over $10 in postage for 4 envelopes, and $3 on twitter.  I even completed a trade with long time fellow blogger Colbey, hopefully repaying a bit of the kindness he has shown me and many others with his free breaks over the years.   I wound up sick last weekend so I didn't hit the monthly card show, thus the reason for the low dollar amount.  I'm hoping to pick up one of either Ozzie Smith's or Dave Parker's RC sometime this week to make up for it.

ANSWER:  None

Was shocked to see that answer, so I took a look.  Assuming that 1900 was used as the cut off for the modern era of baseball, then yes indeed it is true.  A few 2nd place finishes, but the teams that had players hit .400 were never a pennant winner.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

A couple of more trades come in

A rare day when I receive a couple of trades in the mailbox, and none of the cards end up going towards any of my sets.   Mind you, it was only 7 cards that came in, but still...

A pair of really nice refractor cards from the early part of the 10's came all the way from CA courtesy of multiple time trade partner Mike (TCDB ID: 49ants), who received a duplicate I had of McCutchen, and the Oracle Park black parallel I had from this past year's Topps set. 

These 5 cards came from new trade partner Leo (TCDB ID: LO212257) and had me scratching my head at a couple of them.  The T.Y. Hilton portion of my collection is starting to fill up nicely, as these two cards put me solidly into the 50's.  When I made the offer to Leo, I couldn't believe that I didn't have either the McCutchen or the Fitzgerald base cards in my collection.  Had to stop and check both binders to make sure.  Needed them both...

Now you may be thinking the Greg Cater card from '83 Topps FB is a little random, but I actually have a want list on TCDB for the set for a friend of mine.  Need about 75 more to go to finish the set, a lot of them star cards, but it'll be fun to see if I can get a few of them for him via the trade route. 

Another trade or two to come in and I'll hit the 200 mark for completed transactions on the site.  Not bad since I started 2019 at just 37.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

2 down, 8 to go

Just as quickly as the '81 set was done and written about last week, my recent COMC order finished off another set.  Since I'm going in a specific order, '82 Topps is the 2nd set in the predetermined order and the final 10 cards I purchased will be shown off this evening.

Decided to lump the 3 in action cards together, not only because they look good all on the same scan, but there's a lot of hits in those 3 bats.  I decided to take a quick stab at how many hits these 3 Hall of Famers combined for, and I was about 700 shy.  I'll give you the total hits at the end of the post...

No shortage of star cards on this scan as well.  All 6 of them Hall of Famers.  Combined cost was just over $4, and you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you that Alan Trammell's card was the most expensive at 95 cents.   Took a quick look at Fergie Jenkins' career stats, and I had no idea that his career started with 8 relief appearances for the Phillies back in 1965 and '66.

I knew of Jenkins time in Chicago, Texas, and I even remembered his 2 seasons in Fenway.  Fergie also liked to finish what he started as he recorded 20 or more complete games in 8 out of 9 seasons between 1967-75.  That included a Cy Young in 1971 when he won 24 games and completed 30(!) while posting 325 innings and walking just 37 batters.   Wow...

The Braves future stars card rounds out the set, featuring speedster Brett Butler and closer Steve Bedrosian, winner of the '87 Cy Young award in the NL with 40 saves and a sub 3 ERA.  I took a look at the Cy Young race that year because Bedrosian's stats while good, weren't off the charts.   There really wasn't any starter that year that was really dominant, but the most interesting pitcher was Nolan Ryan.  Ryan finished tied for 5th in Cy Young voting with 12 points, but led the league in ERA with 2.76 and K's with 270.   Problem was, he went 8-16 for the Astros that year, and the team won only 78 games. 

ANSWER:  Morgan, Yastrzemski and Carew combined for 8989 hits.  I guessed around 8200, thinking that Yaz only scratched 3000 hits (he was over 3400), and that Morgan was around 2200 (he was over 2500). 

1983 Topps is up next, and I should have that done by the end of January.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Stained glass on a Sunday

I don't know of anyone else on twitter or on the blogs that collects Larry Fitzgerald.  I haven't seen anyone else post cards of him....ever.  I've been fortunate on a few occasions to have other bloggers approach me with offers of cards featuring him.

This luck happened again this past week, as fellow blogger Jon (A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts) sent me a DM on twitter asking if I had the stained glass version of Fitz's card from 2015 Prizm Draft picks. 

Stained glass?  Yeah, I was pretty sure I didn't have anything that resembled that, so I provided a quick response of no.

Now I do!  Great looking card and a very nice add to the Fitzgerald collection, which is now up to 342 cards, a far better amount than I imagined when I started collecting him. 

Jon also mentioned he was going to find a card to add to the envelope so it wouldn't arrive alone.  I thought it might be another card from one of my player collections.   Nope...

'68 Topps #306, Mike Ryan.   Totally unexpected.  Only 37 more cards to hit the halfway point of the '68 set.   Not a priority at the moment, but anytime you can add a card to a vintage set it's great. 

Blogger generosity at its finest, thank you very much for the cards, they really are appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Serial Saturday #27: Free is good

Advertising apparently works.  The other day I posted about picking up the final card for the '81 Topps set after writing a post about the card a couple weeks before. 

Recently I updated my TCDB profile and added this line

Side collections:  Cards serial #'d/99 that are purchased for less than $2.50

I'm not sure why I added it at the time; I imagine I wanted to get the word out about the collection.  A few days later, I received a trade offer, 3 for 1.   I traded off 3 of the 2019 Topps Gallery Wood border cards (which look great if you ask me) and received this in return.

Art by Carlos Cabaleiro

Now, if I didn't have a few dozen sets in the works currently, this set might have been something I would have gone after.   These are great looking cards, and having this as part of my #'d / 99 collection is a great plus for me.

If I'm Brad Keller, do I really want a card depicting me with my face covered?  That's up to him I guess, but this is definitely a unique add to my collection.   Even better is the serial #...

This is numbered 99/99!  Probably the only one I will ever add to this collection with that number. 

Many thanks to Robert (TCDB ID: golfslocum) for the trade offer, it really is appreciated. 

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert