A Trade From the Dime Box

A few weeks ago, well maybe even a month ago at this point, Nick over at the Dime Boxes blog put up a post about how trading seems to have slowed down for him. I was reading it and realized that trading has slowed down for me a lot as well (despite the fact I just featured two trade packages in previous posts). 

At the end of the post, he asked if anyone would be willing to strike up a trade. So of course, since I haven't traded with anyone in a while I said "of course, I'll trade with you Nick." And thus, that's how these cards arrived in my mailbox a few weeks ago. As usual, Nick sent cards that hit everything I collect.

I'll start with vintage as I enjoy nothing more than receiving vintage in trade packages. And boy, am I starting with a doozy. This 1971 Pete Rose card has obviously seen better days but this is a card that even though it wasn't on my "most wanted" list, it's a card that I've had my eye on here and there for a while. 

Defunct teams are another one of my guilty pleasures when it comes to cards. Here's a card from 1964 Topps depicting the Milwaukee Braves. The Braves in 1964 went 88-74 and finished 5th in the National League. They would depart for Atlanta following the 1965 season. Fun fact: The Braves team never had a losing season in Milwaukee.

These are some 1970s O-Pee-Chee cards and I was pretty excited to see these. I might do a write-up on these in a separate post down the road but I'm not sure. Maybe something for the SABR Baseball Cards blog? I'm still looking for a topic to potentially write about there. 

Here's some cards from the 1981 Topps scratch-off game. Aside from scratch-off tickets from the lottery, I've never really played any type of scratch off games. I'm guessing that the way this was played is that you scratch off circle by circle? Not sure. Anyway, these are pretty neat little oddballs.

More modern stuff now and there were these manu-relics included. I'm not down on these as a lot of people are and I think that they definitely have their place in blaster boxes or part of retail packs. I would, however, be disappointed if I bought a hobby box and got one of these as the "guaranteed hit".

I like to collect a little bit of everything, as most can see from my want list, so Nick included a little bit of everything. First we have this very shiny Willie McCovey card.

I can't tell you the last time I received cards of Tony Gwynn in a trade package. These were certainly unexpected and very welcome. 

Good stuff of some misc Hall of Famers here. Always nice to add another Eck to the collection.

The Ozzie card on the left is from the 1990 Baseball Card Magazine set. It's pretty close to the 1969 Topps design so they get credit for that for sure. The other is a from the Score P&G All-Star game set. I received the whole set last year as part of my blogger secret Santa package so this will go in with my Cardinals cards.

Don't have a lot of Topps Kids cards in my collection. I like that these aren't completely crazy like Garbage Pail Kids but are just fun enough that they definitely bring me back to being a kids in the 90s.

A couple new Robin Yount cards. The yellow border one is a box bottom.

In terms of team collections, Nick also hit my Reds and Indians team collections pretty good. It's always a good day when I can add Cy Young cards to my collection.

Some random Indians from then and now including a 2018 Donruss Jay Bruce which was on my most wanted list and a Utz oddball of Jose Ramirez.

Some Edwin Encarnacion cards. Seems like forever ago when he was with Cleveland. I only really look for his cards as a Red or Indian.

And some Francisco Lindor to close out the Indians portion. With all of these cards (plus the ones I didn't show), it'll be a really good time to go through my Indians binder and streamline everything.

Moving on to the Reds section now, these Hal Morris cards are from Baseball Card Magazine as well. I think my favorite of these is the 1970 version.

Yay! Griffey Jr. cards! I'll never tire of Griffey Jr. cards featuring him with the Reds. It's still kind of mind boggling to me that the Reds were able to get him from the Mariners.

More Topps Kids cards.

Some early 2000s action here, including a card of Jose Rijo during his comeback period. For those who don't know, Rijo was out of baseball from 1996-2000 due to numerous elbow problems. Finally, he returned to the bigs in 2001 as a reliever and then managed to even make some starts in 2002 including the final game at Riverfront Stadium. He was going to pitch in 2003 but his arm troubles resurfaced and he retired soon after.

This Adam Dunn card is from a Reds stadium giveaway set. As far as I know, the Reds are one of the few teams, if not the only team, that still produces their own unique card set. I always like the Fleer Greats set as well, if not for the front, just for the backs that have full and complete career stats.

A few random Reds from the 80s

And finally a nice batch of modern day Reds cards. Matt Kemp was dumped from the team in early May, right when Nick Senzel was called up (can't say I really miss Kemp at all) and Scooter Gennett was traded to the Giants during the Reds trade deadline bonanza.

This was a fantastic package from Nick and I appreciate him sending it over. I'm working on a return package and while I can't guarantee it'll be as epic as what he sent, I'm hopeful there will be some stuff in there he can use. Thanks Nick!

Topps Big League ... Target Acquired

So Topps Big League has been all the rage recently and I decided to bite and grab some from Target during a recent excursion. I could've honestly come up with a witty title for this as well but I think most of the good ones have been claimed already.

Last year's debut issue was nice but I thought some of the pictures were a little dark, as if they were taken on an overcast day or something. That's just me though. This year though, I really like the design. It kind of combines the 1965 Topps flag design with the 1987 Topps wood background. The team logos look tremendous on the flag, although if I had one nitpick, it'd be to use a different color flag on those logos with darker backgrounds (like the Braves logo).

Of course, the allure of Big League is a "bargain priced" set but that's not to say that you won't find some gems. The photos on these cards are worthy of Stadium Club in my opinion. Also, the yellow cards come one per pack, much as they did last year.

Here's some cool horizontal cards as well. I can't get enough of Justin Verlander Astros cards.

With Big League being an in-season issue, there will be cards of players in new uniforms. This one will fall into the "short term stops" category with Jay Bruce having recently been shipped to the Phillies.

Here's another short-term stop and the main card I wanted from this set, especially when I saw that Matt Kemp was jettisoned from the Reds after only 20 games in favor of Nick Senzel. With the Reds, he hit .200/.210/.283 with only one home run and 5 RBIs.

More Reds cards. Scott Schebler was sent down to Triple-A when the Reds called up Nick Senzel and released the aforementioned Matt Kemp. Votto is slowly starting to come around and Jesse Winker has been a great as the everyday left fielder this year. 

Here's a bunch of dudes in old school style uniforms, which is one of my mini-collections. I think my favorite of these is Yonder Alonso in the mid-80s White Sox uniform.

I also got a fair amount of inserts. These are the two insert sets I really like. I didn't care much for the inserts with the caricatures. I set those into the trade box. The "Wall Climbers" set is really cool.

Since I bought a blaster, I got a bonus four-card pack of blue parallels.

Also, I managed to get one of these shiny parallels from both the blaster and the fat pack. The scanner doesn't do justice as to how cool these cards are.

All in all, I really really like this year's Big League offering. Lots of fun inserts, cool photography on the base cards, dudes in new uniforms, dudes in throwback uniforms, short-term stops, and more. I'll definitely be buying more of that.

Around the Horn: Cleveland Indians

My "Around the Horn" series returns (finally) and this time I'm heading up to the shores of Lake Erie and exploring one of my team collections ... the Cleveland Indians!

The Indians have been around since the founding of the American League in 1901 and had many different names in their formative years until settling on "Indians" in 1915.

League Park
Photo: wikipedia.org

The team played in League Park (aka Dunn Field) from 1901-1932 and a lighter schedule of games from 1934-1946 when they split home games at both League Park and Cleveland Stadium. League Park also hosted the two predecessors to the Indians, the Cleveland Spiders of the National League and the Cleveland Lake Shores of the Western League.

These Conlon cards represent players from the early years of the Tribe. I love the Colon cards because not only are the usual players featured but you also get forgotten players of the era like Neal Ball, Sarge Connally, and Ab Wright. The Neal Ball card I'm particularly fond of as it just shows how primitive major league baseball was back then. The outfield wall is littered with advertising and beyond that there are houses in the background. As for Ball himself, he was a journeyman infielder who played 7 seasons with Cleveland, New York, and Boston. The back of the card tells how he turned an unassisted triple play on July 19, 1909. 

Cleveland Stadium
Photo: wikipedia.org

The Indians abandoned League Park for good after 1946 and moved into the massive Cleveland Stadium on the shores of Lake Erie. During their time there, the Tribe had some pretty lean years but it hosted two World Series (1948 and 1954) and the All-Star Game four times (1935, 1954, 1963, and 1981).

My actual Indians card collection begins with this 1957 Topps Don Mossi. It's the oldest Indians card I have in my collection. 

Jumping ahead to the 1970s now and some of my favorite Indians cards from the 70s, including two players who played for both the Reds and the Indians, Vada Pinson and Buddy Bell. The most interesting thing here is the Ken Aspromonte manager card, not because of the manager himself, but because of the coaches, especially the pitching coach, Warren Spahn. I find it terribly hard to imagine Warren Spahn in an Indians uniform.

The 1980s were pretty thin on good teams for the majority of the 1980s and had only two winning seasons (1981 and 1986) but still never rose above 5th place during the decade. They had some good players though like Len Barker, who threw a perfect game in 1981, Toby Harrah, Andre Thornton, and Brook Jacoby. Speaking of Jacoby, checkout the dark blue uniform top on him. I don't remember that uniform at all.

To anyone else, this would be just another 1989 Topps card. However, to me, it's one of the most interesting cards of the set. The Indians drafted Mark Lewis out of high school in 1988 and it was out of Hamilton High School, which is only about 15 minutes from me. While I never went to school there, I hung out with a bunch out people there years ago and got to know the area quite well. Hamilton itself is quite the neat little city with a really awesome downtown area and a branch campus of Miami University. The neat thing about this card is that I know exactly where those baseball fields are where that picture was taken and it's of a local guy proudly representing Hamilton on a Topps baseball card. As for his career, he carved out a nice 11-year career as a journeyman infielder with two different stops in Cincinnati.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that the Indians gained prominence being featured in the movie "Major League" which was released in 1989. When I first saw it, I didn't think much of it but over time it's definitely grown on me and is one of my favorite baseball movies now. It spawned a successful 1994 sequel "Major League II" and a third, not so successful entry "Major League: Back to the Minors" in 1998 which bombed at the box office.

Progressive Field (aka Jacobs Field)
Photo: wikipedia.org

The Indians began the 90s the same way they ended the 80s, near the bottom of the standings. However, Mike Hargrove took over as manager in 1992 and the team moved out of tired old Cleveland Stadium after the 1993 season and into shiny new Progressive Field (formerly Jacobs Field) and had brand new uniforms to match. I've seen a couple games at the stadium and it's a wonderful place to see a ballgame.

The Indians dominated the American League pretty much from 1994 to 2001 with players like Jim Thome, Albert Belle, Roberto Alomar, Manny Ramirez, and Kenny Lofton mixed along side older stars like Bip Roberts, Eddie Murray, Dennis Martinez, and Orel Hershiser.  The early 90s weren't without some interesting players too like Keith Hernandez, Eddie Taubensee, and Jeff Shaw, both of who were part of some of the better Reds teams of the 90s as well. I've still yet to figure out where that Kenny Lofton card in the first photo came from. If I had to guess, it was probably from a giveaway to commemorate the final season of Cleveland Stadium.

Here's a bunch of IP autographs I've acquired through various trades. I've mentioned this in a previous post but my favorite of the batch has got to be Dave Burba, with Charles Nagy a close second.

These cards from the 2000s are just awesome. I never bough any Upper Deck Sweet Spot as my collecting had pretty much fizzled out by then but it's nice to have them now.

I don't even remember Doc Gooden's stint in Cleveland but he pitched there in 1998 and 1999 amassing an 11-10 record and a 4.92 ERA over 45 starts in those two seasons.

Some modern cards now celebrating the rich past of the team from early stars like Nap Lajoie to more modern stars like Jay Bruce who spent the the latter part of the 2017 season with the Indians to help them in the playoffs.

I've talked a lot about the team itself but haven't really talked about my player collections. There are really only a handful of Indians players I focus on with Jim Thome being at the top.

Of course, I can't talk about the Indians and not mention Dennis Eckersley. I picked up that 1976 Topps card for five bucks at the flea market probably about five or six years ago.

Bert Blyleven is another pitcher from the Indians I tend to collect. Not so much a lot of his other stuff but definitely his Indians cards for sure.

I can't talk about the current Indians without talking about one of their top players, Francisco Lindor. These are my five favorite Lindor cards I have. 

I wanted to close this out with this card, my absolute favorite card I have in my Indians collection. I acquired this card in a trade with P-Town Tom and it's absolutely stunning. As a matter of fact, it's one card I actually keep in a penny sleeve and top loaded because I like it so much and I don't want anything to ruin it. 

So there it is, a look at some of the Indians cards in my collection. I know this was rather lengthy but I dug through two binders worth of Indians cards, hence the length. The next installment should be a bit shorter. Speaking of which ...

On deck for the next entry ... the Seattle Mariners