Cards on Cards Dumps Extra Cards

Everyone's favorite Cardinals fan, Kerry at Cards on Cards, was looking to shed some excess cards recently and I was the beneficiary of a nice bubble mailer a few weeks back. The only thing he asked is that a PWE or something gets sent back his way.

The bubble mailer was quite the eclectic package. Lots of Reds and lots of other stuff. Here are some shiny Reds that will definitely find a home in my Reds binder once it's re-organized. The Johnny Cueto card is some sort of shadow box card from the revived Pinnacle line a few years back.

I've never really been much on the Turkey Red cards but I really like that Frank Robinson card. All of these will also land in my reorganized Reds binder.

And two more shiny cards. Let's look at the threesome on the "Talent Pipeline" card. Hunter Greene was out all of this year after having Tommy John surgery, last I checked Shed Long is still with the Mariners, and Nick Senzel is the Reds everyday center fielder.

Keyvius Sampson has not resurfaced in the bigs since appearing in 18 games for the Reds in during the 2016 season. He was a decent pitcher and pretty much filled a gap in the bullpen and made spot starts as needed. For 2019, he spent the season with both the Giants Rookie League and Double-A teams appearing in all of six games. Here's a fun fact though...he was the KBO league's (as in the Korean League) strikeout leader for 2018.

Here's a nice Billy Hamilton relic card. I was not expecting this but I'll take it.

Speaking of Billy Hamilton, here are some cards of his when he was with the Royals. He didn't fare too well in Kansas City this year and hit a paltry .211 over 93 games. He was picked up by the Braves on waivers in August and has made 17 appearances for them as of this writing.

I love me some shiny cards and these certainly fit the billy. I've really, really liked what I've seen from the Panini Prizm line this year.

Oddballs are always appreciated as well. I've already covered Hills in a post this past summer but this is the first I've seen of cards from the True Value line. For those not familiar, True Value is a chain of independent hardware stores throughout the US (for those in the grocery business, kind of like an IGA) that sell tools, appliances, lumber, paint, etc. The Buddy Bell card above is from their 1986 set, which was the only mainstream set that the company ever produced.

Diamond Kings cards of Hall of Famers. I think it's great that card companies create cards of Satchel Paige with the Browns as that team it nearly all but forgotten about.

A few great cards of Juan Marichal including a card of featuring both Marichal and Bartolo Colon. How can you really go wrong with that?

Some fun Willie Mays cards from 1993 Upper Deck. That checklist card is super cool.

More Hall of Famers, this time from various runs of Allen & Ginter.

And finally, a nice random batch of cards that I couldn't find any place else for in this post. 

Lots of great stuff here from Kerry. I appreciate him sending these over and I'll return fire here soon with some Cardinals cards.

Marichal and the Pilots

A few weeks ago, you may recall, I went to the monthly card show at the Nutter Center in Dayton. Well, after showing off my wares from that show, I received an email a few days later from one Mr. Haverkamp proposing a trade.

You see, he'd been in search of the 1962 Post Juan Marichal card I picked up for a while now in order to help complete his team set. He graciously offered another vintage Marichal and some 1969 Pilots cards in return. I figured why not. It'd be a nice to do a quick trade with a new trading buddy.

Here's the vintage Marichal as promised to replace the Post Marichal I'm trading. I'd picked up a 1969 Marichal at the show so this will compliment it nicely. 

The rest of the PWE was filled with 1969 Topps Seattle Pilots cards, which is one of my currently active collecting pursuits. I'm trying to get all Pilots cards from the 1969 and 1970 Topps sets.

Jose Vidal only appeared in 18 games early in the season for the Pilots as a backup outfielder after being purchased from the Indians. He was swapped to the Yankees in May for another outfielder in Dick Simpson but never again appeared in a major league game after the trade. He spent 1969 and 1970 at Triple-A Syracuse and then bounced around to first Toledo, then to the Japan Pacific League for Nishitetsu and finally a few years in the Mexican League.

Roland (Rollie) Sheldon is a curiosity. Not only is this a Pilots card but it's also a zero year card as Sheldon never appeared in a single game for the Pilots. His last major league appearance was in 1966 where he made it into 23 games with Boston. After that season, he was sent to the Reds to complete an earlier trade between the two teams. As for his association with the Pilots, it was a brief 5 game run with the Vancouver Triple-A club in 1969.

Mike Marshall is indeed that Mike Marshall. The same iron-armed hurler who had a stellar four-year run with the Expos and Dodgers in the early 70s and would win the 1974 NL Cy Young Award, spent the 1969 season with the Pilots, who'd selected him from the Tigers in the expansion draft. Marshall posted a 5.13 ERA with a 3-10 record over 20 appearances for the 1969 club.

Ray Oyler was the everyday shortstop for the woeful Pilots in 1969 and was also a fellow expansion draftee from the Tigers like Mike Marshall. He would be out of MLB after the 1970 season with a meager .175 career average. 

And finally the man who captained the club from the dugout, Joe Schultz. His playing career was mainly as a backup during the during the 1940s with both the Pirates and the Browns. 1969 was the only full season Schultz managed in the majors. His only other managerial stint was 28 games with the Tigers at the end of the 1973 season after Billy Martin was canned. 

That's five more cards I can knock off my Pilots want list and a nice Marichal to add to my collection. Thanks for the trade Mr Haverkamp! You're return card is going out this weekend.

Going Through the Archives

This past weekend was Father's Day weekend and, despite the underlying current of a rather expensive car repair and bad customer service at the dealership doing the repair, it was still a fun weekend. The threat of rain kept the family and I indoors for much of Father's Day proper but the day before my mom took us out to eat at Chili's. As a gift to myself, I was on the lookout for Archives. We stopped at Target before lunch but no luck as it looked like their shelf hadn't been updated in over a month. On the way home, we stopped at Walmart and behold ... there were only a few blasters left on the shelf. I nabbed two of them. 

Last year Archives really stepped up their game I thought and it was going to be hard to top it. Wouldn't you know it though, Topps nearly succeeded. I say nearly because the 1982 design was used just a few short years ago in the 2013 set. If they were going to use an early 80s design, how about 1981? Regardless, they are still fun cards. 

The other years that Archives celebrated are 1960 and 1992. The 1992 set I have fond memories of as it was one of the first Topps sets I remember collecting from my youth. Some of the pictures they chose are just great, especially the horizontal ones, such as the Astros cards above. Also, much like the 1960 set, every card in that design in a horizontal one as well.

I got one Bazooka insert in each blaster. They're neat little cards and I was pretty happy to get a Kris Bryant one. The Moncada "rookie star" card and the Verlander are ok. I was sort of hoping for something like last year's Topps Supers in the insert department but these are fine.

One of my favorite things about Archives is that you get cards of players on teams that they aren't normally associated with (the lone exception in this batch being Hank Aaron). The Ozzie Padres card is just absolute gold. Unfortunately, I didn't get a Reggie Jackson Orioles card in either blaster.

The one thing I could've done without is the Jeter reprints. These are the only thing out of the Archives box heading for the trade bin. If they were reprints of older Jeter cards, say from the 90s, then I probably would have kept them. As is, I honestly have no use for reprints of cards from just a few years ago.

Moving on from the negativity, this was the only parallel that came from either blaster, and it's of Juan Marichal. No complaints there. This is the second neat Marichal pull I've had recently as a few years ago, I bought some Heritage packs and pulled out a Juan Marichal jersey card numbered to 49. Maybe the hobby gods are trying to tell me something?

Another great thing about Archives is you get cards of players from way back in the day. I've found that Honus Wagner cards are usually found in the higher end products, at least from Topps, so getting his card from the very first pack was really neat. I also like that they kept them to the old 1960 design instead of trying to put them on a newer design.

Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby? I'm good with that.

And a two more cards that I found to be pretty neat. I can't say I've seen too many cards recently of Blyleven in a Tribe uniform, especially the old late 70s/early 80s design. Also, Eddie Murray has a striking resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. I'll have a royale with cheese, please.

Finally, there are two of these coins in every blaster. In case you can't see by the scan, I got David Dahl, Giancarlo Stanton, Mookie Betts, and Anthony Rizzo. I'm not sure how exactly these will fit in pages so for now I put them in the box that has just miscellaneous stuff in it.

Overall, I definitely dig Archives this year and these definitely made up for the stress and otherwise awfulness I had to deal with from the car repair shop. 

Card Show Report Pt. 3: Time Traveling With Some Vintage

Vintage cards were in plentiful supply at the card show as most dealers had some to offer. Some were good, but there were a lot of commons of older players I'd never heard of before in most of the vintage bins. However, being the deal seeker that I am, I did manage to score a nice lot. For the record, none of these cards cost over a dollar each.

I'll start with this, a very forlorn looking Dixie Howell from 1956 Topps. Anything from the 1950s for me instantly goes into a top loader and into my box of "good stuff" which is filling up pretty fast. I think I might need to transfer some of that stuff into a binder. Anyway, the first table I passed had nothing but vintage bargain bins with the deal of $1 each or 6 for $5. I dug through and instantly saw it was nothing but players I've never heard of. However, I pressed on and dug out this and five other cards which you'll see later in this post. It's in pretty good shape too for being 60 years old

All of the 1973 cards below came from the same person that I've mentioned in other parts of this series who had the 2016 dime boxes. He had two and a half rows of random cards from the mid to late 70s for 25 cents each. I can't pass that up. The '73 set is my second favorite of the decade, next to 1971, so I cleaned up on these.

A bunch of fun players from future Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston to long time Astros player/manager/broadcaster Larry Dierker. I think the gem for me in this batch is the Buddy Bell card with the rookie cup.

I enjoy digging out random cards like these from vintage bargain bins as well. Anytime I can find Vada Pinson cards for cheap, I'll gladly jump on them. A few players here with classic nicknames such as "Blue Moon" Odom and "The Mad Hungarian" Al Hrabosky.

I forget exactly who I snagged these from but they were a buck each. Even though the Frank Robinson is well loved, it's still a pretty cool card of Robinson who was entering the twilight of his career. I was thrilled when I found the Joe Morgan card for cheap, considering his stuff sometime suffers from the hometown price hike since he was a key member of the Big Red Machine.

These four I snagged from the same guy I got the Dixie Howell card that I started this section off with. Gil Hodges is totally mean mugging the camera for some reason. Osteen I've never heard of but it's a early 60s Senators card for a buck, which I'll gladly take. My favorite here and the nice scores of classic A's players from the early 70s dynasty, especially with Vida Blue and Gene Tenace on the same card. I really like the Odom card, the photo is so strange with all the water towers behind him. 

This last batch of vintage came from a guy who had a small box on his table of random 70s stuff for 25 cents each. I dug through and came up with these beauties. I'll take that deal any day of the week. The 71 cards pretty much met my quota of all the 71 cards I want that I don't have to shell out big bucks for.

Definitely a great haul of vintage stuff. The final part featuring all of the non-baseball stuff is coming up soon. Stay close.

Card Stories #1

Here are a few cards from my "good stuff" as I call them and the brief story behind them. Let me know if you like these random card profiles and I'll do more of them ....

This card came from a blaster box of Topps Archives that I picked up at Wal-Mart just for the heck of it while I was buying some groceries. My experiences with blaster boxes are pretty dull and boring, as was the case with a Gypsy Queen blaster I bought earlier this year but I have to say, I was pretty pleased with this. Not only did I get this cool John Franco card, I also got some nice commons, some Reds for my Reds binder, and a Will Ferrell card. Not bad for 20 bucks!

 

 I picked this up while I was visiting family in the Akron area over the July 4th weekend. My uncle and I ventured over to Medina, about 20 minutes away from their house, and we stopped in the card shop up there. Of the cards in the case, this was by far the best one he had in my price range. After getting the guy to knock two bucks off the price (really?) I got this and three packs of Panini Prizm. My elation after my purchase was short lived, only to realize the dude had sold me packs of 2012 Prizm he had in with the 2015 Prizm for the same price as the 2015 product! Anyway, the Manziel card is nice and #'d out of 115. This fits pretty well next to the Cris Collinsworth card I mentioned a few posts back as I start to build up my football collection.

Over the easter weekend I was visiting my in-laws in North Carolina and I decided to check out the card shop down there. While there, I was still on a kick of buying 2015 Heritage packs. I picked up probably five or six packs and when I got home and opened them I was pretty excited to pull this out of the last pack. Along with a Mike Trout action variation SP and an Albert Pujols SP, these were some pretty good packs.

Finally, we have this Jorge Soler card. Not a big Cubs fan, especially since they are in the same division as my Reds, but I do respect what they've done this year and Soler is one of their best young players. This came out of the last batch of Donruss packs I bought at the card shop earlier this summer and it displays pretty nice along side the Marichal card shown above.

Hope you enjoyed reading these "Card Stories" posts as I call them. If you like them, let me know and I'll do more of them.