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!

The Odditorium

I'll admit. I was starting to worry. 

It was days before Christmas and I hadn't heard anything about my Secret Santa package. However, thanks to the magic of the USPS, it arrived two days before Christmas. I opened it on Christmas Day and found out my Secret Santa was Andy (aka bbcardz) of Stadium Fantasium. The box he sent was small and modest but packed a big punch consisting mainly of lots and lots and lots of oddball cards.

I'll start first with the two non-oddball cards he included. On the left is a 2018 Heritage Adam Duvall. Duvall was really good with the Reds and put up some good power numbers but after the trade to Atlanta, he bottomed out. On the right, is a 1969 Topps Jerry McNertney which will be added to my Seattle Pilots collection and knocks one more card off that wantlist.

Now on to the meat of the package, oddballs!

Andy sent over three complete sets of oddballs, first up this 1993 Post Cereal 30 card set. These are some really fun cards and cool looking cards. For now, I've put this in a team bag until I get the chance to page it up in a binder.

Next we have this 18-card set of 1992 Score Procter & Gamble featuring the starters from the 1992 All-Star Game in San Diego.

The last complete set Andy included was the 1992 Post Cereal set. Again, I put this into a team bag to be paged up in a binder soon. The first thing I noticed was that awesome Jeff Bagwell "Rookie Star" card on tip. Maybe I'll go through the two Post Cereal sets in future blog posts. Not sure yet.

There was also a bunch of miscellaneous oddball cards thrown in. I'd ordered the Cap'n Crunch Tony Gwynn in my COMC Christmas order so now I have two of them! Oh well, I'm not going to complain. 

There were also a bunch of Post Cereal cards from the early 90s included. First these from 1990.

Then these from 1991. What is it with cards and yellow borders in 1991? (I'm looking at you Fleer.)

Finally, some cards from my favorite Post Cereal set, 1994. The design on these is great with the green marble-ish borders, the red stripe at the bottom with the name and team, and the players signature in gold. These are just some great looking cards.

Here's some Hostess cards from 1993. I always liked how Hostess was able to use the team logos and hot have to airbrush anything off the cards.

Here's two cards I never knew existed, cards from the California Jumbo Sunflower Seeds company. I tried sunflower seeds once when I played knothole baseball and hated them. I was more of a Big League Chew person. These cards claim that they are from the "autograph series" but I only see an autograph on the George Brett card. Also, the pictures are pretty bland and Brett looks more like a generic high school coach. However, they're oddballs so I still like them.

Lastly, there were these three 3-card packs of Jimmy Dean cards. I couldn't resist cracking these open so here's what was inside.

Pack #1 had Kevin Mitchell, Dale Murphy, and Nolan Ryan.

Pack #2 checked in with Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson, and George Brett.

And the final pack featured Jose Canseco, Frank Thomas, and Dave Justice. That's a solid nine cards right there!

Big thanks to Andy for sending these cards over as my Secret Santa present and for the nice note that I showed at the top. I really appreciate it! Also, thanks to Jon at Penny Sleeves for stepping up and running this years festivities. It was great to participate in again.

Nine Neat Cards from 1982

So I caught wind of this contest going around from the blog called It's Like Having My Own Card Shop in honor of his ninth blogging anniversary. The deal is that you write a post showing nine cards. That's it, plain and simple. So, being one for an interesting challenge, I decided to not only partake in said contest but also show nine cards from the 3,200 count box I have filled with cards from 1982 that I finally sorted out. The caveat to this is that I've already filed away the majority of them so what you see here will be out of my rather large duplicate pile that accumulated. And, to add another fun twist to this, I'll field a starting nine from the group.

Brett Butler (CF)

Speedy base stealer Brett Butler would head the top of this line-up and 1982 just so happened to be his rookie season. In 89 games with the Braves that season, he stole 21 bases, hit .217, and managed 7 RBIs. 

Ozzie Smith (SS)

The strange this about this card is that Ozzie wasn't even with the Padres in 1982. He'd been traded to the Cardinals in December of 1981. This would also give me another base running threat at the top of the line-up for the heart of the order.

Lee May (1B)

Former Reds first baseman "The Big Bopper" Lee May would be holding down first and the third spot in the line-up. 1982 was May's final season in the bigs and he was a part-timer with the Royals. Sure, his power was pretty well diminished by this time but over a 12-season span (1968-1979) over the prime of his career, he averaged 27 homers a season. 

Andre Dawson (RF)

Andre Dawson would be my clean-up hitter, although I can't exactly remember where he hit in the order during his career. I'd put him in right field.

Dave Parker (LF)

Despite Parker being primarily a right fielder, I'd have to put him in left since I've already got Butler in center and Dawson in right. Plus, I'd have a "Hawk" in right, "Bugsy" in center, and "Cobra" in left. Definitely an outfield of colorful nicknames.

Ron Cey (3B)

Ron Cey would man the hot corner for me and bat sixth. Yes, I know that most of the cards I've shown so far have been from 1982 Donruss. It's what I had the most duplicates of.

Gene Tenace (C)

Batting seventh and catching would be Gene Tenace. I had no clue that Tenace ever played for the Cardinals until I found this card. To me that's the beauty of going through early 80s cards like this, you find cards of 70s players at the end of their career with completely random teams, like the Lee May card I showed off earlier.

Pete Mackanin (2B)

In the eighth spot is light hitting second baseman Pete Mackanin. I picked this card for two reasons ... 1) the blue Twins uniform and 2) the fact that he was a former Reds manager. This is also a sunset card as he retired after the 1981 season.

Gaylord Perry (P)

Finally, pitching would be Gaylord Perry who looks rather forlorn on this 1982 Fleer card. Perhaps he knew the end of his career was nigh. This is the only 1982 Fleer card I found from my dupes pile that looked decent. 

So there's nine cards from my 1982 box and a pretty decent starting nine as well. As far as the cards themselves go, Fleer probably had the least interesting set of all of these as the design was pretty basic. I really like the Donruss cards from this time and I might have enough to come up with a starter set. 

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Daniel at the ILHMOCS blog for offering up this contest, giving me a blog topic to write about, and for giving me a fun and interesting way to write about cards from 36 years ago.

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.