Around the Horn: Los Angeles Angels

Ah yes, the Angels ... the "other" baseball team in L.A. Despite them taking up residence only an hour south of the Dodgers, I never really hear them get talked about as much as the Dodgers do. 

The Angels have been around in some form or fashion since 1961, when they and the new Washington Senators (now the Texas Rangers) were granted a team in the first round of American League expansion. 

This is the only card I have representing the 1961 Angels and it's a pretty interesting one, Ted Klusewski (one of my player collections I'll get to when I cover the Reds) with a White Sox hat with the Angels listed as the team. It also doubles as his "sunset card" as 1961 was his last year in the bigs.

In terms of player collections, my biggest player collection for the Angels would have to be Mike Trout. These are my two favorites. The first is from 2015 Heritage and is one of those pesky "action image" variations that I pulled from a pack I from a card shop in Jacksonville, NC on a trip to visit the in-laws. The other one is a 2016 Heritage Chrome card that came from, of all things, a random Target 50-card, 4-pack repack deals.

Some horizontal Trout cards, I always think the 2013 card is the famous rookie card because of the rookie cup but I'm not lucky enough to have that. I'll settle for the rookie cup card though.

Overall, I've got 27 unique Mike Trout cards in my collection, most of them pack pulled. I didn't realize exactly how many cards of him I had until I pulled them all for this post. I guess I'll consider him an official player collection now.

I can never figure out if this card belongs as part of my Mike Trout cards or my Albert Pujols cards. Maybe I should count it for both?

Speaking of Pujols, these are all my Pujols Angels cards. I tend to think of him more as a member of the Angels now instead of the Cardinals

I never realized I had this many Tim Salmon cards. He's not really someone I collect but when I get cards of his, I don't mind at all.

Seeing Reggie Jackson as anything but a Yankee is always cool. I always forget he had a couple stops with the Angels. My favorites of these are the Diamond Kings card at the bottom and the 1987 Topps since it's his sunset card.

I just need 1971, 1975, 1978, and 1980 to complete the entire team card run from 1970-1981. 

I had no clue that Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson were on the Angels together in 1973. They're shown as member of the team in the 1974 set but by then Pinson had been traded to the Royals. Speaking of 1973, I've got both a 1970 and 1973 Sandy Alomar card and when I see cards of his, I usually tend to pick them up.

Who can go wrong with a Kellogg's Nolan Ryan card?

Some fun players from the huge batch of 1982 Donruss I picked up in the community yard sale last spring. 

More neat cards from the mid-80s. Bobby Grich is one of only a handful of 1985 Donruss cards I have in my collection. I really like the design of it and it's one I wish I could find some more cards of in dime and quarter boxes.

A handful of Topps cards from 1985-1988. I'd forgotten that Don Sutton was still pitching in 1987. 

Dave Winfield is definitely someone I have on my player collection list but these are the only two Angels cards I have of him. Maybe once I wrap up all going through all these teams, I'll go back and show the cards I have of all my PCs.

I always like Eduardo Perez when he played for the Reds and I think I got an autograph from him when I was a kid. That minor league Classic card is probably one of my favorites.

A mixed bag of random cards from the 90s. I never understood the name change from the California Angels to the Anaheim Angels and from the red and white uniforms to the blue uniforms with the winged, flying "A" on it (seen here on Troy Percival).

I never did see Bert Blyleven pitch but seeing as he's a Hall of Famer and had a long career, I tend to pick up cards of his when I see them for a decent price. He's not on my official player collection list but if I get enough cards of his at some point, I might eventually add him.

I've shown this card off and talked about it previously but it's a pretty unique card from 1993 Topps. Long story short, the Angels scouts were looking for new talent anywhere and found it by signing three players from Russia as an experiment to see if they could open up a talent pipeline there. MLB.com did a great article and retrospective on it (here) and I encourage reading it and it's incredibly interesting.

In terms of short term stops with the Angels, Eddie Murray is probably one of the most interesting. He played 46 games for the Angels during his sunset season and swatted the final three of his 504 career home runs with them. This is the only Eddie Murray card I have of him that chronicles his brief stint with the Halos.

Some cards from the 2000s. My favorites here are the UD Decades Don Baylor and the 2001 Topps Garrett Anderson. It feels to me that 2001 Topps doesn't get a whole lot of love from the card community but I've always enjoyed it as it's the last Topps set I bought packs of during my initial foray into collecting. Maybe someday I'll attempt the set but the Pujols and Ichiro rookies might dissuade me from doing so.

Some cards of the famous Rally Monkey. Who doesn't love a little mascot action? 

A few random cards from the current decade. I'd had no clue that Jason Isringhausen played his final season in 2012 for the Angels. The Nolan Ryan I picked up at a card show last fall and it's some sort of Panini VIP card.

I don't know much about Jeremy Moore but this has always been one of my favorite cards from 2012 Topps, mainly because of the awesome throwback uniform. As a matter of fact, it's the card that inspired me to start chasing throwback uniforms.

I instantly thought of Dimebox Nick when I plucked this card out of of a dime box at a card show. It's probably one of my favorite cards in my collection overall.

I'm sure most everyone forgot about Brandon Phillips' 24 game sojurn to L.A. towards the tail end of last season. Truth be told, I'd forgotten about it too until I pulled this card out of a Heritage pack earlier this year. Despite him being an anchor of the Reds infield, he never was one of my favorite players. I always found him a bit too cocky and show-boaty.

Even though I've shown this card previously, I felt it was appropriate to close out with my lone card of Shohei Otani that came out a Gypsy Queen retail pack.

That pretty much covers the best of the Angels cards in my collection. I hope you enjoyed this entry in the "Around the Horn" series. 

Next up .... the Houston Astros.

A COMC Anniversary Present

The sixth wedding anniversary for my wife and I is this week and every year, she lets me do a little splurge on cards as an anniversary present. She gets video games, I get cards. It all works out. This year, instead of driving 45 minutes up to Dayton for the monthly Nutter Center card show, I decided to do something I haven't done in a long time, that is place a COMC order. I've had a bunch of stuff on my watch list on COMC so I decided to finally cave in an order from it. Since my wife and I have been together for 8 years (married for six), my budget was $80, ten bucks for every year we've been together. Along with stuff on my watch list, I searched around and found a few other neat cards as well.

I mentioned back in my blog bat around post I was thinking of putting together the 2002 Upper Deck Vintage set. While I haven't fully committed just yet, I did buy these six cards as a starting point in case I decided to take the dive. Plus, it's hard to resist cards of Hideo Nomo with the Red Sox, Fred McGriff with the Cubs, and David Ortiz with the Twins all for about 50 cents each.

While I'm on the subject of 2002 Upper Deck Vintage, this particular card was a hot commodity when that set came out. At the time, I was working in a card shop and I was building the set via packs. When I finally got this card out of a pack, I was thrilled. At the time, the Beckett priced it at about $25 because of it being an error card. Since then? Well, less than a buck now.

And speaking of Upper Deck Vintage, here's a random Harmon Killebrew card I bought from the 2003 issue. I'm guessing this design, which pretty much ripped off 1965 Topps, may have gotten them in a bit of trouble. Regardless, it's a pretty cool card with Killebrew sporting the road blues and the Twins flag in bright yellow. I might have to track down more cards from this set as well.

From faux vintage on to real vintage. The Glenn Beckert card was one I needed to put towards my 1974 Topps Washington error cards. I've only got a handful of them left now to complete the whole team set. I also nabbed this 1961 Topps Ted Kluszewski since it shows him in a White Sox hat but lists him as a member of the new Los Angeles Angels.

Speaking of Big Klu and the Angels, I came across this card which was too good to pass up. It's not often that I can get a relic card of his for a decent price, especially considering everything around here is Reds related so finding a relic card of his from the tail end of his career is certainly cool.

Another thing I found while I was browsing through the Upper Deck Vintage cards were the memorabilia cards. I thought the look of them was pretty cool so I added this Randy Johnson card to my stash. I don't recall getting any relic cards out of packs back in the day so I can honestly say this is the first UD Vintage relic card I've ever owned.

COMC seems to be the only place where I can get some decent singles of local teams. Here's a few from the 90s-era of the Cincinnati Cyclones back when they still played in the IHL. These were two of the most reasonably priced Cyclones cards on COMC and I couldn't pass them up. Jaroslav Nedved, while I've heard that name before, I can't remember from where. Going by the stats on HockeyDB.com, Nedved only played two seasons in the states, one of which was with the 'Clones. Paul Lawless on the other had was a grizzled vet who had seen his last six games of NHL action during the 1989-90 season with Toronto. He resurfaced with the Cyclones during the 1992-93 season and and stayed with the team until the 1996-97 season before he joined the Austin Ice Bats.

One team that used to be around that isn't anymore is the Dayton Bombers. This is the first and only Dayton Bombers card I currently have in my collection. I would like to add more but I don't feel like paying $12.95 plus shipping for a team set on Ebay. I'll just keep my eye out on COMC for random cards to pop up. Anyway, the Bombers were an ECHL team that was in existence from 1991-2009. They decided to fold up and release the franchise back to the ECHL in the summer of 2009 after the IHL Dayton Gems showed up in town. They made the Kelly Cup finals in both the 2001-02 and 2006-07 seasons. 

Shane Doan was one of my all time favorite hockey players to watch. He spent his whole career with the Winnipeg/Phoenix/Arizona franchise and retired at the end of last season. Up until now, I had zero cards of him during his rookie campaign with the original Winnipeg Jets. There were a few different ones available but this was the best looking one, at least in my opinion.

Some much needed O-Pee Chee Cincinnati Stingers cards for my team collection. I definitely prefer the look and the pictures of the 1976-77 cards to the 1975-76 cards as the 75's are pretty basic looking. 

I also grabbed a few cards for my defunct teams collection. First, a card of Gilles Meloche, one of the top goalies for the California Golden Seals. The Seals were part of the NHL's 1967 expansion and they were a troubled team from the start, never drawing well at the gate as they moved from San Francisco to Oakland, was plagued by ownership issues, and ended up in the hands of the Gund Brothers. The Gunds, who were from Cleveland, moved the team in 1976 to their hometown and named them the Barons. After two seasons, the Barons ended up merging with the Minnesota North Stars and remain the last team in the four major sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL) to fold.

The one thing I love about COMC is that it's a place where you can get relic cards on the cheap, such as these two goalie cards featuring jersey patches from NHL All-Star Weekend in Nashville a few years ago. I also couldn't pass up the chance to get a nice Devils relic cards in the Ilya Kovalchuk/Travis Zajac dual-jersey card and the Patrik Elias card.

Here's another one of the shiny O-Pee-Chee Platinum die-cut cards I like so much, plus it's Joe Sakic as Quebec Nordique.

I love it when I can find vintage cards of old school stars for pretty cheap. This 1968-69 Alex Delvecchio card only set me back a few bucks. Sure, it's got some paper loss on the front and isn't in all that great condition, but I've never really been a stickler for condition on vintage. Just so long as the card doesn't look like it's been through the wringer, I'm usually good.

I bought exactly one football card, that being this card of John Avery of the Chicago Enforcers of the XFL. A jersey card from a player of a one and done league? That's too much of a novelty to pass up. 

I'll close this out with a batch of some nice basketball cards. Yes, I've said in the past I'm not much of a basketball collector but there are exceptions and Jerry Lucas is one of those exceptions. I tried to get cards of his that didn't feature the same picture over and over, as I've noticed that's a bit of a problem when it comes to Panini and the older players, so I think I did pretty good.

Another player I like to search out from time to time is Oscar Robertson. Again, Panini likes to use the same picture over and over, as evident by the two cards on the bottom, but still these are nice cards of an NBA legend and of the Cincinnati Royals. 

Speaking of Oscar Robertson, here's a card I had my eye on for a long, long time. I waited until the price dropped on it to a point where I would be ok buying it. It was the most expensive card of the whole lot I've shown so far, coming in at $6.50, but at that price, I just had to add it. 

That's a wrap on my giant COMC order. I'd say for my budget I did pretty good. While I still like going to card shows (the June Nutter Center show is on my radar for Father's Day), it is nice to order from someplace different now and then. Now, I have to scour COMC for more cards and update my watch list.