You've Got Mail #85: The Collector

Over the years I've found one truth about card collecting to be evident ... there is no wrong way to collect. What works for one person will not work for another person. Some may be deeply into team collecting or player collecting. Hey that works. Others, like me, may be more scattered around the map where I collect a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Recently, frequent blog commenter and author of the simply title blog "The Collector" Chris dropped me an email about wanting to do a bit of a swap. I agreed and soon there after a rather large envelope was dropped on my doorstep by the completely unfriendly mailman, who I tend to believe collects nothing but sneers while he's making his rounds. While I won't hit on everything that Chris sent, I'll touch upon the highlights for me.

These Topps Finest cards I've never seen before and they're pretty neat cards. The Reds from 94-97 had a pretty formidable team with a solid line-up and some pretty good pitching. I often think that people forget about Pete Schourek and John Smiley being part of that rotation. Eddie Taubensee was a solid defensive catcher as well. 

I always dug Jose Rijo and I thought it was so cool when he made his comeback in 2001-2002. While he wasn't the same power pitcher he was in the early 90s before he got injured, it was still pretty remarkable to see him comeback from all those injuries and pitch another season and a half. Fun fact, he was the starting pitcher for the last game at Cinergy Field/Riverfront Stadium. Speaking of players who came back from injuries, Devin Mesoraco is healthy this season for the first time is what seems like forever. However, he's been supplanted in the depth chart by Tucker Barnhart, who won a Gold Glove last season. 

Old school Reds cards are always welcomed too. 1981 Topps is one of those sets that most people tend to forget about as is falls right in between two really nice sets, 1980 and 1982, and it's one I don't really see a lot of singles available from. I think that might have a lot to do with the fact there wasn't a very strong rookie class with Tim Raines, Harold Baines, Kirk Gibson, Fernando Valenzuela, and Bob Walk being the top RCs available. This particular card was not one of the top rookie cards in the set as none of these guys would up being ... um, well ... household names. I'll be setting this card aside to do a standalone post on it one of these days.

This is my first experience with 1991 Fleer football and I'm not fully convinced that it's an improvement over it's baseball cousin. Sure, the bright yellow border is replaced by a green border but there is nothing in the background except for a generic sunset color. The name plate on the bottom looks like it was done on a typewriter.

On the flip side, these are some pretty awesome looking cards. The photography on these Fleer Ultra cards is just phenomenal, especially for 1992. The Bengals themselves were not good in 1992, their first season under Dave Shula. Tim Krumrie recorded 4 sacks that season along with 97 tackles and Tim McGee had 35 receptions for total of 408 yards on a Bengals squad that finished 5-11 that year, good enough for dead last in the AFC Central.

One of my side collections is "shiny cards" and do these ever fit the bill. I don't get the chance to buy much O-Pee-Chee Platinum, mainly because singles are impossibly hard to find around my area, but I do love getting them in trades. There's really no good reason I haven't added Mike Smith to my official hockey player collection, I think that might have to change here soon. The card that really takes the cake of these in the Jaromir Jagr team logos die-cut. The picture just really doesn't do it justice.

Chris also hit upon two of my main hockey player collections. First, these two cards of a young Shane Doan. This past season was the first season is as long as I can remember without Doan at the helm of the Coyotes as captain and I think they felt it, finishing with 70 points (29-41-12 overall) and the second worst record in the league. They do have a nice foundation with Clayton Keller, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Max Domi along with Derek Stepan at center and Niklas Hjalmarsson on defense so it'll be interesting to see where they go next year.

Long time readers will know that Martin Brodeur is my top hockey player collection. His cards make up about half of my Devils cards alone and these are some really awesome adds to the collection. While I'm not out to get every card of his ever, I'll keep getting cards of his until I feel I have a decent amount. That's pretty much the way I manage every mini-collection within the collection, once I feel I have a decent amount of a certain thing, then I ease up.

One of the final aspects of my collecting is teams, both old and new. I like collecting defunct teams because it tells the history of the sport through cards. Such as these 1991-92 NHL Pro Set cards of the  long gone Hartford Whalers. While I'm not too familiar with these particular players, I'll be looking them up at some point.

As far as current hockey teams, the Devils are definitely my favorite. They made it into the playoffs this season as the first wild card but got assigned the buzzsaw known as the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round. As much as I would like to see it, I don't think they'll get past that round. Here we've got a few Devils past and present with Cory Schneider, Adam Henrique, and Joe Nieuwendyk to put the bow on this trade package.

While there was a ton of other stuff Chris included that didn't necessarily make the cut to be featured here, I appreciate all that was sent and it afforded me a nice amount of quality quiet time to sort these. Thanks for the trade Chris!

Blog Bat Around: What I Collect

A week or so back, Night Owl made a post about some of the items he collects and just recently followed up on that by officially declaring a blog bat around on the subject. Typically, I don't usually participate in these "Blog Bat Around" type subjects, mainly by the time I have a chance to write about a subject, I'm about 2-3 weeks behind everyone else. However, I'm at a rare point where I'm pretty much caught up on everything (except for a few trade packs I got in the mail recently) so I figured I would jump in on the fun of this particular topic.

I've really enjoyed reading the posts others have done on this particular subject, especially those of my regular trade partners, and it's provided me more ammunition to add to my trade box. Reading want lists and such is nice but really, when it's broken down simply in a blog post, it's much easier to keep track of.

At first I decided to split my collecting interests up into three different posts, however trying to focus on my collecting interests by sport turned out to be a pretty lengthy task, so I decided to summarize my collections in the different sports and other areas I collect.

1. Baseball

Baseball is the primary sport I collect and as far as teams go, the Reds and the Indians are the primary teams I collect. I also go after defunct teams such as the Expos, Browns, Senators, Pilots, Brooklyn Dodgers, Milwaukee/Boston Braves, and the Philadelphia/Kansas City A's. As far as player collections go, there's just too many to list. On my want list page, I did put down a pretty extensive list of players that I quote "collect" but it's just merely a guideline. If I had to pick though, probably my top player collections would be of Barry Larkin, Bronson Arroyo, and Dennis Eckersley.

In terms of sets, the main set I'm trying to complete currently is 1984 Topps, which is my birth year set. I managed to score the Don Mattingly rookie card in last year's Secret Santa package and I'd say I'm probably about 50% complete on the set, but I need to update my want list on that to be sure. Another set I'd like to get started on would be 2002 Upper Deck Vintage, as that was the only set I managed to complete during my initial foray into collecting. I haven't really started on that at all yet though.

Some team sets I'm currently trying to track down are the 1969 and 1970 Seattle Pilots cards from those particular Topps sets. The Pilots to me have always been a curiosity to me, being the only "one and done" team in modern MLB history, and so I thought it'd be pretty cool to have all of the Pilots cards from the two Topps sets to feature them. Also, in the vain of curiosities, I'm trying to piece together all the Washington Nat'l League error cards from the 1974 Topps set. I've already got the Willie McCovey and a handful of others but that's been a collecting mission of mine for as long as I can remember.

Of course, there's other stuff beside just teams, team sets, and players I stay on the lookout for and that would include things such as buybacks, cards of "short term stops", cards of players on teams they never actually played for (aka "zero year cards"), oddballs of defunct retail chains such as Hills, KB Toys, and I guess now Toys R Us could be included in that), card of players in throwback uniforms, vintage team cards, and pretty much any random vintage cards as long as they're in decent shape.

2. Hockey

Over the past few years, I've become a pretty big hockey fan, so much in fact that I buy the NHL.TV all access subscription every year so I can watch the teams I follow and because trying to find a hockey game that's not on NBC is a major chore. The current NHL teams I tend to collect are the New Jersey Devils, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Columbus Blue Jackets, and the Arizona/Phoenix Coyotes. Both the Cincinnati and Dayton areas have a rich minor league hockey history so if I can track down cards from Cincinnati teams like the Cyclones or Mighty Ducks or former Dayton teams like the Bombers and Gems, then I go for those too.

As I mentioned previously, I collect defunct baseball teams and hockey certainly has it's share as well, heck there's even a whole defunct challenger league (the WHA). I'm always on the lookout for cards, mainly vintage, for teams such as the Quebec Nordiques, Hartford Whalers, Cleveland Barons, California Golden Seals, Atlanta Thrasher, and Cincinnati Stingers to name a few. In fact, just like the Seattle Pilots cards, it's one of my collecting missions to get every Stingers card from the O-Pee-Chee WHA sets that were produced in the 70s.

Just like baseball, there's too many player collections I have going on to list, some I actively seek out cards for (Jaromir Jagr, Shane Doan, Martin Brodeur) and some I've yet to officially declare that I'm collecting their cards (Braden Holtby, Ilya Kolvachuk) but if it's a star player or even a player I recognize from watching a game on TV, then I'm pretty likely to pick up their card. I also collect a lot of the players that were popular when I was a kid (Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Joe Sakic, etc.) or are in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

I also collect any vintage hockey I can get my hands on, any of the WHA O-Pee-Chee cards, and any oddball cards as well.

3. Pro Wrestling/UFC

I've been a wrestling fan since the mid 1990s and to be honest, the wrestling cards back then and even into the late 90s were pretty pitiful. Once Fleer got the rights to WWE cards in the early 2000s, things really starting getting better. Since then, I've been into wrestling cards. I usually get cards of wrestlers I enjoy watching on TV both past and present. I'll buy a few packs of Topps WWE cards here and there as well, but I mostly focus on singles.

As far as UFC cards go, my interest in that has definitely waned over the years. I'm more of a fan of the original UFC stuff from the 90s but I will still watch the TV fights here and there if I have time. Topps usually includes cards from old school fighters like Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, and Royce Gracie in some of their releases. Also, Jessamyn Duke (a distant cousin of mine) was on the Ultimate Fighter a few years ago and had a few UFC cards produced of her, so I try to get those when I come across them.

4. Football

I'm not a big football collector but if I find older cards, I might snag a few up here and there, especially of Hall of Famers. I do like the cards that Panini puts out in some of their sets of retired stars and Hall of Famers, so if I stumble across those in a dime or nickel box, I'm apt to potentially get those as well. I'm also on the lookout for USFL and XFL cards, since I'm big into that sort of thing, but that about the only thing I'll grab in the way of that sort of stuff.

The only cards I really actively seek out in terms of football are Cincinnati Bengals cards, and even there I'm pretty selective. I won't buy just any Bengals card, it has to be of someone like Andy Dalton or A.J. Green or older stars from the 80s and 90s like Boomer Esiason, Anthony Munoz, Jeff Blake, Corey Dillon, Cris Collinsworth, Ickey Woods, Ken Anderson (not the wrestler), etc.

5. Basketball

I'll admit it, I don't really watch basketball at all, not even when the NCAA Tournament is happening. I've tried. I played some youth basketball at the local YMCA in grade school, and couldn't get into it. I even tried to watch a little bit when the Cavs were in the the Finals the past few years and it's just not for me. However, that hasn't really stopped me in terms of collecting. I'm always on the lookout for Cincinnati Royals cards and ABA cards, plus cards of Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas.

6. 1988 Topps Fright Flicks

I don't remember exactly when or where I heard about these cards but when I did, I knew I had to try to build the whole set. I found a dealer a few years ago at the HorrorHound convention who was selling packs of the stuff for five bucks each. I bought one pack just to try it out and, as a fan of classic horror and sci-fi, I was hooked. I've only got about 16 of these in my collection currently.

7. Racing cards

I got back into racing cards last year thanks to Panini's Donruss set. I really enjoyed busting open packs of it and trying something new. I just recently went back and thumbed through some of the cards I got from those packs and I forgot how neat they were and I'm planning on getting a handful of packs again this year.

8. Pokemon cards

Even though it's not officially listed on my want list, I have a five year old son who is in to everything Pokemon. I managed to get him into collecting Pokemon cards and he's already got a half a binder full of cards. While I don't understand the whole concept behind the show, nor do I understand how to play the official game, it's still a fun father/son activity that we share every so often.

So there it is, my collecting habits in a nutshell ... well, almost a nutshell as this got a bit more wordy than I thought it would. I hope this provided everyone some more insight into what I collect and, in some cases, why I collect certain things. An also, as I said in the beginning, a big shout out to Night Owl for introducing the topic and declaring an official "Blog Bat Around".