Pick A Pair

Getting cards in the mail in nice.

It's also nice when said cards are from longtime trade pal and blog reader Julie when she does her famous "pick pockets" grab bag on her blog.

Her most recent one was over the holidays (that feels like forever ago) and I got in on the tail end of the action as I just came back into the card and card blogging universe at the time. I was lucky enough to nab the pair of Francisco Lindor cards above to add to my Indians collection (side note: it's gonna be weird to see him in a Mets uniform in 2021) but those weren't the only cool pair of cards I picked out.

I also got a pair of these shiny cards of some Hall of Famers. Not only do these fit into the Hall of Famers category that I collect, they also fit into the defunct teams category as well. Both of these cards have interesting attributes and not just because they're shiny. The Gary Carter card proudly displays itself as an Expos card, complete with the old-school blue uniform and red and white batting helmet. The Satchel Paige card mentions him with three different teams on the front. The background picture is him with a St. Louis Browns hat, the foreground photos is him in an Indians uniform, and at the bottom it lists him as a member of the Kansas City Monarchs.

Neither of these two look exactly thrilled but I couldn't pass up this pair of 1974 Traded cards that were offered up. Let's look at each trade here...

Lindy McDaniel was traded from the Yankees to the Royals on December 7, 1973 for Lou Piniella and Ken Wright. Lindy's last two years in the bigs were 1974 and 1975. In those two seasons for the Royals, he appeared in 78 games, primarily as a reliever, and went 6-5 with a 3.75 ERA. Meanwhile, Piniella would spend the next ten seasons in pinstripes (and several more after that as a manager) and Ken Wright pitched in all of three games for the Yankees in 1974.

As far as Jimmy Wynn goes, he was shipped off from the Astros to the Dodgers the day before the Lindy McDaniel trade for Claude Osteen and minor leaguer David Culpepper.Wynn only played two seasons for the Dodgers (1974 and 1975) becoming an All-Star in both seasons and finishing in the top five of NL MVP votes in '74. In Houston, Osteen didn't even make it the full season before being flipped to the Cardinals in August of 1974 for the dreaded "player to be named later" Fun fact, did you know that both principles in the deal, Wynn and Osteen, were both signed by the Reds as amateur free agents?

Pairs weren't the only things I picked out from the pick pockets. I also grabbed this trio of interesting cards. Is there anything that these three cards have in common? Not really aside from the fact I thought they were neat. The Ned Yost card I grabbed just because it's an early 80s Topps card, Bobby Bonds because it's an oddball, and Eugenio Suarez because ... well, it's just a neat card!

I was pretty happy to add all of these to my collection and thanks to Julie for doing the pick pockets thing! I look forward to participating in the next round.

Nick’s Super Stuffed PWE of Super Stuff

It seems like Thursday is becoming my regular posting day. I hadn’t really intended it to be that way but with work being incredibly busy right now, it’s the one night of the week where I don’t have much going on.

So, might as well use my time to write about baseball cards, right?

Anyway, I received a bunch of cards in a PWE from Dimebox Nick after I claimed a card or two on one of his last “Free Card Fridays”.

I don’t remember which ones I chose but I think the Christian Yelich card shown above was one of them. With Nick being the kind card sharing soul that he is, he also stuffed the PWE with as much as stuff as humanly possible.

A couple of Jose Ramirez cards. The Big League card was my first in-person look at that product this year as this arrived before my massive Card Barrel order I wrote about last week. 

No, you’re not seeing double. Yes, it’s kinda the same card but different. The left one is the holiday variation and the other one is Topps Chrome. I’m not too big on those Holiday variants but I have a really good idea for that card for when the Christmas tree goes up later this year.

Now, here’s where things get really interesting. First, we’ve got this 1978 TCMA of Reds shortstop Leo Cardenas. Funny story is that I only know Leo Cardenas from getting his autograph on an index card at the local mall when I was a kid. I had no clue who he was at the time but he was sitting at a table in the middle of the mall signing autographs for free. I don’t remember if it was part of a card show or what, but I just remember him sitting at a table by the fountain signing autographs.

I love me some vintage cards, it’s even better if it’s vintage Expos. I don’t know much about Ron Hunt honestly but after looking him up on Baseball Reference, it turns out he led all of Major League Baseball in HBP (that’s hit by pitch) for six straight seasons! Between 1968 and 1973, he was hit by 176 pitches with 50 of those coming in 1971. Oh, he was also a two-time All Star and finished second in ROY balloting in 1963 behind some guy you may have heard of named Pete Rose.

Sticking with the Expos theme, here’s some interesting oddball cards. I’m not familiar with the “Stuart” brand but a quick glance on TCDB tells me that Stuart is some kind of bakery. I’m guessing these are team issue or issued by the Stuart Company itself. I’m not sure but these are really, really neat. The Doug Flynn card really stands out to me because of the white Expos uniforms.

Here’s the backs if you’re curious. Pretty plain and simple, nothing exciting really. Just the basic vital stats and a quick blurb about each persons career.

Here’s another oddball from a company named Provigo of Floyd Youmans who only spent five years in the majors, all with the Expos. Fun fact ... Floyd Youmans led the National League in walks in 1986 with 118. Yes, 118 walks in 219 innings.

Finally, we come to this batch of 1970 cards. While these may look like any other mild-mannered 1970 cards, they’re not. They’re actually 1970 O-Pee-Chee cards ... and Expos nonetheless (well, except for Tommy Helms). It’s really such a treat when I can add really cool cards like this to my collection. 

And the backs, both English and French. But I’m showing these mainly for the cartoons because, honestly, who doesn’t love cartoons.

That wraps up a super stuffed PWE from Nick. Big thanks to him for sending these cards my way. I really appreciate it.

What I Collect

I'll be honest ... I haven't spent money on baseball cards since Thanksgiving last year.

Since I put my old blog, Cardboard Clubhouse, on ice last fall due to family reasons (aka new baby), baseball cards were the last thing on my mind. I did, however, purchase quite a few cards during the annual COMC Black Friday sale last fall.

Over the past few months while my collection grew dust, I could count on one hand the number of times I thought about these cards I'd ordered. Now, since I'm getting re-acquainted with everything and getting this organized again, I thought I'd start with these since that's about where I left off last year.

Along with the super shiny Hank Aaron card above, I purchased a number of other baseball cards, along with miscellaneous cards for my other collections. Seeing as I'm trying to keep this blog (and my collection) limited to just baseball, that's all that I'm planning on covering.

My collecting interests are really varied. I don't really focus on one thing in general when it comes to baseball cards as I'd get pretty bored of that pretty quick. I'm not really a team collector either. I mean, if I had to pick one team to collect, it'd be the Reds. I had a lot of fun watching Nick Senzel play center field last year and that's why I nabbed this Donruss Rated Rookie card. I can't really say that the Donruss designs this year and last year are all that enticing but I felt this was worth picking up.

Another thing that I like collecting are "unfamiliar uniform" cards as I call them. These typically fall into one of two categories ... "short-term stops" or "zero year" (trademark to Dime Box Nick) but on this blog they'll be referred to as "unfamiliar uniforms" because that's what they are. Take Steve Carlton here for example. Most everyone will think of him as a Cardinal or a Phillie but I'll bet you didn't know he pitched for the White Sox as well. The South-Siders were one of three stops of a whirlwind tour Lefty had in 1986. 

I know I mentioned that the non-baseball content will be next to nothing. I intend on sticking to that but it's cards like this from Allen & Ginter that fall into that grey area. Technically, this is a baseball card as it came from a baseball product but obviously Tiger Mask is not a baseball player. Along with baseball, pro wrestling is another big interest of mine and to see the legendary Tiger Mask featured on a card is pretty cool. On this card, it says "1st Tiger Mask" and that would be Satoru Sayama who portrayed the character until 1983 when he left New Japan Pro Wresting. Since then, several other wrestlers have portrayed the character, the most notable being the legendary Mitsuharu Misawa.

This card certainly checks off several things I like to collect ... oddball? Yes. Defunct retail? Yes. Defunct team? Yes. Hall of Famer? Yes. There's just something about these types of cards which is just fun. Maybe in the future I'll do a blog post on cards from defunct retail chains. Not sure yet but it's an idea I'm kicking around. 

Here's another card that would qualify as an "unfamiliar uniform" card. When I first got into collecting as a kid, I always thought it was weird to see former Reds players in a different uniform. That's exactly what's happening here as Hal Morris is shown in a Royals uniform. Despite being the first baseman for the Reds from 1990-1997, Morris left as a free agent and signed with the Royals for the 1998 season. He would return to the Reds the next season (1999) and stayed with the team until midway through the 2000 season when he was purchased by Detroit. I'd always found that one year in Kansas City a curiosity and now I finally have a card to document it.

Another big thing I like to collect is vintage cards. Typically if I'm at a show or browsing online, if I can find cool vintage cards for a reasonable price, I'll jump on it. This 1961 Topps card shows the Reds outfield trio of Vada Pinson, Gus Bell (grandfather of current Reds manager David Bell), and Frank Robinson. That trio, along with fellow outfielder Wally Post (shown in the 1962 Topps card), would help the "Ragamuffin Reds" get to the World Series in 1961 where they lost to the Yankees in five games.

One of the last big things I enjoy are cheap relic cards. I'll be honest, I'm not a the kind of person who would buy packs of cards and get disappointed there was no relic or anything. If I get one, great! If not, fine too. Products like Topps Tribute, Museum Collection, and all that are way out of my price range and I'm fine with that. It's not like I'm exactly their target audience anyway. That being said, if I come across cheap relic cards from those sets or just cool looking ones in general, I tend to jump on them. Take this Bruce Sutter card for example, it's a dual-jersey card of him with both the Cubs and Cardinals and it was a steal at under five bucks. 

I'm in the process of updating my want list to be posted on the blog soon after I update my lists for Pilots cards and 1984 Topps along with several other random things. 

A New Type of Repack

Until recently, I'd never set foot in the store Five Below. I'd heard of it before and was told they had some cool things but until recently never went in there. What I saw though was fantastic! If you've never been, it's pretty much a hip discount store with toys, games, snacks, candy, trinkets, etc all for five dollars or under (hence the name). I went in with very low expectations but found that I probably could've bought a number of things. I contained myself and walked out of there with two of these repack cubes for me and a bag full of orange Airheads for my wife.

I kid you not when I say that literally every single repack cube on the shelf (and there were about 18 or so) had a Mike Piazza card visible. Half of them had this exact card showing as well. Since this is an O-Pee-Chee card, I just had to grab this cube. I forget which one the other cube had. 

The front proclaimed several things, including cards from "each of the past five decades". That would mean cards from the 70s, right? Nope. The 1980 Indians card was the oldest card I could find in the lot. I'll take it though. Plus early 80s Topps like the Vukovich and the Parker are always fun finds as well.

Here's an interesting card. I've never heard of Brigham's but apparently it was a regional ice cream chain and also a brand of ice cream found in the New England area. In conjunction with Coca-Cola, they issued a 23-card Red Sox set that shared the 1982 Topps design. I'm not sure if these cards were available at the ice cream shops or at the store in the carton. Maybe someone out that way can enlighten me? Regardless, pretty interesting to find a regional oddball all these years later in a repack in southwest Ohio.

Some miscellaneous 80s cards including John Tudor and Walt Weiss, both of whom look very unimpressed.

Early 90s stuff. Meh.

Another promise of the repack was that it featured one "hall of fame card". Well, together with the Mike Piazza card I showed to start with, there's Alan Trammell and Craig Biggio. That brings the Hall of Fame total to five.

1991 Score. Not a bad selection of players here. Rickey brings the Hall of Fame total to six. 

More modern cards from the 2000s. The Luis Aparicio card has to be one of my favorites from the box.

Here's a few cool horizontal cards that I found. I was genuinely happy when I saw the Randy Johnson card from 2002 Upper Deck Vintage. I'm always on the lookout for cards from that set but I'm not to the point yet where I'd consider officially putting the set together. Also, the Johnson card puts me at nine "Hall of Fame cards" for the lot.

The repack box/cube/whatever also said there were two packs included. The 2018 Topps pack was the one shown and the other was a pack of 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier.

Here's the contents of the O-Pee-Chee pack. Nothing too terribly exciting here. My keepers will probably be Orel Hershier, Mo Vaughn, Jeff Reardon, and Ivan Calderon. Dave Parker I already have somewhere.

And the contents of the Topps pack. I'll probably keep Amed Rosario, Cody Bellinger, Randal Grichuk, and the "Boston B-Boys" card. I'm honestly more happy with the O-Pee-Chee pack than I am this.

There's the contents of a repack from Five Below. I've got another one of these to bust into soon but maybe I'll hold that off until next month. 

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.