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.

What I Got For Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone!

I hope everyone had a fun holiday with their family and loved ones. Here at the CCHQ (Cardboard Clubhouse headquarters for short), my family came over last night for Christmas Eve and we exchanged presents with them. I would share what I got but I've already put all of that away. Plus, my mom was sick so they didn't stay but a few hours. It didn't help either that the kids were sick, my wife was sick, and I was starting to get sick as well. 

Anyway, this morning the kids woke up to a giant haul from Santa complete with Paw Patrol toys, Peppa Pig toys and other things that we'll have to find room for. My wife then went to the kitchen and starting making lunch which consisted of a giant ham, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, corn, baked beans, dressing, mac and cheese, carrots, and gravy. It was a good thing too because my stepmom and her friend/neighbor/handyman came by to visit for an hour or so. We hadn't seen them in a while so it was good to catch-up.

After lunch we did presents amongst ourselves (me, my wife, and the kids).

This may seem a bit odd for a Christmas present but my son actually picked it out for me from the Santa Shoppe at his school. He knows how much I like breakfast sandwiches so while I'm off work for the holidays, him and I will give it a try.

I always lump my blogger Secret Santa package in with the family gifts. I won't give away who my Secret Santa was quite yet but it was a very neat haul with a very nice notes which I'll devote a post too soon.

Now I'll dive in to what my wife got me ...

I got a new blu-ray player from my aunt so naturally I asked for some blu-rays to add to my collection which I'm trying to build up. These six should definitely keep me entertained for a while. 

I ordered some cards from COMC over Black Friday weekend which I saved for Christmas so I could have some cards to open up under the tree. I could have opted to have gotten blasters and packs from Target but I figured it'd be a better idea to use the money set aside for that to use on cards I actually want. Again, I'll cover these in a separate post later.

Pop Funkos!! The Big Boy Funko I wanted because in the Cincinnati area, Frisch's Big Boy is an institution. Some Big Boy chains do theirs with red relish but Frisch's does theirs with their own trademark tartar sauce. The Lindor Funko was on my list because he's one of my favorite Indians players to watch. It's nice to see MLB getting into the Funko game finally.

I got these awesome new shirts as well from the Cincy Shirts website. I was kind of amazed they had a Cincinnati Stingers shirt. The Cincinnati Gardens shirt I just had to have because of my love of that historic arena.

I told my wife about the $9 DVD sale at Cornette's Collectibles so she told me to order what I wanted from there. So I did. These were the DVDs I wanted most from the sale (and yes, the 5-disc set was included in the sale) and they came autographed which is super cool as well! I'm really looking forward to diving into these.

Finally, I got some more books to add to my library. I've already read "Up Up and Away" and I highly recommend it if you haven't read it before. The "Nitro" book was voted the best wrestling book of 2018 by the readers of the POST Wrestling website and "Death of the Territories" was runner-up (I think, regardless it's new as well). The Golden Seals book I heard about during an episode of a podcast I listen too and I thought it'd be a fun read.

So that's what I got for Christmas. What about you? 

Secret Santa .... Is Back!!

In case you didn't know, the annual blogosphere Secret Santa is back! Just one thing though, there's a new guy hosting it, that being Jon of the Penny Sleeves blog since Matt at BWTP went into blogging retirement this year.

So, if you haven't signed up for it yet but have participated in years past and want to get in on the action this year, jump on it by signing up HERE! If you haven't participated in the past but wish to join the fray this year, then I recommend signing up. It's a good time had by all.

But hurry! This is only open for a week so get signed up.

You've Got Mail #77: Off the Wall Cards (aka Secret Santa 2017)

Yes, I know it's February and only a few weeks out from Valentine's Day but last Christmas Matt at BWTP organized another wonderful blogger secret Santa extravaganza. In the draw, I ended up having to buy for Matt himself but the person who pulled my name was Shane over at Off the Wall Cards and someone who I've interacted with on Twitter quite a bit. 

Shane's package arrived just a few days before Christmas and was one of those large size USPS priority mail boxes stuffed to the gills with all kinds of stuff that hit pretty much every collection under the sun. I won't show everything because if I did, we'd be here until next Christmas 

There were these 1982 Topps Bengals cards to start with. While I'm not a big collector of modern football cards, I still enjoy getting older cards such as these, especially Bengals cards and these are a great addition to the Bengals collection.

I wanted to take a moment as well and show the back of the team leaders card. It's so cool that it shows the results of all the games from the 1981 season. It makes me want to go back and look up the records on some of these games. You'll see this card again in the future too for a "Multi-Player Mayhem" entry.

1982 Topps wasn't the only thing in the way of Bengals cards that were included. There was also this smattering of random Bengals.

But here's the most interesting item of the Bengals portion, this sticker/pocket schedule. I checked the front and the back for any info on who may have printed it and there's nothing but a quick gander over at COMC turned up the fact this is a 1982 Fleer Teams in Action sticker. The sticker itself is cool but it's really the schedule on the back that does it for me. Kind of makes me want to go back again and look up the results of those games.

Bengals cards weren't the only thing included. There were these WWF cards from the early 90s as well, including three Ultimate Warrior cards.

Some reprints of cards of defunct teams, from both the Topps 1952 reprint series and 2001 Topps Archives. I wonder if it would be feasible at some point to put together a 1952 Topps set using nothing but the reprints.

Here's something pretty cool, a 1970 Topps poster of Don Mincher, first baseman for the Seattle Pilots. One thing I really find interesting about 1970 Topps is that it features cards for the Pilots but by the time the season started, the Pilots had morphed into the Brewers. One of my collecting goals is to get every Pilots card from both the 1969 and 1970 sets. If you've got Pilots cards to send, feel free to let me know.

Here's a handful of 1984 Topps cards for the set build. This reminds me, I really need to update my want list for that.

I'm not sure if these are TTM autographs or in-person autographs but this is probably my second favorite batch of Indians cards in the package. I think the one I like the most has to be Dave Burba, who was kind of a forgotten about pitcher. He was pretty solid with the Reds in the mid-90s and was part of two major trades the Reds made. He was acquired by the Reds in 1995 as part of a July deal that also netted Mark Portugal and Darren Lewis from the Giants in exchange for Deion Sanders and a few other players. The Reds would then flip Burba to Cleveland on the eve of Opening Day 1998 for a young first baseman named Sean Casey. The rest, as they say, is history.

I always enjoy it when vintage cards are hidden in a trade package and this is no exception. First, there's a well loved 1955 Bowman card of George Strickland, then a 1962 Topps Woody Held, and a smattering of 1959 Topps cards, of which I had none until just now. 

This is a sampling of the 1983 Reds yearbook team set. I really like the card with the aerial shot of Riverfront Stadium and the Coliseum. I look at that picture and realize that 20 years after the fact the stadium would be gone and a new one would be built right between it and the Coliseum. As for how the Reds did in 1983, they finished 6th (aka last) in the NL West with a 71-91 record.

Pretty much this whole post has been about oddballs and stickers so here's more. This time some Star stickers made by Fleer in 1981 featuring the remnants of the Big Red Machine.

Here's more vintage, this time with cards from 1958, 1957, and 1963 respectively and all three of popular Reds players in that era. The Gus Bell card will go well with the Vada Pinson and Joe Nuxhall cards I already have from that set. We also have another well worn 1955 Bowman card, this time of Fred Baczewski, a man whose major league career spanned only three seasons and in 1955, the year this card was produced, pitched 1 inning of one game and amassed an 18.00 ERA.

Moving on to more modern territory, there was a nice selection of Barry Larkin cards, these four I know I didn't have previously. I really should inventory my Reds player collection cards sometime but that's a major project and something I don't have time to do currently.

To go along with the Indians autographs previously shown, here's a nice IP/TTM auto of the newest Reds Hall of Famer Adam Dunn, and it's on his rookie card.

I'm nearing the end of this massive mail day but just wanted to touch on a few more newer cards that were thrown in before I show the major cards. First, there were these minor league cards

And a bunch of newer cards, including a nice Adam Duvall Donruss card from last year. I've said it before and I'll say it again, even though Panini doesn't have an MLB license, I think they do pretty well with what they've got and Donruss has been one of my favorite products to buy the last few years. I think last year and the year before, they really started to hit their stride.

Now the two big ticket items of the package and two cards off my most wanted list. First, a card that been haunting me seeming forever, that being the 1984 Topps #8 Don Mattingly card. I've seen it for sale at numerous places but the price was always a bit more that I wanted to pay. Now a glaring hole in my 1984 Topps set is complete and I can focus on getting the rest of it whittled away.

Here's another card I placed on my most wanted list and quite honestly forgot it was on there, that being this 1969 Tony Perez. This is really a nice early career card of Perez and trying to find a card like this around here isn't cheap since local dealers then to jack up the price of early cards of Big Red Machine.

A big thank you goes out to Shane for his generosity and all the awesome stuff both pictured and not pictured. Some stuff I scanned in but ended up cutting due to space but believe me, there was a lot of stuff and things that'll take me a while to organize. I definitely recommend getting in on the Secret Santa deal, it's a ton of fun.