Vintage Saturday revisited

It's always good when I get to spend a Saturday at the flea market or at the card shop. My goals are pretty much the same: I'm not really expecting to find anything I actually "need", like for one of the sets I'm chasing or from a particular player.

What I'm basically looking for is something cool that I've seen on other blogs, something old that I don't already have or hopefully I'll run across something that I've never seen before.

This Saturday I feel like I've done all three, plus a little more. And it only cost me less than 3 dollars. Pretty cool. I don't mind spending more, but honestly there wasn't a lot to be had at the flea market yesterday so I think spending 3 dollars was about the limit.

I stopped by two tables. The first one had the obligatory zip lock bags taped up with random "packs" of cards. I picked up one of these only because the card on the front was one that I'm sure I've seen on another blog. I don't remember the blog right now, but I do remember commenting something when I saw it. Probably something stupid, but anyway here's the card:



A 1990 Topps of Walt Weiss. According to the back Walt is from Tuxedo,NY and is a big Bruce Springsteen fan who sometimes works as a guest disc jockey. I wonder if he used any baseball terminology as is DJ name?


Most of the rest of the pack was pretty boring, but there was another card that caught my eye:


Another 1990 Topps. It's got a lot of cool stuff going on in this card; it's a horizontal action shot of Eddie pitching into some shadowy, blurry figures. The ball looks like it's in orbit around the ump and batters heads.

Next up the guy had pages of cards to be bought for a dollar a piece. Near the end of the stack was the only promising page. I immediately noticed the two 75 cards and a Psychedelic Tombstone card and that's all I needed to see.



Sort of a Joy of a Completed Page, but not really since it was already completed for me. It won't be for long though. The cards will be broken up into little groups. I'm toying with the idea of trying to collect the entire 1973 and 1980 Topps sets. The bottom three cards will be my first 73's to start me on my way.


I spent probably 2 plus hours "playing" with these nine cards. I picked up the cards. Looked at them in the car. Ate lunch and then after mowing and a nap I picked them back up and sat out on my back porch checking them out again.

I'm pretty amazed at the photos in these cards. At first the photography doesn't seem that great, but on closer inspection they're actually pretty cool.

The Rivers card is really sharp and has nice colors.



Guerrero looks a little bit like actor Richard Edson. The signs in the background of these old cards are cool. This one looks like it says "Buck ..string CO.".


Not only are the fronts cool, but I get a lot out of the backs too.


I think this is one of the main appeals of these cards and the current Heritage cards. I really like the cartoons and the write ups more than stat lines. I'm not much of a stat guy, but I should be.


This is my first 72 card and the Psychedelic Tombstone card lives up to the hype. It has the saturated colors, skewed horizon line, huge catchers mitt you can put your head in and of course he's wearing some sort of women's shoes. To top it all off he's got a pretty cool name too. I'm pretty sure I've also seen this card on another blog, I just can't remember where.




I really thought the backs would be as colorful and psychedelic as the fronts, but that's not the case. I think the 1970 cards are more colorful. Their are little rounded tombstonesque corners near the card number and the cartoon.



I think this is my only Alomar card. As with all of these cards I didn't even notice the creases or miscuts or pencil marks. This card features two creases and a couple of dinged corners. Still a cool card though.



To me that only adds to the character of these old cards.




I didn't know Jim Perry, I've only heard of Gaylord. It has a nice write up on the back.




The World Series highlight card is pretty cool. I realized it was miscut only after getting into the car. the part that I can see is a name that looks like Morrlee. Or maybe Murrlll. Haha. Checking out the checklist online hasn't helped me to figure out who it is.



The card itself is cool. I got an appreciation from horizontal and night cards from Night Owl and this card is pretty cool. It looks like the Mets won this game. The series was finally won in 7 games by the defending champion Oakland A's. I would have liked to see this series. From the wikipedia article it seems like it would have been an entertaining series to watch.


Getting back to the page I can't think of anything interesting or witty to say about this card.

Actually I haven't said anything witty or interesting yet about any of these cards. I need to get cracking on that. I do like the clouds though.



I can see another player in a Houston hat in the background of the Rader card. I think I can almost make out the lettering on the sign. I think it says "Matthew's Garden Supply". That may not be right. I'm pretty sure on the Matthew's and the Supply part though.




I can tell from the LaGrow card that the photographer used some fill lighting on this card. Or possibly a reflector to bounce some light back into his face. I think that's right. You can see the bright sunlight hitting his left eye and the shadow from his hat. The reason why I think some other lighting or a reflector was used is because his face is well exposed and also because of the hard shadow on his left nostril that should be lit from the sunlight.




Okay enough with all the Photo CSI stuff. Let's get on with the cards from the category of Stuff I Didn't Know Existed.

I only found 7 of these cards. They're all black and white and were produced in 1988. These have cool write ups on the back and come from the Charles Martin Conlon Collection.


Starting with the top card: David Dale Alexander, Charles Walter Dressen, Carl William Mays, Robert Moses Grove, Jay Hanna Dean (dizzy dean), Harold Homer Chase and Frederick Charles Merkle.

Some of these photos look a little like dust bowl era photos from Dorothea Lange.

The name sounded familiar so I looked him up. Here is a bio about him at Sporting News.

Here is a cool Gallery of some of his more famous photos.




Here's a back for posterity sakes.


Next up is a guy in an OU uniform. It's Adrian Cooper.


I couldn't quite place the name at first. I knew I had read about him recently which isn't a good sign. Apparently he ran afoul of the law with some sort of money laundering. Nice. I find one OU player and he's a convicted felon. Cool. I guess it'll still go into the OU binder. If I refuse to put athletes that ran afoul of the law in my football binder it'd be pretty empty.

All in all a pretty successful day for cool vintage cards.


Alright that's it for another random vintage roundup. Thanks for reading.