Calling Mr. Clete Thomas!

I've had a keen interest lately in a particular Detroit Tiger; Outfielder Clete Thomas. Until recently he's a been flying under my radar. One thing is I don't keep up much with the Tigers and Mr. Thomas has been battling an injured shoulder for most of the season.


I have a few of his cards already:

A really cool Heritage Rookie Stars of 2008 to go with my...


...even cooler Heritage ad panel of Clete with a couple o' Rays.

In my rush to put my '09 Updates in a binder I had forgotten about this gem:

A nice action shot of Thomas running to third.

In case you think I've become a Clete Thomas player collector, that's not quite true. No offense to Mr. Thomas. I think it stinks that his injury could have possibly killed his chances to stay in the majors, I'm not that keen on collecting every one of his cards. I'm just looking for one:

2008 Allen and Ginter card NO# 209. If you missed it before , I had bought a "complete" set off of Ebay but it was missing this one card.


Thanks to Brian from Play at the Plate I can finally put Mr. Clete Thomas in his rightful place in between Bruce Jenner and Carlos Lee. You can tell from the scan that Bruce is super excited to see Clete, but Carlos is a little bit more subdued in his reaction to Mr. Thomas sharing a binder page with him.



That's not all Brian sent. In the package was a couple of players that I am really interested in getting every card made of them.


These two cards have eluded me all year. The awesome action shot of David Wright doing what he does at the hot corner.



And an even better shot of not one, but three priceless expressions on one card. The main subject Reyes is obviously showing a lot of emotion and is the focal point of the card, but look at the umpire and the Marlins player's leg up in the air. Not to mention his shocked expression too. A really nice card. I think there's something to the diagonal white baseline running through the frame and Jose's white uniform that makes the photo stand out more.

Sorry for the short post, but I love the cards. Thanks a bunch Brian. Now I can put the 2008 A&G base and SP set to bed!

trade with too many grandersons

As most of you know the new blog Too Many Grandersons hit the blogo-spere about a week or so ago and made a big splash with his giveaway posts. On a side note it makes me feel a little guilty about having a sports blog for a little over a year and still not doing a giveaway.

Unfortunately I don't think many people want a bunch of 2009 Topps baseball or 2009 Allen and Ginter base cards. That seems to be majority of my "left over" cards so I probably won't be doing an official giveaway anytime soon. I do however need to do a cheap box break one of these days. I just need to find out what I want to break.


He sent out a Gridiron code which I redeemed for this beauty:

A 1973 Chip Glass. A pretty cool card. I now need to find out if the football cards ship with the baseball cards. I have a few cool cards that I want to get shipped to me. Out of curiosity I'll probably go ahead and get all of them sent over.

I think I've figured out what the card reminds me of and that's a Mustang emblem.


I found this one that is labeled 1967 Mustang. This seems right, but I recall some sort of emblem with a forked pennant look to it. If anybody has a clue(I don't) then please let me know.

In addition to the virtual card he sent over a bunch of "real" cards. Some cards that are just cool and some cards that help me with specific want lists.

I'm down to just 10 cards to finish up the 150 card set of 2009 Turkey Red. I'm so close that I can feel it! I've gone through periods of getting discouraged with this subset, but I'm thinking that pretty soon I'll get this one done.



Gary Sheffield charging the camera.



..and I knew that I've seen this one before. One of the 5 or so short prints that I pulled out of last years product was this really nice card of Rogers Hornsby. Sadly the Turkey Red pales in comparison to the actual photograph card.

This is the main problem with the retro cards; the designers have a tendency to make it so "authentic" looking that they make it too muddy looking or a fake soft focus effect. It's hard to explain, but in my original post I felt that the Hornsby SP was a good example of how sharp and colorful an old film print can be. The Heritage line is a good example of taking a good idea and over doing it to make it look vintage and the main photo itself suffers. I can see where a new crisp photo with an old school border might look ridiculous, but it seems like a happy medium could be found.
Don't get me wrong, despite my reservations I still like Heritage a lot. Also, don't think I'm complaining about getting Turkeys in the mail. I love all the retro stuff, I just think they do every thing with a broad brush and some cards suffer a little in the process.

Okay, enough whining about my cards, let's see what else Dennis sent over.

Here's a few more cards for a set I'm trying to finish:


the 1980 Topps Baseball set.


with a great trio of players.


Joe Morgan on the other side of a mic.


I love this set. There are a lot of nice sets over the years, but I still look at this one fondly from when I was a kid.

And lastly some nice Packers to round out the package.



I hope the Packers do well this year. My Sooners look horrible and the Mets are done so I need some team that can compete for championships this year.

A nice action shot of Ahman Green.

A card depicting Favre showing his touchdown face. He seems so decisive in this photo. I wonder what happened? Soon after this card was released he seemed to have lost his confidence in his decision making ability.

Anyway, nice cards. Thanks again Dennis!

You think you have it bad?

I read about this guy this morning and the headline blew my mind so much that I had to file it away in the deep recesses of my brain and for my own good I lumped it together with all the stories of Lindsey Lohan being arrested and random political douches douchebagging their way through life and I hoped that I could remember to revisit it at some point.

After some caffeine and a reminder by Colin Cowherd on ESPN radio I knew that I had to make some sort of comment on this story. Obviously I didn't report or break this story, but I think it needs to be mentioned simply because of the subject matter.

Here's the link: NPR

Most of you have probably heard some mention of it or would have heard of it anyway without this blog bringing it to your attention.

In addition to being a humbling and inspirational story wouldn't this be a great A&G card for next year? I hate to try and relate everything to my hobby, but this is so much better than some of the non-sports subjects in this years set. It might be a little gruesome for some people, but really? I mean most collectors have got to be old dudes like myself and this seems like such a positive end to a tragic story.

He said he wanted to undertake swimming the English Channel because he wanted "to inspire all those who think life is nothing but suffering."

Thanks for reading. And be sure to Google Philippe Croizon when you get a chance.

Trade with Drinking the Orange Kool-aid

Everybody in blogoland seems to be in the doldrums these days and it sucks. I'm guessing some of it has to do with the limited amount of products and possibly the fact that some people's teams might not be doing so well at this time of year. Maybe the reality of their team sucking doesn't inspire people to want to collect cards. I can definitely relate to that aspect of it, but I haven't been bitten by the boredom bug. I must be opposite man.

Seems like lately I've been doing some major damage to the myriad of sets that I'm trying to finish. I'm really close to finishing some of the sets that I've been obsessing on lately. Propaganda, Turkey Red and A&G are close to being finished so maybe that has opened the door to finding some player collections.

One thing that I haven't really focused on until lately is trying to find cards of former OU guys. It's always nice if someone realizes a player is from OU and sends a card my way, but it's really too hard for people I trade with to go looking at the backs of cards to see what college the player is from. I haven't gotten around to coming up with a good want list for that part of my collection.

Occasionally I'll pass by someone's blog and they have a former OU guy up for trade.

Dave from Drinking the Orange Kool-aid posted up a trade bait the other day and he had a couple of cool cards of a former OU player.



Dominique Franks played corner for OU the past couple of years. This is one of the guys that tends to be forgotten pretty quickly when you have Gerald McCoy, Sam Bradford and Jermaine Gresham all being drafted ahead of him.

I haven't forgotten about him though. He was a fun guy to watch.

In addition to the card above, Dave had another auto card of Mr. Franks.


This time a Prestige rookie draft picks card of Dom in his OU uniform.


I guess I have more of a fondness for guys like this because they played hard at OU and also are local guys that are trying to fulfill their dream in the pros.

Here is a link to a Washington Post article about the tragedies in Dom's life. Pretty tough things for a young guy to endure.

Currently he's on the 53 man roster as a 3rd string Cornerback. Hopefully he'll do good things in the NFL.

Thanks for the cards, Dave.

Everybody should check out his blog if they haven't already.

High atop Mt. Fuji

No, I don't actually want to "mount" Mr. Fuji. He seems like a pretty sexy guy though, but I ain't goin' there. I know he's hot because of his personalized card that he sent with my contest winnings.

I really wish I could come up with something cool like this for my packages that I send out. I think I might have gotten the facismile auto rather than a real 1/1. Maybe if I bribe him with some cards he'll send one over.

As most of you know already, he organized a contest a few weeks ago and decided to give out consolation prizes to multiple winners.

As part of his contest he also had multiple questions that the applicants had to answer. I guess he was influenced by his day job as a teacher. (a noble profession by the way.)



I was awarded some packs of 4400, a TV show that I actually know nothing about.


It didn't matter though, I ripped through them examining each card. Here's a cool subset called "Ripples". I pulled a few of these.

They are nice enough. If you look at them from an angle the ripples look like they are 3-D.

Like I said, I haven't seen this show, but from the cards it looks interesting enough. Maybe I'll Youtube it some day.

In addition to the winnings he sent over some random(or not so random) assortment of Packers and Mets cards.

I don't have a lot of these 2006 football cards so it was nice to get some more in trades.

A nice Aaron Rodgers card. I was lucky enough to pick him as my QB in BA Benny's Card Collectors of the Gridiron fantasy football league. In reality Aaron is going to have to do a lot more these days; it looks like running back Ryan Grant is out for the season. Horrible. I really like to watch him play. Actually I like to watch all the RB's play.

The old guy. At least he's wearing the correct uniform. I still can't imagine him in the Vikings uniform. It's weird. But I like the card though.

It wouldn't be a trade post without at least one Mets card.
A 2005 Turkey Red of NY Mets catcher Gary Carter. A pretty nice card. I didn't realize that they had Turkey Red in 2005. I know about 09 and 10 obviously and the 2007 cards, but I didn't realize they were doing this in 2005. Turkey Reds are always cool.


I try to keep up with the Dodgers too, and this is a cool albeit weird card of Darryl Strawberry.


There are a lot of things to like about this card, but the main one for me is that it's a drawn card rather than a photo card.

Thanks for the cool cards. It was nice of you to make us all winners.

Trade with Night Owl

One of my favorite bloggers and I completed a trade last month. As prolific as he is, he still managed to put up a post detailing the trade before me. Really sad. I'm not blogging much these days, but you think I could at least come up with something especially when it's specific cards that some one has sent over.


I had pulled a bunch of Dodgers that he needed as well as some O-Pee-Chee and the deal was done! O-Pee-Chee was on the downturn here in Norman when I got into collecting cards so I never had a chance to buy any packs, so I jumped at the chance when the discount blasters hit Walmart.

Being a set collector can sometimes be tough. I like certain players and teams, but whenever I see a new product or an old product that's new to me and I like it, it makes me want to own every card in that set. So I have a tendency to want to collect everything which isn't good idea. I've been pretty good lately of finding what is truly important for me to collect, but I still have a lot of sets and subsets that I'm working on. I don't think it' a big deal. I mean someday I'll probably finish those sets. But until I do I'm going to slow down and not go out and buy every new product that comes out.

Of course that doesn't apply to the discount blasters though.

Apparently I pulled a bunch of Dodger cards that blogger extraordinaire Night Owl couldn't resist.

Like me, he has a bunch of sets that he's working on and finally I found some cards in my collection that he didn't have. He's like the sultan of Brunei of card collecting.


1980 Topps baseball is a set that I've been neglecting this summer. I've been focusing on other stuff and haven't had a chance to look for any of these cards.

And a fine pair of Dodgers it is.


I really like the signature on Garvey's card. The uniform S and G is my favorite part of the signature on the card.



Stadium Club is also something I've neglected. All this Million Dollar Giveaway stuff and Gridiron Giveaway is pulling my attention to all the new products and away from the vintage that captured my attention this spring.

Not that it needs to be said again, but Stadium Club has really nice photography.



Here is a local guy Nick Blackburn pitching.



...and a former Cornhusker Joba Chamberlain. He made an appearance before last years OU/Nebraska game.


One element that I get excited about while looking at cards is to see what's going on in the background. Scoreboards always interest me, but also seeing big 400mm lenses poking out is cool too. I'm not sure if I'm going to go out and start another weird personal collection of "cards with Cameras in them" but maybe. I'd probably be the only guy doing a collection like that. No competition would make them easier to collect.

And of course the crown jewel of the trade. I had coveted this card when Night Owl pulled it out of his A&G box, but I had nothing to offer in trade at that time.


It goes great in the A&G binder. Really the only hit that I have from this years set that means anything to me. A different photo is used on these mini relic/auto cards than on the base card. I'm still not so into the red borders though. I thought by now it would grow on me, but not so much. Don't think I'm complaining I really like this card.

Thanks for the cards Night Owl!

Career runner up finally gets a win!

I haven't had a good history in any sort of contest whether it be popularity, athletic or academic. I've never been motivated to enter many contests until I started blogging and it seemed like every few days somebody was having some sort of giveaway or contest. I never seemed to do well in any of those contests, so I've tried to keep my expectations down when entering them now.

Beardy from the Mojo Beard was holding a National Convention contest. He was asking what his purchases were at the national and I guessed Nick Markakis 2003 Bowman Chrome.

I guess my extra motivation was seeing what he had up for contest winnings. When I saw the names: Bradford, Favre and Griffin I knew I had to pull out some extra brain power and try to win this thing.


Turns out I correctly guess one of his purchases so I got the three cards I wanted. I don't have any experience with this product, so these were the first cards that I've seen of Donruss Elite. They're pretty nice.



This will be my first of hopefully many Blake Griffin cards. I have a Panini sticker that Brian from Play at the Plate sent over, but this is my first "real" card of the former OU and current LA Clippers guard. He's from Edmond, Oklahoma.

Bradford is also a local guy who played for OU and is now doing okay as a rookie with the St. Louis Rams. Like to watch this guy. Hopefully he'll do well for the Rams. I noticed the other day that the Rams traded for former OU wideout Mark Clayton. I liked to watch Mark at OU, but haven't seen many Ravens games so I'm hoping to catch both of them playing for St. Louis soon.

I'm not big on Favre anymore because of his off field nonsense, but he's still a pretty good QB and Peterson needs a competent quarterback to hand him the ball. Notice how everything somehow revolves around the University of Oklahoma?



The three other guys in the prize lot were a mystery to me. I picked Javid Best as my backup running back in B A Benny's fantasy draft mainly because of this card. I couldn't remember anybody else and the clock was ticking. Hopefully he'll do well. I can't imagine the Lions doing anything ever, but who knows?


Thanks for having the contest and thanks for the cool cards.

Contest Closed! Here are the winners!

Okay. So I guess it's about time to close this baby. It's been about a week and the suspense is killing me. I got about 7 entrants which is about 5 more than I thought would enter so I guess it was a success!! Whoo hoo. I don't really feel like going through with the randomization thing since there were only 7 entrants. So everybody is a winner!!

Here are the winners in no particular order:

Captain Canuck

Night Owl

Play at the Plate

BA Benny

82 Redbirds

Colbey(Flywheels)

It's like Having my Own Card Shop

I really enjoyed reading your favorite sports memories. Thanks for entering. Now all you have to do is let me know what you'd like on your sketch card and also send me an email with your address. My email is jscott3668@aol.com.

As promised I'll add some random packs and try to find some cards from teams that you all collect.

I just ordered some cool sketch card blanks. I haven't used these yet, but a lot of people swear by them so I think they'll work out fine.

Hopefully the card blanks will show up this week and I can get started on the sketch cards.

Thanks for reading!

Gridiron Giveaway at Too Many Grandersons

The blog Too Many Grandersons is giving away free Gridiron Giveaway codes on his blog. He's also offering up some free football cards so check out his blog! Apparently he is a big Simpsons fan so that's cool too.

Trade with Shot Not Taken

I'm not sure if ya'll have had the chance to check out the blog Shot Not Taken. I have passed by a few times. I'm not sure if I've commented. I'm a pretty bad commenter sometimes. I feel like saying something, but I know that I really have nothing of note to contribute, so I move on to the next blog or get back to crafting these wonderful blog posts on this here blog that nobody reads.

Anyway, I hope he doesn't mind but I'm going to upload his banner. I love anything to do with art so I'm going to show it off for everybody.

It's from a Lichtenstein painting entitled "Whamm". It was taken from the DC comic All American Men of War. Pretty cool banner. I've been meaning to do a banner for about 8 months now and I haven't gotten around to doing it.

But this isn't all about me, this is about a cool offer of football memorabilia and auto cards that Ray was offering up for trade.

As soon as I saw an Adrian Peterson card up for trade I had to make an offer. After much searching I realize I had absolutely nothing for him in trade.

So as a last ditch effort I offered up the services of my amateurish sketch art skills. He was cool with it and this is what I got in return for my two sketch cards.


My first ever(and probably only) Adrian Peterson relic card.

It's from 2008 Mayo. It's a stark contrast from the '09 version of Mayo that has white borders on the base and relic cards. The Peterson card is the best looking card from that year. I'm probably biased in my opinion because he's one of my favorite all time players, but I think it's really true. Most of the cards that I've pulled or seen online have a weird look to them and they're not all weird in the same way. It's almost like a fake textured look. Sort of the same fakeness you can see on some of the 2008 A&G cards.

But this card looks cool. The swatch is even purple so that's nice. The black border and desaturated colors really make the purple swatch stand out.

It will be the cornerstone of my A.D. collection. This is the card that I will pull out and show off to people when they ask about my cards.

Thanks again for the cool card Ray!!