Wheeeeew...

Watching the fourth game between the Thunder and Lakers and I felt like I was watching ice skating rather than basketball. Roughly 5 times I noticed players for both teams slipping on the court and not even on the painted part. The announcers mentioned something about ice. I guess there is some hockey or ice skating going on this time of year?

At halftime it looked like Westbrook wasn't doing too well. He slipped right before half, but at least walked to the locker room.

For those of you who didn't watch the game the rundown is basically like this: Tied at halftime, Thunder down by ten in the third and down by 9 in the fourth. A little more defense and some rebounds and with about 13 seconds left in the game they went up 101-98 on a Kevin Durant three.

That's about it. Or at least the quick generalized version.

The Thunder lead the series 3-1 after the 103 to 100 win tonight. It looked like they might drop two in a row to the Lakers. I'm glad they didn't. Durant made it interesting with his two missed free throws in the final few minutes.

His free throw season percentage is .878 his postseason percentage is .846. They don't have the averages up for tonight's game and I think he only missed two of them all night. The reason why I bring it up is that he doesn't miss much. In fact, it's so odd when he misses one, much less two that it made me think that definitely we were going to lose this one.

Of course, as always he redeems himself by hitting the big threes. Especially the go ahead game winning type of threes.





While waiting for the game to start I went through some of my basketball cards. I don't have that many basketball cards, but I found a few cool ones that sort of relate to the play off teams.

So I'm going to pick one card from the collection as a representative for each playoff team.




Hal Greer played for the 76'ers in the 60's. Try to say that 6 times fast. He was a Hall of Famer and was voted one of the 50 Greatest Players in the NBA.



I traded away all of my Celtics cards so this graphic will have to do.

76er's and Celtics are tied 2-2.


I picked this one of Blake because I'm sort of collecting him and he's one of two Clippers players that I'm even aware of. The other being Chris Paul. I only have Chris Paul Hornet cards so he didn't make the cut.


I have no idea who Manu Ginobili is, but he sounds delicious. I picked this card because of the huge bandage across his nose and he also makes me hungry. I came across a Tony Parker card, but I'd rather have one of his ex-wife. I wonder if there are any Eva Longoria cards?

Between this card and those New Era commercials where they mention deep dish pizza I'm starving. I'll have to celebrate this post with some bread sticks and pizza from Pizza Hut.


Spurs lead the series 3-0 against the Clippers.




I recall Reggie when I was in college. Occasionally I would catch one of his games on TV.


I'm not even sure if Micheal Beasley is even on the team anymore. I remember him from his playing days at Kansas State. I think it was literally days and not years as he only stayed for a year and then went pro.



I couldn't find any Lakers cards of current players on the roster, so I picked this one of Magic. A card of Kareem would have been nice. Especially if he were wearing those cool glasses.

The Thunder lead the Lakers 3-1.

That sounds so nice! I'm hoping we can close them out tomorrow night in OKC.

Trade with My Sports Obssession

"You know it's so nice when it happens good."

That's a line from the Seinfeld episode where George and Jerry go to California,


Kramer had gotten into some trouble. The police thought he was serial killer.

Eventually they make their way back to the hotel room where George can't sleep because Lupe the chambermaid tucked his sheets in too much.

Jerry opted for "no tucking" and was able to sleep relatively easy by comparison. That's when he says, "You know it's so nice when it happens good."

The quote that Jerry utters was from Fred DeCordiva the producer from the Tonight Show.

He talked to Jerry about doing his first standup on the show and how he felt about it and the quote always stayed with Jerry because of the weird phrasing.

This phrase keeps coming to me when I start to write about my latest trade with Jeff at My Sports Obsession. He's also working on the 1973 set so I was able to help him out a little bit.

He sent over a bunch of cards including some 2011 Topps, Allen and Ginter and some 73's.

The card at the top of the post is the very last one I needed for the 2011 Opening Day set.

Technically I'm still searching for a few inserts, but everything else is complete.

About a month ago I decided to look over all my cards laying around and make sure they were all arranged correctly. I realized I had a few Opening Day cards mixed with the regular Topps cards.
With both sets having the same design that probably happens a lot with collectors getting the two mixed up.

I'm really happy to finish off this set and put the last base card in the binder. It was a fun set to collect and I occasionally I'll look over it in the binder.

binder shot.


In addition to that card he also sent over the flagship version of the same card.


And a nice Score Board in the Background candidate with this Edwin Jackson card.



I've mentioned before how nice the team cards look.

The celebration photos used in these cards are nice too.


A trade post wouldn't be complete without some Allen and Ginter. Especially some horizontal A&G.

This is shaping up to be a White Sox heavy post so far. This Edwin Jackson card and the A&G card both have something in common and that's the beady eye treatment.

I think in both cases Topps editors brought out the whites in Jackson's eyes.

Speaking of Topps editors.


Look at this airbrush job. Not as bad as the ones I mentioned a few posts ago, but pretty obvious.

Jeff sent over 7 1973 cards to help me on my way with that set.



First off is Oklahoma City's own Dave Rader. He makes an apperance on a card with Dave Conception I think.


Rudy May in one of those cool Angels uniforms.


Tim McGraw's dad in one of the many jersey over the windbreaker Mets cards.

Thanks a lot for the cards Jeff.

Funny baseball story

I came across this cool story. It's baseball related and there is a joke about baseball cards so I thought it might appeal to people who might come across this post.



I don't have a card of Eckersley, so I found this image here: Ron Riesterer photography

trade with andrews baseball cards

Lately I have been complaining about the abundance of inserts in the past few years Topps sets. For the most part I like the inserts, I just don't like how there are so many of them in each set. If you're trying to at least get the base set it's going to take buying that much more of the product to finish off the set and you're still left with partially completed inserts and base sets. It's one of the reasons why I got a little bored with A&G last year. Buying some random retail packs didn't do much to chip away at the set and actually completing the set or feeling like I was getting closer makes me want to buy more of it. It feels a little futile to buy up a bunch of packs and not really feel like you're doing much in the way of completing anything. Pulling the cards are fun, grabbing a few inserts or some cool minis is nice too, but ultimately I want to feel like I'm getting closer to the goal of finishing something.

Whew, that was a long winded rant. Sorry. Enough whining, now for the stuff that I do like:


In the past few years of Topps flagship baseball they included at least one insert set if not more that I really liked. The retro themed inserts like Turkey Red and Kimball Champions were really nice looking to me.

I was mainly collecting series one. Occasionally I would buy a series two rack pack or individual packs for fun. I wasn't really that concerned with collecting the series two, but as long as I was buying it I might as well put them in the binder. It's a very lazy way of collecting, but that's how I felt about flagship last year.


I didn't buy much in the way of Updates, mainly one value pack and a loose pack to see what kind of stuff I could pull.

Since I wasn't buying much product it stands to reason I wouldn't get close to finishing up the base set much less my favorite insert set: Kimball Champions.



By not going the Ebay or COMC route, buying packs is pretty much the only way I'll finished

That only leaves one other option which is the trade route. I did pick some singles online, but I was pretty much laying off this set in favor of vintage. I don't know about you guys, but I seem to have a little ADD with my collecting habits. For a few months it's all retro stuff, then it'll be vintage, then it might be football or player collections. Just whatever random stuff I happen to be into at the moment.

Gettting back to the trade topic. Andrew's baseball cards blog offered up a big chunk of Kimballs for trade. I jumped on the offer and he sent over about 29 minis from series one, two and updates.

Here's some visual evidence of the trade.

In series one I only needed one card of Roy Halladay to finish up the first 50.

You can see that their is a missing Halladay at the bottom of the sheet.

Here is the after pic.


I bought a bunch of 20 card pages in addition to the 15 card pages just to see how I like them. It's nice to have a bunch of mini cards on one page. 20 per page looks better, but the top of the card sticks out of the top of the sleeve, so the card isn't completely protected. It bothers me a little, but I'll get over it. 15 card pages protect the card more, but there is a lot of space in between the cards.

While I'm at it, here's the third page. The first ten were already in my collection. the lower five including the Koufax was from Andrew. Pretty nice.


I only bought a couple of packs of Updates last year and I only pulled one Kimball; the one of Ozzie.



As you can see after the trade I have a lot more in the binder.
Ozzie's not so lonely now. I wish I would have remembered to put the blank page on top of the cards when scanning, but at least you get the idea.

Since I needed some photos to break up the monotony of my writing and because I wanted to show off the minis in the binder rather than alone on a scan I just randomly inserted scans of the pages. Hope you all liked it.

Thanks for the cards Andrew and thanks for the cards.

Cards from the Hopeful chase

Justin at the Hopeful Chase blog posted up some mini trade bait last August(August! I need to get a handle on my laziness) and of course I inquired about some of the minis he had for trade.


He sent over these three 2009 Allen and Ginter black bordered minis. Out of all my collection the decision to try and collect the entire black border mini set was probably my first (and last) foray into trying to complete a big parallel set. I love minis of all sizes and colors and parallels, but this is the one set that I'm trying to complete. The other minis go into a random mini set or what has been trademarked by Dayf: the frankenset. These won't be going into a frankenset, they'll reside with their brothers and sisters in the Official A&G binder. (Official because it has a blaster box top cut to fit the front and sides of the binder.)

A cool Kimball mini was included in the trade package.


Nice Jackie Robinson card. This card is from the series two of the Kimballs which of course focused on retired players. If I didn't need it for the Kimball set, it would definitely be material for the frankenset.

Thanks a lot for the minis Justin. Sorry it took so long to get the post up.

Sandy Sketch

I'm not sure if I have covered this before, but I wanted to do a sketch card post for a while. I finally have some free time now, so here is one of my Sandy Koufax sketches.

I think the color is a little off, but I like the composition and I think it sort of looks like him. So overall I like the way it turned out. I need to do another one with him in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform.

I based the drawing on a book I was reading by Jane Levy.



Pretty cool book. If you have chance to check it out and haven't already, it's a pretty good read.

Alright then. That's about all I got today. Thanks for reading (if you are). And have a good weekend.

Cards from suldog part two- the stars

In the Suldog trade post Part One I mentioned that I thought it would be pretty hard (or expensive) to finish this set considering how many stars were included in the set. A few of those hard to find cards were showcased in the last post.

In the last post I presented a bunch of cards that had cameos from other players or cards that had players obscuring their own cards. One card that I forgot about was this Steve Garvey card.



He definitely fits in the star category, but is only making a small cameo on his own card. Wes Parker is more prominently shown than Garvey. I was reading a blog the other day where they mentioned how the timing just seemed to be off a little on some of these action shots. I can't quite remember who mentioned that, but it's seems right. Quite a few of these action photos don't seem to be timed right. I guess working with film makes it a bit harder. I don't know what the frame rate on those older 35mm cameras were. I have absolutely no experience with the film rewinders on those older cameras. Thank goodness I have digital when I do action photography.

In this post I want to focus on solo shots of the stars. Coincidentally these are all posed shots rather than action shots. It should go without saying that the posed shots would feature just one player on the card and make them the focus of the card.


Just like with the action shots sometimes the posed shots are cool, sometimes they can be a little bizarre.

Here's one of the cool ones:


Jim "Catfish" Hunter, named by Athletics owner Charles Finley for an imaginary catfish that Jim had supposedly caught. Somehow the name stuck. A more interesting bit of trivia is that Hunter was the subject of a Bob Dylan song. I'm a big Dylan fan, but I didn't know this factoid. Joe Cocker also did a version of this song. I can only find the Joe Cocker version. Apparently this was recorded and was planned to appear on Desire. My favorite Dylan album.

The name of the song is "Catfish". I could only find the Joe Cocker version online. Here's a youtube link if you want to check it out.



Not really my type of song. Slow blues can be a little boring sometimes. He suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease and died while falling down the stairs at age 53. Too young.

I wish I had a poster of this card. Really nice clear sharp film photography. It looks like an early morning shot. Beautiful freshly cut grass and an immaculate stadium in the background. Really nice card.

It's cards like this that make me wonder if the older guys had better cards than the rookies because they were treated differently by the photographer or they had been around so long they knew how to pose and get in the mood of being in front of the camera so they wouldn't look so dorky.

There are a few cards that make me think this way.

One of which is this card of Jim Hickman. I don't know if it's the cartoon Cubs logo(which I like) or if it's the skinny neck. There's just something non-athletic about this guy. Looking at the stands it appears as if this photo looks like it was taken during a game.

One the back it mentions that he had pitched a game for the Dodgers in 67. Now that's an interesting story for a first baseman. Looking at the stat line he had been in the majors for at least 10 years at the time of this photo. So he had to be doing something right. I guess looks can be deceiving.



Manny Mota. One of my favorites in the 1980 set. Another set that I'm closer to finishing than this one. Nice pose and nice blue colors in this card.



His teammate Lee Lacy just looks insane. What a horrible trick to pull on someone on photo. "Hunker down and grunt like a psychopath while an imaginary ball bounces your way".

"Grrrrr"

"Yeah,that's a keeper. Next!"

When this picture was taken Lacy had only spent one year with the Dodgers. The other four years were spent bouncing around the minors. Safe to say at this point in his career he wasn't the star that Mota was. Could this be an example of picture day also being Haze the Rookie day?



Since we're on a Dodgers kick let's keep it going with the famous Tommy John. If memory serves (and it probably doesn't)Tommy started his rise with the Dodgers before getting hurt. According to the card back 73 was his second year with the Dodgers. 11 years previously spent in the minors as well as with the White Sox.

Pretty nice pose though.

A better fake follow through pose would be this card of Jerry Koosman. (you were wondering when the Mets would start making an appearance, didn't you?) Not to nitpick, but it would be a shade more cooler if there weren't a bunch of players playing catch in the background. Maybe they should do these fake pitching photos on the mound. That might be too revolutionary for 1973. Heck, it might be too revolutionary for 2012.

Back to the non-stars.



This one's a little hard for me. I've heard of Don Money, but from what I can tell from the front and back of this card he might not have been one of the bigger stars of the day. If you couldn't tell from the scan that's not his normal uniform. A little airbrushing has taken place. It looks so bad that he might as well be playing for Looney Tunes rather than the Brewers. I guess they couldn't erase the Philly pinstripes so they just painted them blue. The jersey looks so odd that it appears that his neck and head have been placed in someone else's uniform. That can't be right though, because then they could have just placed him in another Brewer's uni. It might have looked more realistic.



Vincente is from Mexico. You can tell from his cartoon that they all play baseball in their sombrero's.


Looking at the front of the card he might want to continue wearing the sombrero rather than this airbrushed brown dishrag on his head. He doesn't look to happy about it either.



Pre-windup shots = not so great photo.


Hands over the head = a little better. Might be a lot better if there wasn't that cluttered background. Not a great card for Ryan. He deserves better. Cool Angels logo though.

This post is getting a little sloppy going back and forth between fake pitching cards and fake batting cards.

I've got only two more cards to share and they're both fake batting shots.


First off is The Say Hey Kid. This was past his say hey day. A little older, but still had big biceps. He's wearing a black armband honoring Gil Hodges who had passed away in 72.


...and lastly a Joe Torre card. Mostly a Joe Torre sideburn card, but who's counting. More obvious than the sideburns is the big white building in the background. Takes the focus off of the players in the background taking off their windbreakers. Of course Joe still has on underneath his jersey. A lot of these posed shots have the jersey over the windbreaker theme.


Alright then. I guess that's all I have for this one. Not the best way to end a post, but thanks for reading anyway. And of course, thanks for the cards Suldog.