Trip to the card store

In my search for some vintage cards I made my way over to the LCS to see what he had in stock. He seems to have a lot more 1973 cards these days and that's exactly up my alley! I picked up quite a few cards for that set as well as a couple of more cool vintage cards.


Vintage has been giving me a much better feeling with my collection than just ripping open random packs. I'm not much into current sets, so I'm going to focus more on the older stuff.

I first started liking the 73 set because of the action shots I saw on the blogs. Like most sets there is a plethora of posed shots, but first I want to start off with a rare candid shot.



What a happy looking card. Smiling player spending time in the sun. With a name like May to boot! Looks like he's having a genuine good time in this photo. According to the back his nickname is "Daisy". No wonder then. Seems like a happy fellow.

It's kind of cool when you grab a bunch of cards that seem to have some connection.

This was a dup I picked because I was too stupid to pick up the smart phone and check my want list as I was picking out cards. Oh well, it was an upgrade to the card I already had.

A more prominent shot of Chaney is this one of Game 3 of the World Series between the Reds and A's.


Kind of an obvious with Chaney featured so prominently in the foreground. He's still not the actual subject of the action though. It's the dude sliding to home.



Another example would be this one of "Odom Out at Plate". To me, the main subject of the card is Oklahoma's own Johnny Bench. I guess that's the whole point of the "out at plate" thing. My first Bench card during his playing years. Pretty cool.



I picked up this nice Jim Fregosi card for two reasons: it's a nice action shot and it's a 71. I'm slowly picking up 71's and 72's when I see them. Those might be the next two sets I work on later. I have a tendency to jump around from set to set.

I recalled the name Fregosi, but it wasn't until I pulled this out of the box that I remembered he was a Met.

Uggh. A big contrast to the epic horizontal swing action shot in the 71 card. A couple of guys looking up for the ball. Somewhat interesting looking fans in the background, but bored looking teammates in the dugout all conspire to make this a pretty lame "action" shot.



This Lindy McDaniel card was an anomaly in the 25 cent box. Normally any former OU players or players who were born or reside in Oklahoma go in the more expensive OKLAHOMA PLAYERS box. I haven't been over to that box in a while. I guess Lindy was TRADED to the cheap 25 cent box. I can't think of a more humiliating card to have your face on. This was one of a few 1974 cards that I'm interested in because I knew he was in the Traded set. They editors really did a number on the hat. I think they may have even deleted some of the clouds in the background.

It's good that I'm not a real writer, if I were headlines like this would be the norm.

I guess that explains Lou as a Royal. I never really think of Lou as anything but a Yankee.
Alright, that's all I got for this installment of cheap guy goes to the card store. I have some vintage planned for later on this week.

I can't believe it's been almost a year

In the few years of blogging (I’m not sure if posting once every couple of months could be considered blogging, but bear with me) I’ve never had a bad trade. The worst trade I’ve ever completed was still great because I got exactly what I expected in the trade. Nothing more, nothing less, but exactly what I was expecting which was great because it filled some holes in my player, team or set collection. Most of the time a trade fits all three criteria. Some, actually most trades will include a few extras. Random cards of a team or player that you didn’t expect and that’s nice too. It’s always nice to get extra cards, it’s also nice to get rid of some cards that you know the receiving party will also like.


Their have been a couple of times that I was guilty of the same thing. The person I traded with requested no extras because they didn’t want a bunch of dups of crap they already had. A few times I assumed they didn’t want my extra crap or I didn’t have any extras to send over and I felt a little guilty about that. I’m pretty sure most of my trade partners have intimated that they liked the cards I sent either by email or trade posts or both.

That leaves me to the second part of a trade and that would be the trade post. These days I haven’t done much posting which means I still haven’t gotten around to my trade posts.

Not doing a trade post is sort of like not cuddling after intercourse. * You’re contractually obligated to do one. You don't want to be seen as a brutish oaf, do you?? You also don't want to be labelled an insensitive and selfish person. Honestly you really should show appreciation for the cards and the time it took for people to go through their collections to send you some cards. Add in obnoxious postal workers and kiosks that go on the fritz and the sending part can be tedious.


And it’s not that I don’t want to do a trade post it just seems like the longer I go without doing one it’s just that much more of a insult to the trade partner. So the longer I wait means that the trade post has to be that much better to compensate for my laziness. It’s a vicious circle.

Which brings me to the present day. Even though I’ve spent three paragraphs setting it up, this technically isn’t a trade post. This is a contest winnings post. Not doing a winning contest post is even more egregious simply because the person you should be thanking has braved the postal workers ,kiosk lines, and/or the line at Target or the card store to pick up packing materials as well as pulling the cards. They’ve spent infinitely more time setting up the contest, picking the winners and then sending out the cards so the least you can do is acknowledge the package, right?

I mean, your part of the contest was pretty simple and easy by comparison. A comment, shout out and a random guess or question to answer and that's it.


Yikes! I’m a really bad person. It’s taken me months to get around to blogging about my contest winnings from Ted who runs the blog Crinkly Wrappers. We actually did complete a trade around the time of the contest, but I haven’t done a trade post on that yet either. (Sorry!!)



This is a post that is tough to do not just because of the shear volume of cards, but for the content of the package. The cards he sent over all three criteria, plus the added bonus of being mostly vintage examples of cards that I had never seen in person.



One Topps card from 1952 to 2011. Pretty crazy. Much nicer and better thought out than the Diamond Giveaway stuff that Topps does. In all fairness Topps couldn’t do something quite like this. No offense to Crinkly Wrappers, but if Topps did a similar giveaway they would be expected to have more than a few winners. Think of the outrage if out of all the collectors Topps only awarded 1 set of cards from 1952 to 2011. Their giveaway site is still pretty nice, just not quite a giveaway. More like a lottery. Ted’s giveaway was a true giveaway and I’m definitely pleased to receive the cards. This has got to be one of the most generous packages I’ve ever gotten in the mail.

I mean, when you are holding a 1952 card in your hand and it’s in pretty decent shape that’s saying something. I never thought I would own a 1952 card, much less one in great shape. Honestly I never thought I would hold in my hand any cards from the 50’s or 60’s when I started collecting so this is all mind blowing.

Out of all the cards he sent a few of them were personally more intriguing to me than the others simply because they fit specific holes in my collection.



This 1967 card of Jerry Adair is nice because he’s an Oklahoma guy and this will go into my Oklahoma guy binder. I’m trying to get one card of everybody who is from oklahoma in one binder. The card itself didn’t really grab me. A close up portrait of a ballplayer from the 60’s didn’t immediately grab my attention; it was the name Adair. Adair is a county in Oklahoma so I checked out the back to see who he was. It would be nice if he was from Adair county, but alas Sand Springs is in Osage and Tulsa counties. It would be cool if he was the king of Adair county before becoming a ballplayer.



Another card that immediately went into the binder was this 1973 card. When I decide to collect a set putting what few cards I have into the binder is one of the first things I do. It’s better for me that way than doing the box thing and then putting the cards in binders later. I like to look at them so even if I only have like 10-20 cards they’ll sit in a binder alone into I can fill it out more. This card was needed.


This 2011 Clay Bucholz card was also a set need. It's also a Score Board in the Background candidate.


2008 is a set that I’ve made fun of a few times, but it’s starting to grow on me. The Topps tab thing is still a little irritating, but it’s a nice, colorful set.


just as colorful is the 1960 Topps. A few similarities with the colored names. 1960 Topps and...



....1965 Topps are two sets that I’ll try to tackle at some point. Not to be a pessimist, but they’ll be a little hard to complete too. The journey will be nice though. Unlike the 1973 set these are in the “good box” until I can get a little more to put in the binders. So far I only have a couple of '65's and only the single 1960 card you see above.


1971 would be a nice set to collect. With this Clyde Wright card I now have 3 1971 cards. The journey to collect 1971 has started. We all have to start somewhere right? It only takes a couple of cards to get me into a set and I’m afraid the more I look at these cards in hand I’ll try to collect every year of Topps.

This is only the second 1972 card that I have in hand. I can see why people go crazy for these cards. IT’s such an odd border. You could safely say that nothing like it exists. (1982 Fleer borrowed the lower name plate.) I may put off doing those other sets I mentioned to focus on 1972.


You see what happens when you have an abundance of riches? You become greedy and want more riches. I really would like to own every single card from 1952 to 2008. Crap! I need to reign myself in a little.


In addition to a couple of set needs I also was lucky to get a couple of Mets cards like this 1964 Amado Samuel card.


I have to admit that I’m not familiar with all the players on these cards. A few stand out to me like this 1979 Tony Perez card. I know this guy. I was six when this card was issued.

Jerry Johnson is another name I recognize. Pretty cool action shot. Not a lot of these from the selection Ted sent over. A little faster shutter speed would help with the blurry pitching hand. It looks like a daytime shot so that should allow for a faster shutter speed. Oh well. It’s still a nice shot.

One name I thought I recognized was Jon Matlock. Actually it's Matlack. All this time I referred to him as Matlock. Maybe I was influenced by my grandparents always watching reruns of Andy Griffith's TV detective. Anyway, it's nice to have a card of his as a Met. I only have some childhood cards of him as a Ranger. Pretty cool photo of Jon with a mischievous grin.

Brohamer is a cool name, but I bet every frat boy in his class probably referred to him as "Bro Hammer", rather than "Bro Haymer". "How's it hangin' BroHammer!"



Some photos selections by the editors and/ or photographers on these cards are a little more odd like in this 1977 card of Ralph Garr.


Kind of lame.


This 1959 card is pretty awesome though. Nice clear photo. I like that it’s taken near the dugout rather than in some gully or a fake pose in front of an empty stadium. We could imagine this card being taken while he was waiting to go to the on deck circle. You could imagine him during a game. Most probably it was taken before a game during spring practice. It just doesn’t scream preseason like most cards do.

A plethora a blue backgrounds in the early sixties and late seventies.





Not to mention pretty cool flat tops too.

A nice batting helmet shot in 1963.

And there you have it, basically an example of every Topps card from 1952 to 1979. I didn’t want to bore people with the 80’s and 90’s cards as they’re a little more common and recognizable to us.

I don’t think my crappy, long winded post really did the cards justice. It was mostly a self-deprecating blog about my procrastination.

Thanks for the cards. I really did enjoy them. Hopefully one day I can repay the blogosphere with a cool giveaway of my own.

* Until our collecting community is infiltrated with hot, female collectors I'm not trading cuddling or sex for cards. Maybe a nice compliment or some sweet talking, but that's it. I'm easy, not slutty.

Thanks for reading.

What is your favorite card set?

When I think of baseball cards the first thing that comes to mind is the colorful banners and round borders of the 1980 Topps baseball set. For me it's the quintessential baseball set. I wasn't up on baseball much in 1980. I would rather be outside playing baseball or soccer or playing army or Star Wars rather than watching games or keeping up with certain players.

But when I was watching Magnum P.I. with my mom and felt like going through my cards I always held the 1980 Topps cards in much higher esteem than the 84 and 85 Donruss or the Fleer cards. That doesn't mean that I didn't hold them together with a rubber band or stuff them in a shoe box, because I did. This was before the days of highly profitable error cards or penny sleeves or plastic toploaders. Maybe their was this technology available, but not in a small town in south east Oklahoma. And to my recollection it was a couple of years later that everybody was trying to keep their comics and baseball cards hermetically sealed so they would be worth something someday.

Since I got back into collecting I have thought to try and finish this set. I could only rescue about 5 badly dinged up cards from that set.


You can see how the years of being lost in the attic with a rubber band wrapped around them has taken a toll on the cards.

A good example of this is the Roy Thomas card.


I tried positioning the card in such a way that you could tell how disfigured it is.

Besides the few cards that I've seen online and the 5 that I have in the shoe box, I really haven't searched out many examples to see what they look like. I wanted to surprise myself when I finally got around to trying to collect the set. I wanted each card to be new to me even if I had already seen it before.

So that brings me back to the present.

I'm pretty excited to have "won" an auction on ebay for about half the 1980 set. Part of me feels like it's cheating the other part of me thinks that this is an easy and somewhat affordable way to get started on the set. It's definitely not a complete set so I still have a way to go to finish it and some of the cards are well worn which is fine by me. I'm just interested in seeing all the cool cards from this year finally.


I don't remember there being many action shots and so far I'm right. Out of the 300 or so cards that I've gone through only a handful are "cool" action shots.


My guesses are usually wrong, but I believe that is Joel Youngblood sliding into Foli on this card. Foli has a great "OH CRAP!" expression on his face.


This what I mean by cool action shots.




This is a somewhat pedestrian action shot. Their are loads of these in this set so far. Or at least from what I've seen. Still a cool shot: it's definitely from a game and you can see emotion and the ball is in the frame.

Most of the cards seem to be of the posed shot or candid shot variety. Like this one of Tony Scott.

This is one of the few underexposed cards that I've seen so far in the set. Besides that it's pretty indicative of the type of candid head shot found in these cards.


Here's one of the more goofy candid shots in the set:

"Hey look who's down there takin' my picture. Hello photo boy!"


I'm guessing every baseball set pretty much recaps the previous year in some form. Here we have a Manny Mota highlight.


I'll be lazy and let the card back do the talking.



It's got the ripped out of a newspaper and fake headline theme on the back.


On the other end of the spectrum would be the Future Stars cards:

I'm not sure if Tim's hat is airbrushed. It looks a little weird. He played for the Padres his entire career with a few years of minor league ball so I don't know why it would be airbrushed. I'm also not sure why they felt the need to airbrush his face. It's a little disconcerting that his head looks so cartoonish.


A Victory Leader stat card.
This card features two brothers that led the N.L. with 21 wins apiece. Flanagan led the A.L. with 23 wins. Runner up was Tommy John with 21 wins.


This is atypical of the team checklist cards. Most of them are outside shots with the entire team and managers sitting in rows like we all expect. Going through my stack of cards I came across this floating head Cubs team card. It's weird enough for me to want to show it off. I've seen floating head manager cards, but not floating head team cards.


Going back to the backs.


I didn't realize how blue all the backs were. I mean to say that I realized that their were no variations in the backs, but I didn't realize how the two shades of blue really make the card backs kind of bland.

The backs do have a pretty nice layout though.


And of course they have the cool cartoons with a little home plate looking emblem containing the card number. Gotta love cartoons on the card backs.

Alright! That's it for now for my trip down 1980 Topps memory lane. I'm still not quite sure how many more cards I need, but it's roughly half of the set. I'm pretty excited to try and finish my favorite baseball card set. In the next few days I'm going to stick them in the binder so I can look at them easier. I don't want to have them cluttered all over my coffee table.

Thanks for reading.