Cardboard wisdom from baseball dad

A long while ago I pulled off a trade with everyone's favorite dad; Jack from the All Tribe Baseball blog.

We've traded a few times and I've been a fan of his every since I came across his blog. His was one of the first blogs that I read and he was my first commenter and trade partner. In the past three years or so that I've been reading his blog I don't think I've read a negative word from him. He's always the most laid back and positive person in our little blogging community.



He was nice enough to send me over some Heritage team sets. When ever I see team cards no matter the year, I always want to collect them. I still haven't gotten around to achieving this goal, it's one of the many things that I've procrastinated about doing this past year. I may have to do a Heritage Team Frankenset. That might look cool, or horrible. Whatever the outcome it would be fun to try.

When 2012 flagship came out, Jack mentioned how he wished that a card company should do an all vertical or horizontal set one of these days because it looks better in the binder. It wouldn't be as hard to enjoy the cards if they were all facing the same way.

I'm sure other people have mentioned it on their blogs, but I don't recall it having an effect on me until I read Jack's review. It makes sense though; a lot of times I think the insert sets like Kimball Champions and Turkey Red look so nice simply because it's a uniform style and they all are orientated in the same direction. I'll have more on this in another post later.

That could also be why I like the all horizontal team cards. Imaging them in the binder together will look really nice. So far I only have them in toploaders before I get around to putting them in the binder.


For now, I'll change gears a little and show off some other cards that Jack sent over.


Last year Opening Day was my favorite set to collect. I like the small checklist, the Opening Day Logo and the inserts. For the most part it was a pretty easy set to collect. I'm still needing some mascot and Superstar Celebration cards to finish it up, but overall it was fun to open packs and put together the set. I also pulled an auto from one of my Wal Mart blasters so that was nice. Not a player that I necessarily care about, but still a nice pull.

One of my many sets that has taken a back seat is 08 Stadium Club.

I like the logo and the full bleed photography, but who doesn't? I don't think I've heard a negative word about SC ever.

Even the vertical action shots look nice.


The inclusion of retired stars in the checklist is a good idea too. What better way to give tribute to the older stars with a nice full bleed action shots like this one of Nolan Ryan. In a Mets uniform no less!

I'm a sucker for advertising. Writing this post I'm wearing a New Era brand Mets hat. Kershaw's steely gaze makes this posed shot a little more interesting than the basic posed baseball card shot.

That's all I got in the tank for this post. Thanks for reading. And thanks for the cards and wisdom Jack!

Geschenk von Baseball-dad

Dies ist mein Deutsch inspiriert Post über eine aktuelle Paket erhielt ich von Baseball Dad!

Alright enough of that. I was going to do a whole post translated in German as a tribute to the two German and two American made cameras that Jack from All Tribe Baseball sent down to me but I think that would be too hard and since I don't really speak German I'll cancel that idea.

I had been meaning to write up a post about this a long time ago, but I really wanted to do it the right way. I don't think I'll ever be able to sum up how nice it was for him to send over those antique cameras to me.


He mentioned have some older cameras and wanted to know if I was interested. Heck yeah! It didn't take me long to agree to that one. He sent over four cameras.


I'll try to do a post singling out each one later, but for now I'll just do a brief overview of all four of them.


First up is the Ernemann Heag from the 1920's.


It's a plate camera and it was really hard for me to figure out how to open this one up. I didn't noticed the little "bump" at first. I thought it was just a place where the leather had come unglued from the body of the camera. This was actually the mechanism to open up the lens/shutter assembly. I highlighted it with a blue arrow.


Like I mentioned earlier it's a plate camera so that means it takes sheets of film that are loaded into the back of the camera.


I'm not sure how to actually load the film up. I'm not sure if it needs another piece in the back or not. I need to do more searching online and in some of my old books to see what's going on with these types of cameras.


I've labeled this camera to show off the different parts in case it wasn't obvious what was what.

1. Viewfinder
2. Shutter
3. Shutter speed
4. Aperture setting

He sent me this Anso-Kodak D-6 Cadet "box camera". It's the most primitive of the four.


It's basically a box with a basic mechanical shutter with a fixed aperture. In theory you can make these cameras at home. Some of the nicer, newer box cameras are made from wood and look pretty cool, but I'd rather just build my own if I was interested in one of these cameras.

Now, I don't have to make that decision, I have my very own box camera.



Here is a closeup of one of the viewfinders.



You can tell that the viewfinders are a little hazy. I don't know what can be done about that. I think it's made from glass so I should be able to use my lens cleaner to clean that up a bit.

The card in the viewfinder is a chrome card of Johan. It was hard to hold the camera and the card. Chrome is shiny,but also slippery.

Next up is a Kodak Hawkeye 2A which I think is from the period of about 1926 to 1933.

It's a nice camera two. Sort of big, but nice. The only problem with this camera right now is that the bellows are all brittle and have separated from the lens assembly.


I've seen some places online that refurbish bellows and a local guy says he has a DIY book. I might go that route. I think I could come up with something, the main problem would be that it would need to fold into the camera and not be too bulky and also it would have to be light proof.

The Ernemann and Voightlander both have little mono pods that pull down to stabilize the camera door. The Ernemann is actually the release that opens up the door to allow the lens and viewfinder to be extended outward.





Here is a shot of the distance meter for focusing.


The last and best camera in the bunch is a Voigtlander camera from I think the early 1930's.


It's quite a bit smaller than the Hawkeye.


It's also in a lot better shape as well. The bellows aren't torn and don't seem to be letting in any light. The only thing wrong with this camera is the bottom part is detached from the bellows. I can't seem to fix it myself. I know what has to be done, I'm just too timid right now to actually do it.



For now I'm going to try and shoot a few rolls and see how it goes first, before I try to do a permanent fix.
1. A threaded hole for either a tripod or viewfinder
2. A window for seeing the amount of photos taken
3. A little pull down mono pod
4. Button to release the door that contains the shutter/lens and viewfinder
5. Film winder


All of these cameras use a mechanical shutter and have a very primitive setup for exposure. Most only have a few settings for shutter speed: T,B, 25, 50, 100 and 200. T= timer, B=Bulb and you know the rest.

For focusing you use the little distance meter at the bottom. It's in metric so I'll have make a little conversion chart to take with me. The blue arrows are pointing at the things that you use to pull the assembly out and then you can slide the whole thing forward for focusing (1).



These cameras are all medium format which basically means they all take square photos of varying sizes depending on the camera, film and how far you wind it. This is the part of the equation that is the most confusing to me.

I've been interested in owning a medium format camera for a while, I've just never had the chance to buy any.

I've already had one mishap dealing with film formats so far, but that's a subject for another post. Let's just suffice it to say that I finally found some film that worked, but it took some looking around. I'm looking forward to cleaning these babies up and hopefully taking some nice photos.


I still don't think this post does justice to how happy I was to receive this cameras in the mail.

Thanks again.

Cards from Baseball Dad!

Cool thing about trading with bloggers is that they always keep you in mind when they have a few doubles laying around. I received some cards from Baseball Dad in the mail yesterday. After checking out my trade/want list he mentioned that he had a few cards that I could probably use and he was right.

I'll start with the Allen and Ginter cards that he sent.

I haven't seen a lot of people scanning the non-sports cards recently (or ever). So I thought I'd use that as an excuse to upload some more 2009 Allen and Ginter. maybe there's some people out there who aren't sick of this set yet.


Charles Goodyear.



Florence wrote the first text book on nursing, "Notes on Nurses".



Hertz predicted that electricity can be transmitted through electromagnetic waves.


I couldn't help but scan this one too. Dontrelle's pose jumps out of the frame at me.


Baseball Dad also sent me some extra cards to help me along with my Topps series one and two. I'm only going to show off the cool horizontal cards.


Luis Castillo.


Verlander. Really nice post throw shot.



I really love this shot of Chad Qualls. I like that the ball is in the frame and the composition of the card is nice. The empty stadium in the back isn't so hot, but actually the flat colors of the stadium seats are less distracting than if had been a full stadium filled with multi-color spectators. Looking at it closely, I can't help but try to figure out what that is behind him. I think it's a few scattered out of focus fans, but at first it looks like one huge person jumping off of the stadium into the field. I'm pretty sure that isn't it.


2001 Donruss Studio. This is a "Leather and Lumber" insert set. Really nice, thick card stock.


Donruss seems to know how to do a relic the right way. The disclaimer says that it's personally used by the player on the card, so that's nice.


Another cool card he sent over was this reprint of a '49 Bowman Duke Snider card. Really nice for him to send that over. I really like it. The reason for the reprint is that it's an ad to win a that card as well as a few others. I'd like to enter (even though I never win any contests), but the contest expired on or about(!) March 15, 1990. Hmmm, guess I won't be trying that one.

.... and of course the coolest card on my want list. I never thought that anybody would even notice this card. I didn't even know the number for it, so I just listed "David Wright, Topps 2008" on my list. I realize that it's not a rare card, but without listing it by number, would make it hard for people to find in their stack of cards. But anyway, I'm glad he found an extra one for me.



Wow, I guess I should go through all the old checklists and make a huge master list of stuff I want by number. That might be easier for everyone involved. Anyways, I can cross that one off the "list".

Thanks again. You're too generous for all these nice cards.