well loved cards

Picking through the cards at yard sales. flea markets and dime boxes at the local card store will sometimes yield some really interesting cards. Not the typical type of card in that it's of a nice player or because the photo on the card is cool or funny looking. Like most of you I also run across those types of cards.

I'm mainly talking about the cards that no matter the subject matter have obviously shown some wear and tear and in my opinion lots of love.

I used to not think that way. I would see a card like the one pictured above and assume that the previous owner or owners hadn't really taken care of it.

I should have known better; when I was a kid I collected comics. I knew some people who would buy two copies of a comic; one for the bag and board to be protected and never enjoyed and the other copy to be read. I never did that. I kept most of them in the bag with a cardboard back to try and keep them new, but I knew that they wouldn't be worth as much to anybody as they were to me. I used to read those comics all the time. They're a little worse for wear these days, but I still have them to read. They didn't suffer much.

I'd like to think that these cards that I come across these days are from the same type of owner. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's a new positivity thing I'm doing these days. Trying to look on the brighter side of things and all that.

Maybe I'm wrong and the former owners of these cards were all Mets fans and were taking out their frustrations on the cards that were reminding them of a not so distant past in which the Mets got to the World Series and lost. Maybe the owner just hated the Mets.

I didn't really follow the 1973 World Series much though as it was played in October 1973. Since I was born in March of that year, I really didn't have much of an interest in the game.

So when I find these 1974 world series recap cards I always pick them up. It's a start of a new collection in which I try and get the championship highlight cards from the previous year.




These 1974 cards first caught my eye because of the patriotic colors and the action shots. I've run across more of these action shots from other sets that I hope to get around to writing about.


I'm not so sure how far I'll go with this type of collection, but I really, really want to eventually find the rest of these cards from 1974. I have 3 so far and all three have some sort of damage.


When I found the first one at the flea market I vowed to find all 10 of them and upgrade this particular card. Now I'm thinking that I'll just try to complete this "set" and if it turns out they are all in damaged condition or miss-cut all the better. I'm not going to be worried about condition to much these days.

Thanks for reading.

The Doon abides.....

Sorry, couldn't think of a better title for this post. "the Doon abides" has been bouncing around in my head for a while. I'm hoping that I didn't rip this off from somebody else.

Anyway, on with the body of this post.

A few months ago, The Napkin Doon did one of his many auction posts and offered up some cool vintage for any takers. I'm on a vintage kick these days. I don't mind the condition either.

The first card that caught my eye was the Don Mossi card.


I've seen a few Don Mossi cards and this card is awesome. It's more miss-scanned than miss cut. 59 is a really nice set. Look at that cool Tigers logo. I wish Topps or some other company would do mascot short prints. They could replace some of the cards with the current logo and replace it with the older ones. Would that be cool? I think so.

Here's a couple of examples that I came up with.


I'm sorry that I don't know who either of these people are.


I realize that the retired short prints have the old logos, but having the new logos on current players instantly make them a lot cooler.

Alvin Dark is an Oklahoma guy and this will go nicely in my Oklahoma guy collection. Pink is actually not that bad of a background color on these 59's. Al Dark is a pretty cool name too.


I have one of his manager cards from the 1973 set, but it's still nice to have one of his solo cards from when he was playing.

59's are so nice looking aren't they?




Come to think of it I think 1960 Rookie Stars cards are cool too!


My only previous experience with this design was Heritage a few years ago.

http://noonesgoingtoreadthisblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/fighting-doldrums.html

I knew nothing about these players when I received them in the mail, but that's one of the cool things about vintage. Looking up some of the players online to see what trivia you can find about them.


Chico Cardenas probably has a bunch of stories to tell. His boyhood hero was Sandy Amoros also from Cuba. Amoros gave Leo (chico) his first baseball glove. He came to the US at 16 and played most of his career with the Reds. He retired as a Ranger.

Another cool thing about these vintage cards is the Tasby card. It's a rookie stars card and as such it's a completely different looking card than the regular 59's.




It looks like the previous owner had tried trimming the Tasby card to make it look more like a shield. It didn't work to well on the back of the card though. I think they stopped so as not to trim away the stats.

Thanks for the cool vintage. I'll be sending out some stuff to you in return soon.

Another vintage Saturday post

Stopping by the LCS the other day for some stuff I came across some nice vintage cards. Let's take a look shall we.

My eye always seems to find the Mets first so let's do them first.




Team cards are cool. It would be a nice part of my collection to collect every Mets team card of their existence. I only have a couple of vintage team cards in my possession right now. Before this card trip all I had was a 1970 team card from Justin at the Hopeful Chase. (his blog used to be called Tampa Bay Wasteland)



I received a bunch of 75's from Duane a Democratic Roadkill a year or so ago. They're nice, but I'm going to try for some of the other vintage sets before I think about 1975. I hadn't come across this card before, so I thought I'd snatch it up while I had the chance.

Having these teams cards has me wondering if I should just devote a page or two to a chronological team card page or should I put it with the player's cards. Anybody out there ever have this same type of dilemma? Not much of a dilemma in the grand scheme of things, just a way for me to get a little more neurotic and nerdy with my hobby.

I'll let you know how that all works out for me. I'm sure you all are on the edge of your seats waiting for this info.


This manager card of Gil Hodges is pretty boring, but a nice start on the Mets team set from 1972.



I haven't seen these Sporting News cards before. I was pretty sure it was from 1969 because of the bright yellow circle with the position, team and player name.

The back is a puzzle piece.
I'm not sure what it is, but I think if you tweeted this today you might have to resign from Congress.


1968's are a set that I haven't spent much time on. Mainly because I haven't seen too many of them. I came across this Ed Kranepool card and was struck by how vibrant the colors are on this card. The blue Mets hat is pretty bright and really stands out from the yellowish brown border.
Just a typical posed batting cage pic from a time before action shots were common, but it's one of my nicer vintage cards.

Since I haven't seen many 68's in person, this card was a nice surprise.


This has been a pretty Mets-centric post. I do have some vintage with other teams represented, but I'll leave that for another post.

Thanks for reading.

vintage weekend

I haven't done one of these in a while so it's about time for another installment. I used to do these types of posts on Saturday, but I had a friend come into town, so I didn't have enough time to play with my cards yesterday. Hence, the Vintage Sunday rather than Vintage Saturday post.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the local flea market in search of the holy trinity of junk: old cameras, baseball cards and comic books. I didn't find any cameras at all which was pretty disappointing, the comics I found were over priced, but I did find some random cards to pick up.

One of the booths that I visited had the best stuff. He was selling a bunch of relics and autos that were a little too pricey for me. He also had a complete set of 1962 Post cereal box "cards" for the bargain price of 300 smackers. Nice set, but a little too much for me. I settled for a pack of 89 Fleer, a shrink wrapped box of a 1992 Heisman set and some random assortment of Stadium Club. I've had some good luck finding packs of Stadium Club, but not this time.

The cards in the "packs" weren't so good, but I did get a few cards of some nice players.

This card is a little odd: Wade is basically congratulating somebody else's home run. It's an odd choice, but he's definitely the subject of the card.

Will Clark is somebody I recognize. I know that it's one of Brian's fav's. Still, it's kind of pedestrian shot. I don't know much about the Member's Choice parallels.


Nobody that I particularly collect, and the saddest part is that their weren't any cool action shots. Stadium club is known for cool action shots, I wasn't really feeling any of these cards. They just didn't do it for me. At least the John Russel card will go into the Oklahoma binder which is still under construction.

The Heisman Collection box yielded some nice cards. They are all reproductions of the paintings that hang on the walls of the Downtown Athletic Club in Manhattan.

I know a lot of people don't like what the Heisman ceremony has become. I could count myself as one of those people. I don't think it really goes to the most outstanding player in college football anymore. It really helps that you play in a major conference. I think they over look a lot of nice players. I'm glad Robert Griffin III won it this past year though. He's an outstanding player and should have won it. He brought a lot of attention to Baylor a doormat in the Big XII these past 14 + years and gave them something to be excited about. A lot of people count the game against Oklahoma as the game that won him the Heisman. I'm not so sure about that, but it certainly didn't hurt to beat a top ten team decisively. There I go again, always trying to bring the focus on OU.


Oh look! A cool card of former Oklahoma running back Steve Owens. I did it again. Sorry, but it's my only card of his at this point. I know there are some nice ones of his and I have waited too long to grab some of his cards. He's a pretty nice guy in person too. He signed a book and a football for my mom.

No vintage card post could be complete without an afro. Billy is also a great guy in person. He was nice enough to sign a photo and talk to me for a while a few years ago when I was trying to get an autograph for my mom's Christmas present. She now has two out of five OU Heisman autos. It's going to be tough to find one of Billy Vessels. (He passed away in 2001).


Johnny Rodgers also makes an appearance. He is famous to OU fans as being that guy that ran the punt back for a touchdown in the Game of the Century. Apparently the Heisman people took note; it mentions this fact on the back of the card. Shades of Robert Griffin III? Okay, I'm doing it again. I won't be that guy that thinks the world revolves around his team, but there seems to be some evidence to the contrary. I think maybe Oklahoma is the center of the college football world.

Here's a video of the punt return:




Alright then. I don't have much else in the tank. I didn't show off the pack of 89 Fleer, mainly because there wasn't much to show. The flea market guy had a whole box and I only bought one pack. If I had remembered the Billy Ripken card was in that set I would have probably bought the whole box. I wouldn't mind pulling one of the variations of those cards, especially the one with the curse word on it.

Hopefully I can get around to showing off some cool vintage stuff from the card store this week.

Respect your elders

I haven't done a vintage Saturday type post for a while so I thought I'd knock one out. I know that technically it's not Saturday, but I've been busy with football season and life stuff. The life stuff is good stuff, not bad stuff. But still, life has a tendency to get in the way though.

This particular post is sponsored by the Topps Million Card Giveaway. I finally got around to having some of my cards delivered. I'm really surprised by how quickly they got here! I think it was late Wednesday night when I ordered them and by Saturday I had them in my hands. I know that there was a least one blogger complaining about Topps not having the cards in stock that they requested. Thankfully I didn't have to go through that.


First up is this card of Skip Pitlock. This was one of the cards that I showed off when the Giveaway was still fresh on people's minds, but now that I have the card in hand I wanted to scan it and show it off again. He looks just as dorky in "person" as he does online, but the card itself is in pretty decent shape. A little miscut, but not much chipping.

I noticed that the 1971 cards are a lot darker compared to other vintage cards. The 1970 cards have those gray borders and they don't call the '72 set the psychedelic tombstone set for nothing.


Maybe it's because I "pulled" this 2007 card out of the bubble mailer right after the Pitlock card, but I think the 1971 and 2007 cards have some similarities. Obviously the black borders, but...



..also on the two cards you can see a box for the players head, albeit much smaller on the '07 than the window on the 1971 card. There is also an absence of a cartoon on both cards. The 1970 and 2006 cards both had cartoons. Hmm. That might be the impetus for another post, but for now I'm just saying their are a few similarities. I guess you can make a case for a lot of the card sets having some similar traits.


Yes, I had a 2007 card set to me. Don't ask me why, possibly I just had a brain freeze. I had about 6 cards that I was on the fence about having sent home, and three of them made it to my house. I probably shouldn't have done that, but oh well. I just can't stand the idea of something that I "own" sitting in some warehouse. I think I still have two cards sitting in the virtual warehouse gathering dust.

This card was a no brainer to have delivered. It's a 1966 Ray Herbert card. Looking at it in person I originally thought it was from 1970.



Side by side you can see the similarities.




The backs of the two sets are similar too. Again, I guess with a little imagination a lot of the card sets could be "similar" in most respects. cartoons, stat lines and player portraits, but these '66 and '70 seem pretty close in a lot of ways. ( for full disclosure I got the Alomar card at a flea market, not the MCG site)


The most colorful and oldest card that I obtained from the Giveaway was this cool Murray card.

It's got all the makings of a vintage card:

1. Miscut? Check!
2. Colorful background Check
3. Confused expression on subject's face Check!
4. Retired franchise Check!

Great card!

The funny thing is that I didn't notice that it was larger than the other cards. This is my first time dealing with a card this old and I forgot that they were of a different size than modern cards. Hopefully this side by side comparison shows off the dimensions better. I didn't realize that their were toploaders that size too. I guess you learn all sorts of stuff from vintage cards.



The cartoon is pretty cool. For some reason I always have an affinity for players who have played in Oklahoma at some point in their career.


This is by far my oldest card in my collection. Pretty nice if you ask me. Thanks for reading and if for any reason somebody else has used the title "respect your elders" in regards to a vintage style post I'm sorry in advance. I didn't try to plagiarize anybody I just thought it was a clever title.

Get ready, it's another vintage Saturday!!!

It's time for another vintage Saturday. This actually is more like a vintage Wednesday, but I didn't have a chance to post then so I'll do it now.

I found a new hobby shop in OKC that has a lot of cool stuff. Mainly they have 15 card pages designed for the basic size minis that come in A&G etc. I was really happy to find a shop that has those pages since I've been too lazy to go online and order some.


They even threw in a mini that they were using as a display for the pages. Free stuff is good, even if it's something I'm not collecting.

If anybody is interested Amazon has 20 and 15 card pages available. I have no info on the 20 pages so you'll have to try those for yourself.



Here's my Joy of a Completed Page mini style. It's a pretty bad scan, but you get the idea. You don't know how happy I am to get these pages. So far I've bought around 76 of these pages and I'm still needing more. I bought the shop out the other day, so hopefully they'll get more in soon.

Enough of that. Let's get on with the "vintage". I've got real vintage and psuedo vintage to show off today. I picked up a couple of these Bowman packs. They're from 1989 . So not really vintage, but older stuff. I haven't seen packs of Bowman baseball so this'll be cool.

I grabbed these two packs off the top and I'm glad I did.




When I got home I noticed that one of the packs has what appears to be a Brooklyn Dodger. . .



... and the other a New York Giant/Met. I couldn't tell at first because of the packaging. I'll get to those later, but first a couple of cards of guys that I knew from when I was younger:



A Mattingly..


A Mike Schmidt.


...and a 75 year old Robin Yount.



This is a local sports talk radio guy, Jim Trabor. Pretty entertaining guy sometimes.

The two cards that I saw on the front were of:


a 1949 Gil Hodges and...


.... a 1951 Willie Mays. It looks like he's playing in front of a tarp with a barracks in the background. The older players really had to pay their dues in the old days it seems. Playing center field on the front lines must have been tough.

I now know where I saw these before. Baseball dad had sent me a Duke Snider card like this once in a trade.

They're pretty nice, but these cards are slightly oversized. There's even a mail in offer for Bowman pages on the back of these packs. I'm wondering if I should try to cut them down to size. That's probably too much trouble. Actually I'm wondering if I should even be looking at these cards. I pulled a lot of cool players, but it's frustrating not being able to store them properly. I like to put the cool cards in binders so that I can look at them better. The cards that don't fit into binders go into a "good box" that all contain cards in a toploader. These cards are too big for either. Crap!! I solved one problem with the mini card pages and now this.

Too much angst for me, let's get on with the true vintage.



A 1971 Dock Ellis card. This is the first '71 that I have in hand. The other is a card that I redeemed on the Topps website, but I haven't had sent to me yet. I think this card will go in oddball folder in between Sparky Lyle and Bake McBride. He he. Wink wink. It's actually in really great shape. I checked it a few times to make sure it isn't some sort of reprint and I think it's legit.

Anyway, that's about it for today. I have some more cool stuff coming up soon to celebrate my sort of one year anniversary so be on the look out for that.

Thanks for reading.

Another Vintage Saturday

Well it's time for another installment of Retro/Vintage Saturday. I've done about 3 or 4 of these the past year and I'm going to wow you with another exciting blog post about my purchases. Whoo Hoo! I didn't have a chance to check out the flea market today, but I went over the fake card shop to get some supplies and random packs.

I'm never prepared to see box toppers on sale at this store. I should be used to it by now as I've seen (and bought)some box toppers on one other occasion. I really wish they would have these available more often.


I picked up two 2008 Heritage High Numbers box toppers.


One an ad panel. Not really vintage more like retro vintage or faux vintage.

... and the other a 1959 Buyback card. Hence the Vintage in the post title.

Okay first the ad panel.



Pretty nice. I think I actually have owned or currently own these three cards. Now I have the uncut versions.


In fact, I think I have about 2 or three copies of the Clete Thomas card. Would have rather opened something with some players that I collect, but still cool.

Now for the buyback card.

A little worn, but still nice and firm. Not a flimsy piece of cardboard.

A little bit smudged, but that's okay. I've been slowly brainwashed by Topps to think that faux smudge cards ala Turkey Red, 206 and A&G are acceptable so I guess real vintage smudging is okay.

As you can tell from the cartoon he was a "Yankee Killer". He beat them 6 straight times in 1954 and 1955. According to his wikipedia article 1958 was his last year.




The front shows a pretty close up head shot though. Actually an extreme head shot.

It sort of reminds me of this old Buddy Bell card that I picked out of my parents attic last summer. This was one of the cards that I never got around to posting.


A little too close for comfort for me. Also technically more of a full profile pic rather than a slight 3/4 shot in the Nixon card, but close enough for my brain to make a quick connection. At least Buddy is smiling in his card; Willard looks confused or disoriented on his.

Not a lot of cards to show off this Saturday. Wish I could've pulled in a big haul o' vintage to show off, but not this weekend. The real shop is closed tomorrow. Maybe I'll make a surprise visit during the week and look for something cool. I'll have to hold off the urge to buy random packs of Ginter and look for something less Gintery.


Thanks for reading. If any of these cards are something that you can't live without let me know. They're up for trade if anybody is interested.