Post #300: PACKAGES ADDRESSED! And, I Went to A Card Show

This is my 300th post. This being post 300, part of me wants to leap up from my seat and scream:

I have to confess: I've never seen that movie, and the only reason I know that line is because of the incredibly effective advertising campaign causing that line to stick in my head. But, the number 300 could be a unifying theme for this post...let's see where this goes. 

As was the case with my 1-year anniversary of blogging, I almost forgot to celebrate it. I know -- big round numbers usually involve contests.  Instead, I'm going with the SAME offer as the one-year anniversary:

If you would like some cards from me, no strings attached, no trades required, just comment below with what you want and e-mail me your mailing address.  

Rules for this giveaway: you are limited to picking one team or up to five different players whose cards you would like me to send to you.  If you have a want list, e-mail me a link.

And, one more thing: I've spent most of the past few days putting together packages that are already addressed and everything that are all set to go to the post office.  These packages are going to the following ZIP Codes:

62450
77251
60706
61615
55419
35750
80020
60618
26505
34479
55129
02919
16101
and, while I'm still putting these two packages together, I've also got cards ready to go to: 
13601
V9T 5T1

And there are a couple of other people to whom I am way overdue in putting packages together, but those are getting closer to fruition.


On to the (Card) Show

So, I've been to a couple of card shows recently. Two weeks ago, I went to my usual card show that I have attended probably about 4 or 5 times in the past year of collecting. Then, last weekend, I drove south of Atlanta to a show I'd never attended before to check it out. Both shows had their interesting parts, both had their disappointments, and both yielded some great cards, some great trade bait (a lot of which has been packaged up already) and some cool oddballs.

This post is going to focus on the first show -- from which the Topps 3D box came.  I'll post about the other show soon.

With no other unifying them other than, "this is what came up in Google searches for 300", here we go:

The Onion: Travel Cincinnati in 300 Days

Cincinnati is actually a great city to visit for a weekend.  I have friends there, neighbors from there, and my wife's uncle and aunt live there.  But this is still a funny faux travel magazine from the Onion.  This random start to this post deserves a pretty random card, and it comes with a tie to Cincinnati:

A 2001 Topps Archives reprint of Gus Bell's 1964 Topps card.  Bell's Braves career consisted of 85 games over three seasons -- 79 in 1962 and 3 pinch hitting appearances in each of 1963 and 1964.  The majority of his career -- from 1953 through 1961 -- was spent in Cincinnati.  Cincinnati is where son Buddy grew up and went to high school, and Cincinnati is where Gus was laid to rest when he passed away on May 7, 1995.

This card is random because, um, Topps, why 1964 Gus Bell in 2001?  

The Brewery: 300 Suns Brewing, Longmont, Colorado

A Brewer-y angle is an obvious one, and pretty punny too.  Let's celebrate Brewers with this Brewer card:

One of the guys whose tables I always stop at is a guy named Ryan, who's an Auburn fan. Since I hadn't been to the show in a couple of months, Ryan had a couple of great cards for me, including this 2008 Topps Triple Threads Auto-Relic serial numbered 23 of 75.  He also had a couple of more cards for me, and for all of these together, I think paid $25 (but it might be $40 too...either way, it was still a good deal in my book):

The three Seguras include a 2014 Bowman Chrome Green Refractor (SN38/75), a Topps Supreme Autograph (SN11/50), and a Topps High Tek Net Background (not a base background...no clue, obviously, how rare it is).  The very red Braun is a 2011 Finest Red Refractor serial numbered to 25.

That beer in Colorado had better be pretty good to live up to this.

The 300th Win

An obvious milestone for pitchers is achieving their 300th win.  Of all the pitchers to pitch in Milwaukee for the Braves or Brewers, two men have reached the 300-win mark.  The main guy, of course, is the one who achieved his 300th win as a Milwaukee Brave:

And this 1961 Post card of Warren Spahn comes from the very season that he won his 300th game.  Spahn first appeared in a game in 1942 at the age of 20. He refused to throw at Pee-Wee Reese in a game, so Casey Stengel called him "gutless" and sent him to the minors.  Spahn went on to be a war hero who won a Purple Heart while seeing action in the Battle of the Bulge.  

The other 300-game winner to pitch for a Milwaukee team was, of course, Don Sutton.  I didn't get the card below at the card show (I got it at the 1983 game at which they were given away) but it is an example of a lesser pinstriped side-Suttoning [(c) 2012 Garvey Russell Cey Lopes]:

Mathematical Properties

This is a direct headline quote from Wikipedia in which it is noted that the number 300 is "the sum of ten consecutive primes (13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47)."

So, how about ten great vintage cards, which may be in or near their respective primes?

That 1961 Covington has been blogged about before by Commishbob, Shoeboxlegends, The Chop Keeper, Night Owl, and Commishbob again, and that's just from a quick search. My version is off-centered, which kept the price for it down to just 50 cents.  In fact, all of these except the team card were all 50 cents.  The team card was a dollar or two.

There are others, you know.

Other vintage, I mean:

There were 14 of us, you know.

The Lowest Possible FICO Score

FICO stands for "Fair, Isaac, and Company." FICO was the originator of the 300 to 850 credit score on which nearly every lender in America now relies.  As you can see, you are in the absolute pits if you have a 300 score.  300 is bad.  So is the card for which this is being used.

I was alive in the 1970s -- for most of it, in fact, having been born near the end of 1971.  I remember the 1970s.  The look for most adult men featured lots of hair and lots of facial hair, right Mr. Stallone?

Paul McCartney agrees.

As a result, I guess that some kid felt like a baseball card of four grown men from 1976 that featured four men without facial hair was just not right.

So, that little kid 39 years ago took the pen into their own hands and gave Larry Anderson, Ken Crosby, Mark Littell, and Butch Metzger the facial hair that each deserved.

I needed this card for my 1976 Brewers team set.  I would not turn down this card, since the price of FREE was right, but safe to say that I am looking for a less hirsute card.

The Perfect Game

Okay, last one.  In bowling, a 300 game is a perfect game. Twelve straight strikes, from frame 1 through frame 12. My final vintage purchase of the day qualifies as being a baseball card version of the Perfect Game:

Ed Mathews in all of his 1959 Topps glory.  This card is in excellent shape, is not nearly as off-center as it scanned, and, with the 1961 Post Warren Spahn cost me a total of $25. That's a lot for me to spend on two cards, but when you're getting two cards that each are well over 50 years old of guys in the Hall of Fame and which are in very good to excellent condition, I think that's a fair price.

Thanks for reading this post and the 299 that came before it -- or as many as you could get through before giving up!