COMC Card Show, Part II: I'm Kuenn to Ad to My Collection

Please ignore my attempt at writing a tabloid headline, but it was the easiest way to say that the other half of my COMC purchases focused on my Harvey Kuenn and Joe Adcock collections -- mostly Kuenn but the Adcock stuff is pretty damn cool.

Let's get started with vintage. I tried to select the best looking specimens of some older cards that wouldn't cost me more than about $1 or so.  For Kuenn, that meant a bonanza of 1960s Topps cards:

It appears that Harvey had a chew of tobacco in his left cheek in every one of those photos. At least it does to me. Perhaps it's because I don't think I ever saw a photo of the guy without tobacco packed in his cheek. 

I also picked up two normal Topps cards from the early 1970s on which Harvey is pictured as a coach:

Harvey looks like the long-lost orange member of RUN-DMC in that top photo with those big boxy glasses. And the tobacco-filled left cheek even comes through on the 1974 tiny Harvey photo. 

Now, I also got some more recent Harvey cards as well -- cards from the 2000s:

The two Bowmans are from the 2001 "Bowman Rookie Reprints." One is the normal version, and one is the Chrome version.  Chrome reprints of vintage cards just seems stupid to me.  The other two cards are from two SP Legendary Cuts sets five years apart -- from 2002 and 2007.

And all that is really nice and all.  But you know when you're talking about me and my collecting that there will be oddballs.  The odder, the better.

The older the better, too:

Such as a 1962 Post Cereal card. I have to admit that this scan makes the card look in a lot worse shape than it really appears in hand.  But, come on -- the card is 53 years old. You try looking in mint condition when you're 53 years old.

I picked up a bunch of TCMA cards as well. Five, to be exact:

As you can see, TCMA was not above reusing photos themselves. The top photo of the repeated three is from the 1979 TCMA "The 1950s" set.  These two "Baseball's Greatest Hitters" cards are actually parallels from 1982, I suppose -- one's on regular gray/tan cardboard while the other is on white cardstock.  The card picturing Harvey with the Brewers is actually from the 1975 "The 42" set and not from the nearly identical 1975/6 SSPC set. And finally, the Kuenn in the middle is from TCMA's 1981 set commemorating the 1962 San Francisco Giants.

I did not realize that Harvey Kuenn made a Cramer's Baseball Legends set until this round of buying, but now I do know:

All of those are great cards and great additions to the Kuenn collection, which has now doubled in size. But, they are not the oddest oddball of ol' Harvey.  This one is:

Apparently, Cramer found that photo after the NuSash Replacement Window Company (which is still in business today) issued this card as card #34 in its "Great Plains Greats" set. Others in the set include Burleigh Grimes, Jake Beckley, Jim Bottomley, Cap Anson, Cool Papa Bell, and Yogi Berra, to name a few, and it was released in 1975-1976.

All told, I added 21 total cards to my Harvey Kuenn collection, bringing the overall total to forty-three.  Not bad for a PC I started in May.

Now, on to Joe Adcock.  The Adcock collection started with a solitary 1957 Topps card of his that I've had for at least 35 years now.  I only added three cards this time around, bringing my total cards in that collection up to sixteen.  But I did add three nice cards.  Let's go newest to oldest.

Newest:  2007 SP Legendary Cuts

I am in favor of cards of players from before 1960 appearing in black-and-white photos that are cropped to make them look like art or museum pieces. It shows an appropriate level of respect, I think.  Good job, Upper Deck.  

Still new but older than the SP:  2002 Topps Super Teams Retrofractor

It's shiny and serial numbered (to 1957). So, it's got that going for it. Otherwise, well, I like the Super Teams concept and wouldn't mind seeing it return somehow.  Or maybe, let's do a "Super Crappy Teams" set. Include cards only for teams that lost 100 or more games. Now that would be craptastic!

Finally, here's the last addition to the Adcock collection.  It's not old -- well, it's 25 years old, so that's still relatively recent to me -- but man is it cool:

And now I know that Joe Adcock was a true Southerner. Born in Coushatta, Louisiana, and given the name "Joseph Wilbur", his family shortened both names and, at least for his college years in Baton Rouge, he went by that handle.  

The card back notes that Joe Bill attended LSU on a basketball scholarship from 1945 to 1947. But, the basketball coach at the time was also the baseball coach and asked Joe Bill to come out to play baseball. Adcock was 6'4" tall, but he was the Tigers center -- a full foot smaller than the LSU basketball center when this card came out -- some guy named Shaquille O'Neal.

I want more cards like this one.  By that, I mean that we should get some card sets of guys who became famous playing one sport shown playing another -- say, Joe Montana as a track guy or Mike Trout playing football.  Multisport athletes fascinate me.

So, even though it shows Joe Adcock playing basketball for an SEC team that isn't Georgia, it's still my favorite card I bought in this round of COMC Card Show.

Thanks for reading.