Back to the Card Show: The Brewers Cards

Last weekend, I spent a few hours at my usual monthly card show.  The cheap items in dime boxes were fewer in number this time than even the last time I went, but I still came home with a lot of great cards for less money than I would have otherwise expected to pay. Today's post is going to highlight the Brewers cards.  I have two more posts from the show yet to come -- one to cover the Milwaukee Braves cards from after 1965 combined with the Gary Carter cards and another to cover the truly vintage Milwaukee cards.

But today, let's celebrate the newer cards.  As always, some of these finished off team sets while others go directly into the player collections.

The first table I stopped at was manned by a guy from South Carolina.  I have talked to this gentleman at two past shows -- both the one in Roswell/North Fulton and the one in McDonough -- and each time I was able to pull some great cards from his dime boxes.  This time was no different, so let's go to the cheap seats first!

How about a dime for a Topps Chrome Refractor, to start?

And a couple of Opening Day PC Parallel types too:

I finished off my Topps Chrome Brewers team set too.  I didn't scan them, but they were all dimeboxers as well.  

He also had a great $0.25 box that turned into 6 for $1.  From that box, I snagged a couple of Brewers from Bowman Chrome:

Refractor, SN500

Refractor, SN500

Regular chrome...I think this was a dime card

My memory gets a little fuzzy here, but I think that these other three cards were in the dollar bin or were sold for $1 to me:  

SN8/150 -- an eBay 1/1 for being
his uniform number!

Purple Paper Parallel

The Garza is also an eBay 1/1 for being serial numbered 72/75 -- the same as his ERA!

My next stop were the quarter-boxes of another seller whose table I stop at frequently.  The box yielded a few Brewers I needed and some that I'm not sure if I needed or not...I guessed that for a quarter I wouldn't mind having a double:

Yes, Molitor is a Blue Jay looking skyward to a Twin on that Pinnacle Card, but I needed it for his player collection.

My last stop at which I purchased Brewers was Frank Moiger's table.  Frank is the guy who organizes and promotes the two shows on the north side of Atlanta near where I live -- the North Fulton Sports Collectibles Show and the East Cobb Sports Collectibles Show.  I have been meaning to get to the other show in Marietta, but this month that was not going to happen.  

Despite the fact that Frank is a big-time Tennessee Volunteer fan, I like him anyway.  He always has vintage boxes with commons and some stars set up for set builders, and this time he had a binder with some random relics in them.  In addition to a bunch of older Braves cards, this time I got a few Brewers cards from him:

The most expensive of the Brewers I got

And, for $3 (or, rather, as part of the transaction with a represented cost of $3) I picked up this fashionable swatch.

This is just the appetizer, though.  

Thanks for reading!

Mailday Post: Hot Corner Cards

Just before the Fourth of July, I got an unexpected PWE in the mail from Pat from Hot Corner Cards.  I thought about songs that mention corners and the obvious choice is clearly the correct one here:

I listened to Creedence Clearwater Revival as much as the next kid who grew up in the 1980s.  Then, I got to college and had a friend and later roommate who played Chronicle, a greatest hits compilation by CCR so much that I ended up buying it myself and listening to it regularly.  So, I figured out that I really liked the CCR song "Lodi" a lot more than "Down on the Corner," but "Lodi" doesn't fit here.  So "Down on the Corner" it is.

Pat sent me an interesting three-card melange in that envelope.  First, I got a Cy Young Award condition upgrade:

Vuckovich won the Cy Young Award probably at the height of the BBWAA's infatuation with wins over performance.  I mean, Vuke is a Brewer and all, so I'm biased toward him, but his stats are those of a pitcher who got excellent run support and a lot of luck -- 102 walks, 105 strikeouts, 234 hits allowed -- a 1.502 WHIP!  He won the Cy with a Wins Above Replacement of just 2.8; very clearly, the best pitching season that year was authored by Dave Stieb, whose 17-14 record masked a 288-1/3 inning season with 19 complete games and 5 shutouts. 

But they can't take that Award away from Vuke now.

Speaking of a guy whom some want to take an award away from, the second card I got from Pat is a Bowman Chrome (rookie?  I don't know these days) of none other than the Biogenesis Most Valuable Player, Ryan Braun:

I mean, y'all know my stance on Braun.  He's a convicted PED-user, but he is my PED-user, so I welcomed the Hittin' Hebrew's USA uniform right into my Braun binder.  

Finally, Pat sent a brand-spankin' new purple mini parallel from this year's Bowman set, serial numbered 20 of 99 -- a card, by the way, that I'm told by Night Owl (once I get the olives out of my ears) will fit wonderfully into the new UltraPro mini-plastic sheets:

Devin Williams came into the year listed as the Brewers third-leading prospect by Bowman.  Now, that was certainly done on the weight of his high draft-pick status -- 2nd round pick last year -- and his physical talents and not necessarily on results.  Certainly, he was an 18-year-old kid in the Arizona Rookie League last year, but he walked a ton of guys per nine innings last year -- 22 in 34-2/3 innings. This year, he is in Helena in the Pioneer League, and, well, it's not going that well for him. He has cut his walks -- a good thing -- but his homers allowed has normalized more, which means more runs allowed and more hits allowed too.  

It just goes to show that old adage from Baseball Prospectus, et al., is true -- There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect -- TINSTAAPP. I'm hopeful that Williams will continue to develop, find better command of his pitches, and that he'll help the Brewers sometime in 2018 -- when Williams will be 23 years old.  He is still a long way away.

But this card is one that will not go any further.  

Pat, thanks again for the cards!