A Trade with Mets Cardboard

Some days, the inspiration to write comes easily. On those days, it feels as though I could post four or five times in a day and it would all make sense.

Today is not one of those days. 

I went to Georgia's Homecoming game against Missouri yesterday. It was a defensive struggle of a game -- two good defenses squaring off against two very troubled offenses. The same Georgia defense that gave up 38 points in back-to-back weeks (and yes, apologists for the defense can point out that 14 points against Alabama did not come against the defense, but, yeah, what about that brutally horrible game against Tennessee?) held Mizzou's "offense" to just 6 points while Georgia's "offense" put up 9 points in 5 red-zone opportunities.  

Three of those points came on an opening drive for Missouri that started on the half-yard line thanks to a Greyson Lambert interception on the first play of the game from scrimmage -- a play on which Lambert stared down tight end Jeb Blazevich, noted that Jeb was bracketed with double coverage, and then threw the ball anyway.  Only Malcolm Mitchell's TD-saving tackle -- followed by a fantastic defensive stand -- held Mizzou to a field goal on that drive.

Back to struggling to write, though.  Thing is, that game started at 7:45 PM in Athens -- a 70-mile drive -- and ended around 11 PM.  A 20-minute walk to the car and a fairly brisk 90-minute drive back to Atlanta, and I was home at around 12:45 AM...then couldn't get to sleep until nearly 2 AM.

So, today, while many folks cast aspersions on the "here's what I got" posts, I'm putting up a "here's what I got" post.  I made a trade with Justin from Mets Cardboard. Like many collectors, he has his collection posted on Zistle -- man, I should really get my Zistle updated... -- so I was able to put together a pretty good package of things he needed in exchange for some great cards that I needed.  

Here are the highlights.  

As you would expect from a Mets collector, Justin had some extra Gary Carter cards laying around. As my Carter collection (now up to 231 cards) is a bit lacking in the late 1980s/early 1990s junk wax era, I got a few cards here to fill those gaps:

I am embarrassed to note that I did not have the 1990 Topps card in my collection before this package arrived.  Truly shocking.  But that play-at-the-plate Carter with Fred McGriff sliding in from the 1993 Topps set -- Carter's sunset card, since he retired in 1992 -- is one of his best action photos.  Before this, most of Carter's cards tended either to be posed photos of Carter smiling or of him at the plate.  But, for his last card, it's as if Topps remembered Carter is a catcher who was a great hitter rather than just being a great hitter.

I also received some post-Brewers Paul Molitor cards that I did not have in my collection:

Paul Molitor had such a sweet swing. Most scouts will tell you that left-handed hitters are far more likely to have a quiet, picturesque swing that hitting coaches would want to teach. Molitor had one of those swings, but from the right side of the plate.  He always stayed on the pitches, and he was rarely completely fooled.

Another player who was a very good hitter -- though nowhere near as good, obviously -- was Jeff Cirillo.

There is good and bad to having been away from card collecting for nearly 25 years. The good is that there are plenty of cards on my want lists that are incredibly common cards for other collectors to send to me in trade.  The bad is that sometimes, those common cards can be tough to find because no one bothers to put a 2006 Topps Updates and Highlights Jeff Cirillo on eBay for someone to buy for a penny.  Heck, no one even puts one on Listia.

Finally, I was also the recipient of two cards from the 1990s of two players from the 1950s and 1960s:

When life brings you a Mathews and a Spahn, you gratefully take those cards in and get excited for the fact that new cards of these two players get made all the time.  It really is a good thing.

Now, that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the cards that I received.  But, as I said, when inspiration is lacking, sometimes it's just a good thing to get up a basic "thank you" post.  

So, thanks for the great cards, Justin, and good luck to your Mets in the NLCS!

Vintage Mania at the Card Show

It's not a stretch to say that it is probably easier to find and buy cards from 1953 at a card show than it is to find and buy cards from 1993 or 2003. There's a lot higher demand for the 1953 cards, first of all, and they are easier for dealers to find on their secondary market as well. 

As a result, I find it far easier to come home from my local shows and start crossing Braves off my want lists that it is for me to find a random vein of Pinnacle or Fleer Metal Brewers. Throw in the fact for me that the cards I am chasing from the vintage era between 1953 and 1965 are Braves -- and that a lot of Atlanta Braves collectors do not have a problem with collecting Milwaukee Braves (or, indeed, chase the cards) -- and you can easily see why my purchases tend to be older, grayer cardboard.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I picked up some cheap Gary Carter cards and a Ted Higuera Desert Shield card from a dealer whose table I frequent at these shows. I always seem to forget that he brings along probably a dozen or more 3000-count boxes filled with cards dating from 1952 to 1976 or so. This past weekend, though, I felt bad about perhaps spending $3 at his table, and I didn't feel like wandering a ton at that point, so I decided to dig into his vintage boxes.

Before I did it, he told me that so long as the card wasn't marked differently, each card in the vintage boxes would be $2.  That's not super cheap, to be fair, but it's also not that terrible when you get to the end and the guy knocks more off the sticker price in the end. What did I get?  

Literally everything I bought from him was issued before 1960.

Let's start with my first two 1953 Bowman Black & White cards.  On the left is Ebba St. Claire (misspelled as St. Clair on the card), and on the right is the Wisconsin-born great, Andy Pafko.  

Ebba played just 164 games in the major leagues starting at the age of 29 in 1951 with the Boston Braves and ending in 1954 with the New York Giants.  While Eddie Mathews was the only player to play for all three incarnations of the Braves, St. Claire was one of the first to play in all three cities -- suiting up for the Atlanta Crackers from 1948 to 1950 before the Boston Braves picked him up.  He spent one year in Milwaukee before being traded to the Giants.  After he retired, he fathered a son named Randy who went on to pitch for Montreal, Minnesota, Atlanta, and Toronto from 1984 to 1994.

If you want to know who Andy Pafko is, ask the Andy Pafko supercollector, Matt F. from Heartbreaking Cards.

Del Crandall is still alive and hopefully well at the age of 84 in California. He was the Brewer manager who gave an 18-year-old kid with only 64 games in professional baseball a chance to be the starting shortstop in 1974. In the interview I've linked to, he raved about how great Robin's makeup was even as an 18-year-old.  The talent wasn't obvious (though it was there), but the professionalism was.

Danny O'Connell is known as the answer to an odd trivia question: he scored the first run in a major league game held on the West Coast. Unfortunately, he died in a car accident at the age of just 42 years old in 1969. The 1955 Topps Conley and the 1956 Topps Tanner are just nice cards -- even if some kid in 1957 or 1958 decided to update that card to provide Tanner's then-current team of the Cubs. 

The last of the pre-1957 cards was also the most expensive one, and for good reason. A 1956 Topps Warren Spahn card was never going to come too cheaply. It was listed at $20 on the sticker on the card, but, as I said, I got these all as a package deal, so I paid a little bit less than that.

Now, bring on the 1957s!

Of these cards, the two that were not just $2 cards were the Braves team card (my apologies for a poor job scanning that one) and...of course, Taylor Phillips.  Wait, what? For some reason, that card just seems scarcer than others.  The PSA write-up on the set (though it has a few mistakes in it, such as saying that Lew Burdette's card has his name spelled "Lou" on it...um, no, it doesn't) notes that just 166 total copies of Phillips's card have been graded, and just 1 PSA 9 has been awarded. Trust me -- mine won't ever be graded, and it wouldn't get a 9 in any case.  But, I've got one in my Braves collection.

Did I get some 1958 cards? Um, a few.

 

I did not get the Mathews 1958 regular card from the same guy as these other cards -- that one came from my first transaction of the day with Frank Moiger, the man who organizes these shows. I always stop at Frank's table, and I always find at least a few cards that I need for either a condition upgrade, a team set, or a player collection.  The Mathews All-Star was bought with the other ones, though.

As an aside, I'm just about complete with re-reading Jim Brosnan's book about the 1961 season in which the Cincinnati Reds won the National League called Pennant Race, the follow up to his groundbreaking book, The Long Season.  Joey Jay features prominently in Pennant Race, as Jay won 21 games for the Reds that year, was an all-star, and finished fifth in the MVP race -- all at the age of 25.  

Before that, as Jay's SABR Biography mentions, he was the bonus baby on the Braves who was resented by a lot of the veterans due to the money. Jay has been a massive success in his post-baseball career as a businessman in drilling oil wells and oil fields in Oklaahoma and West Virginia. Yet, he doesn't live the "old ballplayer" life -- he doesn't go to fantasy camps or card shows and calls it "infantile" to "keep thinking about the game." But, he says he's happier than ever since he left, asking the SABR interviewer to do him a favor and "don't mention where I live."

After that little downer, how about one more group of cards -- the 1959s?

 

Some great 1959s popped up as well.  I really like the Frank Torre card. The background makes it look like the photo was taken in the underbelly of the stadium, and the look on his face make it appear as if someone interrupted him in the middle of the Joe Pesci-getting-killed-in-Casino scene.

Don't watch if you have problems with guys getting beaten with baseball bats...

Now, there were a few more cards that I picked up.  They will be presented without comment here:

For the team collection

For the team collection

For the Spahn collection. Need one for Burdette and for the team collection.

I got the Spahns and the Gus Bell from a guy I don't believe I've ever bought from before, while the other cards were all from Frank Moiger.

So, which one of these cards is your favorite?

I Went to a Card Show Last Weekend

I'm a lucky collector in that I have two card shows a month within a twenty-minute drive from my house. Before last weekend, though, I had only gone to one of those shows. Wanting a little different experience and hoping for a few different vendors, I decided to go to the other one.  It's the further away of the two, but I mean, really -- it was a twenty-minute drive instead of a fifteen-minute drive.

This show had some ups and downs for me. Let's start with the bad stuff first.

I was excited when I saw one table with nearly every card from 1952 through 1976 in his boxes for sale, but I soon found out why all of those cards were still in those boxes: the seller relied solely on book value to price his cards. I was in the middle of pulling basically a complete Milwaukee Braves team set from the 1954 Bowman set out when a guy next to me pulled out a 1958 Topps Ernie Banks that was missing about 5% of the card because the corner was ripped off. It looked like someone hated Ernie Banks and used the card for BB-gun target practice.

So, the guy next to me asked about the price of the card.  The dealer laughed when he saw it. Then, he pulled out his Beckett Magazine.  If you're at a card show and you meet a dealer that relies on Beckett, it is a sure sign that the dealer either (a) is greedy, (b) is out of touch with card collecting, or (c) is so worried about missing out on a quarter in a sale that he or she will be impossible to bargain with.  

I know this now.

I learned this when the dealer laughed again and said, "usually, I never price a card at 5% of book value, but that's a 5% card.  So that card is $5."  If I had had a drink in my mouth, I would have sprayed it all over the cards and the guy behind the table.  Sure, it's a $100 card in mint condition -- and one graded 7 sold on eBay for $135 but, then again, one graded 7 sold on eBay for $34 (including shipping). But we're talking about a card missing a corner. 

So, when I heard that price and his justification for that price on that card, I knew I was in trouble with my 1954 Bowman team set. It took him a while to add it all up because he checked his handy-dandy Beckett magazine with its ridiculous pricing.  He told me "for these, $180."  I immediately put nearly everything back into his boxes, and I should have put all of them back on the sheer principle of the matter.  He tried to justify that cost by saying, "well, you have Bruton in there, and he's the last card in the set, so that's a $40 card right there and you have most of these cards in top condition, so that's what the price is."  Or he said something to that effect. By the time he was saying that, I was putting cards back.  

In the end and from that vendor, I bought only two cards:

And I should have put all of them back. I know I overpaid for these two cards, and I should have never bought any cards from a person who thinks book value is real. Never again.

To be fair, though, that was the real spoiler to an otherwise enjoyable show. When I first arrived, I stopped by the table of the guy who promotes these shows, Frank.  As I was sitting there, a guy came in and mentioned he was in town from Texas for a boys' baseball tournament and wanted to get a card of his coach -- Bump Wills.  Bump didn't make an appearance at the show, but I did find a couple of his cards for the guy. The kids looked at the cards as if in disbelief that Coach Bump really played professional baseball.

It made me smile to see that.

From Frank, I bought a few reprint Braves:

So, yeah, that's pretty much the entire Milwaukee Braves team 1953 Topps Reprint set from 1983, along with Warren Spahn (more from him in a moment) and a "rookie card that wasn't" of Hank Aaron.

And, there were two other reprint sets that Frank had that I grabbed from:

First, it's a reprint from 1983 of the 1953 Bowman Color set of Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn. I have tried to find out who reprinted these without much luck.  But man, the color on these cards is just incredible.

These cards were from the "Baseball Favorites" 1953 Bowman Black & White extension set from 1979. They were a part of a sixteen-card set that a company put out to add some star power to the 1953 Bowman B&W set. 

The great thing about the reprints is that you can find them reasonably priced and can have them in your collection while you look for the real McCoy. And, for an obsessive completist like myself, I feel like I need to have both the originals and the reprints in my collection. They are different cards, after all.

After I left Frank's table, the next table I stopped at was another of my usual stops at my other show. I know -- I come to this show for new vendors and end up spending my time digging through cards that I probably could have picked through any other time. But, I enjoyed going through his books and pulling out a bunch of great old Braves and finding a couple of cards on his table well worth my time:

 

Talk about filling in some needs!

But, those weren't the only cards that I was able to find at this table that I needed.  Indeed, I found a bunch of cards for my player collections too, such as Joe Adcock:

And Lew Burdette (since I have this one in my Spahn collection already:

Speaking of Spahnie:

Yes! The reprint and the original in the same day. Unlike my book-value-wanting friend, who probably would have looked at his book, saw that the EX-MT price is around $135 and wanted $15 for this card, I paid $2. Now that's what I call fair.

And, Harvey Kuenn appeared as well:

Finally, from this table, I was finally able to finish off my 1981 Topps Brewers Team set by picking up the 1980 Home Runs leader card with Ben Oglivie (and two other players who may be better known than Benji) on it:

Whatever happened to that Jackson guy?

My next stop at the show brought me to a table manned by a gentleman who had decided to come to the show to sell 1990s inserts for a quarter a piece.  I grabbed up every Brewer in sight, including a few fun cards to add to some PCs.  The highlights only, please:

To be fair, not all of the inserts were horizontal, but this gives you a feel for what I found. All the Dufex you could want (and I do like how those cards look!), a bunch of the Topps Gold (and not the Gold Winners from the same year), some Electric Diamond Boogaloo, a Fleer All-Star of Molitor, a bunch of Stadium Club Golden Rainbow Parallels, and that Molitor SP hologram. Just 25 cents each. Also, if anyone has a few thousand dollars to spend on cards, this gentleman is selling off a bunch of old sets from 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and into the early 2000s. I thought about it...for a little while...but thought I'd rather have my mortgage paid instead.

Stupid need to have a roof over my head.

At the next table I stopped at, I found just one card I needed at the cost of $1.  It's pretty off center and all, but it completed my 1975 Topps Team set:

While most people look at that and say it is a Keith Hernandez rookie card, all I see is Bob Sheldon crossed off my list.  

Finally, I stopped at a table and chatted for a long time with a guy who specializes in top-condition cards and graded cards from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.  When I say his cards were in fantastic shape, I may be understating it. Things like a 1971 Topps Thurman Munson graded at a 7 -- and I cannot understand how it wasn't higher. I don't deal in graded cards, but he had a few "raw" cards that really caught my eye.  First, a 1964 Topps Felipe Alou:

I am not kidding when I say that this card feels and looks like it just came out of a pack.It's that sharp. The scan has a line in the middle of the card, but it doesn't appear on the card itself. 

To be fair, though, this is the least impressive of the three cards I bought from this gentleman.  

Second most impressive? 1954 Topps Harvey Kuenn Rookie Card:

Yes, those corners are sharp -- on a 61-year-old card. I'm telling you that this guy really had awesome cards.  

Finally, the card that I spent the most on was well worth the $40 I paid.  A Hall of Famer oddball from the 1950s?

Yes sir! A 1954 Johnston's Cookies Warren Spahn!

The discoloration on the scan isn't on the card -- I don't know why it looks yellowish in the scan because it's pure white in my hand.  With sharp corners.  Just blew me away, and when I saw it I had to have it.

Thankfully, with the good deals from most of the sellers at this show, it was well within my budget. If I were inclined to get it graded, and say it graded at a 7, well, one just sold on eBay for $96.  

How's that look for book value?