The (non-vintage) Hall of Famers

Yes, I'm finally finishing up my posting about the card show purchases that I made a couple of weeks ago. To be fair, I actually did not post every card that I bought at the card show. My overall total spend was $40, and I came home with somewhere in the range of 350 to 400 cards when all was said and done. 

I love shows like that. Cheap, good condition cards that I need.  The downside to this type of purchasing, though, is that it means that I really need to update my collection and get the "bulk" Brewers collection organized.  

I know. Who would have thought that I would say that I need more organization?

This final group of cards I bought at the show are special in many respects. They are all not vintage. Not in the least. But, they were all Hall of Famers that I found in the dime, nickel, and quarter boxes.

Let's start with the 2002 Upper Deck Piece of History of Eddie Mathews, rescued from the 7.5 cent box (the 15 for $1 group). 

The great thing about Hall of Famers getting cardboard love in present day sets is that these cards are easily obtainable for the average person and within the average collector's budget. The downside is that no one will ever again try to collect the "complete Eddie Mathews" collection. There are too many "1 of 1" cards out there -- even of Mathews -- for anyone to make that effort. 

I haven't added much lately to my Robin Yount collection in large part because most of the cards I am looking for these days either are 100% new or are oddballs. That means more buying on eBay or COMC or Just Commons, but I've been spending most of my card budgets at the shows.  But, I did pick up two of Robin's cards at this past show:

That's a 1994 Score Gold Rush parallel of Robin, a card that had eluded me to this point. That elusiveness wasn't based on any active attempts to purchase it, mind you, but rather based solely on availability.  The other card is from Score's "Hottest 100 Stars" set from 1989. I personally don't find this photo makes Robin look all that hot.

Finally, I picked up a bunch of Paul Molitor cards at the show. 

These dime boxes had some great cards to fill in some gaps. Everything from Electric Boogaloo Diamonds to 1989 Topps glossy All-Stars to 1984 Fleer to 1992 Post Cereal (in fact, I probably could have picked up an entire set of the Post Cereal for about $2 by grabbing one of each of the 30 cards).  

I think this purchase shows more that I focused a lot more on Robin Yount than on Paul Molitor in my purchasing so far this year!

As always, thanks for reading.

Trade Bait from the Monthly Card Show

Last month, I dragged about 3 or 4 posts out of a trip to my local card show. The great thing for me is that this local card show is a monthly show. I mean, check out the show's Facebook page.

So, I decided to go to the show again in October to see what I could find. 

The last time I went, I wandered around the room a bit more than the previous times that I had attended the show. For whatever reason, I still end up drawn to a table run by an older woman who has tons of "15 for $1" boxes next to the "20 for $2.50" boxes next to the "25 cents each or 200 for $20" boxes before you get to the 50 cent, $1, $2, $3, and $5 boxes. 

Okay, I think the reason that I go to that table should be obvious.

Anyway, to start dragging some more posts out of my card-show trip, I thought I would post some trade bait I picked up at the show.  All of these were either in the 15 for $1 or the 25-cent boxes, and all of them are available in trade.

Let's start in 1979: 

Back to the present, or nearly the present, with this one. Is this a "liquor-fractor" that people talked about from 2012?  Matt, let me know if you want/need this one.

I have a strange love for mid-1980s Fleer cards. Does anyone want a Carl Yastrzemski from 1983 Fleer?

These two Pinnacle cards commemorated a MLB-to-Japan series that occurred in the mid-1990s. I hadn't seen these cards before, so I grabbed them in hopes someone would like them. 

Every once in a while, I get on Twitter and lob out some sarcasm/smart-assery in response to other Tweeters. I usually stay on there until I get tired of it -- usually about 10-15 minutes or so.  But, on the night before the show, I was chatting with View from the Skybox about cards he might need. He mentioned the Blue slate sparkle cards from 2013 and asked if I could look for Royals from that set.

I didn't find any royals, but I got a now-illegal play at the plate hit from Carlos Quentin:

This last card is already going to be sent to the Dime Box King, but I had to share it because it is a strange card to me. It is slightly larger than the normal card -- not so much that it won't fit in a 9-pocket sheet, but just a little bit.  And, it's perforated.  

The card came from a book from Dover Publications, as the back of the card mentions, and it is on white, thin card stock. 

It's a great oddball if you haven't run across those Dover Publications books.

As with anything, let me know if you're interested in any of these. Thanks for reading.

Memorabilia Monday: The Ball that Was My Pride and Joy

I like trivia. I especially like baseball trivia, but really, any trivia will do. Whether it's pub trivia, trivia websites, or trivia TV shows, I enjoy watching and participating in trivia contests. 

This has been true for most of my life. As a young kid subscribing to Baseball Digest, one of my favorite parts of the magazine was to test myself with the trivia questions and answers.  If the trivia related to a team or player I cared about, then there was no question that I would get the question correct.

In 1982, I remember there being one weekend -- perhaps in June, because the weather was not hot outside -- when Jim Gantner was making an autograph signing appearance at a marina in Pewaukee. I think that it was competing with another appearance at a location closer to Milwaukee at which both Paul Molitor and Robin Yount were signing autographs at a shoe store, but I may be misremembering that.

I think that was the case, though, because when we got to the location where Gantner was supposed to be signing, the place was dead. Now, I also seem to recall that Gantner's appearance hours were from 1 PM to 3 PM before a 7:30 PM game, and we were arriving at around 2:45 PM.  So, coupled with the fact that usually, a Brewer making an appearance would draw a line, we (my mom, my older brother [who had to come along], and me) thought that perhaps they had wrapped up the appearance a bit early.

We took a chance and went inside anyway.  We found Jim Gantner standing next to a boat, checking out its dashboard and talking to a salesperson who was pretty clearly his liaison of sorts for this appearance.  When we walked in, we must have looked a bit apprehensive, because the salesperson and Gantner both said, "come on over, good to see you!"

The salesperson then posed a trivia question: in 1980, what Brewer finished second in the American League batting title race with a .352 batting average? Even now, that would be an easy question for me, but for little ten-year-old Tony you might as well have asked for his name, address, and telephone number.  I knew that answer immediately and without missing a beat said quickly, "Cecil Cooper." 

The guy goes, "You're correct! Here's your prize!"

And he handed me a plastic covered baseball with the Brewers team name and logo on it, which Jim Gantner promptly signed.

That ball was my constant autograph companion for the next year or so.

The problem with a plastic covering, however, is the fact that ink fades pretty badly from plastic.  Only a few autographs remain legible.

Anyway, here are some photos of that ball, which I still have today.  It used to be my pride and joy, and in some respects it still is:

The Brewers name.  If you squint, you can see Roy Howell's signature on the left of the team name and a badly retraced Robin Yount signature on the right side.  Underneath the team name is Bob Gibson, the version who played in Milwaukee in the 1980s who was not very good.  On the far left side in black is Charlie Moore.

The fading old Brewers Logo.  The black sharpie signature there is Ted Simmons. Barely visible on the logo itself (and upside down) is Bob Uecker.

On this panel are three Hall of Famers.  Yes, once again, 12-year-old me was disappointed in how much the signatures had faded already at that point and took a sharpie to darken the signatures from Rollie Fingers and Paul Molitor. Under Molitor, of course, is Don Sutton.  Above Fingers in ink is reserve outfielder Mark Brouhard.

Finally, on this part of the ball, you see the badly retraced Robin Yount at the bottom.  Above his signature is now-Commissioner Bud Selig.  Above Selig is fifth outfielder Marshall Edwards, whose twin brother Mike played for the Oakland A's.  Above Edwards is the first ever signature on the ball from Jim Gantner.  Above Gantner is baseball arsonist Ned Yost, the backup to Ted Simmons at catcher in 1982.

Also on the ball but faded so badly I'm embarrassed to show them are Buck Rodgers, announcers Pat Hughes and Steve Shannon, Don Money, Sal Bando, Mike Caldwell, and a couple more that are so faded that I can't read them.

The enjoyment I got in chasing those autographs -- as I got them all in person -- was incredibly high.  I just wish that they were still legible.

Memorabilia Monday: A New Entry Into my Favorites

There is a saying that there is no zeal as strong as the zeal of the newly converted.

It is most frequently applied in the realm of religions; indeed, a group called the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life found the statement quantitatively true -- at least slightly -- through a survey performed in 2007.  Similarly, though anecdotally, the Australian Broadcast Company has a link to a YouTube video showing a woman who became a zealot against climate change after watching a documentary on melting glaciers.  So, it's not just religion that can bring about such feelings.

The obvious place this is going is for me to look into the mirror.  With a zeal reserved in life for those new or rediscovered loves, I have been attacking eBay with nearly reckless abandon -- searching for items for my Robin Yount collection or my Brewers collection or my Paul Molitor collection.

In that search, I found a new item that immediately became one of my favorites:

This is the 2004 Yearbook for the Hall of Fame induction for Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley.  It had a cover price 10 years ago of $10, and I got it for not much more than that.  It has the short biographies of all the members of the Hall of Fame as well as a three-page discussion of Paul Molitor's career.

I have a bunch of Molitor autographs.  Of all the top stars from the 1980s Brewers, Molitor was the most approachable and most likely to be appearing for autograph signings.  Kids loved him so much that Pepsi and the Brewers named him the "Honorary Captain" for the "Milwaukee Brewers/Pepsi Fan Club" -- which gave away such wonderful hats as this one:

No, I don't have that any more.  But, as a kid, I was a member because for the low price of $8 and two Pepsi proofs of purchase, you got 6 tickets to Brewers games.  And, you could upgrade them to better seats at a cut-rate price.  It was awesome.

That's it for today's Memorabilia Monday.  Apparently, we are going to be taking cover from severe storms for the next day or two here in Atlanta, so I can't guarantee I'll post tomorrow.

Please enter my 100th post contest -- I really want to give away a bunch of stuff if I can, but I need your help to do it.

Thanks again for reading.

Repack Gold, Part 1

I envy people who catalog every pack as they open them.  Their level of organization is far beyond what I can muster.  Frankly, their level of patience is more than I can muster.  I like -- no, I need -- to open all the packs that I've bought, sort through them, see what I have, and pick out my favorites.  With this blog, I add the step of scanning in a bunch of cards from what I've opened to show off and write about.

By the time I get through step two of sorting, I've completely forgotten what cards came in which pack. And, I don't like organization so much that I have to put everything into spreadsheets.  At least not yet.  Perhaps that time will come, but I'm still sorting through all the cards (probably around 50,000 or so) that I had as a kid in the 1980s.

Anyway, that's a long introduction to the first of two posts to share what gold the $4 repacks held yesterday. There were some fantastic cards.  In fact, this entire post includes only Hall of Fame members (sorry, Mr. Clemens and Mr. Bonds! HA!).  These weren't the only HoF members I got -- just the ones I liked best.

First, two 1980 Topps cards that, while a little off center, have incredibly sharp corners (in particular for being repacks):

The Stargell is in such good shape with good, sharp corners that I actually commented out loud on it while sitting by myself in my basement/card room.  Both cards are ones I had as a kid, but these two are in much better shape than anything I had from 34 years ago myself.

Topps UK Minis are fairly common in the Fairfield repacks -- I always get some, and sometimes I even get a Mini Tiffany (like the Dion James one I passed along to the Chop Keeper in Idaho).  These five had two or three Nolan Ryans, three or four of Ryno trying to grow a mustache to look older, 5 Dale Murphys, 3 or 4 Wade Boggs, and 3 or 4 Roger Clemens, among others.

If you've read my nascent 1982 Topps Blog, you'll have heard the story about how much of a conspiracy freak Steve Carlton is these days (or at least was 15 years ago).  This is his 1987 Topps Traded set card, straight from the repack.

Cards from the late 1980s usually comprise at least 60% of the repack loose cards.  Fun oddballs like that Cap'n Crunch Robin Yount show up pretty regularly, though not with enough consistency to try to put the set together solely from the repacks.  Well, okay, you could do it, but you'll end up with a LOT of 1989 Topps commons to show for your efforts.

That said, this nice 1988 Fleer of Cal Ripken, Jr. just struck me as an attractive card of the Orioles Hall of Famer.  I have this set in a Gary Carter box, but I don't have many 1988 Fleer outside of that.

Finally, Mr. Barry Larkin.  This past week, I was talking by e-mail with a guy I met at the last card show I went to about a month ago, Von.  We have been discussing some trading, and I mentioned my lack of 1994 through 2007 Brewers (which, thanks to all of you has been filling up some lately!).  One of the things he said was, "It's strange but you don't see too many cards from that timeframe in the repacks."

Perhaps that avalanche is about to be unleashed.  This 1996 Topps Barry Larkin might have been the only 1996 Topps in the group, but there were also a few cards from a number of those 1994-2007 sets.  The tide might be turning, Von!