Cardboard Jones Sends Out Dairy Cards and Autographs

One of the first guys I ever interacted with and traded with is Steve a/k/a Cardboard Jones f/k/a The Chop Keeper. I especially appreciate his interaction on Twitter, where he frequently feels like a voice of reason amidst a sea of greedy giveaway hawks, overzealous sales pitches, and strange bracket competitions.

It's been a couple of months since he sent me the four cards I'm going to blog about today. So in penance for that failure to post these cards with any kind of haste at all, I'm posting music of Steve's liking to go with the cards. Hopefully Steve still likes Taylor Swift.

via GIPHY

That's a joke, y'all. A joke.

At least I think so.

Anyway, here come the cards and the music courtesy of my pal from Idaho.

The first three cards are all from the 1960 Lake to Lake Milwaukee Braves set. I will note first that I do not believe that that is Johnny Logan's autograph on this card, as I have an exemplar that it does not match at all.

That out of the way, let's talk first about Lake to Lake Dairy. According to this article from a few days ago in the Wisconsin State Farmer newspaper, Lake to Lake was a dairy cooperative formed in 1946. The cooperative was formed because the dairy farmers wanted to be able to negotiate dairy prices more collectively and get better returns for their milk products. The cooperative formed in the  Manitowoc County area and included the surrounding counties such as Kewaunee and Calumet -- the same area that produced the "Making a Murder" series on Netflix. Lake to Lake Dairy was bought out by Land O'Lakes, Inc. in 1981.

The first band that I'll highlight is Black Country Communion. Members of this supergroup include Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa, Jason Bonham, and Derek Sherinian. Hughes was the vocalist for a few iterations of Deep Purple and, for a short time in the mid-1980s, for Black Sabbath. Bonamassa, of course, is a legend in blues rock and was a child prodigy who opened about 20 shows for B.B. King at the age of 22. Bonham may be the best known of the group thanks to his famous father John Bonham being Led Zeppelin's drummer and thanks to Jason playing the drums for Zeppelin fairly regularly. Finally, Sherinian is a keyboardist who played in Dream Theater and has toured and recorded with Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, and Yngwie Malmsteen, among many many others. 

For whatever reason, this is the first time I've heard this band and this song, "Collide." It reminded me a little of Soundgarden/Chris Cornell. That's what came to mind without watching the video. Call me crazy.

You may have noticed that these cards are in pretty rough shape -- missing big parts and all. That should come as no surprise, as these Lake to Lake cards were originally stapled to milk cartons distributed by the dairy around Wisconsin. As the Standard Catalog notes, these cards were also redeemable for prizes ranging from pen and pencil sets to Braves tickets. When redeemed, the cards were punched with hole punches.

It is an understatement to say, as the Standard Catalog does, that these cards "offer a special challenge for the condition-conscious collector." Also, as a further aside, the Ray Boone and Bill Bruton cards are very difficult to find -- Boone's because he was traded and the card was withdrawn, and Bruton's for no discernible reason (other than, perhaps, his card was a grand-prize type giveaway).

Steve is a pretty big fan of the Tedeschi Trucks Band. I have no idea if this song was in the "Tiny Desk Concert" that I posted in February last year (as recommended by Mark Hoyle, who also recommended Joe Bonamassa). Susan Tedeschi is a Bostonian by birth who attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. Her husband Derek Trucks is 9 years younger than her and is a Jacksonville, Florida, native who got his start at the age of about 9 playing with the Gregg Allman Band. Good stuff here.

The last of the three Lake to Lake Dairy cards was Del Crandall. If you can find any of these in Near Mint condition, you'll pay a pretty penny. Even in 2011, the price for a NM Red Schoendienst was estimated at $75 and a Hank Aaron NM was estimated to cost $500. 

If you're interested in getting me an early Christmas gift, a complete set of the 28 cards is available on eBay for $1,499.99, plus $2.99 shipping. You know, that kind of pisses me off that someone would charge $3 shipping for a $1500 set. You mean you can't spring for it? You mean you're just going to toss them into a bubble mailer and ship them that way? Come on.

This next song is actually one I remember well from the 1980s, though I could have never told you that the band that sang the song was called Saga. I also could have never told you that Saga was from Oakville, Ontario, Canada (though I'm quite positive that Canadians would probably hang me, draw me, and quarter me for that admission). 

For what it's worth, you will never be able to see Saga live again, if they are to be believed. They performed a farewell tour in 2017 and 2018 and held their last show in Toronto at the Phoenix Concert Theatre on February 24. It was a good run, I suppose.

Finally, the last card was not a 1960 Lake to Lake but, instead, a 1989 Swell Baseball Greats Del Crandall card autographed by the man himself. Do these "Swell Baseball Greats" cards qualify as being 1980s oddballs? I think they probably do, so I will have to add this set to the queue to be written up. As I've mentioned on Twitter, I take requests, after all.

So, I cheated a bit here. Steve was singing the praises of a Michael Schenker Group album awhile back, but I was sort of jonesing for this old McAuley Schenker Group song from 1987 called "Gimme Your Love." It's great to see how often rock bands in the 1980s tried to help down-and-out club dancers by giving them roles in rock videos.

This song and band were much better than many of their contemporaries who got more famous, such as Slaughter, Winger, and Poison. Those guys couldn't sing or play in the same state at MSG, to be fair. This song still rocks.

As does Steve -- he's one of the best guys out there to trade with or just talk with on Twitter.  Thanks, Steve.

Late December Card Show Post, Part I

Last night, I was working on my Bowman parallel want list for 2014 -- bindering up what I have, putting in markers in sheets for what I don't have, and generally muttering under my breath at the multiplicity of parallels -- and I started getting bored of my musical selections. So, I reached out to the Twitter world and asked for recommendations. 

In response, I now have well over 50 recommendations for songs, albums, and artists to try out and see what I think. My thanks go out to Crackin' Wax, Zippy Zappy, Dayf, and Mark Hoyle for their suggestions. Thanks to them, this post and the next one will feature music I'm listening to for the first time.

So, what's this post about? On December 30, my local card show popped up on a Saturday to avoid New Year's Eve and hit the after-Christmas pocketbooks. Thanks to my in-laws, I had some extra money in my pocket for Christmas and my birthday (December 27...y'all missed out on a great barbecue lunch in Columbus, Georgia). I had not gone to a show in a while for multiple reasons -- time being the biggest one. 

This trip yielded some great cards, as always. I did not scan all the cards I got -- largely because I simply lost track of which ones I got at the show as they got mixed into other stacks. For instance, I did not scan the 2016 Heritage Mini (serial numbered to 100) of Ryan Braun that I found in a quarter box. Oops. Should have done that.

Cue the music:

Mark Hoyle recommended that I check out Storyville (among about 35 other bands!). This song is from an Austin City Limits taping from 1998.  Storyville was an active band for about 6 or 7 years starting in 1994. According to Wikipedia, the band formed out of the remnants of Arc Angels (another Hoyle recommendation) and Stevie Ray Vaughan's rhythm section.

It should not be a big surprise that this is an Austin, Texas band. Austin calls itself the Live Music Capital of the World. I've been to Austin a few times now (my brother-in-law and sister-in-law live there and I have been to two ABA conferences there as well), and the times I have seen live music there, it has been excellent and inexpensive. As this list shows, Austin's music is diverse too: everything from Storyville to the Dixie Chicks to Willie Nelson to Butthole Surfers to Fastball to Janis Joplin to Spoon all came out of Austin. 

Let's start with a few vintage Milwaukee Braves cards that I picked up -- appropriately for music suggested by the vintage king Mark. I think these probably cost more than nearly all the rest of the cards I bought due to age and/or Hall of Fame status being involved. Of the three, I think the Mathews actually cost the least -- likely due to the creases -- and the Logan was the most expensive with it being something of a high-number in 1961. 

Another Mark Hoyle recommendation -- one seconded by Matthew Scott of Bob Walk the Plank -- is Joe Bonamassa. I think you can see from these two recommendations alone what kind of music Mark really likes: southern rock/blues. There are times when I get in the mood for music like this. To me, this type of music is best seen and heard live rather than through music videos, so finding shows on YouTube is a great way to experience this.

The rest of the Braves that I bought at the card show. I got the two Aaron career retrospective cards at the same time as I got the other three older cards above. The Warren Spahn card at the bottom is my first card from the 1983 ASA Warren Spahn set. Now, I just need to find the other 12 cards in the set -- including another two copies of card 6 (featuring Warren with Fred Haney, Bobby Thomson, and Lew Burdette) and finding one of the autographed card 1 -- and the red border variation of the entire set. So, then, that'll be fun.

NPR has a ton of these "Tiny Desk Concert" videos on YouTube. Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks are a married couple whose musical talent individually is incredible and together is just awesome. I've heard of them before Mark suggested taking a listen. 

As I said before, listening to bands like this live is the best way to take them in. If you are a fan of Tedeschi Trucks, hopefully you have discovered the ridiculous library of live shows freely available on Archive.org -- there are 478 results for Tedeschi Trucks on Archive, though of course not all of them are actually them. But if you like the band, you owe it to yourself to give a listen there.

I was lucky to find three Gary Carter cards to add to my collection at the show, including two from the 2005 Donruss Throwback Threads set. The 2016 Archives card, though, just looks wrong to me. Why? The 1991 set did not use the M logo for Montreal -- just the Expos name. I'm sure that's been mentioned elsewhere before, but it still bugs me.

Okay, let's change gears here a little bit and go to a couple of musical recommendations from Dayf from Card Junk.

Dave recommended albums rather than bands. One of the albums he recommended was The North Borders by Bonobo. It's very different from the blues that Mark Hoyle favors, of course, but I'm digging this too. The first song, "First Fires," is soothing -- perfect for me to listen to on a Sunday morning while typing up a blog post. This one is going to get added to my listening library for sure. 

Out of a quarter or dime box -- not sure which -- came these three mid-90s Molitors, including that Pinnacle die-cut insert. My Molitor collection is one I'm still a bit up in the air about. Every time I see cards like these of Molitor not on the Brewers, it kind of pisses me off all over again about his free agency in the early 1990s. It's easy to second guess and say, "yeah, of course the Brewers should have known that Molitor would play another 6 years." 

It would have been easier to take if Molitor went to Minnesota first and stayed there. That would have been much more understandable -- after all, the Brewers did try hard to bring him back after his Toronto contract ended, but the lure of playing at home in front of his hometown fans won out.

Fantastic Plastic Machine is another Dave suggestion. This video was an easy one to pick out from the list of potential videos to show for obvious reasons. To be fair, this song is not on the album that Dave suggested I listen to (which was FPM's first album) but come on -- isn't this better to have as the video?

When the music on this one started, I thought, "this kind of reminds me of some of the Japanese music that Zippy Zappy was listening to." Then, I found out that FPM is a Japanese musician named Tomoyuki Tanaka. I guess sometimes you can figure out things about a musician just by listening to their music?

These are the last cards for today's post -- the Upper Deck cards I picked up. I know almost all of these were in a 6 for $1 box. It is always good when I can add a Ryan Braun serial-numbered card for less than 20 cents. Those "A Piece of History" cards leave me chasing only a couple of cards for the 2009 set. 

Of course, I still haven't gotten around to cataloging what Upper Deck inserts I need, so I haven't got a clue where I stand on the "Cut from the Same Cloth" or the season biography cards. 

Thanks for stopping by today. You'll be hearing a bit more of the musical suggestions as the week goes on -- so thank you to those four gentlemen for the help!

Get Off Hiatus, Chop Keeper!

A couple of weeks ago, Steve from the Card Chop announced that he was taking a summer hiatus from blogging. His reasoning is sound -- fighting blog burn out and working long hours combined with the familial responsibilities during the summer can take a toll on anyone.  I speak for myself and a lot of other bloggers, though, when I say come back soon, Steve!

Apparently to celebrate his stepping back a bit from blogging, Steve was kind enough to send a package my way -- even making reference to the #WarwithJBF monster packages along the way:

What frightening things I might find? What do you mean?

Those Wacky Packages are awesome.  I've never collected them, and probably won't, but that Twerx bar with its "Break Me off a Piece of That!" slogan is almost certainly scarier than Jason Voorhees.  I mean, Jason isn't real...but that scary-ass backwoods twerker is as real as it gets.

Thankfully, Steve didn't just sent me those. Otherwise, I would have considered that whole package to be just a big Troll-up. Steve sent me a few cards as well -- a few great cards, that is.

Not a bad start -- Rickie and Prince, the "Brew Crew" (imaginative name there, Topps).  

As a side note, crazy weird groups of players put together on a single card for no apparent reason other than the photographer caught them posing together -- like those Fleer cards in their first ten or so years of existence -- are sorely missing from cards today. Sure, it's great that I can get a Skittles rainbow of refractors of Trevor Plouffe, but how about giving me a card featuring Pat Neshek talking to Munenori Kawasaki?  Or a David Price and Sonny Gray "Anchor Down" card? Would it be such a bad thing to make cards fun again?

Now, to be fair, that was the only Brewers card that Steve sent to me.  

The rest?

Del Crandall and Bill Bruton -- two of the early stars of Milwaukee Braves baseball.  As a kid, I had no idea how good of a baseball player Del Crandall really was. I only thought of him as the really not-so-good manager of the Brewers and the Mariners.  As for Bruton, I only think of him as a Milwaukee Brave, but he finished his career with four seasons in Detroit.

And there were two more cards too:

More Delmar!  And Johnny Logan too!  I love the play at the plate that Del Crandall's card has and the double-play/turning two on Logan's card.  I wonder -- has Topps sold off that original artwork?

But those weren't even the best part!

Holy Johnny Logan Autograph!

Steve, thank you very much for the great cards including the awesome additions to my Milwaukee Braves collection and especially the Logan autograph!  Enjoy your time away from the blog, but you better come back.  Otherwise, you'll be forced to watch this video on constant loop like some sort of classical conditioning straight from "A Clockwork Orange."

A PWE from All Trade Bait, All the Time

One of my earlier blog trades was with Dodgers fan Stealing Home from All Trade Bait, All The Time. SH is a genuinely nice guy to trade with and talk to by e-mail.  He recently went on a PWE-sending spree, and I was one of the lucky folks to get one.  Here are the cards he sent to me:

This Kyle Lohse card is just an opportunity for me to point out that once again the current "throwback" uniforms have a design error.  Everyone who is a Brewers fan from the 1980s knows that the hat with the yellow panel on the front was the away hat -- the team wore a solid blue cap at home.

Just as this 1986 Topps Ben Oglivie -- about to take batting practice on the road in his baby-blue road uniform -- proves.

I miss having a leadoff hitter who actually got on base.  Actually, I miss having a team that didn't hit like it was a Triple-A team.  This year to date, the team has scored 170 runs in 45 games -- 3.78 runs per game -- while allowing 221 (4.91 runs per game, so yes, pitching is a problem too).  But, the Brewers have scored 10 or more runs in 4 games this year (and lost one of them...again, pitching is a problem).  Remove those four games in which the Brewers scored 43 runs, and the team over the other 41 games are averaging barely 3 runs per game -- 3.098 per game, to be super exact.  The team has a slash line of .227/.285/.378 (taking out pitchers, it's .234/.293/.392).

Now I'm depressed...

That's better.  The Clash always bring a smile to my face.  Okay, back to the cards!

Khris Davis is not known for his defense, but his card from both last year and this year show him making defensive plays.

Finally, the piece de resistance for this PWE.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my grandfather probably was convinced that Johnny Logan was the best player on the Milwaukee Braves in the 1950s.  Perhaps the 1950s baseball fans were as enamored with great shortstop play as a lot of us bloggers seem to like catchers -- or perhaps that reflects more about bloggers tending to be more cerebral than the average fan and appreciating all the thought, hard work, and intelligence that goes into being a catcher.

At any rate, Stealing Home sent me this card with the note that it clearly belongs with me due to the fact that Logan was such a bad ass in my grandpa's eyes.

I have to say that this reason for getting a card is perhaps the best reason I have ever heard.  My memories of being a kid growing up pretty poor in Wisconsin (my mom, my brothers, and I lived with my grandparents as I grew up) were filled with stories of past sportsmen to come through Milwaukee.  My grandpa and I bonded in the mornings by reading the game stories in the Milwaukee Sentinel of the previous day's Brewer game, or Packers game, or Milwaukee Bucks game, or even the Milwaukee Admirals games. I'd then get ready for school and head off, not realizing that those days would be ones I'd look back on now with a fondness for how innocent those days were -- and how lucky I was to have a grandfather who indulged my sports fanaticism.

Thank you, Stealing Home, for that reminder.