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!

A PWE from 2x3 Heroes and Contest, Part II

First off, thank you to the folks who have already entered the card show Contest. I started thinking about the fact that there are a lot of folks who may never have been to a card show, and that I should try to make an effort to include them in some ways.  

Let's do that here: if you have never been to a card show, comment on this post and tell me what card or cards you would look for at a card show.  I'll do the same prize here as well -- $10 spent at my local card show trying to help you live out your card show dreams.  Please note: you are only allowed to win one time -- either on this post or the other one.  

Last week while I was roaming around the country's midsection, I received a PWE from JediJeff at 2x3 Heroes. I was happy to see it because I now can confirm that I am in his PWE club, in which he randomly sends out a PWE based on your collecting interests.  Jeff is the kind of guy who will take those miscuts off your hands -- yes, he collects them, and he even spelled out his criteria last year as to what it takes to be a true miscut.  He also tends to put songs on each of his blog posts, which is always a big win to me.

Songs? Sure, I overuse the song-introducing-a-card posts here, but dadgum it, I'm a big music fan. So, using whatever songs catch my ear today, here are the Brewers that Jeff sent my way.

2008 Upper Deck Ryan Braun

Wholly appropriate song to go with the card that popped into my head?

One of my wife's favorite artists:

The song is called "Before He Cheats," though I can't be sure that this card came before Braun cheated.

Carrie Underwood sure is easy on the eyes. The first concert my wife and I attended together was in Milwaukee at Summerfest in 2010, and it was Carrie Underwood. My wife was then just my fiance, and she had not met my family in person. When I saw that Carrie was playing the last day of Summerfest, I jumped on the tickets and made that our gift to ourselves for going to Wisconsin.

Oddly enough, that was the last show that Carrie did before she came to Georgia and Lake Oconee and got married to hockey player Mike Fisher at the Ritz Carlton Reynolds Plantation.

1991 Topps Tom Edens

What fits this card?

So, when I think of 1991 and the name Edens, I think of going back to college for my sophomore year at Vanderbilt. My drive to Vandy from where I grew up took me south on I-94 (eastbound, officially) from Milwaukee to Chicago before cutting into Gary, Indiana. I-94 in Chicago is the Edens Expressway.

What does that have to do with REM? Well, in the spring of 1991 and as happened every spring, the Southern Baptist Church has some sort of big get-together on campus at Vanderbilt and they rented out the 15,000 seat Memorial Gymnasium for it. It was my first time seeing that big meeting there.  As I was walking back to my dorm from that side of campus, I walked by the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house. Blasting from their speakers was the entirely appropriate "Losing My Religion."

2009 Topps Allen & Ginter Jeff Suppan

I'm not a Jeff Suppan fan. But, I'll make the best of this:

The Soup Dragons biggest U.S. hit was "Divine Thing." I listened to this song a ton a couple of years after it was released because the "New Rock" station in Milwaukee in 1994, New Rock 102.1, had this song in constant rotation at that time. 

It's still a pretty good song, I think.  It holds up well...and a lot better than Suppan did as a Brewer.

2000 Upper Deck Mark Loretta

I have few strong memories of Mark Loretta. He was a Brewer around the time they moved to the NL, and then he became an Astro.  Based on his Twitter feed, it appears that Loretta is drawn more to the Padres than anything else.  Loretta is only about 4 months older than me, and yet, he feels like he belongs to a distant past.

I guess if I were a pro athlete, I'd belong to a distant past as well.

When I think of Loretta, though...

There's only one Loretta Lynn. Even though she is 83 years old, the Coal Miner's Daughter from Butcher Hollow (that's pronounced "Holler", by the way), Kentucky, is still touring -- playing casinos and theaters from Tyler, Texas, to Tarrytown, New York.

Personally, I'll be lucky to make it to age 83.

Okay...last card to share, even though Jeff sent a bunch more.

2013 Topps Mike Fiers

Yeah, I had this card already. But I always get a particular song in my head whenever I see a card of the Astro's no-hit thrower:

I didn't start the Fiers.  He was always burning since the world's been turning.

Jeff, thank you very much for having me in your PWE club. I'll be on the lookout for some good Chisox to send your way.

Reporting from the Card Show: A Contest?

Based on the resounding lack of readers for yesterday's post, perhaps I was wrong about being missed last week. Work sucks in that it takes us away from the stuff we enjoy doing, but generally we are unable to do things we enjoy doing without working to get money to allow us to do what we enjoy.  It's a vicious cycle.

Today on Twitter, the blog world's favorite marketing communications manager at Topps, Sooz, held her usual 3 PM Monday #CardChat.  The topic was card shows. 

Question 1:

Q1 When is the last time you went to a card show? #CardChat

— Sooz (@yanxchick) October 12, 2015

My answer was Sunday, October 4.  As I mentioned before I left town, I stopped at my local card show for a couple of hours and picked up some random finds. How random? Let's start with Gary Carter random:

1989 Donruss All-Stars

1992 Pinnacle

2015 Diamond Kings

I know I'm a logo snob, and I have commented previously about the Diamond Kings set not being a favorite, but the more I see the cards, the more it grows on me.  Quality like this -- and not those crappy cartoon cards that Panini put out in 2012 and 2013 under the guise of being "Triple Play" -- makes me not miss the logos.

Here's an idea as to how to control parallels while still having the hits and the parallels and getting fully licensed cards from people other than Topps.  MLB should issue a license for exactly one set per card manufacturer per year (other than Topps...again, we're not affecting their contract here). That licensed set can include up to 500 base set cards, of which one team may not have more than 17 cards and no fewer than 15 cards.  Any teams that no longer exist can have up to 20 cards in the set, and those cards don't count against the 500 limit.  

With me so far?

There can be up to 8 parallels (to make collecting a rainbow on one binder page possible) for each card, and each parallel may not be serial numbered any less than out of 99.  Why? To make collecting a rainbow possible for up to 99 collectors.  It's an attempt at being egalitarian.

There can be up to 5 insert sets.  One insert can be autographed, one insert may have relics, and one insert can combine the two. All of these must be serial numbered to no fewer than 25 -- to give some scarcity -- and they cannot have parallels.  The other two insert sets are the more common ones -- 1 in every 2 packs, say -- and can include any assortment of players and teams that the card company wants to include.

Then, collectors get to vote on which of those fully licensed sets sticks around for the next season.  It'll be like All-Star voting.  You get to vote on which base set wins, which insert sets win, which parallels win, and which auto/relic/combo set wins.  The following season, the company that created the most winning sets gets to create two licensed sets -- one higher end, one of the same base-type set -- and we do it all over again as to the voting.

Too complicated? What do y'all think?

Sooz's question two:

Q2 How many card shows happen in your area throughout a year? #CardChat

— Sooz (@yanxchick) October 12, 2015

Again, I'm very lucky. Within a twenty minute drive, there are between 20 and 25 card shows a year for me to attend. The downside is that many of the same vendors attend. The upside is that I have gotten to know a bunch of the vendors so they look out for me and bring Brewers cards when they otherwise might not.

Because, to be fair, there really is no reason that any of these cards should appear at a card show here:

Sure, ten years ago, the Rickie Weeks Huntsville Stars card would have been in some demand, and maybe a 2001 Topps Stars Ben Sheets or UD Game Face Promo of Sheets might have had some pull when Sheets was the next big thing in the early 2000s.  But the Gallardo Bowman Heritage Prospects card? A 1990 Teddy Higuera Sportflics?  I feel like the folks at the show know I will scarf these up.

Q3 What are some of the benefits of a card show? #CardChat

— Sooz (@yanxchick) October 12, 2015

Now this one is a softball question for me.  I mean, where else could I find these cards for 10 cents without any postage or shipping fees?

Perhaps when COMC has its Black Friday promotion with free shipping you might be able to find these there, but even then the card will not be a dime.  For instance, I can't find the Molitor 1989 Topps Big on COMC, but the cheapest Brewers available from that set currently are Don August and Juan Castillo, each for $0.45 a card.  The 1995 Molitor Zenith is $0.50 a pop, the 1998 Fleer Tradition is at least $0.75 a piece, and the only copy of the Just Minors Just Prospects Prince Fielder available on COMC as of 10/12 is an encased version of it at $9. I got two copies of it -- one for the team collection, one for the player collection -- for a total of $0.20 including shipping.

Seems like the relative cost and deals that are available at card shows provides a big plus for those of us who do have them available...so long as you have good vendors.

Sooz's next question was a bit more difficult.

Q4 IF you could revamp card shows, what would you change? #CardChat

— Sooz (@yanxchick) October 12, 2015

Some of the responses to this question were interesting. Ideas such as making dealers stay to the end (not sure how you do that other than hold people hostage, perhaps), having shows at night at a bar or restaurant, themed weekends (80s cards one weekend, 90s cards the next), or getting listings of the dealers attending and having WiFi available all were listed out. 

Once again, I'm pretty lucky on many of those counts. Our shows aren't at night, but the gentleman who promotes the show, Frank Moiger, sends out an e-mail prior to the show with the vendors who are attending and what the vendor is planning to bring. These folks go all over and buy cards and are collectors themselves, so they tend to have new stock every show.  And, because the shows are at a hotel with free WiFi, that's not an issue either.

The WiFi is great too because it allows me to check my want lists on this site at the show so I can see that I need cards.  My problem this time was that I didn't have anything up from 2015, so I guessed -- correctly, I'll add -- that I needed these cards:

Since these are from this year, I had to pay 15 cents for each of these.  Highway robbery!

Now, I'm out of cards to show you, but I did want to bring up the last question Sooz asked (skipping over the "what killed card shows" and the obvious answer of eBay/the internet):

Q6 What is your best ever card show find? #CardChat

— Sooz (@yanxchick) October 12, 2015

I know it wasn't from this show, but I think, for the price, that this was my best card show find.  It's from last June, and I paid a shiny quarter for it.  

Considering how much I love oddballs, it should come as no surprise that I would pick one of these MSA discs from 1976 (minimum COMC price: $2.94) as my favorite.

How about any of you? Have a favorite card show find to show off?

If you do, how about we make this a little contest? For everyone who puts up a favorite card show find -- whether the show took place last week or in 1983 -- and then puts a link to your blog post in the comments section, you'll be entered into a randomized drawing for a $10 gift certificate for my local card show. In other words, I'll spend $10 buying you cards for your collection at my card show.

The contest will close on October 31 at midnight, and I'll get the winner picked out in time either for a November or a December show (I'm out of town that weekend, so I may not make the November 1 show).

Thanks for reading!

Cards from the Juice Box

Hey, I heard you missed me.  I'm back!

My week away from home -- sleeping in hotel rooms, meeting new (often very strange) people and seeing old friends -- ended on Friday night. It was only four nights away, to be exact, but I successfully picked up a cold/sore throat and slept perhaps 9 hours from Wednesday through Friday. So, it was a great feeling to get to sleep in my own bed, to see my wife and our two cats, and to get back to the friendly confines of my office/baseball card room.

Even before I left, I had received my first-ever package from a gentleman named Trevor. Trevor has started a blog called "Juice Box Baseball."  I received several comments on my blog from Trevor, so we exchanged e-mails about cards and want lists and the like.  A few days later and Voila! Baseball cards arrive in my mailbox.

Trevor is a Houston Astros collector. Hopefully he will post more soon.  In the meantime, though, here are the highlights from the great envelope of cards that he sent my way for my player collections and/or team collection, punctuated by some juicy music.

Jose Valentin

Yes, there are many readily available cards from the 1990s and early 2000s that I need for my collections, such as these two Topps base set cards of Jose Valentin. I still need both of these one more time for my team collection.  

So what juicy song goes with these two cards?

How about a song from 34 years ago called "Queen of Hearts" by New Jersey native Juice Newton? It's a funny thing about country music -- most of the popular songs from that genre really aren't all that "country" at all. Think about it: if you were alive in 1981, you couldn't avoid this song no matter what radio station you listened to -- country or pop -- as it hit Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, Number 14 on the Country chart, and Number 2 on the Adult Contemporary chart.  Heck, even Alvin & The Chipmunks covered it.

So, the next time you hear someone complain about how Luke Bryan or Taylor Swift really isn't country, know that Barbara Mandrell and Johnny Cash were saying the same thing 35 years ago about Juice Newton.  And what that has to do with Jose Valentin is the square root of bupkis.  

B.J. Surhoff

Surhoff's 1995 Donruss card lists him as a catcher and third baseman. It was the time when everyone in the majors wanted a Tony Phillips thanks to Sparky Anderson's use of Phillips all over the diamond to give other players a day off.  Surhoff was always an incredibly earnest player as well.  As this story from The Washington Times said in 1999, everything Surhoff felts was "writ large across his mug."

To go with that...hmmm....

I'd never heard of or heard this song or this band before today, but it fits here.  The song is called "Juice" and the band -- called Headless Chickens -- was big in New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Sort of like Surhoff in Milwaukee.  Take a listen and tell me that this song isn't incredibly earnest with emotional heartstrings being tugged the entire way. Or, it may just be obnoxious, throwaway tripe that got released in every country around that time.

Actually, it's not bad at all, really, so I'm going with the first part of that choice.

Rob Deer

A 1989 Topps Big card of the big three-true-outcomes slugger Rob Deer graced this package as well. I remember buying Topps Big in those cellophane wrappers back in 1989 or 1988. As was the case for the 1989 Bowman set, Topps Big are tough to store in sheets for us binder guys and gals -- they fit, sort of, in the 9-pocket varietals, but they are such a tight fit that you are really jamming them into the pockets. 

Did someone say jamming?

Let's go to Jimmy Kimmel jamming with Oran "Juice" Jones last November on Kimmel's 47th birthday. "The Rain" was Juice's biggest hit, reaching number 9 in the US, number 3 in Germany, number 4 in the UK, and number 6 in both Ireland and Belgium.  Watching this performance from 2014, I feel like Juice may be the world's coolest one-hit wonder ever. Dude is a bad ass.

Prince Fielder

Because Trevor sent me four Fielders for my player collection, we get two songs here.

This Prince Fielder 2007 Topps Turkey Red had me Googling the card to double check the date on it without picking up the card (a crazy thing since the card is right in a stack in front of me as I type this).  

But, that search led me to Dick Perez's website where he sells some of his original art -- such as this absolutely awesome Eddie Mathews acrylic (for $2,000...wish I'd found this site when I was single and had much more disposable income!).  If you like Dick Perez's art, you should poke around there. He has it sorted by team and then by player, and he has some photos with stories about his career.  His early work in particular was fantastic.

Sort of like...

Ahhhhh...rollin' down the street, smokin' indo, sippin' on gin and juice. Laid back....

Snoop's debut album had a creativity and fun about it that couldn't be replicated later in his life for all the obvious reasons. 

Okay, on to the final two cards.

The orange refractor from 2011 Topps pairs well with one of Fielder's final cards as a Brewer player (rather than those after-the-fact cards that Topps puts out from time to time). In retrospect, Fielder leaving Milwaukee started the window closing on the Doug Melvin Brewers's opportunities to contend. Fielder left a big hole behind both in the lineup -- the lefty power bat needed to balance out the rest of the team's right-handedness -- and on the field.  

Corey Hart was a good fit there for a while, but his injuries took him away from being the first baseman.  Then, the Brewers messed around with people like Travis Ishikawa, Mat Gamel, Taylor Green, Brooks Conrad, Cesar Izturis, Yuniesky Betancourt (seriously...WTF is that?), Juan Francisco, Sean Halton, Alex Gonzalez (another shortstop? Huh?), Mark Reynolds, and Lyle Overbay playing first base in 2012 through 2014. That failure to address first base with a real hitter before 2015 and Adam Lind was one of the biggest failures in Doug Melvin's tenure.  That, and signing Jeff Suppan to a four-year contract for $42 million.  The Suppan contract will always be a stain on Melvin's record.

So, what do I have to close this out?

Three 6 Mafia, of course.  Of course.  Jordan Michael Houston -- a/k/a Juicy J -- is one of the founders of Three 6 Mafia out of Memphis.  Sadly, one of the co-founders of Three 6 Mafia -- Koopsta Knicca -- died this past week at the age of just 40 years old from a brain aneurysm. 

Trevor, thanks for the cards that you sent to me.  I've got a package all set to go out to you this week. And for everyone else, Trevor needs a fair amount of late 1980s junk wax -- so check out his want lists!

See You Next Week

Did anyone else listen to drivin' n' cryin' 25 years ago, like I did? In college in the South in the early 1990s, every big frat party that featured a DJ seemingly was required to play DNC's "Straight to Hell."

I even sang the song -- poorly, I'm sure -- at a friend's 30th birthday party about 14 years ago. 

I was reminded of those days recently because drivin' n' cryin' was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame about a week ago. I recorded it on the off-chance that there would be something worth watching.  I was surprised when the final half hour was all Kevn Kinney and his usual gang of friends (including former REM guitarist Peter Buck).

My wife said I looked positively giddy watching the show. I was too -- I listened to DNC a ton from 1991 to about 1994 and saw them live two or three times in addition to seeing Kevn Kinney live in Athens a time or two.  I even met Kinney once randomly in Athens in 1996. Dude had some seriously bad teeth back then.

This memory, though, was all spurred on by my failure to get anything scanned and written prior to leaving on a business trip for which I'll be gone for nearly the entire week.  I started thinking about the whole cliched "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" idea...but I prefer the version DNC put out in 1997 covering John Denver's classic folkie song.

That said, it's been awhile since I've had to travel for an entire week for work. I have two days of depositions in beautiful Omaha, Nebraska -- my first trip there since 1993 -- followed by two days for an ABA meeting/seminar in Austin, Texas.  I just hope I make my connection next Wednesday. 

Today, I stopped off today for a couple of hours at my local card show and spent 10 whole dollars on cards -- mostly newer stuff but a few oddballs as well.  And, I received an envelope of cards recently as well (for which I'll be putting together the return envelope next weekend).  

Of course, this is a baseball card blog, so I need a baseball card or two to show off from today's purchases.  I paid no more than 15 cents for any of the cards I got, and both of these cards were in the midst of a dime box heaven.

I think this is a box bottom card from the 1988 Score sets. The card stock is much thicker than other companies' boxes, though, which is what threw me off on it.  Not having encountered one before is another reason it threw me off, as did the fact that the card does not look like the 1988 Score design at all.

Not bad for a dime, really.

Here's what the back looks like:

The other fun dime card that I bought was not one I found. Over the last 18 months of going to this show, I've run into Von of Von's Cards and his daughter a couple of times. We were barreling through the dime boxes when he handed me this next card and said, "do you collect Molitor on the Twins?"

Why, yes I do, Von.  Yes I do.  Especially when it is one of Topps's most, well, Nineties set: 1996 Topps Laser. The details are pretty intricate for the laser cuts -- the fire cut out under the ball behind Molitor's bat, the oddly-positioned catcher dude, and even the brand's name are all pretty impressive. It's nothing I'd encourage Topps to bring back, mind you...or maybe it would be a good insert with Archives to change things up a bit?

I hope y'all have a great week.

Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Being original is difficult. Taking ideas and putting new spins on them is pretty hard too. If either originality or redefining old ideas were easy, the advertising industry would never make the money it does -- and even then, many ad campaigns are immediately either forgettable, unintelligible, or stick around for way too long.

Right?

A card collector putting together a collection of all the players who ever played for their favorite team is probably a concept as old as baseball cards themselves. Whether it is being an OCD-team-collector or a Frankenset creator of a team's all-time roster (and I know I am missing many, many other blogs outside of Night Owl and Tony Burbs), again, creating a complete team collection in whatever form is nothing new.

And still, I think I want to do one myself.

My "Meet the Brewers" series is one that appeals to the amateur historian in me. I especially enjoy finding out more about the lesser lights who made it to the major leagues -- guys like George Lauzerique and his opinions as a scout about John Elway and Manny Ramirez, for example. 

To go along with that series, I had to do a little research. Because I want to present the Brewers in the order they appeared for the team, I had to use Baseball Reference's boxscore information to create that information. Of course, since this is a baseball card blog, I then turn to my own collection to cards for each player.

For the first twenty-five years of the team's history, the Brewers have made that part of my story easy by issuing books of cards featuring every player ever to play for the team in a four-book series sponsored by Miller Brewing. I recently bought a second set of these four books on eBay so I could start my new project.

The first two books are sponsored officially by Miller Lite, and the third and fourth books are sponsored by Miller Genuine Draft.  I bought these for a total of $24 with shipping included. 

What I did next was basically to disassemble all four books.  The cards are all perforated, so to create my "Brewers in Order" book, they had to be taken apart.

I have put 1970 through 1976 into a binder already.  As you might expect, 1970 had a ton of Brewers debuts -- 45 in all.  When everyone on the roster is new to the team, well, that's what happens.

So, now, it's moving forward with putting this set in order.  After that, the real trick is going to be finding cards for the debutantes after 1994. For at least most of the time -- I think through about 2012 or so -- the Brewers and the local police departments continued to issue safety sets with the cards being in the standard 2.5" x 3.5" size.  

The problem here, though, will be twofold.  First, police sets after about 1995 or so are tough to find. I've got a set from 2000, and I have one from 2012. But, otherwise, it's been rough sledding.  So, that will be one issue.

The second issue, of course, is finding cards for the lesser lights and one-offs. Sure, some of these lesser guys were fancied as prospects for five seconds or so. As a result, I might be able to find them in Bowman sets.  But, finding cards for, say, Neal Cotts or Brooks Conrad as Brewers may be difficult to impossible.

I'll probably end up adopting similar rules to what Tony Burbs at Wrigley Roster Jenga has, preferring cards for the player being active and shown as a Brewer over those from the post-career cards showing the guys as Brewers, etc.  Those rules and the order of precedence for such cards make sense to me.  

It will be a fun project for me, and it will give me something more to do with the nearly 12,000 Brewers duplicate cards that I have already.