Cleaning up on My Birthday

Being a Christmastime baby, I've learned to give myself birthday gifts. I get it -- people are partied and gifted out, and many folks aren't even in town 2 days after Christmas.

This year, I was lucky in that the local card show promoter, Frank Moiger, put together a special "holiday" edition of the local card show on December 27. Now, to be fair, most of the normal folks I would normally visit set up at this show. The show was much smaller than normal as well. As a result, I only spent a couple of hours at the show. 

But it was a great couple of hours. Why? 

A vendor that I'm not sure I've met before had set up. He had a bunch of player-specific binders put together, including a Yount binder and a Molitor binder. I bought a few Younts and a ton of Molitors -- something like 30-40 cards of them total -- for a total price of $20. That may sound a bit pricy, but compared to the various online sources (and for what I got), it was a hell of a deal.

I also got some trade bait that I will show later this week.

What Younts did I get?

That Gallery HOF set from 2003 had photo variations for literally every card. I'm shocked that Topps hasn't done this for its base set by this point, considering their love of the photo variation. What I got this time were the two variations I needed -- the "no player" regular card and the "player in the background" artist's proof card. Throw in the "Innovation" insert from the 2002 Topps American Pie set and an oddball that I've looked for regularly for two years -- the 1991 Ballstreet card -- and you have four great additions to my Yount collection.

The Molitors though...my goodness.

For some reason, that mashup works.

I'll start with something about which I'm not sure of its origin -- and I'd love your help figuring out what it is.

This is an 8x10 photo of Molitor. I've tried finding it through Google Image Search, and I get a wonderfully Japanese shopping website called Sekaimon...and nothing else. I know that this photo had to be taken before the uniform change in 1992, and it's clearly taken in Milwaukee because that does not look like spring training. Can anyone help?

Two other great oversized items were in this buy as well:

First, there is this Pinnacle/Score 1992 promo panel. This is one of those items I've seen in the massive Baseball Card Catalog and thought, "that will be tough to find." Then, it drops into my hands for around fifty cents.

To go with it is my first ever Super Diamond King of anyone. Once again, this is something I don't know that I've even seen another one of anywhere else. Now, I may have been able to find either of these on eBay, but not for fifty cents with shipping included.

Then, there were all the 1990s cards. The massive hole in my collection generally are those 1990s cards -- especially post-1992. Those were the years of the first inserts, the proliferation of parallels, and just a ton of card makers. And I didn't buy cards then.

Now I do.  Here are the highlights.

First, let's go to the "Top of the Order" Donruss card and the 1998 Donruss Studio "Proof" card. I like the Studio Proof for its shininess, of course.

Several just base set cards I needed:

Now, that Donruss Diamond King may be an insert, but to me, tradition dictates that the Diamond Kings are the first 26 cards of the set. And I don't care that there are 30 teams now.

One more base card came with its two parallels:

So, I haven't looked up the frequency for the seeding of the Gold and Platinum versions of the 1995 Studio credit-card-style cards. The Platinum, in particular, feels like a real credit card -- similar thickness and flexibility to it and everything. 

More shininess? Yes, more shininess:

All that shininess. There's some Bowman's Best and Bowman Chrome and a parallel Bowman Chrome, then there's Flair Showcase Grace and a Leaf Limited and a Donruss Elite, and then you get an SP Authentic and even a die-cut Leaf Limited. I guess I like the Pinnacle Artist's Proof and that Flair Showcase the most for their weirdness and obnoxiousness as a parallel.

Of course, I'm the oddball lover, so I did pick up some Molitor oddballs too:

Everything from a 1993 Post to a 1981 Kellogg's to a 1987 Classic to a 1989 Donruss Pop-up to a 1984 Topps "rub off" with three Hall of Famers joining the late Alan Wiggins -- I mean, who could ask for anything more?

Well, there was one more. 

So, this is the 1997 Fleer "Decade of Excellence" Rare Traditions insert Parallel. It's the rarer variation, I think.

Because I wanted to make sure I entered it on my Molitor collection list correctly and I wanted to find out whether my $20 was spent well.  

So, I looked this card up on Beckett and eBay to see what people are selling it for. I don't subscribe to Beckett's pricing services, but I did check out their marketplace to get a feel for what one might expect to pay for this. The only two on eBay are listed as "Buy It Now" for $9.60 (plus $2.50 shipping) or $8.40 (and $2.71 shipping), and one of the base inserts sold for $0.99 plus $2 shipping in December. So, this was probably the best find I had at this show for my collection.

Next time: trade bait.

Cards JayP's Mom Kept

I'm coming up on my two-year blogging anniversary next month, and it's been an eventful two years. Trades have happened, envelopes have been sent and received, and even priority mailers have shown up and been received.

I've even seen two people who started out as commenters start their own blogs.  Now, I did it pretty much backwards -- I mean, I saw that blogs existed and said "that sounds like fun to me." In fact, the reason I found out that blogs existed were thanks to Fuji cross-posting his blog posts to one of the online chat forums.

It's probably a more likely scenario that people start out as readers and commentators, though. Personally, I've seen Angus at Dawg Day Cards go from sending me O-Pee-Chee to blogging about the foibles of the Cleveland Browns. I can relate to that level of futility thanks to being a Brewers fan.

I've also seen a recent commenter, JayP, start up his blog as an apparent homage to the "Cards Your Mom Threw Out" insert set in 2010 Topps.  His elegantly named blog, Cards Mom Didn't Throw Out, has started up very recently. He introduced himself to me through email and comments, and now he introduced himself to all of us. The best thing is that he has a wantlist up already -- always a good idea in my book.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get a nice envelope full of cards from JayP. Since he is about to become the man who gets a bunch of Diamondbacks from me, how about we use some Arizona bands to introduce the cards? Sounds good to me.

Let's start with Ben Sheets -- including a great card of Sheets with a Brewers hat and a United States jersey from the 2000 Futures Game in Atlanta's Turner Field. What's great about that is I actually attended that game!



Ben Sheets cards from the early part of the 2000s deserve music from that era. Let's go with a band from Mesa that formed in 1993 and is still going strong. Their biggest hits came off their 2001 album Bleed American. Of course I am talking about Foghat.

Oh wait. That was Sunday's post.

I'm talking about Jimmy Eat World. The song I always think of by them is "The Middle."

Next up, some singles from the 1998 Stadium Club set, including PCs Jose Valentin and Cal Eldred (along with Gerald "Ice" Williams):



While not an exact analog timewise -- in fact, not really all that close to be fair -- I like Meat Puppets and wanted to post one of their songs. To be fair, I like the Nirvana unplugged version especially, so that's what I'm putting up:

Old school throwback cards have been all the rage for quite a while now, once Topps figured out that its old designs still draw people in. Some of the attempts at "Heritage" cards missed the mark though.

Here's a good one and a not so good one.



On the left -- Tony Gwynn Jr., er, Anthony Gwynn in the "not-so-good", and, on the right, Taylor Jungmann's 2015 Heritage High Numbers card. I still need a few of the high-numbers from this year, in case you have some Brewers you'd like to trade.

As for a musical accompaniment, I don't think I could have Arizona bands without featuring the big baseball fan musician from Arizona:

Alice Cooper, of course. I mean, the guy owns a sports bar in Phoenix called "Alice Cooper'stown" -- I had to include him.

Okay -- last two groups of cards. The first group is another early 2000s pairing -- again from Stadium Club. Man, these 2001 Stadium Club Cards look GOOD:



As I have looked for bands to feature from Arizona, I knew of a few that I would definitely feature. This next one is an odd one because I had never heard of them before this blogpost. Still, it's pretty interesting music from a band called Audra:

That's Audra's paean to Syd Barrett, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd who passed away about 3 years before that album was released. Of the tracks from Audra to which I listened, there were some reminders of the band She Wants Revenge, whose song "Tear You Apart" was one of my favorites from 2006.

But, if you're an Arizona person, please tell me one thing: how does a state with so much sunshine produce such dark music? There is a ton of death metal from Arizona. Seriously -- does the heat make people want to thrash? 

Anyway, I digress because, well, most of the time I'm writing a blog that's Seinfeldian in its nothingness...

Okay, last group of cards -- two guys of recent vintage:



Braun and Fielder, of course. The guys who powered the 2008 Wild Card run and the 2011 division title will almost certainly have their defenders in Milwaukee. I'm among them, obviously, since these guys are both PCs for me. 

So, music? Yeah, it has to be done...

Mainly because I really and truly quote from this song's chorus about once a week, I think. This is a true classic to me -- I mean, how can you not quote the line "Everybody knows, that the world is full of stupid people"...especially when you find yourself in rush-hour traffic?

JayP -- thank you very much for the cards. I'm working on the return package to you.