Mailday from Fuji

A couple weeks ago Mark/SanJoseFuji (I’m pretty sure the most popular name on Card Twitter is Mark/Marc) asked me for my address so that he could send me a few cards for myself and my kids. Last week a pair of PWEs showed up and what was inside was definitely good stuff for the three of us.

We’ll start off with the things that are clearly for me. Three Stanford autographs of random guys who my kids have never heard of. Fuji also collects Stanford guys so I assume these are his duplicates.

Justin Armour was not in the binder yet. I’ve been hitting the  pre-1990s guys but haven’t put the list together of junk wax NFL cards of Stanford guys. Todd LaRocca is definitely one I remember watching play. It occurs to me that I should look through those mid-90s signature cards and see if there are any other Stanford players on those checklists (I do have Jed Hansen already). And that Steve Stenstrom signed $2 phone card is one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know where to begin.

Explaining pay phones and phone cards to my kid is going to be tough enough. Adding in the idea of them being certified autographs of sports players? Weird. Plus a $2 phone card in the age of 20¢ phone calls would actually have been a decent number of calls.

The first batch of cards are all ones I have at some level. I don’t know if my Kellogg’s are in this nice of shape though so I’ll definitely be doublechecking those before I distribute them to the boys. I really like the UK minis and MLB Debut is one of those sets which I wish Topps still made.*

*My dream would be if the MLB portion of Bowman became MLB Debut so that those cards would never show up in Update, we could lose a lot of the rookie bloat in flagship, and a bunch of guys who normally don’t get cards would be able to get a real MLB card.

A half-dozen shiny cards for us to fight over. Though to be honest these all have my youngest’s name written all over them. My eldest is a traditionalist who likes his cards to be made of paper and emphasize the photography. My youngest likes the bright colors and shiny backgrounds and it’s always a bit heartbreaking to see him realize that those cards are not intended to be affordable for kids.

I’m not sure what they think about the logoless Panini stuff though. Is interesting to me to realize that this entire batch is non-licensed including that Lincecum where Upper Deck hilariously didn’t bother to do anything to remove the logos.

Finally, Fuji included a Tim Alderson relic. Very much a “who was this?” card now even though he would’ve absolutely been a big deal in 2008 after he was one of two Giants first round draft picks in 2007 (the other being Madison Bumgarner) and was on track to being one of the California League ERA leaders that season. In 2009 the Giants would send him to Pittsburgh in exchange for Freddy Sanchez. Sanchez became a key part of that 2010 World Series team. Alderson meanwhile topped out in AAA ball.

Thanks Fuji this was fun!

Random pickups

A post of a few random but interesting pickups I’ve gotten recently. I don’t like writing super-short posts so instead we’ve got a handful of things which I want to write about but can only summon a paragraph or two of text.

We’ll start off with a 1968 Topps Venezuelan Jim Ray Hart. This takes me to having four different years of Venezuelans in the collection and while 1962’s Spanish-language backs are still my favorites, I appreciate that 1968 at least has an “Hecho en Venezuela” slug on the back. This is in great shape for a Venezuelan and, given the general condition of most of my 1960s cards, the only way you can distinguish it easily is the yellowed paper.

I’m perfectly happy type collecting these. Venezuelan versions of Topps cards exist for 1959, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1967, and 1968 which means I’m only missing examples from 1959, 1960, and 1967 now.

I don’t seek Exhibits out but I kind of love adding new ones to the collection when I come across them cheaply. Exhibit cards represent a different direction which the hobby could have gone* and place cards in a larger ecosystem of both pop culture and the history of photography. This makes them kind of perfect for my larger collecting interests.

*Something I go into a bit on my SABR post about them.

Player-wise, Bill Voiselle barely made the cutoff for this checklist as a Giant. This release of Exhibits starts in 1947 and he was traded from the Giants to the Braves in June of that year. Willard Marshall meanwhile was an All Star before WW2 before spending three years in the Marines (apparently stateside as a quartermaster before being recruited as a member of the Marines baseball team). He then picked up where he left off as both an All Star and an MVP vote getter.

Is interesting. As much as I like Exhibits I have no real interest in getting any San Francisco ones. Something about them feels like they should only feature New York players to me.

Not everything on this post is going to vintage though. I grabbed the 1983 Gaylord Perry Peanut Farm set because why not. First off, Perry is a Giants retired number and a third of the set are Giants cards (note, the whole set is in my Giants album). Plus it’s such a weird oddball. Sort of generic in that there’s no branding or even a team name listed while at the same time clearly made by Topps.

Especially once you look at the backs. Very much a Topps-style design but the only hint at branding are the card numbers in the peanut shape. Such a wonderfully weird little detail. The set covers five of the eight teams Perry played for and is a fun group of highlights with his first game, a no hitter, two Cy Young Awards, 2500 strikeouts, and 300 wins.

1922 Zeenut

I got a bonus 1922 Zeenut with my 1911 Zeenut as a reward for being patient about a shipping delay. Totally unnecessary but I’m not complaining either. This is in typical Zeenut condition and features Jimmy O’Connell who would go on to play for the New York Giants in 1923 and 1924 before being banned for life after attempting to bribe Phillie Heinie Sand to throw the last couple games in 1924.

The Phillies were out of contention and the Giants were in a pennant race. O’Connell admitted to offering Sand $500 to “go easy” and implicated Frankie Frisch, George Kelly, and Ross Youngs in the scheme. They apparently denied involvement and only coach Cozy Dolan was punished along with O’Connell.

Finally, four 1910 Helmar Seals of the US and Coats of Arms of the World cards. Fuji blogged about these the other day and when I went to check the checklist I discovered that there were both California and Hawai‘i cards available. I did a quick Ebay search, no Hawai‘i but the California card was super cheap. Easy easy add to the cart. I also discovered that there are cards of various Native American nations on the checklist so I grabbed a few of those too.

The California card is great with the state seal and Giant Sequoia tunnel tree. The three Native American nations all have reservations located in Oklahoma which, in 1910 has only been a state for three years. Seeing that there are six Native American cards in this set (the other three are Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole), all of which are located in Oklahoma is interesting. It’s very nice that a lot of pre-war cards are specific about different nations rather than flattening into “Indian” but I’m really curious how those where chosen.

Shlabotnik Surprise

Last week I found a surprise envelope from Shlabotnik Report in my mailbox. Inside were a pair of cards and some newsprint clippings.

Let’s start with the cards, in particular the classic 1985 Topps Gary Pettis error which features his younger brother. As with the 1984 Fleer Glenn Hubbard, this is one of those noteworthy cards from my youth that for whatever reason never made it into my collection.  The story behind it is pretty fun and includes the information that Pettis refuses to sign the card.

This one isn’t as obvious a keeper as the Hubbard but collectors my age all know about it and know why it’s special so I’m very happy to add it to my binder after all these years.

The other card was an extra Goggomobile that he had mistakenly ordered form COMC and which he felt would look good next to the Ferrari card I grabbed earlier. Such a weird set with super-sporty Ferraris that people still admire and whatever this with a silly name, is but if I assemble a 6-pocket page of them it’ll definitely be a fun one to look at.

I’m glad Shlabotnik included a note about how the newsprint wasn’t just packaging since it was a good read. I didn’t scan them since they came from the current Sports Collectors Digest and you can just read the article online.

Shlabotnik thought of me because the article contained printing information about the 1960s Post sets.

Rotogravure printing was accomplished by Post’s graphic designers creating 150 percent scale mockups of each box, including the back panel. The group of mockups for each cereal brand and size were then arranged in the way they would be printed. A photograph was made and used to etch six color rotogravure cylinder plates. Each set of plates printed the boxes for one particular cereal.

Rotogravure makes sense since it’s ideal for single-sided packaging. This prompted me to loupe my Post cards and I can see how the text and linework isn’t as crisp as I’d expect it to be with offset. It’s still solid but all the edges have a slight dot screen aspect to them. The real interesting thing is the 6-color information but I suspect it’s really just CMYK process plus corporate logo spot colors.

Very cool stuff. Thanks Shlabotnik report!

A look at the numbers

A quick post prompted by something Greg posted last week when he updated his Dodger card count by year. One nice thing about having everything cataloged is that it can be fun to just explore the data and looking at Greg’s numbers was prey cool. So I did some quick Google Sheets calculations and came up with the resulting graph.

The graph goes all the way to 1911 because I do have one card from that year but after a couple blips in the early 1930s and 1939–1941 it really only gets going with the dawn of modern cards in 1948. The graph profile is almost exactly what I would expect with a massive peak in my childhood junk wax years that never returned to what it was before then since we never returned to the age of just one set of cards a year.

Looking more closely. The peak in 1955 is caused by the Golden Stamps set whereas the ones in 1976 and 1979 are TCMA’s fault. The absence of a big jump starting in 1981 reflects how poorly I’ve done getting the Donruss and Fleer team sets for the early 1980s.

Also, compared to Greg’s numbers my numbers in general are super small. Yes at one level getting 100 different Giants cards each year is still a lot of cards. At another though it could clearly be a whole lot worse and I’m pleased that I’ve been as disciplined as I have been.

Anyway, a big long list of the numbers follows. I’ve deleted all the zero years.

1911: 1
1933: 2
1934: 2
1935: 2
1937: 1
1939: 4
1940: 4
1941: 5
1948: 10
1949: 11
1950: 16
1951: 22
1952: 25
1953: 19
1954: 30
1955: 45
1956: 22
1957: 25
1958: 32
1959: 32
1960: 42
1961: 40
1962: 38
1963: 50
1964: 33
1965: 35
1966: 34
1967: 40
1968: 34
1969: 41
1970: 43
1971: 48
1972: 36
1973: 34
1974: 43
1975: 48
1976: 72
1977: 55
1978: 53
1979: 107
1980: 72
1981: 65
1982: 73
1983: 112
1984: 111
1985: 93
1986: 124
1987: 125
1988: 179
1989: 239
1990: 332
1991: 331
1992: 444
1993: 380
1994: 467
1995: 339
1996: 290
1997: 221
1998: 191
1999: 159
2000: 149
2001: 212
2002: 219
2003: 195
2004: 106
2005: 87
2006: 91
2007: 93
2008: 127
2009: 131
2010: 108
2011: 167
2012: 168
2013: 180
2014: 144
2015: 207
2016: 131
2017: 100
2018: 179
2019: 190
2020: 159
2021: 107
2022: 99

More Holiday Mail

A couple more holiday mailings trickled in after my last post so it’s time for another roundup post. These both warranted further comments so this post took a while to get up.

Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown is one of the custom card makers who I really enjoy. He’s been playing with intentionally fading 1991 Fleer and sent out a bunch of his experiments as a Christmas surprise to various card bloggers.

A lot of bloggers were writing about theres in the week before Christmas and I figured that I just hadn’t made the cut. I don’t trade very much and it’s been years since I traded with Gavin in particular.* It turned out that Gavin still had my old address and had sent my card to my previous apartment. I was dropping off Christmas cards locally and when I swung by my old place Gavin’s card was there waiting for me (along with a few other Christmas cards).

*Though I did inspire a couple GIFs.

The Christmas overlay is as fun as expected but I really just love the faded yellow card by itself. I’ve never hated on 1991 Fleer as much as other people do since the only problem is the yellow. Design and photographywise it’s actually a nice card and toning the yellow down eliminates the only questionable design decision.

I’ve gone ahead and included a scan of the unfaded card as a way of showing the difference. Gavin’s clearly doing more than just leaving a card out in the sun since the image isn’t faded at all.

I’ve gone ahead and put a gif together of the faded and non-faded cards. My unfaded card is actually more yellow across the board but it’s clear that Gavin has masked the image so that it didn’t get hit by the UV from the sun.* Since UV breaks down yellow pigment first.** The orange signs and yellow foul pole are both mostly untouched while the border is almost all gone.

*A discerning eye will also note the slightest of differences in the cropping and logo placement.

**Also magenta but yellow is clearly the most reactive. A combination of UV susceptibility as well as basic color physics in how blue light is higher energy and while blue pigment reflects blue light, the other colors absorb the higher energy wavelengths. 

It’s a transformative way of looking at 1991 Fleer and making the design itself more apparent. I want to try it myself once we have sun again as well as think about other junk wax sets or cards that might benefit from the same approach.

The cards will have to feature a design with prominent red or yellow elements. 1990 Donruss came to mind first but the white lettering for the player name may not work. The 1988 Topps All Star cards on the other hand might be perfect (though cutting the mask for the head will be difficult*). And heck maybe even 1987 Topps could be interesting. Plenty of time to think about it since we won’t have proper sun for a while.

*Hehe so Gavin was doing exactly this while I was drafting my post.

Plenty of time to also think about doing fun things with the mask as well as changing reds to magenta or greens to cyans. I’m interested to see what else Gavin cooks up

I also got a nice bubble mailer from Marc consisting of a combination of cards from a childhood pile he’d inherited and some unwanted cards from various boxes he’s ripped. This firs batch of Giants is clearly form the collection with a bunch of late-90s/early 00s cards. I have some of these but need to check my notes since I also don’t have many of them.

It’s interesting to see the 1981 Fleer design get remade using higher-quality graphics and how the better quality makes the cards look even more amateur. As a 1981 design I love it. As a ~2001 design it falls into the uncanny valley. I also enjoy the Pacific cards. They’re sadly no longer in Spanish but it’s always nice to see Pacific‘s unique take on cards. Also the foil stamping on the JT Snow Bowman is massively misregistered to the point where it almost changes the card design. I’m not sure if I love the mistake or if it gives me hives. Or both.

The rest of the Giants includes a pair of Rich Aurilias from set I’ve never seen before and an always-welcome Kenny Lofton card. Lofton, like Eric Davis in the first photo, only played for the Giants for one season but it’s nice to have had a chance to root for a player I always admired.

The 2022 cards are all from various product rips Marc’s had. Nice to get a Chrome colored parallel as well as a pair of Holiday cards. Also nice to be able to slide my first Ginters into the binder.

A few Stanford cards. Total is always appeciated. As is Donruss. Since I focus on Topps Flagship for this PC the other brands/products only make it in as I come across them. The Shawn Greens are nice too (almost all caught up on his Topps run now) and these are the firs 2023 Ginter and Chrome to make it into the Stanford album.

And finally a handful of other cards. I’m pretty sure this is one of Scott Erickson’s last cards and comes from a set that’s not well represented in the binder. And Marc sent me the three New Jersey™ cards in this year‘s Ginter set. TWO Pork Roll cards suggests that there’s a heavy New Jersey contingent working there and I’ve loved seeing how many people have zero idea WTF Pork Roll is.

Thanks so much guys! Happy New Year!

Holiday PWEs

Every holiday season I’m surprised by a few PWEs from other card bloggers and people out there. Sometimes these can be kind of amazing but most of the time they’re assorted randomness which consists of people getting surplus cards out of their house and into the hands of people who’ll appreciate them. This year’s examples fall into that category.

The first PWE was nine John Elway cards from Johnny’s Trading Spot—basically the Elway version of the Giants I got in my first batch. I have a few Elway cards in the Stanford binder but it’s a pretty random selection or whatever was cheapest. These don’t make it less random but do flesh things out a bit. I especially like the Pinnacle Idols card as well as the 2013 Topps Archives using the 1976 design.

My two favorite cards though were the Spanish Pro Set card and the Game Dated highlight. I love Spanish-language cards released in the United States. They’re one of the things I collect casually and it’s great to add them to the Stanford album. I also just like the wider-angle horizontal photo on the highlight card. I’m not used to seeing images like this on cards and it’s a nice change of pace.

I also got a pair of 1989 Donruss cards from HayMay who’s no longer on Twitter but is part of our Discord “Card Twitter in Exile” community. As one of those sets where I’m at the point where buying lots makes zero sense (due to duplication issues) and buying singles makes even less sense (due to just not being worth it financially), every bit of progress toward set completion is fully appreciated.

The Bo is admittedly a bit weird. A bit larger than it’s supposed to be and for whatever reason it wasn’t trimmed fully on the bottom so the corners got torn off. The Eck is nice though. Always fun when the A’s cards are in the team color gradient too.

And finally a Christmas trade with Clearush, a new trading partner who’s also on the Discord. He had a bunch of off-grade 1953 Bowmans including one I needed. I had a handful of 1974 Topps cards he needed for his set build. PWEs were dispatched on the weekend and by the following Wednesday I had card #1 Davey Williams in hand.

Yes there’s some tape. And yes I was advised of this beforehand. It doesn’t matter though. A lot of the Williams cards I’ve seen are misregistered and this one is sharp. Plus most of my 1953s have some kind of major damage whether it’s tape, creasing, or a hole punch. It takes a lot to detract from the quality of this set though. Only two more left for the team set now!*

*Leo Durocher and Whitey Lockman (plus Bill Rigney and Hoyt Wilhelm for the Black and White set)

Thanks guys and Happy Holidays! It’s always fun to get this kind of Christmas card instead.

Thanksgiving Zapping

I haven’t been doing a lot of trading recently. The thing with trading is that you need to be acquiring product which has things that you don’t need or want. And I’m barely acquiring product anymore at all let alone anything which produces the kind of bycatch needed to trade nicely.

Which means that it’s always a surprise and please when I do find a package in my mailbox. Thanksgiving weekend one such surprise package arrived from Kenny. It was a large, suspiciously-light box which turned out to be mostly packed with boxes and toploaders as Kenny is rehoming his excess storage supplies. But there was also a decent stack of cards in there too.

I went through quickly and pulled out everything that looked relevant to my collecting interests. The Jack McDowell is a new card for the Stanford album and reminds me that I don’t have a lot of 1996 Score. Matt Cain is a Giants card I didn’t have though I still have no idea what ToppsTown was.

It’s not a primary project but I’ve been slipping cards of Hall of Famers into their own album for a while now. While I don’t picture Kaat, Smith, or Pudge as Yankees it’s always nice to add cards to that album.

I’m also putting a small collection together of guys who I’ve see play at Trenton or Somerset. While this is mostly focused on Major Leaguers I’ll totally add Bowman or Panini cards if I come across them. Is very nice to get Rookie Cards of Abreu and Deivi as well.

Two African-American cards are great to have. I wish Topps had Negro League players in Allen & Ginter every year but I’ll never turn down a Moses Fleetwood Walker card. It’s also always fun to get a Japanese card—in this case a nice foil Hideki Matsui.

And finally a few 1980s oddballs from toy stores. I remember the Toys R Us cards but never saw the Kay Bee ones. A bit funny to see who was considered a “young superstar” back then.

Most of the cards though was various assorted Yankees from multiple sets. I do have to admit though that I’ll never turn down the chance to add more cards from before I began collecting. I’m mostly thin on any set before 1986.* With this batch I now have almost a page each of 1972s (all Yankees), 1973s, and 1974s. The 1972 Kekich makes me want to get a 1972 Fritz Peterson to pair with it and the 1973 Blomberg is a fun on for first DH reasons.**

*Exceptions are 1975–1979 due to an 800-count box that I found on ebay for $10 that was labeled and listed at 1991 Donruss but was actually stuffed with commons from 1975–1979 Topps. This is why I ended up building 1978.

**I TTM’d him the 1974 card which lists him as DH.

The 1980–1985 cards are also welcome as I only ever got a pack’s worth of those cards as a kid. I have more now of a few of those sets* but it’s always nice to flesh those out a bit. There’s something about those sets from before my childhood which still scratch a collecting itch.

*A decent number of 1984 and 1985 Topps.

The 1986–1988s here though are cards from when I was accumulating a lot of things. They go in the duplicate/TTM pile or might become trade packages for someone else. Yes even that 1988 Traded Jay Buhner which looks so wrong as a Yankees card.

More of the same for a lot of these cards. Though it’s worth mentioning that the 1989 Donruss cards are the Traded set and that the Deion Sanders The Rookies is one I missed as being for my oddball album. This also goes with the Melido Perez Pacific card which belongs in my Spanish-language album.

Kenny also included a bunch of Minor League cards which are starting to slip into the stream in this photo. The 1993 Pulaski Yankees design is a super-basic Minor League set whereas Classic was a more nationally-distributed production.

Into the 2000s with a bunch of cards I don’t have much to say about. Andy Brown must’ve been someone who was getting prospected a bit though. There are also three guys who I remember form the Giants here. Kenny Lofton of course needs no introduction as he’s one of those criminally-underrated players who deserved serious Hall of Fame consideration but dropped off the ballot in only a year. Brett Tomko wasn’t bad either but the less said about Sidney Ponson the better.

Late 2000s to early 2010s with more of a grab bag but it is worth commenting on the two stacks of 2011 Topps and 2011 Topps Update. A few fun cards in there and definitely nice to have a representative stack to look through from that year. I enjoy getting Thairo cards as he’s become a bit of a fan favorite in San Francisco. No idea why there are two different sizes of Bowman minis. And I do like 2014 Allen & Ginter.

Also I did not open the 2014 Staten Island Yankees team set but it appears that there are Thairo Estrada, Jordan Montgomery, and Luis Torrens cards inside.

To the last batch which is increasingly a Minor League grab bag. The random Topps Archives cards are fun and I’ll have to be on alert with the Hudson Valley teams set next season in Somerset.

The main point of interest here are the Stars and Stripes USA cards. I’m a bit weirded out that cards of kids who are on the under 15 team exist. Especially since my kids are approaching this age. I did a quick look through and most of the names are completely unknown to me. There was however one card of Charlie Saum who was a freshman at Sanford last year so I guess that’s going into that album too.

And finally Kenny’s calling cards. I have sent him a Torrens custom before so getting his “you’ve been Zippy Zapped” custom back makes perfect sense. And the Power Puff and anime girls are also on brand.

Very cool. That was a fun way to unwind after hosting Thanksgiving. Thanks Kenny!

Common Culture vs Hegemony

Back in summer I found myself in the lucky position of being able to present the SABR Baseball Card Committee’s Burdick Award to Jim Beckett. This wasn’t just in my capacity as co-chair either. As a member of the Beckett generation of card collectors, I was a good choice to not only introduce him but also thank him for creating a common culture which continues to bring a generation of card collectors together.

I haven’t found any better way to explain the role that baseball cards had to my generation than to mention how my Junior High had a baseball card club. In my introduction I got a few gasps when I said I had never purchased a Beckett but in many ways it’s the greatest compliment to how successful and important they were. I never needed to purchase one since they were always around. At the club. At a friend’s house. In a classmate’s backpack. I’m pretty sure I read very one of them for a few years.

That level of shared culture and how I’ve found it from my entire generation of collectors on Twitter is super cool and I absolutely mean it when I say that Beckett was a huge positive force on my childhood and my memories of childhood.

At the same time, Beckett is also a huge part of why I burned out and gave up on the hobby. No, I didn’t mention this part in the presentation but it’s 100% true. As much as I remember Beckett with absolute fondness which evokes a wonderful period of my childhood, I also remember it as the authority about the “correct” way to collect which drove me away from the hobby.

There’s something entirely appropriate about the 1980s setting up a price guide to become the cultural zeitgeist but the increasing focus on “investing” and rookie cards was tiresome then and is tiresome now.* Yes it’s fun to share interests. But when everyone wants the same cards because everyone else wants those cards things get pretty boring pretty fast.

*Beckett’s homage to the 1980s was fun but also missed everything I loved about those cards.

It’s a fine line between a shared common culture and a hegemony.

Do I love collecting cards? Absolutely. But I want to do it my way. Put together collections I’m interested in. Value them for what they are not for what someone else will pay me for them. And show those collections to other collectors. One of my favorite things is seeing the weird and wonderful collections people put together and hearing why those collections are the way they are and what they man to he people who collect them. That’s where the common culture is for me.

It’s not arguing over the definition of  a rookie card. Trying to collect the same hot players as everyone else. Or focusing on how much something is going to be worth next week or next month.

This applies to so much more than cards as I’ve seen it with watching movies or taking photos where things slip across the line from being something that’s fun to do for yourself and share with others to become something where there are rules and a wrong way of doing things.

A lot of this is definitely bad actors on the internet but I also get the feeling that much of my generation grew up being told what was good, what to like, and how those two walk hand-in-hand. Not inherently awful as long as you learn at some point that it’s okay to like things that are bad or unpopular and it’s just as okay to not like things that are good or popular.

Sadly, a lot of us have been unable to grow out of that education and, whether it’s seeking the comfort of liking things that everyone else likes or feeling threatened when someone critiques something that everyone is supposed to like, manage to turn a lot of the stuff that should be fun and sharable into an activity in groupthink.

I love seeing takes on things that force me to reconsider my opinions. I love discovering stuff because someone else is so passionate about it that it inspires me to learn more about it as well. These are all much more exciting ways to enjoy hobbies than receiving a list of rules about what I’m supposed to do and what’s supposed to be good.

Johnny’s Trading Spot

Johnny’s Trading Spot has been one of those fun bogs to follow for many years now. I was never able to commit to being available to his Big Fun Game series* that he was running every Friday but I enjoyed reading the recaps. He also manages to both collect really a interesting range of items so I frequently see things I’ve not seen elsewhere.

*basically a mini Secret Santa slash White Elephant sort of game of picking a freebie or stealing someone else’s freebie.

Recently he’s been giving 9 cards away to a random reader who comments on the day’s post before midnight. Since my blog reader often doesn’t catch new posts until like 12 hours after the post I often miss the midnight deadline.* Plus I only comment when I have something to say so sometimes I don’t even enter even if I do see the post in time.

*This happens with most contests and giveaways in the card blogosphere. This is a little frustrating but I also am not in this just to be a prize hound.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago I not only commented in time but also won the random drawing so earlier this week I found a PWE with 9 cards inside.

A fun mix of cards. Six Giants and another three stars. The middle row are all cards which count as “needs” of which the Fleer Cloth Sticker is the most interesting to me. First off, I totally mis-identified it as being an early 1990s insert since I was completely unaware  of Fleer releasing these from the late 1960s to early 1970s.* But it’s in really good shape and I didn’t catch that it was missing the ® or ™ symbols that such logos would have in the 1990s. Anyway it’s I really like it since it’s one of those things that was completely off my radar and those are always fun to be surprised by.

*The Fleer Sticker Project blog of course is the go-to here with posts about the 1972 and 1974 uncut sheets as well as a comparison of different Giants stickers.

The 2004 Donruss Barry Bonds is the first 2004 base Donruss card I have. I have a few Super Estrellas Spanish-language cards which look very similar but yeah none of the base flagship sets. It’s a nice-looking design even if not particularly memorable. Very cool to add a new set and especially cool to have the Bonds as my first sample.

The 2008 Heritage Lincecum is the last new one for me. It’s always nice to see the 1959 design in use even though Topps kind of messed things up by using photos which use clearly-modern materials. This is another set which I have very few samples of so a Giants card featuring one of the key players from those teams is always welcome.

Of the other cards the Donruss Learning Series Kevin Mitchell does deserve special comment. It’s one of those things which perfectly demonstrates how embedded baseball cards were in everyday life when I was a kid. I’m kind of annoyed that I never saw these when I was in school—how cool would that have been—but it’s great to have them now.

Thanks Johnny!

Mailday from Bru

About a week ago I received a small bubble mailer from Marc with the usual assortment of Giants, Stanford, and other cards that he thinks I’d be interested in. Marc has a good track record here both in terms of having a lot of cards from products that I’ve never actively acquired and being one of the only guys out there who keeps track of a lot of the players in my Stanford checklist.

I’ll start with the oldest Giants cards. This first batch is mostly cards I could have collected as a kid and as such are definitely the years where I could conceivably have everything covered. As it turns out though the only ones I had are the ones from after I stopped collecting. I only have O Pee Chees that work as Traded  cards so these are both new and welcome. I only have a handful of 1992 Leaf Black Gold cards. And I didn’t have any Giants from 1992 Bowman or 1993 SP.

Also the 1963 Al Dark buyback deserves a special mention. The 50th Anniversary stamp says this is from 2012 and suggests that Topps is up to its usual shenanigans where 2012 is the 50th Anniversary of something that happens in 1963 while 1951–2001 is “50 years of Topps.” Anyway while I have this card already, buybacks are definitely one of those things which are interesting to add to the binder even though the only way I’d seek one out is if it were cheaper than the non-buyback version.

The next group of cards are the more-recent Giants. Victory is definitely a set I don’t see much and the Bill Mueller is the kind of card that sneaks past any checklist checking since it’s not technically a Giants card. It is fun to add cards of guys still in the uniform to the binder though.

The Matt Cain relic is very cool. I’m not the hugest Ginter fan but I appreciate that their relics are thin enough to binder. Also the construction of the framed cards is pretty neat. A couple shiny Logan Webbs are also appreciated. He was a revelation last year and had another good season this year. Hes been a lot of fun to watch him emerge as a legit pitcher.

A good mix of Stanford guys including some early-career Shawn Greens to supplement all the Dodgers that I got from Night Owl. Also a few Jeffrey Hammonds cards I needed in here. While most of my Topps searchlist is complete* there are a lot of non-Topps cards from the 1990s and 2000s which I don’t have and haven’t even looked up.

*Aside from current year cards and grey areas like Green I think I’m just missing the 1962 Doug Camilli Rookie Parade card which I’ll never be able to justify the expense for and the 2013 Tampa Bay Rays Sam Fuld card which is impossible to find as a single and which I haven’t felt like spending $10 on the team set for.

And finally a pair of Scott Ericksons as well as a cool photo of Orel Hershiser and one of Marc’s customs. I should probably put an Erickson checklist together at some point but I’ve only been super passively collecting him recently. The Hershiser is indeed a fun photo; you only get light like this at rare moments during the season. And Marc’s custom is a menko design he’s been working on which I may consider stealing at some point.

Very cool, stuff thanks Marc!