Music, baseball, and Dad

There's no doubt in my mind that I get my collecting genes from my dad.

Who knows? If one or two things went a little differently, I might be a vinyl addict right now. Just like my dad. I certainly get a lot of my music tastes from him. I doubt I'd have bands like the Replacements and the Kinks on my MP3 player right now without my dad.

As you know by now, I chose to make the leap into baseball cards. I've stuck with this wacky hobby for about the last fifteen years of my life. My dad's been collecting records for about forty years now.

Surprisingly, the two hobbies do overlap from time to time. My dad goes to a lot of garage sales in search of new records for his collection. He'll find ones that happen to have a little bit of baseball card action every now and then.

Or, as was the case with a garage sale he hit a few weeks ago, he'll find some non-vinyl music memorabilia. The seller had a box of non-sports cards up for grabs. Most featured superheroes, comics, that sort of thing. Not my personal cup of tea.

However, my dad fished around and got a few music cards out of the mix. One of the goods was the Alice Cooper you see above, which hails from the 1991 Rock Cards checklist.

Does this guy know how to party or what?

I have no good way of transitioning from Alice Cooper to Madonna.

The others my dad found come from the 1991 Pro Set Superstars checklist.

Though I did already own a few, my collection of these more than doubled after this little haul.

Much like baseball cards, I prefer shots of musicians that feature them in-action.

I've never been a huge blues fan, but this is definitely a cool photo of the legendary B.B. King.

I can only dream of owning a guitar that nice one day.

The "Historic Concerts" subset is one of the more interesting aspects of this music-based set.

The fronts feature vintage (and often pretty psychedelic) concert posters. From what I've seen, people who collect these things are a) big music fans and b) have a lot of money.

I'll just stick to the cards for now.

Now that's more like it.

John Lennon is probably my nominee for the greatest musician in history. I've mentioned my love for the Beatles many times before. Though this shot comes from his post-Fabs career, I still enjoy it all the same.

My dad managed to secure this little lot of music cards for a single dollar.

Just as he was about to pay for his finds, he noticed a box that mostly looked like scrapbooking material off to the side. I'm not exactly sure why my dad decided to check it out, as that sort of thing has never been his scene. Surely there wouldn't be anything worthwhile for him to find.

The baseball card gods had other ideas.

Yep, that's a real T206 right there.

Granted, it's extremely fragile and in pretty rough shape. But let's be serious here.

IT'S A T206! WHO CARES?

Pictured here is former Reds outfielder Dode Paskert, a man who enjoyed a fairly marginal 15-year big league career. I'd never heard of him before this card came into my grasp. Needless to say, I'm a big Dode Paskert fan now.

I shudder at the thought of what would've happened if I was the one at that garage sale. I would've passed right by that box. And I wouldn't have had to opportunity to find an authentic T206 for fifty cents.

You read that right. My dad forked over two quarters for a card that is over a century old.

Does it get any better than that?

I don't know the answer to that question.

What I do know is that my dad tried to top himself yet again with a recent COMC run. He had a little good fortune with a few recent garage sale record finds. While he's a collector first and foremost, my dad does sell a few things every now and then to make a bit of extra cash.

I believe a small lot of old Hank Williams albums funded this unexpected COMC prize. My dad said he wanted to wait until Christmas to get me these, but didn't want to wait that long. Plus, he'd run the risk of someone else snapping them up before him.

My dad was intrigued by these 1989 Topps Baseball Talk issues, a set that I first become aware of after an epic package from my buddy Wes. The one he found features a reprint of Mr. Cub's 1954 Topps rookie on the front.

It's easy to see why my dad likes these so much...

...given they include an actual record on the back and everything.

I still don't know exactly what these sound like. I can't tell you if the record has Ernie Banks talking or just some guy. I'll have to play it on my dad's turntable one of these days to find out.

So, yes, vinyl funded this awesome baseball/record hybrid.

It's like a match made in heaven.

Though he very well could have, my dad didn't stop there.

He also invested in a handful of these 1975 TCMA Black Sox issues, a set that I didn't even know existed before this COMC purchase. TCMA has a soft spot in my heart, and it's really hard to go wrong with anything Black Sox.

This lot is what inspired me to grab that little reprint set I posted about a couple days ago. I'll have to scour the internet and see if I can find anything else from this TCMA checklist.

Little did I know that my dad had one last surprise in store.

I have wanted this card from the moment I first laid eyes on it.

I think I discovered it, ironically, during a random COMC search last year. COMC has a tendency to overprice some of their vintage, so I couldn't afford it.

Since then, I've dug and dug and dug through Ebay, Sportlots, and pretty much every card site you can think of in search of a copy for a reasonable price.

No luck.

I don't know whether the one my dad found was the one I discovered during that fateful evening last year. All I know is that my search for a 1977 Kellogg's Mark Fidrych came full circle back to COMC.

I seriously doubt my collection of "The Bird" could ever be complete, but finally having this one in my hands makes me breathe a lot easier.

No question.

And that's the story of how my dad's obsession with records helped a T206, a few Black Sox, and a 3-D Mark Fidrych find a good home.

Quite a tale, huh?