Friday, March 8, 2024

God save your mad parade (a guest post from Dad!)


Nick's Dad here...

Nick loves his "oddball" cards and I love seeing his posts here and going
through his cards, amazing the amount of cool stuff!

I collected the '70s Kiss and Elvis cards, as well as vintage Beatles, Monkees, etc, that were in obtainable mass-produced retail packs, but I also really dig musical oddballs...the apple didn't fall far from the tree! 

Here are some of my favorites...




Amazingly, at one of Nick's old bookstore jobs, he grabbed me a bag of about 40 of these 1957 Hit Stars trading cards that they were THROWING AWAY! 

The set was about half movie and TV stars and half music...guess they figured they'd cash in on that new rock n roll "fad"!




Also going in the trash, Nick got me a bunch of these double-sided Supremes cards...I thought they'd be 60s-70s vintage but turns out they were produced by the Motown Corp. in 1986,and that IS odd!




These 1974 minis were put out in the U.K. by Bassett & Co. which is a company who made all kinds of cards from way back, many of my Brit friends collected their football (soccer) and cricket cards...

3 big faves here: Marc Bolan, Noddy Holder, and Roy Wood...




These next couple sets were made by the Dutch company Monty Gum 76-77...I LOVE ABBA but only have a few of these cards, they're usually in the 6-10 dollar range...




...the "Punk" set is really cool with lots of cards I'd love to nab, but these are even scarcer and pricier, but if I had to pick 2 I'd pick the 2 I have!




Nick was nuts about those cards in the SI For Kids magazine when he was
a boy, and has since showed me other "came with a magazine" cards...

A Chicago legend, Jake Austen has been cranking out issues of his magazine Roctober for a loooong time, and an issue a few years ago contained these "Hall Of Dynamic Greatness" cards, from the well-known (Blondie) to the obscure but just as great (Jobriath!)...




I realize any card issued by Topps might not qualify as an "oddball", but
if any qualify it would be these cards issued for the 1994 revival of
"Damn Yankees" on Broadway...

They were (as far as I know) only sold in a pack at the theatre...On my last trip to the Broadway Cares Flea Market in NYC, I finally found a set at a table for 20 dollars, and I immediately asked the vendor if the Jerry Lewis card was in there, since most sets I saw online his card was pulled to sell seperately...it wasn't in there, so the vendor says "how about five bucks?"

Sold!! Found a reasonable Lewis card shortly thereafter to complete the set...

Always fun to "guest post" and thanks for the opportunity, Nick!

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Let's make a deal (on COMC)


I've grown a bit more comfortable with haggling over the years.

I try not to take it to extremes - seeing people trying to negotiate over dime and quarter cards at shows drives me insane - but I like to think there's nothing wrong with trying to get a dealer to shave a few bucks off a card I otherwise might not touch. I give huge points to card sellers here, because I can't imagine the number of negotiations they have to deal with in a single day.

This is one of the many reasons why I continue to use COMC for my card-addict activities - you can make offers, and from my experience, they're accepted more often than not. Couple that with their (relatively) recent Black Friday sale that arrived on my doorstep a few weeks ago, and you have potential a sea of good deals.

Which is heaven for me, since I am, admittedly, a collector forever in search of a deal. 




I didn't have to make offers on any of the three gargantuan minor league cards I've showed already - Black Friday sellers marked them down to a price that was already in my wheelhouse.

I've had my sights set on nabbing a minor league Willie McGee for a long time - a rare document of his zero-year tenure in the Yankees system - and the prices were so good that I grabbed a second one for good measure!




Ainge and McGee were the unquestioned minor league kings of this order, but I managed to grab a few other familiar names and Obscure Dime Box Favorites on the cheap as well (pre-beard Brian Wilson!).




I'm still amazed at how cheap I can find Japanese cards on COMC - a new Ichiro manages to sneak into every order nowadays, and they're not as pricey as you might think (this one was about $5).

I also still have a soft spot for the Japanese busts of my childhood like Kazuhisa Ishii, because they can't all be Ichiros and Ohtanis.




I've managed to negotiate my way into scoring quite a few variations and generally fun oddballs on COMC, which is great because I always salivate over stuff like this.

Stadium Club variations are downright impossible to touch, but given that people don't go wild over Billy Hamilton cards these days (he'll always have a spot in my binders!), I was able to nab that one.




Gotta show the big player- and mini-collection hits - I don't make a habit of chasing parallels on COMC, but who among us can resist a shiny Hoyt for 80 cents?




A few fun fan favorites here - been chasing that Madlock for a while because it's one of the extreme few cards you'll see that documents his brief Rangers tenure.

I'm still not exactly sure what that Gates Brown is, and while it's not a particularly great baseball card, anything of Gates Brown I don't already have automatically goes in my cart.




Mini madness!

(I thought I was bad with a pair of scissors until I saw that Milk Duds Cepeda.)




A nice batch for the horizontal files here - I paid more for that Big Klu than I wanted, but a card like that is love at first sight & I couldn't bear the pain of not owning it.




Modern oddballs are cool, but they can't light a candle to the TCMA and Shakey's Pizza days of yore.

Today in the too-frequent episode of Nick Doesn't Know Everything About Baseball Cards - I thought I had all the cards I needed from that '80s Cramer oddball set, only to find that not only was I missing Roger Maris...I was missing Roger Maris on the A's!!




Oddballs from my youth will always have a special place in my heart.

I've documented my love for SI for Kids cards many times (I used to steal them from the magazines in my school library), and I always want Starting Lineup cards even though I've never cared a hoot for the actual figurines.




With my chase for all the '76 SSPCs I need more or less complete, my focus has turned to a few of the tougher SSPC offerings like these various '75s.

The Brooks & Reggie have been thorns in my side for a while, always out there at just a hair over what I want to pay - but thankfully a particularly generous Black Friday price slash took care of that!




Vintage is by far where most of my haggling takes place - which is how a few otherwise unattainable biggies came my way in this COMC order.

It's taken me far too long to discover these '59 Topps "Baseball Thrills" can be had for largely affordable prices - Mr. Kaline is already one of the last few I needed (I'll get the Mantle one day!).




A couple top-notch Dodgers here - I've been going through a minor obsession with those Bell Brand cards ever since procuring my first one at The National last year.

The Podres is a just plain excellent card (dig the Schaefer ad!) from the scary '57 Topps scarce series - the $10 I paid for this one was a steal in my book.




Elroy Face is a guy I collect who makes me happy since his cards go for almost nothing, but he admittedly can't light a candle to his fellow '64 Bob Gibson, a "Keep Dreaming" suspect I finally netted with this order.

Normally, something like that would receive top billing, but not this time because, my friends...




...THE WHITE WHALE HAS BEEN SPEARED!

Aside from the Roberto Clemente rookie I'll have to sell a kidney to afford, this '64 Pete Rose has been #1 on my most wanted list for a while now. I've searched for it in earnest at the last few shows I've attended, and the cheapest one I'd seen through all that time was $150 (most were north of $300). 

I noticed a copy (in not-at-all bad condition) sitting in the COMC archives for 100 bucks, a solid price on its own given the glass-case price tags I'd come across again and again. But with a little back-and-forth, I was able to knock the final price down to a mere $70 - still a nice chunk of change for this dime box collector (and by far the most I've spent on a single card on COMC), but a definite steal when you consider the immensity of the purchase.

Again, I try not to make a habit out of haggling with every single purchase I make, but in moderation I've learned that it often doesn't hurt to ask - it might even help land that white whale you've been chasing for the better part of your adult life.

Friday, February 16, 2024

Welcome to the dark side (a box of 2024 Topps)


Baseball cards have made me do weird things over the years.

There's been many a Topps release day where I've traveled far and wide across suburbia, scouring the Targets and Wal-Marts for any trace of the new cards. I've been to parts of town I didn't know existed in search of these tiny pieces of cardboard. It gets to be an obsession that really brings out the darker side of my collecting personality.

I don't do the retail tour anymore - when did I have the time or energy? - but that doesn't mean the prospect of new cards doesn't still trigger the obsessive in me. One of the benefits of having a card shop open up down the block is knowing that the newest stuff will be there if I'm willing to plunk down a bit of cash for a box.

I didn't plan on buying a whole box of 2024 Topps - I didn't last year, either - but alas, here I am, getting ready to unleash the spoils of the box that I so ravenously tore into last night.




I'll join the chorus right away and say that 2024 Topps is awesome - there's just no better way to put it.

It's a colorful shot in the arm to a Flagship run that sorely needed it. I haven't necessarily disliked the designs over the last few years, but they're not wildly distinct and have already started to kinda bleed together in my head. The neon theme reminds me of a '50s diner in the wee hours of the morning, and the borders do actually glow a bit in-hand if you shine them up against a light.

The player selection is the usual crop of stars, rookies (so...many...rookies), and other personal delights like Jose Quintana who for some reason got the shaft from Topps last year (best I can tell, his only 2023 card was a Heritage SP). And they all shine on a wonderful design.

It's simply something we've never seen from Flagship before, and immediately goes right up there on the best Topps looks of my lifetime (easily my favorite one since 2015).




The backs are different enough to warrant mention - I've accepted the fact that Topps has long been phoning these in, but the thicker bar between the team/stat lines is a good touch.




As usual, the inserts aren't anything to write home about - I forget what that Tatis insert set is called, but it's ghastly.

And it looks like '89 is the retro insert honoree this year, not a horrible thing since Topps hasn't crammed that design down our collective throats yet.




The only thing better than a great design is a great photo on a great design.

(Editor's note: Detmers and his stellar Angels throwback was the first card of 2024 to crack the Dime Box Frankenset!)




Really the only bone I have to pick with this year's set is the proliferation of City Connect uniforms - seriously, it seemed like I pulled one or two of these things from every pack.

Listen: I actually like the City Connect idea, and welcomed cards that featured them last year. They're not a universal win - the jerseys range from excellence (Marlins), to indifference (Rangers), to vehemence (Pirates) - but it was different enough to make me pay attention.

Maybe this is a case of MLB taking this idea too far, but I kinda think the whole City Connect thing has run its course at this point. 




It seems like the last few Topps designs have catered to horizontals, and 2024 is no exception (always nice to see personal favorite Anthony Rizzo get a great card).




All in all, I'm genuinely excited to see more of this design across Series 2 and Update, which hasn't happened in a while - a tip of the cap to Topps for a job well done.

If any set could make me return to those odd days of dashing to three Targets and two Wal-Marts across the greater Chicago area, this is it.

Friday, February 2, 2024

Scammed


Well, it finally happened: I got scammed on a baseball card.

Earlier this week, I thought I had a deal in place on Twitter to secure my '53 Topps Satchel(l) Paige dream card. But after a little back and forth with payments and such, things seemed a bit fishy, and I ultimately declined. Then another user stepped forward and said that he had a Paige for the same price. Things looked to be a bit more kosher this time, and we agreed on a deal. Or so I believed.

To put it shortly, there was a chain of events (including said user blocking me) that made it clearly obvious I'd been taken. Admittedly, I wasn't the smartest buyer here - the way I paid left little recourse for getting my money back, and the alarm bells should've been clanging in my head. So now I'm out what is (or would have been) the most I've ever spent on a card by a good margin.

Losing the money obviously sucks (and it was no small amount), but I think I'm just as frustrated by the humanity of it all. Call me naïve, but I always had it in my head that this world of scammers operated in a cardboard underbelly that would never affect me. I've dealt with so many sellers that have been nothing but excellent, so I suppose I took that trust into other darker places where I should've been more careful.

I suppose everyone gets scammed at some point in their life, and lo and behold, here came my turn.




Still, I truly believe one of the joys of writing is being able to take a shitty situation and make something at least a little joyous out of it.

I've been trying to come up with a way to showcase some odds and ends I've picked up lately on the blog - granted, I wish it didn't take me getting fleeced to do it, but if nothing else it gives me a chance to honor those great sellers who had the decency to send me the cards I bought.

I've been using Sportlots at a record pace these days, so much so that I'm left to wonder why I hadn't made this place a bigger part of my card life a long time ago - it's gone a long way in fueling my recent kick of minor league issues of treasured binder guys.




I think part of why I never used Sportlots much before was that you buy from individual sellers rather than one central website - which can cause shipping prices to skyrocket.

But lately I've taken that as more of a fun challenge - it's been a blast sifting through the inventories of certain sellers and seeing what I can find (while paying just the one shipping cost). It's the closest to a the thrill of a good card show discount box as you're gonna find on the internet.

I've been after the Gulf Coast Dodgers Tiant for a while now, and by some miracle I found a seller who had one for 20 cents(!) - and as a bonus, he also had Tiant's 1993 ProCards issue that I didn't even know about (also for 20 cents!). 




One Sportlots seller had a wild inventory of oddballs I'd never seen before and/or wasn't likely to see again.

A couple good mid-aughts food issues with the Stieb (Sunkist) and Konerko (Frito-Lay), and the Vlad appears to be from some kind of board game that never took off - plus, dig Jim Abbott signing autographs!




Another recent kick of mine is cards from the slew of short-lived early '90s card magazines like RBI Baseball.

I've never seen a copy of the magazine itself - has anyone? - but I knew I needed that Tartabull the minute I laid eyes on it.




I personally think Topps Holiday has ran its course - I haven't sought these out in years & am content to land handfuls a dime box way later.

However, Topps always manages to sneak in a few cards that differ from the standard Flagship issues, which I of course desperately need - didn't think Lucas Giolito's dubious six-game tenure with the Angels would get documented on cardboard.




I don't often use eBay for card purchases, but lately I've been forced to make a few exceptions to that rule.

Yes, I'm one of the suckers who bought the Topps Now Ohtani - I couldn't let the first Dodgers card of one of my favorite baseball dudes slip by! I also finally pulled the trigger on a different Topps Now card that's been torturing me for a while with that Brandon Phillips.

That's the one and only card of Phillips's nine-game sunset stint with the Red Sox, and I'm glad I decided the time was nigh to buy it.




I'm pretty sure I discovered these "Little Big Leaguers" cards through Fuji's blog a while back - apparently they were issued with a book in the early '90s.

I found a generic listing for said book with the common "inserts may not be included" caveat - but either way it was cheap enough that I decided to give it a shot. And it's my pleasure to report that when the book arrived a few days later...the cards were in there!

I spent the better part of that evening separating each card from its perforated sheet, which was a blast since there's nothing quite like discovering a new oddball set.




A couple more random eBay gets - the Fisk was one of the last handful of '78 SSPCs I needed (mostly down to the bigger names at this point).

I overpaid for the Jenkins, but the seller kinda had me over a barrel since it was (at least at the time) the only copy of it I could find for sale on the whole wide internet - still, no price is too steep for a rare Phillies Fergie!




Might as well close with another dream card - one that I actually received upon purchase this time - with this treasured minor league John Smoltz.

It's been a glaring hole in my zero-year collection for a while now. Smoltz pitched in the Tigers' system for two years and was famously dealt to the Braves before ever reaching the bigs with Detroit. This is one of only two cards documenting the future HOFer's zero-year stint, and I can't tell you how satisfying it is to finally cross it off the list.

But I'm still cursed with the mind of a collector, because even after getting scammed - and even with all the fantastic stuff I've shown here - I'm left wanting a '53 Paige even more now!

Friday, January 26, 2024

I've moved since you last saw me


I know the last thing I need is yet another cardboard obsession, but here I am about to post about a new one.

It began rather morbidly, following the far-too-soon passing of knuckleball legend Tim Wakefield. I knew Wake had started his professional career as a position player, and had a few cards issued as such, but I thought they were unattainable. That is, until I checked Ebay and found a rather fairly-priced regional issue from Wakefield's minor-league days that listed him as a third baseman(!). 

I couldn't hit BUY IT NOW fast enough, and before I knew it, an obsession was born.




That set off a chain of events that led to me wanting to discover other notable names who made odd and/or forgotten position switches early in their careers - and specifically ones that were documented on cardboard.

Like Wakefield, I knew dominant closer Troy Percival began his career as a position player, but I didn't know he had any cards issued as such until this obsession came about. Best I can tell, this is the one and only card of his lone season as a catcher in the Angels' system, and I was thrilled to snag a copy for a song recently.

As is the case with most of the dudes you'll see here, Percival probably had the right idea in switching positions since he hit a whopping .203 in Low-A ball in 1990.




Guillermo Mota is a trademark Dime Box Favorite - but he's unlike Wakefield and Percival given that I had absolutely no clue he started his career as an infielder in the Mets organization.

Switching positions isn't that uncommon of a tale - Kenley Jansen and Trevor Hoffman are a few others who come to mind that I don't yet own cards of as position players (though I have a bead on a minor-league Hoffman) - but seeing it on baseball cards kinda causes my brain to short out (in a good way!).




Sean Doolittle is another collection favorite who made the switch - an injury caused him to try his hand at pitching after a few middling years as a position player in the A's system.

I'd say it worked out well for him, given that Doolittle just retired following a fine 11-year career as a dominant closer.




But these shifts go farther than the position-player-to-pitcher phenomenon I've shown thus far.

Catchers are known to switch positions at various points in their career - the body can only take so much wear and tear - but I'm particularly fascinated by the guys like Dale Murphy who gave up catching earlier rather than later.

I've never seen a card that actually depicts Murphy as a catcher - he caught sparsely in his first few seasons with the Braves - but look closely and you'll find that weird "C-1B" designation on his early cards.




Recent memory may recall that Bryce Harper was drafted as a catcher, though I think it was always a given that he'd find stardom elsewhere on the diamond.

From what I understand, though, HOFer Jimmie Foxx was thought to be a legitimate catching prospect, so much so that his earlier cards show him in the tools of ignorance (this is obviously a reprint). A good amount of the earlier photos of Double-X on baseball cards show him as a backstop.

Foxx was never a regular catcher, but he did catch more often than I knew before I wrote this post - he was appearing in a game or two at catcher as late as 1944.




As I so often say, baseball cards are fun, but they can also be educational - I didn't know Stan Musial was signed as a pitcher until I unearthed this Pro Debut insert from a few years back.

Musial had a few successes on the mound - he actually won 18 games in Class-D ball 1940, his final season as a pitcher - but he obviously never would've become the "Stan the Man" we know and love had he stayed on the bump.




Of course, no discussion of this ilk is complete without mentioning The Great Bambino, a guy who gave up a career as a world-class pitcher to become an equally world-class slugger.

I love (and want) all Babe Ruth cards, but ones that show him during his earlier Red Sox pitching days are still ever-so extra special to me. They're a great reminder of how strange the trajectory of certain baseball careers can be. But Ruth is obviously the rarity in this field - most position switches, like the Wakefields and Percivals of the world, are born out of dubiousness or downright failure.

So I guess if you're wrestling with the Mendoza Line in the low minors, perhaps your destiny lies elsewhere on the diamond.