The dime box frankenset, Page 7: Numbers 55-63

Last week's frankenset voting was a barnburner.

Win -- 1981 Fleer #46 John Wathan (8 votes)

Place (tie) -- 1998 Fleer Tradition #48 Wilton Guerrero, 1995 Stadium Club #51 Rex Hudler, 1996 Stadium Club #53 Jim Bullinger (6 votes each)

Show -- 1994 Score #52 Jose Rijo (2 votes)

We very nearly had a four-way tie for first last week, but, in the end, a couple late votes pushed John Wathan over the top. The 29 total votes were again a big drop from the 35-plus numbers we'd had in the past, but Wathan took the crown with eight of the 29 tallies.

Personally, this was the toughest frankenset choice I'd had to make in a while, and I was particularly torn between Wathan, the Brothers Guerrero, and Jim Bullinger. I went with the Guerreros after all was said and done, because, when you get down to it, I can't go against Vlad.

Wathan was my second choice, but he's still a deserving victor.

We have a fresh page of nominees this week, and let's see if we can get the vote totals back above 30...because the more votes, the better the competition.

Let's meet the newest nine.

1995 Collector's Choice #55 Sid Bream

The climax of perhaps the most famous play at the plate in baseball history. 

2000 Ultra #56 Jose Lima

Bat in hands + glove on head = LIMA TIME! 

1995 Pinnacle #57 Ryan Thompson

Trainer! 

1991 Score #58 Rick Parker

A last-second lunge for home plate. 

1997 Upper Deck #59 Walt Weiss

Turning two with the double play king himself, Walt Weiss. 

1994 Collector's Choice #60 Pat Borders

This is a particularly painful page, isn't it?

1994 Sportflics Rookie/Traded #61 Carlos Rodriguez

Double dipping the 3-D way. 

1998 Upper Deck #62 Chris Snopek

A multiple-exposure Web Gem. 

2015 Stadium Club #63 Matt Adams

We close with a tip of the cap from this year's Stadium Club.

The polls are now on the sidebar.

Happy voting!

The winds of change bring PWEs

I feel like I've been saying this all the time lately, but...I have a couple more announcements regarding my posting habits on the blog.

1) You may start to see more late evening/nighttime posts (like this one) show up as, due to work and school, my usual 6-7 P.M. blogging window isn't open much these days.

2) I do apologize to everyone who has sent me great cards over the last couple months because I've once again fallen hopelessly behind with my trade posts. I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but some of what you'll see in this post arrived nearly two months ago.

I mean, I have three separate posts to write on just the small packages and/or PWEs that have been hitting my doorstep. It's about time I showcased these wonderful cards people have been gracious enough to send me, because, if I've learned one thing around here, it's that good things can indeed come in small packages.

The Luis Aparicio insert you see above came from Gavin, the guy you might know as the mind behind the terrific blog "Baseball Card Breakdown."

The "Looie" was actually a throw-in with these two, which I had specifically requested from Gavin.

I loved the idea of reproducing the '68 Topps Game design in this year's Archives, and I couldn't help but pounce on these two Cubbies. And, as an added bonus, their correlating actions (if anyone actually plays the game anymore, which I highly doubt) are quite fitting.

Rizzo's currently leading the league in hit-by-pitches, and Javier Baez is a strikeout machine.

Gavin helped me out with my new "Shooter" collection as well.

I had recently placed a Just Commons order (which has yet to arrive) that included north of 50 new Becks for my collection, but I don't believe any of those were older than these two. 

The '92 Ultra on the right lists "Shooter" as a rookie, but the '89 Star minor league issue on the left outdoes that one by a good three years.

Am I crazy, or does Rod Beck look like an alien without his famous facial hair?

These two Panini Cooperstowns came courtesy of a small PWE I received from my buddy Zach of the great blog "The Underdog Card Collector."

The Cooperstown brand may be defunct (for now), but I do still need singles from its inaugural offering in 2012.

There really should be more Whitey Herzog cards.

These next few gems came from the man who is generally regarded as the PWE King of the Blogosphere, none other than Jeff of "2x3 Heroes."

If there was one saving grace to the God-awful Donruss brand, it was the ability to say HEY TOPPS! We have Ichiro cards and you don't! HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!

But now they can't even say that anymore. Ichiro showed up in this year's A&G after assumedly signing a contract with Topps sometime in recent months.

So now Donruss is completely worthless.

I don't believe Jeff collects "autograph" shots, but I do know that, like myself, he chases "broken bat" cards.

He gifted me a new one with that Billy Ashley (a dupe, I assume), which I almost missed at first glance.

Jeff surprised me with a second PWE not long after that first one, and this quartet of Golden Age minis fell out of it.

My favorite of the lot here is probably the Joe Tinker, although the Arnold Rothstein (the big money behind the 1919 World Series fix) is no slouch.

Note to, well...everyone: If you have any spare Golden Age minis lying around, I'm always in the market.

Jeff made it a Panini-centric envelope with this Diamond Kings "Wee Willie" Keeler.

I'm still deciding whether I like the brand or not, but this one is pretty darn nice.

Next up is a PWE I received from Brian of the terrific "Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary" blog.

Brian has quickly made himself known as one of the better bloggers and traders around here, and he gifted me what can be described as nothing short of a legendary box of hand-picked cards during our meeting at this year's National. But that's for another post which I'll be writing very soon.

Before that, Brian dropped a smaller envelope on me in the standard through-the-mail way.

I've always enjoyed this "Masked Mauraders" subset, and the fact that this one features Brad Ausmus (a top-tier player collection guy) is an added bonus.

Here's not one, but two new "anthemic" cards...from the same set, no less.

Looks like Stadium Club had a brief obsession with these types of shots in 1995.

The parade of PWEs continues with these two from Weston of the awesome "Fantastic Catch" blog.

I already had the Vlad, but I wanted to show it again to bask in the glory of how oddly-shaped that "All-World" insert series was.

The Rendon "bat barrel," however, was all new to me.

Now we've come to a PWE from my single most frequent trading partner here in the blogosphere, Mark of the legendary blog "This Way to the Clubhouse...".

I have a hazy memory of Mark and I actually emailing one another and setting up a specific, concrete trade once, but that was a long time ago. We simply surprise each other with unannounced PWEs now.

He certainly caught me off-guard with this reprint of former Sox manager Paul Richards. What you see here is actually a reprint from the oddball '54 Wilson Franks set, which, as you can tell, drew heavily on the design of 1954 Topps.

Now that I think of it, you don't see reprints of oddball releases too often, do you?

Mark added to the fun with a couple brand new mini-collection hits here.

And I feel compelled to share the secret every time I post a Sportflix card: scan your 3-D cards sideways for better results.

I feel out of breath (in a writerly sense) with all the great traders I've given credit to in this post, and the last of this bunch comes from Robert of the spectacular "$30 A Week Habit."

Robert recently took a brief hiatus from the blogs, but I'm happy to see that he's back and chugging along again. He was nice enough to hit me with a GQ-based PWE as of late.

When you combine minis and Mr. Cub, it's hard to go wrong.

I've always said that Gypsy Queen is among the top in the insert game these days, and these two add fuel to that train of thought.

I love this year's "Walk Off Winners" series, and I'm positive that Dykstra will be fighting for a spot in my Cards of the Year countdown come December.

We close with a serious head-shaker on the part of Topps.

Listen: I always love throwbacks, and this is a most-appreciated addition to my Cubs binder. But as if the fact that "The Queen's Throwbacks" concept is a ripoff of the "Franchise Flashbacks" from Opening Day wasn't bad enough, this is the exact same photo Topps used for Anthony Rizzo's card in that Opening Day series.

In summation, Topps used a recycled photo for a recycled idea. But, at the end of the day, Rizzo is Rizzo and a throwback is a throwback, and I'm happy Robert chose to send this one my way.

Whew. Seven different trading partners in one post...and that was only one of three PWE marathons I'll be writing in the next handful of days.

Looks like people really are getting the most out of their stamps these days.

The dime box frankenset, Page 6: Numbers 46-54

Let's take a look at how last week's frankenset page played out.

Win -- 1996 Score #38 Bip Roberts (10 votes)

Place (tie) -- 1995 Pinnacle #37 Tom Pagnozzi, 1973 Topps #45 Ellie Rodriguez (4 votes each)

Show (tie) -- 1971 Topps #40 Lee May, 2012 Topps Chrome #43 Desmond Jennings (3 votes each)

Voting took a significant dip last week for some reason, but Sombrero Bip still cruised to an easy victory. He collected ten of the 29 total votes and beat out two legendary '73 Topps nominees (not an easy task) to claim the crown.

I, too, voted for Sombrero Bip, because, well...how could I not?

This week's frankenset page features a nice crop of nominees, and hopefully they can get those vote totals back to their normal pace.

Let's see what's in store.

1981 Fleer #46 John Wathan

Quite possibly the single greatest card from '81 Fleer. 

2012 Bowman Chrome #47 Andrelton Simmons

Turning two over Bryce Harper. 

1998 Fleer Tradition #48 Wilton Guerrero

The Brothers Guerrero are all smiles. 

1997 Upper Deck #49 Charles Nagy

Cardio day, bro. 

1993 Donruss #50 Bud Black

The former Padre manager sporting some throwback Giants duds from his playing days. 

1995 Stadium Club #51 Rex Hudler

I don't know. 

 1994 Score #52 Jose Rijo

The continuing saga of Jose Rijo and the squirt gun.

1996 Stadium Club #53 Jim Bullinger

A panoramic view of Wrigley from the rooftops. 

1998 Collector's Choice #54 Kevin Foster

We close with some spiffy 1906 Cubs throwbacks, as well as a bonus "pitcher at the plate" shot on the flip side.

The polls are now on the sidebar.

Happy voting!

My newest trading buddy

Some of you may remember my discovery that the son of one of my college professors is a card collector.

Had I been better prepared, I would've given him a whole bunch of cards that afternoon this past summer. After all, how often does one get to impact the collection of a budding young hobbyist?

Well, as the card gods would have it, I have that professor for another creative writing course this fall, and, earlier this week, I prepared a special present for her son. I tried making something like a "collector's kit," and I stuffed a little tin box with some penny sleeves, a handful of toploaders, and, of course, a few stacks of cards. (Mostly Cubs, since he's a Cubs fan.)

My professor said he really enjoyed the gift, and, after class yesterday, she gave me a little envelope of hand-picked cards from her son on his behalf, an envelope that included this wonderful note inside. (It says, I believe...Thank you for the amazing cards and card protectors, and includes a few little scribbles of baseball cards.)

The sheer thoughtfulness of the gift was enough, and I picked my five favorites from the stack during one of my afternoon breaks from class yesterday.

#5 -- 2007 Fleer #314 Livan Hernandez

Cards like these take me back to when I was about the age of my teacher's son.

I'd been collecting since the age of about eight or nine, but it wasn't until about eighth grade that I decided to focus exclusively on baseball. I bought many packs of 2007 Fleer during that period of transition, the brand's swan song.

Seeing cards of "remember him?" guys like Livan Hernandez take me back to those eighth grade days.

#4 -- 1996 Stadium Club #168 Bret Boone

Hitting me with anything Stadium Club is probably a good bet, but I'm especially partial to anything from the mid '90s era.

You don't see these pop up too often these days, and this terrific horizontal Bret Boone is a great example of what I've missed. Although I never did understand why guys wore sunglasses on their caps rather than over their eyes.

Does a good job of making sure that team logo doesn't fade, I guess.

#3 -- 1998 Ultra #130 J.T. Snow

I've collected J.T. Snow for as long as I can remember, but I don't often get new cards of him into Dime Box HQ since the peak of his career came during the gluttony of mid-to-late '90s sets.

This, however, is indeed a prime addition to the Snow collection, and one that features a fantastic landscape image of the former first sacker doing his best to keep a ball fair.

It's yet another piece of cardboard greatness brought to you by the wonderful people at Ultra.

#2 -- 1995 Fleer Update #U-190 Fernando Valenzuela

My newest trading buddy nearly pulled a fast one on me here.

I was almost positive I already had this particular Fernando in my binders, and I very nearly chucked it into my doubles pile without checking. In hindsight, it's a real good thing I did, because it turns out, of course, that I didn't own one after all. I'm sure most collectors can relate to this thought-I-had-it-but-didn't phenomenon.

A new Fernando Valenzuela is great...but one featuring the immortal '95 Fleer design is a hundred times better.

#1 -- 2014 Topps Allen & Ginter Mini #285 Carl Crawford

Hey, a mini!

I noticed when I was flipping through his binder over the summer that my teacher's son liked busting packs of more recent sets. One of the team bags in the gift I gave him earlier this week was entirely filled with loose 2015 singles I had lying around because a) I had no other homes for them and b) I figured it might save him some allowance money.

I guess he was willing to part with one of his latest-and-greatest pulls with this Carl Crawford mini from last year's A&G. It'll take a prime spot in my Dodgers binder.

I probably don't have to tell you how pleasing it is to have a new collecting pal, and I'll definitely be supplying him with new gifts throughout the semester because God knows I have enough extra baseball cards lying around to give him.

Rest assured, I'll be doing my best to make sure he stays a collector for life.

Call me Ahab

YOU'VE BEEN ZIPPY ZAPPED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you see those four glorious words, you know you've just received a trade package from none other than Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) of the great blog "Torren' Up Cards." In case you've been living under a rock, Kenny's Zippy Zappings have become the stuff of legend here in the blogosphere.

I was the beneficiary of a particularly large Zapping a few weeks back, and I use the word "large" from both a quality and quantity standpoint. This mailer contained perhaps the best single card I've ever received from a fellow blogger...but I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, I'll just say that this thing was huge. 

Inside, I found two small binders packed with pages and cards inside, a separate assorted stack of singles...

...and a special Staten Island Yankees exclusive giveaway set.

I remember Kenny recently picking up a gross of these at one of the many SI Yankees games he attends, and I guess it was to be expected that one would eventually find its way to me.

The set, as far as I can tell, honors the 2000 SI Yankees championship club. I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but the only player I've heard of from this sheet is Chien-Ming Wang, seen second from the left on the bottom row. (There's also a Tim Nettles, who I assume is some sort of relative of Graig Nettles.)

Stadium giveaways of any kind are always welcome around here, but it does help if they're in the form of cards, obviously.

The singles Kenny included were extraordinary, which is pretty much par for the course with a Zippy Zapping.

Like each and every past time I'd been Zapped, I found a Sega Card-Gen hiding inside this box, and what a card it was. This isn't your run-of-the-mill Card-Gen common. This is a foil, kiddies.

A foil of Paulie, at that.

I've been on a half-hearted quest to complete this "Voices of Summer" Panini Cooperstown insert set for a while now, and this Joe Garagiola brings me one step closer to fulfilling that goal.

I often worry that the current era won't have any legendary announcers that will be remembered years from now, like Garagiola, Mel Allen, Ernie Harwell, etc. (Unless you count Vin Scully as part of this generation, which you could, I guess.)

Maybe we'll remember Hawk Harrelson, but for all the wrong reasons.

Ken threw in quite a mix of non-baseball miscellany into this box.

The assortment included, but was not limited to: a couple cards of the track-and-field star formerly known as Bruce Jenner, a pocket schedule, and a Stonewall Jackson.

Although I wouldn't blame you if your eyes didn't see anything besides the three cards in the center of this page.

Kenny kept the non-sports train chugging with these four Golden Age minis.

I'm still waiting for my generation's Evel Knievel.

This Zapping also helped knock out a couple of my 2015 Topps insert wants.

Please don't hold it against me that I actually needed an Austin Mahone card and showed it on the blog here today.

It comes with the territory when you decide to build this year's "First Pitch" set.

This, at the time, was the first I'd seen of 2015 Bowman.

The Cobb, Hamilton, and Holliday are all mini-collection hits (yes, I included faux-backs in my "throwback" theme), and, as seen from the Japanese text in the background, the Longoria is a nifty little shot from the US-Japan Series this past winter.

If all Bowman cards looked like this, I'd like the brand a lot more.

Here's a quartet of three current Cubs rookie stars, and (hopefully) one future star.

It's been a ton of fun to watch Bryant, Schwarber, and Russell this year, but I fear that I won't be able to track down many of their cards because of how crazy the prices are going to get. (I still haven't landed a copy of Bryant's standard Series 2 rookie if anyone happens to have an extra.)

Still, despite the card prices, it's been a massively fun year for baseball here on the North Side.

Here's a neat X-fractor of Alex Liddi, a fellow paisan.

Liddi is the only major leaguer to have been born and raised in Italy, which, given my Italian roots, is why I collect the guy even though he hasn't played in the show since 2013.

He's currently in Double-A in the Royals' organization, but here's hoping he can at least sniff a big-league return soon.

That minor league double dip got me excited, because I'd have exactly zero chance of tracking down a card like that on my own.

Also seen here is an IP autograph of former top-prospect Brett Jackson, a man who I'm convinced fell of the face of the Earth after hitting a lowly .175 in 44 games with the 2012 Cubs.

Thankfully, Jackson's alive and well...and currently hitting .220 in Triple-A with the Giants.

And now we've come to the crown jewel of this Zippy Zapping.

This note was covering up the middle of a nine-pocket page inside one of the binders. Kenny's nice enough to include translations of the Card-Gens he sends, which you can see here with the aforementioned Konerko.

But under that was a shot of a comment I'd left on Kenny's blog a few weeks before, and one I'd all but forgotten about. Kenny wrote a post about chasing white whales and showed a Hal Chase tobacco within said post. I commented that finding a real Hal Chase card had always been a white whale of mine, which is true.

And now I'd like to take you through my exact reaction when I saw what was behind that note.

Ahab? Who's Ahab? What does he mean by...

HOLY %^&*($^&*()#%^#^$%^&*(#$%^&*($%^&*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Yes, that is, in fact, an authentic T206 tobacco card of Mr. Hal Chase.

It might be a little cliche to say my jaw hit the floor...but I think my jaw almost did hit the floor. This is a real tobacco card (I cannot emphasize this enough), and I had absolutely no idea it was coming.

I wouldn't exactly say I'm a Hal Chase fan, but he's definitely one of the more interesting ballplayers in history, no doubt.

Though he was a star player in his day, Chase got involved with some bad seeds (see: gamblers) and was eventually banned for life after attempting to bribe opposing ballplayers and umpires while in the minors in 1920. (He was also allegedly involved in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.)

A white whale has been speared, and I cannot thank Kenny and his crazy Zipping Zappings enough for that. As I said earlier, this is probably the single greatest card a fellow blogger has sent me during my long tenure around here. But, geez, be careful throwing tobacco cards around like that, Kenny.

You're bound to give someone a heart attack.