Summer of Slabs preview... maybe...

On May 1st, I sent an 8-card submission to Beckett Grading. The plan was to get these cards back in mid- July, keep a couple, and send the rest (along with 10-15 cards I already have) to 4 Sharp Corners for consignment. Those cards would be listed on eBay in late July, and I'd receive my payout sometime around the second week of August. This would align perfectly with my birthday and the East Coast National in White Plains, NY. 

I received two emails on Friday, one from Lucky's Promotions listing the autograph guests for the show, including Julius Erving, Frank Thomas, Sammy Sosa, Allen Iverson, and Barry Sanders. Of particular interest to me: Packers legend and Pro Football Hall of Famer LeRoy Bulter, and Basketball Hall of Famer Alex English. 

I've never had an opportunity to meet any of the Packers stars I cheered for as a kid/young adult, and I only have autographs of two: Brett Favre and Dorsey Levens. Butler was the anchor of Green Bay's secondary for the entire 1990s. He invented the Lambeau Leap! 

Alex English was a guy I never even saw on TV, an out-of-market star that I learned about through trading cards and became a fan simply because his stats popped off the page. $39 bucks to meet him and get his autograph - on an 8x10 or a basketball?!?!? That's a steal!! 

The other email I received was from Beckett, informing me that my order would be delivered to me via FedEx on Monday(today). Cool, I'll just tell my wife and she can sign for it, and...

.....nope, she has a chemo appointment. Up until the end of May, she had two appointments every two weeks. But the surgeon took her off chemo so she can get her strength up for the major surgery she needs to have somewhere around the end of August/early September. She shouldn't have any chemo at all. But she's still taking pills and going in for hydration and checkups and whatever. So she would not be home from about 10 am-12:30pm or so. No problem, I can come home for lunch at Noon, and my office is right down the street, so there will only be a two hour-window when no one will be home. 

Yeeahh, no one was home. Of course they attempted delivery at 11:15 a.m. What are the odds? 

Glad you asked. July has 31 days, and every day has 24 hours, and Mrs. Collector has exactly two two-hour chemo appointments per month, and does not leave the house on a weekday for any other reason. So the odds of the FedEx delivery truck arriving at a time when neither one of us would be home to sign for a package that contains $5,000+ worth of trading cards is:

100%, exactly. 

Well, that sucks, but they'll re-attempt delivery tomorrow when the Mrs. will be here. No problem. 

They'd better, because she already has to go upstate on Wednesday for an exam and meeting with some more doctors. That will take her out of the house all day. And, the surgeon called her today to discuss her condition. Apparently her tumor is growing a bit larger no shit sherlock, you took her off the good chemo so he wants to schedule her for some tests on Thursday. He's already starting to waver on his initial steadfast diagnosis that he can remove all of the tumors in one single six-hour surgery. 

What was I talking about? 

Oh yeah. Cards. So, I'm still going to send a consignment order to 4 Sharp Corners and (assuming there are no unforeseen issues with my cards) I'll have some money to spend in August. But I can't drag my wife around a big convention center for 4+ hours while I browse through dime boxes and stand in line for autographs. Instead, I'm going to visit my mother that day. My wife can handle a 2+ hour drive, but standing and walking for more than a minute is an issue. The surgeon told her to exercise but she didn't listen. I kept trying to get her to take walks but she's been too tired or busy. 

I'm torn about what to sell though. If I send everything I initially wanted to consign, that will include hockey cards which are out of season and would likely sell for more during fall/winter. But I don't know what I'll be able to do by then; when I sent my BGS order on 5/1, none of this surgery shit was on our radar. Will things be better, or worse, in November? And it is worth waiting just for the potential to make a couple hundred dollars more?

But if I don't send the hockey cards I have a lot less to work with. My goal was to upgrade these three:

...plus pick up a Nikola Jokic RC, a Joe Montana RC, and some of the remaining 1956 Topps cards on my need list (Willie Mays in particular) If I don't include the high-end hockey cards in my consignment, I'll basically have enough to upgrade the Mantle. 

Not that any of this is important under the circumstances. It's just that the window for enjoying my collection is closing fast.

I won't be able to squeeze in another card show, but maybe I can make the best of it somehow. If the BGS order arrives as expected I'll show those off before I ship them out to 4 Sharp Corners.

Thanks for reading!



~

donotreadthispost nothingtoseehere

I had a minor mental breakdown yesterday.

The plan was to stop at home on my lunch break and pick up some cash to get a couple gifts. Two days ago I had $80 in my wallet, but then I gave $60 to my boss for two Nintendo Switch games -  The Legend Of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (brand new/sealed!) and a Super Mario All-Stars game for my girls.

That left me with $20, which my daughter took so she could get ice cream with her friends. She did not spend it - but she didn't give it back, either. So I had an empty wallet. Fine, whatever. 

Except that this weekend was supposed to be a total washout. Nothing but pouring rain from Friday night to Monday night. I'd planned to watch a movie or two and play my new Zelda game (and some Stardew Valley, too). If I was going to shop for gifts, it had to be early in the afternoon.

It was very warm and sunny at lunch time yesterday so I tried to stop home. Mrs. Collector was supposed to be at work and I knew she'd have to be back by 3 p.m. since that's when the girls get home from school. It was 12:30 p.m. and she had not left yet. Because she was home I did not get cash because I would have had to tell her why I needed cash. Walgreens and Hallmark take credit cards, of course. But I can't use plastic, because then she'd know what I bought.

So my new plan was to forgo the rest of my lunch break and leave work at 2:30 p.m. rather than 3 p.m. (This is not an issue at all, for reasons I won't get into here.)  That way I could walk home, grab cash, and hit up the stores before everyone got home and gave me the third degree about my purchases.

I also planned to pick up some repacks for TCDB trades and a Free Stuff Friday post I planned to pen last night - had I made it to the repack source. But I couldn't get that far.

The moment I left my office (a half hour early) Mrs. Collector texted me that she wouldn't be back home before the girls got out of school. You should have gone to work earlier! They take the bus, but a) my 6th grader just started going to this school 3 days ago, and b) the doors are locked when we're not home and they don't have keys (long story). 

So that meant I had to cut my shopping short and hightail it home by 3 p.m. My grocery list included items intended for: my wife, my mom, my blogger/trader friends, and a Rosh Hashanah card for my old boss. The only thing I wanted for myself was a bottle of soda and a bag of chips. 

And that was the only thing I was able to acquire. Because the sky suddenly got dark. And this eerie wind started blowing like the beginning of a hurricane. I had to scrap the gifts until at least Tuesday and run home fast. 

I was too late.

As I'm running home carrying my feedbag like a football, my wife is texting me that I don't have to hurry because the girls don't get off the bus until about 3:30. How would I check my texts in a monsoon, you say? I wouldn't.

Anyway, my 6th grader wasn't even on the bus - her grandma (who just happens to work at that school) gave her a ride home around 4 p.m. My 8th grader got home at 3:30 and she was bone dry because the storm ended before she got home! No one got soaked except me!

This... is what I get for trying to do things for other people. 

 

Anyway, rant over. My repack connection will be there next week and I'll have some new-old cards for y'all. Giveaway to follow the conclusion of my 1956 Topps scan parade - which I hope to resume next Friday.

In other blog news, this is last call for anyone who might want to read my short story Sarah's Surf Shop. I'll be taking that down next week and replacing it with a wantlist or collection tab (1988-89 Fleer basketball?) soon.

Speaking of wantlists, I received some cards in the mail that cheered me up a bit:

Bo sent these my way in a 3-for-3 trade. I'm now one Pujols and one Yankee icon away from completing this set because... my latest Sportlots order also arrived:

Ichiro, Mantle, Mo, A-Rod, Scherzer, Chipper... lots of legends for 20 cents each. (Bummer they didn't have the base Pujols or the Jeter.)

Yadi, Miggy, and Ryan Howard are here too, along with some other cards that eluded me until now.

In more set building news, this Curtis Joseph insert from 2003-04 Topps Lost Rookie Cards is on the way:

I actually bid in an eBay auction for the first time in forever. Won this for $1.99 shipped... because no one else bid. All in all, not a bad haul for $10 if I do say so myself. Probably better than a repack box.

I've started shopping for some more Starting Lineup figures. I'll probably go with either an '88 Jack Morris or '89 Alan Trammell as my Tiger - though a Chet Lemon would be neat. Might start looking to fill in other missing teams as well. Oh! Maybe that's what my new tab will be - a gallery of SLU figures by team.

By the way, my last post got the most views of anything I've published this year by far.

 

I guess you guys really like reading about Kansas City Starting Lineups, huh? 

That's why I titled this post a little differently, just to mess with the algorithm (and to warn you about my mini-rant)

Not sure what my next post will bring, but I'm certain it will be sunnier.

Definitely...probably... hopefully... maybe.

Thanks for reading!


~

A Barrel of Fun

What an absolutely exhausting week. I had two job interviews that went well. One of them told me to call and let them know when I can start. However I held out for the second job (much closer, better pay/benefits) and after that interview I was told I was "at the top of the list." Unfortunately they had two more days of interviews and I didn't get the job (yet?) If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both.

Meanwhile my current place of employment has become a shitshow. We were operating as part of a franchise until January 1. Our owners decided to sever ties with the franchise and change the name of the company, which makes it really difficult to follow up on jobs that started before the name change. Also it's tough to keep track of which customers know us by which name, and some customers have to be asked to re-sign documents because the original copy had our company's old name on it. Fun times.

Anyway... here are some cards I bought at CardBarrel. I got a big order from BaseballCardStore too, but that deserves its own series of posts. I don't have the energy for that yet.

These Conlon Collection cards were a mixed bag. I already had the Rice. Cuyler has a small crease across the front. Wood is fine though. This is my first non-Red Sox card of Smoky Joe, who passed away in my hometown when I was four.

A pair of newer Brewer cards. I now have 117 different Robin Yount cards but not his 1975 Topps RC. I do have a Yelich RC incoming, as soon as Nick stops giving away cards :D

The rest of my Cardbarrel order featured set fillers, including two from 2013 Topps Update. I need just 16 cards to complete the 330-card set, and all but two or three of them are big names. The 2018 Chromes you see here leave me just 29 cards shy of a complete set, 25 of which are rookie cards.

2019 Topps Update got a big boost as well. Does anyone know why Mike Trout is wearing #45 here?

Every other card I ordered was a 2014 Topps common. I forgot to scan any of those before putting them away, so here's a Domonic Brown from my duplicate pile. Sorry folks, it's been quite a week.

I was hoping to visit my mother today, whom I haven't seen since before Thanksgiving. After I got Covid, my girls got Covid, and my mom got Covid I thought that there was no one left to get Covid and delay our visit. LOL. Her heart doctor got Covid, so she had to put off having a test done until... today. 😡

Perhaps I'll see her next weekend. This weekend I plan to put away the rest of my new card purchases (and Christmas gifts), update my wantlists, update my tradelists on TCDB, and visit your blogs while watching playoff football. Since my Packers have a bye I'm hoping for the Bengals to win and the Buccaneers to lose. I'd add Dallas to the 'lose' list but I've got no love for the Niners, either.


Enjoy the games, and have a great weekend!


~

Venting

I started writing a statistical analysis post about a flagship franchise's lack of all-time greats, but I scrapped it because a) this post could lead to a series of similar posts and I'm not sure I would have the time to complete such a project, and b) I can't focus on it because I'm too frustrated to write something that would only interest two or three people. (Not that this post would generate more interest than a series on all-time teams but at least it would be a lot less work?)

Before I make a list of minor annoyances I should note that they are all completely insignificant compared to the state of the world (I spent hours yesterday reading updates about a city I've never been to just to make sure nothing terrible happened) or a serious illness (click on the custom card for updates on Taryn's fight to save second base) They're just little things that have been piling up lately and I thought it would be cathartic to address them here.

Work life is shifting in a way that I'm not really ready to handle. One of our two receptionist ladies quit. She was the one who contacted me to interview for this job and she has a 12-year old autistic son who has been in the office and is very difficult to handle. I guess I like her more than most people in the office, everyone seemed to have issues with her both before and after she left.

I don't know if she had to quit or if she'd just had enough of the place and the people, but my manager hasn't been able to find anyone outside the company to replace her - so the girl in my department has to stay up front indefinitely. No one is happy about this, least of all M. It's a lot quieter in our office now, and I have to deal with the nasty customers that M would have handled. I'm starting to dread going to work, like I did at the law firm.

My house is a complete disaster because we live in a tiny Cape Cod and we're converting my bedroom into a bedroom for both my daughters. That means all of our stuff is spread out into all the other rooms while we paint and clean the bedroom. This has to be done by Aug. 30 because we're going to visit my brother-in-law in DC the weekend before school starts. I'm secretly hoping it won't be done in time, so I can stay home and finish the fucker myself. 

One bit of potentially good news: the in-laws just got back from San Diego where they attended a Padres game - even though they don't like baseball. So there's no excuse for them to not go to a Nationals game while I'm in DC, right? Assuming the Nats are home that weekend. 

Oh, they're home that weekend.

Ugh, should I even bother?

Most of my TCDB trades are complete, but I'm still waiting for the last two packages. One of them is slowing down a potential trade with Bo, because I might be sending some vintage his way. There's another pending deal that's annoyed me. I didn't expect all 70 transactions to go smoothly, of course. One guy sent me the wrong Brett Favre card and it had a dinged corner to boot, but I let it go because it wasn't worth the trouble.

I made some offers a couple days before closing trades. Some replied right away, others said they wouldn't be able to get back to me in time. One guy told me to wait, so I did. I told him if he's going to counter to please let me know before I turn off offers. He didn't.

Then he said he couldn't find the one card I really wanted, and doesn't know why his counter offer is stuck. I told him to scrap the trade completely. Yes, that might make me sound like a jerk but I seriously doubt my wife is going to have any time to go to the post office this week considering the state of our house. 


All of these are temporary inconveniences, and they will pass. There's one sports-card related worry that could linger indefinitely, and it's starting to freak me out.

 

4 Sharp Corners has had a "customer appreciation sale" for the past few weeks, and I picked up a few slabbed singles for various set builds. I had all but written them off because the selection dried up. There aren't many affordable 1956 Topps singles left, but I found this Eddie Miksis for $16.79 and that's a decent deal for an NM 7 common.

This Miksis brings me to a not-insignificant milestone in my set build:

I should feel good about this, but I don't. I can't. This set is either going to be the crown jewel of my collection or an investment in my daughter's future. And all 154 cards are graded.

That used to mean something. After all of these card-trimming scandals that have cast doubt on the authenticity of hundreds of graded cards...who knows? 

Of course I'm the sucker with hundreds of graded cards in my collection. 

I'm not worried about these two being trimmed. Even if they weren't clearly perforated I only spent $7.99 on Mathewson and $6.39 on Vance. That said, I probably could have purchased an intact album of these cards for the amount of money I've paid for my ten graded singles.

And then there's this friggin' set. I once bought a complete set of 1984-85 O-Pee-Chee, ungraded, for under $150. I spent more than $150 on a PSA 9 example of the Steve Yzerman RC alone. Why? Because ten years ago I spent over $160 on a starter set of PSA-graded singles and I just kept chipping away at the set, for some reason.

These two cards would cost about a buck ungraded. Total. I won't tell you exactly what I paid for my high-grade examples but they were more than a blaster. Each.

I'm now 71 singles shy of the set. If money were no object (and with this set I've got to wonder) I could acquire 15-20 of them right now. Roughly 50 of the cards in the set never even surface in PSA 9 or 10. All this time and money spent on a set I'll probably never finish. Aaugh! indeed.

Which brings me to my final complaint for the day...

2019-20 Upper Deck MVP is now in stores. I haven't bought this stuff in a very long time, and I'm not going to buy any of this year's. But this release annoys me because I still haven't found a card from last year's set. The '18-19 edition had 20th Anniversary parallels and stamped buybacks, which were #d/20. I've been trying to track down a Peter Worrell buyback for a whole year. Can't find one anywhere. 

I've seen pretty much every other Panthers player in the set. Mark Parrish, Jaroslav Spacek, Pavel Bure. Rob Niedermayer. No Worrell. I was certain that one of the 20 copies would have surfaced by the end of 2018, and I would have gladly paid at least $10 for one - even though I have several unstamped originals. Where the hell are they hiding?


This hobby can be frustrating sometimes. It can also be a source of generosity and joy. 

Perhaps I should tackle that All-Time Team project after all. Perhaps it will breathe some new life into this stagnating blog and help me enjoy the hobby again :-)


Thanks for reading. Hope you're having a great weekend!


~

Green and Gold Goals

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2019 brings you all health, happiness..and some great new cards for your collection :)

I spent a lot of time with the family over the holidays, and so I'm still plugging away at a few different projects - cataloging my Packers cards on TCDB, finishing up a mix CD for Night Owl, and getting a couple trade packages ready to ship tomorrow (which is also when the Anna Kendrick book is due back at the library) As a result, I haven't had much time to blog. My plan is to catch up on reading and commenting this Friday.

Until then, It's time for the obligatory list of Goals for 2019. But first, a recap of my Goals for 2018:

1. Lose 50 pounds. Or 30 pounds. Whatever...just get in shape.
Ha! Yeah, right. Sometime around July my cousin put together the elliptical I've had in my card room for almost three years now. I used it a couple times. But..I'm 6 '1" and the ceiling is 6' 6"..so when I'm on the elliptical my head comes this close to scraping the wall. So that's excuse number one. Depression is excuse number two. 

This is going to be addressed - and soon - but I won't bother making it a goal for 2019.


2. Get a full-time job. Or a better paying part-time job. Or at the very least, a job that's closer to home.
Hahaha! Also a "no". I am still working the same collections job for the same law firm, still a part-time employee with no benefits and a meager salary. But! The boss I like retired and the firm moved further away from my home. Also, the woman whom I considered my only office "friend" was fired. Oh, and my Christmas bonus was less than half of what it was under previous management. Fun times!


3. Do not spend any money on sports cards all year.
Seriously, was I on crack this time last year? That's frickin' impossible. I lasted one month. And since COMC had a "bonus" sale and I'm rolling in gift cards, it should not be too hard to match that 30-day spending freeze this January. But all bets are off in Febtober.

4. Reach the top 100 on COMC Challenges All-Time Leaderboard
This was within my grasp, I really believe that. Had I not had internet connectivity issues for four f*cking months there's a good chance I would have made it. Came close, though:
 

Your definition of "close" may vary

Now for some goals I actually achieved this past year!

5. Make 20 trades (and keep better records of my trades)
I made 12 trades on TCDB - which obviously helps with the record keeping - and while I haven't actually counted up all of the trades I made before becoming an active member there, it's a safe bet that I made 8 trades away from TCDB in 2018. 

6. Write 100 blog posts
Cleared that easily, thanks in large part to Sports Card Tour. 

Side note: where the heck was I in October? 

Oh...right :)


There were other things I wanted to accomplish:

• I need to figure out what to do with my other blog. I decided to delete it and will integrate some non-sports posts here when the mood arises.
• I'd like to spice things up here, perhaps with a new banner pic or layout. Done.
• I also want to do a better job of cataloging my collection. Working on it.
• Finally, I want to get back to reading books. Yeah..that's not going so well.
  

Which brings me to this year's goals. There are only four.

1. Collect my 1,000th unique Brett Favre card.
I'm not much of a player collector. There are a handful of players I collect but it's too hard for my A.D.D. brain to fathom narrowing my focus to one single star. Props to those who can - like Collecting Cutch - because it takes a lot of dedication to seek out every single card of a star player. 

I'm not delusional enough to think I can acquire a copy of every single Brett Favre issue (all 15,000+) nor would I want to even if I could. He wasn't a perfect player and he's sure not a perfect person. But I've been collecting his cards and memorabilia since I was 14 years old. I've accumulated at least 700 different Favre cards so far. 1K is possible if I focus, and I want to get it done this year in case he does something stupid. Again.


2. Catalog every single card in my collection on TCDB. This will hopefully be the last major reorganization project I attempt for a long time. Every one of my basketball cards has been added to the site, and all of my non-Packers football cards are cataloged. That's the good news. The bad news is that I have more Packers cards than the other 31 NFL teams combined, which is why I'm only done through 2001. 

The worse news? I have more baseball cards than basketball and football combined (including Packers). The even worse news? I have more hockey cards than baseball cards.

Please tell me that this will save me tons of time in the long run.


3. Limit myself to spending $50 a month on sports cards and other non-essential things. As many of you have no doubt noticed, the price of things keeps going up. Our salaries almost never do. My wife and I are still working part-time, my mom is struggling, and at some point I have to start saving (more) for my daughters' college fund. So I'm limiting myself to a strict sports card/entertainment/junk food budget this year. Let's see if I can stop using retail therapy as a crutch.

 
4. Really, seriously, definitely get a new job. For real this time. I seriously cannot stand the thought of being a debt collector for another year. Not with my yearly salary. I'm a health issue away from being in the debtors' shoes FFS.


Other things I want to achieve include: making progress on my 1956 Topps baseball set, going to a card show (preferably the big one in White Plains but I'll settle for the Milford show), spending more time with my family, reading more books, and drinking less caffeinated beverages. And maybe - maybe - write some fiction. We'll see.


Do you have any personal or collecting goals for 2019? If you've written a post about them let me know and I will read it asap. If not, what would you like to accomplish in 2019?



~

Sports Card Tour 2018 - Toronto

Oh, Canada! The final leg of our tour features three stops in the great white north. Today we're in Toronto. This is going to be one of the longest SCT posts as I have a lot of personal stories to share. Soarie aboot that. ;-P

Toronto is home to four pro sports teams - and the Hockey Hall of Fame. The Maple Leafs have won 13 Stanley Cups, more than any NHL club except their hated arch-rivals the Montreal Canadiens. However they have not even reached the final since the league was comprised of only six teams.

I have a few Leafs legends in my collection, including defenseman (and donut magnate) Tim Horton, Borje Salming and Darryl Sittler. I flipped over the Frank Mahovilich because I've never seen card text refer to a player as "handsome" before. I'm not disagreeing with Topps, I just found it interesting.

Bill Barilko won four Stanley Cups in five seasons with the Leafs. His overtime game-winner clinched the Cup for Toronto in 1951..and he disappeared that summer. Barilko's story was the subject of a Pro Set hockey card and a Tragically Hip song.

The only slabbed single you will see in this post is this Jacques Plante O-Pee-Chee card.

I had been watching a graded copy on COMC but the price wasn't right, so I searched for ungraded copies and snagged this one for $10.05..then sent it in to PSA. Plante won six Stanley Cups-all with the Canadiens. He was 42 years old when this card was released and played pro hockey until he was 46. 

The Leafs left their historic home arena Maple Leaf Gardens during the 1998-99 season. I happened to be dating an Ontario girl at the time and spent nearly the entire first half of '99 in the Greater Toronto Area.  

She took me to a couple card shops (we might have attended the Toronto Expo but the admission price scared her off), the Hockey Hall of Fame, Wayne Gretzky's restaurant, and a Blue Jays game at SkyDome (I'll get to that.)

She even managed to score tickets to a Leafs-Flyers playoff game at their new home, Air Canada Centre. The game was 1-1 early, and then nothing happened for a while. I remember feeling like the fans were oddly quiet and tense, until Toronto scored in overtime and sent everyone home happy. We exited through a mall or something, and there was a young kid working as a greeter outside a restaurant. He spotted us and asked "Did we win?" Fionna told him "we" did and he pumped his fist in celebration. 

I was actually a little bit of a Leafs fan before I met her. Felix Potvin and Doug Gilmour were two of my favorite players in 1993, when the Leafs reached the Western Conference Finals (you read that right.) I even bought a shark tooth-style Maple Leafs hat (I'm wearing it in the Maple Leaf Gardens picture) in a Bradlees and wore it throughout the playoffs. I sold it a few years ago and the guy who bought it tried to file a claim against me with eBay - even though I clearly stated the had was old and had been worn frequently. Feebay ruled against him because he admitted to altering the item.

Toronto would lose the 1994 Conference Final to the next team on our tour, Vancouver. That prompted the Leafs to shake up their roster by trading popular captain Wendel Clark to Quebec for Mats Sundin.

My ex was a huge Sundin fan and so I became one, too. One of the very first items I bought on eBay was an autographed 8 x 10 of Mats - when he was with the Nordiques. The photo was smudged up pretty bad, but I was too much of a noob to complain. At one point I had a Sundin PC with over 100 cards, a "Suntouchable" poster, and a McFarlane figure. After Fionna and I broke up I pared down the Sundin card collection to a more manageable amount. It now stands at 33 Leafs cards, and probably about 40 overall.

Longtime Leaf Ron Ellis was a member of their last Cup-winning team in 1967. Fionna told me Ellis was her gym teacher (in high school I assume) so I bought two of his cards and gave her one. (I also bought her that Leafs jersey she's wearing in that very dark picture we took at MLG.)

 

I was even a little bit of a Leafs fan after she and I had gone our separate ways. In 2002 the Maple Leafs (rightfully realinged to the NHL's Eastern Conference) had advanced to the conference semi-finals along with two other Canadian teams..and Carolina. Surely a Canadian team would win the East and advance to the Stanley Cup Final..right? Wrong. Toronto beat Ottawa in the second round, then lost to the Canes in the Conference Final. 

The Leafs were dead to me after that.

 

I stopped collecting Upper Deck hockey sets in 2016-and the Maple Leafs are to blame. The Young Guns subset in '16-17 was loaded with Leafs, and I didn't have any interest (or money) to compete with that crazy collector base over $200 Auston Matthews RCs. As a result, these are my only cards of Matthews-and Mitch Marner, who is also part of that rookie class.  

John Tavares became the latest marquee player to sign a free agent contract with his boyhood team. Returning home has been a trend in hockey for a long time - from Tavares, James van Riemsdyk*, and Patrick Maroon this year to Kevin Shattenkirk, Zach Parise, and Ilya Kovalchuk in years past. Auston Matthews is from Arizona. I'm just saying...

 *at least that's how he tells it. The Devils are his hometown team, not Philly. 

The last two Toronto titles belong to the Blue Jays. American League East champions in 1985, the Jays were knocking on the door in the late '80s..and burst it open after moving in to the state-of-the-art SkyDome. Attendance soared, reaching record totals of over 4 million fans per year. The added revenue allowed the team to build a back-to back World Series winner..in the two seasons preceding the strike.

The World Series truly became a World Series when the Blue Jays beat the Braves for the 1992 title. In 1993, John Olerud was chasing .400 well into the summer. (All of my collecting friends were trying to get our hands on his Leaf RC.) He finished the year at .363 and won the batting title. Toronto teammates Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar finished second and third that year.

Joe Carter's home run off Phillies' closer Mitch Williams was only the second World Series-clinching homer in history. Carter and Alomar arrived from San Diego in a 1990 trade that involved four high-profile players.

I don't have nearly as many Carter cards as I should (probably traded 'em all to Mike or Robert) so I added some other Jays faves to this scan - including Edwin Encarnacion taking Edwing for a walk, Eric Lindros taking BP with the Jays (he ended up with his hometown Leafs eventually) and one of my favorite Clemens cards.

Alex Rios, Guillermo Quiroz, and Dustin McGowan played for the New Haven Ravens when they were a Toronto affiliate; the franchise moved closer to its parent club, in New Hampshire, after the 2003 season. I went to the Ravens' last game with a couple friends. The fans were allowed to go onto the field and run the bases. All the memorabilia had been picked clean; we couldn't even find a foul ball.

So..about that Blue Jays game I attended in the spring of 1999. I can't remember who they were playing - thought it was the Devil Rays because I remember Jose Canseco hitting a long home run - and so I checked my stack of ticket stubs. Apparently I went to two Jays games that year. 

There was a promotion going on involving back-to-back home runs or two home runs in the same inning which the Jays didn't do against Tampa, so this much have been the Tigers game. If the home team homered twice, everyone in our section would get a free Blue Jays hat. Toronto hit back-to-back home runs twice in that game, so I don't even remember the inning. I just remember we were going to get a free hat.

How did we acquire said hats? They were not handed to each one of us as we left our seats. They were tossed at us by some dumb college girl (sorry..university girl) in between innings. I reached up for mine at the same time as the man sitting in front of me. Figured I'd be polite and let him have that one (I was in Canada, after all.) He somehow grabbed another one for his little boy..and then the girl ran out of hats to throw at us. An instant later, the man and his boy left the game. Yeah, take off hoser.

I had this Fred McGriff Donruss rookie card when I was a young collector. It was one of those cards I mysteriously lost, like my 1984 Donruss Nolan Ryan and my SI for Kids Kim Zmeskal card. The Crime Dog is back in my collection but the Ryan isn't. I don't have any key rookies from 1984 Fleer Update like Clemens, Puckett, or even Dwight Gooden - but I do have the Jimmy Key. Does anyone remember that SportsCenter commercial where they rushed the young anchor up to the big show before he was ready? Jimmy Key..what's he, like..45? I could hit him!

The best of my Blue Jays hits, including some color-matching refractors. Joey Bats was my dude for a while-but his attitude went south at the same time as his ability. I liked Tulo, too, but the guy is made of glass so I had to demote his base cards back to the binders. Who's ready for Vlad Jr. to debut? I'm not-I only have two of his Bowman prospect cards.

Sorry, guys. I'm keeping those Vlad cards. This is the only Argos card in my collection - Dollar Store Doug sent me one of every CFL team. [Are you guys cool with my short-hand nicknames for bloggers such as "Dollar Store Doug", "Shoebox Shane",  "Dime Box Nick" ..and so on?]

The Raptors made a blockbuster trade last week, sending DeMar DeRozan to San Antonio for Kawhi Leonard. Both players were unhappy with the trade - Leonard didn't want to go to Toronto and DeRozan didn't want to leave. I'm no NBA expert, but it seems awfully risky trading a franchise stalwart for an equal-to-slightly better player who is coming off a major injury and will be a free agent at the end of the year. 

The franchise has only advanced to the conference final once (in 2016) and now that LeBron James has signed with the Lakers, the East is wide open. It could be a small window though - Kawhi will likely leave and Kyle Lowry will be 33 at the end of the season. This Immaculate base card sat on my COMC watch list for a while. I finally bought it for $1.15 in February.

Many of my newest Toronto cards are Raptors; this DeMarre Carroll dual patch came home in my latest COMC order. It only cost $1.75 due to 'top left corner wear.'

This Vince Carter Black Diamond RC was one of the hundred or so basketball cards I saved when I purged most of my collection. When I worked at a card shop there was another guy who came into the store a lot, and one day he grabbed a bunch of packs and started opening them. He was a cop, so I assumed he was going to pay for them all (maybe he had a 'tab' with the owner?) I joined in on the fun and pulled this Carter card. I would have been annoyed if I hadn't, the guy told me to pay for my packs - even though I was the employee!

Vince Carter was the first star I remember who actually embraced playing on a non-US team. "Air Canada" nearly got the Raps to the conference final in 2001-but he missed the final shot  in Game 7.

How long has Carter been an active NBA player? His cousin (and onetime Toronto teammate) Tracy McGrady is younger than him...and he's already in the Hall of Fame.

I don't have any McGrady Raptors cards, but I did buy his Finest RC at a card-and-coin shop back in the day. The proprietors were older gentlemen who didn't follow sports all that much. I found the T-Mac RC in a dime box and couldn't believe my eyes. Not sure what it's worth now but at the time it was $10.

The rest of my Raptors hits, including a Chris Bosh Chrome RC. The Serge Ibaka Certified cost $1.18 on COMC; I probably could have saved a few cents if I waited a while but I didn't want to risk losing or forgetting about it.

I only have 18 Raptors cards in my commons binder. (not including Bosh-he's a star player.) That's the least I have of any NBA team - partially because they're one of the newest NBA franchises (half of my basketball commons are from 1990-93) but also because other bloggers often get dibs on the Raptors cards. 

Favorite Maple Leafs player (current): it might be John Tavares
Favorite Maple Leafs player (all-time): Mats Sundin and Felix Potvin
Favorite Blue Jays player (current): I kind of like Stroman, Granderson, Tulo, and Donaldson..but not enough to have a clear fave
Favorite Blue Jays player (all-time): Jose Bautista
Favorite Raptors player (current): Kyle Lowry or Serge Ibaka
Favorite Raptors player (all-time): Vince Carter..Chris Bosh a close second

Next tour stop: Vancouver


Thanks for reading!


~