Sports Card Tour 2018 - San Diego

We're coming down the home stretch - just nine stops left on the Sports Card Tour. The next three cities are in California, starting with today's stop in San Diego. 

The Padres are San Diego's only pro sports team. They were National League champions in 1984 and 1998. 

The legendary Tony Gwynn played on both pennant winners. "Mr. Padre" won eight batting titles and hit over .350 seven times. This 2000 Finest box topper is one of 26 Gwynn cards in my collection. 

I don't have a Gwynn rookie card; there was once a coffee-stained Fleer RC in my collection years ago. Early-mid '80s rookies aren't yet a priority - they're still so abundant and affordable (aside from some update sets). The '85 Topps was part of a grab bag-type mystery lot I bought on eBay about 10 years ago.

It always amazed me that Ted Williams hit .388 as a 38-year old in 1957. Tony Gwynn's 1997 season was nearly as impressive. He won his fourth consecutive batting title with a .372 average at age 37. Gwynn and Williams (who was a native San Diegan) became friends late in Ted's life. At the 1999 All-Star Game in Boston, every active player wanted to talk to Ted - but Ted wanted to talk to Tony.

I only have a few Tony Gwynn 'hits', including a relic swatch that doesn't match the picture. The 1995 Topps Cyberstats parallel projected Gwynn's 1994 batting average as .391 had the season been completed. His average stood at .394 when the strike began (on my 14th birthday.)  The 1998 Topps Minted In Cooperstown card was one of a half-dozen such singles I picked out at a card shop.. in Cooperstown. It's likely classified as a base card but I give it the top loader treatment as if it were a parallel.

Some more Gwynn - and other Padres keepers - from Brad's box. The Rey Ordonez photo would fit perfectly in a Heritage set.

Trevor Hoffman will be officially inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this month. He was the first closer to save 500 games, and the only National Leaguer to save 600. The Sweet Swatch relic is numbered to 45.

More HOF-man cards, including a 1996 Fleer Tiffany parallel. The flimsy, grainy base set was unbearable but the parallels really pop.

The rest of my Padre Hall of Famers, including a Score Traded Roberto Alomar XRC. Only Donruss thought to put Robbie in their main set-which made that card a hot item back in the day. I'd rather have the Score Traded (or Topps Traded) over that ugly '88 Donruss set.

While we're on the subject of update sets...I tried to build the 2011 Topps Update set but couldn't get my hands on a Mike Trout RC before they hit triple digits. I broke up the set and offloaded every decent card except Anthony Rizzo. Huge mistake. I sold the Jose Altuve and J.D. Martinez cards for a fraction of their current value. (The J.D. will return to my collection soon.)

Assorted Friars from my hits box. The Craig Kimbrel gold refractor is numbered to 50; I added it to my 500-card COMC order last year for $1.30. I keep forgetting to ask Jon if he needs the Justin Upton Heritage high number (#445) for his set. [Jon, it's yours if you want it.] The Bowman Brian Giles is a base card I added to fill the white space. His brother Marcus (also a former Padre) was classmates with Gavin - who packed a ton of Padre cards into a box of CDs he sold me last year.

New Haven native Brad Ausmus wasn't a classmate of mine (he's a lot older than I am) but my 7th grade teacher told us he was one of her students. That was around the time he made his major league debut for the Padres, in 1993.

Here's some more local flavor:

Padres pitching prospect MacKenzie Gore is from North Carolina, but Jersey girl Sydney McLaughlin attended high school right down the road from me, in the town where I work. If anyone has this Sports Illustrated issue, please let me know. I'd be happy to trade for it.

Camo Padres. The Jedd Gyorko was a seven-cent "dime box" find at the Milford card show.

Throwback Padres. Padres GM A.J. Preller did the Yankees a huge favor by taking back Chase Headley. Can't wait to see him trade Brad Hand to New York for Jacoby Ellsbury ::eyeroll:: 

Sparkly Padres. Pinnacle Museum parallels were a hot item back in the day. The Tejada Platinum Diamond was part of the flat rate randoms I bought on eBay. I didn't know what the Ben Davis was until writing this post, I had to look it up (it's a Star Power parallel.)

Fictional Padres. These customs are Corky's creation. I was a huge fan of the show Pitch and wanted to see the star of the show and the star of the team on one of my favorite vintage designs. (If I were a Pinterest person I'd 'pin' these to this page of custom card creations.)

Until recently San Diego was a two-team town. The Chargers played 56 seasons there, winning an AFL Championship in 1963. Lance Alworth was the star of that team, but I don't have any of his cards.

San Diego's passing attack was way ahead of its time. "Air Coryell" was implemented by Chargers coach Don Coryell and is used by many NFL teams today. Record-breaking quarterback Dan Fouts led the team to back-to-back AFC title games in 1980 and 1981.

I've seen this iconic image of Chargers tight end Kellen Winslow about a dozen times. This was after the Chargers' overtime playoff win against the Dolphins in '81. The story I'm much less familiar with (and even more fascinated by) was that the Bolts' "reward" for winning that game was perhaps the coldest game in NFL history - an AFC Championship game in Cincinnati, in sub-zero weather. The "Freezer Bowl" had a wind chill of -37 F!

Not surprisingly, San Diego lost that AFC title game. The Chargers' only Super Bowl appearance was a blowout loss to the 49ers in SB XXIX after the 1994 season. 

Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau was the star of that San Diego squad. I have nine Seau cards in my stars/HOFers box, including a '94 Stadium Club card with an interesting cartoon on the back:

Seau took his own life in 2012, less than three years after his last NFL game. A staggering total of eight players from the 1994 Chargers team have passed away; Seau was the eighth.

In 2001, the Chargers had the #1 overall draft pick. They traded the pick to Atlanta and ended up with #5 overall pick LaDanian Tomlinson.

I was a fan of the "other" LT for years, and I had hoped he would get to play in a Super Bowl. I also hoped to acquire a higher-value Tomlinson Rookie card like Topps Chrome. Neither of those happened.

Tomlinson reached two AFC Championship games, one with the Chargers and one with the Jets.

After trading the Michael Vick pick, San Diego drafted Drew Brees with their own second rounder in 2001. I have nine cards of #9, all base cards. I had a Brees SPx RC about 15 years ago and planned to send it off to PSA for some reason. But when I took it out of the top loader a small speck of paint peeled off the back. I ended up selling it instead.

There were two versions of each RC. This is the one I had. Don't tell me what it's 'worth' now :/

A few months ago I stopped into a small sports memorabilia store that I had passed by dozens of times on my way to work. Autographed jerseys, prints, and helmets are way out of my price range anymore, but I had hoped there would be sports cards for sale. 

As it turned out, there were very few. No packs or boxes, and nearly all of the single cards the owner had for sale were cleaned out. I did find a couple cards I liked:

The Tomlinson Flair relic caught my eye immediately. I also needed the Brett Favre insert pictured. The proprietor of Kessler's Korner told me that some Devils players (and their wives) shop in the store-which he mentioned because my wife and I were wearing Devils jackets. As I approached the counter to pay for the two cards I decided to add the pen to my order. He charged me $5 for all three items.

The Chargers aren't the only sports team to leave San Diego for Los Angeles...

The Clippers played six seasons in San Diego. The city also had an ABA team called the Sails.

Favorite Padres player (current): Eric Hosmer
Favorite Padres player (all-time): Tony Gwynn and Trevor Hoffman

Favorite Chargers player (all-time): LaDanian Tomlinson

Next tour stop: San Francisco

Thanks for reading!

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Guilty Pleasures

Last week Blowout Cards had a 4th of July special with discounted prices on all kinds of products. I've been dying to bust open some packs/boxes, so I did some window shopping. There was a whole row of old school basketball boxes, from as far back as 1992-93. 2018 Topps baseball was available at a reasonable price, and the best deal might have been a 72-card hanger box of 2012 Topps Football ..for $1.76!

All of that caught my eye, but not as much as a pre-order product: 2018 Cryptozic Supergirl cards.

Scheduled to hit stores next week

As some of you know, I've got a side PC of Women on Cards. It would be ideal to place them in my collection based on their abilities in sports or entertainment (even politics) and I do so whenever possible. But...sometimes I like adding cards of attractive women because they're attractive women. I feel a little guilty about that - hence the title of this post.

So, here's the thing...I don't watch Supergirl. I've seen a few minutes of it here and there, because I happen to think that Melissa Benoist is incredibly cute. But I'm not a superhero guy. Never got into DC Comics or Marvel or any of that. The lady at the local comic book shop knows me as the guy who comes in once a month to buy four packs of penny sleeves (75 cents each!), a pack of Topps baseball (the only sports cards they sell), and a Mountain Dew.

But..if I see this item on my next visit to Little Shop Of Comics...do I buy it?

No, of course not. That would be silly. A pack or two..maybe. And even then I'd feel guilty because I could have used that $6 or so to buy baseball cards. 
 
Having said that, I always get excited when I see a celebrity I like on a trading card. It doesn't happen often.

Jennifer Lawrence appears a dozen times in the Hunger Games card set(s) as Katniss Everdeen. I mentioned those in a previous post. Zero guilt here. My wife knows I'm a big J-Law fan, though lately I've had a hard time reminding myself why. Old loyalties die hard I s'pose. If anything, the 'guilty pleasure' here is the fact that I enjoy teen/YA stories.

Kristen Bell is another longtime fave. Wifey rolled her eyes when I first started watching Veronica Mars - she saw right through my excuse. But a few weeks later, we were both fans of the show and Kristen. It was her idea to go see the Veronica Mars movie in theaters, and she probably watches more of Kristen's late-night interviews than I do.

I don't feel guilty for picking out these promo cards on COMC, and I doubt it would be an issue if I plunked down $25 or so on an autographed K-Bell card...which I don't have to worry about, since they sell for about five times that! 

Taryn Southern might have appeared on American Idol cards had she made it farther in the competition. But then she probably wouldn't have done musical comedy on YouTube and I wouldn't have had any interest in her. I didn't feel guilty about asking Corky to make custom Taryn cards for me..sending them to her TTM wasn't a great feeling, though.

I don't consider Taryn a guilty pleasure - for two reasons. One, because she is/was genuinely funny (and I love funny women.) And two, even though she is probably the closest anyone has ever come to my idea of an absolutely perfect woman.. she doesn't produce interesting content anymore. She's all about science and technology and gadgets that will accelerate the downfall of civilization. Plus she's engaged to a gazillionaire who built a fortune on such things. Bye, Felicia.

Aaaand now we're back to guilty pleasures. Allow me to explain how I became a (casual) Katherine McNamara fan. I was writing a young adult novel a couple years ago when I found a discussion topic called "Make Your Mock Cast" or something similar. I didn't know any teen actors but I knew what my characters looked like. And my female protagonist looked a lot like Kat. So I went with it. I browsed her IMDB page, saved a couple pics in a "Mock cast" folder (along with some male actors such as Logan Lerman and Alex Pettyfer) and that was that.

Until she did Shadowhunters. I decided to check her out in the first episode. It wasn't my thing - too supernatural I s'pose. So I didn't watch another episode.. until an article on ESPNW caught my eye. It discussed her training for the show. Is that the same girl? I thought. She looks buff!

I'm a huge fan of gingers anyway (Molly Quinn comes to mind) and now that Kat was a little more grown-up I decided to give Shadowhunters a second chance. And I dig it.

Wifey watched a minute of the first episode with me, after I explained why I wanted to see it. She knew Kat was on my radar a bit - for creative purposes only - and she, too, dismissed Shadowhunters as too weird. 

I never told her I started watching it again. I feel guilty about that. (Btw, Shadowhunters and Supergirl were on at the same time during the spring.)

One more thing...there is a trading card set for Shadowhunters:The Mortal Instruments.

The movie version. No disrespect to Lily Collins but I'm not chasing these any time soon. If the TV series gets its own card set however...I'm going to buy a box. I'm going to chase a KatMac auto, and I'm going to tell my wife it was a box of Stadium Club baseball ;-)



Do you watch any "guilty pleasure" TV shows? Do you have any "guilty pleasure" cards in your collection? Share with the group - we're all friends here!


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Sports Card Tour 2018 - San Antonio

The Collector's Sports Card Tour is making a Sunday night stop at the Alamo. Today we're in San Antonio, home of the Spurs.

The Spurs have won five championships; their most recent title in 2013-14 avenged their loss to Miami a year earlier. Dating back to their ABA origins, the Spurs have made the playoffs in an incredible 46 of their 51 seasons. The last time they failed to qualify was in 1996-97, when Gregg Popovich took over as head coach. After that season, the Spurs used the #1 overall pick to select Tim Duncan (perfect basketball name, btw)

I have seven Tim Duncan cards, including these two I purchased on COMC. The True Colors insert was $0.46; the Immaculate bronze parallel (#d/49) was over $5 for a while but I finally grabbed it on sale for $3.25. I probably had a Duncan Upper Deck RC back in the day. 1997-98 was the last year I bought basketball boxes and collected the flagship set.

Duncan was an integral part of all five Spurs championships, but he might have cost himself a sixth ring. In the 2013 NBA Finals, Duncan missed a short jumper from about three feet that would have put the game out of reach. Instead the Heat rebounded to win the game - and the series. I remember watching Duncan slap the floor in anger after the miss and thinking how did you miss that? right along with him. 

 

Duncan and 1987 #1 overall pick David Robinson led the Spurs to their first title in the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season. "The Admiral" spent two years in the Navy before turning pro. He was one of three centers on the U.S. Olympic Dream Team in 1992, back when big men dominated the game. 

Robinson won the scoring title over Shaquille O'Neal in 1993-94, thanks to a 71-point game on the last day of the season.  

 

The stats on the back of these 1990-91 Fleer cards used to trick my ten year-old self. If Robinson or Terry Cummings average 30+ points per 48 minutes, why don't they play all 48 minutes? Because they're not robots..they're human and they get tired. Duh.

I have more Spurs cards in my Stars/Hall of Famers box than most NBA teams, including late-career cards of Moses Malone and Maurice Cheeks. No George Gervin cards though.

As you know by now, most of my basketball base commons come from 1990s sets. The Fleer Avery Johnson isn't quite as pink in person; it's more of a salmon color.

I pulled and scanned these Sean Elliott cards before realizing that one of them isn't Sean Elliott. The player wearing #32 on the Collector's Choice card is Negele Knight. I was too lazy to redo it, and I don't like leaving white space in a scan anyhow...so you get a Negele Knight card. 

 

Welp..that's about it for my binder cards. You don't want to hear me blab about these guys, do you? Lol..I couldn't resist the bad puns. Uwe Blab was a funny name as a kid, probably because I pronounced it you instead of oo-vay (I corrected this later in the '90s when Uwe Krupp played for the NHL's Colorado Avalanche.) Am I dreaming, or did Brent Barry win a Slam Dunk contest one year? The Rudy Gay was in a four-card pack of Optic I bought at Target - I pulled three average joes and a Luke Kennard insert :/

 

The Spurs' dynasty gave way to Golden State a few years ago, and their playoff streak is in serious jeopardy. Kawhi Leonard is unhappy and wants out of San Antonio (he'll probably end up on the Lakers with LeBron James soon.) 

 

Tony Parker has already left the Spurs this summer, signing a two-year contract with the Charlotte Hornets. LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol are over 30 and Manu Ginobili is over 40. It might be time for the Spurs to commit to a full rebuild.

This black-bored Bowman Parker is my best Spurs card. I bought it on COMC for $5.25 three years ago. The card is numbered to 48, because it mimics the 1948 Bowman design. Blue parallels (like my Kevin Durant card) were numbered to 1948. It appears that '48 Bowman is the first mainstream basketball card set; if there were basketball cards before then I hope one of you will let me know ::coughbillycough:: 

One more mention of the short-lived World League. I know I had this Jason Garrett card in my collection 27 years ago. No idea if I had the John Layfield - and until researching this post I had no idea why this was such a sought-after card. Apparently he's a pro wrestler.. or was a pro wrestler. That seems to be a fairly common career path for failed football players. I mentioned Bill Goldberg before, but there's also Rock "The Dwayne" Johnson* and Brock Lesnar, among others.

*I know his real name, I was quoting John Oliver

Finally here's a pair of cards that are in my collection. The San Antonio Rampage are the AHL affiliate of the St. Louis Blues, but they were the Florida Panthers' top farm club when these cards were released. The Jacob Markstrom card was sent to me by Douglas (Dollar Store Cards) along with the CFL cards I've mentioned before. (Still have a couple of those left to show you.) 

Heroes & Prospects was one of a scant few hockey sets released during the 2004-05 NHL lockout. I hoarded H&P cards like the Bouwmeester, as well as another In The Game set (Franchises) to get my hockey card fix during that miserable year.


Favorite Spurs player (current): Pau Gasol and Manu Ginobili

Favorite Spurs player (all-time): Tim Duncan

Next tour stop: We're kicking off California week in San Diego


Just a quick update: the Sports Card Tour Standings page has been updated - and there's some big news regarding the giveaway draft and scoring system. Also, the contest is officially closed to new entries. Bandwagon's full, please catch another...


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Addendum, Epilogue

The topic of card bloggers retiring from their blog and migrating to social media has come up a lot lately. Let me tell you why I would never make such a move...


Friday morning I posted my most recent Sports Card Tour stop, Salt Lake City. I mentioned that Salt Lake City is home to an MLS franchise, a minor league baseball team, and a wonderful girl whom I crushed on for many years.

In the afternoon my wife took the girls to her mother's and I had the house to myself. I'll be there for the Fourth of July cookout by the time you read this, so I saw no reason to go two days in a row. I had planned on scrolling through my blogroll, leaving a few comments, and starting my San Antonio post. 

Instead I decided to check in with that girl....


My previous blog The Pedestrian Writer was a place for me to share some of my story ideas, favorite songs, life lessons, crushes, etc. Some of you have read (or written) blogs that mention attractive women - from actors and singers to sideline reporters to stars of wrestling/fight sports. I did a lot of that, too. But the one girl that really captured my heart wasn't famous.

I'm long past the phase of swooning over a girl and journaling my thoughts. And this isn't the place for that, anyhow. Let's just say that she had a light inside of her that drew me in like a moth. She had a lot of struggles in her life but managed to stay positive and fight for her joy. She was a beautiful person inside and out.

She's mostly gone from the social media haunts I found her on, and I disconnected from them - and her - some time ago. But when I re-read that line in my SLC post I decided to do something I had only done once this year. I checked her Instagram.

She's engaged.

Now I want to be clear here - I'm not jealous. I'm happy. Well, actually I'm proud.

She and I communicated for a while, but we never became friends. I'm socially awkward and terrible at navigating social media. Also I'm married, which added a layer of guilt I won't get into. This is my comfort zone - long form writing. What twenty-something female wants to read blog posts? (She did, once upon a time.)


I looked at my social media experience like it was television. Everyone has a story to tell, and you're joining them in-progress. Choose to follow along, catch up, get hooked - or don't. I was hooked on her story. She even wrote a blog post page called "My Story - From Death to Life" so I felt like I was there from Season One.

Yesterday I saw the ending. She got a better job. She just moved into a house she bought with her fiancee (in SLC). They have a little puppy. 

She has the life I always hoped she would. And they lived happily ever after....



I know that my mind would have wandered her way a lot more often in the past two years, had I not decided to write a blog about sports cards. So you won't see me on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook (and definitely not Tumblr-does anyone still use that?) ostensibly because I'm avoiding poisonous political rhetoric. But secretly? Because I don't want to run into another girl like her.



Obligatory card:

She won't be a Mele much longer.

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Until now, Sports Card Tour has kept me focused on positive thoughts and hobbies. This post doesn't belong here but I needed to write it as a final update on blog posts past and present. If you read this drivel, I'll award bonus SCT points to show my gratitude. 


Tomorrow we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming :-)


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Sports Card Tour 2018 - Salt Lake City

The next two stops on The Collector's Sports Card Tour are the last two NBA-only cities. Today we're in Salt Lake City. 

Salt Lake City is home to an MLS franchise, a minor league baseball team, and a wonderful girl whom I crushed on for many years. It was also the host city of the 2002 Winter Olympics. But we're not going to discuss any of that...

Next season will be the 40th for the Jazz in Utah. They were Western Conference champions in 1997 and 1998. I was so mad when they lost both NBA Finals to Michael Jordan and the Bulls-especially after The Shove...er, I mean The Shot.

Karl Malone and John Stockton were one of the greatest tandems in NBA history. They were teammates in Utah for 18 seasons - and on the 1992 U.S. Olympic "Dream Team."

I asked my mom to buy me a Karl Malone Fleer RC for Christmas one year, and sure enough she wrapped it in a small package and stuffed it in my stocking. Sadly, it's long gone from my collection.

True Colors is one of my favorite insert sets. I hunted for these on COMC before I truly got back to collecting NBA cards. Perhaps cards like these contributed to that commitment.

More Mailman. The middle two cards were acquired in a trade with Bo (Baseball Cards Come To Life). The bottom two cards - and all of the Panini Prizm singles you see in these posts - were sent to me by Jon (A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts). 

Until two weeks ago I had twelve cards of #12 - six base cards...

...and six inserts. However there was a single John Stockton card in the box from Brad, so now I have a baker's dozen. 

I only have one Jeff Hornacek Jazz card. Hornacek used to wipe the side of his face at the free throw line, as a way of acknowledging his kids. He also used to coach the Knicks (there's a joke about children in there somewhere but I'll let it slide.)

Shot blocker extraordinaire Mark Eaton was a Jazz star in the 80's. Darrell Griffith was one of the greatest players in Jazz history - at least according to his 1989-90 NBA Hoops card.

Early 90s Jazz, including a pair of Jerry Sloan. The Skybox Benoit was a repack pull. And speaking of repacks...

This Derrick Favors Prizm was the face card of a repack I picked out at Target a couple months ago. It was more appealing to me than the star player base cards that were showing on the other packs.

Favors also appears in my Jazz binder page, along with Ronnie Brewer and Alec Burks among others. I just saw an E:60 story about Carlos Boozer renting out his L.A. home to Prince while he was playing for the Jazz. Aside from the Hornacek Prizm, these are my most recent base cards - one page covers ten years. 

Back when Andrei Kirilenko was playing, ESPN did a story on basketball WAGs (long before VH1 tackled that subject) and I remember his supermodel-looking wife saying she expected him to mess around on the road...so she gave him a Hall Pass on the air! He declined it of course. I'm not a firearms aficionado at all, but AK-47 is a badass nickname.

Since I don't have a lot of Jazz cards to discuss I pulled out some singles from my 2015-16 Donruss set build.While scanning them I noticed something very interesting on the back... do you see it? Isn't that odd?



I don't have any (other) Rudy Gobert cards in my collection, and I don't have any Gordon Hayward base cards - unless you count this super thick Immaculate single.

I don't, btw. Thick base cards go in my relics box, waiting for me to buy thicker top loaders (The comic book store near my work only has standard size.) These were all part of the COMC 500; the Excalibur relic ($1.22) cost slightly more than the Immaculate ($1)

This Tom Chambers autograph was another COMC purchase. When I saw these Shadowbox Signatures cards I had to have one. Missed out on a David Thompson Sonics card (sold for $5) and at $3.97 this was the cheapest card of a player I recognized. Chambers was the only eligible member of the 20,000-point club not in the Hall of Fame-until Antawn Jamison joined him.

When Hayward left the Jazz I was worried that they would slip back into mediocrity and miss the playoffs. Despite the natural beauty of Utah, Salt Lake City is not exactly a choice free agent destination (the night life is kind of a joke.) Then Donovan Mitchell arrived and now the future looks even brighter for the team. 

I don't have any Mitchell rookie cards - something that must be addressed soon since he's a rising star, the NBA's true Rookie of the Year, and a Connecticut native.

Favorite Jazz player (current): Donovan Mitchell and Ricky Rubio

Favorite Jazz player (all-time): John Coltrane

Just kidding...it's Malone and Stockton, of course.

Next tour stop: San Antonio

Thanks for reading. Enjoy your weekend!


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