Cardbarrel Mailday part 1

Some housekeeping notes before I get to my Cardbarrel mailday...

• I'm working on a list of 10 Things I Like (that most of you don't) which should be ready this weekend - unless I can't come up with ten things to list. 
• I also wanted to do a list of retired PCs based on a Free Stuff gift from Rod, who has been giving away cards daily on his blog Padrographs. 
• I'm feeling all this generosity around the blogs and have decided to do a Free Stuff Friday every week until May 1st. At that time I will ship out all your PWEs. 

This is going to be a fun week for me as part of my cardboard stockpile is scheduled to trickle in each of the next four days. Today's haul was a 189-card order from Cardbarrel.

Fifty-five of these cards are for set builds. I've sunk more money into 2018 Stadium Club than I should have, but there's no turning back now. I'm just 22 cards away from completion.

Nearly all of my set building projects are completed so I decided to start some new ones. I've got between 90 and 100 cards of these three - all of which are low-end, 200-card sets. 

There are 14 Red Sox in 2016 Topps Bunt, over 14% of the set. I now have all of them. 

Not counting set fillers I added eleven new Red Sox cards to my collection (not shown: 1982 Donruss Dwight Evans and 2020 Topps Heritage Rafael Devers & Eduardo Rodriguez)


The main reason for this order was to fill some holes in my new All-Time Teams frankenset. Here are some new additions from the rest of the American League:

The AL East was not a priority for me; only three of these will go in the All-Time Teams binder. (Not pictured: Roy Halladay 2006 Ovation - I missed it at first and didn't feel like re-scanning.)

By contrast I added eight new Indians to my collection. I'm just four players away from completing this All-Time team: Addie Joss, Sam McDowell, Steve Gromek, and Jim Hegan.

In some cases I picked multiple cards of a player I needed. In some cases I picked new cards of a player I already had in my collection. 

And in some cases I picked cards of players who are not on one of my All-Time Teams.

The Athletics were well-represented. I picked another Paul Lindblad because I had a feeling the 1967 Topps single would have a condition issue. It was the oldest and most expensive card in this order at eighty cents. I took a chance because I wanted a Kansas City card on the A's page.  

Why not sprinkle some O-Pee-Chee into this set? There's a couple more on the NL side, too.

Some Seattle stars including Ichiro in action and my man Yuni Betancourt.
  

Some Astros who weren't cheating (and Andy Pettitte.) I added the Brewers since they were once an AL team and I've got more NL cards to show off. 

Okay, fine, here's the Halladay - just so every team is represented :)


Thanks for reading! 



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Mr. Tiger

Tigers legend Al Kaline passed away today at age 85. I'll leave it to Dennis or another Tigers fan to discuss the details of his Hall of Fame career. My Kaline stories are all related to my late father in-law Bob, who we all called 'Pop'. 

"Mr. Tiger" was Pop's favorite player, and he often told me stories about watching Tigers games on TV or listening to the World Series while he was fixing helicopters during the Vietnam War. Pop didn't have any baseball fans in his family, so he shared his appreciation for Al Kaline with me. He told me about Kaline going straight to the majors at age 18, without playing any minor league ball, and he knew that Al won a batting title at age 20.

Pop collected cards as a kid; he completed the entire 1957 Topps set and saved it in a toy box (wrapped in rubber bands of course) until one day his mother threw out all the toys he hadn't cleaned up - including all of his cards!

My wife collected hockey cards but her brothers hadn't collected baseball cards after about 1992. Pop took an interest in my collection and decided he wanted to collect Tigers again. Specifically Al Kaline cards. I was thrilled to have another collector around, so I gave him a 1965 Topps Kaline card.

Not his card; I don't have access to his collection.

When we went to the East Coast National in 2009 Pop was on the hunt for two cards: a high-grade copy of Kaline's 1968 Topps card for his Tigers team set, and an affordable copy of his rookie card. Pop finished his '68 Tigers team set (and later a 1984 Tigers set) but didn't find a 1954 Topps Kaline RC in his budget. 


I started to pick up some Kaline cards on my own, initially for my father in-law. After he passed away I kept collecting Kaline as a way to remember him. Here are my six favorite cards of #6:

I doubt I'll ever finish the 1964 Topps Giants set but It's a joy to have a jumbo-sized Kaline card in mint condition. 

I had no idea that there was an Al Kaline card set until a couple years ago. Pop would have appreciated this for sure.

Pop's pursuit of the 1968 Topps Tigers team set in high-grade influenced me to pick up as many mid-to-high grade copies of 1956 Topps singles as I could find. Naturally, I had to have a clean copy of Kaline.

This '53 Bowman style card was a VIP promo at the 2015 National. I came across this gem at the card show in Connecticut a couple years ago. After picking out a relic and an auto I skimmed through another box and picked this out. The dealer gave it to me as a freebie for my $10 purchase.

 

I've shown this on the blog before; this was back when I busted multiple boxes of Sweet Spot. Pulled a Bobby Richardson auto out of a retail tin and a Chien-Ming Wang auto out of a hobby box. A couple years later I ordered a discounted box on Dave & Adam's, which yielded this beauty. It's one of my all-time favorite pack-pulled autographed cards.

This card is on its way to me, but I'm not going to wait until it's in-hand to count it among my favorite Kaline cards. The image on this card can be seen at the conclusion of the video on ESPN. 



Thank you, Mr. Kaline. Rest in peace.





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Dreaming of.. cards?

Last night I was compiling my Frankenset wantlist when I fell into a bit of a wormhole.

I've got a bunch of these Galasso Glossy Greats cards from a random flat-rate box I bought on eBay. As I was cataloging the Chicago White Sox All-Time Team I lingered on the back of the cards:

I read a Wikipedia page and a couple of forum postings about Galasso and the mail-order business she and her husband once had. Then I decided to type the address into Google Maps and see what's there today.

It appears to be a house (I'm not certain; 75th St. comes up as Bay Ridge Pkwy.)  But in my dream it's something different...

I climb up the stairs of the nearest subway stop on a bright, sunny day. The streets are humming with people. I cross a wide intersection to a rounded curb. I check my notes. 

That's it!

A grand building appears before me. This is the Renata Galasso store, it has to be! 

The excitement pours through me as I swing open the door and step into...

..a convenience store. I'm disappointed for about five seconds. Maybe the card store is upstairs?  It's at that moment that I spy a few packs of 2019 Topps hanging on a rack. 

I pull off a pack and discreetly open it (why would I do this?!) There are only four cards inside, but one of them is a Legends variation of Pee Wee Reese. And it's autographed. 

In my dream, the Reese SP has the photo from the Galasso card, not the actual photo from the 2019 Topps card. Also, Reese has been dead for over 20 years. Pretty sure he didn't sign any 2019 cards.

I re-seal the pack.Then I grab a bottle of Mountain Dew and some food stuffs. I pay for my purchases and mention something about the Galasso store. Honestly I don't recall who gave me access to the building but the indication was that no one knew if the store was there but I was welcomed to look around. 


Once upstairs I'm at the foot of a long hallway covered in burgundy carpeting. Closed doors on either side. It's a Saturday; no one is here. The doors are unmarked. 

I open a door, nothing interesting. I open another. And another. Offices. They're all offices. Very basic - a phone here, a computer there. No brand names, no corporate logos - and no cards. 

It's getting dark. I'm getting frantic, opening drawers left and right. Surely there has to be some cards around here..



Have you ever had a dream about buying (or searching for) sports cards?


Thanks for reading!


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Free Stuff Friday - All-Time Teams exclusive

Thank you to everyone who read and commented on the All-Time Teams series. If you see your name listed below, please claim up to ten of the cards pictured in this post. List your claims in the comments (first come, first serve) and let me know if you would like me to hold your cards until after the Covid-19 crisis is over or ship them ASAP in a PWE.

Billy (Cardboard History)

Bo (Baseball Cards Come To Life!)

Brett Alan (no blog)

Brian (Collecting Cutch)

Brian (Highly Subjective...) 

Bulldog (Nothing If Not Random)

Dennis (Too Many Verlanders)

Elliptical Man (no active blog?)

Fuji (The Chronicles of Fuji)

Greg (Night Owl Cards)

Gregory (Nine Pockets)

Henry (Cardboard Greats)

Jon (A Penny Sleeve...)

Julie (A Cracked Bat)

Matt (Diamond Jesters)

Mike (Not Another Baseball Card Blog)

Rod (Padrographs)

Shane (Shoebox Legends)

Tom (Waiting 'til Next Year)

Trevor (Bump and Run Football Cards)

Get ready for a lot of scans. Mostly baseball, but some football and hockey at the end:

Football:

Hockey:
 please note the first five are well-loved

I might do an "open" Free Stuff Friday at the beginning of May with some basketball cards and more from these sports. Until then, thanks as always for reading! Have a great weekend, and take care out there!


 

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My 100,000th card!!

It's finally here - the 100,000th card in my collection!

Can you guess what it is? Here are some hints:


It is a baseball card.
 




Of a Hall of Famer..


 



In his "sunset" season..





Give up? It's the one and only..








 ...Phil Niekro:

Just kidding! This is not my 100,000th card (I'm still stuck on 98,000 or so.) This is my entry in Matt's April Fools Day Bat-Around prank. By the way..

Did you know that Matt Batts

never..

ever...

ever bats?

This is true: Matt Batts played 546 games over ten seasons and didn't get to bat once.

April Fool! Obviously Matt Batts was allowed to bat, I just thought it was interesting that he was never shown holding a bat on any of his Topps or Bowman cards.



Thanks for reading!



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