Happy Boxing Day

I hope everyone had a great Christmas yesterday.

Most people don't know it but I have a boxing card collection as well as a Red Sox and a Virdon collection.   So when I saw a card that Eric from Manupatches and Mustaches posted the other day I had to make him an offer for it.  

This is a 48 Leaf Boxing Card.  The perfect thing for Boxing Day.  Most probably recognize it because it looks allot like its baseball counterpart.  Even though I know that there is no possible way I will ever build this set complete I still collect it.  I haven't counted lately but I have about 10 of them.  The reason I won't ever finish it is because there is one particular card that was short-printed and last I knew there was only one reported copy of it and it sold for for $50,000 at the Boxing Hall Of Fame memorabilia show something like 10 years ago.  Even if I get all but that one a 60+ year old set is a challenge to collect. 

I scanned it as a normal sized card so everyone can see just what size it is.  This one is a little smaller than most because one side has been trimmed.

Thank you for the great card Eric.  If you ever come across anymore of them, keep me in mind.

This isn't the only boxing card I have received this year. 

The Sewing Maching Guy sent me these. 

The first gloved heavyweight championship was between these two guys.  Corbett came out the winner by knockout in the 21st round.  Back then they went until someone won.  Goodwinn also put out a Bob Fitzsimmons in this set that I still need. (Got it)  I also need the mini versions of each, if anyone out there has one. 

I know that this thank you post is a long time coming but, thanks for the cards Larry!

On the 12th Day of Christmas Manupatches & Mustaches sent to Me...

An oddball Jacoby...

This is no normal  206 Jacoby.  No it is a No# back Ellsbury.  While I never seek out variant backs I keep every one that comes my way.

It looks to me like Jacoby is standing in front of an old schoolhouse.  That or an insane asylum.  

 Here is the aforementioned No# back. 

 Here is a card for Night Owl to hate on.  Why?  Not because he hates Lester, at least that I know of, but because of the lack of hat. 

  And thank you Eric.   This isn't everything he sent.  There was something else but it has to wait for another day.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas and you all find cards under the tree.

On the 11th Day of Christmas The Diamond King Gave to Me..

 A yankee named Whitey.

Kevin of The Diamond King held and awesome contest.  I was lucky enough to win the 60s HOF lot.

This is actually the 2nd time I have had this card in my collection.  Not just the second time I have owned a 1960 Whitey Ford, the second time I have owned this particular 1960 Whitey Ford.  See I sent it to Kevin as part of the Beckett Bash.  The Beckett Bash is actually what got me entered in the contest.

This is the only vintage Ruth I have ever owned.  I know it isn't from his playing days but still cool.

This is also the only vintage Aaron I have ever owned.  The only other Aaron I have ever probably owned would have been either an A&G or a Cards You Mom Threw Out.  This is much better. 

While I am very appreciative of the cards I got they are all up for trade.  I'm not going to trade them for just anything though.  I'm limiting it to vintage only.  What I really want is a 61 Yaz but I'm open to some other vintage stuff.  I think after Christmas and all these 12 days posts I will do a vintage tradebait post. 

Thanks for the cards Kevin.  You were very generous.

On the 10th Day of Christmas Play at the Plate sent to me..

A Black Baldelli, O-Pee-Chee.

I'm sure that Brian from Play at the Plate probably doesn't remember because this was in my draft folder from September of 09.  Nothing like being 2 years and 3 months late at something.

Here is the aforementioned Baldelli.  Blogger won't let me put him in the middle for some reason.  He is a righty so I don't understand it.

I don' t remember this guy, Lee.  This was a short print card though for some reason.  Sang-Hoon has to have one of the worst haircuts in the history of the game.

This is the best card of the bunch but I couldn't figure out how to rhyme it with me.  Now that I already typed the rest of the post I realize that Gallery rhymes just fine with me and I could have put him at the top. Oh Well.

On the 9th day of Christmas Cards From The Quarry sent to me...

Some Red Sox including  a Manny..

I found this in my drafts from April.  Evidently Cards From the Quarry sent me some stuff back then that I never got around to posting.  Hopefully I sent him something in return.  If not I hope he lets me know. 

A Manny numbered 101/250.  Manny wants to come back.  I have been giving all my Cardinal fan friends a hard time by saying that the Cards are going to try to replace Albert's bat with Manny.  Manny or JD Drew actually.  They hate that.

This is a Goodwin Mini Carlton Fisk.  I really liked this Goodwin set.  The 2011 set, not so much.

 

This is actually half a card.  Now he sent me the whole thing but the other half were yankee players so I didn't scan the other half.  Even looking at a zombie eyed Buchholz is better than a yankee.  

In case I didn't tell you way back then, thanks for the cards Johnny.  If I owe you something please let me know.

On the 8th Day Of Christmas...

I got a Virdon Courtesy of Joey.

I have known Joey for YEARS.  If anyone recalls my Vince Carter Story it is the same Joey.  He doesn't have a blog but he is a long time ebay seller.  He picked up this really cool Virdon ZeeNut Virdon for me.  Now I don't know a thing about this set other than this card.  I don'e know if it was actually produced or if someone printed it up in their basement.  It is pretty cool though.  I set the scanner on 2.5" x 3.5" so that you could see that it is smaller thsn s normal card.  It is a little bigger than say an A&G mini and also a little bigger than a Kimball.  It has rounded corners so tit is definalty odd sized.  Mark's Ephemera had some questions himself about a card like this. 

http://marksephemera.blogspot.com/2011/12/oddball-earl-wilson.html

Surely someone out there knows something about these.  I have since seen another Virdon ZeeNut show up on eBay but didn't have any money to buy it.  It showed him in a yankee hat.  Whatever this thing is it is a cool card.

On the 7th Day of Chrismas Tribecards sent to me

A whole package of Oddity.

Long ago David had an oddball group break.  Not odd in how he did it, odd in the type of cards.  They were all stickers or oversized or just plain old not cards.  Above are some great big cards, a sticker, and some tattoos.  David even included a card of himself in the package. 

These are all stickers too.  Well, all except one.  One of the Boggs is off the bottom of the original box.  I with that they still did that.  That last set I can think of like that was 09 O-Pee-Cee blasters.  There may have been others but if so I don't recall them. 

In a separate package David also sent a Random Package of Kindness.  I don't remember what was in it but I kept the package to scan.   I knew I would get to it one day.  So probably 3 months after I got it I have finally posted it.  For those of you who don't know, David is perhaps the most generous blogger I know of.  There is no telling how many Random Packs and Christmas packs and even Halloween packs he has sent out.

Thank you David!

On the 6th Day of Christmas This Card Is Cool Sent To Me

A Yaz from a package of Twinkee

This card traded a few hands before it found me.  My Sports obsession had it before Ryan sent it to me.  I realized when I stared typing this (about a week before it published) that I never returned anything to Ryan for this.  I don't think I have the CC card he originally wanted for it so I sent him something else instead.  Hopefully he was happy.

Thanks Ryan.

On the 5th Day of Christmas One Out Away Gave To Me

A package of Red Sox Gypsy

The first two are both parallels.  I like how the colors are raised like a Masterpiece card.  I scanned the Minis upside down.  What he sent was a Gypsy back Youkilis and Pedrioa as well as a normal back Youkilis.  My 4 year old was helping me put them on the scanner bed and I didn't notice they were flipped. 

Thanks for the Cards Jason.  I think I sent you some stuff in return, some Masterpiece if I remember right.  If not let me know so I can make it right.

On the 4th Day of Christmas the Diamond King sent ot me.

 A bunch of all time greats including Fred Lynnee.

I know that rhyme was a stretch but it is harder for me than it should.

Our trade started with the Williams Classic Combo card.  It was part of his Beckett Bashing experiment.  I took forever sending hims somethign in return and probably ruined his experiment in the process.  I had good intentions when I made the trade though.  Hopefully Kevin liked what I sent him. 

I should have scanned the top middle Pedro by itself.  It is the best card out of the bunch.  In hand it looks great.  It isn't like any other Topps insert I know of.  It is more like a Pinnacle dufex card and I love it. 

Thanks for the cards Kevin.  Sorry It took me so long to get you a return package and hopefully you were happy with what I sent.

On the 3rd Day of Christmas Heartbreaking sent to me...

A complete Bowman Team set (mostly all scanned and posted) for all to see.

This is another package I got long long ago.  There is no better way to get a Bowman team set than all in one shot.  No opening packages of guys you never heard of and  chasing commons from people who only care about cards of 18-19 year old kids. 

Thanks Matt!

On the 2nd Day of Christmas Carl Crawford Cards gave to me...

A personalized Doerr auto for my birthday.

Yep,  I got his card way back in July around my birthday.  I'm not sure of the particulars on how he got it personalized but is is awesome just the same.  It was a great surprise and much appreciated because July was a pretty dark time at my house. 

Than you Paul for the great card.  It was a great surprise and couldn't have come at a better time.

On the 1st day of Christmas someone gave to me...

A package of cards with no Return Addressee

That is about as much rhyming you are going to get out of me.  Seriously though I did get a great package that had no note and no return address so I don't know who to thank.

Liquor cards of Okajima and Buchholz.  I'm hoping that Clay rebounds from his injury in a big way this year. 

My first 2011 Chrome cards are Refractors this year.  The Beckett is a regular and the Gonzalez is what I call an Atomic though Topps calls them something else now.  Atomic got imprinted in my brain from releases in the early 90s so that is what they always will be, Topps new name be damned.  Is anyone else as resistant to change on these as me.

Some Big Papi bling.  Another Atomic from last year and 2011 shiny diamondy sparkle card.  I'm not really sure what to call it.  I think it is supposed to be a diamond parallel but weren't the diamond cards 1/1, imprinted with diamonds, and only available on the Give-Away site.  That makes these not diamond cards.  I want to call them sparkly but that would confuse them with the gimmick sparkle cards.  Instead I have deemed these Diamond Sparkly Cards.    Either way I am happy Papi is back for at least another year.  I really hope they give him a contract for a few years though.  Some people need to stay with the club that made them famous and retire there.  That is just the way it should be <cough> Pujoles

Whoever sent these also included a bunch of others too.  A great big stack of 2011 inserts, which is great because I didn't purchase any 2011 cards.  I seem to remember someone offering up a bunch of 2011 stuff but don't remember who that was.  Whoever you are thank you for the package and please let me know what I owe you in return.

This is the first in what I plan to be a series of posts with a bunch of stuff I received during my absence.  A trade catch up if you will.

How did you stumble upon card blogging?

A few weeks ago was the 3 year anniversiry of starting this blog.  I got to thinking about how first found card blogging.  I started wondering how eveyone else stumbled into it.  For me I was reading a Globe story about the Red Sox written by Chad Finn of Touching All The Bases.  I love his writing style and lots of times he uses baseball cards in place of pictures on his articles.  I noticed he had a link to Ben Henery's The Baseball Card Blog  and I clicked it and found my first card blog.  From there I found a link to a blog called Cardboard Junkie who had a ton of links and from that day on I was hooked.  I worked out my first online trade with a blogger and then jumped into blogging myself.

So how did you find your first card blog?

I'm still here.

It has been a long time.  Months in fact since I posted.  It has been a tough year but things are starting to look up.  New home new job and slowly digging my way out of the hole I was in.  I'm not totally out of it but I can at least see some daylight. 

I don't want to be all gloom and doom but there are surely some sad things going on in sports right now.  No matter how bad things were for me they were never as bad as what some families up in Happy Valley are having to deal with.  It sucks that it happened and it sucks even more that is was my team that it happened to. 

That is not all the bad stuff either.  I won't mention what happened to my Red Sox; there has been plenty said about that already.  But yesterday was a sad day in the boxing world.  Former heavyweight champ Joe Frazier passed away from liver cancer.  People that read my blog long ago (not that there were many) know that I am a big boxing fan, I even names my son after boxers.  So I was saddened to hear about Joe. 

As far as athletes go I couldn't count on one hand people that had more heart than Frazier.  I sold off most of my boxing memorabilia earlier this year but I hung onto my Frazier auto.  (kept Ali and Foreman too)  Rest In Peace Joe, you were an inspiration to many.

I promise my next post wont be so gloomy.  Not going to promise when it happens but bright skeis are ahead.

Blue - My mood in Baseball cards.

I woke up this morning to an empty driveway.

Not even a late 90s Pedro brightens your day after finding out your car has been stolen.

The responding officer said that only about half the cards stolen here are ever found.  The rest make it to Mexico.

If I was still in MO the police report would have been in the paper.  (press - press prof)   Here it won't.

My severance ran out.

I was enjoying my time off with pay.

 I got a new job.

It is not what I want to be doing but bills must be paid.

It is a 45 minute drive to the new job.

 Now I must have the wife pick me up and drop me off. 

I'm working the night shift.

 

 My wife will now have to pick me up at 5AM in the morning.  She is not a morning person!!!

 My birthday was last weekend.

I didn't get a single card.

 I only  get my oldest son for part of the summer.

He goes back to MO next weekend. 

I haven't been getting any cards.

 My last trade package had these Topps Town Doubles in it.

Buchh is on the DL...

Along with Lester.  And Beckett left the game yesterday with a twisted knee.

Some of these cards might not even be blue!!

I'm the kind of color blind where blues and purples look the same.

I could have found some bluer cards but all these cards came from Too Many Grandersons about a week ago.  That was before the blues hit.  So I snuck a trade post in on all the anti trade post guys.  These are only a tiny sampling of the great stuff Dennis sent.  Only the blue stuff.  The rest were almost all different kinds of parallels.  Awesome stuff.  Thanks for the great cards Dennis.

Trade Bait

Long ago I made a trade with CarlCrawfordCards.  He was short on Red Sox so he sent some Crawfords as filler.  I figured that I could turn them around fairly easily.  But as it turns out the people that I would have sent Carl to don't want his cards anymore now that he is a Red Sox.  So I now need to find someone else that wants them.  Send me some offer to ajpca07 at hotmail dot com.  Or comment.  My Red Sox wantlist can be found here.