The Card That Started The Project

A couple weeks ago I was going through my Red Sox doubles looking for cards on Angels in Order's set wantlist.  In my doubles was this card.

 As soon as I saw it I knew positively, without a doubt, that this was not a double.  I don't really chase autograph cards so I have zero autograph doubles.  How it got in my doubles I have no idea.  I don't even remember getting it.  After I found the Piersall auto I also found two team bags in my doubles that was very suspect too.  The team bags I knew were the cards came from, one was a card show and one was a card store in the west valley but I don't know how they got mixed into my doubles.  I then knew I had to go through them all.  I has been many years since I went through my doubles.  I have been in Arizona for 12 years and the last time I went trough my doubles was before I moved here.  It took me about two and a half weeks of sorting almost every single evening but the project is finally done.  What a pain!  This is probably going to make me change how I store cards.  The final tally is 39.  I found 39 cards that were in my doubles and not in my collection.  Most of them were in those two aforementioned team bags but there were a few scattered here and there also.  

The reason the sort was such a pin is that I originally started putting near complete team sets in binders.  I stopped that practice years ago but those partial team sets that I originally put into binders are still in binders mixed in with the completed team sets.  After I sorted all my doubles by year I then had to get out the appropriate binder and the corresponding box of cards that had not been put in a binder yet and start comparing that to both my doubles and my checklist.  It was so time consuming!  And I don't even want to get started telling how much time I spent on just the confusing mess that is Bowman vs Bowman Draft vs Bowman Prospects vs Chrome with some of those aforementioned Bowman sets also having Chrome Inserts; plus the dates on the back of early 00s Bowman are not always the year the cards were issued.  So while I found 39 "new" cards to add to my collection I took out close to 20 Bowman cards that I had doubled up between my binders, my box, or had the same card in two different years.  

I  know it is blasphemy to many people but I am now seriously considering unbindering my whole collection.  I already did it with my "vintage" cards.  I couldn't make myself put things like a Yaz RC or Ted Williams cards from his playing days in the binder with the rest of the team set and this cause me to have a Vintage Red Sox binder with an additional Vintage Red Sox box that housed the cards that were not in the binder. I hated that the cards were not together so I unbindered all my vintage a couple months ago and I really like how they are stored now.  I top loaded everything up to 1979 and then team bagged each top loader because I hate scratched top loaders.  I made a label for every year and I put that label on some of those non rigid tall top loaders? I never saw the point in those flimsy top loaders and I just threw them away when I acquired cards in them.  To me they were always inferior and people just used them to save a few cents on top loaders plus they are too tall for a card box so they are also inconvenient to store.  But too tall also means that they stick up about an inch taller than the top loaders and perfectly display my year labels.  To overcome the inconvenient tallness, I got graded card boxes instead of regular card boxes so that everything fits with the labeled dividers.  I am really liking it and I think I am going to do the rest of my collection the same way, minus top loading and team bagging every single card.  Yes I will probably still use some top loaders on certain rookies and insert cards but not everything will go into a top loader like I did with my vintage cards.  I am on the fence if I will penny sleeve every non vintage card before I box them.  Right now I am leaning towards the penny sleeve but when I see how many penny sleeves I will need to buy I might just balk at it.

I now have all my doubles sorted by year.  I just need to find some Red Sox collectors that have want lists to fill because it will be so easy now.

Card Package From Night Owl

Right after my PWE from Tom I got a mailer from Greg at Night Owl cards.

First up is a batch of 2025 Heritage.  To me this is the worst year of Heritage ever.  I can't put my finger on it but it doesn't give me any 1976 Topps vibes at all.  It has the two colors at the bottom and the little cartoon but for some reason it just doesn't have the nostalgia factor that any other Heritage product had.

You can't tell from the scan but these are no ordinary 2024 Heritage these are all of the mini variety.  I had zero 2024 Heritage minis before this mailing.  It has been surprising how little I have missed Devers since the trade.  He went from my favorite current Red Sox to virtually forgotten about in no time.

In all the thousands and thousands of Red Sox cards I have this is my fist Laughlin.  I have seen them at shows before but always found something else to buy instead.  The set wasn't even listed on my checklist until this card came. 

This Hostess Fred Lynn was my favorite card of the package.  How can you not love an almost 50 year old food issue.  For some reason most of my Hostess sets are complete or really near complete except for 1977.  This is just my third of eight Red Sox in the team set.

 Like Tom in my past post This mailing completed a team set for me.  1987 Hygrade is now complete.  If you would have asked me a week ago if it was complete I would have said yes even though it was two cards short.  If I had seen them in a box of cards I would have automatically said I already have those and went right past them.  Somehow they fell through the cracks in my collective brain.  

Major Happenings and An Angelic PWE

 I took a longer than expected break.  I made a bitter/sweet trip to Eastern Tennessee.  My oldest daughter graduated high school this year and decided on UT as her college of choice.  Of all my kids I was always closest with my daughter.  All those long hours of driving in the car to soccer practices and games all over the country gave us more time to bond than any of my other kids.  I spent two weeks driving her stuff across the country and getting her set up in her new place.  (set up means putting furniture together and staying out of the way.)  Then there was the long drive home alone.  I did listen to the radio broadcast if every Red Sox game during my trip and it was nice for them to go on that win streak right before the break.  I just hope it didn't kill their momentum.  

I came home to a PWE from Angels in Order.  It wasn't totally unexpected, he had emailed me for my address right as I was leaving town.  

His email said something about it not being much but little did he know it made a big impact, both on my collection and myself as it was a nice thing to come home to after the long "not vacation trip".  These two Minor League cards finished off my 19 Line Drive AA Red Sox team set.  

This 1992 Classic Best card of Tony Scheffield knocked of a team set for me also.  Like Fox and Randle above Scheffield never made it into the majors.

This Carlos Quintana card is the entirety of the 1989 CMC All Star Red Sox team set.  This also makes the first time I completed three team sets from one mailing. (that wasn't three complete team sets bought and paid for from the same eBay seller)  I don't even think I have had a COMC order that finished off three team sets before.  

My early 90s collection is riddled with Frank Rodriguez cards.  He played nine games for the Red Sox in 1995 before being traded for Rick Aguilera in July.  This was the first of seven seasons spent in the majors. 

When trying to figure out what to write about this 1992 Red Sox prospect I found out that there has never been an MLB player named Boo.  Lots of Bos but no Boo, though there was a former Red Sox named Dave Ferriss that evidently was nicknamed Boo who has a museum at Delta State University.  

Even with those three finished off sets this was my favorite part of the package.  Six 1982 Fleer Stamps.  Luckily Google image search is a thing because I would have struggled with putting a year on them otherwise.  The stamp portion of my Red Sox collection is severely lacking. 

The Yaz is really different.  I can't think of a single card that is a picture of someone posing for a picture.  

Thank you for the mail day Tom is was much appreciated and a heck of a pick me up for an otherwise terrible summer.  I will have a return package coming your way this week.