Exactly What I Asked For

 When giving and receiving gifts at the holidays we all know there is usually some room for error when you ask what someone would like as a gift.  When grandma asks what your kids want for Christmas and you say that they like Avengers that can be anything from toys to underwear.  (I had and I'm sure many others all had Underoos as a kid)  Amazon gift lists have taken most of the "not quite what I wanted" out of the gift giving season but it doesn't work well with collectables.  Telling someone I like Red Sox and Virdon baseball cards leads to junk wax and doubles.  This is double edged too when your wife says I want something from Athleta there is so much room for error, trust me!  This year me wife came to me Mid-December and asked if I already bought her present.  I told her I already know what I was getting her but I had not yet braved the crowds at the mall to obtain that present yet.  There was something that she really wanted and it was a little more that we had "extra" right at Christmas time but if I spent the money that I earmarked for her gift than she would be getting exactly what she wanted for Christmas there would just be no surprise Christmas morning.  It just so happened that there was something on eBay that had showed up the day before that I wanted but I had no "extra" to buy it so when she made her pitch, I countered with "you know there is this thing on eBay right now that would make a perfect gift for me.  

This might look like a card in the picture but it is not.  This is Bill Virdon's belt buckle from the 1951 Piedmont League All Star Game.  The picture doesn't do it justice at all.  All the detail is so sharp it feels machined and not cast; even though it was obviously cast because in 1951, with no CNC, there is no way they could have machined a whole teams worth of belt buckles all exactly the same with this much detail.  

In 51 Virdon spent the year with the yankees B team (back then B League was like the current lower A teams in MiLB).  The Norfork Tars won back to back titles and both Bill Skowron and Whitey Herzog were on that same team.  (though Whitey was only there 5 games)

For scale here it is with a regular sized baseball card. I haven't really figured out what to do with it yet, it needs displayed but it is small enough that it really need to be part of a bigger display.  I probably have enough small really cool oddball stuff to fill a shadowbox frame but I am not artsy enough to pull it off myself.