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.  

Trade Bait Pays Off

Last month I offered up some Pirates stuff as trade bait.  Roger wanted some of it and a quick trade was worked out. 

Roger said he didn't have much off of my want list but he had a two Hostess I needed.  Not only did I need them but they finished off my 1976 Hostess Team Set. 

I thought all I was getting was the two hostess cards.  But Roger threw in some extras. My original assumption was since it says he as an All Star in 1964 that this would be a 1965 coin.  But it turns out that it is actually a 1964 coin.  This must have come out of the high number series for the All Star game to have already been over. 

This second coin was even harder to figure out.  It looks brand new.  The Stuart coin above has some scratches and it looks like a 1964 coin should but this one looks like a more recent coin, like it came out in the 1980s or 1990s.  I had to do one of those Google image search things to figure out that it was a 1971 Topps Coin.  I didn't even realize there were 71 Topps coins and this prompted me to add them to my want list.  

I threw in some extra Pirates stuff when I shipped his package but I don't think I added enough extras for the vintage coin throw ins.  Thanks Roger, I am going to get some more stuff sent your way in the next week or so. 

 

it's A Small World

 Anyone that has done much trading amongst other blogs knows about a small town in upstate New York called Watertown.  When I started the blog in 2008 one of the first places I sent cards was Watertown and I have been sending them there periodically ever since.  Fast forward a few years and someone I knew got married to a girl in North Carolina and a couple years later decided to move to his bride's hometown, Watertown.  The total number of people I knew in the state of New York was two and they both happen to live in the same town of 13,000.  This week I completed a transaction on Facebook with a guy named Matt and this showed up.

There is that city again, small world?   

First off some Pedro cards from 1998.  My late 90s and early 00s want list are filled with regular base Pedro cards I need.

90s and 00 Nomar cards are the same way.  I have a theory for this.  The hobby went into a lull in the late 90s.  At that time tons of people collected Nomar and Pedro; even if they didn't outright collect them they wouldn't have been thrown in with the commons they were sequestrated with "the good cards" even if they were base cards. My theory is a bunch of people stopped collecting cards in this time period and just put them away in a closet/basement.  All those Pedro and Nomar cards are just sitting around waiting to be let back out into the collecting world.

Mo Vaugh is a little like that also but not nearly to the same extent.  I see Mo cards a whole lot more often than I do Pedro or Nomar.  That Donruss Preferred Mo is one of those annoying SP cards tacked onto the tail end of a set.  

It wasn't just 90s cards I picked up from Matt I also got some 2020s stuff including this Donruss Unleashed Mayer card that looks WAY better in hand than it scanned.  

Most of what I got was Panini cards.  Panini seems to make more parallels than Topps and a lot of what I got was parallels. I got lot of base too though.  When I started just outright buying team sets a few years ago I quickly noticed that there are not a lot of people selling team sets for panini products.  I am not sure why that is.  Maybe it is the no logos or maybe Panini buyers are more about the inserts and parallels and the base cards are deemed useless.

This card sure is different today than it was a week ago.  The best batter on the team is now on the Giants.  Heart of the City to persona non grata just like that.  To me it feels like a huge mistake to trade of Devers but I've got my fingers crossed it can turn out like the Nomar trade of 2004.  This card is another card that looks totally different in hand.  I would go as far as to say this is one of the very best looking cards, if not the best looking card, I have seen put out in many years.  It is a refractor and the skyline and water just pop perfectly.  

Thanks for the cards Matt and if anyone else runs into him he gets a recommendation as a good seller from me. 

Beggars Can t Be Choosers

 I picked up a Dave Roberts autograph for my 2004 Red Sox Autograph project.  I am trying to do this project on a budget. There is a single Certified Dave Roberts autograph on a Red Sox card.  It is from 2018 Topps Archives Fan Favorites.  There is one on eBay but it is $200 and I'm not giving $200 for it.  So I settled for an uncertified 2004 Upper Deck Update autograph.  

Dave Roberts steal was one of the most memorable things from the 2004 ALCS.  But as trade deadline pickup and not signing on for 2005 there are very few Dave Roberts cards in a Red Sox uniform.  And oddly to me, no cards of his stolen base.  (the aforementioned 2018 autograph is him scoring the tying run after that stolen base.) 

Also, how weird is it that the only Upper Deck Red Sox card of him came out in 2005 Update.  Not 2005 regular Upper Deck, 2005 Upper Deck Update.  When the Red Sox didn't sign him he played the the 2005 season with the Padres so I would have thought for the Update set he would have been on a Padres card.

COMC Delivery Post 4 - Knocking Out The Rest

 The is the last of my COMC delivery.  It is something dear to me that not many else collect, boxing cards.  These are all 1951 Topps Ringside.  Once I finished 1948 Leaf boxing (minus the Graziano which I will never own because it is more rare than a T206 Wagner) I focused my vintage boxing on the Topps 1951 Ringside set.  

Tony Canzoneri is a former champion that I never heard of.  All of these guys fought way before I was born but I have normally at least heard of the champions before. No this guy though.

Every so often I do a COMC search for 1951 Ringside boxing cards and sort it by price.  Then I buy all the cheap ones I do not have yet.  It works our pretty good, I get a handful of them every shipment.  I know that one of these days though I am going to have to bite off going after some of the big names like Lamotta, Baer, Wolcott, etc.

At 2x3 these cards are smaller than the current cards.  I find it odd that they didn't make them the same size as 1951 Topps Baseball.

It is kind of hard to see but this card as a perforated edge at the bottom. Some of the cards were issued one for .01 or a two card panel for .05.  They don't seem to carry a premium for the perforation.  Oddly I have never seen a two card panel of them that hasn't already been separated.  

The backs of these 1951 Ringside are some of my favorite backs of all time.  It is the glove that does it for me.  

COMC Delivery Part 3 - A New Old Virdon

Topps Buybacks suck for Player Collectors.  The Heritage ones are not so bad because there is the potential of like one per year.  But in 2014 when Topps started adding buybacks to everything it got messy quick.  Topps didn't issue any print runs or anything they just stamped a bunch of cards 75th Anniversary and us collectors find what we can find.  For 2014 Buyback Virdons I have:

• 1958
• 1959
• 1961
• 1965
• 1973
• 1976
• 1978
• 1979
• 1980

The one that came in the COMC shipment is the #147 1976 Astros Team Bill Virdon

Do I have all the 2014 Buybacks now?  Who knows?  Potentially there are 60,62,63,64 (x2). 72, 73 Variant, 75, 77, 81, 83, and 84 cards that were stamped with the 75th logo on them but until they show up there is no telling if they were even made.  They did the same thing in 2015 and 2016 just using different logos.

COMC Delivery Part 2 - 2004 Red Sox Autos

A continuation of my latest COMC order.

When I started this project I was certain I already had a Damon autograph card.  I was sure I had a 2005 Cracker Jacks auto of him.  It turns I only had a Cracker Jack game used card not an autograph.  This Tier One auto was a better deal than anything I could find on eBay.  

This may just be a placeholder because he isn't in a Red Sox uniform.  But there has never been an autograph card of him with the Red Sox so unless I do a TTM auto I am stuck with this one.  With the grey uniform it probably wouldn't even stick out that he is in a Tigers Uniform instead of the Red Sox.

COMC Delivery Part 1 - Errors

I saw that people are having to wait a long time on their COMC orders.  Evidently I'm lucky though because I requested shipment on 6-3 and got my order on 6-9.  It was a very small order though.  I am going to break it up into a couple posts.

If you thought from the title COMC screwed up my order that is not the case,  Everything I ordered came in.  Part of what I ordered were Bill Virdon Printing Errors that I had never seen before.

Before I get to the errors this is what a 1979 TMCA The 50s #100 Bill Virdon should look like.  It is in color but just barely.  Now to the print errors.

As you can see this card lacks all color on the front but it does have a normal back to it. I actually like this better than the original.  The original looks like it was colorized after the fact.

This second error has the blue from Russ Meyer's card on top of a black and white version of Bill Virdon.  For whatever reason it has a blank back.  

This one is really screwy.  It has all the color but black from #161 Roger Maris superimposed on top if Virdon's back and white photo.  The back has an upside down #162 Bob Cerv superimposed on top of a regular Bill Virdon back.

When this shipment came in I logged into COMC to see when I requested the shipment because it came so fast.  I did a Virdon search and there are more Virdon printing errors from this set.  I skipped all the ones that were only back errors and bought the one that had a front error.  This is a yellowized version of the 79 TCMA card.  It has a normal back. Makes me wonder if a blue and a red one will pop up some day.

I Did It Too

Recently Night Owl posted about picking up some 52 Topps Dodgers.  I did kind of the same thing though mine was a Red Sox.

 He got a better deal than I did as mine cost $8.01 on eBay to his $5.  $8 was perfectly acceptable to me. This card has no creases but there are no corners on Walt either. That is perfectly acceptable for any 52 Topps in my collection. 

I have totally ignored the back variations of 52 Topps, so much so I almost forgot they existed.  When Night Owl mentioned the back variation I thought to myself, "Oh yeah, that was a thing" otherwise I don't think it would have register with me.  But 52 Topps has always been my least favorite vintage Topps set.  I just don't get the appeal.  It is the first Topps set, but not really the first Topps set, I just don't get it.  But I got this one.  There are still three more Red Sox in the low numbers that I need to grab but I'm not after them, I only pick them up when they fall in my lap for a low price.  

I Need An Otriz For My Autograph Project

I am planning on getting 20 autographs of 2004 Red Sox players and putting them in a wall frame from Michael's. I have decided on the following 20.

• Aaroyo 
• Bellhorn 
• Damon 
• Embree 
• Foulke 
• Lowe 
• Pedro 
• Mientkiewicz 
• Millar 
• Mirabelli 
• Mueller 
• Myers 
• Nixon 
• Ortiz 
• Manny 
• Roberts 
• Schilling 
• Timlin 
• Varitek 
• Wakefield 

I still need six cards to complete this.  

Mark Bellhorn

Pedro Martinez 

Doug Mirabelli 

Mike Myers

Dave Roberts 

Curt Schilling 

Besides those six I want and extra three cards to complete my frame because:

For Arroyo and Ortiz I only have horizontal cards. And for Doug Mientkiewicz I only have a twins autograph.  I posted about trading for the Arroyo today I'm posting about the Pappi. 

I have this 2009 Topps Finest Autograph but like Arroyo is horizontal instead of vertical.  Will anyone out there swap Ortiz autographs? 

Doug Mientkiewicz, Mike Myers, and Dave Roberts in a Red Sox uniform are all going to be a problem.  None of them ever had a certified autograph in a Red Sox uniform. It's hard to believe the guy that caught the last out and the guy that made the steal were never issued a Red Sox autograph.  There are actually very few cards of them in a Red Sox uniform at all.  I may have try the TTM route which I haven't done since I was about 12. (Edit... Roberts has a Red Sox autograph in 2018 Topps Fan Favorites but the only one I see for sale is 200) 

Does Anyone Have An Arroyo Autograph For Trade??

I started a new project.  I am going to fill one of those 20 card frames that go on a wall with autographs from the 2004 Red Sox.  I plan got them all to be in a Red Sox uniform and all of them to be vertical cards. I am like 70% of the way there already.  A few are going to be expensive like Pedro and Schilling but I will get there eventually.  That said, I need a Bronson Arroyo autograph.  Well, a different Bronson Arroyo autograph.

I have this licensed Upper Deck autographed card but the frame holds the cards vertically so I would prefer a non horizontal card. I would happily trade this for a vertical Arroyo if anyone has one. 

I have this licensed SP autograph and it is vertical like i need but it is so badly faded that you can hardy see the autograph. Take sucks because it's serial numbered even. It kind of defeats the purpose of 20 autographs of the 2004 World Series team of your can't see the auto so I'm looking for another one.   I would throw this in with the other auto for a vertical Arroyo autograph. 

Another blogger sent me this card more than 10 years ago.  It's been so long I don't even remember who sent it to me. I don't remember if they got it as a TTM or of they got it at a concert he was playing. Either way it's a book card just because it was produced by him, for him.  It's still horizontal though so I can't use it in the frame but I do plan to keep it. 

If anyone has a vertical Arroyo autograph to trade please let me know. 

King Features Oddball Virdons

One of my more recent purchases are two Bill Virdon caricatures from King Features Syndicate.  I don't know much about them, other than King owns Popeye, Beatle Bailey, and Betty Boop.  They also sell comics to newspapers.  Considering they deal with newspapers, Night owl probably knows more about them off the top of his head than I can find out in hours searching Google.  

I am guessing this is from 1977 as it mentions his first full season as Astros manager.  This isn't a clipping out of a newspaper it is more of a proof that would have been sent to a newspaper.  The ebay auction I bought it from said it is from the Estate of the cartoonist, Alan Maver who passed away in 1984.   It is on semi glossy paper and is 4.5x6.75.

I am guessing this one was from 1981.  The text mentions leading the race for manager of the year and 1981 was the year he won it for the Astros.  This one is a little bigger coming in a 5x7.75 and also comes from the Alan Maver Estate.

While those two were new to me, I already had two of them from previous purchases.  

The text blurb mentions the Astros being 89-73 the last season so that means this came out the following year 1980.  It is the smaller 4.5x6.75 size.

This is from early in the 1975 season, before the yankees released him for Billy Martin.  It is back to the larger 5x7.75 size like the 1981 Astros picture above.  It is just the wrong size for any type of page and creates a cluster for me. 

I have to store it in a way oversized 8x10 page so it looks ridiculous in my binder.  My non card binder is sorted by team and then by page size.  So it starts out:

• Cardinals four per page
• Cardinals three per page
• Cardinals two per page
• Pirates four per page
• Pirates three per page
• Pirates two per page
• Same with the yankees
• Same with the Astros
• Same with the Expos

Because the pages are a half an longer I have all the 8x10s pages together in the back, again sorted by team.  Right now since these items "feel" like a smaller item they are next to the two card pages and not with the 8x10s.  ( there are a few oddball Team Issues that fall in this same category)  I don't really like that but I also don't want them in with the 8x10s either.  I'm considering braking my 6" non card binder into five separate binders, one for each team he was with.  Then things in this oddball size could live between the two card pages and the 8x10s.  However that leaves me with what do I do with the three oddball 8x10s I have from when he was a Minor League Manager with the Mets.  Three 8x10s don't justify a sixth binder.

For now I am probably going leave them alone and let them be oddballs in the binder even though I don't like that the pages don't line up. If I get a few more things in this odd size I may make the multi-binder switch.  Another half inch or so of pages will force me to multiple binders anyway so I might just wait until then.