Opening Day

March Card Show Pickups

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One night I was checking out some of the other collector blogs and as a few of the guys were showing off their card show finds, I realized how long it had been since I had been to a card show myself. After a quick google search, I saw that there was a card show in my area that was only a few weeks away. I shot my buddy Matt from Passion for Cards a text and he said he would meet me out there.

I didn’t really have any major cards on my wish list but I knew that he has been working on his 1963 Topps set. You can check out his pickups from the show HERE. Go ahead and subscribe to his channel as well. He never lets me down in showcasing his sweet collection. It’s a MONSTER too!

The show was at a local bingo hall and featured about 25 dealer tables. Lots of vintage cards and autographed memorabilia were mixed in with the usual dime-boxes, quarter boxes, and buck-boxes. I only had a few hours so I pulled a chair out of the corner and posted up at one of the dealer’s dime-box tables. Picked up about 300 cards in total. Here are a few of my favorites.

I recently started a player collection of Rickey Henderson. These cards will help fill some gaps. You can check out a post I did on Rickey a few months ago HERE. In 1995, Topps featured Rickey in their Bazooka set. He hit .300 that year with 9 home runs and 32 stolen bases. I was happy to find the 2001 Topps Traded as it features Rickey in his Padres uniform and books for $12. Not bad for a dime. Lastly, Rickey showed up in 72 games for Boston in 2002. Leaf featured his on the base paths in their relatively uninteresting base set.

I found myself pulling more and more of the Topps Archives out of the boxes. I’ve always thought that Topps Archives was one of the more creative sets out there. Each year, the 300 card set is broken up into three different designs from the past. I’ve always liked the 1991 Topps design and anytime I can find someone from the Mets is always a bonus. Mookie looks great on the 1984 Topps design again as well. Topps really outdid themselves with the photo choice of Xander Bogaerts. This one will go into my “personal favorites” binder.

I’ve already completed my 2014 Topps Gyspsy Queen set but I wanted to add this Johnny Bench to my catcher’s collection. Same goes for the 2000 Fleer Greats card. Despite never being a set that caught my eye, I grabbed it for a dime. Allen & Ginter is a great set for signatures and some years the design strikes my eye, 2012 wasn’t really one of them but Bench looks good on this one.

I decided I would start a mini-collection of cards with the ivy-covered outfield wall in the background. I was able to add three good ones out of the dime-box. The Fleer Ultra Ray Lankford is much more vibrant in person. He is a widely underrated player given that he played most of his career in a lackluster Cardinals era. He came in at the tail end of the Willie McGee/Ozzie Smith era and was traded to San Diego just before the Pujols/Molina era. Even still, his 38 career WAR as a Cardinal is 13 more than McGee, and just 3 behind Lou Brock. Andrew Cashner’s Topps Chrome rookie card features him warming up at Wrigley. Today he can be found at Camden Yards in an Orioles uniform. Predicted to be the worst team in baseball this year, they are off to a hot start with a new GM, new manager and virtually a new 25 man roster. Leaf captured a likely force out at second for Ryne Sandberg’s base card. It’s always been a favorite of mine.

As a nine year old little league player, I volunteered to play catcher at one of the team’s first practices. Mainly because I thought wearing the equipment was cool and because Gary Carter was a catcher. The other reason was because if I didn’t do it, we probably wouldn’t have had a catcher. Our main pitcher threw harder than anyone in the league. I learned to catch the ball at all costs because if I didn’t, it was going to hurt – bad. I love cards of catchers. I love to see the changes in the protective gear and the mitts over the decades.

Three more for the Adrian Beltre player collection. Those 2018 Archives on the 1991 design get me every time. Beltre is one of the greatest third baseman of our generation. With Beltre, you have the big traditional numbers: 3,166 hits, 477 home runs, 1,707 runs batted in. You have the awards: five Gold Gloves, four Silver Sluggers, four top-10 Most Valuable Player Award finishes. And you even have an outrageous advanced statistic: 95.7 career wins above replacement, which trailed only Albert Pujols among active players when Beltre retired last year. He also hates to have his head touched. I love to watch YouTube clips of teammates trying to catch him off guard and touch his head.

The Virginia Beach/Norfolk area has been a hotbed for Major League baseball talent and I try to collect the local guys. Ryan Zimmerman graduated from the University of Virginia, was drafted by the Washington Nationals in the first round of the 2005 draft and has played for the entirety of his 15 year career. If he can stay healthy, Ryan may close out his career with 300+ home runs. I picked these up for .30 cents and realized that I had picked up the middle SP card not only once, not twice, but THREE times. Not the first time that’s happened. Ryan’s parents still live here in the Virginia Beach area and his mother used to come into my restaurant pretty frequently. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1995. You can learn more about the disease and help the cause through Ryan’s “ZiMS Foundation.”

David Wright is another local baseball star that I collect. I always said that I would never collect unlicensed brand cards like Donruss but these Wrights look so good that I had to pick them up. Wright was not on the Captain of the Mets but played 1,585 games across 14 seasons, with 1,777 hits and a .296 batting average. Spinal stenosis took him off of the field for the last two years but he remained firmly at the helm of the team from the dugout.

There is another show in a few weeks. We are getting a new driveway installed soon so the Wife has me on a budget. It’s a good thing I still have $59 in cash left over from this show.

$20 in Junk Wax

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It was a simple task really. I was supposed to go to the store and come home with some milk.

As I pulled the car back into the driveway, I realized that I had forgotten the milk. Instead, the trip to Target had yielded me this:

$19.99 will get you this

The box boasted the “World’s Greatest Card Chase”. I may even pull a “Diamond Pack” which would gain me an entry to win the “The Big Find” which according to the box would be a framed autograph and photo of Hall of Famer Cy Young.

I couldn’t have cared less about winning that card.

I just wanted the 14 packs of worthless junk wax inside the box.

It’s no wonder I forgot all about the milk right?

Inside the box was a good variety of packs. Mostly from the 90’s, a few 80’s, some Topps, Donruss, Upper Deck, Score and Fleer and just as I suspected, no Cy Young autograph which was fine by me. I’m always looking for cards to either mail off with an autograph request or add to my mini collections. Let’s take a look at a few of my favorite pulls from each pack.

(1991 Leaf) – Possibly one of the most forgettable sets of the early 90’s. You can get the entire 1991 Leaf set for about $6 these days. Leaf spotlighted the 1991 rookie crop through a 26 card “Gold” set. Bagwell, Mussina, Van Poppel, and Klesko were among those featured. This pack awarded me with one Gold Rookie – Scott Leius – but it was the card of Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes that will end up in my “Wrigley Ivy Covered Wall” mini collection. Here you can see him warming up in front of the lush ivy covered wall of Wrigley Field.

(1990 Fleer) – Another snoozer of a set from the early 90’s and also, the same cards that I see the most of at garage sales and thrift stores. Not being particularly thrilled to open this pack, I was happy to pull this Mattingly. I’ve decided to start a player collection for him and I’ve always liked cards that feature players at the old Comisky Park. You can always tell it’s Comisky from the bright yellow aisle railings in the stands.

(1987 Donruss) – It had been 32 years since these cards had seen the light of day. A testament to the sheer number of cards produced around that time I guess. I’ve heard stories of entire warehouses full of master cases of cards from the late 80’s and early 90’s. The result of dealers and collectors hoarding them with hopes of one day flipping them into boat loads of cash. Today, they sit there collecting dust with no one showing them any interest. My pack was so absolutely unremarkable that this Joe Cowley was the only one that sparked my interest. Cowley is known for the no-hitter he threw when playing for the Chicago White Sox. It would be the last game he would win in his career. Cowley now works in sales for a text message marketing company. A few years ago, my company had partnered with his company and his business card was passed along to me. I immediately recognized the name but figured it was another Joe Cowley. I ended up giving him a call one day and asked if he was the same guy. He was! Sadly, he wanted to talk business more than baseball. Of course my agenda was the opposite. Adam over at Cardboard Gods also has a cool story about Joe. Click here to give it a read.

(1989 Donruss) – Despite not pulling a Griffey Jr., Sheffield, or Johnson rookie card, I was pretty happy to pull this Rickey Henderson for my player collection. I have been meaning to upgrade the one I already had. I remember being in 6th grade when this set came out. A few of my buddies and I agreed that the design was an improvement from the 1988 Donruss set. Not only was the design much better but Donruss also increased the weight of the card stock which was nice. I particularly enjoyed the Baseball’s Best subset that came out later in the year. The Griffey Jr card is much more beautiful than his regular issue Rated Rookie. Donruss also made sure to feature an additional Rickey card as he was traded to Oakland mid-season.

(1988 Fleer) – Some people will tell you that Fleer had a print run in 1988 that was far less than its competitors but I would disagree. These cards are not only everywhere, but as ugly as they come. This pack was quite unremarkable with the exception of this Andre Dawson. Here you can see the future Hall of Famer watching a fly ball take off at Wrigley Field.

(1990 Upper Deck) – I love this card of Andy Allanson and it will go right into my catcher mini-collection. The 1990 Upper Deck set has a few fun cards to chase. The 10 card set of Reggie Jackson was popular and we all used to purchase packs with the hopes of pulling a signed and numbered Reggie card. I think this may have been the start of the modern day “chase card”. There are also a few error cards to look for. The Nolan Ryan high number card #734 can be found both with and without the “300th Win” flag on it. Ben McDonald’s rookie card #54 was printed with either the Oriole’s logo or the Star Rookie logo on the front.

(1991 Topps) – Another “Donny Ballgame” upgrade for the player collection. Topps really outdid themselves with their 1991 set as they celebrated 40 years in the baseball card business. The 1991 set features a few of my all-time favorite cards. These include Benito Santiago, Wade Boggs, Walt Weiss, and Rickey Henderson.

(1990 Score) – I’ve always liked Score baseball cards. I particularly liked their effort to include a thoughtful paragraph or two about the player on the back of most cards. The full color photo on the back was also a nice touch. This particular set’s popularity was driven by card #697 which featured a horizontal black and white photo of a shirtless Bo Jackson sporting shoulder pads and holding a baseball bat. At the time, he was a phenom on both the football and baseball fields and was starring in his own Nike commercials. He was the man. There was no Bo Jackson in this pack but I did pull this Bob Geren for my catcher mini-collection.

(1989 Topps) – The fact that this Chili Davis card is the “best” card in this pack should tell you something about the other cards. I have actually always liked the design of the 1989 Topps set. I don’t always like designs where the team name is featured without the logo but in this case it seems to work okay. Davis was a three time All Star with 350 home runs in his 19 year career. He also won three World Series. This year he will work with the New York Mets as their hitting coach. The nickname “Chili” came from a particularly bad haircut he received from his father. His classmates asked him if his dad had put a “chili bowl” on his head before he trimmed his hair.

(1991 Leaf) – Another unimaginative design for collectors to suffer through. We can be thankful for this great action shot of young future star Gary Sheffield recording a force out on Oakland’s Carney Lansford. This photo appears to be from the May 12, 1989 game between Milwaukee and Oakland. Lansford lead off the bottom of the 6th with a base hit. As Walt Weiss poked a ground ball into right field, Lansford made his way to third base. A strong throw from right fielder Rob Deer gave Sheffield just enough time to tag the bag and avoid the slide. This card will go into my double play mini-collection. (Yes, I know it’s not a double play – the shot is just too good to pass up.)

Three cards for the “Catchers mini-collection”.

(1990 Score) – The 1990 Score pack provided not only the Bob Geren above but also this card featuring Gary Carter at Shea Stadium waiting on a throw home. Score had already gone to print with Carter in his Met’s uniform for this set. He was actually a San Francisco Giant in 1990. In November of 1989 the Mets released Carter batting only .183 in fifty games.

(2018 Topps Opening Day) – Topps put together a nice Opening Day card of Salvy Perez. He would go on to be elected to his sixth All Star game last year and has won Gold Gloves in the last five seasons. This year, the Royals will not have their beloved catcher behind the dish as he will be out with Tommy John surgery for the year.

(1988 Score) – I’m always happy to pull an Ed Hearn card. He was a crowd favorite here in Norfolk when he played for the Tidewater Tides in the mid 80’s. He would not be with the Met’s during their championship season. Barry Lyons beat him out for the backup catcher job in 1986. He was then traded to the Kansas City Royals in 1987 for pitcher David Cone. A shoulder injury sidelined Hearn after only nine games into the 87 season. He would spend the next six years trying to make his way back to a major league team before he decided to hang it up. Hearn is remembered most for his personal health battles after his baseball career. In 1992 Hearn was diagnosed with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. Hearn immediately underwent a kidney transplant and was required to take several types of medication on a daily basis. Due to the debilitating effects of the disease, and mood swings caused by the medication, Hearn almost committed suicide, but was able to fight his way past it through faith and a chance request for him to give a motivational seminar. He has also been treated for skin cancer twice, undergone two more kidney transplants, and was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Despite all of the challenges and taking more than fifty types of medication on a daily basis, Hearn travels the country as a motivational speaker.

(1992 Babe Ruth Collection) – Kind of a cool set with 162 cards highlighting the life and times of Babe Ruth. I’ve seen a million of these cards over the years but was never compelled to give them a second look or attempt to complete the set. There is one listed on Ebay today for $3 with free shipping. This particular card caught my attention due to the horizontal photo of what appears to be a spring training game in Florida. After some digging, I learned that this photo was taken in St. Petersburg Florida during an exhibition game and features Babe sending one over the fence against the Boston Braves. The back features a great story by pitcher Wes Ferrell. He said that pitching against Ruth was like “looking into a lion’s jaw.” He would go on to say:

“Hell man, you’re pitching to a legend! You were nothing out there when Ruth came up. You would look around and all of your infielders were way back and your outfields have all but left town. Here you are, 60 feet away from him. You also get great encouragement from your infielders. The first baseman will tell you to pitch him outside while your third baseman will tell you to pitch him inside. After all, they didn’t want Babe to knock their legs out from under them. I used to say ‘take it easy guys, I’m closer to him than you are and I’m not worryin” — I actually was though.”