Baseball at Its Best

Last night was a beautiful night for baseball in the Mountain West. In the middle of an unprecedented heat wave, yesterday was overcast and cooler. The smoke drifting over from Oregon and California, while tragic, actually helped set the atmosphere. The smoke-filled skies helped cool things down and made for some beautiful colors as the sun set. Against this backdrop, baseball's best met at Coor's Field in the annual All-Star Game. The Midsummer Classic has been a tradition for me since I was a kid, and the reason behind one of my biggest collection focuses, All-Star Game MVPs. The All-Star Game is the single biggest MLB game of the year to me.

Except last night, for the third straight All-Star Game, I wasn't watching.

Since my boys got to be old enough to play Little League, their state tournaments have coincided with the All-Star Game every year. So while the MLB All-Stars played, I was watching this game, also played in the Rocky Mountains.

 

Didn't I tell you it was a perfect night for baseball? This is my second son, Gavin, who singled, scored, lined out to third, and grounded out to shortstop on the night. His team advanced to the semi-finals, so they have two games tonight to play for the Utah Mustang League (3rd & 4th grade) state title. I may have missed the All-Star Game, but there was nowhere I would have rather been.

But congrats to Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., who took home MVP honors and joined my list of PC players. He hit a solo home run and an RBI ground out to help the AL win (again).

Unfortunately for me, I haven't held on to every Vlad Jr. I've pulled, so these three cards are all I have outside of set builds to start my ASG MVP PC. But welcome to the club, Vlad!

Meanwhile tonight, while the professional baseball world remains quiet, I'll be cheering on the Salem Mets. It doesn't get any better than that.

Sale on Cards!

There are many places to buy cards online. Some of them I use often. Some of them I use occasionally. Some I have used once but never again. Recently, I found a new place that I tried. A TCDB member named baseballcardstoreca posted that his website was offering a sale. So I went and checked it out. The site is the same as the TCDB username, baseballcardstore.ca, and every card on the site is $.25. Except for right now. Using the promo code 2020 at checkout will make every card $.10! So I went virtual dime box digging and came away with some good stuff.

Dime box 1973s? I'll take some. I was able to score some old Cubs, and some pretty good names, too. I believe this is my first Randy Hundley card.

My mini-collections, like my Rookie of the Year collection, got a boost. I like the bright blue foil Opening Day Dontrelle Willis, but the steal of this lot is the National Baseball Card Day Aaron Judge. This is the incentive card given for purchasing $10 in packs at the store. It's a nice find for a dime, I think.

I didn't forget about my All-Star MVPs. I picked up a bunch of SP Legendary Cuts from various years for this purpose.

My All-Decade teams got some help. Here we have the 80s.

The 1990s. Well, except for Ty Law, who is a member of the All-2000s team, but his rookie cards here are from 1995, so I mistakenly put them in this photo. The Steve Wisniewski that is so washed-out is a 1995 Ultra Gold Medallion, so the entire background is gold foil.

And here, the 2000s. I like the Derrick Brooks cards I got. There were some really cool ones, like the Skybox NFLPD subset, which is embossed. The two bookend Polamalus are minis.

I also found some college uniform cards of Heisman Winners. I usually prefer college unis in this collection. The Charlie Ward is an interesting addition to my Heisman collection, as he is playing basketball on it. Despite his stellar college football career, Ward passed on the NFL in favor of a 12-year career in the NBA. Jim Plunkett may not be in a college uniform here, but I wasn't to pass on a vintage Plunkett for ten cents.

I also was able to pick up a card here and there for various set builds.

Most of my order, though, was focused on refractors. I picked up some for my refractor frankenset and some of guys I collect.

All of these go in the frankenset. I love the look of the infield dirt as a refractor on Alcides Escobar.

Here are some different types of refractors, like refractor versions and different color variations.

I've never bought any Prizm baseball, but there was a good selection of Prizm refractors on the site, so I picked a lot of them for my frankenset.

My order was mostly refractors, and all for $.10 apiece! I don't know how long the sale will be going, but I know it is still. The site doesn't have a great filtering system to find what you want, but with a little bit of searching, you can probably find a few things you want. It's worth checking out.

Secret Santa Comes with Some b(ase)b(all)cardz

One of the reasons I love the Secret Santa is that it offers an opportunity to give to and receive from people I have never dealt with before. That was the case on both ends, as I had never dealt with my giftee (Tim B., of the dormant "I Love the Smell of Cardboard" blog and current Twitter "CardpocalypseNC") and my Secret Santa. My Secret Santa this year was Mr. Stadium Fantasium, who goes by the name bbcardz in the cardsphere.

The package arrived on Monday, just two days before Christmas. Perfect timing. Inside were some unopened products and team bag of goodies.

 

The unopened products were a pack of 2018 Archives and 2019 GQ, plus a cellophane pack of 1990 Pro Set with 4 cards in it. I don't know where these would have been distributed back in the day.

I went ahead and opened these packs. The one card that stays in my collection is a GQ Wil Myers. This Coming Attraction Walker Buehler was a pretty good find, too.

When I first opened the package, I gave the cards a quick glance and then was distracted by my kids. It wasn't until I returned to them later in the week to log them into TCDB that I realized just how extraordinary this package was.

Aside from the Pro Set, there were just two other football cards included. One was legendary Reggie White, commemorating his 133rd sack to become the league's all-time leader. I didn't realize that it happened against the Bears, which makes it just that much cooler to me. The other was a 1991 Pacific Flash Card. The front of this card is a math addition problem, the back a football card. I've seen these cards before, but I discovered when I added this Ed West to TCDB that I previously didn't own any.

There were a few Cubs base cards that I didn't have. I especially like Zo making a catch in front of the Ivy.

Santa didn't kill my 1993 Hostess set needs, but he left it on life support. These cards, besides being some of the top names of the 90s, are four of the final six cards I needed for the set. I only need Gary Sheffield and Kirby Puckett to finish it off.

Javy Baez was the focal point of this package. All of these cards were new to me. Heritage Chrome cards are always cool to me. When I first looked through these cards, I pegged the Chrome as my favorite of the package. It was when I examined these next cards more carefully that I realized what I had here.

At first I thought this was a 2002 DK base card. When I flipped it over to find the card number that I noticed this:

The gold "SAMPLE" stamp. I don't know much about this Sample set, but it apparently included every card in the set. There were also silver stamps with gold logos, gold stamps with gold logos, and silver stamps with silver logos to go along with the gold stamp and gold logo. Samples are always cool to me, though.

I only bought one pack of GQ this year, but I remembered that the box toppers this year were Chromed. I didn't register at first that this shiny GQ Baez was a box topper. Very cool! The Fortune Teller minis are a great insert set, and I didn't have the Baez, so this was already a great card. Once again, it wasn't until I was trying to log it on the database that I noticed this isn't a base insert. This is an Indigo parallel, numbered 152/250. Whoa! That's a nice upgrade.

The last card in the package was this 1969 Leon Wagner. When I was logging this one, I noticed what great shape this card is in. Look at how sharp those corners are! This card is half a century old, and you could put an eye out with them! Not only that, but there's no paper loss or creasing anywhere. This is a beautiful addition of a relatively forgotten All-Star Game MVP who doesn't have too many cards out there.

So a close examination of these cards revealed a sample card, a box topper, a numbered mini parallel, and a 50-year-old vintage in beautiful condition. I'd say bbcardz knocked this Secret Santa package out of the park. A million thanks to you!

Back on the TCDB Trading Horse

I took about 6 months off from trading on my favorite trading site.  Part of my reason was the rising cost of postage made me less willing to send out trade packages.  One other, bigger, reason was that I needed to get my tradelists in order.  I was finding far too many trade proposals were coming in and I was missing a card or two that the computer said I had, but I did not.  So I went through the grueling process of going through my traders and touching each card, and removing the cards I did not touch from the list.  I'm not sure that I'm done and that my tradelist is perfect, but I feel much better about it.  In June, I resumed trading--and I completed a record number of trades this summer.  At least for me.  There were a couple of blockbusters involving hundreds of cards each, but most were PWE trades.  I've decided to compile all of those PWEs together and share them in a couple of posts.

First, let me thank these trading partners: nwcardsupplies, mtc32226, MoPack626, budler, itsjustoldcardboard, bravefan1, dsorek, joe0786, nozzlemaster, Breck19D, corozco, alh, Lyrical Kees, and T-Rex 70.

Today let's look at some baseball goodies from these various trading partners.

Most of the 2019 Cubs I own have come via trade, and you see a good bundle of them here. I love the Javy Baez inserts to lead things off.  The Cubs season fizzled out in a monumental collapse, but I can at least feel the fun and excitement of the game in some of these cards.  I'm only now realizing that I acquired two copies of the Windy City Warriors team card.  Whoops.  I can't say that's the first time it's happened, though.

Two more inserts featuring my current favorite player.  You know, four years ago--when they broke into the Big Leagues--I would have put more stock in Jorge Soler than Baez.  Soler is having a great season in his own right, but in the wrong shade of blue, while Javy is just a nightly firework display.  Of course, both were less of a sure thing than fellow rookie Kris Bryant.  That was really a pretty good rookie class for the Cubbies.  I hope the window hasn't slammed shut on all that promising youth.

It wasn't all current-year Cubs, though.  Here is another Baez insert, from last year's iteration, and a Chrome former ROY backstop, Geovany Soto.

I got my first card of reigning All-Star MVP Shane "Justin" Bieber through TCDB trades.

As well as some other All-Star MVPs.  I like the Leather and Lumber of Garret Anderson and Frank Robinson, and the 2013 Gold parallel of Michael Young especially.

Once I put Tony Oliva on my want list as a former ROY, it seemed like everyone had a card they wanted to trade me.  I don't often manage to pull off a trade for real vintage, but that's a nice 1976 there.

Same with Pat Listach.  Man, everybody had Listach crowding their tradelists it seemed.  I went from one or two cards to filling my Listach page in no time at all.

More vintage!  All of these players were Rookie of the Year stars.  Some had better careers than others, but I love these cards.  1973 Luis Aparicio may be in rough shape, but it may be the oldest card I own of a bona fide Hall of Famer.

The mid to late 90s, as always, were well-represented.  Finest and Certified in all their protective glory.

Finally, my BYU collection isn't limited to football.  I picked up some cards of former Cougs Wally Joyner, of whom I already have a decent collection, and Jeremy Guthrie, who was sorely lacking in my collection.

Thanks again to a cadre of traders on the database.  I have football PWEs and a couple of monster trades still to post.

Wolverine to Wolverine

I've been using my summer break to do some organizing around the house.  I built some shelving in my garage and finally threw out some useless junk.  I used my newfound space in the garage to move some things out of my shed (which is ridiculously small) and I can move around both spaces for the first time since we moved in almost three years ago.  The organization has extended to my card closet, of course.  As part of this organizing movement, I cleared out some space in my trader box.  In my trader box, I set aside cards that come my way that I think other bloggers might like.  This month, I sent out a few stacks of cards unannounced to a few different bloggers.

One of them, Dennis at Too Many Marios Verlanders, was quick to send back few things my way.

 

Dennis is a Cal Jr. collector, so it makes sense that he had some extras to send my way.  Surprisingly, all of these cards were needs.  I thought for sure I had the Fleer Tradition checklist and the Donruss in my Cal collection, but it turns out that I didn't.

Joining Ripken, Jr. in my ASG MVP binder is Griffey, Jr.  Dennis is still batting 1.000, as I needed all three of these, too.

He also hit my ROY binder.  I had the two Correas already, but Myers and Hellickson were new to me.

The biggest item in the package, though, was a Starting Lineup figure of former All-Star MVP Jeff Conine.  I don't collect SLU, but I do collect the cards that accompany them.

That's not to say the I couldn't put the figure to good use, though.  I still have a few of them from my childhood days, and they sit on display in my classroom.

Conine was able to join his Kenner brethren Barry Sanders, Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew, and Whitey Ford in a middle school classroom.  The guy you see on the far right is a new item, too.  It came from a stadium giveaway a couple of weeks ago for the local rookie ball team, the Orem Owlz.

Interestingly, I sent a package to Ann Arbor full of Michigan Wolverines, and ended up getting something in return that I could put in my classroom.  Our school's mascot?  Why, it's the Wolverines, of course.  From one Wolverine to another, thank you for the package, Dennis.