Some Recent Additions

I've been somewhat absent here over the past couple of weeks, but it's not because I haven't had any time for my hobby.  I've actually had a decent amount of hobby time, but have been spending it organizing and condensing my collection and my home office/card room.  Here are some cool cards that I ran across, scanned and added to my organized collection proper during that process...

Still chugging away on these '72-73 O-Pee-Chee hockey high number WHA cards.  Tough little buggers, but I've got another trio to share today, starting with Reg Fleming of the Chicago Cougars!  You really have to question what the folks at O-Pee-Chee were doing with photograph selection and cropping here, but since I'm trying to complete the entire WHA portion of this set, I needed a copy of this card regardless.

Before the Edmonton Oilers, there was the Alberta Oilers.  They were the final stop in a lengthy professional hockey career for Val Fonteyne, who began playing in the NHL all the way back in the 1950s!  If you look closely, there's a giant crease running across this card, just below Val's shoulders.  Do I care?  Not in the least.  This is a perfectly fine, visually appealing example for my little set.

Last but not least, Murray Hall of the Houston Aeros.  The bright blue of the Aeros gear, combined with the jarring hot pink background, really makes this card tough on the eyes.  Murray broke into the NHL in the early '60s with Chicago, and played in just about every game of the first four seasons of Houston Aeros hockey in the WHA.

There are a total of 51 of these WHA cards at the tail end of the '72-73 O-Pee-Chee checklist.  With this trio in hand I'm now up to 21 of them in my collection, with an even 30 left to go.  I think I still have a small handful in my "to be processed" box, but probably only enough to get me to the halfway point or so.  Next year I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to track down the final couple dozen.  It won't be easy, but this is one set I absolutely plan to finish someday.

Next up, a trio of 1957 Topps baseball singles that I picked up in a local antiques shop at least a couple of years ago now.  While I'm not really pursuing the '57 set with that much vigor, I couldn't pass up Gus Zernial's pythons holding not one, but three bats.  Great image on this one, a fantastic look at the Athletics' elephant shoulder patch as well.

Don't really know much about Dave Pope, but I like this simple portrait shot.  I feel like this particular Cleveland Indians cap, with Chief Wahoo behind the large C, isn't one you see all that often.  Maybe that's just me, though.

Rounding out the trio of '57 Topps cards is this Bob Grim.  Picked this one up because you just don't miss a chance to grab '50s Yankees cards when the price is reasonable.  If I someday get serious about a '57 Topps set pursuit, I'll be glad to have this card already crossed off of my list.

I picked this one up at the same shop as the '57s, because like many collectors I'm a sucker for rookie cards of HOFers.  It was only 75 cents, so I just couldn't leave it behind.  Sadly, I returned to this antiques store a month or two ago to quickly grab a birthday present for my wife, and noticed their card selection was all but gone.  Glad I grabbed what I did when I did, I suppose.

Switching topics, one of my favorite things to do on cold, winter evenings when my wife has fallen asleep or is watching a Netflix show, is to browse Sportlots and put together a cheap order.  Many sellers offer bargain shipping via PWE if you pick up four cards or less, so I enjoy putting these together.  It's nice to find surprise cards in the mailbox alongside bills and junk mail, especially when I can often assemble a PWE for just a couple of dollars shipped.

Here are the contents one such package that arrived just a couple of weeks ago...

Started off with this 2019 Topps Heritage Purple Refractor of my man Xander Bogaerts.  Aside from the fact that I'm always in search of new Xander cards for my collection, I generally enjoy the Purple Refractors from Topps Heritage each year.  Scooping this one up for less than a dollar was very satisfying.

After Xander, and now that Mookie Betts has moved on, Rafael Devers is my favorite player to collect on the Red Sox.  With this 2017 Bowman Prospects yellow parallel counted for, I'm up to 48 unique cards of Devers in my collection now.  I have quite a few others in my COMC to post chest as well.  I'd like to get up to around 100 or so cards of the young star at some point, but I'm not in a serious rush.  He's at times inconsistent in the field, but his bat is so good that I think he has a shot to become a legitimate MLB star.  Don't forget, he led the American League in doubles and total bases during the last "normal" season in 2019.

For now, this one checked the box as far as my love of colorful cardboard and, like the Xander Heritage Purple Refractor, was less than a dollar.  Not too bad for a pre-rookie card parallel of one of the game's best young hitters.  Speaking of which...

...I wanted to find two other cards from the seller's inventory to go with the Bogaerts and Devers, since as I mentioned the shipping was the same for four cards as it was for a pair.

I found a couple of cards of one of my favorite young non-Red Sox players, Kyle Tucker of the Astros, available for pocket change.  Kyle doesn't seem to be as appreciated yet among the national collecting base as some other young stars like Ronald Acuna Jr and Fernando Tatis, Jr, which is great for me as his cards are still very attainable.  I paid 38 cents for this 2017 Bowman Prospects yellow parallel.

I'm hoping Kyle, who is still just 23 years old, can get a couple of 25/30-HR, 100-RBI seasons under his belt soon.  If so this will be a great pick-up in retrospect, if not I certainly didn't break the bank on it.  Pocket-change prospecting.  Might have to turn that into a recurring series of blog posts actually, has a nice ring to it!

Here's the final card from that Sportlots order, another yellow Kyle Tucker.  Paid the site-minimum 18 cents for this Collector's Card insert from 2018 Topps Heritage Minor League.  I like it because I'm fairly certain it's my very first card of the Fresno Grizzlies!  Not only that, but you get a good (if fuzzy) look at the Grizzlies' ballpark, Chukchansi Park, in the background there.

This post's getting a little long, so we'll call it here for today.  Thanks for stopping by to check out some of the most recent cards to enter into my collection.

There are stacks of amazing cards that have yet to see the blog laying all over the place here at Shoebox Legends World Headquarters, so check back frequently over the winter if you're bored.  Until then, thanks as always for stopping by!

Back in the Saddle

Took the weekend off from blogging and spent it outside enjoying everything that is great about New England in the summer time, like this view from the hike I took on Saturday morning in NH.  It was every bit as serene as it looks.

It was a nice break both from work and from my hobbies, but it's Monday now so let's get back in the proverbial saddle here.  To get the blogging juices flowing I just grabbed ten cards that were sitting around in my home office/hobby room waiting to be processed and added to my collection, and did exactly that with them.  Let's check 'em out...

The latest '72-73 OPC high-number WHA card to enter my collection is this JC Tremblay.  I always love landing a unique new Nordiques card, but I especially like landing a new Nordiques card from before they joined the NHL!  Jean-Claude was no slouch either, widely regarded as one of the best defensemen in the NHL for a long time with Montreal before jumping ship to the WHA.  Awesome stuff.

This one was sitting around in my "to be processed" box for what seems like forever before I finally yanked it today just so that I don't have to flip past it anymore.  Seriously, it's been years.  Like, long enough that Will Middlebrooks was not only still playing professional baseball, but was still a promising young star when I grabbed it from a dollar box.  Doesn't do much for me today if I'm being honest, but it's a new Sox card in any event.

I've honestly considered taking a big batch of memorabilia, serial-numbered and autograph cards like this and seeing if I can list them on eBay as a bundle to flip into a single card or two I'd appreciate more.  So far though I haven't gotten around to that, so Middlebrooks has a place in the collection for at least a bit here.

Ditto for this one.  Margot was a notable prospect when I plucked this orange (#'d /250) parallel of his Bowman Prospects card from a discount box at a hobby shop I used to frequent.  Just like the Middlebrooks before it, this isn't a fit for my collection other than being a Red Sox card.

Here's one that I actually do enjoy for reasons other than (or in addition to) the fact that it's a Boston card.  This was printed up for the National Convention back in 2015, and is a relatively rare rookie card (#'d /25) of the young Red Sox southpaw.  I was drawn to it because it uses Panini's "Cracked Ice" technology, which is akin to the Atomic Refractors from Topps.  This is one bright and shiny rookie.  It may not have logos, but it certainly has some bling to it when you hold it in natural light.

How about a trio from Pro Set's second hockey release, the French version no less!  I always liked the small subset of hockey history cards in this release that used sepia-toned photographs.  This one is a tribute to the Toronto Maple Leafs' "Kid Line" of the 1930s.

Next up, the title "Before the Zamboni" says it all for this card.  Actually, some things never change, as if you've attended any NHL games even in the past few years then you know there are shovel crews that come out and clean off excess ice shavings during most commercial breaks to this day.  Just a really unique and cool hockey card.  Pro Set did a lot of things right during their first two hockey sets in particular.

Here's one subtitled "Arena Design".  My French is pretty poor at best, so I can't give you much of a breakdown of what this card is showing here.  Something related to the way the benches are setup I suppose.  Anyway, some cool uniforms here, both from the professional world and the world of sports.

After those three cool photographs from Pro Set, let's transition to a couple of modern hockey cards.  From the '94-95 Upper Deck set we have two of the greatest goalies of their era in Eddie the Eagle Belfour...

...and the Dominator, Dominik Hasek!  Hasek was my favorite of these two, just because of his amazing, unconventional style.  If it's possible to be under-rated as a member of the Hall of Fame I'd say Hasek might be.  Also, I love that he's got the same style face mask at the NHL level that I was rocking in Bantam League hockey around this era!

Last up for today, a '98 Stadium Club Mark McGwire.  I ran across a pack or two's worth of cards from this set when I was purging recently.  I got rid of all of them except for this Big Mac, just because it's from the famed 1998 season.  I actually have the McGwire/Sosa documentary and the Griffey Jr. one that debuted on the MLB Network last night both on my DVR.  Can't wait to dive into those two soon to ease a little of the pain from the lack of live sports.

Well, that's all I've got time for today.  Hope you enjoyed these random ten cards, and I'll be back soon with something that's got a bit more structure to it.  Until then, thanks as always for stopping by!

Weekly Cardboard Recap - Helmar, Knocking of Team Sets, WHA & More

I seem to have gotten into a routine the past couple of Fridays of just posting some goings-on from my little corner of the collecting world from the week prior.  No reason to break that streak today I suppose, let's see what I've been up to hobby-wise...

Another nice new Helmar card here, from their T206 tribute set.  I picked this one up a while back now, but only just got around to processing and adding it to my inventoried collection this past week.  Perhaps not as cool as my first card from this set, but an interesting one in that it's my one and only card of Hugh Bedient.

This guy was a rookie for Boston in 1912 and was absolutely huge.  He won 20 games for the Sox in that first season, and was clutch in the World Series against Christy Mathewson and the Giants as well.  It's crazy that, as far as I know, the guy doesn't have a single mainstream card out there.

I know they're not for everyone, but this is exactly why I love the Helmar art cards.  So many of the subjects in the sets they make just aren't available to be added to your collection elsewhere.  I was more than happy to bring this one home for the opening bid of $9.99.  I mean, check out this back:

Simply awesome!  After landing quite a few Helmar cards last summer and early fall, I've really laid off and it's been many months since I landed one or really even paid close attention to their weekly eBay auctions.  Every time I do though I'm reminded of what great work they do.

On the hockey front, it was another great week for my Whalers collection, as I processed and added a full 30 new cards from the stack that I recently rediscovered.  This lot brought me to over 1,800 total Whalers cards now, within 200 cards of my goal of reaching the 2,000 mark this year.

Most of them were '90s cards, but included in the lot was this '89-90 O-Pee-Chee Sticker.  It's half a Whalers card, anyway.  That's the great Dave Tippett on the right there!

A handful of the cards were from Upper Deck's 1993-94 flagship set.  I ripped a wax box of this many years back, probably at least ten years ago now.  Still haven't decided what I plan to do with that, but in the meantime...

...the ones that I processed this week completed my Whalers team set for this release!  This is a pretty solid design, if less memorable than the first two to three years of Upper Deck hockey.  I feel like the photography was especially crisp for the early '90s.  Maybe it's just me, but the colors seem to absolutely pop off the card when it comes to this set.

These Playoff One on One game cards are something only a team or player collector could love in my opinion.  If it's got a Whalers logo on it though, I'll take it!

The team set completion momentum continued, as this '94-95 Donruss card is the final Whaler I was missing for this release as well.  I think what Donruss went with design-wise here could have actually worked quite well had they not made the entire thing blinding, largely illegible foil.

It just kept getting better as I processed through the stack, as I also completed the 1994-95 Score team set when I scanned and logged this overly busy card celebrating Brian Propp's 1,000th career point.  That's right, the longtime Philadelphia Flyer recorded point number 1,000 while sporting Whaler blue.

1993-94 Pinnacle doesn't do much for me.  It's a clean design I'll say.  Anyway, that's enough Whalers for this post, but again it was a good week.  I have one more small stack probably the same size as this to process, so maybe I'll be featuring the Whalers one more time in a weekly round-up post like this.

Let's see, what else?  Oh, here's another '72-73 O-Pee-Chee high number WHA card.  Mike Amodeo looks pretty much like a spot-on WHA stereotypical guy here.  Love that handlebar 'stache!  I'm approaching one third complete now as far as the 51 WHA cards in this release go, and feeling more and more confident with each addition that I'll complete this someday.

Not much to say about this one, just a really cool Pedro that I picked up in a quarter box many years back and just got around to processing now.

In collection news, back in April I'd posted about the first ten athletes that hit the 100-card threshold within my collection.  Since then two more have been added to the list.  The great Mario Lemieux (his '91-92 Upper Deck card here is a real beauty, no?)...

...and the controversial Roger Clemens!  Mario Lemieux hitting the 100-card mark is a result of me seeking out his cards every so often since he's one of my all-time favorite players.  Roger on the other hand hit the mark simply because I'm a Red Sox collector, and he was included in practically every single release with the team during the height of the junk wax era.

Different rationale, same end result.  Welcome to the 100 club, Mario and Roger!

We'll close it out with a new shiny card.  I've become highly intrigued by these 1999 Bowman's Best Refrators since learning about them from a collector on YouTube a few weeks back.  After picking up the Vlad Guerrero 'Performers' subset card for just a few bucks, I was looking for other low-hanging fruit and found Todd Helton here for the same price.

He may not be enshrined in Cooperstown, but he's certainly a member of the Hall of Very Good.  That was enough to get me to bite on this Refractor.  These are really stunning in hand, happy to have one to pair with my Vlad.

That's a wrap for now.  Thanks as always for stopping by, and check back this weekend for more great cardboard.  Until then, stay safe!

Jumping Aboard the Project 2020 Train (& Other Hobby Happenings)

Well, it took a while, but I finally went there.  My first Topps Project 2020 card arrived in the mail this week.  Since I'm on Topps' email list, I was aware of this concept right from the outset.  For the first few weeks though I really didn't see any cards that appealed to me.  Had I known the earliest cards from the set would skyrocket in price I'd have grabbed a couple just to flip and buy dream cards with, but hindsight is 2020 and I was trying to be conservative with my hobby spending during March and April due to COVID-19.

Well, more than 50 cards into the project I finally saw one that I just knew I had to have, even though it was tough to put my finger on exactly why I liked it.  It was just so...strange?  ugly?  odd?  I still don't know what to make of it quite honestly, but I knew that it was unique enough that Topps had my attention for the first time during this long-running project.

I found a seller on eBay with copies available for $17 and change, picked mine up and waited.  A few days ago this card showed up in the mailbox:

This is artist Ermsy's take on Ted Williams' 1954 Topps card (a card I still need to track down an original of someday).

What an insanely crazy and original cartoon version we have here, with the old-school Sox logo sporting a pair of phantom legs and feet, and taking a mean cut.  The ball has apparently been hit so hard that its trajectory is curving all over the place as it cuts in and out of different parts of Williams' face, while leaving a trail of smoke behind.  Throw in some random red scribbles and the small added touch that Ted appears to be signing his own card with a pen, and this one just spoke to me.

To me, that's what's cool about Project 2020, they seem to be very polarizing in terms of how collectors feel about them.  Much like any art (and I'd consider many different types of sports cards art, in a way), beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  To me this one almost fell into the "so bizarre I actually kind of like it" category, but I'm sure others will look at this same card and be appalled by the fact that I shelled out nearly $20 for it with sales tax included.

I think I would like these a lot more if the artists had done a card back for each of the entries, but I can totally understand how that may not have been practical.  Besides, it makes sense to include information about the artist in all fairness.

I don't see myself going too crazy with picking many more of these up, but I probably will grab one or two that strike me given that there are still so many left to be revealed.  A quirky addition to my Red Sox collection here, that to me is more enjoyable than heading down to Target and grabbing a blaster for about the same price.

Let's see, what else is new?  Here's one that's more run-of-the-mill than that crazy Williams, and also much more shiny!  I processed through a big stack of these Green & Orange Wave parallels from the 2018 Panini Prizm World Cup set this week, getting further along towards starting on my franken-parallel-set build.  The star of the show was absolutely this new Leo Messi.  Easily one of my best cards of the Argentinian superstar.  This one got the One Touch magnetic holder treatment, for sure!

Just a couple more cards here for today.  First up is this totally awesome '72-73 O-Pee-Chee (original) Winnipeg Jets card.  For those who aren't hockey card collectors or aren't otherwise aware, O-Pee-Chee included a high-series run in their '72-73 set featuring 51 players from the recently spawned rival league to the NHL, the WHA.

These aren't the easiest cards to come by since they were released late in the year and may not have drawn as much interest as the NHL cards, so you can expect to pay at least a few bucks a piece when you find them.  Chris Bordeleau here gives me 14 of them in my organized collection now.  Over a quarter of the way there.  Completing this WHA series is something I'd love to someday accomplish.  One card at a time though, it's a marathon not a race after all.

Wrapping it up for today, here's another beautiful '71 HOFer that I picked up in May.  After adding a handful of '71 Topps stars with the proceeds from my 1953 Topps sale a few months ago, I've been on the lookout for other bargain opportunities.  Couldn't pass up this vibrant Mazeroski with pretty good edges and corners for just $7.

I believe there are a full 47 men with both plaques in Cooperstown and individual cards in the 1971 Topps set if my count is correct, so I'll be at this project a good long while yet.

Well, that's all I've got time for today on the blog front.  I hope you enjoyed these recent additions to my collection, and thanks as always for stopping by to read my ramblings on cardboard.

I've got more great content lined up for the weekend, including the results of yet another incredible eBay flip.  Stop on by if you're bored!  Until then, stay safe!

WHA Woytowich

A nice, quiet winter night after a snowstorm here in New England. Seems like a great time to post another card in my quest to acquire all of the WHA cards from the 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee set...

Bob Woytowich of the Winnipeg Jets gives me a baker's dozen now when it comes to these cards.  This was the WHA's inaugural year, and the only year that O-Pee-Chee included cards for that league in their flagship NHL release.  These are high series cards, in fact they represent the very end of the set, so they aren't the easiest cards to come across at cheap prices as '70s hockey goes.

Bob Woytowich was a defenseman who was born in Winnipeg, and played there early in his career on his rise to the NHL.  He enjoyed an 8-year career in the National Hockey League, appearing in 503 regular season games.  Woytowich broke in with the Bruins in '64-65, but is probably best remembered for his three and a half seasons with the Penguins.

When the WHA formed, Woytowich made the leap over to the "other league", joining his hometown Winnipeg Jets as an assistant captain.  Aside from the bold, bright colors, I love these cards because they give you such a great look at the absolutely fantastic logos and sweaters that the WHA had to offer.

Here's a look at the back, featuring the WHA league logo and a small write-up that mentions Bob's return to Winnipeg.

Completing a 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee set would be a bear, but I do have a goal of accumulating all 51 of the high number WHA cards.  It'll be years from now if it ever happens, as I don't like to pay more than $3-4 dollars per card if I can help it, but getting a quarter of the way there feels good for now!

1972-73 O-Pee-Chee WHA Progress:  13/51 (25%)

Chipping Away at the WHA

Something about sub-zero temperatures and shoveling snow just gets me in the mood for hockey cards.  Understandable, I guess.  Anyway, as I touched on in my 2017 re-cap, one of the areas I hope to make better progress on in 2018 within my collection would be WHA hockey cards.

My long term goal is to complete the entire '70s WHA run, but I'm targeting the very first WHA hockey cards to begin with, from the high series of the standard '72-73 O-Pee-Chee set.  There are 51 total WHA subjects in the set, and I closed out 2017 with 11 of them.  40 more to go, I'd love to cut that number in half this year.  Let's knock one off the list today anyway...

My first Minnesota Fighting Saints card from this release is right winger Wayne Connelly.  Wayne actually had a lengthy and fairly successful run at the NHL level beginning in the early 1960s, before transitioning to the WHA to wind down his career.  Random trivia fact, Bobby Orr's first career point came as an assist on a powerplay goal that Wayne scored in October of 1966!

The Fighting Saints lasted about 3 and 3/4 seasons in the WHA before folding.  Yes, I said 3 and 3/4.  The WHA was such an adventure that just because you started a season as a franchise didn't necessarily mean you were going to finish it.  Though you don't get a look at it on this card, they had one of the more "interesting" logos you'll probably ever see:

Here's the back.  These are all about the fronts if you ask me, but it is kinda cool that it mentions Wayne's shot being so hard that he broke plexiglass on more than one occasion.

I got this one in a lot of '72-73 OPC cards that included some of the regular lower series NHL cards as well, so why not take a look at a couple of those while we're at it here...

Here's another winger.  Lowell MacDonald played in just over 500 NHL games, recording 390 career points.  His best years came with the Pens, right around when this set was released.

Last of today's trio, goaltender Dan Bouchard.  Love those brown pads!  Dan would become an NHL regular for many seasons, but '72-73 was actually his rookie campaign.  A couple of nice commons, but...

...at the end of the day it was the WHA cards that drove me to this lot.  Nice to be up to an even dozen of these now!

Seems like it's going to be a long winter here in New England, so I'm sure I'll have plenty of motivation to post more of these in the coming weeks...