Cardboard Keepers - Early Ernie Banks

Time for the next installment of "Cardboard Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

Today we show some love and appreciation to Mr. Cub, the great Ernie Banks!

I was always a fan of Banks growing up, and when I got some disposable income in my 20s I actually built a pretty decent collection of Ernie's vintage cardboard.  I decided in the last year to part with quite a few of those cards, and have sold them off on eBay to fund savings or other cardboard adventures.

There were two cards that I knew would survive the sell-off and condensing I've been going through though, and today I'll induct both of them into my Cardboard Keepers collection:

The first is my oldest Ernie Banks card, since I don't (yet anyway!) have his expensive 1954 rookie.  This is also a pretty big notch in my belt as far as my slow-burn 1955 Topps set build goes.  In fact, I think it's the first and only HOFer in my pursuit despite the fact that I'm 25% done with the set overall.

This particular card is just a beautiful example too, a great look at a young Banks here.  I wouldn't bother shelling out the cash for a PSA 6 grade these days, but like I said this one was acquired many years ago when my responsibilities were much different than they are today.  Easily my best overall card of the Chicago slugger.

Here's a look at the back, also nice and clean.

The other one that's a certain keeper for now is from the very next year's Topps set.  I like 1956 Topps every bit as much as 1955, and I'd love to complete it someday as well.  It's a bummer that we get the exact same portrait photograph used in consecutive years, but that wasn't exactly uncommon practice at the time.

I don't really care about which back variation (light or dark) I get when it comes to my '56s, and even my OCD would never force me to pick up a whole second set just because of the backs.  I'm very happy just to have this light back one in my collection.

So, there are my two oldest Ernie Banks cards, both obvious choices for this exercise.  Welcome to the Cardboard Keepers collection, Ernie!

That's 28 cards down in the baseball Cardboard Keepers collection altogether now, 972 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!

Cardboard Keepers - Super Mario

Time for the next installment of Cardboard Keepers, a thought experiment in which I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers, and 1,000 "other" keepers.

Tonight I'll induct a new card into the non-baseball collection for the first time in months.  We're in the throes of winter here in New England, and so a hockey card just seemed appropriate.  As for which one to go with, tonight's entry represents one of the best hockey cards of the '80s, and one I had in mind from the outset of this project...

Yes, it's the rookie card of the great Mario Lemieux!  Aside from being one of the most talented players ever to stick-handle a puck, he's also one of the most inspiring stories in hockey history for the way he battled through illness to return to top form.  If Wayne Gretzky's rookie card is the most iconic hockey card of the 1970s, then I submit that this card may hold that title for the following decade?

Growing up as a kid hockey fan I always wanted a copy of this card, but it was out of my "raise money by raking leaves and doing other chores" price range.  I finally scored one as an adult when, back in 2011, I unloaded a few David Krejci cards to a super collector.  The proceeds from that sale funded this card, as well as a Steven Stamkos Young Guns RC.  Coming up on 10 years in the rear-view mirror and I'm liking how that trade looks in retrospect!

I've got the Topps version, which is just fine as I was pursuing (and have since completed!) an '85-86 Topps hockey set, and this is by far the toughest card on the checklist.  I'd love to add an O-Pee-Chee version of Le Magnifique's RC to my collection someday, but it's not all that high on my hobby priority list, and given the prices they command that means I may well never see one.  Fine by me, I'm still so excited to have this copy nearly a decade after acquiring it.

This iconic card is a worthy choice for this project indeed!  Whittling down my collection or not, there's no chance I'd part with it.  Easily a top 20, and maybe even top 10, hockey card in my entire collection.

The "other" Cardboard Keepers collection is up to a full 15 cards now, and can be viewed here.  I've still got a long way to go, 985 non-baseball cards remaining to be exact.  I'll be back soon with the next card, but until then thanks as always for stopping by! 

Cardboard Keepers - T206 Red Sox!

Time for the next installment of "Cardboard Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

For this installment we go way back to feature some of the oldest Red Sox cards in my collection, from the infamous T206 tobacco card set!

We'll start things off with my newest acquisition, and a card that has yet to see the light of day on the blog until now, Heinie Wagner!  There are two different versions of Wagner T206 cards out there, with this one being the "Bat on Left Shoulder" variant as indicated by the PSA label.  This is one of my better-condition T206 cards for sure, a real beauty.

Heinie was a longtime member of the Red Sox, winning four World Series championships as a member of the club including the 1912 championship when he served as team captain.  He later served as the team's manager for the 1930 season as well.  He was known for being a strong fielder, who was fleet of foot.  In fact, his 141 stolen bases in a Red Sox uniform are still good enough for Wagner to hold 5th place on the team's all-time leader board at the time of this post.

Clean Sweet Caporal back on this one.  I don't pay attention to the many available back variants in this legendary set, I only hope to acquire one card of each Red Sox subject regardless of the brand name on the back.  Speaking of which, I'm inducting not just this card to the Cardboard Keepers collection, but also the other seven Red Sox I have from this set that have already been shown here in the past.

In alphabetical order by subject, here are those seven cards...

Red Kleinow is my personal favorite due to that awesome mask!

It's easy to see why this set remains one of the most prized baseball card releases in existence, more than 100 years after people were pulling these little gems out of cigarette packs.  These eight cards absolutely deserve a spot in this project!

That's 26 cards down in the baseball Cardboard Keepers collection altogether now, 974 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!

Cardboard Keepers! Early Career Yaz

Time for the next installment of "Cardboard Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

Today I've got a trio of baseball cards joining the project, each of which feature the great Carl Yastrzemski!

In my last Cardboard Keepers post I chose a Ted Williams card, so it makes sense to go with arguably the second most popular player in Red Sox history this time around with Yaz.  I was a tad too young to ever have been able to see Carl play with my own two eyes, as I'd only just turned a year old when he made his final MLB appearance.  That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the man though, and no proper Red Sox collection could be considered complete without some Yaz representation!

I aspire to someday complete the entire run of Yastrzemski's Topps cards from his playing days, but as it stands now this '63 is my earliest card of his.  An aesthetically pleasing card as 1963 Topps goes, if you ask me.

I like the '64 design more so than the '63s, but this one's a bit of a bummer in that Topps re-used the exact same photo from Carl's card the year prior.  1964 wasn't exactly a banner year for Carl either, as his batting average dropped from .321 the year prior to .289.  Not that .289 is anything to scoff at, but a 32-point drop is notable (especially when he rebounded to .312 the following year).

The final card in today's trio may be the most recognizable, as Yaz's '65 release has become somewhat iconic due to the "looking up to catch a pop-up" photograph.

Carl had a monster year in 1965, leading the league in doubles, on-base percentage, and slugging en route to his second All-Star selection and second Gold Glove award.  He finished 10th in American League MVP voting.

A nice selection of earlier Yastrzemski cards there, and he's certainly someone who deserves a few slots on the baseball side of this project.  The HOFer is the only player in Red Sox history to accumulate more than 3,000 hits while wearing the uniform, and his 3,419 career hits with Boston are better than 700 more than the next closest player on the franchise list (some guy named Ted Williams).

That's 18 cards down in the baseball Cardboard Keepers collection altogether now, 982 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!

Cardboard Keepers! Teddy Ballgame

Time for the next installment of "Cardboard Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

Tonight I've got just a single card to add to the baseball collection.  It was one of the first really big vintage baseball cards I landed after returning to collecting as an adult, and also an early example in practice of the philosophy I'm continuing to use in my collecting these days.  Behold! 

Pretty sweet, huh?  Aside from being my first vintage Topps Ted Williams card proper, I appreciate this card due to the sheer amount of work that went into acquiring it.  You see, this card was largely funded by the proceeds from the first and only "card draft" I've ever held in the history of this blog.

Back in 2012, I organized a draft of cards I was ready to part with.  I ended up with 7 participants, at $22 bucks a head, with each participant getting 22 cards in the end.  I think the project was a success, and I got positive feedback from most if not all of the participants.  It was a good deal of work, but in the end I mailed out around 150 cards that weren't a strict fit for my collection at the time, and made around $150, which funded the majority of this beautiful Ted Williams card.

Even as far back as 2012, I was in the "condense and collect fewer but more significant cards" mindset.  Well, some of the time anyway...

Nice, clean back on this copy.

I haven't inducted any Red Sox cards into the Cardboard Keepers collection since the very first post, so I'm pleased to get some more Boston representation in the project.  As far as Red Sox cards, it doesn't get much better than vintage Ted!

That's 15 cards down in the baseball Cardboard Keepers collection altogether now, 985 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!

Keepers! '53 Topps HOF Trio

Time for the next installment of "Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

Today's post is all about 1953 Topps.  I know, the blog has been heavy on this set as of late.  What can I say?  In a weird way, selling off the bulk of my graded '53s has motivated me more than ever to go after the set (as well as provided some serious funds with which to do so).  When I sold that lot of graded cards off, I kept not only my Red Sox cards from the release, but also the three HOFers from the set featured in today's post.

All three are no-brainers for my Keepers project on the baseball side.  They've each been featured on the blog in the distant past, but not for many long years, so I'm excited to show them off again...

Leading the charge is one of the game's all-time great southpaws, Mr. Warren Spahn.  My favorite card of Spahn of the handful in my collection, both because I love this set and because Warren was flat out dominating in 1953.  The Cy Young Award wasn't introduced until the 1956 season, but had it existed back then Warren would have been a strong contender in '53 with his 23 wins and 2.10 ERA, both best in the league.

There are actually two versions of the Spahn card in the set if you're that particular (I'm not).  This one has the biographical information up top printed in white ink, the other version uses black ink.  I am not pursuing a "master set", so one version of Warren's card is plenty for me.

Next, Yankees superstar Phil Rizzuto!  If memory serves, this was one of the very first HOFers from the set that I ever landed, well over ten years ago now.  [Goes and searches email - yep, January 2008!]  1953 was Rizzuto's last really good season, and the last in which he'd receive any MVP votes.

Lastly, my favorite card in today's trio, Satchel (misspelled Satchell here) Paige!  This is an absolute cornerstone card of my entire baseball collection.  There are precious few playing-era Paige cards out there, since he enjoyed the majority of his success during his many years in the Negro leagues.  This one's been a personal favorite since the day it arrived, and still brings a smile to my face many years later.

This has really become an iconic baseball card, and it's easy to see why.  I'd be hanging onto it even if I had to shave my collection down to just 10 baseball cards, forget 1,000.  Can't say that for the other two cards in this post, as cool as they are.

Three great cards there, all easy selections for this exercise.  With these added to my tally I'm back up to 35 cards in my second pass at the 1953 Topps set as well, getting there slowly but surely!

That's 14 cards down in the Baseball Keepers collection altogether now, 986 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!

Keepers! Cognac

Time for the next installment of "Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.


On the baseball front it's been all about the vintage up until this point, which isn't surprising.  There are plenty of modern cards that I enjoy as well however, and today I've got a pair of them to induct into the Keepers collection...

Yes, it's everyone's favorite parallel from 2011, the Cognac Diamond Anniversary cards, also sometimes referred to as "liquor-fractors".  Even eight years later, I can still remember and completely understand the hype that existed around these, and their Platinum Diamond Anniversary brethren.  I haven't seen a parallel this attractive in a Topps flagship set in the time since!

I've got a handful of these, many of which are the retired legends short prints, but two in particular stand above all the others and merit addition to this collection.  First up, Jose Altuve's RC.  I picked this copy up back in 2016 for the unbelievably low price of $19.  Nowadays it's worth around ten times that much, not that I plan to ever part with mine (that's kind of the point of this exercise, after all).

If you think that was a fortunately timed purchase, the other card in tonight's post blows it out of the water...

A couple months before I grabbed the Altuve, just before the start of the 2016 MLB season, I snagged this Mike Trout for $189.99 with free shipping.  At the time it was one of the most expensive single cards I'd ever purchased, certainly top five.  I didn't mind ponying up given that Mike had already secured a Rookie of the Year and an MVP award before I grabbed it, and at a young age seemed poised to continue to perform at an elite level for many, many years.  I had a gut feeling that if I didn't grab one of these then, I might never get one.

Well, in the season immediately after I acquired this, Trout earned his second AL MVP award, and he has continued to be arguably the top overall player in the game since.  Still just 28 years old, he's already cemented himself as a legend of the game.  After nine seasons in Major League Baseball, his career OPS is 1.000, and his career slugging percentage is .581.  Yes, you read that right.  He's also got 200 stolen bases, and we all know he's the king of WAR.

A solid pair of additions to this project today, and I can confidently say that if circumstances forced me to condense my baseball card collection in extreme fashion these would both make the cut.  The Trout in particular has become somewhat of an iconic card already.  Maybe one of the most recognizable/important baseball cards of the 21st century so far?

That's 11 cards down in the Baseball Keepers collection altogether now, 989 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!

Keepers! Brass Bonanza

Time for the next installment of Keepers, a thought experiment in which I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers, and 1,000 "other" keepers.

Today we add a whopping ten cards to the other keepers collection, with these ten being among the greatest cards in my Hartford Whalers collection...

I've been a fan of the Whalers since attending their games and their summer hockey camps as a kid.  My brothers and I tuned into every broadcast we could catch, and were faithful members of the "Junior Whalers" club for many years.  To this day, I don't think there's anything on the hockey side of collecting that gives me more joy than picking up new Whalers cards.

Well, back during the 2010-11 season Panini included a ten card autograph set called Brass Bonanza (the name of the unforgettable theme song for the team) in their ultra high-end Dominion release that paid homage to the boys in green and blue.  The design was really striking and, as you can see with the Bobby Hull card above, each card featured a bold, blue on-card autograph.

This Whalers fan and hockey card collector in me was hooked, and I knew right away that I had to make every reasonable effort to complete the set.  It was quite a challenge, with the cards serial-numbered to just /50.  On top of that, the first two cards in the set, Bobby Hull and Brendan Shanahan, were short-printed and numbered to just /24!

After many watched auctions and failed bids, I was finally able to complete my set, and boy did it feel good.

The player selection was somewhat random, with the first three guys being players who weren't in town all that long.

The rest of the checklist contains more familiar faces that the fans knew and loved for many years.

With one notable exception, that is!

Panini did a great job of selecting some of the better players on the team from across the couple of decades that they existed, and as a result there's a good variety of different uniform styles depicted among the small set.

Even tough guy and penalty minute accumulator Tiger Williams made the cut.

As for goaltenders, Sean Burke or Peter Sidorkiewicz may have been more fitting, but Panini apparently had access to Daryl Reaugh so here we are.  I'll take it!

This might be my favorite among my many Ron Francis autographs.  I honestly don't have anything negative to say about the design here at all.  These really feel like they're from a high-end release, and they're significantly thick and heavy, too.

Completing this insert set was a challenge that took many months, and the end result was quite possibly the absolute pinnacle of my ever-expanding Whalers collection.  When I conceived of this keepers idea, I knew this grouping needed to be among the first cards to make the cut for the non-baseball album.

The "other keepers" collection is up to a full 14 cards now, and can be viewed here.  I've still got a long way to go, 986 non-baseball cards remaining to be exact.  I'll be back soon with the next batch, but until then thanks as always for stopping by!

Keepers! Mantle, Mantle, Mantle

Time for the next installment of "Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

I've got the next three additions to the baseball keepers collection, and unlike the first half dozen entrants one of these has never seen the light of day here on the blog before.  Today's post is all about the great Mickey Mantle!

Owning a playing-era Mickey Mantle card seems almost like a rite of passage for baseball card collectors who specialize in vintage, at least in some circles.  I've wanted one quite literally since I was a kid, and I can remember drooling over the handful of vintage Mantles that my childhood friend's father owned way back in the early '90s.

Well, I made it all the way to my mid-30s without crossing that goal off of my collecting bucket list.  Late in 2018 I finally bit the bullet though, and picked up this '66 Topps example.  It still makes me smile when I look at it, coming up on a year later.  In fact, I liked it so much that I think I got the itch.

Shortly after featuring the '66 Mantle, I used an eBay gift card I received for Christmas to take about half of the sting out of this beautiful '64.  I like this one even better than the first, and could now say that I owned a pair of Mantle cards proper.

Each of those two cards has received a post here on the blog over the last few months.  I actually have a third 1960s Mantle though, acquired after that initial pair gave me the taste.  I'm especially pleased with and proud of this one.  The pair has now become a trio...behold!

Oh yeah!  Quite possibly my best card from the '60s, period.  I love the look of Mantle on one of the most unique and easily-recognizable designs of the decade.  Just classic.

As with my first two Mantle cards, the low grade allowed me to nag this otherwise unattainable card.  I assume this one received a "Good 2.5" from the folks at PSA primarily based on the soft upper left corner, but it sure feels criminally under-graded to me.  I have a feeling this card would have actually fetched more at auction raw than it did in this holder, but that's fine with me.  A vibrant and visually appealing card if you ask this collector!

My scanner struggles with PSA slab backs, but you get the picture.  Nice clean back, no paper loss or anything nasty.  Works for me.

So that's how I went from zero proper playing-era Mantle cards to three, all within a year.  I'd love to augment these with a Topps Mantle from the '50s as my next goal.  1959 in particular would be killer since I'm working on that set, but no luck there yet.

For now, I'm selecting all three of these cards for my baseball keepers collection.  That's 9 cards down in that collection altogether now, 991 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!

Keepers! A Thought Experiment

What if you had to thin your collection down to just one or two thousand cards? Which cards would you keep, and which would you let go of? I find this to be an interesting thought experiment, particularly as I've watched my collection bloom over the last decade plus.

At its height, before I started seriously purging around a year or so ago, I had quite literally hundreds of thousands of cards.  This began to bother me for a few reasons, first and foremost the OCD with which I track my collection was a real challenge with numbers that large.  Secondly, I wasn't happy with the amount of physical space my collection was literally taking up in my house.  Lastly, I find it hard to truly appreciate the cards as I should be doing, when there are that many of them.

So, I'm starting a new series of blog posts where I'm going to (theoretically at first, but who knows later) shave my collection down to just 2,000 cards.  I'm going to give myself 1,000 baseball cards, plus 1,000 "other" cards which will consist of anything other than baseball.  I'm sure the majority of this second collection will end up being hockey cards, but this is also where I'll have to tally any basketball, football, soccer or non-sport cards I want to hang onto.

In the end, I should be whittled down to the 2,000 total cards I'd hang onto above all others, the "keepers".  I think this will be a fun exercise that will allow me to show off and appreciate my best cardboard here on the blog, and help me identify and focus on what really brings me the most joy as a collector at the same time.

For this first post I've got the first half dozen cards for the baseball keepers collection, and the first four cards for the other keepers collection to share with you.

On the baseball side, I had an easy time picking the first six cards.  I went with my 1934-1936 Diamond Stars Red Sox team set.  Not only does it contain my only playing-era card of the great Lefty Grove, but the artwork is simply beautiful.

I love the art deco style of the paintings, and the backgrounds are simply fantastic.

Lefty Grove isn't the only HOFer in the small team set either, as he's joined by Rick Ferrell.  This one might actually be my favorite of the bunch.

Billy Werber has the only plain background out of the Sox players, with this rainbow stripe deal.

Fritz Ostermueller is the only horizontally-oriented card in the bunch.  Another interesting background; that building has always reminded me of the "Superman building" in downtown Providence right next to where I work.

This is, to date, the oldest team set I have ever completed.  Probably will be for some time, too.  Given that fact, and the fact that at six cards it didn't chew too much into my 1,000-card cap, these were an obvious choice to start off this project with on the baseball side.

As far as the non-baseball group, I knew exactly how I wanted to lead off there as well.  One of my absolute proudest accomplishments since returning to the hobby is completing the four-card hockey subset from the iconic 1933 Sport Kings release.

The first two cards alone, HOFers Eddie Shore...

...and Howie Morenz are probably top 25 cards in terms of my entire collection, period.  These are likely the only two playing-era cards I'll ever own of these guys, the studs of their era and still two of the most revered names in the history of the NHL.  There is no way, even 50 years from now, that these would ever fall outside my top 1,000 non-baseball cards.

Ace Bailey was the final piece of the puzzle in securing this hockey subset.  Took me years to track down this copy.

Ching Johnson rounds it out, and we have our first four inductees into the other keepers collection.

Today's cards had all appeared on the blog previously, but that won't always be the case with these posts.  Many of my most prized cards have never seen the light of day here for some odd reason, and I figure this series will give me some needed motivation to get around to showcasing them at last.

I'm keeping a virtual album of sorts for the each collection that I'll update with every post.  The baseball keepers collection is here, and the other keepers collection is here.

Have you ever thought about which cards you'd hang onto if you had to do something drastic, like reduce the size of your collection by 99% or more?  If so I'd love to hear about it in the comments, or even better a blog post of your own.  Thanks for stopping by!