A Surprise PWE from Dimebox Nick

I received two nice surprise PWEs in the mail this past week.  I'll cover the first one today, from everyone's favorite dime box bargain hunter, Nick!

Both of the PWEs I received contained some Topps Bunt cards, with Nick providing me with a Roger Clemens.  As a low price point release, I'm definitely a fan of this set.  Seems like most collectors feel that way, or at least the cross-section of blog posts I've read on the set.  I picked up just a single hanger pack of these and pulled no Red Sox cards at all, so it was a nice surprise to receive this one.

Bunt wasn't the only (relatively) new release I found in this package, as Ryan Hanigan here hails from the 2016 Heritage High Numbers set.  Definitely needed this one!

Keeping it rolling with the 2016 releases, here's a Topps Sticker of (your AL Cy Young Award winner?) Rick Porcello.  Does Topps release a book for collectors to stick these in like they used to?  I'm so out of touch.

Here's a nice Future Stars Gold parallel of lefty Eduardo Rodriguez.  On the whole, he seemed to regress a bit this year, and had to deal with some injuries as well.  It was not the season that I, or any Red Sox fan, had hoped for from Eddie.  He did show the occasional flash of brilliance though, and is still quite young.  I expect that we'll see him towards the back of the rotation to begin 2017.

Here's another one from the recent Heritage High Numbers set.  I believe you got a couple/few of these black-bordered parallels in each hanger pack.  I definitely don't have too many Pomeranz Red Sox cards yet, and I'm rarely lucky enough to pull Red Sox parallels on my own so I'm grateful that Nick thought of me for this one.

I have to say that the MLB Debut inserts from this year's Topps flagship set are some of the better inserts I've seen in the flagship effort in some time.  Just my opinion of course, but I like these where I generally find Topps inserts to be boring if not awful.  Boggs debuted just a few months before I was born...boy I'm starting to get old.

I'm not sure if Nick read here on the blog that I'm making a concerted effort to wrap up with the Kellogg's Red Sox cards this year, or if it was just chance that he included this one, but either way I'm happy!  This '72 Sonny Siebert is one I'd yet to track down, just perfect.

Just one more 2016 card here.  It looks like a near certainty that Rusney Castillo will go down as one of the biggest contract busts in the history of the franchise to date.  If this turns out to be his final Stadium Club card, he sure got a nice one at least.

How perfect is this card?  This might be the most 1990s card in my entire collection.  The obnoxious color scheme, the design, the fonts used, Scott's turtleneck.  The Classic releases are an admitted guilty pleasure of mine, so Nick really hit a home run with this one.

How about another odd-ball release, 1988 Topps Woolworth.  Don Baylor is actually the first card on the checklist in this small set.  I believe Roger Clemens is the only other Red Sox player in this release, I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for that one.

An Upper Deck SP card of Tim Naehring in the midst of a pretty good collision at the plate.  I'm going to say he was called out on this one.

How great is this 1987 Leaf card of legend Tom Seaver?  Easily within my top 3 favorite cards from the PWE, maybe my overall favorite in fact.  There truly were only a handful of Red Sox Seaver cards released in 1987, so it's a good day when I acquire a new one like this.

A perfect black-and-white posed shot on this Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classic Yaz.  I don't recall having seen this set before (this is the 2005 release), but it's actually a nice design.

Here's another Yaz, this one a Topps Heritage insert paying homage to the '67 Topps Stickers.  I've got a few of the originals, but no Yastrzemski unfortunately.

Manny Ramirez recently appeared at the send-off ceremony for David Ortiz at Fenway Park.

Closing things out is a fantastic vintage odd-ball, Haywood Sullivan's 1961 Post card.  Every time I see one of these I'm impressed that it's survived all these years after being cut from a box.  I think Haywood here looks pretty good after 50 years plus.

Thanks for the nice surprise Nick, was a joy finding these in my mailbox!  I'm working on a return for you that I hope to have out soon.

Buyback Franken-set: Haddix vs. Stoneman

Today we've got a quick face-off between two buyback franken-set hopefuls.  First, the challenger!

1965 Topps #67 - Harvey Haddix

Fresh from my latest COMC shipment, a nice Heritage buyback of hurler Harvey Haddix (how's that for alliteration?).  A pretty standard photograph for the time period on this card.  I like that this was the final Topps card issued for Harvey, whose MLB career began all the way back in 1952.

Haddix makes a strong case to be included in the franken-set at slot #67, but as I mentioned at the outset there's already a card in that particular binder slot.  Let's see the competition...

Hmm, a very well-loved copy of a '69 Bill Stoneman.  This one really made the rounds before Topps got their hands back on it and stamped it.  I love the character this card shows, but hat-less players are a minor pet peeve of mine...

Bill Stoneman is out!

Harvey Haddix is in!  Honestly, that sleeve patch alone would have given this card the victory over the beat-up Bill Stoneman.  I almost hate to remove that Stoneman from my franken-set because it was one of the most well-worn buybacks in there, but Harvey is sporting a mystery stain of his own at least.

Franken-set Progress:  129/792 (16%)

Signature Sundays - Bill Spanswick

Mother Nature guaranteed that the 2016 season for the Boston Red Sox (and by extension the career of David Ortiz) would last at least one more day with today's rain-out.  I'll be at Fenway tomorrow evening, but not for the baseball game.  I'll be seeing Kaleo in concert across the street at the House of Blues.  Hopefully Clay Buchholz and the gang can at least force a game 4 while I'm enjoying an evening of live rock music.

Alright, onto Signature Sundays.  Tonight I've got an autograph of a really obscure name from Red Sox history, pitcher Bill Spanswick:

Bill grew up in Connecticut, went to college in Worcester, MA, and entered the Red Sox minor league system in the late '50s.  He finally made the big league club coming out of Spring Training in 1964.  Spanswick would appear in 29 games that year, 7 of them as a starter in the earlier portion of the season.

He returned to the minors for the 1965 season and would never pitch an inning in Major League Baseball again.  The one season wonder that was Bill Spanswick seems like an odd choice for Topps to have included in the 2014 Heritage set as a 'Real One Autograph', but as a fan of the lesser known players in the Red Sox past I'm glad they did!

Buyback Franken-set: Lew & the Lawnmower

Just a quick post tonight, no time for much else.  Lew Krausse already made my buyback franken-set, but for less than a dollar on COMC I've now got him with the Red Sox as well.  I believe this is the first lawnmower to make the set, and it's also a nice example of the dizzying, tilted photographs that Topps loved so much in the '70s.

In other news, I finally got the franken-set organized into a nice online spreadsheet, you can find a link right at the top of the blog.  If you have any buybacks I need I'm highly interested in trading!

Franken-set Progress:  129/792 (16%)

Will Work for Cards

This past week I made it to my local hobby shop for the first time in nearly 6 months I would guess.  The reason for my stopping in was to help the owner, my buddy John, with a computer question.  Since I was there though, and had an hour or two to spare, I took an opportunity to poke around a bit.

In the brief amount of time that I had, I picked out $20 or so worth of cards, plus another $10 in supplies (toploaders, shoeboxes, etc).  John was nice enough to charge me just $10 for everything, which means I basically paid for the supplies and got the cards for free in exchange for my time in looking at the computer issue.  It's not the first time I've worked for cards, and I hope it's not the last either!

With one exception, all of my pick-ups came from some new dollar boxes that he had out, and that one exception was the legendary 1989 Fleer "F*CK FACE" Billy Ripken card you see above.  I guess it's my juvenile/adolescent side, but I've always wanted to land a copy of this card.  Just never came across one at a reasonable price.  John had a couple of them out on the counter, and when I found out he was asking $5 a piece into my stack it went!

As for the dollar box picks, I was all over the map as usual.  Though I don't typically collect in-person autographs, this Kevin Bass was too tempting to pass up given my love of the ugly set that is 1990 Topps.  This card is actually from the Traded set, but still goes nicely with the pair of '90 Topps autos I showed off here a couple of weeks back.  Also, I don't think a lot of folks are forging Kevin Bass autographs, and even if they are I'm invested in this card for all of a dollar.

There was one card that I picked out with another collector in mind, and that was this Felix Pie Cracker Jack autograph.  I owe Tony of Wrigley Roster Jenga a PWE, and since he's a Cubs collector who also just so happened to do a recent post on Cracker Jack I figured this would be a nice throw-in (should have that out to you by early next week Tony!).

The 2007 Goudey HOF short prints are tough to come by in my experience.  This was the set that got me back into collecting almost 10 years ago now, and I'm still missing 10 of the 88 short prints all these years later.

I was certain I had both of these Johnny Bench cards already, but a buck is a good price on these SPs and these will be very solid additions to my trade box.  If any of my regular trading buddies are interested leave a comment!

From there, one last autograph.  Picked this one out just because it's not everyday that I see a Portland SeaDogs autograph.  This is from a time when the SeaDogs were affiliated with the Marlins, not the Red Sox like they are today, but I don't mind.

If you've been following along here for any length of time, you've probably heard me gushing about the 2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractors.  I was very pleased to find Austin Jackson here in the dollar box.  I don't have my want list together for this 220-card set just yet, but I took a chance.  I'm glad I did because when I got home and checked Austin was indeed a card I needed.

I'm an absolute sucker for any and all Starting Lineup cards.  While the 1988 release is far and away my favorite, I pounced on the opportunity to pick up my first two '89s in the form of Kirby Puckett...

...and a young Mark McGwire.  The green border works especially well for an Athletics card if I do say so myself.

Still hard to believe he's gone.  $1 seemed more than fair for this blue refractor, #'d to /150.

A nice minor league card here of one of the game's many bright, young shortstops.  Also, I just like random minor league teams generally speaking, and I am fairly certain this may be my first River Bandits card.

I probably overpaid for this one at $1 (then again, the cards ended up costing me nothing), but 1961 Topps is growing on me in recent months, and this card is in "will never need to be upgraded" condition.

1971 Topps #86 - Mike Kilkenny

Probably not a huge surprise, but to me the most exciting cards I encountered while digging through the dollar boxes were some buybacks for my franken-set!  The only thing I can think to say about this Mike Kilkenny card is that I had a wonderful time in Kilkenny when my wife and I were over in Ireland a few years ago.  Smithwick's has a brewery there, and their Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale is pretty damn tasty.

Mike's got some competition for card #86 though in the form of a 1978 Topps Dave Tomlin.

I know next to nothing about Tomlin, and prefer '71 Topps to '78, so even though Dave has my initials on his ballcap here he's out!

1961 Topps #101 - Bubba Phillips

The second 1961 Topps card of this post, and both players are actually wearing hats!  Bubba Phillips hit the only two grand slams of his career in '61.  He makes the franken-set uncontested as the only #101 buyback I've gotten my hands on so far, and is already nestled inside the binder with his compatriots.

1958 Topps #415 - Bob Bowman

This one really had me smiling.  Buybacks from the '50s seem a little harder to come by in my experience, in fact this is the first pre-1960 buyback in my franken-set!  Funny having a Topps buyback of a guy named Bowman, too.  At #415 Bob makes the set without question, and I highly doubt he will ever be replaced in that slot.  The final buyback I grabbed was even more significant than this one though...

1982 Topps #551 - Reggie Jackson

I nearly flipped right past this one, but noticed that silver 2016 Topps buyback stamp at the last minute.  I'm pumped to be able to add a nice All-Star subset card of one of the greatest clutch hitters ever to step up to the plate to my little ol' franken-set.  Nice landing a sweet buyback of Mr. October in the month of October, and bonus points for the card being from the set that was released the year I was born.  I can never seem to find HOFer buybacks like this for less than a few bucks at the very least, so this was probably my most satisfying dollar box pick-up of the day.

Not a bad little lot there, like I said at the outset, getting paid in cards is cool with me!

Franken-set Progress:  128/792 (16%)

Happy Birthday to Me - A COMC "Card Show" - Part 2

Time for the second and final installment featuring the birthday presents I picked out for myself on COMC last month.  With my $75 credit I ended up with eight cards in total.  You can see the first four here, today I've got the remaining four to show off.  Let's get to it!

I don't recall ever having seen this great '68 Topps Steve Carlton before.  The copy this seller was offering was in pretty spectacular shape, and it didn't take more than a few minutes of internet research to discover that I was getting a real bargain here at $6.44.  Something about this pre-game shot of a young, smiling Steve enjoying a sunny day at the ballpark just spoke to me.  Though his best days were still ahead of him in 1968, he'd just been a member of a World Series winning team the season prior.

Nice, clean back too.  This is now hands down my favorite Steve Carlton card of the 30-40 that I own.

Next up we've got a '63 Topps Nellie Fox.  Couple of small corner dings and a little white marking on the smaller black & white photo, but this card was an absolute steal at $3.94 because it's a scarce high number card from the 7th and final series of '63 Topps.  Nellie was close to wrapping up his HOF career here, in fact 1963 was the final season he would be elected an All-Star (for the 15th time!).

Just two cards left now, and they represent two of the nicest vintage cards I've been able to add to my collection this entire year.  First, this stunning second-year card of speedster Lou Brock.  Like the Steve Carlton that I led off today's post with, I don't have any recollection of having come across this card previously, but fell in love with it instantly.  At $12.69 it was my second most expensive card purchased, but in my mind it was worth every penny.

Not quite as high a number as the Nellie Fox, this one comes from the still scarce 6th series of the '63 release.  I love the cartoon on the back, so appropriate for the man who has stolen more bases than anyone not named Rickey Henderson.

Okay, time for the final card, and it's one I've wanted to own for years now, since I was a boy really.

As far as '60s baseball cards go, this has to be one of the most iconic.  Behold!

I can't describe how excited I was when this COMC order arrived and I finally owned my own copy of the 1961 Topps Roger Maris card.  A great portrait shot here, I love Roger's stoic look.

The home run race that went on that season is one of the most well-known tales in baseball history, and I've been interested in that race since first reading about it as a young boy obsessed with any baseball books I could get my grubby little hands on.  It's awesome to me to think that this card was printed up during that historic year.  I'd like to think that this was pulled from a pack and traded around between a group of neighborhood friends that summer as Roger and Mickey chased history, though I'll never really know.

At $25 and change, this card makes me never want to purchase a retail blaster again.  Bonds, McGwire and Sosa can all go screw, Maris is still the true single season home run king as far as this collector is concerned!

Happy birthday to me, indeed!

Happy Birthday to Me - A COMC "Card Show" - Part 1

My birthday was just about a month ago now.  Since I don't typically get anything sports card-related as a gift (though I did receive an eBay gift card from my mother-in-law), I decided to treat myself this year.  I loaded $75 of credit into my COMC account on a Saturday with a couple of hours to kill and treated it like my own virtual card show.

$75 is much more than I'd typically spend on COMC, but I justified this because A) I haven't busted a single wax box of cards all year and have generally been doing a good job sticking to my hobby budget in 2016, and B) I haven't made the regularly scheduled card show in my area in over 6 months now.

I really wanted above all else to land a few significant vintage baseball cards.  My timing was perfect that weekend, as one particular seller was offering some pretty amazing sales on some "slightly loved" vintage baseball cards.  Some of the best sales I can ever recall seeing on COMC in fact!  I ended up with just 8 cards in total, which I admit doesn't sound like a lot.  One of them took up 1/3 of my allotted budget though, and the other 7 came to $50 combined.  I've got the first four to show off today, and will follow up with the rest in part 2 tomorrow...

Batting lead-off, a nice '63 Topps Yogi Berra, complete with some surface wrinkles.  At #340 on the checklist, this is a "middle series" card from the '63 release.  While the 6th and 7th series cards (#447 and up) are generally thought of as the toughest to acquire, the 4th and 5th series (#284 - #446) were printed in much smaller quantities in 1963 than the middle series releases from previous years.

I was drawn to this one because despite the surface wrinkles it is centered fairly well, which is probably the thing I look for most in a vintage card.  Of course, the ultimate reason I decided to go with this card is that it was priced at an insanely low $6.44.  Can you believe that?  Condition aside, I figured I wouldn't get too many chances to own this card at less than $10.  To put it in perspective, the current lowest price example of this Berra on COMC is listed at $25 and change, and it looks like this:

All of the sudden those surface wrinkles don't look so bad, do they?  With all due respect to Charles Manson, I'd rather have the copy I ended up with.

Nice, clean back too!  This is the third vintage Berra card I've been able to acquire now, which is certainly more than I thought I'd ever get my hands on.

The second card I picked out was another "somewhat" high series card.  With card #505, Juan Marichal is a series 6 (out of 7) card in the 1962 Topps set.  The corners on this one are a little rougher than the Berra, but again the centering is pretty good.  This now gives me Juan's '62, '63 and '64 Topps releases, so I've got the beginnings of a nice little player collecting forming almost by accident.

While it's probably my least favorite of the 8 cards I picked up, it was also the least expensive at just $2.19.  Absolutely no way I could leave this one out of my cart at that bargain basement price.

Next up, Ed Mathews' '57 Topps release.  This one was obviously heavily discounted based on the crease that runs through the middle of the card.  It looks worse in the scan than it does in hand for some reason.  Once again, pretty decent centering though, and like the Berra that I led off with I spent just $6.44 to acquire this card.

It may not be perfect, but if I ever decide to take a stab at the '57 Topps set this will certainly suffice.  Adding to the allure of this one is the fact that the Braves won the World Series in 1957!

Final card of the day is actually the most recent of the 8 that I purchased that weekend.  I love Hoyt Wilhelm because he has some really interesting looking cards (this one included), but you can also pick most of them up for extremely low prices compared to many other HOFers.  I'd seen this one, featuring Hoyt standing in front of an empty grandstand, on a couple of other blogs and I'm happy to have my own copy.

Again I paid $6.44 for this card, but it's in really fantastic shape with hardly a flaw to be noticed.  I also didn't mind shelling out over $6 for a 1972 Topps card because this is a high number.  At card #777, it's from the sixth and final series and is now the highest number '72 Topps card that I own.

A nice start to a birthday treat to myself there!  These four cards combined added up to what a lowly blaster would cost me at my local Target, but feel so much more significant than that in terms of adding to my collection.

Tomorrow I'll show the other group of four, which I think puts even these to shame!

200 Hits - An Update

A week or two ago, when Mookie Betts recorded his 200th hit of 2016, I put together a post on 200-hit seasons in Boston Red Sox history.  Well, I guess I should have waited a bit longer to hit publish on that one, because over the final weekend of the season a second Red Sox player achieved the mark!

Dustin Pedroia ended up with 201 hits on the year, the second time in his career that he's topped 200 in a season.  Neither Dustin's 201, nor Mookie Betts' 214 hits were enough to take top spot in the league this year though.  That honor for 2016 goes to Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros, who raked in 216 hits!

This gives me a nice excuse to show off a rookie card I've been sitting on for a few months now...

Nice card, huh?  I've wanted a decent Altuve rookie for at least a couple of years now, and with my love for the Cognac Diamond Anniversary parallels this one was an easy pick.  I wasn't necessarily looking for a graded copy, but this particular card was available for a real steal that was less than any raw copy I could find.

I'm hearing Jose's name less and less when it comes to 2016 AL MVP (lately all the talk seems to be Trout vs. Betts), but I guess you never know.  Any way you slice it though, it was quite a 2016 season put in by both of the second basemen featured in this post.

Can't wait for post-season baseball to start this week!