Signature Sundays - Hockey 10-Pack to Close Out 2013!

Let's celebrate the last Signature Sundays post of 2013 with a 10-pack of on-card autographs from 2012-13 Panini Classics Signatures...

Kicking things off is Al Secord, who emerged as a talented scorer after the Boston Bruins, who had originally drafted him, dealt him to the 'Hawks.  He topped 40 goals 3 times, and even 50 once.  He wasn't afraid to mix it up either and spent plenty of time in the sin bin.  These days he's actually a pilot with American Airlines.  My cost?  $5.51.

Next we've got Marian Stastny.  I sound like a broken record at this point, but the autographs are just beautiful on so many of these cards.  I love that Marian signed "Stastny, Marian #18".  You don't see the last name, first name format very often.  I already showed Anton's card a while back, so I've now got 2/3 of the Stastny brothers.  Unfortunately that's probably all I'll ever have, since Peter's card is a short print and the last one I saw listed went for $178 (no, I'm not kidding).  By contrast, Marian here came to $3.49...

Anders Hedberg was an autograph I was excited to get from this set.  I would love one showing him from his days of dominating the WHA with the Winnipeg Jets, but this is a more than acceptable placeholder from Panini until that day comes.  Especially since it set me back all of $4.47 on COMC.  Anders absolutely owned the WHA alongside Bobby Hull, capturing two titles, and was one of the first European-born players to make a significant impact in North American hockey, period.  To get his John Hancock for under $5 almost felt like stealing.

You know you have a good checklist when one of the weaker cards in the set represents 3,149 career penalty minutes and the current head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers.  Certainly not one of the better autographs either, sort of a weak scribble.  If you're a Flyers fan you better hope Craig tries a little harder at coaching hockey than he does at signing hockey cards.  I think I overpaid for this one at $5.41, but I was tired of waiting around for it.

Brian Bellows was actually a fine player, who if anything suffered from being compared to Wayne Gretzky as a young prospect and (surprise) failing to live up to those lofty standards (along with every other human being to ever lace up a pair of skates).  In the end, he amassed over 1,000 points and close to 500 goals at the NHL level, and after coming tantalizingly close to winning it all with the North Stars, finally did just that with the Canadiens in 1993.  1,000 career points, $4.80 for an on-card auto, not too bad...

Everyone remembers the epic 1994 Cup finals when the Rangers finally ended their drought in 7 games against Vancouver.  Fewer remember the Eastern Conference Finals just before that, in which the Rangers squeaked by the Devils, also in 7 games.  Stephane Matteau is best remembered by Rangers fans for scoring two overtime goals in that series, including the ultimate series-decider in game 7.  Interesting guy to have an autograph of, for just $3.75.

As a kid in the early '90s, all I remember about encountering a Tim Kerr card in a pack was snickering about his curly afro.  He was actually quite a sniper though, to the tune of back-to-back-to-back-to-back 50 goal seasons!  I don't think it's unreasonable to ask whether, had it not been for injuries, Kerr would have maybe had a shot at being a Hall-of-Famer.  $6.46 was what it took to add his autograph to my collection.

Ogrodnick was a long time NHL player, in fact he played long enough to accumulate over 400 career goals.  The highlight of his career was the the 1984-85 season in which he scored 55 goals and assisted on 50 others for 105 points (all career highs).  This card was the bargain of this lot unquestionably at $1.60...

Mike Foligno was a gritty winger who carved out a long career at the NHL level.  He appears to have started a hockey dynasty as well, with two sons playing in the league today.  Mike's nice bold auto complete with uniform #17, set me back $5.50.

Finally, the most expensive card of the lot (at just $7) believe it or not, Guy Hebert.  Guy was a Mighty Duck for longer than any other player from the original expansion team, and is still near the top of every major statistical category in goaltending for the franchise.  His autograph is not a short print, but for whatever reason doesn't seem to show up as frequently as many of the other autographs, hence the slightly inflated price.

10 great on-card autographs, and in case you weren't tallying that's a total of $47.99.  At $4.79 on average you can't go wrong in my opinion.  These bring my total to 75 autographs and counting, a nice tidy number to round out 2013.  I've got plenty more great autographs, both from this set and others, that I'll be featuring in the new year!

Saturday Smorgasbord

Alright, well I've been checked out for an entire week thanks to some insane illness that completely kicked my ass, followed up by the holidays.  How about a totally random assortment of cards to get back into the swing of things.  It's time for Saturday Smorgasbord...

First up, I received a few packs of cards from one generous gift giver this year.  I'll be enjoying them slowly over time (I often save packs for years if you can believe that), but I figured I should at least tear into one right away.  I chose this hobby pack of 2008 Upper Deck Series 2 baseball, containing a solid 20 cards...

One of the best pitchers of all-time straight out of the gate.  A great start to the pack even if it is a tubby, late-career photo of Maddux.

2008 Upper Deck flagship was actually my favorite baseball set released that year, which was the second year of my return to collecting.

Here's the man on the wrapper, and the lone Red Sox card in the pack.  This is card #795, and the huge checklist is one of the things I like about the set.

Best name in the pack, Norris Hopper.

A nice photo of a stretch at first.

The simple, almost non-existent design combined with the crystal-clear full-bleed photography make for a set you either love or hate.  I fall into the camp that loves the cards for the amazing photos, but I've heard many collectors who more heavily value card design complain that this set just mails it in.

Here's my insert, a Jeremy Hamilton USA Baseball.  As far as I can tell he never made the bigs.

You could build a pretty decent team at the time out of the guys from this pack.

Love this Lincecum card.

I miss Upper Deck.  That was a fun look back at a favorite of mine.  I'll be sharing the other packs I was gifted in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, here's some other random clutter from my card desk...

Speaking of great Upper Deck sets, here's one from the 2005 Baseball Heroes release.  I've been trying to accumulate the five Will Clark Emerald Autos (#'d/99) from this set for years, and while I was sick I missed out on an eBay auction I was watching that represented the first I'd seen of one of them in years.  Ugh.

Here's a baseball card that's really a hockey card.  I find it funny that I own exactly two 2011 Goodwin Champions baseball cards, and they're both hockey players (the other being a Cam Neely base card I received in a trade).  Lindros was a beast during my childhood NHL fandom, so I couldn't pass up this interesting swatch.  I must have bought this a year or two ago now, but only got around to cataloging it this week.

Last but not least, I recently showed off some box bottoms from 1989-90 Topps.  Well here's another I picked up recently, Ron Francis from 1988-89 O-Pee-Chee.  A different photo than what was used on his standard card in the set...

I'll be back tomorrow with some on-card autographs...

1953 Topps Project - Herman Wehmeier

Another day, another card towards my lifelong goal of completing the 1953 Topps baseball set. Today we look at card #110 on the checklist, Herman Wehmeier of the Cincinnati Reds.  This card actually reflects an interesting story from the United States' past...

If you've never heard of Herm here, you could certainly be forgiven.  He appeared in 13 different seasons (between 1945 and 1958, did not play in 1946), but really turned in a pretty underwhelming career stat line overall.  His first 8 1/2 seasons were played with the Cincinnati Reds.  In 361 total appearances, Wehmeier pitched to a career 92-108 record with a 4.80 ERA.  Herman frequently lead the league in categories you don't generally want to lead in as a pitcher, like walks, hit batsmen, earned runs allowed, wild pitches, etc.  He'd spend the final few seasons bouncing around with four other teams before calling it a career.

As a fan of world history, what I love about this card are the ties between baseball and what was occurring in American society at the time.  1953 was right smack in the middle of the Second Red Scare, the McCarthy era, and the paranoia related to communism was at a peak here in the States.  So much so that even the word "Red" was a potential indicator, and a good way to draw unwanted attention to yourself.  During this period the Cincinnati Reds, quite obviously aware of this, took a variety of steps to disassociate themselves from the word (and the color).

You can see on Wehmeier's '53 Topps card that there seems to be a lot of blue in the Reds uniform, but at least here they still use the word Reds within the team's red "C" logo, and still refer to the team as the Reds.  Like I said, these changes kind of came in stages relative to the panic level of the general public.  Here's a look at another '50s Reds card from my collection, from just two years later:

Whole lotta blue right there, even the sleeves and the stirrups.  The logo, while totally awesome, no longer features the word Reds and the team is now being referred to as the Redlegs, even though Chuck's legs are blue.  I'm fascinated by this as an example of society influencing sport, in fact I think I'm going to pick up some more '50s Reds cards and do a post on just this topic sometime.

Oh yeah, a couple more interesting things.  Herman was absolutely owned by the St. Louis Cardinals (as in 0-14!) before being traded to them later in his career.  Not only that, he also died on the witness stand while testifying at a federal theft trial at age 46!  There's an interesting read on it, much better than I could ever type up, here.  Herm Wehmeier's 1953 Topps card is just another example proving that even a lowly common can make for a very interesting piece of cardboard.

Set Progress:  61 of 274 (22%)

Keeping the Mailman Busy

The other day I happened to be out on my front lawn with my dog when the mailman stopped by on his run.  He had a package for me that required a signature, and when I walked over to sign the first thing he said to me was "man, you must have one hell of a baseball card collection".  Sign #1 that you may have a "cardboard problem"?  When your postal carrier knows your residence as the baseball card house.

Since I keep good track of my cardboard purchases, I figured I'd take a look back at some of the packages delivered by my trusty mailman this past year.  So here are some cards that arrived in my mailbox in 2013...

In January, the mailman delivered two of the final cards I needed for the beast of a set that is 2008-09 O-Pee-Chee retro.  This set is absolutely maddening to collect just because of how infrequently the cards appear on the secondary market.  I snagged these for just a penny each plus a couple bucks shipping, but I had a saved eBay search up for nearly two years on them before I got a hit, if you can believe that.  If you have or can track down #368 Gilbert Brule or #393 Milan Jurcina I will pay handsomely!

In Febraury, this Black Diamond Ron Francis lay behind the little plastic door at the end of my driveway.  As you can see, my sports card purchases tend to fall in line with the seasons of the actual sports I enjoy watching.  In the winter, most of my purchases are hockey cards, in the summer baseball cards.

This awesome Junior Whalers team-issue of Francis came the very same month!

In March, things were much the same.  In fact I was grabbing so many Whalers cards I started a separate blog for them.  Things have slowed down a bit over there but I'm still happy with having featured over 100 cards in my first year and am hoping to pick the pace back up in 2014...

By April, the snow had all melted away, Spring Training was over, summer was just around the corner and the 2013 baseball season was officially underway.  My lawn was green for the first time in months, so it's no surprise that April saw some Red Sox rolling in, including a lot of these crazy blue Opening Day parallels.  I had no idea back then just what 2013 had in store for the Sox...

In May, the baseball purchases continued.  I snagged what I would say was one of my cheap bargains of the year on eBay in the form of this 1954 Bowman Hoot Evers.  This is actually my very first '54 Bowman, and what a great looking piece of cardboard it is.  If you can believe it, this card set me back just $3.84 plus an even $2 for shipping.

In June, the Bruins were marching towards the Stanley Cup Finals.

A lot of these O-Pee-Chee retros was delivered...

...just a few days before the Bruins lost in the finals.

In July it was back to baseball, and one of the bubble mailers that arrived contained this '56 Topps Grady Hatton, which lightened my virtual wallet by just a buck.

In August I purchased a lot of 200+ Red Sox cards on the cheap that actually came in a 400ct box.  Maybe this is what tipped him off as to the contents of all those bubble mailers.

The highlight for me were these 2001 Topps Heritage short prints.  I would have paid the same for just these two SPs (if I could even find them) as what the entire lot set me back...

..and there were 200 other great cards included, like this awesome Boomer Bowman Heritage mini.

We all know how things were starting to shape up for the Red Sox in October, and it was reflected in my online purchases.  One of the highlights of this month for me was something like 11 or 12 of these silver slate blue foil parallels...

In October, the Red Sox made history, and I celebrated by adding another awesome pre-'50s Red Sox card to my collection.  Sam Mele's 1949 Bowman card in really great shape was had for less than the cost of a blaster, including shipping.

In November, the World Series hangover continued, and my mailman delivered this nice pair of '59 Topps Red Sox cards.

Finally, December, and here's a card that was in the stack of mail the very same day my mailman made his comment.  Yup, I've certainly kept him busy.

Fitting that I should end this post with a 2012-13 Panini Classics Signatures autograph, as he's probably left more of these in my mailbox than anything else this past year!