A Couple of Parkies & a Teaser for Tomorrow's Epic Post!

Even in these stressful and uncertain times, in fact maybe now more than ever, it's important to treat yourself.  That's why a couple of weeks back I put together an order with one of my favorite eBay sellers as a small mental reward for making it through my first few weeks of sheltering in place.

I picked up five cards in all for around $30 (free shipping on orders over $25).  I've got the first pair to show today, from one of my favorite vintage hockey sets; 1957-58 Parkhurst!

First up, Leafs left wing Sid Smith.  Sid played a dozen seasons with Toronto, winning three Stanley Cups and two Lady Byng Trophies (for sportsmanship).  He was even captain of the club for a season, just a year or two before this card was printed up.

I love this set for its simplicity.  A prominent logo, a nice painting of the subject in action sans background, and a loud red strip across the bottom with the card number (on the front, blasphemous!), subject name, and position. 

You can see some surface wrinkling in the upper right of Sid's card here, but it doesn't bother me in the least.  As this set goes, and virtually all '50s hockey for that matter, I just care about overall visual appeal and avoiding cards that are truly atrocious (like missing an entire corner, or a mustache drawn on, stuff like that).

The backs aren't quite as exciting, but you do get a nice write-up in both English and French at least.

The other addition is from the Montreal Canadians portion of the set, defenseman Bob Turner.  He was fortunate enough to be a member of the team that won five straight Stanley Cup Championships between 1956 and 1960!

The entire checklist for this release is only 50 cards deep; 25 Maple Leafs cards and 25 Canadiens cards.  When I first learned that, I thought for a moment that maybe this would be a reasonable '50s hockey set to pursue.  Then I looked at the checklist and saw names like Jean Beliveau, Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Tim Horton and plenty of other HOFers, and realized that's not a very likely possibility.

That's okay though, I'm content to sit back and enjoy each and every relatively cheap pick-up I can find from this set.  Like these two, which cost me $4.75 and $5.50, respectively.  I may never reach the finish line, but with this pair in hand I do have 5 of these now, or 10% of a complete set.

That's a wrap for today, gotta get back to work here.  I don't usually do this but I also wanted to tease my next post just a bit...

Earlier this year, before the pandemic really broke out, I executed a massive flip via eBay.  In the end I sold 35 separate cards and shipped them out all over the country, and used the proceeds to buy just a single dream card for my collection.  For now I'll just say that it's one of the most iconic cards in its particular sport, and it's probably not the card you'd guess it would be if you've followed this blog over the years.

Tune in tomorrow morning to see the results of my largest many-to-single card flip to date!

Cardboard Keepers - My Two Best Hockey Relics

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.

Today we're going to look at a pair of game-used hockey cards.  I'm one of those collectors who isn't generally all that enthused with relic cards.  When I first got back into collecting in 2007 I thought the concept was neat, and chased a few of them in those early days.  I learned relatively quickly though about the questionable authenticity of some of the cards, and reading the fine print on the back and learning that some were "event-used" was sort of a bummer as well.

I don't mean to paint an overly dire picture of these cards though, because there are some that I truly do enjoy.  On the hockey side of my collection, there are two in particular that stand out above all the others, and today I'll be inducting both into my Cardboard Keepers collection...

Check this baby out!  I learned about these fantastic "Super-sized Pads" relics from In the Game courtesy of another blogger back in 2017.  As soon as I read his post I knew I wanted to acquire one of these for my own collection, and in looking over the checklist Gerry Cheevers was the obvious choice for me.

I love the "brown leather pad" era for goalies in the NHL, and looking at this gigantic slice of Cheevers' pad still makes me smile even a couple of years after landing this card.  This is a relic card done right, of a Stanley Cup Champion, HOFer, and cable TV broadcaster of Hartford Whalers games from my youth!

Here's a look at the back, which importantly notes that this piece of pad is actually game-used.

My other favorite hockey card relic was sent to me by my longtime hobby friend Douglas Corti, and features an absolutely sweet piece of Pat Verbeek's hockey stick!  The "Little Ball of Hate" was one of my brothers' and I's favorite players growing up, and I just thought this card was the coolest thing when I received it totally by surprise.

I even managed to track down a card within my collection that shows the exact model stick that I'm fairly certain the shard on this relic card came from.  If you click for a larger image and zoom in you can see the word Louisville on his stick, and the relic from Douglas contains the letter E at the end, and the copyright mark.

Again, the back confirms that this is game-used, which is how all relic cards should be in my personal opinion.  A really great card there of one of the under-rated 500-goal scorers in league history.

So, there are my two favorite hockey relics, easy selections for my Cardboard Keepers collection.  It's interesting that neither of them comes from a company who had a license to produce NHL hockey cards at the time.  I think Upper Deck could learn a thing or two from the ingenuity shown in this pair of relic cards!

The non-baseball Cardboard Keepers collection is up to 19 cards in size now, and can be viewed here.  I've still got a long way to go, with 981 cards remaining to be selected.  I'll be back soon with the next card or group of cards, but until then thanks as always for stopping by!

Crazy Days and Polar Nights with Pretzels Getzien!

Last year, I went on a brief Helmar streak over the summer.  I really like their "art cards", which are inspired by old-time card designs and feature original artwork of many forgotten heroes of the dead-ball era.  At a $9.99 starting price for each auction my enthusiasm eventually waned, but I still look at their weekly eBay auctions every so often (they end every Tuesday night) and will sometimes grab one that speaks to me if I'm the lone bidder.

Anyway, the two I have to feature today were grabbed last year, and are from the Polar Night set.  These are over-sized, closer to a postcard in size than a modern trading card actually.  If you care to learn more about them here's a link to my post last summer where I discuss the inspiration behind the design, size of the cards, etc.

First up, we have Charles "Pretzels" Getzien (or Getzein, as it appears here).  Several things drew me to this card, including but not limited to:

• The awesome backdrop, featuring what looks like a factory of some sort?  A riverboat on the horizon, maybe?
• He's shown here with the Detroit Wolverines, which is just a fantastic team name
• He was the first German player in MLB history
• Dude pitched six complete games in the 1887 World Series (which the Wolverines won 10 games to 5)!

Apparently sources dispute whether he got the nickname "Pretzels" due to his German descent, or due to the fact that he possessed an ability to throw a "double curve" that mimicked the shape of the German snack!  To me it sounds like the former is more likely, but you never know given that his curveball was indeed the source of much study and speculation in the 1880s.  Either way, what a cool piece of baseball lore!

Here's a look at the back of Pretzels' card.  The Polar Nights all have this standard back, with the only difference being the card number of course.

The other Polar Night I have for you today is Larry Twitchell, pictured above.  I grabbed this one because he was a teammate of Pretzels Getzien on those Detroit Wolverines clubs of the late 1880s, including on the 1887 team that won the World Series!  I guess I'm off and running on a Wolverines team set here.

I believe Larry has a card in the Old Judge set from the 1800s, but I don't have that kind of hobby budget, and even if I did there would be a lot of other expensive cards on my want list ahead of that one.  That's why I enjoy these Helmar cards so much, they are an affordable way to obtain high quality cards with vintage look and feel, of largely forgotten stars that would be absent from my collection otherwise.

To each his own, but I love the work that Helmar Brewing does in creating these little works of art, and hope to continue supporting their business in the future.  At the same price point, give me one of these over a Topps NOW card any day!

Coronavirus Packages Episode II - The Clone Wars

A bit of a stretch on the post title?  Maybe, but I've been cooped up inside for weeks and may or may not be starting to go a little loony.  Anyway, it's not that much of a stretch, given that it is the second package I've received while sheltering in place here, and given that five of the six cards in today's package from Douglas of Sports Cards from the Dollar Store could loosely be defined as imperfect "clones"...

For example, here's a "Holo Blue" parallel of Chris Sale from 2020 Donruss.  A slightly altered clone of the base card, no?

Douglas' package provided me my very first in-hand look at 2020 Donruss, and the crazy thing is that I got some really nice parallel and insert cards from the set before ever receiving any base cards.  We have some of the absolute friendliest folks you'll encounter in this hobby of ours.

I mean, look at this one!  This JD Martinez is an Artist Proof parallel, and is serial-numbered to just /10.  I know modern-day, unlicensed Donruss isn't every collector's cup of tea, but you have to appreciate receiving a card serial-numbered to just /10 out of the blue!  Simply amazing.

It keeps getting better, as this Rafael Devers "Season Stat Line" parallel is the latest addition to my growing player collection of the young Boston star.  I've mentioned before that aside from Xander Bogaerts, Devers is my favorite current Red Sox player to land new cards of. 

Sure, it looks like Devers is taking a cut wearing purple and grey pajamas here, but I love the shiny, holofoil effect and I won't turn down any of his cards that I don't have already, especially serial-numbered ones like this.

Closing out the Donruss portion of the package we have the one card in this post that can't really be compared to a clone.  I actually really like the look of this relic card.  While I do wish MLB would grant Panini a license to produce trading cards, this photograph is well-chosen and the lack of logos is nearly unnoticeable here.

With four cards, Douglas made a huge impact to my 2020 Red Sox collection here.  But that's not all, as he contributed a pair of cards featuring my favorite team on the hockey side as well...

You may be saying to yourself, "wait a second, you have over 1,700 Whalers cards and you didn't have a 1990-91 Score Peter Sidorkiewicz until now?".  Well, I do have the entire 1990-91 Score set, however...

...this is the Canadian version, complete with French text!  Douglas has been sending me one or two of these over time, and I think I'm maybe half a dozen cards in towards the team set at this point.  A cool card and much appreciated, but the other Whalers card that was inside the package blows this one away.

Whoa!!!  There are few hockey cards on planet earth that make me happier to acquire than a very scarce Whalers parallel.  Aside from that, if you've stopped by here with any regularity over the years then you likely know about my love of buyback cards.  You've outdone yourself here Douglas, I was beaming when I came across this one in the stack you sent!

Released as part of the 2014-15 Upper Deck set, these buybacks from the inaugural '90-91 set are foil stamped (lower left corner above Jody Hull's stick), and hand-numbered to /25.  I'm not sure if it's because there were fewer produced, or if hardcore hockey collectors just embraced them more, or what, but these are difficult to come by.  If you ever see one, even a total scrub common, for less than a couple dollars then you've stumbled upon quite the deal.

It's unlikely that I'll ever be able to complete a team set of these due to their scarcity, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try!  This is the 9th one of these buybacks in my collection, 5 of which feature Hartford Whalers.  There were 22 Whalers in the inaugural Upper Deck hockey release, so I'm not even a quarter of the way there.  Maybe I could build a combined team set though featuring a mix of these buybacks, and the 20th Anniversary buybacks of the same set from a few seasons prior.  Still probably a stretch, but a more realistically attainable goal anyway.

In any event, this is an absolutely amazing card and a perfect fit for my collection.  Douglas, your generosity and sheer volume of mailings continues to amaze me.  Thank you so much for these cards, each and every one is a perfect hit!

To everyone else, thanks as always for stopping by and stay inside if you can...

Buyback Franken-set: 1,500 Buybacks Starring Clemente? Yep, Clemente!

Today marks a significant milestone in my Buyback Franken-set project, 1,500 total buybacks profiled to date!  Just like when I crossed the 1,000 total buybacks threshold, I wanted to feature a special buyback to commemorate the occasion.

I knew just which card I wanted to go with too, as it's one of my all-time favorite buybacks featuring one of my all-time favorite players.  I actually grabbed it a couple of years ago, but had been waiting for the right opportunity to show it off here and evaluate it for my franken-set.

Behold!

1968 Topps #480 - Manager's Dream (Tony Oliva/Chico Cardenas/Roberto Clemente)

Isn't it beautiful?  1960s Topps combo cards like this are some of my favorite vintage baseball cards, period.  This one in particular is just fantastic, featuring three stars of the game on a sunny day, one of whom is generally regarded as one of the best men (both professionally and personally) ever to appear on a Major League field.

I'm still somewhat astonished that Topps would dare to stamp a vintage card featuring Clemente like this, and I can already hear some folks griping about that.  There are plenty of copies of this card floating around out there though, so if you feel that way go buy an un-stamped one, and let me enjoy my buybacks in peace!  While Topps doesn't really release any specific information about their buyback program (that I know of anyway), I'm fairly certain this is the one and only buyback version of this card in existence.  In all my years of searching out buybacks I've never seen or heard of another.

Here's a look at the back.  Slightly mis-cut, but overall the condition on this buyback is relatively surprising.  If Topps was going to stamp a Clemente like this, you'd think they'd have found a beater, or at least one in worse shape than this beauty.

Now, this card is obviously about as close to a lock as I've encountered in the history of this project, but nonetheless let's go through the motions and see what its competition is as far as the franken-set binder goes...

Wow, not a half bad match-up!  I guess it's not surprising that we'd find a star in this slot given that it's a card number divisible by ten.  Even though Fred Lynn's magical 1975 campaign took place years before I ever drew a breath, I still appreciate him as most Red Sox fans do.

The card itself isn't exactly a head-turner I have to say.  The 1979 Topps set has much better examples to offer, and if you've read many of these franken-set posts you already know my feelings on cap-less players.

Unsurprisingly, Fred Lynn is immediately ousted from the binder to make way for Tony, Chico and Roberto.

I can't believe I've profiled a full 1,500 buybacks for this project now.  I couldn't think of a more appropriate card to celebrate the milestone with than this one.  Easily a top-five buyback in the entire binder, and I can't imagine there's a card in existence that could possibly bump this one from its slot.

To those of you who have read along, left comments, or even sent me buybacks over the course of this years-long project, thank you so much!  I'm still very much passionate about completing the franken-set, and have just 120 empty pockets left to fill to get there.  I hope you'll join me as I plunge forward into the next 1,500!

Franken-set Progress: 672/792 (84%)
1990 Topps Buyback Set: 133/792 (16%)
"Rejected" Buybacks: 695
Total Buybacks in Collection: 1,500!

Buyback Franken-set: Rickey & Friends Bring Me to 1,499 Buybacks

As we wind down another week of isolation, let's take a peek at another ten hopefuls for my Buyback Franken-set project.  As with the last few posts, this week's contenders come from a random eBay lot that I picked up months back for around $20.  Let's get to it!

1981 Topps #478 - Juan Eichelberger

Coming out strong with the meanest sideburns/mustache combo in today's post by a country mile, it's Juan Eichelberger.  Juan was before my time as a fan, but I can respect that strong facial hair game for sure.  Doesn't hurt that he's sporting my initials on his cap there either.  On top of that, 1981 is an under-represented set in the binder.

Tough draw for Juan though, as he is pitted against the beloved Red Sox color commentator, Jerry Remy.  Rem-Dawg is sporting a nice 'stache of his own here.

If I lived anywhere but New England I'd probably have gone with the Eichelberger, but in this case Remy edges him out.

1965 Topps #214 - Bob Purkey

Bob Purkey was a multiple-time All-Star and even received MVP votes in two separate seasons.  The best year of his career was in 1962 with the Reds, where he went an impressive 23-5 with a 2.81 ERA, finishing third in Cy Young voting.  The fact that Heritage box-toppers are my favorite buybacks, and that the '65 set is one of my favorites from the decade, give this one even more weight.

The thing is though, it's up against an equally colorful Heritage buyback from the '60s, and in this case the player is actually wearing a hat.

It takes a lot for a cap-less player to make the binder over one wearing proper head gear.

1987 Topps #738 - Jorge Orta

I got excited when I encountered this 1987 Topps Jorge Orta.  Why?  Because it's a nice high number buyback.  At #738 I figured this one would slide on into an empty pocket.

That was not the case though, as Omar Moreno showing us the art of the bunt is already in slot 738 of the binder.

Not a tough choice there.  I've got precious few '85 buybacks compared to '87s, and the photograph on the '85 is better as well.

1988 Topps #706 - Rick Mahler

Another number above 700, will the results be better this time?  You bet, as this is my first #706 buyback.  Another one bites the dust in my march towards 792-card franken-set completion.  Mahler got battered pretty well over the course of his MLB career, but still managed to stick around from the late '70s through the early '90s.  Welcome to the binder, Rick!

1969 Topps #486 - Paul Casanova

What an awesome Heritage buyback we have here.  I love franchises of yesteryear, so I was pumped to see a Senators buyback in the lot.  Just an awesome classic pose too, with the large catcher's mitt and the batting cage backdrop.  This one's gotta be a lock for inclusion, no?

Well, it'll have to bump this '78 John Curtis from the binder.  This isn't a bad buyback by any means, but it's certainly not as interesting as the Casanova.

Another easy call there.

1988 Topps #686 - Terry Francona

Next up, we've got Terry Francona.  As a Boston sports fan I have more memories of this guy as a manager than I do a player.  Still a nice looking card of Tito though from an under-rated '80s set.

Do I prefer it over this '87 Doyle Alexander, which has been in slot 686 of the binder for a while now?

You bet I do!

1987 Topps #311 - Rickey Henderson TBTC

Very cool, I didn't expect to find any HOFer buybacks in the lot based on the price, even if it is a Turn Back the Clock subset like this.  I have fond memories of the TBTC cards from when I was a kid.  On top of that I'm a Rickey Henderson fan, and I was born in 1982, so this card is right up my alley!

Standing in Rickey's path to the franken-set is this great '65 Topps Orlando Pena buyback.  This one has been in the binder for years, and has bested many a hopeful contestant up until this point.

After much debate, I decided to go with Rickey.  That's no knock on Orlando Pena here, which instantly becomes one of my favorite buybacks in the "Rejected" box.

This card number is part of a complete page, and here you can see part of my reasoning for bouncing Pena.  There were no less than five 1965 Topps buybacks on this one page!

Here it is now, with Rickey front and center, just the way Rickey likes it.  Little more variety anyway.

1986 Topps Traded #55T - Wayne Krenchicki

Wayne Krenchicki looks pretty pleased here, but...

...unfortunately, as a Topps Traded buyback, he is ineligible for this project.  If I ever get around to doing a Traded/Update franken-set maybe he'll make the cut.

1987 Topps #261 - Ruben Sierra

A nice enough 1987 Topps card is next, with outfielder Ruben Sierra taking a big old cut.  I certainly remember having this card as a kid.  A Ruben Sierra rookie card.  Cardboard gold.  After his 30 home run, 35 double, 109 RBI season in 1987, Ruben certainly looked poised for success.

He runs into a buzz-saw though with respect to the franken-set.  As a Red Sox collector, it doesn't get much better than this amazing Gene Stephens buyback from the very first batch of Heritage box-topper buybacks to hit the market.

A close call right there, but my team bias played a part.  My binder, my rules.

1978 Topps #635 - Joe Rudi

Closing out the proceedings today we have Joe Rudi's 1978 issue, courtesy of the 2016 Topps "65th Anniversary" buyback program.  The best part about this card?  It's another new number for the project, the second one in today's post!

That was an interesting grouping for sure.  You won't hear me complain about multiple new card numbers at this relatively advanced stage of the project.  The buybacks in this post take me to 1,499 total buybacks profiled for the franken-set project to date.

I'll be back soon with a very special single-card buyback post to commemorate reaching the 1,500 total buybacks mark.  Until then, thanks as always for stopping by, and have a great weekend!

Franken-set Progress: 672/792 (84%)
1990 Topps Buyback Set: 133/792 (16%)
"Rejected" Buybacks: 694
Total Buybacks in Collection: 1,499