Cheap Slabs - A Beautiful Charlie Hodge

There are an infinite number of ways to enjoy this hobby, and many polarizing topics that divide collectors as well.  One of the things that I enjoy, though I fully realize many do not, is graded cards.  In a new series here on the blog dubbed Cheap Slabs, I'll be featuring graded card pick-ups that set me back $25 or less.

We get things off to a pretty fantastic start if you ask me; here's an absolutely beautiful 1950s Parkhurst hockey card:

The goaltenders got the best hockey cards in the 1950s as far as aesthetics.  There's not a goalie card from the 1950s that I wouldn't want in my collection, if the price is right.  In this case, the price was definitely right, as this card not only cost me less than the $25 threshold to qualify for my Cheap Slabs series, but was actually less than the price of a retail blaster.  Even better, it truly cost me nothing out of pocket since I used proceeds from selling my Stadium Club Crystal Ball Mookie Betts card to fund the purchase.

Here's a much better look at how colorful and vibrant the card is, courtesy of my iPhone camera.  These types of staged poses in full gear in front of the goal were very common in this decade, but it doesn't make them any less visually stunning.  As another example, my prized Jacques Plante from a couple of years prior to this card features a similar look.

Here's the back, with a vertically oriented layout, contrary to the front.  There's a whole lot to take in here, in two different languages of course, so if you'd like a better look just click the image to enlarge.

Well, that's a wrap.  Not much more to say about this one, except that it's more aesthetically pleasing, and a better long-term fit for my collection, than anything I'd likely have pulled out of a blaster box for about the same coin.

Even if graded cards aren't your thing, I hope you found this one interesting and maybe even enough so that you'll enjoy seeing some others down the line.  Until next time, stay safe!

An Authentic Goudey in a PWE?!?!

During the pandemic, the idea of bloggers giving away free cards really seemed to take off.  Of the couple dozen card blogs that I read religiously, a good number of them held these giveaways throughout the summer months.  Mostly I stayed away, either because I'm trying to purge and minimize the size of my collection, or because things had been pretty well picked over whenever I stumbled upon a post.

The lone exception for me was a giveaway held by my good hobby friend Nick, of Dime Boxes.  I happened upon this particular giveaway pretty early in the game, and snagged a pair of cards that intrigued me.  First, the Ohtani card I led off with.  This one's from 2019 Big League, and I recently explained that while I can understand why others aren't into them, I'm a fan of caricature/big head cartoons on cards.

The other freebie that I grabbed was this Frank Howard from the small 1968 Topps Game set.  Decided to make a play for this one because it's in good shape, and while I don't have any active plans to complete the set yet I may decide to someday, based on its small size alone.  I've got just four cards from the release counting this one, but am already better than 10% of the way there!

Because Nick is a stand-up guy, and one of the nicest collectors you'll ever encounter, he absolutely stuffed the PWE that he delivered my two claimed cards in full of Red Sox for me!

Recently I tore into the first of two blasters of 2020 Topps Big League that I picked up on eBay.  I'm hesitantly and tentatively planning to complete the entire 300-card set, but I'm definitely hoping to acquire all the Red Sox cards at the very least.

Nick was a big help on that front, including a pair of sluggers who have admittedly had a pretty rough start to this 2020 "season".  Devers had such an amazing 2019 campaign, and became my second favorite active Boston player behind Xander Bogaerts.  Here's hoping he's able to right the ship here in the remaining games.

Also got this great Orange parallel of the man who should have been the ace of the 2020 rotation with Chris Sale being out.  Unfortunately, this card is a reminder of just how serious the current pandemic is, as Eduardo has been declared out for the season after suffering a heart condition as a result of having contracted COVID-19.  I believe the long-term prognosis should be a full recovery from what I've read, but scary stuff nonetheless, and an unfortunate loss of an arm the team could have desperately used this year.  

Here's to a full recovery for E-Rod!

Let's travel back in time a bit now, with an insert from one of those early 2000s Topps Total releases.  When I first encountered this one in the PWE I could have sworn it looked familiar or that I already had a copy.  Consulting my collection on TCDB I found that was not the case, and my Nomar count increases by one here!

Here's a Josh Beckett Turkey Red insert from a little over a decade ago now.  Don't have a whole lot to say about this one, so this is probably a good opportunity to add my voice to the choir as far as complaining about the new Blogger interface.

I actually had to completely recreate this post from scratch, because for some reason when I added all these scans and clicked the upload button, Blogger decided to put them in reverse order.  Super annoying given that I scan and upload the pics in the order that I want them to appear in for the post.  Normally I'd correct this by switching to HTML view and cutting and pasting the links.  I know just enough HTML to be dangerous, but this was really easy to do on the prior platform because each photo was clearly separated within the underlying code.  Well, in the new Blogger the HTML is jumbled together into a somewhat incomprehensible (at least for a novice like me) mess.  Tried cutting and pasting the scans into the right order from Compose View next, but that introduced a whole host of other problems that I won't get into here.  Eventually, I just ditched the entire thing, started over, and found that Blogger uploaded the scans in the correct order next time around.

I work in IT, so I'm used to technical change being forced upon me and am willing to be somewhat forgiving, but let's hope that doesn't rear it's ugly head again.  If it wasn't for the fact that I was so determined to give Nick his proper thanks, I would have just called it a dead post and walked away.  Too many experiences like this, and I'll consider packing up and taking this show over to YouTube.

Moving on...

Here's a cool one.  Not just because Mookie Betts was absolutely amazing in his few short seasons with the Red Sox, but also because this is a short print!

Nick is the undisputed king of oddballs around the blogs, and he certainly didn't disappoint with this PWE.  What's better than a Dwight Evans Hostess card?

Two Dwight Evans Hostess cards, of course!  Full disclosure, I actually already had a copy of this (1977?) release.  However, this one has so much character with all the staining that I absolutely love it.  So much so that I decided to hang onto both copies, which is unusual for me.  If this card could talk, it would have some stories to tell!

If you saw my post where I highlighted my other recent delivery from Nick then you probably know that this Manny Ramirez is no ordinary Topps flagship card...

...it's from the 2003 Topps Kanebo Japan release!  I've got three of these fantastic cards in my Red Sox collection now, all of which came from Nick in the past few months alone.  Amazing.

Nick also provided me with my very first in-person look at the apparently-impossible-to-find 2020 Bowman release.  I'm not a huge Bowman guy generally speaking, but will happily accept this Camo parallel of Boston's current #10 prospect according to MLB.com.

This is one of the greatest 1980s Red Sox cards in existence, period.  I've got a copy already, proudly plucked off of COMC a few years back, but like the Evans Hostess above I'm tempted to keep this one anyway.  If not, I'll have no problem at all getting this sent off to another trade partner.  Every decent Red Sox collection needs a copy of the Wade Boggs rubber chicken card, after all.

As today's post title indicates, this was easily the most stunning card to fall out of Nick's PWE.  I could be wrong of course, but as far as my untrained eye can tell this is not a reprint.  I'm fairly certain this is a freakin' authentic 1933 Goudey card.

To say that I was sitting in stunned disbelief for a few minutes when I discovered this card would be an understatement.  This card has everything you'd want from a super old vintage card.  Enough wear and surface wrinkling to know it's been around the block, but still vibrant and colorful, and just plain beautiful.  This might be the oldest card anyone has ever sent me by surprise and out of the blue, off the top of my head.

You'd think maybe it would have glue or paper loss on the back, which wouldn't bother me in the least given its age, but nope, nice and clean and totally legible.  Again, I'm absolutely amazed.  You've really outdone yourself here, Nick!

As if stuffing all those cards into a single PWE, and including a 1930s Red Sox card, wasn't enough, Nick also tossed in a pair of buybacks in the hopes that they'd potentially make my Buyback Franken-set!

Let's check them out and see how they fare...

1976 Topps #338 - Bob Bailey

First up we've got a nice Expos card from the under-rated '76 Topps set.  1972 and 1975 get so much love when it comes to 1970s Topps designs, and deservedly so, but the '76 design is nothing to scoff at either.  I do have a card already in slot 338 of the franken-set...

...and it's this interesting Paul Schaal from the 1970 release.  As far as set design goes, give me '76 over '70 any day.  The thing is though, I've always really enjoyed the photograph on this Paul Schaal.  For some reason the angle makes it look like he's in a little league park or something like that, and you can't go wrong with a bunch of trees in the background on a baseball card, either.

It wasn't an easy call by any means, but I'm reluctantly sticking with the Schaal. 

1990 Topps #313 - Gus Polidor

The other buyback that Nick included really got me excited.  Most of you probably know this already, but I'm attempting to complete an entire 1990 Topps set in buyback form.  Honestly this is likely a fool's errand, but I'm determined to see how far I can get with it before flaming out or giving up.

Not only is Gus Polidor missing from that 1990 buyback binder so far, but I'm also confident based on my records that it's a card I don't have in my backlog of "to be processed" buybacks either.  Literally a perfect fit for my buyback collection!  The thing is though, the Buyback Franken-set comes before the 1990 buyback set in terms of priority, so I can only slide this one over to the 1990 binder if I've already got a card #313 in the franken-set.

Luckily for me, I already do, in the form of this 1965 Topps Jimmie Schaffer, rocking the backwards cap a full 30 years before Ken Griffey Jr. made it cool.

Polidor goes off to the 1990 buyback set, where he belongs.  All is right with the world (of buybacks anyway).

Nick, thank you SO MUCH for the amazing cards.  I'm mystified that you were able to jam all this content into a single PWE, and am so appreciative of every one of these new additions to my collection.  I'm absolutely gonna prepare something to return fire with here.

To everyone else, thanks as always for stopping by!

Franken-set Progress: 672/792 (84%)
1990 Topps Buyback Set: 135/792 (16%)
"Rejected" Buybacks: 722
Total Buybacks in Collection: 1,527

Shiny Cardboard - Sepia Trout

It's been one of those days today, just not much time for the hobby.  Wanted to get something up since it's been a couple of days, so here's a shiny Mike Trout Sepia Refractor I landed a while back.  Purchases like these are prime examples of where my lack of focus becomes apparent, but I couldn't resist for less than ten dollars.  Best player in baseball, and I love a good refractor, can't go wrong.

That is all, thanks for stopping by.

 

Hobby Happenings

Just some hobby happenings from Shoebox Legends World Headquarters over the past week or so here...

So, I had two copies of this Kylian Mbappe Black & Gold Wave Refractor from the 2018 Panini Prizm World Cup set.  It's not quite as desirable as the Silver Prizm that I flipped into a 1940 Joe DiMaggio, but it's a desirable card nonetheless.  I sold one copy in July to generate some funds for other cards since I was on a spending freeze, and just this past week finally made the decision to part with the other.  It got listed this morning, 3 day auction starting at $9.99 with no reserve.  We'll see where it ends up!

Because I've been on a run of these of late, here's another of those fantastic '72-73 O-Pee-Chee high number WHA cards.  Couple soft corners here, but this one is a beauty with really bold color.  Plus, I have precious few cards of the short-lived Philadelphia Blazers.

Here's my latest Helmar T206 card, and by latest I mean that I picked it up many, many months ago and am just getting around to featuring it now.

In the case of this card, I picked it up more for the subject than for the artwork, which is unusual as Helmar goes for me.  The thing is, Benny Kauff is fascinating to me in that he was the best hitter in the short-lived Federal League!  He led the league in batting average in both years of its existence, which makes this card just awesome.

I'd love to pick up Benny's 1915 Cracker Jack release someday, but that's a couple hundred dollars all day long, so for now I'll enjoy this beautiful card for $9.99 instead.

Here's a look at the back, very well done and different from my other two Helmar T206 backs.  These are just absolutely beautiful cards, I'm really overdue to pick up some more.

Well, that's it for now, just a quick trio of cards for you, one that's on the way out, two more that pass it on the way in.  The revolving door that is my collection these days.

Thanks as always for stopping by, and I'll be back this week with some great trade packages from my hobby friends, as well as a few pick-ups of my own!

The Itch to Rip - Late to the Big League Party

Since Topps Stadium Club, the one new release I seem to really enjoy each year, hasn't come out yet in 2020, there just hasn't been much out there that appeals to me in terms of new sets.  The one exception to that might be Topps Big League Baseball.  I've enjoyed the concept for this low-end set since its inception, but the design for the first few years hasn't done much for me.

This year seemed different though, at least based on the images I saw on other hobby blogs.  I was intrigued by the design.  As with this brand in previous years, I like the concept of a simple set, devoid (mostly) of hits and chase cards that is cheap, easy and, gasp, FUN to collect!

When I finished ripping my 2018 Topps Stadium Club blaster a couple weeks ago I decided I'd try to track down some Big League next.  Retail cardboard availability is an absolute joke still, and I'm not keen on spending time in big box stores if I don't have to due to COVID, so once again eBay it was.  Worked out great actually, as I found a seller with two blasters available for $32 with free shipping.  Not sure how that could be profitable for this particular seller, but anyway, let's crack open the first pack from the first blaster.

I'll try to keep my commentary to a minimum, as I'm sure you've seen (and probably collected) many of these cards by now.  What can I say, I'm a little late to the party.  Like I said, I love the simple design Topps used here, with the subtly color-coded borders and simplistic layout.

Your 2019 AL WHIP leaders.

The photography might not be "Stadium Club level", but that's okay.  There are some great shots, and the framing is very well done as you can see here.

Each pack in the blaster comes with one Orange parallel, and apparently this blaster was meant for me since my very first one is a Red Sox card.  Chavis may not be one of the more exciting players in Boston's line-up, as he swings for the fences and strikes out a ton.  Still, a cool card with a really nice photograph.

I have to be honest, these Roll Call inserts sort of make me snooze.  They're slightly better than what I've seen in other recent Topps projects, but just don't do much for me.  Off to the trade box with this Arenado.

It's never a bad thing pulling a Mike Trout card.  Never.

Fantastic action shot on Lorenzo Cain's card.  I can certainly understand his recent decision to opt out of the remainder of the 2020 season.

Actually, the first pack ends on back-to-back awesome horizontal photographs, with a great sliding catch here from Pittsburgh outfielder Gregory Polanco.

That was a lot of fun, so let's take a look at another pack.  Now would be a good time to mention another plus for Big League, which is that you get ten cards per pack.  Even with the obligatory insert and parallel, you still get what feels like a generous eight base cards per pack.  With ten packs in a blaster, you're coming out of one with a full 80 base cards.  Compare that to Stadium Club, where you get five cards per pack and just eight packs per blaster, and you're getting more than twice the number of base cards for the same price.

Second pack starts off with the NL RBI Leaders.

Again, keeping the commentary to a minimum here but really enjoying these cards.  At just 300 cards in size, and with no short prints, it doesn't feel like too daunting a task to take a stab at this set.

Orange parallel was a little less exciting for me personally this time, with D-Backs hurler Robbie Ray.

On the other hand, I actually enjoy the insert and may hang onto it.  I know a lot of people are creeped out by them, but I sort of enjoy the "big head/caricature" cartoon cards like this.  Maybe it's due to the fact that I was a kid collector in the early '90s when things like Topps Kids and those Score All-Star subset cards used this tactic.  Anyway, I'll hang onto this one for now.

That wraps up pack two.

Let's rip one more open in this first post, why not.

Another leaders card in the lead-off spot.

Two Trouts in the first three packs.  Not too bad, even if the "bro-hawk and a tux" look isn't the most desirable form of Trout card.

Sort of indifferent about these Flipping Out inserts.  Into the trade stack with this one.

Great Spider-man wall-climbing shot on Ramon Laureano's card.

Hanser Alberto is a player that had somewhat fallen under the radar as far as my fandom goes, but I thought he looked great when the Sox played Baltimore at the start of this odd 2020 season, and learned at that time about his impressive 2019 season also.  Happy to have this card, my first of his I'm fairly certain.

Well, that's a wrap as far as the first three packs of this blaster go.  An entertaining start to the rip, and I'm excited to get to the remaining packs soon.  These blasters come with a 5-card pack of blue parallels as well.  I'll likely squeeze two more posts from this in the coming days, one covering packs 4-7 and another with packs 8-10 and the blue parallels.

Thanks as always for stopping by, and enjoy your evening!