1954 Bowman - Oversized Works of Art

Until recently, I had virtually ignored the 1954 Bowman set when it came to my vintage collection.  I think maybe it stemmed from the fact that the '50 and '52 sets were the ones I had a couple of cards from as a kid, so I tended to gravitate towards those releases.  In any event, over the past couple of months I was amazed to discover just how cheaply I could acquire '54 Bowman cards on COMC.

These cards really are small works of art.  Like quite a few '50s sets, they're larger than your average modern day trading card at 2 1/2" by 3 3/4".  The design is very simple, focusing largely on the player portrait with the exception of the small colored box containing the facsimile signature.  The illustrated/painted style of the player pictures, combined with the larger card size, really makes these look impressive in hand.

As I said in the opening, I was astounded by how cheap I could get most of these for.  Not one card in this post even topped the $4 mark, and 9 out of the 12 were less than $2.50!

I'm not nearly as big a fan of the backs as I am the fronts, but oh well.  The bat and ball player name and card number is kinda cool, other than that they're frankly a little boring.

How about $1.50 for Hoot Evers sitting on the dugout steps?  Sold!  At this point I'll shut up and let you simply enjoy the scans...

Jim Piersall here was the most expensive of this dozen, ringing in at $3.99.  All twelve cards from this post came to a grand total of $26.78, just a few bucks more than a blaster would set you back at Target.  That averages out to a paltry $2.23 per card!

I don't think I'll likely ever finish off this team set, since it includes the infamous Ted Williams that was replaced and pulled from printing, and is nearly impossible to find for a reasonable price.  Nonetheless, this was a huge bump in my vintage Sox collection, and quite possibly the most rewarding $25 I've ever spent on cardboard...

Shlabotnik Strikes Again

The trade posts roll on! Today I've got the most recent PWE received from Joe Shlabotnik over at The Shlabotnik Report.  Joe and I have gotten on a bit of a back-and-forth roll lately, and his latest PWE did not disappoint!

We'll lead off here with the one card in the package that I did know was coming, this retail chrome parallel from the 2015 Topps Heritage set.  Rusney and the rest of the young Red Sox outfield have been pretty fun to watch this past month or so.  Unfortunately, the card suffered a little ding in the lower left hand corner during shipping, but them's the breaks when you use the infamous PWE.

Joe included a few other new-to-me Red Sox for my quest to acquire as many different Sox cards as possible.  I've gotten quite a few Triple Play packs in repacks over the years, yet somehow hadn't managed to track down this Pedroia yet.  I'm hearing a lot of Pedroia off-season trade talk already, and I'm not sure I object to the idea as much as I would have a few years ago.

Here's a very busy card from 2001 Fleer Game Time.  Wow, there's a lot going on with the design here!  To me, the most questionable part is that small head shot in the lower left that for some inexplicable reason Fleer buried under a white grid pattern, making it nearly impossible to make out.

Nice, my very first SSPC Red Sox card (though I do have a few more from another trade waiting to be scanned in).  Recognize the face?  That would be center fielder Juan Beniquez.  Juan carved out a pretty lengthy MLB career, debuting in 1971 and last playing in 1988.  I love the simple design and high-quality photos in the SSPC set, I would certainly pick up more of these, be they Red Sox or otherwise.

Mini Napoli!  The only thing smaller than this card was Mike's batting average before he was traded away to Texas earlier this season (ba-dump-bump!).

Here's another new one, featuring a nice Spring Training shot of HOFer Jim Rice.  This one's from one of those glossy send-in sets that Topps had going for a while there in the '80s.  I like the big, fat Red Sox wristbands on this one.

Joe's been hooking me up with some '82-83 Topps Hockey Stickers in his PWEs.  I really appreciate these, because they're the closest thing to a hockey card set that Topps produced that year.  I think most hockey fans can recognize this guy, but in case you can't that would be Rick Middleton.

Joe's been bolstering my meager soccer collection with his packages, and this one gave me my very first in-person look at 2008 Upper Deck MLS.  While I'm a Premier League guy and couldn't tell you much about MLS, as a Boston sports fan it's neat to get my first card representing the local soccer club.

Steve Ralston carved out a nice MLS career for himself with the Tampa Bay Mutiny, then the Revolution.  When he retired he had recorded the most career assists in MLS history, though he was eventually surpassed by current record holder Landon Donovan (by a single assist!).

In closing, two more soccer cards from a set that I have seen before, thanks to Joe, 1990 Pro Set.  From my favorite team, the Liverpool Reds, we have Alan Hansen.  Alan actually began his career in the late '70s, and was winding down by the time this card was printed up (he'd retire in 1991).  He went on to make a name for himself as a soccer broadcaster/pundit over in England.

The other Pro Set card features mid-fielder Ronnie Whelan.  Ronnie played with Liverpool from 1979 through 1994, an impressive stretch to say the least.  Born in Dublin, Whelan also made plenty appearances for Ireland's national team, including a pair of World Cups.

Joe, thanks as always for the great cards, and sorry for the delay in posting them!  I'm sure I'll have another PWE headed your way before too long...

Quarter Box Quartet - Hand-drawn Mullet & Teemu

Another day, another four cards from the quarter box at my local hobby shop...

I don't recall having seen these Upper Deck MVP cards that use fan-drawn artwork before.  I didn't scan the back so I'm not sure how old the artist is here, but it's not the worst depiction of the D-Backs flamethrower (literally in this case).  Sort of second guessing why I picked this one out at this point.  Onward!

I've liked these UC3 Cyclone Squad inserts since the very first time I saw one over 20 years ago.  I'm not actively chasing the set or anything, but if I see one I don't have for a quarter it's definitely coming home with me.  As with so many modern cards, they look a lot better in person than they do in the scan.

Nice to see a little hockey in the mix of four cards that I grabbed randomly for this post.  I was 50/50 on whether I already had a copy of this one when I grabbed it, but I'm glad I went for it because it turns out I didn't.  I'm sure I probably had multiple copies of this card as a kid, but those are all long gone. 

In any event, I'm always happy to add a new Selanne to the collection, he was one of my favorite players to watch throughout his entire career, and was an effective goal scorer right until the end.  A rookie for a quarter was an easy buy.

Closing things out is the second Kenny Lofton card of this post!  Just another great addition to my small collection of minor league releases, which has really been picking up some steam lately.

That's all for today, I'll be back tomorrow with another trade post...

The Stanley Cup, Red Sox, and a Completed Set!

Let's continue giving props to all the great folks who have sent me cards recently.  Today's batch comes from longtime friend of the blog, Marc B.

Marc is a great guy, and as a regular reader he really has a good pulse on what I like to collect.  For example, he noted that I've mentioned starting up a collection of cards featuring the greatest trophy in sports, The Stanley Cup, and provided two great cards towards that end.

First we've got the great Mike Bossy above, which I had never even seen before.  It comes from the multi-sport 20th Anniversary set that Upper Deck distributed back in 2009.  What an awesome photo of Bossy hoisting the hardware, shots like this are exactly why I wanted to start up this small collection.

Accompanying Mike in the envelope was this Patrick Roy.  Obviously any subset dubbed "Cup Celebrations" is ideal for this collection.  I'll have more on these in a future post as that collection starts to take form, but for now what a great couple of hockey cards to kick things off.

From there, Marc switched over to baseball and hit on a bunch of Red Sox needs...

Here's another one from a multi-sport set.  This card cracked me up because it's the first time I've thought of little-remembered Rohan Davey in probably a decade or more.

Here's a Topps Attax Hot Streak parallel of the game's newest 500 home run hitter.

A new one from the last year of Upper Deck baseball, when they were supposed to be hiding the logos but really didn't try too hard.

I will gladly accept any and all Red Sox cards that aren't already in  my collection, and that includes mid-'90s stuff that some would consider "junk".

I think most fans have those players who become favorites for some reason, despite not exactly being superstars or household names.  For me, Todd Walker was one of those players.

Though Todd played second base for Boston for just a single season in the pre-Pedroia days, I was impressed overall.  He definitely made a few errors in the field, but nothing his bat didn't make up for as far as I was concerned.  In 144 games with Boston in that lone 2003 season, Todd hit .283 with 15 home runs and a career-high 85 RBI.  Add to that almost 40 doubles, and 250 total bases, and I remember being shocked when the Cubs snagged him in free agency after that season on a one-year $1.75M deal.

All of that is a roundabout way of saying that Marc provided me with my very first Todd Walker Red Sox cards in this package!

Here's another 2003 Upper Deck, like the Walker above.  Surprise, surprise, I really like an Upper Deck set with minimal design and their great full-bleed photography.  I'll have to look around for the rest of this team set.

This one was new to me, though I definitely knew exactly what it was.  I remember collectors being very divided when these all-black 2009 Topps cards were distributed in Wal-Mart that year.  Kind of a cool parallel, though I could see a set collector who plopped down twenty hard-earned dollars for a blaster at the time and ended up with a bunch of these being angry about it.

I do have 1990 and 1991 Upper Deck complete sets, but they're shrink-wrapped and I've never bothered to open them or scan in the cards, so this Roger Clemens is new to my collection, though it isn't.

Had never seen this set before.  2005 Fleer Showcase.  Marc hooked me up with a pair, yet another David Ortiz...

...and Curt Schilling.  Hopefully Curt's been staying away from Twitter recently.  Never used it myself, so I couldn't tell you.

I was right at that impressionable age of baseball fandom when Nomar burst onto the scene, and as a kid in New England who loved sports it was impossible not to love this guy.  I still like getting new Garciaparra cards to this day.

Wow, what was Upper Deck thinking with this set?  Yikes.  Hey, I still needed it and at least Marc saved me from having to pay for it out of a dime box or something like that.

I don't know how many of these Topps made, but it sure seems like a lot to me.  Could have sworn I had all the Red Sox already, but a check revealed that Marc nailed it with this one.

When it comes to cards from 1969 and earlier, I'm no stickler on condition.  There's just something cool about a beat up piece of vintage cardboard, especially when it's a new Red Sox card and it's from one of the better sets of the '60s in my opinion.

My first mini from 2011 Allen & Ginter, believe it or not.  I know some folks aren't big on the horizontal A & G cards, but in this case, at least on the mini version, I think the photo works well.  Probably just a throw-in by Marc, but I think it's actually one of my favorite cards in this package.

New Ted Williams!  This is one of those cards that was printed up by Renata Galasso in the '70s.  I had never bothered to research her until I received this card, though I certainly recognized the name.  She actually sounds like an interesting woman.  Would be cool to go back in time and visit this shop.  Final thought on this one...could you get a more perfect photo of Williams' legendary swing?

Wrapping up this post is the definite All-Star of this package.  I have been looking for a copy of this 1982 Topps Carlton Fisk In Action card for over a year now.  It's one of those that for whatever reason I could just never seem to find in great condition for a good (read cheap) price.  Well, Marc really came through for me and the search is over.

The reason this card is such a big one for me is that it's the final card I needed to complete the 1982 Topps baseball set.  The set is significant for me for a few reasons.  First, it's the year I was born.  Aside from that, I've been at this one literally since I was a kid.  In fact, a good portion of my current set is from a vending box I got as a gift from my Dad sometime in the early '90s.

It's fitting that Marc would put the final nail in the coffin on this one, since he is the one that put it within striking distance to begin with.  Marc, I can't thank you enough for the thoughtful package.  Aside from knocking out the '82 Topps set, you've inspired me to really get going on the Stanley Cup collection and have me on the verge of 5,000 unique Red Sox cards.  I truly appreciate it!  You and Oscar from Sweden are next on my list for outbound packages, and I already have stacks started here for both of you...

The Other Kendrick Perkins

I'm starting to get backlogged again when it comes to posting all of the great trade packages I've been receiving.  Let's cross one off the list with the latest delivery from my friend Mark Kaz at This Way to the Clubhouse.

As a Celtics fan, Mark is probably more familiar with the Kendrick Perkins who plays center in the NBA, and who spent parts of 8 seasons with Boston.  I'll take the baseball Kendrick Perkins any day though, even if he never made it above A-ball.  Just not a big basketball guy. 

As a Boston sports fan though, I can certainly appreciate the uniqueness of this particular card.  Also, it would be pretty fun to watch the 6'10" Kendrick Perkins take an at-bat or two.  I think even I could hit that strike zone.

Of course, as is customary for our back-and-forth PWEs, Mark included 8 other cards with the Perkins, like this Retro/Future Bowman card of Wilton Veras.  Wilton actually did make it to Major League Baseball, appearing in over 80 games with Boston over 2 seasons at the turn of the century.

One of my favorite short-term Red Sox players from last decade, third baseman Bill Mueller.

Another great Wakefield card.  I'm a fan of the 2003 Opening Day set, and for whatever reason have received quite a few in trade recently.  No objections here.

I totally missed out on Pacific as a brand, so it's a good bet that virtually any Pacific card from any year they were producing them is new to me.  Such was the case with this John Valentin, the third third baseman in this package!

Really like this 2014 Panini Classics Carlton Fisk.  It seems much easier to deal with lack of logos when you can use a photo of a catcher in gear like this.  Though he played his time in Boston before I was even born, this picture is pretty much exactly how I picture Carlton.

Sometimes you just can't beat a good ol' fashioned Topps base card that fills a need, like this Reggie Jefferson from '97.  I really need to sit down and come up with a list of all the Red Sox I'm missing from the 1951 through 2015 Topps flagship sets...

I remember when Michael Bowden was a big name prospect with Boston.  I lost track of him since he was traded to the Cubs at the beginning of 2012, but it looks like he bounced around a bit and hasn't pitched in the Majors in a couple of years.

In closing, what was probably my favorite card of the PWE.  I really, really love the 1994 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes set.  The black borders and floating heads echo 1971 O-Pee-Chee a bit.  Just a great shot of Tiant's classic delivery on this one, and I love that they let the photo of the player extend beyond the upper border to give the card some pop.

Mark, another great package, thank you very much my friend!  You know I'll have some more Mets headed your way soon...