1991 Fleer Ultra

I picked up a box of these at the card show for $7.  This is the first premium set produced by Fleer.  The design is basic, but nice and clean.  This set features some great photography and are printed with metallic ink.  It looks great on the cards, but doesn’t fair so well on the scanner.  The set features 400 cards,  372 base cards, 17 prospect cards, 6 great performances cards, and 4 checklist cards featuring players on them.  There is also a 10 card Ultra Team subset.  I came up just 11 cards short of the set and need 3 more for the complete Ultra Team.  There are a few boxes on eBay for around $15 shipped.  If your looking for a good cheap box from the early ’90s with quality photos and collation, go pick yourself up a box of Ultra.  And if you do, I could really use these……….

#53 Lee Stevens

#84 Bobby Thigpen

#132 Craig Biggio

#157 Kurt Stillwell

#187 Dan Gladden

#190 Gene Larkin

#241 Eric Plunk

#243 Todd Burns

#353 Kenny Rogers

#374 Steve Carter

#398 Checklist Card (Von Hayes)

Gold Inserts

#2 Will Clark

#5 Rickey Henderson

#6 Bo Jackson

This Is A Seven?

I’ll start out by saying that I hate the Cardinals, I hate Tim McCarver, and I hate graded cards.  With all that said I still bought this.  It came from Ebay and cost all of $4.00.  It “books” for $30 and being a “7” I thought it was an Ok deal.  My question is, does this really look like a 7?  The corners are as round as Rosie O’Donnell.  It has one of the roughest surfaces I’ve seen on a ’62 card.  It’s pretty badly off centered, not horrible, but still far from perfect, and all four edges are dinged to high hell.  I understand that this is a BCCG grade and that’s the very basic service, but that doesn’t justify giving this card a 7.  If I had to rate a girl on a scale of 1 to 10, a 7 would still be on the high end of the spectrum.  Hell, a 5 would still be Ok looking.  If this card was a girl I’d give it a generous 4.  I completely plan on breaking this card out of it’s lucite prison.  If this is a truly justifiable 7, most of my set is a 7 or better.  Hell, I might even have a couple of 9’s.  After reading “The Card” and after receiving this card, I now know for sure I will never send anything out ever to be graded! Here are three examples of what I imagined would be 7’s and what BCCG tells me what a 7 is.

I guess the point of this post is beware, the 7 you think you’re getting may not measure up once you get it.

Cards I Dream Of Owning

1953 Bowman Color Pee Wee Reese

I will be posting a series of these in the near future.  Yes, it’s a filler post,  but these are cards I hope to own someday.  Some may be incredibly valuable, some may not.  You never know who’s trash may be your treasure.  This one here I doubt is in anybodies trash.  It’s a 1953 Bowman Color Pee Wee Reese.  For some reason this is my “holy grail” of baseball cards.  It is the only card my wife knows I want.  She always jokes with me that maybe someday she’ll buy it for me.  The photo on this card is about as perfect of a photo you will find on a card ever made.  I’ve seen these go for a little over $100 and up to $6,000.  I’m thinking if I ever do get one of these it will come from the lower end of the spectrum.  If anyone out there has extras of these and really wants me to have one, by all means, let me know!

1962 Billy Williams

I’ve been on a Hall Of Fame streak lately with my ’62 set.  This beauty here set me back $4.42.  It has some unsightly surface damage but strangely the card is smooth to the touch.  It’s still worth every penny of the $4.42.

Williams started his career in 1959 with the Cubs. He only played in 30 games between ’59 and ’60.  This allowed him to become the Rookie of the Year in 1961.  He played 16 years with the Cubbies before finishing his career with 2 seasons in Oakland.  He was a 6 time All Star who finished his career with 426 HR, 2,711 hits, 1,475 RBI’s and a .290 BA.  He was elected to the Hall Of Fame in 1987.  The Cubs retired his number, 26, later that year.  I was fortunate enough to be at that game.  I’ve actually been fortunate enough to be at 3 out of 4 of the number retirement ceremonies, Banks being the only one I have missed.  I was also fortunate a few years back when my Mom went to a game on Billy Williams Day and won an autographed baseball.  It now sits next to my Santo and Sandberg balls.  I still need the Banks auto to have all four retired jersey numbers.  Somehow Banks manages to elude me!

I have managed to post a complete have/have not list for the ’62 set here.  I am almost 25% of the way home!

Trade Package Bananza

I received two of the best trade packages I have ever received this week.  The first comes from a young collector named Isaac.  He has a blog with his Father, Tony, called Ike’s Cards.  They are both Cardinal fans living in the wrong state, but I guess that’s OK.  We share a rare fondness for Sportflics.  Along with showcasing some nice vintage Cardinals cards, Tony has also turned me on to some nice baseball art.  I’m going to show my wife 20×200 and hope she can take a hint and maybe get me something nice for my birthday!  Their package was full of great Cub’s cards, including my favorite card of ’08, the Sandberg Masterpiece.  I have three of them, but if I had 300 of them I would still want 301 of them.  That’s how much I love this card!  They also sent a bunch of Turkey Red including the D Lee chrome card.  I came back to the hobby too late to fully enjoy these, so these were extra appreciated.  I also received a slew of Fukudome RC.  I truly hope he can come back in ’09 and be worth his contract.  And then maybe his card’s value’s can be justified.  Right now he is a shining example of how out of touch Beckett really is!  All in all this was a great package!  If a 6yr old Cardinal fan has a Cubs collection like this I would love to see his Card’s collection!  Thanks Isaac, you will from now on, receive every Cardinal hit I pull from here on out.

The next trade came by way of the Owl.  Night Owl that is.  It started out as a 1 for 1 trade, the Ripken MP for a James Loney MP.  Some how it turned into a package deal.   He was kind enough to throw in the one and only ’09 UD I was interested in.  Unfortunately this card brings up some mixed emotions.

The story goes like this, a tragic hurricane hits Texas.  The Cubs are to play in Texas.  The games are postponed.  They are then set to play the games in Milwaukee.  I live right between Milwaukee and Chicago.  Tickets go on sale, plenty available and are on sale at a reduced price.  I call my one buddy who I think might want to go.  He says maybe.  I get in an online waiting room.  BAM, I get a shot at infield box, under $100 for the pair!  I call him back, he complains of no money and he has to work on Monday and the truth is his wife told him NO! but he would never admit to it!  I’m pissed.  Go to turn on the game and it is not available in my area, WTF!  I am now reduced to listening on the radio.  It turns out that game is the first Cub’s no-hitter in 37 years.  I call my friend up and tell him how much I hate him and that I’m going to punch him in his nose next time I see him.  But at least I have a neat little card showing me what it would of looked like from an infield box seat!

Back to the trade package, The Owl also must of read my want list.  I now have another addition to my ’62 set, it’s a Cardinal but it’s a ’62 none the less.  I now have a great “Beltin” Bill Melton In Action card from the seventies.  This is one of the coolest subsets Topps threw together.  Most cards of the day were of staged action shots or portraits.  I also received two Rynos that I never knew existed.  These will be even more appreciated when or if I ever get down to the nitty gritty of the Ryno collection.  The backs of these provided a little entertainment……..

I believe these cards are from 1993.  A year when a four year, $28 million contract was the highest paid player in baseball.  The same year the Investment Advisor tells us to hurry and pay $50 for a Sandberg RC.  I bought two of these on Ebay early last year for $3.  Thats $1.50 each.  I wonder if this Investment Advisor went on to have a career with Bear Stearns or  Freddy Mac?

Thanks for the great trades, looking forward to the next ones!

Two New ’62’s

This is what $10 will buy you these days!  Two 47 yr old baseball cards of Hall Of Famers.  As a young collector these are the kind of cards I could only dream of owning, now 20 years later I can pick them up for a little more than a super sized meal at McDonalds.   Beckett puts a value of $60 for the Snider and $40 for the Spahn.  I think I got the Snider for $2.75 and the Spahn for $4.75 and $2.50 for shipping.  These are obviously not in the mintiest of conditions but I am not overly concerned with that.  When I’m buying 47 year old pieces of cardboard I kinda want them to look like 47 year old pieces of cardboard.  It adds a bit of personality to the cards.

In other news, due to a nightmare of a cold/flu/I don’t know what the hell hit me, I have a lot of catching up to do.  I have received a couple of trade packages, including one while I was typing this.  They both deserve their own posts.  I also plan on doing some site maintenance and some updated want and need lists soon.  Hopefully I can get this all done before Spring Training is in full swing otherwise it will all be delayed once more.  Stay tuned……..

A-Roid

Is this………

Now worth this?????????

Way to go Alex, anyone who can make Jose look like an honest, truthful man is an even bigger douche bag than he is.  I never liked Rodriguez at all and am not one bit surprised that he had tested positive or had been tipped off when his tests were coming up.  What I don’t like even more is all of the baseball heroes and record holders of this generation are complete frauds!  My only hope is that Griffey, Pujols, and Maddux will be used as examples of the great players of this generation and none of them end up disappointing us.  I for one can’t wait for the end of the Steroid Era.

Card Show Booty

Today was Super Show Sunday.  There were only 5 dealers there today but I still managed to squander my weekly allowance in a matter of minutes!  The first card I picked up was the “Manager’s Dream” card.  I made a deal for this card last month but had too many other things in my hands to afford it.  The card features Mantle and Mays and if you look in the background you can see the back of Hank Aaron.  This photo was taken at the second game of the All Star double header in Boston, the first game was played 20 days earlier at Candlestick.  What’s that you say, the second game?  Apparently they played the All Star game in a double header format starting in 1959 and continued to do so through 1962.  This was also the first All Star game to end in a tie.  The guy I bought these from said that he had a surprise for me, and what a surprise it was.  He pulled out a tray of what had to be about 2,000 cards from the ’62 set.  He said that I could take my pick for $1 each.  I immediately went for the high series and pulled a few out…..

I grabbed two Herzogs in hope of getting one autographed TTM.  Somehow I ended up with two Jacke Davis’, he only palyed 48 games in his career, all in 1962.  Somehow he managed to get traded 4 times between 1962 and 1963 and not play a single game for the other 4 teams.  That’s got to be a record of some kind?   I also picked up a Danny Murphy card.  I got the same card except it’s a 1961 Topps, the only difference is this one has 1962 rookie and some sweet wood grain borders.  The highlight of this group maybe the unmarked checklist.  I’ve looked for ever for one of these and they are just about impossible to find.  I’m hoping I can get the same deal next month!  The rest of my money went to fill a couple holes in my Cub’s binders…..

This year I want to work on my Cub’s binder.  I also want to put a little binder together featuring 1 card from every year of  Topps.  I think I may be close to that collection but I’ll have to sort through a few piles before I find out.  My plan is to keep upgrading the cards when I can, and eventually have 1 big hit from every year.  I finished the day off with a box of ’91 Fleer Ultra and a box of ’92Leaf.  I picked those up 2 for $15.  I still think the ’91 Ultra set is one of the best looking sets I’ve seen that is worth next to nothing.  I plan on doing a post later this week to prove my point.

Faith Hill is singing right now so I will wrap this up with a Super Prediction:  Arizona  32  Pittsburgh  27