Card Show Pickups: Eh

The first time this year I attended a card show. It was, meh and a good reminder why I don't really go to these any more.

If you like old white guys selling you vintage cards of Hank Aaron and Whitey Ford at nearly triple what Beckett prices them at, this show is for you. If you're like me and you're looking for minor leaguers and obscure oddballs, well, good luck.

Of course not everything about the show was bad.

I managed to get another card in the 1979 Topps collection signed. Billy Sample there was the free guest signer.

Sample was very nice and talked a lot with the fans who came up to him to ask for his autograph. Even took pictures with them.
Also, Sample would like to send a message to both Danny Darwin and Pat Putnam, that he is "still the best looking guy on the card" (his words not mine). I'll have to tell Mr. Darwin and Putnam if/when I ever meet them too.

Dale Berra was another signer who was supposed to come but cancelled. He had a card as part of the Pirates Prospects card in the 1979 Topps set, but I didn't have that one so no big loss on my part lol.

So with the free autograph obtained, what else is a guy to do but see if there's something worthwhile at the card show?

Presenting my token vintage Yankees card, one 1940 Play Ball card of George Alexander "Twinkletoes" Selkirk. With a name like Twinkletoes, how could I resist?
The story goes that the Canadian outfielder got his nickname due to how he ran on the bases BTW.

The back of this card says that he's now "ON SENATERS (sic) FARM." After his playing career and military career was over, Selkirk became the General Manager of the Washington Senators (the one that's currently the Texas Rangers). Which means that this card was in the possession of whoever wrote on it between 1940 and 1968 (the year Selkirk got fired). Selkirk continued working baseball related jobs like being a scout for the Yankees after that.

The same vendor had this neat Mike Gonzalez card available for a pretty nice price and I bought it.

Gonzalez's playing career was over by the time this card came out (his playing days were around the time T206es were still new), but he did have a pretty nice coaching/managing career in various parts of the baseball world. The Cuban ex-catcher won four World Series titles with the Cardinals as a coach, and went on to coach/manage various clubs in Cuba too. Gonzalez was temporarily banned from MLB after being involved with a thing that involved major leaguers going to Mexican baseball leagues or something, but he was eventually reinstated (he never returned stateside though).

At the show there was a depressing lack of any deals that could be done with coins. Because I got spoiled in the past I refuse to pay more than a quarter for 1979 Topps (unless it's Ozzie Smith in which case I'd pay a whole $1). The best I could find were some 1979 Topps singles for a quarter each :P. And maybe some older vintage for $1 each.

Although I'm on a hiatus of sorts with the 1979 Topps set, I figure I'd narrow down the focus to something manageable, like maybe completing the Dodgers team set first. I'm a closet Dodgers fan so it should make sense.

If nothing else, I was glad to finally be able to reunite the Ron Cey card I've had for a while with his three teammates in the infield. Normally this would be the part where I declare that I'm going to get all four of these signed, but then I remembered that Bill Russell doesn't sign anymore so there went that idea :P.

And there you have it. A pretty depressing haul, but I could've done a lot worse I suppose.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

2017 IP Autograph Count: 63

Supersize

So with Luis Torrens finally being immortalized on cardboard again as a rookie for the San Diego Padres, it's come with it's own set of pro's and con's for this player collector.

Even though I used the plural version of pro's, there's really only one pro. The fact that I can keep collecting Torrens. It's been three years since Torrens had a card of any kind made in an official capacity. It's finally nice to get some new cards to chase.

Like the gold parallel above.

And this camo parallel.

Numbered 25/25.

But of course there are some cons.

The biggest being that there are a lot of parallels. And something I didn't realize in recent years is that Topps keeps pulling more and more of these things out of nowhere.

Like these 5x7 jumbo cards. I had no idea these existed and I didn't want to know they existed. They're firmly in the "gimmicks for people who collect major leaguers" category, but the fact that they're on my radar only further reinforces that Torrens is indeed a big leaguer.

I picked up the gold (numbered 01/10) and the base (01/49) on eBay.

While I admit that looking at a bigger version of the card is nice, part of me wonders if the people at Topps were so caught up in asking themselves if they could make them bigger, that they never stopped to ask if they should make them bigger.

These are basically the same except that the serial number is in tiny font on the lower left hand corner of the front. The backs aren't worth scanning.

And on top of that, Torrens will have a few more parallels in the upcoming Topps mini set. Because apparently that set will include Update this year :P. Great. Just great.

Look, I don't want to be that guy who complains about the parallels, but I do have a limit. Luckily this is JUST close enough to the limit that I don't unleash negative Kenny. Which pretty much means that if Torrens was in every product this year like Dan Vogelbach was, my brain would've turned to mush and this blog would've died back in mid-May.

I don't know how collectors like P-Town Tom do it. To go after everything the player has been printed on under the sun. I kneel before their power.

I guess this is what I signed on for when I decided to become a supercollector. I made this bed, might as well make it comfy enough to lay in. If nothing else, the idea of having the jumbo, standard sized and mini sized Torrens base cards next to eachother should make for a fun picture.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

Also, Happy (early) Thanksgiving to my American readers. Hope you all have a wonderful time with your loved ones. And if you're going Black Friday shopping, I hope you don't get trampled. And to the non-American readers, I hope your weekend is just as great too.

Hello Old Friend

It's been a while, but for the first time in years I can say that I have a new Sega Card Gen card in my collection.

Cole Hamels (EX-04), here is my latest pickup from the 2012 Sega Card Gen set.

At this point Card Gen is all but dead and gone. With only a few singles available online and the game itself largely forgotten.

But sometimes I can still come across cards I didn't have yet. This Hamels here eluded me for five years for a simple reason. It's an EXclusive.

Well okay, the better explanation is that it's a shortprint of sorts. It wasn't distributed with the regular Card Gen set. It was one of the special cards that were set aside and given as participation prizes to people who entered contests, but didn't win the grand prize.

Hamels was one of the more notable exclusions from the base set, and now he can rejoin Roy Halladay (RIP) and Cliff Lee as part of the three headed monster of 2012.

As far as I know there were at least 16 special cards. 12 were used as participation trophies, and I believe four were part of a special promotion where you had to redeem them online or order them by mail or something weird like that.

Anyway, it's been a while since I got a Card Gen card in my clutches in again. It really brings me back to 2012-13, the year where I went full hog when it came to collecting cards (in Japan too). I kinda miss it.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE, AND I BRING YOU

My latest pickup is this On Fire diecut autograph of Luis Torrens. It's the red-ish parallel.

It's numbered 1/1 and is now the 15th 1/1 Torrens in my collection. Woof, I never thought I'd ever amass that many 1/1's.

Honestly there's not a whole lot else to say about the card itself. Just that it cost me a bit more than I'd like (and because of that I'm going to have to really buckle down and keep my card purchases limited these next two months), and that I now have the basic rainbow completed.

As it stands I am only three plates and the Holiday Bonus buyback auto numbered to /3 away from the master rainbow. Leaf is a frustrating brand which I've really grown to dislike during the time I've collected Torrens. I hope they go away forever one day.

Anyway, to come up with a good enough title I looked into fire themed songs. "St. Elmo's Fire" popped up but dated 80's soundtrack filler is not my cup of tea. "We Didn't Start The Fire" popped up too but I think I saw a blog use that before (probably Tony's). Instead I went with Fire by Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

I picked this one because it reinforced my greatest fear about my collection. During the song there are lyrics which go...

"You fought so hard and you saved and earned, But it's all going to burn."

I've put in so much work and money into my Torrens collection. But at the end of the day it can all go poof with one lousy fire. Or any number of natural disasters.

It's at this point that I realized that I've invested way too much, emotionally and financially into my collection. If I had spent less on either of the categories I probably wouldn't mind as much, but now I'm constantly worrying about something happening. And the grief I'd feel if nothing survived. Sidenote, my girlfriend and family will be the first to vouch that I have a paranoiac streak.

Alright that's it, the cutting back on purchases stops now before I drive myself insane (as if I wasn't already).

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

Blank

A little before Wes' printing plate arrived I got another 1/1 Luis Torrens. One straight from the Topps Vault.

Yes, the Money Grab Blank Back Parallel.

It's been a while since I owned one of these. Last time was back in 2014 when I got a Blank Back of a Hiroki Kuroda card. Back in 2015 I let Torrens' 1/1 Blank Back from Bowman Draft get away (for $6 too), I wasn't going to make that mistake again. Some NYC Estate Tax and a few days later, it was mine.

As per usual, it came with a certificate of authenticity from Topps stating that is is actually what it is.

I snarked at how this is a money grab (like pretty much everybody has), and it is, but I kind of like these blank backs to be honest. They're a fun little oddball that I can at least appreciate. If they weren't straight to eBay releases and more like special items you could pull in regular products I think they'd be a lot more interesting. Or possibly a lot more irritating depending on where you stand with redemptions.

Wes' printing plate and this blank back bring my total number of Torrens cards above 100 and the total number of Torrens 1/1's I have to 14.

So yeah, after the craziness has settled down, I only need four more 1/1's (great :P), and about eight-ish parallels on top of that for the master Update Rainbow.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

Willinghammer Falleth

There's no real reasonable explanation why, but Wes happened.

Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis should already be very familiar with Wes a.k.a. JayBarkerFan of the currently-in-hiatus-limbo-blog Willinghammer Rising.

Wes' work around this corner of the blogosphere is well documented and often one of the key examples of just how nice a bunch of strangers who all happen to collect pictures of men in pajamas can be to eachother.

I've previously seen Wes' handiwork from afar. Notable instances that I can recall include the time Wes and Bob Walk The Plank went to war (during which the Battle of Waner settled things once and for all), the time Wes sent The Lost Collector a Facemask relic and of course the time Wes sent P-Town Tom the Wampa. And that's just to name a few, Wes' track record extends far beyond that of course. Ask any old blogger who's been around for a the last 4-5 years, they'll probably have a tale to tell.

For whatever reason, it took a while for Wes and I to finally interact. I dunno, I guess maybe I was afraid of having to prepare for my own war lol. Or maybe because in all of the time I've been collecting, I haven't encountered a single notable Josh Willingham card I can offer to Wes. I think he really does have them all.

Well Wes introduced himself in a big way.

Yes, the LUIIIISSSSSSSSSSS Torrens printing plate from my last post, came courtesy of Wes.

It all happened so fast. I was browsing eBay as usual, encountered the plate up for grabs, but first I took a screenshot of the listing to complain about how it was overpriced (I've been watching the Torrens market for years now after all) on Twitter. Wes swooped in and the next thing I knew he was delivering it to me. Woof!

Man, everything about this is awesome. The black printing plate, Wes Happening, everything.

Everything.

Of course now begins the difficult part of trying to send back a good enough thank you package. As you'd expect, Wes has said that they don't need anything in return, but my Zaps stay put for no one. I've put a few things in motion and have a sample Zap going Wes' way.

It probably won't be nearly as good as what JBF has brought, but I have to start somewhere.

So big thanks to Wes for the awesome printing plate (one of the 14 1/1's in my collection), I owe you big time buddy.

And thanks to the rest of you as well for stopping by :).

Take care.