1960 Fleer #116 Hank Stram -or- Crossing Off One From the "Most Wanted" List

I wouldn't change a thing about how I grew up.  I lived somewhat in the country, but in a house that didn't have air conditioning or cable.  Those were two things I REALLY wanted.  Since I didn't havce cable, my current sports info came from the newspaper, local news or radio.  Seriously, how old am I?

The first half of my teenage years I spent fall Sunday nights listening to Jack Buck and Hank Stram call Sunday Night Football on the radio.  Those two are easily a part of my "voices of my youth" list.  While I have fond memories of both, it wasn't until a handful of years later that I know more about Hank Stram.  Most of my knowledge came from the "NFL Films" vault back when ESPN played them and didn't suck. 




Anyway, the card that I picked up wasn't hard to come into, I just hadn't crossed it off before.  I'm glad that I hadn't.  Getting this was pure happenstance.  It showed up in my Facebook feed from a vintage football cards group I'm in, but hadn't looked at in more than a year.  Sometimes you just get lucky.  

1960 Fleer #116 Hank Stram

1960 Fleer #116 Hank Stram (back)

The card is in great shape, other than that "x" written in pen on the back.  A quick feeBay search shows that the cheapest one of these ending recently went for $17.  I got this one for $10, delivered.  I'm happy that I waited!  

___________________________________________________________________________

I've decided to try selling on Sports Card Direct again.  Hopefully you'll take a look at my page and see if there's anything you're interested in.  I can always sell off the site and ship in a PWE if you're only looking for a card or two and don't want to pay $3 shipping.  I'm going to start listing more cards daily.  It's time to get out of a lot of my stuff.  

If you shop online and haven't signed up and used ebates yet, you're missing out.  I also use it on eBay to get money back from purchases there.  Between referrals and cash back, I've gotten over $150 in a year.  FREE CARDS!  Another $40 was depostied into my Paypal account last week.

If you're on Twitter, please give me a follow.  You can also find me on Trading Card Database.  I love trading cards, when it makes sense.  Happy collecting!

Never Give Up!

It's been almost three months since I added to my T36 collection.  A few items have come available at auction, but for some reason the prices are going up.  I don't know the reason, but I'm not looking to pay almost $20 for singles from the set (other than a couple of guys).

After missing out on a few and wondering if I needed to raise my price expectations, I wont a lot of three cards at a very good price.  My persistence and stubbornness paid off.  I paid for three cards what some singles were going off for in the last few months.  I don't understand it but I already knew that I'm getting the best prices buying in lot form.

Something I found interesting that all three cards had the same brand/factory combination.  In time I want to analyze the purchases I've made and where they came from to see if there's regionality to it.  The cards are more than 100 years old so they could have been bought and sold to different parts of the country, but I don't think enough that it's improbable to find a trend.  These aren't T206 cards that have been sold dozens of times.

The first card in the lot is Arthur Duray with a Hassan Factory 649 back.  My 30th T36 is also the second duplicate that I have.  Oddly enough, the other is a Duray Mecca 30 back.  There are 100 cards in the master set (25 different drivers) and my first two duplicates are both Duray.  I find that interesting.  This copy is certainly NOT an upgrade but I will never be sad having multiples.  Perhaps I will find a trading partner someday.

The Felice Nazarro Hassan 649 copy isn't a new front for me, but I'm thrilled to "upgrade" my base 25 driver set.  If you look at my cards on Collector Focus, you'll see that my other Nazarro copy is only about 85% of a card.  It's such a rough copy that it doesn't even count for my master set because the brand and factory can't be read.  Despite the three creases it has good eye appeal and this is certainly my favorite of the three additions.

My fiance and I have been watching Cheers lately on Netflix.  Looking at the first two cards, the four men pictured look like they'd fit into one of the paintings on the Cheers open when the theme plays.  Yeah, that was random.

Last but not least is the black sheep of the T36 set.  I believe that Demoget to be the only non-horizontal card of the set.  There's only one image that I haven't accounted for to date.  This is another new card to the master set.  While it's likely happenstance, both copies of this card that I own have the smaller right border.  I'm interested to see if this plays out in time.  Could it be due to the portrait orientation?  Doubtful, but I'm an analyst.  It's even in my job title.  I love this type of thing. 

With these three additions, my base set is still at 22 of the 25 cards (88%).  I need copies of the Herbert Lytle, Ferenc Szisz and Barney Oldfield cards.  I have two new cards toward the master set and now am at 31/100 (31%).  I really need to have cash ready so that the next time a set or large lot show up at an auction house, I can pounce and do some SERIOUS damage on the need list.  Until then, I will keep plugging away. 

If you shop online and haven't signed up and used ebates yet, you're missing out.  I also use it on eBay to get money back from purchases there.  Between referrals and cash back, I've gotten over $150 in a year.  FREE CARDS!

If you're on Twitter, please give me a follow.  You can also find me on Trading Card Database.  I love trading cards, when it makes sense.  Happy collecting!

30 Day Card Challenge - Day 7

Today's card is one you "bought in person and the story behind it."

I'm not sure that many readers of my blog are familiar with my old blog.  If you are, you may have seen this story before.

I'm not going to retype the whole thing out again, but you can read it here.  Let's just say make sure you know what you're buying.  Information and knowledge are your friends.  I'm still thrilled to have this card, it's just not what I thought I was buying.  There's nobody to blame but myself.

If you're on Twitter, please give me a follow.  Happy collecting!

30 Day Card Challenge - Day 1

30 Day Card Challenge - Day 2

30 Day Card Challenge - Day 3
30 Day Card Challenge - Day 4
30 Day Card Challenge - Day 5

Two Birds, One Stone (30 Day Card Challenge - Day 6)

MORE! MORE!! MORE!!!

I've caught the bug,  The T206 bug.

If you read my post from Thursday you saw that I picked up three T206 cards last weekend.  I've been reading more at Net54 and looking at some other sites since then.  I found a thread on Net54 that "ranks" your collection against others.  I'm both analytical and competitive, placing this right in my wheelhouse.

The first five cards I acquired were raw copies and off two sellers that I trust greatly.  This (raw and in-person) is how I would like to acquire most of mine.  It obviously won't work that way often over the course of time, but I will do my best.  I picked up another T206 Friday.  It was in-person, but it's not a raw copy.

I was in Dallas for work and made a very quick stop at Nick's.  I looked and didn't see any T206s in the case.  I asked and the guy told me that they had a few when he last worked but he didn't see them and they must have been sold.  DRATS!  I looked at some other things in the shop and thankfully as I was about to head out I took one last look.  They had one.

I actually did debate for a few minutes if I wanted this or not.  There were pros and cons.

CONS:  It is encapsulated.  Not only that, but it's an "authentic" and "altered."  He told me that it's likely trimmed.

PROS:  It is a T206.  I did a quick look on eBay and it's once of the more scarce cards.  That's what sold me.  I may have overpaid a little, but graded, scarce copies aren't going to be cheap when I can come by them.  I don't want to have a collection full of trimmed cards, but I'd rather have a trimmed one than a fake.  At this point, I'm not knowledgeable enough to figure out what's authentic and what's not.  According to T206 Insider, this card is the 71st most scarce of the 524 cards in the set.

Also about this card from T206 Insider:  "Another “traded” subject, the New York Highlanders portrait of “Kid” Elberfeld was part of the original 150 series launch and replaced with its counterpart, Elberfeld (Washington Portrait), shortly after 350 series printing began. The early swap-out accounts for the relatively high difficulty of the New York version."

History.  Organic short-prints.  Analytics.

I'm addicted.



 Happy collecting!

Two Set Needs. Oh, Just One.

I walked out of Saturday's card show with three cards for my collection.  In addition to the T206, I picked up two 1955 Topps All American cards for my set.  Or I thought I did until about five minutes before writing this.

1955 Topps All American #70 Bill Daddio

1955 Topps All American #70 Bill Daddio (back)

1955 Topps All American #25 Cas Myslinski

1955 Topps All American #25 Cas Myslinski (back)

When I looked at my checklist, I thought that I needed both of these.  The Cas Myslinski was highlighted that I had, but my note that I'd bought from COMC was still there.  Months ago I picked up a copy from there and didn't pay attention to the back of the card.  The damage was terrible and the card number was not there.  So, I never put it into the set.  

Sometime since then, it appears that I picked up another copy from Nick's and now I have a double.  It's not the first mistake I've made and it won't be the last.  

With this addition, my set is 64.7% (66/102) complete.  

Happy collecting! 

Old-Timey & Non-Sporty

I posted yesterday about picking up three cards from the T206 set, but that isn't all that I picked up over the weekend.  On Friday I also picked up four vintage non-sports cards.  I'm not THAT into non-sports, but I do peruse the Network 54 board sometimes just to read about cool, old cards that I don't know much about.

The first card that I picked up was from a set that I'd read about on the boards.  I can't say that I have too much of an interest in them, but I do like them.  I like that when you read the back, they are at least somewhat educational.

West Virginia 1953 Topps License Plates #68

West Virginia 1953 Topps License Plates #68 (back)

I didn't do the most detailed research on these for information.  However, I found a couple of posts on "The Topps Archives" blog that has a little bit of info on them.

I grew up in West Virginia and my degree is from THE West Virginia University.  I haven't lived there in about 15 years, but it will always be where I grew up.

The other three cards I picked up were from the Topps World Of Wheels set.  I don't know what exact year they are, but I've seen 1953, 1954 and 1953-54.  I'm going to use the last one.  The cards I picked up were chosen for a particular reason.

Cummins Diesel 1953-54 Topps World of Wheels #2 

Cummins Diesel 1953-54 Topps World of Wheels #2 (back)

Mercer Raceabout 1953-54 Topps World of Wheels #5

Mercer Raceabout 1953-54 Topps World of Wheels #5 (back)

Maserati 1953-54 Topps World of Wheels #11 

Maserati 1953-54 Topps World of Wheels #11 (back)

Did you figure out the theme?  All of them are related to the Indianapolis 500.  All of the cars pictured looked similar to ones I've seen and a quick glance at the back of each confirmed my suspicions.

I collect vintage trading cards related to the race and the men that drove in it.  These were a definite buy for me, at the price.

Per the "Cummins History at the Indianapolis 500," the Cummins Diesel is the only diesel to win the pole at Indianapolis.  It was also the first Indy car tested in a wind tunnel.  Fred Agabashian finished 27th in the race after only completing 71 laps.

Hughie Hughes and Charles Bigelow drove Mercers in the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911.  Per wikipedia (always there, sometimes accurate), neither Mercer entry finished in the money in the race.  However, Mercers won the five other races that they ran in 1911.

Hughes did finish third, and in the money, in the 1912 Indianapolis 500.  Spencer Wishart finished second in the 1913 race.  Mercer ended their auto racing program in 1914 after Wishart was killed in a race incident.

I can't recite all of the Indianapolis 500 winners or anything, but I have a pretty solid knowledge of race history.  I was pretty sure that nobody named Wilbur Hatch had won the race, as the back of the last card stated.  I assumed that it was supposed to be Wilbur Shaw and some quick research verified my hypothesis.  Shaw won three times and drove a Maserati to victory in the 1939 and 1940 races.

I didn't dig too deeply into researching the set, but I found posts on this set as well over at "The Topps Archives."  I will probably head over to Duane's Sportscards this weekend.  Another of the sellers at his weekly show has some of these cards and I will look to see if there are any other Indy 500 related ones.

The Monster

If you read my post from yesterday, you know that I'm at one of those hobby points that I'm not sure what to do.  Over the last 18 months I've gone multiple times between wanting to just collect vintage and being more open to modern.

I truly do get more joy out of finding and acquiring vintage cards.  When I look through what I have, I can usually remember where I picked it up and a little bit about it.  I can't say that same thing happens with modern acquisitions.

It was a busy weekend for me.  I put together a couple of bookcases and am starting to get more organized.  I finally have a good place for my hobby library of books and magazines.  I also showed on twitter my small stash of "rainy day" boxes.

Also taking up a lot of my weekend time was that I went to card shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  It was a highly vintage weekend.

When I left work on Friday, I owned two cards from the T206 set.  When I returned to work Monday, I owned five.  Perhaps that sheds some light onto why I'm leaning again toward getting rid of most of my modern cards, or at least not really buying more.

I picked these two up a few months ago.  Obviously, they would be graded at like a -1.5.  However, I picked them up for $5 apiece.  Any T206 I ever see again at $5, I will pick it up.  At one point I actually posted these for sale on Twitter and nobody wanted them.  Thank you to everyone that passed!

LINK:  September 3 Card Show Pickup #2 -(READ ME! T206 inside)

Before I got home on Friday, I stopped by Duane's Sportscard for his weekly card show.  Roger Neufeldt from Oklahoma set up this weekend and every time he's there, I go by.  I picked up a handful of non-sports cards, and this one T206.

Roger had a handful of collector grade T206s at the $10 price point.  All of the others were Sweet Caporal backs, so I chose this one to mix it up a little.  I hope that the next time he's in town, he still has some of the low grade ones,  I may walk out with all of them.

There are three of the Southern Leaguers that I want, but he didn't have any of them.  Carlton Molesworth is the only Birmingham card in the set, I believe.  I was born in Birmingham.  Woodie Thornton and Scoops Carey played baseball at my alma mater, West Virginia University.  I will eventually get all of them, but this wasn't the weekend it was to happen.

On Saturday, I went back to the show (I live about 15 minutes away) and picked up another T206 and a couple of 1955 All American cards for my set.  I debated between picking up my first card from the 1952 Topps set, or another T206.  Pre-war won that battle.

I selected this card by the same process as the card I picked up the day prior.  It was a different back.  It wasn't until yesterday that I noticed it was the second Lefty Leifield pose.  I have just five cards and two of them are the same player!

At a different card show on Sunday, there was a seller that I'd seen set up before, but not very often.  He had probably 50 or so cards from the T206.  I found out that the reason is that he doesn't care for Saturday shows and prefers the Sunday ones.  I've noted that, because I can't wait to talk with him and pick up some more cards.

I spent probably 45 minutes talking to him.  I heard stories about the "old days" of card collecting.  He's been to all but two nationals.  He spoke so fondly of his wife and how she was supportive of him and his hobby, and even attended shows with him.  He talked about attending Cleveland Indians fantasy camps (he's originally from Ohio) and that he got hits off both Herb Score and Bob Feller.

I had planned to just pick out the cheapest one he had, but that didn't happen.  We talked about some of them and I ended up picking up a variation that is a little bit tougher to come by.

I checked eBay on my phone because I wanted to see how many of these were for sale and what the asking prices were.  When I saw that there were just two copies even listed, I was sold.

After the weekend, I'm now five cards toward the monster.  I don't believe I will ever say that I am "working on" this set, but I will continue acquiring them.  The more well-loved and cheap, the better!

My small collection looks like this.

I'm pretty sure that the monster has hooked me and that a bit of the shiny cards in my collection will be finding some new homes!

Happy collecting!

All the Cool Bloggers are doing it!

All the cool kids are incorporating music into their posts.  Due to my need to be accepted by the hobby blogosphere, I felt I must succumb to the peer pressure.



The song is not anywhere close to the genre that I listen to.  However, I know the song and if you think Alicia Keys isn't amazing, you are just wrong.  This is coming from a country music guy.

Why did I choose this?  I've always been about lyrics when it comes to my music.

"I keep on fallin'
In and out of love
With you
Sometimes I love ya
Sometimes you make me blue
Sometimes I feel good
At times I feel used"

That's how I feel about aspects of my collecting right now.  I'll start with the card pickup in this post.  This was a purchase from feebay that showed up last week.

2016-17 Upper Deck Printing Plates Black #348 Andrew Shaw

I just didn't get excited when it showed up and haven't when the last few Andrew Shaw cards have arrived.  I'm sure some of it is because he no longer plays for the Blackhawks.  I feel it's deeper than that.

For the third time in 18 or so months, I'm seriously thinking about giving up on The Andrew Shaw Project.  I've stuck with it, but I just don't know anymore.  It's not just the Shaw cards either, it's the modern cards in general.

I go through phases where I just want to go to vintage.  It's more fun.  Then, I start slowly picking up more modern and I'm back.  The last time I decided to give modern a whirl, I told myself that set building again would be fun.  It was okay, but it's not really a challenge.  Buy a couple of boxes, complete a base set, put it into an album and forget about it.

The set-building process itself is fun.  After that, there's nothing else there.  It's just "stuff" for me.  I have no emotional attachment.  However, when I go through my vintage cards, I remember the excitement of winning a lot of particular cards (and also a set from 1960 that I won).  I don't have those memories on the modern.  It's just stuff I've acquired.

Currently I'm in once of those moods where I'm wondering "what if?"  What if I hadn't spent the money to put together Upper Deck and Parkhurst hockey sets this year and had instead put that $xxx into a beautiful pre-war card?  I change my mind as often as Texas weather.  Or as much as a woman.  Whichever one you prefer.

Part of what has me questioning myself again is some of the pickups I made over the weekend.  You'll see them in the coming days.  They are beautiful to me.  They are sports history.  They aren't shiny, but I'm okay with that.

I don't know yet which direction I will take at this fork in the road.  I do need to make a decision though.  What I do know is that if someone made me a serious, quality, legitimate offer for most of the shiny stuff I have, I'd take it.  I can't say I'd do the same with the pre-1988 items that I have.

Happy collecting, friends!

More Hockey Dollar Box Diving

Last week I posted about a bunch of dollar box pickups from a recent show.  They were all from one vendor, but there were a few more of them from another.  These of the vintage variety!

1974-75 Topps #20 Stan Mikita

1974-75 Topps #20 Stan Mikita

1974-75 Topps #20 Stan Mikita

1970-71 Topps #58 Peter Mahovlich

1970-71 Topps #19 Eric Nesterenko

1970-71 Topps #90 Jim Morrison

1975-76 Topps #254 Dennis Hull

1975-76 Topps #227 Gary Inness

1993-94 Donruss Elite Inserts #5 Brett Hull

Okay, so the last one isn't vintage.  I couldn't pass up a card that there are ONLY 10,000 serial numbered copies of!

Happy collecting, everyone.

Reliving My Youth At the Card Shop

I had the day off yesterday so after lunch with a friend I decided to hit up a card shop that while in the area, isn't exactly in MY area.  I'd visited SMP Sportcards (@SMPSportscards) a couple of times before, but this time the shop owner was in.  I had plenty of time to dig in and found some low-end gems.  I'm not posting all of them, but I had to post these beauties.

Acetate cards have become popular over the last handful of years.  Let's not forget that they have been around for more than 20 years.  I like to keep cards of Mountaineers in their college uniforms but don't care much once they are in NFL uniforms.  I made an exception for these.  As a teen, packs of these cards were a bit more expensive than I was willing to pay.  Since they're not worth much it probably wasn't a bad decision.  They are mine now.

When I first got into sports, Dale Murphy was my guy.  I didn't keep all of the cards that I had as a kid, but I bought these three autographs back shortly after they came out.  Even through multiple card purges since then, they have remained in my collection.  I added a fourth autograph today.

I'd been in the shop for awhile before I saw this card.  He mentioned that prices are not as marked on some things, so I asked about this card.  He told me $20 and that if I wanted to see eBay going price, he'd match it.  I was happy at $20, so I had him take it out of the case and I added it to the stack.

Before I sat it down I flipped the case over...

SERIAL NUMBERED OUT OF 10!!!!

I don't have many of the cards that I had before I was a teen (or even a young adult).  The two that I've had the longest are a Bill Ripken F-Face that I pulled from a pack myself in 1989 and also a Rickey Henderson rookie.  There's a third card that would have made the cut but somehow, I lost the card.  It's the only card I believe I lost.  It had to have been when we moved.  I've been intending for years to "replace" the card by picking up another copy and I did so yesterday.

Sure, it's only a $15 card.  It's worth way more than that to me, even though it's not the original copy that owned.  I'm sure that every time I'm looking through my cards and come across this I will smile and momentarily relive the innocence of youth and the hobby.  It was a good time, when it was just about COLLECTing cards and having ones you enjoyed instead of worrying about how much everything was "worth."

Happy collecting!

The Unlikey Duo of Parkies and My Alma Mater

If you say "Parkies" to a card collector and anytime comes to their mind, it's like a hockey card.  There aren't any NHL alumni that played at my alma mater, West Virginia University.  The card that arrived today was a John Bove/Bovey card from the 1952 Parkhurst CFL set, featuring him with the Ottawa Rough Riders.

I didn't know of this card until a year ago.  I stumbled upon the footballcardgallery.com function to filter by school.  The West Virginia University search turned it up, revealing one of the five oldest cards picturing a former Mountaineer.  I searched ol' feeBay and while none were listed, there was one in the completed listings.  It gave me hope that I'd both be able to run across a copy, and find it at a price I was comfortable with.

Fast forward until today...and this beauty is FINALLY mine.

1952 Parkhurst #71 John Bovey

If you noticed above (and I'm sure that you did), I listed his name as "Bove/Bovey,"  The footballcardgallery.com link states that the card is an uncorrected error.  John Bovey doesn't exist, despite what the card says.  I took a quick look at wvustats.com and it confirmed that the name is (or should be) Bove.  

John Bove on Wikipedia

John Bove on Just Sports Stats

1952 Ottawa Rough Riders Roster

John Bove on WVUStats.com

I was convinced that this card back was just, as Beckett used to list them, a "UER" (uncorrected error). 

1952 Parkhurst #71 John Bovey (back)

All information tells me that is information is correct.  In my heart, I believe it.

However, while doing a quick search on the interwebz for this post, something struck me as odd.  This story from ottawacitizen.com on Moe Racine refers to "Rough Rider middle wing John Bovey" suggesting that Racine try out for the Rough Riders.  Is it possible there was a John Bove and  John Bovey both on the Ottawa team in the 1950s?  I doubt that.  

This article on the Ottawa RedBlacks site, posted a little more than a year later, quotes Racine as saying "I was getting ready to play junior football in Cornwall, Ontario. Our coach, John Bove, had played with the Ottawa Rough Riders. Given my size at 6’3 and 250 pounds, he encouraged me to try out for the Rough Riders."

It certainly seems odd that two stories about the same man would list someone that convinced him to play football with two different names.  It's even more odd that they are the two names associated with the latest addition to my WVU collection.

I Wish I Knew More

One of my favorite pieces that I've written and posted on Bean's Ballcard Blog is a piece titled "Frustration in the Unknown."  It's a piece about how little information there is on collecting vintage racing cards.  There's just not much information on them, even in the interwebz age where you can find "anything" on the web.

These cards were produced nearly 40 years after the ones in the article above, yet I can't find any more information on them than this from Beckett:

"Oversized versions (approximately 3" by 4") of six cards exist featuring the fronts of 12 Hawes Wax cards (#9/26/29/31/33/35/37/38/39/40/43/44) placed back-to-back. Reportedly, the six cards were part of a game produced in Canada that also included additional cards of non-racing subjects. These six cards are valued at approximately $20.00 each."

I picked up five of the six cards in one eBay purchase.

Front 

Back

Front

Back

Front

Back

Front

Back

Front

Back

While I'd not seen these before (and I've been looking for cards from the set for almost a year), two listings of the oversize cards came up within a month.  Unfortunately I didn't get the other one, which did have the sixth card.  While I didn't get it this time, there will be another opportunity.  Patience is key for me when searching for vintage cards.

I planned to slowly piece together the regular set, but last year, I found a complete set at auction for a very nice price and snagged it.  It cost me about 20% of what it was going to cost me to piece the set together.  If you're interested to see the set, I have scanned the pages here.

Now that football season is over, I am getting back into racing mode.  It will be another two months before IndyCar starts, but I have the 24 Hours of Daytona to look forward to.  Before we know it, it will be the month of May and time for the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, the Indianapolis 500.