1949 Eureka Stamps

Here's an interesting little item.

It's the Phillies Willie "Puddin' Head" Jones from the 1949 Eureka Stamps set.

The 201-stamp collection only features National League players. Apparently there wasn't enough interest to release the American League stamps, although the available album mentions the American League stamps. The stamps were issued in team name order, and in player name order within each team set. The Phillies were stamps 127-151. The Jones stamp is 139.

The player's name and stamp number is in a yellow strip across the bottom. Below that, in very tiny print it says "1949 Eureka Sportstamps" followed by what looks like a number that might be 885600M. It's real hard to read.

I'm amazed at the good condition of this 65-year-old piece of paper. The color is excellent. The corners and perforations are sharp, like it was detached just yesterday (maybe the seller had this as part of a larger sheet). The adhesive appears intact but I'm not going to test it. The gray area at the top of the stamp is just a shadow from the scan.

I was looking for 1980s Phillies Topps stamps on eBay and this showed up in the list.

I got all the information on this set from Beckett.com.

2014 All-Star Game in Baseball Cards

Since I'm a National League kind of guy, I put the National League player first at each position. I was hoping to use a different brand card for each player but it didn't work out that way.

First Base

Second Base

Third Base

Shortstop

Catcher

Designated Hitter

 Left Field

Center Field

Right Field

 Starting Pitcher

2014 Topps Allen & Ginter - First Look

A&G came out on the 9th and on the 11th I found some in the local big-box stores. I've had a devil of a time finding earlier Topps releases this year.  I snagged the only blaster in the 1st Target I went to and bought 1 blaster (of the 3 there) and 3 rack packs in WalMart.

I like the cards this year, as usual. I've been unhappy the past few years with the ornate borders of the past few years so I'm happy to see a different approach this year. I really like the team name placement in this year's cards and also the titling on the non-baseball cards. The backs look pretty much the same.

My only disappointment was the number of duplicate cards I got from blasters bought in different stores.  Of the 49 base cards I pulled, I pulled 14 duplicates. Cards numbered 301-350 are supposed to be short prints. I pulled 4 of them, 3 of the 4 I also pulled a dup. The other one I pulled 3 of.

I'll post some more later but here are the base cards going into my reference album.

I'll be searching eBay for a hobby box soon.

I'll only show you the one back. I like the little doodads across the front top and the bottom much more than the borders all the way around.

I like to include any subsets in my reference album. I consider rookie cards that are marked as rookie cards, as a subset. This is the only rookie card I pulled and I pulled 2 of them.

I consider cards of retired players to be a subset when the retired players are a feature of the set.

Queen Victoria is making her second appearance in A&G, this year moving up to base card status. She appeared in the mini insert last year, "Heavy Hangs The Head".

Hey, it's 2013's Miss USA! Trivia, according to Wikipedia she is the "first woman from the state of Connecticut ever to be crowned Miss USA." This leads to the question, was there a man from Connecticut named Miss USA?  I like the titles, like "Personalities" as it makes it easier to identify a subset. Personalities seems like a broad category based on my sample.

Roth is a retired professional bowler and a member of both the professional bowling Halls of Fame. He is the 2nd bowler to earn over a million dollars in his career. Some baseball players make that much money in a week.

I had no idea of who this was, but he's apparently not a relative of Barry Zito. According to Wikipedia he is " an American actor, amateur boxer, martial artist, police captain, celebrity bodyguard, stuntman, former boxing trainer and former president of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels". Also, apparently, an actor in the HBO series "Oz", which I've never seen.

I don't consider promo cards to be part of a set but I'll usually include a copy of them in my reference album.

1993 O-Pee-Chee Phillies

You know how some events in your life always remain in your memory, in almost perfect detail, like the birth of your first child, or when you finally passed your driver's exam?  For some goofy reason, I can remember the first time I saw cards from the 1993 O-Pee-Chee set. I don't remember the date but I remember where. I was with my family at the Oxford Valley Mall in the Philadelphia suburbs. Out in front of the Woolworth's store they had a table of items for sale. Among them were packs of 1993 O-Pee-Chee. I'd seen O-Pee-Chee cards before this at flea markets and card shows but I don't think I'd seen an actual pack for sale. So naturally I had to buy a few packs and open them immediately. To my surprise, they had an original design! They didn't look like 1993 Topps cards in any way. I know, weird story.

Anyway, 1993 was the first year that O-Pee-Chee published their own designed baseball cards. They also had a second set that year, O-Pee-Chee Premier.

Recently I've been looking through my list of needed 1993 Phillies cards. I managed to find the 14-card Phillies set on eBay.  1993 was, of course, that the improbable Phillies made it to the World Series, only to be defeated by the Blue Jays in 6. Here are some of the cards from the O-Pee-Chee set.

Rookie Amaro only played 25 games for the 1993 Phillies and did not appear in any of the playoff games. He was traded to the Indians before the 1994 season. Today, of course, Amaro is the Phillies General Manager and is taking a lot of heat for the performance of the 2014 Phillies, a team he largely built.

Daulton was the Phillies leader in 1993. He had 2 home runs and 7 rbis in the playoffs.

Duncan had 10 hits (a .345 average) in the World Series.

Dykstra, as the lead off man, had a fabulous year in 1993, leading the league in hits, runs scored, at bats, and walks. In the World Series, he probably would have been the MVP if the Phillies had won.

Green had a 16-4 record for the 1993 Phillies but he got shelled in his only World Series start, 2.1 innings pitched, 7 earned runs.

Hollins was an All-Star in 1993 but didn't have much impact in the playoffs.

Kruk batted .316 in 1993 and was also an All-Star. He did pretty well in the playoffs as well, hitting .348 in the World Series.

Wild Thing had 43 saves in 1993 with an ERA of 3.34. What he's mostly remembered for is giving up the walk-off home run to Joe Carter which won the Series for the Blue Jays.

Schilling lost the first game of the World Series after giving up 6 earned runs in an 8-5 defeat. He came back to win the 5th game with a complete game, 5-hit shutout.

2011 Upper Deck World of Sports

I saw a blaster box of Upper Deck World of Sports, marked down from $19.99 to $12.99 back in April. I probably wouldn't have bought it at full price but hey, for $7 off, why not.  Then I promptly forgot I bought it.

There are 400 cards in this set. All the inserts are relic, autos or both. I didn't get any hits in the box, just 66 base cards. Sports represented were: minor league/college baseball; college football (all players who are now pros), college basketball (again, all players who are currently pros and college coaches); pro hockey; soccer; golf; college and professional lacrosse (professional lacrosse?); jockeys and a single race car driver.

The cards are glossy, full-bleed and no foil.  Here are some of the more interesting cards.

 One of only 4 cards in the box I even remotely care about since DeShields is in the Astros minor league system. Here he is in his Woodward Academy uniform.

Gary Brown was the Giants #1 pick in 2010 but hasn't made it to the majors as yet. Here he is playing for Fullerton State. What's interesting about this card is that Brown also appeared in Upper Deck's Goodwin Champions 2011 set using the same photo with one difference - no uniform logo .

I'm not a big basketball fan but a card featuring Hall of Famer Michael Jordan is always interesting. He looks impossibly young here.

Bo Jackson cards are also interesting to me. I only have one other card featuring him playing football, his 1988 Topps rookie card.

There were 7 hockey cards in the box. All are pro players and 6 of them are in Team Canada uniforms. This is one of the few cards in the box which features a player in his pro uniform and it's in black and white for some reason. I thought that maybe there was a b/w parallel set but apparently not.

One thing I learned from this set is that there is such a thing as professional lacrosse. In fact there are two profession leagues in the US, Major League Lacross and The National Lacrosse League, which is apparently an indoor league. Some players play for both leagues.  Greg Bice above is shown in his college days with Rochester. He is currently a long pole defenseman with the Ohio Machine in Major League Lacrosse.

This is Marvell Wynne, Jr. with the Colorado Rapids in Major League Soccer. If his name sounds familiar, it's because is father played major league baseball, mostly with the Pirates and Padres in the 1980s.  According to his Wikipedia page he wanted to play another sport than his father's. He played football in high school and later soccer at UCLA.

There is also a woman's professional soccer league in the US called the National Women's Soccer League. Mitts currently plays for the Boston Breakers. She is also a 3-time Olympic Gold medalist in soccer and appeared on a Topps Allen and Ginter card in 2011.

And I guess I can be interested in a very young Tiger Woods card.

And finally we have Amber Cope. She and her sister Angela, are the only twin sister act in NASCAR.