Random Cards From My Collection #57

Card #23804
2001 Bowman Draft Picks #68 Jason Lane

Comments on the card: Overall not a bad design but I never liked the way Bowman put the facsimile autos on their sets. This year wasn't too bad but some years the frosted auto area covered close to a third of the card.
How/When acquired: Paid $0.34/card for a factory set in Nov. 2001.

Card #4397
1998 Ultra Top 30 #7 Mark McGwire

Comments on the card: This was a 30-card set which came one card per pack of Series II 1998 Ultra. Not too hard to collect although I was never much of a fan of Ultra after the first few years.
How/When acquired: Don't know, but I probably got it new in a pack of Ultra.

Card #33496
1967 Topps #37 Rick Wise

Comments on the card: Looks like a posed action shot at spring training. The card front is in pretty good shape although it is horribly off-center. I'm not sure what happened to the back.
How/When acquired: Paid $1.80 at a card show in Houston in June 2012. I was happy to get it at that price.

Card #31802
1992 Pinnacle Rookies #20 Donovan Osborne

Comments on the card: This was a nice looking 30-card set featuring the top rookies of 1992. It was only available as a boxed set. 180,000 sets were produced. Osborne was the Cardinals #1 pick in 1990, and although he had a 9-year career he did not achieve stardom.
How/When acquired: Paid $3.99 for the entire set, unopened, in the original box, on eBay in Feb. 2012.

Card #31983
2012 Topps Heritage #177 Evan Longoria

Comments on the card: Topps Heritage, not much to say about it.
How/When acquired: Paid $0.36 for this in a rack-pack in March 2012.

Card #7288
1992 Topps Mcdonald's Baseball's Best #18 Will Clark

Comments on the card: In my opinion one of the last great sets available with a food product. The 44-card set was doled out 3 cards at a time with a food purchase at McDonald's.
How/When acquired: I'm still trying to lose the weight I gained trying to complete this set in 1992. I got all but one of the set that way.

Card #35131
2006 Hero Decks Phillies Jim Bunning

Comments on the card: I love this set of playing cards. Each of the 52 cards features a caricature of a different Phillies player.
How/When acquired: I bought the entire set at a sporting goods store in Philadelphia in 2010 when I was visiting there. I don't remember what I paid but it was probably around $10.

Card #43051
2000 Ultra #108 Troy Glaus

Comments on the card: Pretty typical Ultra design from the period although a little less ornate than most. I think I'd probably prefer a natural background on the back but then it wouldn't be Ultra.
How/When acquired: Don't know.

Card #31618
1992 Donruss #369 Brett Butler

Comments on the card: One of my favorite Donruss designs featuring one of my favorite players. Most Butler cards feature him either stealing a base or bunting, both strengths of his.
How/When acquired: Don't know.

Card #7412
1995 Fleer #351 Marquis Grissom

Comments on the card: In a decade of weird designs, 1995 Fleer was perhaps the weirdest. The set featured 5 different designs, each one odder than the last. The backs were nice.
How/When acquired: Don't know.

2014 Topps - let's look at some cards

Last week a did a technical review of 2014 Topps. Let's look at some of the cards I have. I've bought 1 blaster from Target, 1 blaster from WalMart and some packs at Toys R Us. All so I could get the various parallel cards (obsessive, I'm not).  All I've got scanned so far are the cards from Toys R Us.

2014 Topps #18 Jurickson Profar

This is a good example of how tightly some of these cards are cropped. I really like the framing on this card.

2014 Topps #97 Alex Gordon

Gordon keeps his eye on the ball, even after he hits it.

2014 Topps #121 Franklin Gutierrez

Gutierrez keeps his eye on the ball.

2014 Topps #132 Henderson Alvarez

Where's Alvarez? This is a checklist card.

2014 Topps #172 Rickie Weeks

One of my favorite types of cards. Not as closely cropped as the Profar card but still nicely framed.

2014 Topps #75 Garrett Jones

Handling a ground ball just like he learned to do in Little League.

2014 Topps #210 Jose Altuve

Another good play at second base card.

2014 Topps #225 Brian McCann

A good view of a play at the plate.

1998 Flair Showcase Wave of the Future

Here's another one-card post of a card I got at the card show last weekend. It is seriously one of, if not the, weirdest card I own.

The card is made of clear acetate and inclosed in a sort of over sleeve of plastic, sealed all the way around. Look closely (you may want to click on the card to enlarge it) on the right side of the card. See what look like bubbles raising up from the Flair Showcase logo?  Well those are actual bubbles. See what look like sparkles along the top and bottom edges?

The sealed plastic sleeve is filled with, believe it or not, vegetable oil and sparkles, as Beckett.com put it "in an attempt to mimic ocean waves". 

I mainly picked it up because it is a bit smaller than a regular card and the sealed over sleeve made it unusual. As I was cataloging it and preparing to scan it, I noticed that the card was squishy. That's not the way any baseball card I ever bought felt.

Here's the back:

You can see the sparkles a bit better. I assume that at one time the sparkles were suspended in the oil and distributed evenly. Now they've all gathered at the top and bottom of the card and they don't want to move.

Crusin' Records

Here's something a little different. In the early 1990's a company got the bright idea to put out a series of records featuring recreations of radio shows from the '50s. The covers featured Peggy and Eddie through the ages. The concept eventually ended up a a 16 record series following Peggie and Eddie and the music up through 1970. I own several of these on LP, and picked up "Cruisin' 1964" and "Cruisin' 1965" on CD over the weekend. I thought it would be fun if I could find all the covers and make a post out of it.

Each record consists of a 'recreation' of a radio show of a specific DJ, using songs of the year, jingles, station promos, ads and the like. If you're of a certain age (meaning, old like me) these are a lot of fun.

Cruisin' 1955

Featuring 'Jumpin' George Oxford, KSAN, San Francisco
We first meet Eddie and Peggy as young high school students at the public library. Eddie is glancing out the window at a bright red Thunderbird. The girl behind the counter is Genevieve, whom we'll meet later.

Featuring Robin Seymour, WKMH, Detroit
Eddie's turned from a fresh young kid into something of a hood. Peggy is still interested.

Featuring Joe Niagra, WIBG, Philadelphia
"No sweat, hey!" a more clean cut Eddie says. He's still the bad boy. I grew up in Philadelphia. Joe Niagra was a long time DJ there.

Featuring Jack Carney, WIL, St. Louis
In the past year, Eddie seems to have grown up a bit.  Peggy just wants to play tennis. I figure it's Eddie's last summer before college. Note that gasoline was 19 cents a gallon.

Featuring Hunter Hancock, KGFJ, Los Angeles
Along with fuzzy dice, a note of seriousness enters into the covers. I'm not quite sure what Peggy means by "Not at a time like this".

Featuring Dick Bionid, WKBW, Buffalo
Did Eddie go in the Army? We will never know. It's apparent however that he and Peggy have grown apart.

Featuring Arnie Ginsburg, WMEX, Boston
Eddie and Peggy are apparently back together. Things don't seem to be going well. The covers always did a good job with conveying something of the times in the background. Note the newspaper headline.

Featuring Russ (Weird Beard) Knight, KLIF, Dallas
Eddie appears to have been radicalized while Peggy just wants to have fun. The bearded dude is Luther, who will appear on later covers.

Featuring B. Mitchell Reed, WMCA, New York
More radicalization for Eddie. What is it that's more important? The book on the table seems to be "Another Country" by James Baldwin. One of the subjects of this book (according to Wikipedia) was bisexuality. Is this a clue?  Note that Luther is in the background wailing away.

Featuring Johnny Holiday, WHK Cleveland
Luther and Eddie, featuring a fiery beard, are now roommates. Luther seems more interested in smoking dope than social issues. Note the newspaper clipping "Miss Peggy Harrison to wed Kevin Buchannon III".

This is one of the CDs I just bought. My favorite ad is for Khan's Wieners. Johnny Holiday reads the copy and enthusiastically declares that "Kahn's Weiners are not only delicious, but digestible too!"

Featuring Robert W. Morgan, KHJ, Los Angeles
The lovely Genevieve makes a reappearance, working in a new and used book store. If you look real close you'll see that Luther is the bottom artist on the campus concerts poster in the back ground.

Featuring Pat O'Day, KJR, Seattle
Eddie's lost the beard but his social consciousness appears intact.

Featuring Dr. Don Rose, WQXI, Atlanta
Genevieve is back, looking groovier than ever. She's apparently holding an LP by Luthor. Yes, Eddie, why so uptight?

Featuring Johnny Dark, WCAO, Baltimore
Yikes, in the middle of a Vietnam War protest, Eddie runs into Peggy, wearing an incomprehensible hairdo. "Widows for Peace"?  Apparently Kevin Buchannon III met a bad end. Why didn't Eddie go to Vietnam? Maybe having been drafted all the way back in 1959 had something to do with it.

Featuring Harv Moore "The Boy Next Door", Washington DC
We're in the home stretch. Peggy has an even more incomprehensible hairdo. Eddie looks buff and hopes to make partner. I guess he's only interested in #1 now. I'm not quite sure what the marquee outside the window is supposed to mean. Are they on a honeymoon? Their honeymoon suite has a framed photo of Nixon on the wall?

Featuring Kris Stevens, WLS, Chicago
Eddie's talking to some fat cat about that "student thing up as Kent State".  Hoping to get part of the litigation?  Meanwhile, Peg is going to get another 'lesson' from Mike.

I guess we'll never know what happened to Eddie and Peggy. My guess is that they got into EST and straightened out their marriage for awhile. Eddie probably made partner during the Reagan years. Peggy had a couple of kids (a boy and a girl) who went to the best schools. Eddie got rich during the dot com era but lost it all in the bust. Peggy left him and moved into a commune in Wisconsin. The kids, never comfortable with their parents, are living on opposite coasts. Eddie made it big in housing but lost it all again when in the housing bubble burst. At a Tea Party rally in 2008 in the mid-west, Eddie and Peggy ran into each other again. Today, Eddie is 73 and barley scraping along on Social Security. Peggy, at 72, is in a home with Alzheimer's.

2014 Topps - First Look

I'm trying out a new drawing program and a new idea for a blog post.  Tell me what you think.

One of the things I like about baseball cards is comparing the various design elements and how they work together on a card. Let's look at the design elements on 2014 Topps. All in all, I have only a few complaints. It's one of the cleaner designs in recent years which appeals to me. 

White border - This is the 11th year in a row that Topps has chosen white as the border for the base set. It's time for something new.

Bowman-like element - I'm not sure I like this. I've liked it well enough on Bowman, but is it a good idea to incorporate design elements from other sets into the flagship set?  Also, putting the team name here seems superfluous since there is a team logo.

Silver wave - I like this. I might like it more if it wasn't in silver foil, say in the corresponding team color. The photo has a green border for the A's. What if the wave was yellow?

Silver foil on white - I've long complained about silver foil on black.

Close-cropped photos - A lot of the cards I've gotten have very tight cropping, even the action shots. It makes for some interesting cards.

Team color as highlight - a pretty common practice but used sparingly here. The color is subtle rather than overwhelming.

Logo - Nice logo placement.

Easy to read team name - in some years, Topps made it very difficult to read the player's team name. See 2012 as an example.

All white background - unusual for Topps to have so little color on the back.

Tiny position indicator - they made up for an easy to read team name by using smaller font on the player position, and then putting it in a weird place on the card.

Design element from the front - Common on recent Topps designs. More understated than past years. Generally understated is good.

Clear card number - always a good thing.

Fully licensed - of course. You have to see both logos.

Horizontal orientation - The last vertically oriented card back was 2000 Topps. Another change long overdue.

No photo - third year in a row with no photo of any sort on the back. Topps has included photos on 8 years since 2000. That's 8 of the 15 years, so not so uncommon to not have a photo. Personally I prefer a photo on the back.

Complete career stats - always a hallmark of the Topps flagship set. But are stats even necessary anymore? At one time, baseball cards were probably the best place to get stats but with the Internet, all kinds of stats are easily available. It would be a radical change for Topps. For that matter, you can find lots of photos of your favorite players on-line, so are baseball cards even necessary?  I'm not prepared to go that far.

My first 1951 Bowman card

Just a short post today.

There is a small card show that appears every couple of months near where I live. I went to the most recent show, last weekend. When I say small, I mean about 15 dealers. It's pretty much the same dealers each time too, so I don't see too much new there anymore. This show was smaller than most, only 5 dealers. I got some decent stuff from 2 of them. The one guy recognizes me and usually has a few Phillie items for me to look at. One of them was this:

A 1951 Bowman card. I have a few 1950 and 1952 Bowman, but this is my first from 1951. It doesn't look too bad from the front, the color is good with some light creasing. It's pretty well centered as well. The corners are a bit soft but not rounded off. The back, however, has seen some hard times.

It's been written on and was once apparently pasted into an album. The white mark on the bottom right is paper stuck on the surface.

He asked me for whatever I thought was fair so I offered him $5. He agreed. There are a few of these on eBay. Judging by what is there, I probably paid about the right amount.