Million Card Giveaway #6

Tonight I redeemed my 6th card in Topps Million Card Giveaway.  I was the winner of a 1962 Chuck Essegian.  My 2nd card in the lovely wood-grain border set.  Chuck was a utility infielder with the Phillies, Cardinals, Dodgers, Orioles, Athletics, and Indians.  He was a career .255 hitter with 47 HR and 150 RBI.  In the 1959 World Series he set a record with 2 pinch hit home runs against the Chicago White Sox.  He is also one of only two players to appear in both the Rose Bowl and the World Series.  He played running back for Stanford in the 1952 Rose Bowl and played for the Dodgers in the 1959 World Series.

So far my most notable winner has been the 1977 Reggie Jackson.

My M.C.G. Collection also includes a 1987 Paul Molitor, a 1966 Jim Grant, a 1962 Jimmy Piersall, and a 1991 Gene Harris.  Still waiting on that 1952 Mantle!

1971 Dell Today's 1971 Team Stamps

Thanks to Matt from Heartbreaking Cards for identifying this set for me.  It is the 1971 Dell Today's 1971 Team Stamps. 

I discovered there were 25 albums in the complete set, each with 2 pages of 12 player stamps each.  The set that I have comes from their All-Star album.  The stamps were perforated for easy separation, but once separated there were no spaces in the album to put the stamps.  The cards were unnumbered.  I still have no idea why these stamps were laminated and if they were sold that way.  Another mystery remains to be solved.  Thanks again Matt!

Identify These Cards Please!

About 15 years ago I attended an auction that offered quite a collection of sportscards for sale.  I ended up purchasing a couple of boxes not really knowing what I was getting.  I found some interesting cards yesterday from that purchase that I could never identify.  If anybody can help me I would greatly appreciate it.

There were 24 cards in the box.  The cards are roughly 2 1/4" x 3 1/4".  The fronts have player pictures with signatures.  They have dashed lines around the outer edge to appear that they have been cut apart and then professionally laminated.

The backs include the player name and team followed by a brief paragraph detailing many statistics and awards from mainly 1970.  The team logo appears in the background. 

Player Checklist:  Pete Rose, Roberto Clemente, Willie Horton, Luis Aparicio, Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, Tom Seaver, Willie Mays, Harmon Killebrew, Denny McLain, Rusty Staub, Brooks Robinson, Alex Johnson, Reggie Jackson, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Sam McDowell, Al Kaline, Boog Powell, Carl Yastrzemski, Rico Carty, Frank Howard, Bob Gibson, and Johnny Bench.

1980 Topps Needed

The inspiration for starting this blog was my introduction to card collecting in 1980. Tonight, I dug through boxes to locate those cards. Apparently, I had put them into a binder some time ago so making the list of wants was much easier. It was fun to take the time and look through the set and see what started me on this mad craze and now the chase to finally see it to its completion. Upon opening the binder I was quickly reminded of my start in collecting. After I began to amass my stack of cards, my mother decided they needed to be put somewhere. (No, she didn't throw them out!) So she decided make me some bulletin boards and gave me thumbtacks. You got to love moms. As you can see, this resulted in this Willie McCovey with the pinhole in the upper left corner. Not to be outdone, by grandmother decided that my cousin and I needed to keep track of our cards so they wouldn't get mixed up. She didn't quite understand that we often went home with different cards than we came with, but she still made us put our names on the back. I autographed quite a few cards that summer.

As I continued to go through the cards, I came across a great action shot of Gary Carter.  This type of shot was unusual for 1980 as most of the pictures were stills or batting stances.  I wonder if the runner was safe or out???

Anyway, my 1980 Topps needs are located on my Want List page. Please let me know what you have to trade and we can work something out. Mint condition is definitely not expected. They would look out of place next to these.

Cards You Won't Find in a Player Checklist

As a George Brett collector, I tried to keep up with all of his cards during his playing days.  Since retirement, that has been virtually impossible.  However, there are always cards out there for the player collector that will almost certainly never come up in a search of that player's cards.  Toward the end of Brett's career I never would have imagined to look anywhere but on his own cards.  In 1993 I came across a card in a pack of Score Select that caught my eye.  It was not because Roberto Alomar might become a Hall-of-Famer, nor was it because I was a Blue Jays fan.  Take a look at Alomar turning the 6-4-3 double play....

I would also never have thought to look at any non-baseball set either until I saw....anybody care to offer a guess???

The New Season

Even if you don't follow the Royals, you know, I know, everyone knows what is in store for this team.  What's great about Opening Day is that we get to look at our teams as if they are perfect.  The Royals and the every other team start anew.  They are the same. Same record, same excitement, same hopes and dreams.  It is the one perfect day of the year.  I can go to the ballpark just like 750,000 other people across the United States with the belief that my team has a chance to win it all, and on this day you get to see the best go against the best.  Greinke vs. Verlander.  It should be a great matchup.  Let's just hope my dream gets to hang on for one more day.  At least I know the brat and beer will be perfect!

Most Recent Addition to the Brett Collection

With the start of this blog and the start of summer, I hope to be adding more cards to my George Brett Collection.  Growing up a Royals fan, Brett was just starting what would be a Hall of Fame career when I was old enough to follow the team.  When I started collecting in 1980 my main focus was to obtain more cards than my friends.  It seemed that every chance we got we were going to the store to pick up a new pack.  Once I entered college and got back into collecting, I realized my collection would need to be much more focused and since Brett was winding down his career I decided to try to obtain every one of his cards (X3).  Why settle for one when you can have three of them and it would look much more impressive to have pages with a whole row of the same card.  That was fine until the most dreaded event happened....retirement.  Of course, that was when the hobby was beginning to explode with inserts and parallels.  While I have obtained just about all of his cards from his career, I haven't even broken through with the cards that have came after his retirement.  While this keeps my chase alive, it is frustrating to know that my goal is impossible to attain.  However, we keep trying and every chance I get to obtain a few more, I will pick them up.  On a recent trip to Dallas, I ran across Nick's Sportscards.  This is one of the nicest, friendliest shops I have been too.  It was great to be able to walk into a store and be surrounded by sportscards instead of people playing some fantasy card game.  Most of the shops within an hour of where I live have either went out of business, consider sportscards a secondary business, or are just plain trashy.  I was able to pick up a few cards to add to my collection and this is my favorite purchase from Nick's, a 2008 Donruss Threads.

Tickets are Here

Our Royals tickets arrived in the mail this past week, the sign that Opening Day will soon be here.  My wife gave me a wonderful gift a couple of years ago for Christmas of a 10 game pack to the Royals games.  While season tickets would be great, we live 3 hours away so they are not very practical.  We do enjoy going to KC and the games so 10 games is just about right.

We also received our Twins tickets yesterday for a series at the new Target Field.  We are exciting to be heading up north with some good friends of ours to enjoy Minneapolis and the Royals-Twins games.

It finally looks as if winter is over as we hit 77 degrees today.  We are hoping for great weather on Monday for Opening Day at the K.  My favorite quote about spring is a great one from Rogers Hornsby, "People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." Well, spring is here and we can't wait.

2009 Topps - Return to Set Collecting.

Even though I have been collecting cards on and off since 1980, there was a moment after I graduated from Kansas State University in which I just didn't buy any cards.  About four or five years ago I started buying packs here and there.  For the first time last year, I actually started buying cards with the intent of putting sets together.  Even though I have not completed the 2009 Topps set, I will try to piece that together this summer while also trying to complete other sets.  The cards that I need can be found on my "Want List" page.  You will notice that I am trying to put together the 2009 American Heritage and 2009 American Heritage Heroes sets.  While I normally don't do non-sport cards, I really like these sets since I am an American history teacher.

The Summer of 1980

The summer of 100 degree heat, the chase for .400 by George Brett, and the Royals winning the pennant.  I have great memories of this summer as I began collecting baseball cards.  I remember heading to the grocery store every Saturday morning and begging my mom to buy me a pack of cards, and then whenever I was able to put together at least 26 cents I would hop on my bike and head there myself.  You might wonder why 26 cents?  Well, I learned the hard way that just because the sticker says 25 cents that doesn't mean that a quarter is all you need.  The first time I went to the grocery store by myself I had to go back home and find that damn penny to pay for sales tax.  The 1980 Topps set is my favorite because of that summer, and I hope that the summer of 2010 will give me time to go back and finish putting that set together 30 years later.