Friday, May 25, 2018

The Mermen of Area 51

   As most of you know, P-Town Tom of the blog Eamus Catuli!, hosted a give-away of baseball cards cards earlier this month. Several thousand cards, post paid, have found new homes thanks to Tom's generosity. All we readers had to do, was call dibs on a team. Well there is no shortage of Cubs fans in the blogiverse, and of course one must beware of Darth Vader when approaching White Sox cards, so with all of Chicago baseball covered, I did not jump on board to claim any of the freebies. Some days later, Tom posted an update on the progress of the give-away at Eamus Catuli!. There were still teams left unclaimed. How was this possible?! The Mariners. No one claimed the Mariners? Is there no love for the MLB's mermen? Such a travesty! The odds were slim, but slim odds of getting a new Ichiro card for my collection is worth showing some Mariners love, so I jumped in. Below are my favorite pulls from P-Town Tom's generosity Box.

Thanks Tom!

I like the Fleer Tradition Vintage '61 insert cards. Enclosed were these two fellas on FT '61 cards.
In 1961 they were known as George and Alexander-


    I had never encountered a Metal '98 baseball card before. In fact, I think I had only seen this type of card on comic cards in the 90s. I like it! So, I've added some new cards to my wants list at TCDB. There were actually four of these Metal cards in the box, but I'm only showing the one with the Space Needle. It fits with this thinly veiled theme of using cheesy sci-fi references in this post.


    Look a Cubs card! One of these boys may have been abducted by aliens, and replaced by a quirky doppelganger. It's classified information, so I can't tell you anything more. Let's move on.



I collect cards with bubblegum bubbles.  This is a super nice one!


A couple cards for my 1979 Topps set, and a card for my 1978 Topps set. Yeah, I have decided to work on completing all three years (1977-79) of Topps sets.




This has to be one the most humorous baseball cards I've seen. Love it! 



This guy right here is one of my favorite color commentators. Tom Paciorek has great wit and delivery! 



    LOOK! P-Town Tom included a special packet of a few newer Area 51 cards, and made my day! Good stuff for sure! That's my first ticket shaped card. Nice, and it is a Mariner card to boot.


    These Bowman Platinum cards are pretty cool. I have several of the Cubs, and now I have the Ichiro card too. Love it! All of these Ichiro cards are new to my collection, as I did not have any of them. Oh, and that insert of Ichiro on the Cards Your Mom Threw Out card, that was the one Ichiro card hiding in the box. That was the winning ticket.





    Thank you Tom! I will be giving your want list a going over very soon.

Everyone have a great weekend and thank you for reading!

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Plugging Some Holes: In Time & Space

 



   Matt, of the blog Diamond Jesters, surprised me with a time traveling pwe containing a few of my wants that had been listed at the TCDB. This was very cool of Matt, because I had told him that I didn't want anything in return for sending him cards for his Time Travel Trading story series. If you haven't been following Matt's Time Travel shorts, here is a list of the first ten stories and the origins post.


Three holes filled in Topps 2017 




A plugged hole from the magical year of 2016  ✨



Topps Archives are growing on me. I hAs a whole loTTa holes in the Archives Dept.

Oh Ichiro, where hast thou gone?


   Speaking of Ichiro, there was a fabulous write-up in ESPN magazine last month about this beloved player. I enjoyed reading it so much that I dived into eBay and bought a hard copy. Here's a link to the online copy- When Winter Never Ends by Wright Thompson.

    I remember putting this sticker on my want list. I had a reason for doing that, but at the moment it is eluding me.  ... Thank you Matt for the great cards! -And keep those entertaining stories coming!


Thanks for reading!

Thursday, May 3, 2018

A Cracked Bat Strikes Again

    Julie from A Cracked Bat: Baseball Cards and a Hot Dog has once again surprised me with a packet of baseball goodness! I don't know how she does it, but she always manages to send cards that I think are super cool. Super. Cool. In this post I will be sharing some of my favorites sent by Julie.


A few 2018 Gypsy Queen Cubs. I really like the 2017 Gypsy Queen and I did not expect the 2018 Gypsy Queen to live up to last years' design, but it does.  Arrieta's forearms have some anatomical weirdness going on, but I love Baez' warpaint look! Go Schwarbs! 




For my native American collection, we have my first Thorpe New York Giants cards. 
These are beautiful!  



    And there are SHINIES! These are awesome cards, and I had not known of their existance. They are vintage goodness doubled with glossy metallic plastics. Nice! Early Winn, Ozzie Smith and Fergie Jenkins from 2002 Topps Archives Reserve.  




A K-Mart Cubs card. I have the K-Mart Dream Team Cubs 4-card set from the '80s, this Sandberg card is from 1991. I dig these! When I was a kid I liked going to K-Mart. They had hoagies and popcorn, and finding the flashing blue light was somewhat of a game. Good times, good times.


You know this. 
I 💖 Ozzie! 



2017 Diamond Kings- I love what Panini has done with the Diamond Kings line. Fabulous cards! 




Julie has started me on a mini-collection, US Presidents. I have a beauty of an Obak Obama card (from a previous packet from Julie) and now she has added a Clinton to the deck. Cool. 



    This next card is from one of my two favorite Studio sets, (1993 and 1994). I was only three Cubs away from completing both years' sets, this Grace card was one of them. I'm down two cards needed now. Thanks Julie! It's heartening to have another woman out there loving the baseball cards and blogging about it to boot.



Thank you Julie! Thank you readers!