The Dominican Dandy- Juan Marichal

I finished watching the HOF induction speeches tonight, I thought it was a great group of inductees and a great group of speeches. I hope to add autographed cards of Maddux, Glavine, Thomas and LaRussa to my collection soon (I already have Torre and Cox covered).  During the player intros I say former Giants great Juan Marichal and recognized I haven't shared many of his cards lately on the blog.  I dug into my scan folder and found a nice 6-pack of things to share, both old and newer.  I hope you enjoy.

First up is this very nice 1964 Wheaties stamp.  I assume based on the name that these were inserted in cereal boxes but it was before my time.  What I do know is that this is a great colorful photo and a wonderful addition to my Giants collection.

This is a jersey relic from 2011 Prime Cuts.  On the plus side, I now have a relic numbered 18/25 but on the down side this is an obviously unlicensed card with the black cap without a logo.  I personally like some of the newer releases where they attempt to hide that, even if it results in some chopped off heads.

While the Wheaties stamp above is fairly large - wider than a typical card - this 1962 Topps stamp is small, similar to a normal first class postage stamp.  I have always been a fan of these stamps since I picked up a McCovey years ago, to me the yellow background of this really makes it stand out.

 This coin from 1971 Topps is also fairly small.  I like that it shares its origination year with me and I like the green around the coin, even though it isn't a Giants color, I think it looks pretty nice.  I have a stack of these coins and another stack of the recently produced Topps Chipz sitting on a shelf trying to figure out what to do with them. Binder pages don't seem to be the way to go so they might just end up in a storage box which kind of sucks.

 I haven't looked to see how many Marichals there are in this 2006 Upper Deck Epic sets but I know there are tons of McCoveys.  For a while I was trying to pick up as many of the McCoveys as possible but haven't added one in years.  I have a couple binder pages of them but it kind of annoys me to look at them.

This final card is definitely my favorite.  The American Flag is great as is the in action  picture of Juan's throwing motion.  We have a nice vintage swatch with stitches and a solid autograph across the bottom.  Sure I would love to have this as an on card auto but the 2/5 serial number more than makes up for it.

Many of the HOFers were looking pretty old this year. With the passing of Tony Gwynn and seeing all those players it makes me realize that I need to appreciate the baseball greats while they are still here.  It was great seeing so many of the best in one location over the weekend.