A 49er Mailday

It has been a disappointing season being a San Francisco 49er fan, with all the off season departures, the hiring of an inexperienced and over-matched coaching staff and all the chaos surrounding Colin Kaepernick there has been plenty of news (and not of the good kind) about the 49ers over the past few months.

Despite the down times, I am a 49er fan and always will be.  I will suffer through the bad times as I have in the past with hopes of a brighter future.  It helps to have 5 Super Bowl Championships to reflect on.

Just before they won a game last weekend I found myself reminiscing about the good old days and outbid someone on Sportlots for this great looking card:

It is hard to read this Sportsflic like cards but I would hope this player is recognizable.  This is a 1995 Collector's Edge die cut insert of 49er HOF Quarterback Steve Young.  The scan does a nice job of showing all the footballs and the overall design of the card but I promise you it looks 10 times better in had.  Winning a Steve card wasn't enough though.

I did an eBay search for one of my favorite all time 49ers and picked up this autographed 1997 Upper Deck Legends card of Dwight Clark.  Although I was a fan of his prior, his CATCH against the Cowboys to send the Niners to their first Super Bowl cemented Clark as an all time favorite for any true 49er fan.  I have a mini player collection of Clark with this being my 73rd different card of his. 

These card purchases don't fully make up for the pain of this current season but they help get me through it.  If things don't improve (and I don't expect they will this year) some more retail therapy may be in order.

Go Niners!

Even Without the License, I Like Prime Cuts

I completely get people not liking non-licensed Panini products.  Back in my earlier days of collecting airbrushed hats and uniforms on oddball sets were troubling to me.  If I had to pick between licensed and unlicensed cards, the choice would be simple.  However I have taken a liking to many of the products Panini has produced over the past few years. The 2012-13 Cooperstown sets were amazing - full of Hall of Famers, some great autos and really nicely designed insert sets.  Prizm is a pretty solid product, I really like the colored parallels.  The nostalgia of the Donruss product has reeled me in and I have completed the sets the last 2 years.

There is a set that I have found some new appreciation in, Prime Cuts.  I have never purchased a pack of these but I have watched a few breaks on Youtube.  I recently did an eBay search for 2012 Prime Cuts and scrolled through the cards.  I put in some low bids for some cards and ended up losing out on many of them but I was able to bring this group home.

This card works perfectly well without a logo based on the photo selection.  It is a Rated Rookie Auto of Giants backup catcher Hector Sanchez.  He is a switch hitter who seemed to show some promise a couple years back but with the rise of Andrew Susac, Hector has dropped to 3rd on the depth chart.  I predict he won't be in SF in 2016, he would make a good #2 catcher for another team instead of sitting at 3rd on the Giants depth chart.  This card is serial numbered 117/149 and I think Sanchez has a pretty nice signature.

Next up is a card I believe is considered a base card out of 2011 Prime Cuts. This didn't come from my eBay search, I got it from a seller on Sportlots but the 2011 version is similar in nature to 2012 and equally nice.  The missing hat and jersey logos are a little more apparent here but the overall design of the card is really nice.  This card is serial numbered 59/99 and I was really happy to pick it up.

Another Buster card, this one showcasing 6 jersey pieces spelling out his first name.  I believe this is considered a nickname version and I have seen another one that spells out Posey.  In an ideal world, his hat/head wouldn't get cut off but it isn't too terrible.  The overall design is again great, Panini must put a lot of attention into the card design.  This card is 14/25.

The final card in this post helps illustrate one of the reasons I am such a big fan of this set.  This is a bat relic from Giants HOF first baseman, George Kelly. He starred for the Giants in the 1920s and these sets are the only way to pick up a relic from his playing career at a reasonable price.  This card is 85/99 and I was able to pick it up for about $15 delivered.  There are a bunch of old timer relics in this product and many are very reasonable on the secondary market.

Could it be better, sure but with these good looking cards it is good enough for my collection.

My Membership in the T206 Club Expands (And a New Collecting Goal)

I was filing away the awesome T206 card I received from Zippy Zappy into my vintage Giants binder and decided that one isn't enough.  I decided to make a checklist of all the Giants in the set and see if I could perhaps find some reasonably priced T206s to add to my collection.  I am not a stickler for condition usually but I typically like to purchase cards without creases or paper loss but upon researching the available T206 cards and their prices I realized my collection would stay quite small unless I altered my condition expectations.

In the end I decided to look for cards that look good to my eye, creases were perfectly fine and I would even take a little paper loss.  I think I did okay with this card of Chief Myers.  Chief has 3 variations in the set and this is the fielding version (the other 2 are a portrait and batting).

I think the card presents itself just fine and for just about the price of a blaster for a card over a century old I am pretty glad to have it in my collection.

When I researched the Giants in the set, I found that there are 52 Giants cards - I am not concerning myself with the different backs at this point.  As I eluded to in the title of my post, the creation of the checklist and the recent addition of 2 beauties from the set has led to a new collecting goal for me.  I have decided to add one new Giants T206 card to my collection each month.  I am hoping to keep this goal in play throughout the remainder of 2015 and all of 2016 & 2017.  This would get me to about the halfway point of the team set.

I honestly don't see myself ever completing this team set.  There are 3 different Christy Mathewson cards and 4 different John McGraw cards that sell at a premium even in worse condition than this Chief card.  Maybe one day I could score one of each player but I don't want to even set the goal of the team set when it is so far out of reach.

I am pretty excited to be expanding my membership in the T206 club!

Trade Post - Baseball Card Breakdown

One way to know you are a little behind in share trade packages is to have 2 different packages from the same blogger. Sadly this is true about a couple of PWEs I received from Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown.  Time to share the goods and get one step closer to being caught up.

The origin of the first group of cards was a package Gavin received from another blogger who thought he was collecting Chili Davis cards.  Fortunately Gavin remember that it was in fact me and sent me these 5 cards that I needed for my Chili collection (actually it is only 4 as the bottom left card doesn't feature Chili Davis).  I have most of the micro Giants but had forgotten how small those cards really are.

He also tossed in a couple Giants I could use which is also appreciated.  How awesome is that Prism card???

This more recent batch of cards originated with a post I did on wanting to go after Kellogg's cards for my Giants collection and Gavin dropping a comment in a post about a card I had that he was interested in.

In addition to the Kellogg's card, I received this group of Giants.  Of the 6 I needed 4, a pretty darn good hit rate.  Also a couple cool things popped up.  First the JT Snow is a Topps Stars Bronze parallel.  In looking at my checklist, both the base and bronze parallels are numbered to 9799 so I pulled out my binder and to my surprise all of mine are the base version and this JT is the bronze - sweet.  Also, I did not have the Russ Davis Stadium Club Chrome card on my checklist.  I get most of my checklist info on Beckett.com and Davis doesn't have a team listed.  That may be due to his regular  Stadium Club card showing him on the Mariners and then he switched to the Giants in time for the Chrome release.

And finally, the awesome card that started the trade, a 1973 Kellogg's Dave Kingman.  This coupled with the Bobby Bonds I already have finished off the team set from 1973.

 Thanks for the trade Gavin!  I appreciate you reading my posts, remembering I collect Chili and reaching out for trades.