McCovey Monday #87 - 2011 Triple Threads Unity Relic 1/1

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1300 different  McCovey cards since I started collecting him in the late 1980s.  I will show off one of my favorite cards most Mondays.  Stretch was one of the most feared hitters of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

 I just picked up my first Willie McCovey 1/1 in quite a while.  In the days prior to me keeping to a budget and prior to my collecting interests expanding beyond some set building and 4-5 player collections, I was going after each and every McCovey that came onto the market including the super rare cards.  I saw this one come up, put on a reasonable bid and ended up bringing it home.

This isn't my favorite McCovey card of all time, I of course prefer him in the Orange and Black but it is a pretty cool card.  I love the old Taco Bell Padres unis, Willie Mac is sporting a nice smile and of course the shine and that little 1/1 numbering in the top right put a nice smile on my face.

This card brings my McCovey collection to a staggering 1317 different cards!

Jose Fernandez - RIP

I was cleaning up the house today and turned on Sports Center to keep me company when the terrible news broke about the passing of Jose Fernandez.  It his me pretty hard, I am not 100% sure why.  I guess it was his life story (although it ended up being way too short), his young age and limitless potential just made the news so sad and tragic.  I was in a funk most of the day but thought I would post a quick tribute.  RIP Jose.

Trade Post - Ain't Nobody Got Time For Cardboard

I am so far behind in trade posts that I fear I will never catch up. I decided to post today on one of my most recent trades, I hope some of my more distant trade partners don't feel offended.

A little while back I posted some pack breaks of 2016 Topps Chrome and expressed my desire to work on the Perspectives insert set.  I had pulled quite a few and then some bloggers, including this trade partner helped me out in my quest.  I appreciate Andy from Ain't Nobody Got Time For Cardboard helping me out.  He shot me these 5 cards towards the 20 card insert set:

These are great looking inserts and the Chrome touch enhances them even more.  I think every one of these cards is a masterpiece but of these 5 the two on top, Sano and Buxton, are the most attractive to me.  After completing some trades I filled in the gaps on Sportlots and as timing would have it, these were the last ones I needed to finish the set.  Nice to have this set complete!

As many trades seem to go, Andy tossed in some extra Giants and he hit some some needs in my collection.

He included this graded version of former Giants closer and famed beard master Brian Wilson.  If you look closely you can see the tiny beginnings of the Beard under his bottom lip.  Prior to taking the all in plunge on collecting all Giants I had started a player collection of Wilson.  I abandoned the player collection once I went all in on Giants back in 2010/2011 which worked out well as I don't think I could have continued through his whiny Giants exit and time with the Dodgers.  I had this card in raw form but it will fit nicely into my small collection of graded cards.

 Next up some 2016 Giants.

In typical years I am quick to pick up the base Giants and many of the parallels but this year it hasn't worked out that way with my move.  These 8 2016 Giants were all collection needs with the exception of the mini Brandon Belt which is awesome, plus I have a good home for the Belt.

Speaking of awesome, check this out:

The entire team set of Giants from 2016 Topps Bunt!  I have seen some of the posts about these cards on various blogs and in hand I kind of like them.  I know the concept of an actual set that mirrors a virtual set of cards is kind of odd but with big logos in the background and a couple HOFers mixed in, I have to say I am a fan.

Thanks Andy for the set help and all the extras, they were all greatly appreciated!

Just For the "F" of It #8

Have you ever read a story about a ball player that surprised and maybe fascinated you to the point where you were inspired to go out and pick up some of his cards?  It happens for me from time to time with the biggest example perhaps being my player collection of Ben Petrick due to his brave fight against Parkinsons.

It happened to me again about a week ago.  I get a weekly newsletter from the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It typically links to a story or two about a Hall of Famer, an anniversary of a famous event, a unique story and sometime even a memory about a certain baseball card.  It is one of my favorite weekly reads.

The reason this particular story fascinated me was probably due to the fact it was a story, somewhat of a biography of someone I had never heard of.  Now I won't profess to be all knowing about the history of baseball but I do think I am most likely in the top 5% of the population when it comes to baseball knowledge.  As a kid I read every baseball book in the kids portion of the library and moved to the adult books around the age of 10 (Imagine a ten year old reading a book like Ball Four - it was eye opening and probably a little too adult for my immature 10 year old brain but I had to have more baseball).  I have 2 book cases of baseball books in my hallway spanning the entire history and while I haven't read them all yet I have polished off quite a few.  I am not trying to brag just highlight how surprising it was to me that I had never heard a smidgen of the story about Carlos Paula.

Paula was an outfielder for the Washington Senators and was the player who broke the color barrier for the Senators in the mid-1950s.  He apparently was a good hitter and poor fielder and bounced up and down from the minors to majors a couple of times, never fully establishing himself as a major leaguer.  Apparently his fielding was so bad that his name became synonymous with poor fielding with the article siting examples up until the late 1970s.

I really enjoyed the story and if you are interested in learning more about Paula, here is a link to the article.  I was so fascinated with the story I hopped on to eBay and picked up his 1955 Topps rookie card and his 1956 Topps card Just for the "F" of it.

Is there anyone else out there that has heard of Carlos Paula and if so do you recall where you heard his story?

Working on My 1971 Topps Set

I have been trying to chip away at my want lists for 1971 and 1972 Topps for a couple years now.  The 1972 set is proving to be quite difficult to track down any high number cards at bargain prices so I have decided to do some work on the 1971 set.  It is the set from the year of my birth so I would really like to get it completed before too long.  I thought I would share some recent pick ups.

First up is a quad of cards that arrived in a medium sized flat rate box from John at Johnny's Trading Spot.  John sent this monster box of cards prior to my move and I didn't have time to sort them until after the move.  He packed these 4 1971 Topps cards in with a few player collection cards and a ton of Giants cards into 2 small flat rate boxes.  He then packed 4 more boxes of cards for me to use to send out to super traders.  When I get around to putting together some packages of cards, I guess I can start with those.

Recently I saw an eBay seller doing a card by card set break and decided to throw down some $3ish bids on about 2 dozen of the cards I needed in the set.  I ended up winning 6 of the cards, wish it was a few more but these high number cards command a decent price.  Until I get closer to finishing up the set I will seek out bargains like these and not overpay.

Finally I scored the big one!  I mentioned a few posts back that during my travels back and forth for the new job I tried to go for quality over quantity in my purchases and this was definitely a quality pick up:

The card is obviously not in mint condition but definitely in good enough condition for the set I am putting together.  I feel really good with the lack of creases and just the rounded and rough corners and for less than the price of a blaster I was happy to knock off the most valuable card in the set.

So my current status on this set is as follows:
- 3 cards in my account at COMC waiting for me to get them shipped
- 35 Series 3 cards left including HOFers Harmon Killebrew, Tony Perez, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Leo Durocher, Roberto Clemente and Frank Robinson
- 44 Series 4 high number cards with all but 8 being listed as SPs.  I need HOFer managers Sparky Anderson and Dick Williams along with star cards of Dick Allen, Boog Powell, Dusty Baker/Don Baylor RC and Denny McClain.

I have some bigger cards to still track down but I feel like the set is within reach with under 80 cards to go.  I am not close enough to do a fast break blitz on the cards I need but I do think I will try to pick off some of the star cards before year end and make sure to put this to rest in 2017.

I just won a new auction that will start a new project that I will share when it arrives.  The 1972 set has me so frustrated I may put it to the side for a while and work on the new project.  Stay tuned.

1980 Exhibit Reprints

I recently scored a new addition to my Giants collection for a quarter plus shipping via a Sportlots auction. 

I had a few Exhibit cards in my collection at one point but I am not sure where they are today.  This card is a little different in that it is pretty thin (the card not the player).  Doing a little bit of research on this card on Beckett.com I found this description of the set:

Noted long-time dealer Paul Marchant bought out the rights to use the exhibit name in 1980. He then issued this set, which measured the same size as the original exhibits to honor various Hall of Famers. This set was very noticeably marked as a "reprint" so there would be no confusion with the original cards. According to the manufacturer, 10,000 of these sets were produced.

These are post card sized cards with a blank cardboard back.  The set consists of 32 HOFers and this is one of 3 Giants - I need to still track down the Carl Hubbell and Mel Ott to complete my team set.  This picture makes me think I was born a couple generations too late to be a Major League ball player as Mr. Bresnahan's physique matches up to mine fairly well.