Santa Sure Was Good To Me

I have decided to poke my head up out of hibernation for a post this evening.  What might you say awoke this sleeping bear after about a 3 month rest?  I got my Secret Santa goods today in the mail.

They might have been a day late but boy it was worth it.  I was lucky enough to draw friend of the blogging community and active twitter Bosox guy Mark Hoyle as my Secret Santa.  Apparently he sent a package to my old mailing address in CA.  He tried rerouting it and it is apparently sleeping somewhere in Kansas trying to find its way to me.  Mark, being the great guy that he is, got another package sent my way and it has to be the best backup gift I have ever received.

 The package contained a variety of Giants items from Gypsy Oak, according to Mark he is a friend of his named Jeff.  I believe I have seen a couple items posted in blogs or on twitter but this is the first time I have gotten a chance to hold any of his creations in my hands - Jeff is one talented dude!

I am going to go biggest to smallest in terms of what I show.  Check out this awesome Christy Mathewson piece.  It is patterned after a vintage Allen & Ginter card and printed on very heavy stock.  The crease and notches you see on the card were designed to feel authentic as well. This is an amazing piece.

 The back is even done up nicely with a sticker and stamp along with some art work.  I placed this standard card sized Willie Mays net to it to show off the Mays and to give you some perspective on the size.  The Mays is great looking as well.

 Next up are a pair of post card sized photos of Mel Ott and Willie Mays.   These really show off the artistic style of Gypsy Oak and are both beautiful pieces.

I also scored a pair of tobacco card replicas of Bugs Raymond and Roger Brenahan.  These are also a very nice design with perforated edges and nice crisp colors.

The final items are this foursome of Giants HOF greats, Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Christy Mathewson.  These are little minis, maybe half the size of the tobacco cards.  There is a perforation in the middle, you can bend them in half if you would like.  I have already paged these up and gotten all these into my vintage Giants binder but had to break up the set a bit.  The Willie Mac made its way into the player collection binder.

Mark, thank you for the amazing gift and the effort to get it to me with the mailing mix up.  If memory serves me correctly, I gifted you last year in the Secret Santa and I think you one upped me this year.  I will have to make it up one of these days.

As for my blogging future, I suspect I may be doing posts more frequent than quarterly but my days of trying to blog daily (never really reached that for a consistent period anyone) are probably behind me.  It is a variety of factors including a job where I have to be in the office every day (used to work at home 1-3 days/week before moving to Kansas), the kids getting older and more demanding (not bad just takes away from "free" hobby time), a large hobby purchase I made that is taking forever to go through (hope to share real soon and probably the primary source of the 3 month break) and a focus on trying to get healthier as I approach the big 5 - 0 (trying to get up early to go the gym each day which requires me to go to bed earlier, hence less hobby time).

I still love the hobby, still love our blogging community, still appreciate the kindness and generosity of all of you.  I know I don't owe you an explanation and heck most of you probably don't even care but just thought I would include an update and hopefully you will see a few more posts in the not too distant future.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Some Unlicensed Beauty

Maybe I am crazy but I think Panini is doing a much better job of designing really nice cards without their license, particularly the higher end brands.  Over a couple of day period, I had 6 cards delivered from two different 2016 releases.  In addition to all of them fitting nicely into my various collection, I am actually a fan of the design and photo selection.  Check them out:

I really like this design with the selection of a year during the player's career and a headline and description of highlight.  The 3D nature of the picture works with Winfield popping out of the top of the photo to extend his bat into the Biography banner.  My only small complaint would be the small size of the bat piece but I think that is a result of all the other elements of the card.  This fits nicely into my semi-neglected Dave Winfield player collection.

Next up is a jumbo jersey swatch of Madison Bumgarner for my Giants collection.  I like the big swatch while still showing a pretty decent sized picture of MadBum.  This card probably suffers the most from the lack of licensing here but I like the picture as he starts up his delivery.

 Another Giants relic, this time of a guy who isn't typically listed as a Giant.  It seems like The Big Cat has made a cardboard resurgence this year.  He has been in a number of high end products, I don't know about you but if he was my headliner in a metal case of Flawless I would be less than happy.  The seller of the Winfield and MadBum cards also had this one with combined shipping so I jumped at adding a new Andres Galarraga to my Giants collection.

Switching to an even newer product, the final 3 cards are from the Panini Pantheon release.  I have watched a few of these boxes cracked on YouTube and it looks like a pretty solid product.  This die-cut along the top Rickey Henderson card celebrates his inclusion in the 3000 hit club.  I really like that it showcases Rickey in his Mariners uniform, the team he was with when reaching the milestone.  The facsimile autograph ads a nice element, this is one of my favorite new additions to my Rickey player collection.

Here is another milestone card, this time of Barry Bonds for his entry into the 600 Home Run Club.  There are also versions for 500 and 700.  This photo selection doesn't appear to have needed any photo shopping, it is a great looking card.  In looking at both the Bonds and Henderson card, you can see the color scheme was changed to match the team colors - I love it when card companies take the time and effort to make that happen.  If I was a little crazier as a collection, I might research putting together a set of these milestone cards but I really have too many collecting focuses at this point.

This final card really excited me when I found it for sale.  It is a bat relic for Roger Bresnahan, a Hall of Famer who started playing around the turn of the century and played 17 years in the majors - 7 of them with the Giants.  As the card shows, he was enshrined in Cooperstown in 1945 and in addition to being a great addition to my Giants collection, he fits nicely on my new HOF card page as well.  Short of my Babe Ruth relic, this marks the relic from the player inducted earliest into the HOF in my collection.

What are your thoughts about recent Panini releases?  Are they getting any better at minimizing the impact of their lack of license?

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. 

My Trip to Cooperstown - Part 3 - The Oversized and Oddball

Here is my 3rd of 4 posts about my trip to Cooperstown a little ways back.  I had intended to do these back to back to back to back but my posting has been sporadic at best.  In addition to the normal work and home duties, we hosted Thanksgiving and my wonderful little girl's first birthday party over the past couple week.  Also, I have been working to get my card room in order now that most of the rest of the house is in order.  Once it is fully done, I will get some pics up share the set up - however I am still hours and hours away from being done.

The cards to share tonight are all over-sized oddballs.  Most were purchased from a store that is located in the parking lot of the baseball diamond on Main St. in Cooperstown.  I had missed it on my first trip but will not miss it again. The guy has been there for decades and specializes in oddballs.  He had team bags hanging throughout the store with TCMA sets, lots of little box sets and odd sized cards in all the nooks and crannies.  I was the only person in the store for most of my visit and the guy was really friendly.  He gave me a gift at checkout that will be part of my final post.

On to the cards:

The first 6 scans are All-Time Greats postcards put out by TCMA in the early 70s.  I really enjoy the black and white photography captured on these.   Based on the checklist I was able to find, I still need 3 more to finish off a Giants team set.

 Here are some additional postcards with, in my opinion even better photography.  These 4 were printed in 1978 by Dover Publishing and are perforated and were taken from a book titled Great Baseball Players of the Past: Thirty-Two Picture Postcards.  There are 2 more Giants to track down and I can't wait to see what they look like.  The old time photography is just amazing.

This card features rivals Willie Mays and Don Drysdale and was printed in 1984 by TCMA.  It is a nice photo paying tribute to two Hall of Famers.

This is another TCMA Postcard issue from 1985 of Willie Mays from back in the New York days solo.  Somewhat of an odd photo but a pleasant add to the Giants collection.

This next card is an oddball Exhibit card of Catcher Roger Bresnahan.  As I kid I had a solid stack of these cards from a swap meet purchase, I need to see if I can track those down.  In the meantime this card will have to tide me over.

This item is a flip book of Barry Bonds.  I haven't cracked the cellophane yet and I am not sure if I will. I am kind of being stupid as this isn't something I would ever sell, it is now part of my collection so I should just crack it open and enjoy the flipping.
 

 My only non-Giants card of this purchase is the Jumbo Topps Finest card for my Rickey Henderson collection.  This card has been elusive for me and I was very happy to run across in across the country and bring it home.

The final item is the Willie McCovey item.  It appears to be some sort of a pencil sketch.  It is signed Amore '90 in the bottom right corner. It has a pretty strong resemblance to Stretch, my only challenge is going to be how to display it in my binder.  It may end up in its own single page as I think it is too big to fit into a double page.

There you have it, all my odd sized purchase for that trip to Cooperstown.  My last post will display a couple items that aren't card related (but baseball related) during my Cooperstown trip.