How Big Is My Giants Collection?

For those of you that have looked at my want list, you know that it is fairly extensive and pretty detailed.  I have a spreadsheet that has a page for each year's cards that I copied from Beckett.com and have added to it as I have found errors or missing cards/sets.  Whenever I get new cards I mark an "X" by it on my checklist and update my Blog Want List.

Recently I bought a deck of cards that were put out in 1994 that feature Giants on each of the cards.  This added 52 cards to my Giants collection and got me thinking about how many cards I have in my Giants collection.

While I keep a fairly meticulous listing of my cards I had never taken the time to add up the total number so it was time to break out a new spreadsheet and do a tally by year.  At the forefront of my mind was curiosity around whether or not my Giants collection has surpassed my USC Trojans football collection.  My USC collection has taken a back seat the last couple years and totals 11,515 cards.  My SC collection is in boxes whereas my Giants collection is in binders and pages so it is hard to compare.

So lets start with a breakdown by decade:

1930s - 4
1940s - 11
1950s - 187
1960s - 415
1970s - 581
1980s - 1687
1990s - 3335
2000s - 3735
2010s - 1802

This gives me a grand total of 11,757 Giants cards.  I probably just passed the USC collection within the past month and this deck of cards may have put me over the top, pretty crazy.

I know there are a lot of team collectors out there.  How big are your collections?

McCovey Monday #25 - Sweet Triple Patch Card

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1100 different  McCovey cards since I started collecting him in the late 1980s.  I will show off one of my favorite cards every Monday.  Stretch was one of the most feared hitters of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

Sticking with my theme from the last McCovey Monday post, I thought I would feature another multi player card.  This one also includes Reggie Jackson and adds in Adam Dunn.  This trio of left handed sluggers appeared together on a 2008 UD Premier set called Permier Trios.  Take a look:

I am a huge fan of this card for a couple reasons. First it fits nicely into my McCovey collection.  I am also a fan of Reggie and have a fairly decent collection of his cards as well.  My first name is Adam so I guess that makes the Adam Dunn inclusion cool (a very big stretch, obviously grasping a little on that front).  The patches are very nice, the McCovey stripes of white, black, white, orange are really awesome. Reggie's patch must be from his Angels days with a red and blue patch.  The Dunn has a touch of black to go with the red and white.

I bought this card off eBay a few years back and don't recall the exact amount - it wasn't cheap. I also have the version /30 - the patches aren't quite a nice but it is still a great card.  This one is 12/15.  I am very happy to have it in my collection. 

I am seeing Green and Gold

Despite the title, this isn't a post about the Oakland A's or the Green Bay Packers.  When I started to focus on my Giants collection beyond Relic and Auto cards, I would occasionally search on eBay for Giants team sets.  I don't do that too often any more as either through trades or purchases I have portions of many team sets and my stack of duplicates is way too big. I would prefer to wait it out and make trades or buy singles for the cards I need.

However, recently I picked up a couple nice team sets I thought out I would share.  First up is the 2000 Pacific Paramount Emerald Parallel Team set:

Pacific cards fascinate me.  They mostly came out during a period where I was doing little to no collecting.  I moved 4 times in a 3 1/2 year stretch and most of my cards were packed away and other than going after a Topps base set, I didn't do much in the way of card purchasing.  Based on my checklist there were 10 different sets produced (base, copper, gold, green, holographic gold /199, holographic green /99, holographic silver /99, platinum blue /67, premiere date /50, and ruby).  Outside of a Holographic Gold Marvin Bernard, these are my only 2000 Paramount cards in my Giants collection.  I do have 6 different Rickey Henderson cards from this set plus his update.

I like these cards.  Of course I am a fan of the Orange background.  It appears to be muted scenery from the actual photos.  The photos are all full body shots with the players in action.  The Pacific Paramount 2000" logo is kinda big but at least it is easy to tell what set these are from.  The team logo is nicely displayed and I like the Green script for this parallel.  Finally the 8 players selected for the Giants team are the 8 key players from that season which I tend to appreciate.  Overall a nice pick up. I doubt I will track down any additional team sets with the possible exception of the base but I will keep my eyes open for cheap versions of some of the parallels.

The other set I wanted to share is much newer and something Topps collectors are quite used to, the Gold parallel set of the Topps flagship base.  This year's of course are numbered to 2012 although they mixed it up this year and included all 3 series in the Update set.

Here are the Series 1 cards:

 Interesting selection as Shierholtz and Keppinger didn't end the season on the team, Whiteside and Pill were in the minors and Wilson was hurt most of the year.  The rest of the players played pretty huge roles in the World Championship season.

Here are the Series 2 cards:

This grouping has a much higher representation rate.  Surkamp had Tommy John surgery and was out most of the year and injuries derailed Freddy Sanchez.  Otherwise the rest of these players were around and contributed mightily with the except of Aubrey Huff who wasted space on the bench and wasted $22 million dollars of salary money after his strong 2010.  I appreciate what he did in 2010 but am happy he is gone.

Finally the Update cards:

The Giants have a few more cards in Update due primarily to the 4 All Star cards.   Great representation of the team here.  Of course not a fan of Melky but he had to be included.  All these guys played big roles (although you could argue until scoring the winning run Theriot didn't contribute much after Scutaro joined the team).

The last couple years I have been able to trade and pick up single cards here and there to build the gold parallel sets but with needing so many out of 1 set I decided to go the team set route.  I was able to pick these up for just under $33, not too bad for 32 cards.  I actually still need card #92 which features Tim Lincecum as one of the leaders along with Roy Oswalt and Chris Carpenter. If you have one for trade let me know.

Trade Post - Nachos Grande and Night Owl

I want to share the goods I received in a couple trades with two bloggers who have become fairly regular trading partners.

First up was a trade with Chris over at Nachos Grande.  Chris was lucky enough, wait let me rephrase that - I was lucky enough that Chris pulled the Giants as his second team in a group break.  He was kind enough to send me the goods.

This first group is the entire team set of Giants from 2000 Impact.  I was pretty happy to get these as I didn't have any before.  The coloring works quite well for the Giants, not sure if it changes for every team or not.  I find it interesting that all of them are wearing alternate black uniforms, I am guessing  all the photos came from the same game.  I am regretting the way I scanned these now because the best photo is sideways on Rich Aurilia's card.  Looks like a play at second base and since I don't see the ball, I am guessing the runner made it into second.

 The other box in the break was Topps Minis.  I resisted the urge to order a box of this off the Topps web site.  I did pick up a couple packs at my LCS (he bought some boxes to resell) and wasn't lucky enough to pull any Giants (very typical for me). Chris was able to send me over 8 different Giants including my most desired - the Willie McCovey Golden Moments mini!  This card is not in the Giants binder but going straight to the McCovey binders.

Thanks for another great trade Chris!

Next up is a trade with probably my most frequent trade partner, Greg at Night Owl.  In addition to running a great blog, Greg is one of the best traders I have run across. He does a nice job of hitting cards on want lists and I will just randomly get packages out of the blue.  I have gotten to the point where I just have a stack of cards on my desk that are headed his way and when it gets big enough or I need my desk clear, I package them off and away they go.

This trade was a huge help to my 2012 Ginter quest. I decided to collect all the regular sized inserts in addition to the base set. 

 My favorite cards in this insert set are the retired players so in this group Stan The Man and Cal Ripken stand out.  I was immediately attracted to this set when I opened my first pack and I am at the point now with this and some other trades where I am in need of 22 more cards.  Might be time to hit Sportlots and finish this one off as the Ginter trading has seemed to dry up.

 More Ginter insert goodness.  This group is dominated with retired players.  Several of these full names were ones I was already familiar with prior to getting these inserts.  Reggie, Ty, Mickey and Ozzie seem to have names that flow out of announcers mouths - how many times have you heard about Reginald Martinez Jackson in old time highlight reels?  I like how this insert set brought those memories back.  I also scored 2 of the Baseball Sketch cards, I love the Ozzie photo but Seaver's face is looking a little odd to me.   I am down to needing only 2 sketch cards to put this one to rest.

For the longest time I was on the fence about collecting the code/story cards.  They aren't numbered and are they truly an insert.  One trade package I got used a bunch of them for filler and they all happened to be ones I didn't already had so I decided to make a want list and bam Greg knocked a few off the list right way.  My want list is still long so I am not completely sure it was the right call but I will leave it up and hopefully whittle away at it. The Historical Turning Points is one of my favorite insert sets of the year and with these 2 I am down to needing 1 card to complete it.  I really enjoy reading about history so these are fun and educational!

Finally what would a trade with Night Owl be if he wasn't ridding himself of cards from my beloved and his most hated team, the Giants.  I haven't bought more than a pack or two of Bowman Platinum so adding these Giants is great.  The Patterson is a 90s Score card that I need and Greg always seems to track down mini Giants to include, all of which are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the great trade Greg!  I have a small stack of cards getting ready to come back at you.

Just About as Bad As It Gets for a Giants Team Collector

My LCS recently put out a quarter box with a pretty good variety of cards.  There were some vintage mixed in along with some more recent cards so I had some fun going through the box.  I wound up picking up $9 worth of cards with a few Giants cards, a few early 70s vintage and some tradebait.

Earlier today I was sorting through some cards and ran across this:

I picked this up as tradebait, as everyone knows there are quite a few Dodger collectors out there and I figured a Hershiser insert for a quarter would be a nice addition to a trade package.  I looked closer at the card and what do you see along the bottom but San Francisco Giants listed as Orel's team.  I know he was with the Giants during this season and I am sure Dodger fans were not too excited about Hershiser joining the Giants.  I can tell you that Giants fans weren't overly enthusiastic either.  With 3 years with the Indians between his Dodger and Giant years you wouldn't think this would happen to a card.

This card is basically the reverse of this card:

So in reviewing this card I was at a crossroads.  Does it fit in my collection with that ugly Dodger Blue uniform staring at me every time I flip through my 1998 Giants binder.  I did keep the Schmidt but with the Giants uniform proudly displayed it seemed like the right decision.

As I was mulling this over I decide to flip the card over and see how it was numbered and if the back explained why a card celebrating the Dodgers 1988 World Series would list the Giants as his team and look what I found:

While there was no explanation for putting his team on the front as the Giants, my problem is solved.  I have decided to keep the card and just display the back in my pages.  The beautiful Orange, Black and White uniform fits right in won't make me cringe as I flip through.  Problem solved!

So team collectors, what do you do with cards where the uniform doesn't match the team name?  Do you keep them in your collection?  Even if it is your arch rival?

Congratulations to the World Champion SF Giants!!!

I am finally getting around to the post congratulating my team for their sweep of the Tigers in this year's World Series.  It was a very exciting time in the Arpsmith household. The 2010 was particularly exciting for me as it was the first Giants title in my lifetime (I never thought I would see one after failing in the Bonds era) but this year it seemed my boys enjoyed it more.  It was great to see the excitement, my oldest son is 8 so I think being older and following the season and playoffs more closely got him very engaged and my 5 year old was probably reacting to our excitement.

For those of you not as in tuned to Giants history, the last World Series title for the Giants was won in 1954 when this guy was just in his 2nd full season (he debuted in 1951, missed a big portion of 1952 and all of 1953 in military service):

 I picked up this card a couple months back on Sportlots and am finally getting a chance to showcase it.  It is off center a bit but in otherwise pretty nice condition.  I am a fan of the 1962 release and really like the design of these All Star cards and the picture used on this Mays card.

I thought the Giants season was pretty much over 2 games into their playoffs when they were down 0-2 to the Cincinnati Reds. They made an amazing comeback sparked by some great pitching and timely hitting.  The play of the game that turned around the series came when 7-time Gold Glove winner Scott Rolen bobbled a ball with two outs.  This card of Rolen is for trade if anyone is interested:

The Giants bullpen was very strong despite missing All Star Closer Brian Wilson for a majority of the year.  Here is a sweet Wilson card I picked up on eBay a little while back:

Next up after winning 3 straight against the Reds was the team on the uniform Rolen is wearing, the St. Louis Cardinals.  After winning the first ever wild card game and based on last years World Series run, it appeared the Cards were a team of destiny.  This was the feeling in my house particularly when they jumped out to a 3-1 lead in the NLCS.  Somehow the Giants came roaring back to take 3 straight with the Cards only scoring 1 run in the final 3 games combined.  For the second straight series the final game was started by my favorite Giant, Matt Cain.

Picked up this beauty of a card at my LCS for a pretty reasonable price.  Until uploading this card I didn't notice that the A's second basemen on this lineup was none other than NLCS MVP Marco Scutaro!

The Cardinals are a tough team and had a great season, my hats go off to their organization.  After losing Pujols to make it that far is commendable and shows that they will continue to challenge for years to come.   Here is a nice Jumbo Jersey card of the Cardinals team leader and All-Star Catcher Yadier Molia that is for trade:

The Giants won 6 straight elimination games and with a strong Tigers team fresh off a sweep of the Yankees.  I honestly held out little hope for a series victory and probably would have been content (but still disappointed) with a strong showing.  Night Owl's prediction of a Giants victory game me a little hope and inspiration.  The Tigers' rotation was set up to allow this guy to start Game 1 and possibly as many as 3 of the 7 games.

Buy the way, this card if for trade if you are interested.

But my team did the unthinkable, they not only won the World Series, they dominated Verlander and swept the series in 4 games.  The MVP of the series based significantly off his 3 HR (2 off Verlander) game in Game 1 was Mr. Kung Fu Panda himself, Pablo Sandoval.

I have been waiting a little while to show off this beauty and I guess a celebration of something only done by Pujols, Reggie and the Babe is a pretty appropriate event. I love the look of these Gold Rush cards and only wish the auto was on card.  I picked it up right before the playoffs began and thought I paid a little too much but I have to figure it was at a much better price than I might see now.

There was a ton of joy in the Arpsmith household and it still carries over right now. My sons have worn Giants shirts to school multiple times this week and I still need to get online and buy some new Championship swag.  I am hoping for some awesome 2013 card featuring my team to add some excitement to the collecting season.

With the baseball season past us,  I would guess some of the blog activity might die down so let's keep it alive with some trades and cardboard fun.  A pretty good first season to be a blogger!

Wednesday Weekly Contest Winner(s)!

I am still working my way out of my celebratory stupor, I should be back on track with regular blog posts soon.

As you may recall, the contest was to predict the winner of the World Series, the number of games and the MVP.  The winner and games were awarded 2 points and the MVP 3 points.  Nobody swept the 3 questions but with Pablo Sandoval hitting 3 HRs in game 1, the MVP got pretty easy if you entered later in the contest so we actually had 4 people correctly pick the Giants as the winner and Kung Fu Panda as the MVP for a total of 5 points.

1. Mark Kaz - 39 runs
2. Ryan H - 41 runs
3. madding - 51 runs
4. Mariner1 - 42 runs

The tie breaker was total number of runs in the series.  It was pretty low scoring (at least for the Tigers) so the total number of runs was 22.  Therefore the winner is Mark Kaz, the owner of the blog This Way to the Clubhouse (who I actually made a recent trade with and owe him a trade post)!

As you might have seen in the blog title, I have decided to nominate a second winner - irondequoit36, owner of the blog Old Foul Cardboard.  While he only earned 4 points with the prediction of a Giants sweep, he was the only entry to have the confidence in my team plus he was only 3 runs off by predicting 19 total runs.

Congratulations to Mark Kaz and irondequoit36!!!  Let me know which prize you would like off the prize page.

Thanks for participation and check out this week's contest.