Cardboard cousins: '54 Topps/'03 Topps Heritage

I don't have many '54s but I did have a couple that lined up to heritage cards. For some reason Topp's didn't use the baby blue color. The forest green looks pretty good too though.

#192 Cot Deal/Matt Morris. Other than being right-handed pitchers they didn't have much in common. In 1954 Deal, a journeyman reliever, pitched in 33 of his career 45 games. Morris in 2003 went 11-8 in the Cardinal's rotation, a down year from 22-8 and 17-9 the previous two seasons.

 #38 Eddie Stanky/Tony LaRussa. Two famous managers. Stanky at the beginning of his career, LaRussa well into his.

Extra chrome

I had about fifty cents in eBay extra bucks last quarter. I couldn't find any vintage I could make worthwhile at that reduction, so instead I bought a little lot of '19 Chrome for almost nothing. These are my first eight cards in this set. A little extra Chrome once in a while is nice to have.

Vintage backgrounds: Not Sun City?

A while back I showed a 1970 Seattle Pilots card taken in Tempe with Double Butte Mountain dominating the background. In that post Gregory asked if it was the same mountain in the background of Jerry Bell's 1974 card.

We're up to the 1974 set now in the Vintage Backgrounds series. In 1973 the Brewers found themselves in a new spring training site - Sun City Stadium. They stayed there through 1985, and ten years later it was razed for a seniors apartment complex. Theoretically then this picture should have been in Sun City. However that ballpark was in the middle of town and most photos taken in the ballpark (pretty much all the Sun City Stadium photos online can be found on this Smugmug site) do not have mountains in the background. So my guess is that this is a photo from a prior spring, and it is probably Double Butte or another Tempe mountain in the background.

There is one photo from the Sun City era that does have some mountains clearly in the background. It is probably from 1985, the Brewers' last season in Sun City, and it is too good not to be shared. Such a stark difference between baseball of the 1970s/1980s with that of the 2000s/2010s. (The 2020s? Who knows?)

Cards and vintage things: more matchbooks

I picked up a lot more matchbooks recently. One huge lot and one tiny lot.

I'll start off with a little baseball content. Then it's all matchbooks the rest of the way for this post.

I'm happy to say that I am a good enough baseball fan that I recognized this guy immediately. It's the cover of a 1955 Ohio Blue Tip matchbook. It was unlicensed, and is not in the Beckett book or TCDB, so I'm not considering it a baseball card. Fun little thing to have though.

For those of you who couldn't figure out the player - it's Ted Williams. Fun to have a '55 Williams collectible of any kind.

Both lots had cool Pepsi matchbooks. I've got a nice little collection of these now. Here are the two new ones.

 The "Think Young" matchbook came in a little lot of 10. Cost about $7. Other interesting matchbooks were two for the NY restaurant Sardi's. Both had a phone number on the inside, one in the old-style alphanumeric, the other in the new style all-digits. The others were mostly San Francisco-area matchbooks, some of them fairly modern.

The other lot cost twice as much as the first lot - $15. For that $15 I got about 850 matchbooks. Most seem to be 1950s-1960s. So 85 times the matchbooks for 2 times the cost. This was the one where I thought the seller ghosted me, but I think she was just annoyed that it cost her more in postage then what she got for the matchbooks, and took her time sending them. Here are some highlights. There was a fair amount of duplication so if you are interested in anything you see let me know. At least half of the matchbooks came from Texas, seems to be the Austin area.

Some more in the soda category, including two-and-a-half Coke matchbooks.

 A variety of familiar brands here.

 Lots of drugstore/medical matchbooks. Old brands like Rexall, Dristan, Anacin, etc.

 Quite a lot of Hunt's tomato sauce matchbooks. Each one had a recipe on the back.

 Some cool gas station matchbooks.

 Some great automotive matchbooks. '61 and '63 Chevrolet, '62 and '64 Ford.

 There were two of this fantastic Continental Airlines matchbook, allowing me to show the great inside as well as the outside.

 I had never heard of Blackie Sherrod but apparently he is overwhelmingly considered the best sportswriter in Dallas history. He was about 10-15 years into his career at this point. He ended up working for over 60 years. You might recognize the girl in the right from the last matchbook post. Then she was on a kitchen company matchbook, here she is on a dry-cleaner matchbook.

 Such a wide variety of matchbooks that really create a snapshot in time. Afro-American Life Insurance was one of the country's largest black-owned businesses, and it is in the same lot with a caricature that would not be acceptable for much longer.

 The inside of that matchbook may even be more offensive than the outside.

 Matchbooks for children? I couldn't find much online about the "Zany Zoo" series. Seems to be 1960s.

 Anyone out there a USC graduate/fan? Lots of these matchbooks. Also one for Cal, and a couple from Tulane. The Tulane's have the 1967 football schedule inside.

 Lots of 1962 Seattle World's Fair matchbooks.

 There were several older NYC matchbooks. Richmond Hill is in Queens. WEAF became WNBC in the 1940s, dating the matchbook to this time. In 1988 WNBC became WFAN, the sports talk station (and current home of the Yankees).

 This is one of my favorites from the lot. A great piece of Long Island aviation history.

 Lots of military related matchbooks. These are mostly Air Force Bases and military hospitals in Texas.

 Some of the boxes came in this vintage Hershey's box - that will be a fun add to my vintage collection. Probably 1950s. And there are real pipe cleaners in the Sir Walter Raleigh package, also 1950s.

1981 Topps Glenn Hubbard

The front: Hubbard looks even shorter than his stated height of 5’9” as he follows through on a swing in a game at Shea Stadium. Hubbard played in one day game at Shea in 1980, a 3-0 Braves loss as Pat Zachry held the team to four hits. Hubbard went 0-4.

The back: Despite his hot spring training, Hubbard was not called up until July 10, when he was hitting .380 at AAA Richmond.

The player: Second baseman Glenn Hubbard played twelve seasons in the major leagues, mostly for the Braves. Known as an excellent fielder, his best season was 1983, when he made the NL All Star team, hitting .263 with 12 HR and 70 RBI. Overall, in 1,354 games he hit .244 with 70 HR and 448 RBI. One oddity is that he led the NL in sacrifice hits with 20 in 1982, but never had more than 10 in any other season.

The man: Hubbard has had a long career as a minor league coach, currently in the Royals organization.

My collection: I have 36 of his cards, from 1979 to 1989. I would be interested in trading for 1988 Score Rookie Traded #58.

Packaging updates, etc.

First off, RIP Larry Gowell, who pitched for the Yankees in 1972, and was the last AL pitcher to get a hit before the advent of the DH. He had shared his thoughts on baseball cards with this blog last year.

Second, thanks to everyone for the great replies to my packaging questions yesterday. If you haven't yet, you should really bookmark Gavin's fantastic Definitive Guide to Shipping Sports Cards Safely and Cheaply. I am usually pretty slow to change but will look into incorporating some of his great suggestions for sending out larger packages without the post office. Meanwhile, I'm going to order some 70-cent stamps. Per Chris's suggestion I should be able to send out 15 cards with one of those stamps. I told him I'll experiment on him first, if that works I'll send out a lot more to the people I owe cards to.

Finally, here's some content. One of my more unusual items in the Don and Chris Old Stuff order was a box of bandages from the 1950s. I ordered it because it was the only item I saw on the site from Long Island. Acme Plastic Zip-Strips in Valley Stream, NY. I used to live one town over from Valley Stream. Acme Cotton Products was located on 147 S. Franklin Avenue, a building nestled under the LIRR tracks. The company dissolved in 1975. I have paired the box with the only Valley Stream native to play in the major leagues, 1950s pitcher Tom Gorman.

Some cards and a question

Question first. Due to my location in one of the worst-hit parts of the country, and some medical issues in my family, I'm not going to the post office anytime soon. However I really want to start sending cards back to all the people who are sending cards to me, so I want to start doing PWEs. In the past with PWEs I've still gone to the post office to make sure the postage is right. I've been leery of just throwing a stamp or two on and then getting it returned-to-sender (which has happened to me in the past, even when using the machine in the post office). For you PWE veterans, what are your guidelines on the number of cards you can send with one stamp, or two stamps (or three?). I have been using the "three pockets of a nine-pocket page" method but am open to other suggestions for packaging as well. Thanks in advance!

Here are cards from two people I am planning to send PWE's to real soon. One is for the Time Travel Trade at Diamond Jesters. I have a return ready for this great '63 Pinson he sent me.

Another PWE I need to send out is for Johnny's Trading Spot's bingo game. Johnny is the master of blog games. Here is what I got in the latest Big Fun Game. I don't collect Wacky Packages so I'd be happy to send these off in another PWE to someone who does. Also - there's my raffle ticket for yet another of Johnny's awesome games. I figure if I post the photo of it I don't have to worry about losing it, which knowing me is a real possibility.

Latest vintage pickup

Found a cheap little lot on ebay. A large percentage of the cards were '50s and early '60s. Not a bad selection for under $10.
Here's what I got. New-to-me cards first followed by trade bait.

'50s cards. The '55 Bowmans were the big draw, very rare to see them in a little cheap lot.

 Early '60s. That Jim Landis card is a high-number. It looks like there is paper loss on Bob Veale's face but that's actually part of the card - reflection of the camera flash on his glasses.

 Some nice mid-60s additions too.

 On to the trade bait. It might be months before I hit the post office again but feel free to claim anything you like. '50s-early'60s trade bait here.

 Mid-60s trade bait. Anyone looking to start a Jerry Lynch PC? You can get to a good start here.

Cardboard cousins: '53 Topps/'02 Heritage

Am I the only one who finds it annoying that the Heritage sets are one digit off from the sets that they emulate? Maybe if there is no season in 2020 we can skip '21 Heritage and have '22 Heritage mirror '72, and be 50 years apart instead of 49.

I only have three '53s but I was able to find one kind-of/sort-of match. A couple of future All-Star shortstops at #25. Ray Boone would be traded to Detroit during the '53 season, and went on to be an All-Star in '54 and '56. Rafael Furcal (anyone ever call him Ray?) was embarking on a long career that would see him be an All-Star for three different teams - the Braves in '03, Dodgers in '10 and Cardinals in '12.

 There almost was an easy connection with these two - Ray's grandson Bret Boone played for the Braves in 1999 and Furcal made his debut in 2000. Presumably they would have been spring training teammates in 1999, though.

Vintage Backgrounds: The Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront

Reggie Cleveland poses for the photographer at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg in 1972. The Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront, newly constructed in 1972, towers behind him.