1981 Topps Moose Haas

 

The front: Pretty standard photo of a pitcher at spring training.

The back: Haas's father taught him to be a locksmith, in case he needed a backup career. The amateur magician bit was something he did occasionally on the side, but did not heavily publicize. Both of these tidbits are also on his 1987 Topps card, which also mentioned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do which he had not yet achieved in 1981.

The player: Haas was a starter for the Brewers and A's from 1976 to 1988. His best season was 1983, when he went 13-3, leading the AL with an .813 winning percentage. Overall in 266 games he went 100-83 with a 4.01 ERA, an impressive performance given his low strikeout totals, even for the era (853 in 1,655 innings).

The man: Despite his eclectic hobbies, Haas kept a very low profile during his career. Since his retirement he has raised thoroughbred horses, become a certified strength and conditioning coach, and is a regular at Brewers fantasy camps.

My collection: I have 32 of his cards, from 1978 to 1988. I would be interested in trading for 1985 Gardner's Bakery Brewers #8.

Quick, shiny post

It's been a long day, but it was nice to have a little package of cards waiting when I got home. 12 shiny '22 Panini's from the eBay dime box (spent $1.20 on the lot).

These six were less shiny, but they are all big names.

Less star power here (though still some good players) but much shinier cards. I don't get tired of looking at cards like these.

 

Another street trade

I was in the city again yesterday and did another street trade with Al. Not as much variety as last time, but still pretty good.

I picked up a bunch of these Yankee Stadium Legacy cards. These are from a set of great Yankees, it's not the set with every game at Yankee Stadium.

Last time, I noticed he had a lot of 1995 Select Certified. I added it to my wantlist just so I would know which ones I needed when I came back to his boxes. I was able to add a lot of star power to that set.

Here I goofed. Not on the SP minor league cards, but the seven 1992 Score insert cards. I should have known I wouldn't have needed anything from 1992 Score. These were extras in the boxed complete sets. Well, maybe they are useful to someone's collection?

1976 SSPC Tom House

 

The card, in brief: Simple, classic pitcher pose. You can see lots of fans starting to fill the Shea Stadium sets behind him. Wonder if it will be a full House. You can see the ballboy's stool hanging from the fence in the background. (The Mets didn't switch to ball girls until 1982.)

The player, in brief: Tom House pitched eight years in the major leagues for Atlanta, Boston and Seattle from 1971 to 1978, going 29-23 with 33 saves. His best season came with the Braves in 1974, when he went 6-2 with 11 saves and a 1.93 ERA, yet his most famous moment that season came when, sitting in the Braves bullpen, he caught Hank Aaron's record-breaking 715th home run.

Post career, in brief: Since his retirement, he earned a Masters and PhD in sports psychology and became one of the most successful pitching coaches in the country, most famously working with Nolan Ryan in Texas. He answered my questions about baseball cards in 2010.

My collection: I have ten of his cards, from 1969 to 1979. I would be interested in trading for 1976 Star Market Boston Red Sox #NNO.

Cake or Gum? 1975 Joe Lahoud

I've come up with an idea for another blog series. Lately I've been enjoying the old Hostess cards more and more. Overall, the photos seem more interesting, especially with their backgrounds. As far as I know, Topps provided Hostess with the photos, so it's interesting that Hostess seemed to get the better photos sometimes. Or maybe that's just my personal taste, and more people prefer the Topps photos.

For this series, I will take each Hostess card I have and compare it to the corresponding Topps cards. Leading off is 1975 Hostess #10, Joe Lahoud.

These photos look like they may well have been taken at the same time. Though unlikely, it could even have been two photos taken at the same time, one photographer next to Lahoud, the other in front of him. It's hard to pick a favorite between these two. I guess the netting is a little more unusual of a background than the bleachers, so I'll go with Topps this time.

1974 was by far the best season of Lahoud's 11-year major league career. In a career-high 127 games, the perennial backup hit .271 with 13 HR and 44 RBI. Overall in 791 games he hit .223 with 65 HR and 228 RBI. Since the end of his baseball career he has gone into a long and successful career in technology sales.

Fun variety from Fuji

I got a big box of cards from Fuji with lots of fun variety. 

The bulk of the package was 1975 Minis. This is well over double what I had already.

Lots of full-sized vintage too. Heavy on the Yankees. Lots of yellow here which I like.

A couple of minor league autographs.

A variety of more standard modern cards, highlighted by a shiny Juan Rivera card. He had a brief but solid Yankee career.

Some oddball modern cards of various non-standard sizes. I have fond memories of each one of these players from their time with the Yankees. Remember when it was no big deal for even a big slugger like Dave Winfield to bunt?

There was one other item in the package, a very interesting non-baseball item. It is a New York State seal cigarette card, from Helmar cigarettes. Looking online, this apparently dates back to 1910! This card is so fresh-looking and immaculate, I thought it might be a reprint, but I don't see anything online to indicate that there were reprints made of the set.

Here is the back. Very cool addition to my "vintage stuff" collection!

Three more small TCDB trades

These three came this morning, after I posted some other small transactions yesterday. This almost completes the flurry of TCDB activity I've been getting lately.

Two very nice vintage subset cards from fritz63.

I made a one-for-one trade a little larger with lildog7, and ended up with some nice minor league cards in addition to this 1971 need.

The four cards I got from 3bcollection were all modern, but all had vintage players. Some great, unusual photos on these.

Small transaction roundup

A small TCDB trade with Musclebeech netted me several vintage cards, including another 1973 high number need. I still need ten more cards, including eight high numbers. Not sure I'll be able to get the rest from TCDB trades, but I'll probably try a little longer.

Williams3b is a Matt Williams supercollector. I was able to send him a 1990 Donruss variation which he was very appreciate of getting, as well as a few other Dbacks needs. In return, he sent me a very nice 1965 card, and some fun modern needs as well.

Going much farther back in vintage, I was able to win a couple of matchbook lots which had a 1930s Diamond baseball matchcover. This one has Tommy Thevenow, whose career was marred by bad play, bad injuries and bad luck, but was the hitting star of the 1926 World Series.

Silas "Si" Johnson won 101 games for four NL teams. This lot had a football matchbook too. Bill Young had a Pro Bowl season in 1942, the year of this matchbook (there is a 1942 Washington schedule on the back). He then enlisted in the Navy, and was later the head coach at Furman. You may notice a Dick Nixon matchbook from 1960 in the photo as well. In an odd coincidence, Johnson, Young and Nixon all died within a four month period in early 1994.

I picked up some very cheap shiny cards recently too. I had bronze Donruss Preferred cards before but never the shinier silver versions.

Meanwhile I picked up this Cavan Biggio lot to acquire another cheap shiny card.

 

Eclectic street trade

I was in the city this week and stopped by Al's table for a street trade. I was able to pick out a nice variety of different kinds of cards.

He gets a lot of those "silver packs" with shiny parallels of 80's Topps designs. These refractors, or whatever they are, really looks great in the streetlights of after-work dusk.

Al was happy to get rid of these, and counted them as one total card. Some great photos here, especially Eddie Mathews and Vern Law (parking lot card!).

Some Blue Jays parallels from 2014.

A variety of odds and ends. The Japanese Nomo Zenith card is a fun one.

Finally, a few recent set needs, all of them RCs.

1965 lot

My 1965 set is lagging behind 1964 and later 60s sets, so I was glad to pick up a nicely-priced lot of 40 cards.

I needed 13 out of the 40, a pretty good ratio. The unusual webbing in Leon Wagner's glove stood out to me here. I don't remember seeing that kind of glove before.

The rest of the new-to-me ones.

Some great cartoons on the back. Dal Maxvill's is my favorite.

Lots of trade bait. Not too many big names, but could be useful to someone working on this set.