Vintage equipment: 1979

In 1975 we started to see a couple of pitchers wearing unusually-colored gloves. I think Freddie Patek's blue glove is the first one by a position player.

I think ROMO's glove has one of the biggest names on a glove yet.

Vern Ruhle was released by the Tigers at the end of 1978 Spring Training, and was signed by the Astros. His glove says RUHLE 31. He wore #31 for the Tigers but #48 for the Astros. I'm guessing he hadn't changed the number on the glove at the time Topps took his picture. At first I thought this was spring training but it might be Shea Stadium.

Something similar for Jim Dwyer. You can see him wearing #36 but holding bat #11. He wore #11 for the Cardinals but was traded to the Giants in June, and was assigned #36.

A couple of Mariners stealing bats. Bob Stinson #15 has the bat of #36 Leroy Stanton.

#9 Ruppert Jones is one number off, holding bat #8, which was worn by Leon Roberts.

One more sticky-fingered player, in this case, literally. Look at those gloves! I'm guessing #14 Jim Wohlford didn't want to get all that pine tar on his own bat, so he took bat #2. Nobody wore #2 in 1978, perhaps thinking it was bad luck after manager Alex Grammas, who wore #2, was fired after the 1977 season.

 

2023 Topps Series II

My 2023 Topps Series II set came in. Completing the modern sets is low priority for me but I do like to try to keep the Topps run as complete as possible.

It's been well established that the photo style in flagship has gotten very repetitive over the years. 90% of the action shots are batters swinging, pitchers mid-delivery, an occasional outfielder making a catch. Even the "quirky" photos tend to repeat so there are a lot of celebrations and guys in mid-air, enough to make even those boring after a while.

Still I found a few cards worth briefly blogging about.

The thing I liked best was that there was a lot of color. Like Sean Manaea's green glove. Which I am just realizing right now means this was a photoshopped photo from his time in Oakland.

The City Connect uniforms look pretty goofy in games, but sometimes they look good on a baseball card. I like this one that says "Brew Crew".

My favorite is the Rockies' uniform based on the classic Colorado license plate. The shiny, baggy green pants look like pajamas, though, which spoils the look a bit.

Of the young Yankees that have come up over the past couple of years, I've found Oswaldo Cabrera to be the most fun to watch. Like many young Yankees he took a step back in his second year. One of the team's many problems is the inability to develop young talent at the major league level after their initial success. The league figures them out and they can't adjust. Hopefully there is some kind of change next year. The "acknowledging the dugout after reaching base" is another photo style that got overused in this set.

I've been really impressed with the Phillies this postseason. Not everyone like Bryce Harper but I sure wish the Yankees had gotten him when they had the chance. There are so many highly touted prospects that fall short of expectations, it's nice when one actually does have the kind of exceptional career that they were expected to have.

New York Times July 21 1969

 Men Walk on Moon! The entire first section of the paper was all Moon-related. There were extensive transcripts of the dialogue between the astronauts and NASA, and a lot of general information articles that were written well in advance. Unfortunately the other, "regular" sections of the paper were missing.

There was a lot about the human interest side of the moon landing, though. Personally I found that more interesting. There seemed to be two main schools of thought. One was that we were on the cusp of a great age of exploration, and we would have extensive moon bases within the next 10-20 years. Others saw it as a distraction or even "act of war" and that societal problems, particularly urban riots, would get more and more frequent while money was wasted on space. Neither came to pass, of course. 

The Times interviewed 30 prominent individuals (28 of them men), who were more-or-less evenly divided on whether the moon landing was a good thing or bad.

Eugene Ionesco and Saul Alinsky more or less sum up the two political sides' reactions to the event.

Pablo Picasso had the best quote of all, though.

Another article was about how all kinds of random things were happening on Earth while history was made on the moon, including the Mets splitting a doubleheader with the Expos.

In Atlanta, Tony Gonzalez hit a grand slam in the Braves' 6-3 victory over San Diego. Thanks to the Braves' Home Run for the Money contest, Gonzalez's blast won $28,600 for "eight-year-old Estelle Hale of Statham, a cripple . . . Mrs. Hale will use the money to build a greenhouse."

Meanwhile, every advertiser wanted to tie their product to the moon one way or another. Easy for Chromalloy American, who helped build Apollo 11. For household cleaner Brillo, it meant a free moon map offer with proofs of purchase. It has a reminder to include the zip code, which was still pretty new and easy to forget if you weren't used to it. There's not expiration date on the coupon, maybe I should try to redeem it . . .

Incoming roundup

Starting off with an eBay purchase. I picked up a small cheap lot of 1964 Philadelphia Football cards that was sold by the same guy I was buying one of the big baseball lots I purchased, getting combined shipping. The big draw for me was my first Cleveland Browns card with Jim Brown's pink Cadillac. The seller forgot to include the football cards, so when he mailed the '64s he threw in some nice extras, a couple of '74s I had, some '70s I mostly needed, and a 1960!

Everything else this week came from OBC. That stands for Old Baseball Cards even though these cards from Steve Sankner don't exactly qualify. These are my first nine cards from 2023 Series II. Once I got these I decided to add the rest of the set to my TCDB wantlist, as I still like to have a complete Topps set for each year. I immediately got two small trade requests, which made me realize I had no interest in completing this set in dinks and dunks. I had managed to knock out Series I in a large TCDB trade. I spent a little time trying to see if I could pull of something similar for Series II. I got about halfway through the alphabet on TCDB users with large numbers of cards from the set, headed over to eBay to see if I could get the whole thing for cheap, and ordered a complete 331-660 set for $25 shipped. In the long run saves time, probably saves money and certainly saves cards.

OK, now for some legitimately old cards. Mike Rich sent these four in a separate envelope the same time he sent the other four '64 Giants, but these arrived over a week later.

Randy Welk sent a fun mixture of a variety of vintage oddballs, including two variations of a 1970 O-Pee-Chee checklist, as well as a high number from 1970 and from 1971.

Brian "Tony" Levinson sent an amazing assortment of cards ranging from three 1951 Red Backs to some 1960s Hall of Famers.

Seven 1963s from Andy Blackburn. Always fun to see a four-headed rookie card, especially one with Reds on it.

Wayne Delia collects type cards, and needed to beef up his modern cards in that area. I'm sending him some 2018-present cards and he sent me 50 needs from 1958!

Peter Mead sent a nice assortment from 1959-1961.

Some more 1958s, this time from Larry Leonard. These look almost pack-fresh.

Three of the best hitters in the National League, circa 1965, from Steve Archibald.

Finally, the ever-generous Greg Henthorn sent some more really nice cards my way, this time a great 1950s sampler. My favorite is the '53 Hank Bauer Bowman Color. I actually picked up a reprint from 1983 in the Yankee dime box at the card show, with no idea that the real one was on it's way!

 

Big OBC welcome package from Kent Goto

I've been receiving a lot of nice "welcome to OBC" PWEs from members of the group, and have been putting them into more-or-less weekly posts consolidating my incoming cards. This huge package from veteran member Kent Goto was so massive, however, that it needs it's own post.

The majority of the package was Post cards. Here are the 1961 cards. Five of these players would go on to manager World Series champions.

1962 Post. Some Hall of Famers in here.

1963 Post. I like the fancy border cutting on some of these.

A complete 10-card set of the very obscure 1970 Washington Senators Traffic Safety set!

Some 1960s and early 1970s Topps set needs.

Finally, 13 hits to my 1969 set including a couple of big-time Hall of Famers. With this and my card show pickups, I am 25 cards away from finishing this set, almost all stars and high-numbers.

Yankees box

Here are some highlights from the Yankees box I got at the card show. There were lots of fun cards in those three boxes, I could have picked another 400 easily. Here are some of the most interesting.

There were lots of minor league cards in those boxes. That fantastic Dennis Twombley card I've wanted for a long time, I think I first saw it on Nick's blog. Certainly a nice surprise to find it in a dime box. There were some other fun cards in that set too.

This card made me laugh. AAAAAAA!

Mark Shifflett with two cards showing him Suttoning with shades. Bonus points for the card where the pitching coach has a bat.

I'd never seen Little Sun cards before, though I'd heard of them. That Andy Fox card is fun, and I love the very '90s design on Tray Nelson.

Lots of Brien Taylor's. Some dark shades here too. He autographed a lot of product in his day, and I guess it's just dime box fodder now. I remember getting a Topps one from Al a few years ago.

I like the old TCMA sets that were clearly set with a typewriter.  This one featured the Yankee teams of 1936-1939 that won four straight World Series.

Some more great newer cards of vintage players. That Hank Bauer card saluting his military service is very cool. The Jim Bouton photo is interesting with the banner in the background. Funny to see a card celebrating Harmonica Phil Linz as a Yankee Classic. And finally a fantastic Scooter card that I think I also first saw on blogs, that was another fun surprise.

Finally, four great cards from the 1998 Metal set with some NYC landmarks. Can't remember which ones I had already and I haven't checked yet, but they really look great together.

My first real big card show

Before today, I hadn't been to a card show in 20 years, at least. I had been to some small shows in the early '00s when I got back into collecting. I don't even remember what I bought at those for the most part. I do remember going to one show in the middle of a mall where I made the decision to avoid vintage. (Maybe not my best decision.) 

For the past couple of years I had been thinking about going to shows again, partially from reading many other bloggers' posts about them. Since joining OBC, I've heard a lot more about their success at shows, so I decided to go to the big one here at Hofstra University today. 400 tables - maybe about 50 dealers or so.

For the first time I saw the infamous bros with their hard cases, and I'd say over half of the tables were just new stuff. Still there was no shortage of vintage all over the place. I went with Sal Domino, an OBCer who lives a few towns over from me. Sal very kindly showed me around, introduced me to dealers, advised me on purchases and helped me get some "OBC discounts".

Sal and I had a few cards for each other. Neither of us had mentioned doing so beforehand, but the OBC folks are always very generous. I gave him some '70s football needs and he gave me these four much older cards.

The first dealer he introduced me to was a guy named Frank (I think). Frank had a small box of beat-up stars, and said we could have half off the sticker price. Aaron was listed as $20 and Rose for $30. I asked if he'd do $20 for both and he did.

These were from a guy named Steve. I'd actually bought some cards from him at the flea market a couple of years ago. Found some '69 and '70 high numbers, some '70 Topps booklets . . .

. . . . a Scratch-Off and some stamps. All were $0.50 each.

He also had some beat up stars at some good prices. I'm realizing I've got to loosen up the change a bit for big stars. I think these are some good prices. My favorite is the Clemente with the writing, capturing an important bit of baseball history.

A different dealer named Lenny had some really fun $0.50 boxes. I wish they were dime boxes, lots of fun newer oddballs. Because of the price I stuck with vintage and found some great stuff. Topps needs . . .

. . . stamps, a decal, Star Wars . . .

. . . lots of vintage oddballs! OBC discount brought me to 3/$1. Pretty good.

Pulled these from someone else's $0.50 box of almost all newer stuff.

I was feeling a little weird about spending more money on cards than I usually do, but having so few. There were no dime boxes but there was someone with Yankee cards that were $15/100. I asked if he'd do 400/$40. Probably ended up with more than 400. Lots of great newer stuff, oddballs, minor league, shiny stuff. That'll be another post.