Some 1959 Topps Baseball From Sportlots

 

1959 Topps Baseball from Sportlots Auctions

Another one of these quick posts. Long story short I "won" 4 auctions over at Sportlots.com from one seller each was won at the opening bid of just 25 cents plus the shipping which totaled $4.80. With Sportlots you don't get combined shipping when it comes to the auctions. I forgot about that this time. Oh well.

Anywho I got 4 cards from 1959 Topps Baseball. I will  be talking about 3 of them here and the lone Senator over at my Curly W Cards blog.

The first two cards are from the Los Angeles Dodgers:

We have Shortstop Charlie Neal

1959 Topps Baseball: 427 Charlie Neal Los Angeles Dodgers

And Outfielder Solly Drake

1959 Topps Baseball: 406 Solly Drake Los Angeles Dodgers

Next up Pittsburgh Pirates Pitchers "Buc Hill Aces": 

1959 Topps Baseball: 428 Buc Hill Aces

Ron Kline Bob Friend Vern Law Roy Face Pittsburgh Pirates

Oh I almost forgot the seller included a couple of filler/buffer cards that were in toploaders to further protect the bought cards.

1989 Upper Deck Baseball 494 Al Nipper Chicago Cubs

1986 Donruss Baseball 133 Dick Schofield California Angels

So there we have a nice little recent package of cards one card short of a full hand, well actually 1 card more than a hand or a hand in some other variation of a card game. There are so many versions of poker I'm not sure which one(s) have a 6 card hand. Look for the Hal Griggs card over at my Curly W Cards blog.

Washington Wednesday: RIP Redskins HTTR

WASHINGTON WEDNESDAY:

RIP Redskins: HTTR4LIFE

Redskins Super Fan Chief Zee crying (date unknown)

Well they went ahead and did it. The NFL's Washington Team The REDSKINS gave into the pressure to change their controversial Nickname. I won't go into all the history of the name and the periodic attempts from outside entities to force the team to change the name they have held for 87 years. all that can be found on the interwebs. Along with all the Pros and Cons. Sure some people are now not offended but now a different group of people have been offended and some angered.

I will say that I am far from happy about the whole thing. I've been a life-long fan of the team, growing up with an older brother who was a super true blue fan, even my father who wasn't much of a sports fan enjoyed watching the occasional Redskins game on the telly and kept track of them during the season from time to time (mostly I think to please his fan family). What ticks me off the most is it appears to be that the owners were being blackmailed by FedEx one of their biggest financial supporters, investors and others. The delivery service sent a letter saying basically "Change the name or move to another stadium", they have about 7 more years on the stadium's lease so that isn't really one of the pressing issues. Also several big named merchandise retailers such as Amazon, Target and Walmart to name a few have pulled all Redskins merchandise from their shelves and have stopped selling them.

A couple of weeks after announcing that the name was going to be changed and the old name dropped the team now has a temporary name for the 2020 season "The Washington Football Team". They will keep the maroon and gold colors, but will be logoless. The helmets will be plain maroon with large gold numbers on the sides. Apparently they will have a permanent as yet unannounced new name and logo starting in the 2021 season.

I guess to a non-fan the best analogy would be if the high school you and your siblings graduated from, maybe even one of your parents and their siblings graduated from as well, was forced to change their mascot's name and/or even the entire school name. That is how it has affected me. After several generations of history.  It just "always was the way it was". It is part of the fandom intangibles. You don't know exactly what it is unless you have it. Even then it seems to be different for every fan.

As a fan of the old team I am not in the mood to attempt to become a fan of whatever the new team will be. Collecting cards for this year/season will be bittersweet. I'm not sure what I will do for next season. Do I stay with the team trading group I am a part of once the new team is established and cards baring the new team name and logo are made? A big part of me doesn't want to. 

OK rant over for now here are some historic DC Football cards that are sure to offend some people.

Lets start with one of my fave QBs of ALL-TIME Sonny Jurgensen. This one is from 1991 a special Quarterbacks set. I chose to show it because of it's original old school looks, especially the back pic with the original arrow helmet design (not the 1990s retro version)

1991 Quarterback Legends: 24 Sonny Jurgensen Washington Redskins

These next two cards I picked to show are of the same Player Jim Lachey. Both are very cool photos the first is a portrait from the 1991 Pro Set Football set, 

1991 Pro Set Football: 381 Jim Lachey Washington Redskins

Next Card. Check out the cool up close and personal pic. I picked this card to show because of the peeling of the stripe stickers on his helmet. Thought it was very cool looking.

1991 Upper Deck Football - 102 Jim Lachey Washington Redskins

This next card I chose because of the retro looks with the airbrushing/photoshopping (or maybe it is just unbranded spring training gear). It is also close to what the "temporary" helmets of this 2020 season will look like, with the exception that the new temporary helmets will have the player's uniform number in gold on the sides.

2004 Score Football: 330 James Thrash Washington Redskins

The final card I'm showing is one of the cool retro cards from 2004 Fleer Tradition Football set. Not only is the card design retro but this was the year the Redskins were sporting an anniversary retro uniform with the Arrow Helmet and a retro looking jersey and their return to the mustard colored pants.

2004 Fleer Tradition Football: 196 LaVar Arrington Washington Redskins

*UGH Due to the recent formatting updating changes that Blogger did, on my ancient computer at home I can no longer edit posts on blogger. It just gave me a blank page, well it had part of the editing "frame" of the page but the part where content was supposed to be it was blank. An incomplete page. I think it is because of something with my outdated Chrome browser. I didn't think about checking with Firefox (or Internet Explorer) until after I had shutdown my ancient Windows XP laptop/notebook. I'll try seeing if my ancient Firefox or IE works sometime later. Probably not because I think they had problems ages ago preventing me from using them then. So I won't be able to directly upload from my laptop to Blogger. I will have to use other sites or do what I did this time and transfer the images to a thumb drive and do it old school. Not to mention I will have to use my work laptop to do all the post editing, not just some of the last minute corrections before the scheduled Noontime posting. Yeah Yeah Yeah I need to get a new up-to-date home 'puter/laptop.

Washington Wednesday: R.I.P. Wes "Mr. Bullet" Unseld

R.I.P. WES UNSELD 1946-2020

On Tuesday 02 June of this year 2020 while doing my daily routine of checking out the main page of TCDB (Trading Card Database) for the random card of the day, new forum posts, born on today and then finally In Memoriam I saw the image of a familiar RC. (I don't have the card but am familiar with it). That of perhaps the most iconic Washington Basketball Player of All-Time Wes Unseld. I was beyond shocked another of my childhood sports idols passed from this Earth. I think it was during the years between his playing career (1981) to his coaching career (1988) that I drifted away from being a basketball fan and would eventually stop caring about the sport until a few years ago. Plus I was more attached to football at the time, as the Washington Senators were long gone, and the Washington Capitals were not very good yet.

1969-70 Topps Basketball: 56 Wes Unseld Baltimore Bullets

Image from comc.com

OK so his rookie card was when the Bullets were still the Baltimore Bullets, but the man would play his entire career with the Bullets Franchise, work with the front office and then later return to the court as Head Coach. He then moved onto General Manager for the team on into the transition to the name change to Wizards and a few years after that.

Here are some (but not all) of my Unseld Cards as a tribute to one of my childhood Icons. For the most part I have already shown these cards on this blog sometime previously so I don't need to explain them.

The following items are a few gems in my collection:

Next is a "card" in my collection that is more of a mini poster than a real "card" it is from 1969-70 Topps and they call it a "ruler" it is only 10 inches by 2.5 inches so not a true ruler but hey it is only paper. I got it from Ebay I think some years back for I forget how much I might have mentioned where and when some posts back a few years back.

1969-70 Topps Basketball Ruler: 22 Wes Unseld Baltimore Bullets

Finally here is a photo of an item I have from my childhood, the photo is actually from an image search I did a few years back and from someone's Ebay auction for which they had I think the whole set was listed for of course way too much money. I forget if they sold or not. Anyway as I said this is something that I actually have but not my copy in the image (I haven't scanned or photographed mine). It is a mini poster that was available from McDonald's in 1976. The size is 12" x 16" One of those premium things during the basketball season that year. Each week they featured a new poster that had two caricatures of Washington Bullets players. There are a total of 4 mini posters. This is the one with Wes and K.C. Jones.

1976 McDonald's Washington Bullets mini poster: K.C. Jones and Wes Unseld

Misprint Double Sided Back-To-Back Footzball Y'all

I forget when I got this card probably sometime last year, but I'm pretty sure it was from a Fairfield Football Repacked box I think one of the ones that had 4 packs and 50 non-packed cards or 100 non-packed cards or a 10 pack box with 50 or 100 non-packed cards or just a 50 card box with no packs. I'm not sure which it came from it was that long ago. If I was sure I'd show a scan of the box it came from, I don't even think I have that particular box anymore. It would have been from Target.

This particular card is from 1990 Pro Set Football and is a misprint. It is a double backed card technically it is a wrong front card even though the "front" is a back. I am saving it because the true back (that is the back back) is of a Rams player. The front of the card or the misprinted "back" is a Jet. There is also some green (or blue/cyan) ink smearing/bleeding on the "front". Yes the "back" also has a bit of a printing problem with a vertical white line (or rather lack of ink line) on the left hand side.

1990 Pro Set Football: 166 Jerry Gray Los Angeles Rams

Misprint: Wrong Front 237 Pat Leahy New York Jets back image

When I first came across the card I saw the Jets player and thought it was going to go to my trade stack, but I turned it over saw it was a double backed card and that one of the "backs" was of my PC Rams.

Speaking of trade stacks there are times I have considered doing a trade stack like Chris over at Nachos Grande or a trade pile like Alex at Chavez Ravining. My biggest problem with it though is the low frequency of my blogging doesn't work with the required high frequency of a task such as that and my want list might not be practical for most collectors.

MFTP: A Handful of Rams From 67 and 73

MailDazed From The Pazt:

A Handfull of Rams from 1967 & 1973

OK so for this post I was going to do a Strive For '65 post but the cards I wasn't sure if I had blogged about or not I had blogged about well over a year ago. I don't think I blogged about the cards that were with them, but those 2 or 3 cards are for some other post some other time ...maybe. Right now I want to show off some later vintage cards and some that are more Neo-Vintage cards. All of them are Los Angeles Rams cards. Oh big surprise there huh? I'm pressed for time to get this post in while it is still April so I won't go into details on the players or even the cards specifically. I'll just show 'em. I'm not very good at telling about player's careers anyway.

I received the cards on 31 December 2018 from a Sportlots auction. Apparently they were all part of one single five card lot that I got for 25¢ plus $3.50 shipping. There are 5 cards total, Two 1967 Philadelphia Gum Football Cards and Three 1973 Topps Football Cards.

1967 PHILADELPHIA GUM FOOTBALL

1967 Philadelphia Gum Football: 90 Dave Jones Los Angeles Rams

1967 Philadelphia Gum Football: 91 Tommy McDonald Los Angeles Rams

1973 TOPPS FOOTBALL

1973 Topps Football: 41 Les Josephson Los Angeles Rams

1973 Topps Football: 324 Gene Howard Los Angeles Rams

1973 Topps Football: 365 Dave Elmendorf Los Angeles Rams

Bye Bye Mail-day Tracking Bye Bye Bye

OK so this post story will probably be two-fold. The main subject will be mail days tracking. I guess I'll start with what I used to do up until a little over a year ago. I think I have described the process in detail before so I'll try not to get too deep into this time. Basically until around mid January of last year (2019) I used to keep pretty detailed records of what cards I got in the mail, from where how much I paid for them etc. Since last January I haven't updated any posts or files, but still stupidly have been keeping all the packages and envelopes separate in their piles and marking the outer envelope with the receiving date, but often not keeping track of prices especially the shipping costs. So I have a few boxes of padded envelopes and PWEs with assorted cards that I know exactly when I got them but may or may not have what I paid for them. Sometimes Sportlots sellers include all the details, but often if they do include a packing slip the shipping fees are not listed. Sometimes they don't include anything so there is not even the record of what I paid for the lot or the singles or what have me. At one time I thought about trying to catch up and have a word file with some stuff that came in early 2019 but it is far from complete I think there are 3 or 4 padded envelopes left from January 2019 and some of the other months I have some packages listed here and some PWEs there. So That stuff came to a screeching halt sometime around this January. Except I have still been marking the envelopes with date received.

I used to keep track of all that stuff in two places first on the community site Trading Card Central (TCC) that was my main "storage" area for my mail day posts. I would then cut & paste my TCC post onto Trading Card Zone (TCZ) which a few years back changed it's name to Sports Card University. Sometimes the TCZ version I would tweak some to cater to that forum's platform. Usually I would draft my posts as a MicroSoft Word file or just a plain Windows Notepad file. Sometimes I would save the original file sometimes not. Well now long story short TCC seems to have finally bought the farm and bit the bullet, and formerly TCZ merged with another site to become Sports Card Club. The TCC site seems to be totally dead now (since around early Mar) and Sports Card Club is currently blocked by my work network and I haven't bothered trying to connect when at home.

So yeah I no longer keep detailed records of what I have gotten, when, or from where, or for how much. I can look at my buying history on COMC and Sporlots and Ebay (to some extent) but I'm not going to bother any more. Trying to do my previous card inventory logging delays the organizing and cataloging of my collection too much. So those days of being super detailed (or anal retentive) are over. I still have some records and I have my Check Out My Cards records that I have been meaning to make some "MailDazed From The Pazt" posts with those. I'm stalled on finding the dang Football cards from my very first order that were mostly from the 2009 Donruss Classics football cards. Maybe sometime I'll get around to that and scanning all the cards from my various orders there.

Well that is all that I will talk about that for now lets look at some cards:

OK so I'll show two cards that it turns out I got from a Sportlots order that I received on 19 Jul 2019. Two 2019 Panini Score Football cards both parallels, both Rams. First one is card 296 Todd Gurley Red parallel and the other is card 299 Brandin Cooks Gold parallel. Neither is a serial numbered card. I only know that information from the little paper slip I put in the penny sleeve that one of the cards was in. Part of my old system that sort of ended last year, except I have still marked the envelopes with the date I received things. I could look in my Sportlots buying history to find out about the order but I'm not going to bother.

 2019 Panini: Score Football: 299 Gold Brandin Cooks Los Angeles Rams

 2019 Panini: Score Football: 296 Red Todd Gurley II Los Angeles Rams

I really like the design of the 2019 Score Football. Especially the helmet in the corner. I wish the backs had more complete stats and didn't repeat the front photo. I'd rather have all stats like in the 1960s and 70s Topps monopoly days. I probably have the normal base versions of these cards from my Sports Card Forum (SCF) team trades but I'm not sure. I should also get the Red Cooks and the Gold Gurley to have those rainbows. Oh well a collectors life is never done, or his collection never complete or dead or something.

Losing Interest A Little Bit

Lately I have been losing interest in collecting a little. As the end of February was approaching I was even losing a little interest in blogging a bit. Of course some of this was my renewed efforts to get back into selling on Ebay. This month I have concentrated on my Ebay. As a result of making an effort to list new items and actually get them up on Ebay I went from having 6 stale listings and a last sale about 3 or 4 months ago for a 3 inch button that sold for $1.50 with Free Shipping to 30 listings. Over the last few weeks I have sold 5 items from 4 listings. I sold 2 books, and 16 packs of Football Cards (11 packs of 2016 Leaf Draft Football and 5 packs of 2018 Leaf Draft Football) I didn't know those things were so popular. Personally I don't like the Draft cards since they are undrafted players in college uniforms. Eventually some of those guys go on to have professional careers but many don't.

To reflect my Ebay sales I have tried to update my trading posts on this blog. I think they are current now. Anyway it is almost midnight on 29 February and I need to get this posted to make the deadline. For the full details (or at least what I could recall) check out my post over at my regular Blog "Kirk's Knook": Back To The Swing of Ebay Selling

COTW: 1961 Topps Moe Thacker

1961 Topps Moe Thacker

Let The Sunshine, Let The Sunshine in...

Don't let The Sun go down on me.

This month's quick and dirty Card of The Whenever is a card I have had for a long time and an upgrade that I have also had for sometime just not as long. I don't remember when or where I got the first poor one, nor am I even sure of where I got the upgrade. Probably from Sportlots maybe from Ebay. I forget and obviously also forget for how much.

Anyway my original one  which the more I think about it I might have gotten from a repack box of some kind or not. So the card in question 1961 Topps Baseball 12 Moe Thacker Chicago Cubs:

No the colors from my scanner were not off and no your monitor colors are not off. This card is extremely sun faded on the front. There is the slightest bit of red in the Cubs "C" on the cap and where his name should be there is the very slightest indication that some printing was once there. So the fading rules out it being an ink test variant. There is also a roundish shaped bump or crease at the top as if a quarter might have spent some time putting pressure on the card. Hmm that reminds me of the gumball/card vending machine(s) they used to have many years ago at my LCS (House of Cards). They used to put common vintage cards in those machines and that is where I would often get some of my first late 1950s and early 1960s vintage cards. For a quarter (I think they also had a 50 cent machine) you would get a gumball and a card. Usually they were vintage baseball cards, but I think on occasion the cards in the machine were also non-sport cards or football. But I digress, majorly.

Here is the back of the sun faded copy of this card: Yes it is off centered/miscut toward the top edge.

I forget how long I had the faded copy before I got around to getting the upgrade:

and its back:

Finally a side by side image of the fronts just for the fun of it.

I probably should have reversed them putting the faded copy on the left and the replacement upgrade on the right. Oh well guess I was speed photo editing again.

COTW: 1976 Topps Fred Dryer

It is the end of the year and yep I had the entire month of December to think about and plan for some of the recent goodies I've gotten but procrastination, dilly dallying and being sort of nonchalant about the whole blogging thing has once again gotten in the way of posting.

Let us go back a few years, decades to the mid 1970s  and a defensive end football player for the LA Rams who would go on to have a pretty decent acting career. Fred Dryer and one of his playing days cards. I have a couple of others somewhere but this seems to be the only one I have scanned and that was some time ago before I would photoscape card's orientation and proper cropping.

This could have been one of my BBNB (Blogged But Not Blogged) cards. I forgot about that series for this card's post. (I was looking for a quick and dirty post subject and found the images in my pictures folder) I did a quick check of My Collection posts at TCC but didn't find a post about it. I guess it is better in many ways that I didn't. Most of my posts from over there in that thread have obnoxious "image not available" images from Photobucket, because I haven't updated my account over there and am over the super low minimum memory limit they recently (as in last few months) started enforcing.  To be a little honest if it weren't for some of the email reminders and account warnings I wouldn't even think about Photobucket any more. but I do have some remnant photo images over there to do something with.

1976 Topps Football: 252 Fred Dryer Los Angeles Rams