Card Of The Whenever: The Return?

 Yes you guessed it I started this post on the 30th of the month with absolutely NO idea on what card(s) I was going to blab er BLOG about. This is always fun at the end of the month.

Hey I have a wacky idea. I'll revisit an old feature I just remembered I used to do on this blog... "The Card of the Whenever". Hmm lets see where did I put that logo?

This card is appropriate in many ways a childhood hero on a card from my childhood showing the hero in his childhood. How cool am I now?

The card is from 1972 Topps Baseball "Boyhood Photos Of The Stars" subset, card number 498 Brooks Robinson Baltimore Orioles. I got it for a whopping 25¢ from a Sportlots auction a few months back. I should hunker down on this subset, heck even the full set.

1972 Topps Baseball #498 Boyhood Photos of the Stars Brooks Robinson Baltimore Orioles

The card has offcentering problems most noticeable on the back.

TCDB Trade With A Canuck

 Hello and welcome to my standard "I don't know what I'm going to post about" post, until I come up with something that is fairly easy to scan and yack about.

Since I only have about a dozen regular readers and one or two regular commenters , no one but me would notice if I skipped a month in posting. I have made several posts about my self-regulating posting quota of at least one post per month, per blog.

Long story short this post might end up being one of my worst posts with very very minimal views. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm not sure but I might have to sometime soon think about reevaluating my collection and draw a line somewhere about acquiring "new" cards. There are just too many things currently in the industry that take away the fun of collecting. One of the many things is the endless and pointless parallels. It seems every card now needs to have at least a dozen parallels. Now sometimes it is fun to collect the variants and go for the "rainbow" but usually it is just another gimmick to fall for. Cheap in the sense that it is low quality or literally no brainer as in it takes no brain to come up with the idea. However it is expensive in the fact that it adds to the overall cost of the cards and sometimes adds in the materials used to make the cards.

Well that didn't solve a damned thing.

Alright so I had a recent trade with a member over at TCDB from Canada. The trader supposedly originally sent the cards within a day or two of the trade being confirmed, but a week or two later he sent me a message saying the cards had been returned because the stamp fell off, so he resent. I didn't complain because Canada. About a week or two later the cards finally arrive. Sent  of course via PWE with a stamp. There was thin cardboard from a "Coors Light" box nicely painter's taped around a 3 pocket section from a 9 card sheet. I noticed the stamp cancellation was 3 days before arrival, so his sending time honesty wasn't entirely accurate. Again no complaints everything was safe. I sent five Topps 1978 Battlestar Galactica cards, the last of my original dupes from that set for 6 hockey cards (I might already have some of the Caps cards but didn't have them marked in my collection online) and a 1978 Topps Superman: The Movie card I needed for my set (a card I thought I had, maybe I have the sticker with the same photo). My ship out day was a week after the trade confirmation because the trade was confirmed on a Saturday afternoon.

Here are the cards I got.

1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey 41 Ken Hodge Boston Bruins

1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey 402 Ken Baumgartner New York Islanders

1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey 585 Donald Audette Buffalo Sabres

1994-95 Parkhurst Hockey 254 Dale Hunter Washington Capitals

1992-93 Pro Set Platinum Hockey 242 Dimitri Khristich Washington Capitals

1990-91 Upper Deck Hockey 109 Kevin Hatcher Washington Capitals

1978 Topps Superman: The Movie 10 Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen with puzzle back

Three Freebies From The Wrapper

 One of the Trading Card Trade magazines I subscribe to is called "The Wrapper" a low-budget publication that comes out every six weeks or so (7 times a year) and is Non-Sport specific. Often they dive deep into vintage Non-Sport sets as well as the occasional newer set, some super popular and well known and others that are rare and very obscure. I forget how many years I have been subscribed. Anyway when it comes to renewing your subscription along with the notice that your subscription is about to expire they will often send a few freebies to sweeten the deal. Here are three cards I received in my subscription renewal envelope; 1 I am pretty sure I already have, 1 I know I already have and the 3rd is "new" to me:

2004 Inkworks Charmed Connections Promo CC-3

1978 Donruss Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -

58 Preston, the weathervane, sings "Get Back".

1997 Fleer/Skybox Star Trek Original Series 1 - 47 EP16.2 The Menagerie

Terry Bradshaw 1974 Topps Slightly Miscut

 In a recent Sportlots auction purchase I got a miscut 1974 Topps Football Terry Bradshaw 470 Pittsburgh Steelers card for $2.25 + shipping. I thought I already had this card but it wasn't in my TCDB collection. It is now.

1974 Topps Football 470 Terry Bradshaw Pittsburgh Steelers miscut

Checking Off Some Sportlots First 2022 Sportlots Order

 I got some cards from a couple of Sportlots Auctions from two sellers one was in Canada but the cards came fairly quickly as if they were the US. The first Sportlots order for this year 2022. A couple of them were vintage checklists. One unmarked and one partly marked on the back. Plus a couple of 1972 Topps Baseball "Boyhood Photos Of The Stars" (one I apparently have a duplicate of because I already had a scan of it). Anyway you want to see the cards not read by blabbering.

1963 Topps Baseball 79 1st Series Checklist

Cards 1-88 Unmarked

1969 Topps Baseball 214 3rd Series Checklist

Cards 219-327 (Plus Autographed Photos 1-33)

Some marking on back

1971 Topps Baseball 245 Jim Kaat Minnesota Twins

1972 Topps Baseball 344 Boyhood Photos of the Stars

Dave McNally Baltimore Orioles

1972 Topps Baseball 347 Boyhood Photos of the Stars

Tom Seaver New York Mets

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

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