A Slightly Oversized B'More Orange and Black Bird

Back in September for my Sportlots Spending Splurge I got this nice card, with another card from the set Walter Johnson Senators which I am mentioning on my Curly W Cards blog. This one was 70¢ (Big Train was only 50¢) I also got a Hockey card for my name niche PC. Shipping was only 68¢ for the three cards. Buying from Sportlots stores is better on shipping than for the auctions. For some reason auctions there don't combine shipping.

I had forgotten that the cards from this set were slightly larger than standard size at 3.5" x 5" about postcard size. Still nice looking cards. Only 60 cards in the set and not too expensive. I don't think there are any super hard to get cards from this. That is good since it looks like I should get more of these oversized beasts.

1984 Donruss Champions 19 Eddie Murray Orioles

EDITED: To cross-link to Curly W Cards blog for Walter Johnson card from this set.

COTW: AAGPBL Maddy English

1994 Ted Williams Baseball 95 Maddy English AAGPBL Racine Belles

You guessed it, it is the end of the month and I didn't have anything prepared so I am rushing something out to make my self-appointed blogging quota of at least one post per month. Fortunately for this month I sill have a few images that I have uploaded to the photo album of this blog that I haven't blogged about here. I scanned this card and talked about elsewhere. I had posted this card sometime last year I think over at the TCC forum in one of those all-out contests where contestants show off cards they have that fit a certain category as picked by the contest holder/judge and then usually forum members vote on which they think is the best. I came in third over all I think. I forget what the category was, maybe female athletes, but this is one of the cards I posted. A few years back I used to use my photobucket to post pics on the forums, but I don't use "the bucket" much any more. I mainly just keep it as an alternate storage space. At that time I started using the albums from the blogger blogs since I could then easily blog about any cards I posted on the forums, or blog about something first then post on the forums.

So here we go a single card from the 1994 Ted Williams Baseball set. I may have blogged about this set before or the Ted Williams card company that made the set. If not you can Google the card company (or Bing if people Bing anymore). It is one of the seven cards from the "Women of Baseball" subset that features key players from the AAGPBL (All American Girls Professional Baseball League) the woman's league featured in the movie A League of Their Own about women's baseball during WWII.

 1994 Ted Williams Baseball 95 Maddy English AAGPBL Racine Belles

(Front and Back)

Backlog Of... Well Just Stuff

Edit: Oh pooh I already had a post scheduled for when I originally posted this. Sorry for the edit/change in posting.

Just to let you know I have a huge backlog of stuff including tons of scanning that I want to eventually post to this blog and my Curly W Blog. The biggest part of the problem is PRO-crastination. Procrastinating on scanning, procrastinating on most aspects of organization. I even procrastinate a little when I mention my maildays on on card forums at my TCC "blog" and TCZ show and tell "mail bag" post. Oddly enough those are more up-to-date than this blog is in part due to not including scans (sometimes I do, but it is very rare). Sometimes I wait waste a day or two before mentioning what I got in the mail there, sometimes it is the sheer volume of what came that intimidates me. Then there are these blogs and they really intimidate me when I look at how much I have to catch up on. So...

That means that some of my posts about maildays in the next month or two or three might be from ancient vintage maildays. I will most likely point out that they are from sometime in the way-back past and not something that just came "the other day". Try the other day from the other day from about two years ago in some cases. Then again I might have to wait until I complete a set or sub-set to mention some of this stuff.

The wonderful thing about blogging is there is no real standard for how, what, or even when you post something. I wonder if I should have ever composed this particular post to begin with.

So yeah I have some upcoming posts about stale snail mail.

Hmmm I should show a card or two... don't think I've shown this one.

1994 Ted Williams Baseball 9 Andy Etchebarren Orioles

(Front and Back)

and How about this one?

 2009 UD Goodwin Champions Mini Black Border 215 Jimmy Rollins Phillies

Gypsy Queen Back

(Front and Back)

1993 Ted Williams Cards

A while back, Months and Months ago (I am backlogged with my scanning and the priorities keep changing) out of the blue I got an email from Tom at Angels In Order blog asking for my mailing address. He had some cards from the 1993 Ted Williams Baseball set that were on my want list. So about a week later I got these.

2 Rick Ferrell
3 Jim Lonborg
7 Carl Yastrzemski
25 Louis Aparicio
26 Luke Appling
30 Joe Morgan
35 Tris Speaker (I share my birthday with him 04/04)
46 Lew Burdette
48 Warren Spahn

54 Monte Irvin
58 Yogi Berra
67 Bobby Murcer
78 Richie Ashburn
72 Steve Carlton
74 Matty Alou
81 Willie Stargell
82 Al Bumbry
85 Earl Weaver

86 Lou Brock
87 James "Cool Papa" Bell
105 Josh Gibson
106 Cowan "Bubber" Hyde
107 William J. "Judy" Johnson
108 Walter "Buck" Leonard
115 Negro Leagues Checklist
121 Babe Ruth "The Babe"
122 Lou Gehrig "The Iron Horse"

124 Rogers Hornsby "Rajah"
125 Ty Cobb "The Georgia Peach"
128 Tris Speaker "The Grey Eagle"
129 Johnny Mize "The Big Cat"
130 Ted's Greatest Hitters Checklist
141 Roy Campanella
143 Boog Powell
144 Willie Mays
145 Johnny Mize

146 Monte Irvin
147 Earl Weaver
149 Jim Gilliam
150 Goin' North Checklist
160 Dawning of a Legacy Checklist: Jeff Bagwell

Tom included a simple note:

The note was on the back of some sort of stat card for an umpire:
Don Denkinger who unfortunately is best known for a blown call in a World Series. Oops.

Thanks Tom.

This mailday was form August of last year 2013. I have several other batches of cards from various maildays that I have to blog about. Some are fairly recent ones others are very old, even older than this one is/was.

Add To The 1993 Ted Williams Set: Johnny Mize

One of the many sets I am trying to finish that will probably never be finished since I have so many of them to complete is the 1993 Ted Williams Baseball set and some of it's sub-sets/inserts. On 13 January 2014 (hey a month ago, see some of my posts can be fairly recent and dust-free) I got a couple of cards from two separate sportlots auctions from a seller in Canada for the opening bid of 25¢. One of those cards is the one I'm showing right now, the other I think will be a "Card of the Whenever". So for the shipping of two sportlots cards of $3.14. So here is the nice Hall of Famer from the 1993 Ted Williams Baseball set.

1993 Ted Williams Baseball 66 Johnny Mize Yankees

(Front and Back)

I either have to adjust some settings on my scanner (yeah like that is gonna happen) or get a new scanner (ditto) some of my recent scans have had these wavy lines which are more noticeable when the images are enlarged. Anyway for those who have extra cards from this set, or just don't collect this set and have some here is my need list to finish it up.

1993 Ted Williams:
Base: 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123, 126, 127, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 148, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159,
Brooks Robinson: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Roberto Clemente: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

A Crinkly Package but not cards

I've been sitting on this post for too long. {SIGH}

One of the card blogs I read fairly regularly is "Crinkly Wrappers". I made a comment on one of Ted's posts a while back and he sent an email in reply w/ a notation that he had checked some of my want lists and had a couple of 2009 Philadelphia Football cards to help w/ my set build and a ton from the 1994 Ted Williams Baseball set to "start/finish" a set (seeing as I had a handful already it would be the latter). All I had to do was send my mailing addy and pay for postage. No problem, done and done. Ain't that the way the blog-universe is 'sposed to work? Then on Monday 19 Mar 2012 a nice package arrives. I had anticipated some of what I saw, but not all.

I knew there would be only a handful of the football cards so barely a poker hand of football cards wasn't a disappointment.

I needed most of them (I already had the Anquan Boldin and I think another one).

2009 Philadelphia Football 6 Anquan Boldin Cardinals

I did not have the Marc Bulger, although I have most of the Rams from this set weird I usually have Bulger cards coming out of my ears. LOL

 2009 Philadelphia Football 174 Marc Bulger Rams

(Front and Back)

Some of the other cards I may show individually later sometime when I talk about their subsets or the next time I do a random sampling of cards.

Then there was this: A ton of cards from the 1994 Ted Williams Baseball set.

 a loaded 8 3/4 x 12 inch flatbed scanner worth of

1994 Ted Williams Baseball Cards.

 9 semi random cards from the base main part of the set.

9 more semi-random cards but these are:
Checklist 1 of 2 plus some of the sub-set cards

(each subset has its own checklist as well)

The Subsets are as follows:

• Cards 93-99 Women of Baseball: The women who played professional baseball during WWII in the AAGPBL (All American Girls Professional Baseball League) the league that was immortalized in the 1992 movie A League of Their Own
• Cards 100-117 The Negro Leagues
• Cards 118-135 The Campaign: Minor League Players (Includes future Major League Players Jason Giambi and Billy Wagner)
• Cards 136-144 Goin' North: Players in their Minor League Uniforms
• Cards 145-153 Swinging for the Fences: Players who have hit 4 homers in one game
• Cards 154-162 Dawning of A Legacy: Cliff Floyd and Tim Salmon careers

A near complete set of 1994 Ted Williams Baseball. 112 out of 162. Some of the higher priced Super Stars, the Namesake cards (Ted Williams) and harder to find cards from the set are missing but with a little shopping around and maybe some begging on card forums and to other bloggers I'll have the set finished sooner than later (then I can start in on the 1993 set). I already had the Women of Baseball sub-set, which I plan on blogging about sometime in the future, and the "3 MuskaSenators" cards from the main part of the set Frank Howard, Walter Johnson, Eddie Yost (I'll blog about them on my other blog I'm about to mention). I did not have any of the Negro League cards from the set. I mentioned that on my other blog "Curly W Cards" (my blog about Washington Baseball cards) in my Frank Howard post that I didn't have any Negro League cards yet. Well now I have some Yay!

My favorite card from the set is still the first one I had gotten of the player mentioned above. Now I have a double of it (and some of the ladies).

Card number 88 Frank "Hondo" Howard - Senators
(Front and Back)

Many many thanks Ted for such a fantastic lot of cards.

Introducing Curly W Cards my other Card Blog

My Curly W Cards Blog

Just a little self promotion here. Over the past week plus a few days over, I have been working on and kicked off another card blog. I had posted up a page here (static page linked on the right sidebar not a regular main page post) Originally called "Thinking about a new Card Blog" but when I launched the blog I changed it to "Curly W Cards Blog News" (Now Curly W Cards Blog Update) in an effort to start getting visitors. The page here gives a brief tale of how I decided to start it up.The blog is Washington Baseball Specific. I plan on covering the whole spectrum of cards from the various Washington DC baseball teams focusing on the Senators and the Current Nationals. Even though technically the "Curly W" the Nationals have been using was developed in 1963. Previous Washington teams used a straight laced W that was usually narrow since the "Curly" version wasn't around yet. I'll talk about those older cards dispite the fact they pre-date the more modern logo. The nature of the beast will also have me mentioning the Montreal Expos often and probably the Texas Rangers and Minnesota Twins. So occasionally I'll show cards that on the surface don't have anything to do with baseball in DC. [Think "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" only with Washington Baseball cards]

Off on a semi-related tangent thought. I don't have any cards from the Negro Leagues neither vintage nor modern commemorative so I probably won't mention the Homestead Grays too often. (Unless I get blessed with packages of them from interested readers - If and when I get readers. There is a nice 1994 Ted Williams baseball card set that includes a few.) Time to get back on track.

 So far I have only posted an introduction post at CWC. I am in the process of developing 2 or 3 posts that concentrate on just one player per post. I figure that will be part of my SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for the blog. Each player post will feature a few cards from that player, unless I only have one card of them. The first post I'm working on probably won't be a homer but could possibly be a ground rule double or a triple maybe. I almost had it ready to post but then I decided I should scan the backs of the cards I showed so I can mention the backs as well, unless they are blank. I still need to do that scanning.

I have a couple of static pages on a top tab list one is a repeat of the "Introduction/Welcome" post that will serve as an introduction to the blog. The other is an attempt to list all the Washington Baseball cards I currently own. (Oy what a task). That one is called "My Curly W Checklist". On it I will list each card from each Washington player I have, even their cards from when they were on other teams (finding some of those in my collection is challenging since my collection is not well organized and quite big). The list is in chronological order by card set/series. UGH I just thought maybe I should have made the list alphabetical, but then I get the problem of what to do with multiple player cards and the team cards would have to be either at the beginning of the list or the end they would get lost in a list if they were in the "Ws" (or "Ns" or "Ss") The team cards and other miscellaneous cards would have to be chrological anyway so why not?

I am also working on a player list of the guys I "Super Collect" (Some I "super" collect more than others). Maybe I should incorporate some sort of checklist there or link them to a list. The Herculean task I am attempting is to make a full All-Time Roster. I had noticed that any ATRs on the web are "franchise specific" so they include all the current players on a team like the Rangers or Twins and those players during the "Non-Existent" years who never put on a Washington Uniform or played in DC so why list those guys. Even though I do collect guys like Gary Carter (Expos) and Vladimir Guerrero (Expos, currently on Orioles)

At times I think I bit off more than I can chew or even close my mouth, but it has been fun developing it, I only wish my collection was better organized.Wow I was originally just going to mention the blog and link to it, or make a "link this" link to the welcome entry. So enjoy.

Good Old Sonny J.

One of my fave QBs of all time especially growing up was Sonny Jurgensen of the Washington Redskins. My Homie Team. here is a card I recently got for a decent price at Ebay. It is serial numbered and that was one of the selling points to it because of the connection I could make with the number.

2007 Donruss Gridiron Gear

Performers Gold P-30 Sonny Jurgensen

244/500

The serial number is 244 of 500. Of course the number 44 is Riggo's jersey number (John Riggins).

Sometime earlier I had gotten this other 2007 Jurgensen card from a group break. It is also serial numbered Bronze Spotlight card it is 32/32 an Ebay 1/1. Then it's companion common version.

2007 Donruss Leaf Limited Bronze Spotlight
189 Sonny Jurgensen

32/32

2007 Donruss Leaf Limited

 189 Sonny Jurgensen 

 

 100/249

 2008 Donruss Leaf Limited

181 Sonny Jurgensen

 064/499

 Another grab from the Bay was a special version of the 1994 Ted Williams  61 Sonny Jurgensen Card. Notice that the picture of Sonny on this card is the same exact photo as the previous 2008 Leaf Limited card. Also the faded background picture is a 1970s picture where the main picture is from the '60s.

1994 Ted Williams 61 Sonny Jurgensen

 

 1994 Ted Williams 61 Sonny Jurgensen

AUTOGRAPHED

  

 As I said I got that one from the Bay and at a good price only $5.74 +$3.00 shipping. It's not authenticated but it does seem to be consistent with Sonny's signature. The exception though is it doesn't have "HOF 83" this worried me a little, but there have been some authenticated autographs of his by PSA without the extra Hall of Fame line. I know that for every legit autograph out there there are about 1,000 forgeries. This card might not be an authentic autograph, but I don't mind. There have been cases of people getting legit autographs from celebs and then an "expert" tells them that their signature is a "fake". I have no intentions of selling or trading this card. If I ever do I guess I'll say out front that I don't for sure if the signature is authentic or not. I've gotten autographs of celebs before; Weird Al Yankovic, James Belushi, Peter Noone & Harry Chapin to name a few and those signatures are not "authenticated' maybe someday I'll get then looked at. The Belushi & Noone autos are on a program from 1982 when they performed in The Pirates of Penzance, and the Chapin auto is in a concert program, so those should be easier for an authenticator to give the thumbs up on.

O.J. Could not have stolen this one.

(Photo of card from http://www.vintagecardtraders.org/virtual/index.html)*

OK I'm not sure if I can do this story justice. I heard about this from a member on tradingcardcentral.com. They provided this link http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story/Stolen-Baseball-Card-Worth-Over-5-000/_ci7nvtwjU6xORSbXsa5dw.cspx. The gist is a 1954 Ted Williams card by Wilson Franks was stolen from a Canadian card collector's hotel room in NY along with 5 other cards. Before you go pointing the blame don't blame O.J. Simpson he's already doing his time for sports memorabilia theft. This is very disturbing news to hear. Here is a link to another take on the theft http://www.wpix.com/news/local/wpix-ted-williams-card-stolen,0,6362006.story

My Theory is the crook knew the guy had these cards in his Hotel room and found a time when the guy wasn't around. Maybe the thief is a card collector. I doubt that a typical Hotel employee would realize the value of vintage trading cards. The card was an officially graded card so in a way it is almost like stealing a work of art from a museum. Card grading companies keep records of the cards they have graded, and each card usually gets some sort of inventory serial number to trace its origins. So unless the thief is a collector that wants it for his personal collection (PC) or knows of a buyer to sell it on the black market, they are not going to be able to sell it easily.

*When I started this blog, I thought I would limit card images to only cards from my collection. Well I just broke that personal rule. D'oh! The image I used is a typical specimen of this card, it is not a "graded" card, those are "entombed" in plastic cases that are difficult (but not impossible as shown by some innovative card collectors) to break open without damaging the card. The news stories I linked to show a sample of the "graded" card.