Trade Pile 001: Card 2 Lenticular Opening Day Star

 Trade Pile 001:

Card 2: Lenticular Opening Day Star

31 Jul 2022

As expected just one card doesn't seem to do it. So time to add another. Now the lucky claimant gets 2 cards and they only have to send one. Of course more cards can be sent but only one is required.

Hmm should I mix it up with other sports and maybe some non-sport or keep this baseball only? Maybe I could juggle a few of these things at once?

Top of The Pile:

Upping the stakes some by adding a superstar, bold early move I know. This card I pulled from a pack of 2011 Topps Opening Day Baseball way back when. It is from the Opening Day Stars insert set. They are those lenticular flickering "Sportflix" type cards. 

2011 Topps Opening Day Baseball:

ODS-3 Alex Rodriguez Yankees

The rest of the Pile:

2016 Bowman Draft - Chrome Baseball:

BDC-29 Justin Dunn Mets

The concept is simple I will post a card or cards I have up for trade and the first person to claim the "pile" in this post's comments will receive them all. The golden rule with this is that you must offer at least one card off of my wantlists. See My Master Want List on this blog or My Wantlist at TCDB (Collection -> Main Collection -> scroll to Wantlist, select sport category) If you don't have a card off of my lists I will also accept Pre 1987 Vintage Baseball or Football. Also Non-Sport from 1960s to 1970s. Please let me know what you intend to send.

After awhile I will add another card or two to the "Pile" (or "Stack") of unclaimed cards until the pile gets claimed. 

Edit: I had to adjust the post date because it had been marked as being posted 4 weeks previously on 03 July at noon. I didn't post until sometime in the evening of 31 July. The post for my Curly W Blog was at 8:06 PM. I think I may have posted this before that post. I forget the order I did them in. So It might have been posted between 7:45 PM 31 July to sometime around 8:15 PM 31 July 2022. So I'll mark it as 8:00 PM 31 July.

MLB Managing Ladies Baseball

Women are making big strides in all walks of life even in pro sports that used to be strictly "Men's Clubs". In April just 4 days apart two women made big debuts on the Pro Baseball Diamond, one in the Minors and one in the big Major League Stage. Topps Now recorded these events and I got the cards from Topps Now on Ebay for about 7 bucks each plus a little in shipping and/or tax. Most Topps Now cards I've gotten from between $5.99 to about $13.99 with most being at $7-$8, sometimes free shipping sometimes not. These two I happened to get from the ToppsNow store on Ebay, (EDIT: I was wrong the minor league card I got from a different seller, no toppsnow store)  sometimes I get them from other dealers. It depends mostly on the price. Usually there is a bit of a wait on the shipping especially through the toppsnow ebay store. 

Lets start with the Minor league card. Rachel Balkovec made her managerial debut for the Tampa Tarpons (careful reading that one, it caught me the first time I saw it) a MILB affiliate of the New York Yankees on Friday 08 April 2022.

2022 Topps Now Baseball MILB-1 Rachel Balkovec Tampa Tarpons

Card two is Up to the big league MLB just 4 days later. Alyssa Nakken took the field as First Base Coach for the San Francisco Giants Tuesday 12 April 2022.

2022 Topps Now Baseball 45 Alyssa Nakken San Francisco Giants

I don't intend to dis Miss Nakken here but in that photo she looks a bit like Ellen DeGeneres or Jane Lynch.

 

Strive For '65: Set The Wayback Machine To Last May/June

STRIVE FOR '65 STATUS:

28 Feb 2022 Strive for '65 | 1965 Set Build | Master Want List Current card count: 304/598 (306/600) 50.8% (51%)

For those of you wondering YES I am STILL BUILDING THIS DANG SET. I don't have the luxury of being a huge fandom blog where you mention you are building a vintage set and within a few months or maybe even weeks BAM It's Complete. 

Here is the link to my last update from May of 2021. For this posting I got 5 cards from Sportlots, one was apparently an unaware duplicate. Upon seeing the original scan it seems to be a downgrade. Oops silly me. I am also breaking my tradition slightly by not posting on a Saturday. Anyway lets get on with this post:

Thursday 27 May 2021:

295 Dick Radatz Red Sox

Friday 28 May 2021:

131 Johnny Keane Yankees

Tuesday 01 Jun 2021:

103 Harvey Kuenn Giants

119 John Kennedy Dodgers

147 Dennis Bennett Red Sox

The Latest Additions:
Thursday 27 May 2021:

295 Dick Radatz Red Sox

Friday 28 May 2021:

131 Johnny Keene Yankees

Tuesday 01 Jun 2021:

103 Harvey Kuenn Giants

119 John Kennedy Dodgers

147 Dennis Bennett Red Sox

Here is the card that I duplicated: The first copy is on the left and the dupe on the right.

Card 295 Dick Radatz Red Sox

Both copies have some centering issues. Hmm the dupe has some schmutz on Dick's shoulder while the original has a white spot in the sky.

Now for the backs even though the dupe is better centered it has some pen markings on it and is a bit faded or dirtied. Must have been in more shoeboxes than the original.

Accompanying A Strive Set Build 69 Style

As a life-long collector it is odd that there are many many (read most of the damn things) Topps Flagship sets that I still need to complete. Now days with the very short printed super high number cards even base set collecting has become impossible. Many collectors seem to start a set build and then wham bamm they are finished in a year or two with little effort. No matter how much it costs to complete or how many high value cards are in the set. Even if there are a bunch of super short printed cards. Well that is what it seems like to me anyway.

One of my big goals, as readers of this blog may know, is to complete the 1965 Topps Baseball set for my Strive for '65 set build. I'm already over a year and a half behind in that goal. Update to the set build. One of the common themes other than purchasing the cards from a Sportlots auction was that I also got some 1969 Topps Baseball cards to help with that set from yet more Sportlots auctions. I had three packages that had the 1965 and 1969 combo, one had some bonus stuff. Well not technically bonus since they were auctions also, they just hitched a ride on the Hippie '60s Trip. Now the cards in no particular order.

First a three card package the '65 was Marty Keough Reds. The two 1969 cards were 25¢ each:

4 NL RBI Leaders: Willie McCovey Giants, Ron Santo Cubs and Billy Williams Cubs

164 World Series 1968 Game 3: (Tim) McCarver's Homer Puts St. Louis (Cardinals) Ahead

Package two contained eight cards from 5 sportlots 25¢ auctions. [First picture at top of this post] I don't recall the distribution by auction of the seven '65 cards, but it resulted in getting one card duplicated. I also got one card I already had (the previous one of course is in better condition). I think it was a case of the needs of more cards outweighing not needing one card. The lone '69 card in this case is:

6 NL Home Run Leaders: Willie McCovey Giants, Richie Allen Phillies and Ernie Banks Cubs.

The final package only had one lone '65 card the Dave Vineyard (at 25¢) it contained a total of 19 cards from 7 different auctions (but yes the same seller) the shipping costs varied but came to $6.73 the auction prices ranged from 25¢ to $4.75. The grand total was $15.98.

The 1969 Topps Baseball: 8 cards 3 auctions two were for multiple cards at 25¢ each auction A's team lot and 2 Yankees, 2 Mets and the third auction was for card #12 at $1.25

12 NL Strike Out Leaders: Bob Gibson Cardinals, Fergie Jenkins Cubs, and Bill Singer Yankees

46 Fritz Peterson Yankees
72 Ron Taylor Mets
127 Kevin Collins Mets
143 Joe Mossek Athletics
195 John Odom Athletics
217 John Donaldson Athletics
313 Bill Robinson Yankees

BONUS CARDS: AKA Not '65 nor '69

1967 Philadelphia Gum Football: 1 card $2.25

120 New York Giants Team Card - Team Logo on front.

1982 Kellogg's 3-D Super Stars Baseball: 9 cards 2 auctions one of 4 cards at 25¢ and one 5 cards $4.75 (includes Parker and Cey). All in excellent condition with only a little bent warping.

9 Fernando Valenzuela Dodgers
25 Carlton Fisk White Sox
28 Robin Yount Brewers
46 Ron Cey Dodgers
48 Dave Parker Pirates
52 Chris Chambliss Dodgers
57 Dwayne Murphy Athletics
63 Vida Blue Giants
64 Eddie Murray Orioles

Strive For '65 Status: January 2016

STRIVE FOR '65 STATUS:

Mid January 2016

I figure if I start doing weekly  more frequent updates for this set build goal it will push me to be more active in pursuing it. It will also remind readers that I am desperately trying to complete this vintage set.

Currently the count sits at 222/598 (224/600) 37.5% The first count being the unique card count and the count in the parentheses is the count with the two variant cards. Checklist cards as it turns out.

I ordered a bunch of stuff from sportlots including some 1965 Topps Baseball. The '65 Topps cards were about half of the order 20some out of 40some. The conditions range from GOOD on up to EX/NM. Hopefully the lower graded ones don't have much writing on them if any. I didn't see any notations of markings. I hate ordering vintage cards blind (especially if I have to get checklists) which is why I was avoiding ordering any from sportlots in the first place. The prices for the '65s ranged from .24¢ to $3.50 with most averaging somewhere between .50¢ to about $1.00 In the batch I knocked out a few of the team cards. Still need a few teams like The Reds and Yankees.
 

Strive for '65 | 1965 Set Build | Master Want List

Weird Packaging: But Still Pretty Safe

On Thursday 26 March 2015 I had a three package mailday. Someday I might blog about the other two packages especially the second one that was a lot of 15 hand-cut mid 1970s Hostess cards many of them poorly cut from their product boxes. This post is not about them but about the third package which was very strangely packaged for what it actually contained. This is the story of this overpacked package:

This last package was a work of art. Very strange packaging. Without giving away what the item was yet I will mention I purchased it from Ebay an auction with the winning bid of $4.99 + $2.32 shipping. OK nothing out of the ordinary here. Reasonable final price for the item and shipping costs also reasonable.

Now the odd thing the packaging job: (Image blurred on purpose)

The envelope was 9" x 12" yellow clasp envelope. Super taped with clear shipping tape that I had to cut an opening at the top to get it open.

Inside that a piece of cardboard (white sort of odd triangular piece not sure what it originally boxed).

Next to that, I forget if it was taped or not, a clear ziplock plastic bag 6" x 11" has red lettering printed on it "AdoptaPlatoon www.adoptaplatoon.org" strange.

Stranger still in the clear plastic bag a paper bag that was folded and taped some. The paper bag from Burger King "Bags of Flavor"

with hand scribbled "yogi berra" barely legible. OK the cat is almost out of the bag.

Inside that a small plain white PWE (4x6) with one fold and surprisingly not sealed or taped. Then the card safe in a toploader with penny sleeve.

Yogi peaks his head out over the edge of the envelope to see if it is safe to come out.

Yes it is a 1961 Topps Baseball: 472 Yogi Berra Yankees MVP Card.

I left positive feedback because other than the strange overly excessive packaging it was a smooth transaction with safely delivered card. My feedback reads "Good Service. Strange packaging for one card but everything is good"