A Spectacular TTM Success!- Carl Erskine

A couple of weeks ago it hit me how I liked the 1950s-1970s period, and the players from that era were going to die in not too long. I wasn't there for back then, but I've read about, heard about it from my Dad and Grandpa, and even watched a little of it. I decided to make my own baseball card for it ( I did this for Bobby Doerr in 2017). I decided to send my 1st one to Carl Erskine. I sent it 2 weeks ago and it came back today!

Not only did he sign my card, he also sent me another card, which he even inscribed "To John"!

I asked him what his favorite moment in baseball was, and he took the time to answer my question, and even signed that. Overall, he went way above what I asked for. It was a really encouraging start to my project. Every time I've done something like this ( 2 times in total), I've always been impressed with how nice they were.

The Baseball Card Box: Part 3-The Random

Well folks, I've really done it this time. Part 2 of this short series was nearly 5 weeks ago,  and only now am I posting the 3rd part.The thing is that I generally have at least one rather ambitious project going, and I've  had about 2 over the past 2 weeks. Still, that's only a partial excuse. I'm hoping to be more of a consistent blogger in the future. Anyway, I know you came here to read about the cards, not me making excuses for not posting more often ( at least it would be pretty weird if you came for that).

I think this is a pretty nice pitcher at the plate card. Al looks like he's about to bunt, and it's pretty cool how you can see the ball in transit to the plate.  It's also a angle you don't see much.

I think it's cool how this set has the outlines of the picture itself, not just one for each position. You can especially tell with cards like this.

Tony Gwynn looks really cool on his motorcycle. It's nice how the score board bears the touching message: "Anks Ton!"

I think that these are gold parallels. They're pretty thick.

This Pacific is pretty cool. The design is pretty 90s and the see-through part is rather unusual.

This is a nice card of Luis Gonzalez with his son. I'll still always remember him for this card though:

Speaking of creepy cards, here's one I got in the box

:

This isn't creepy, it's actually pretty nice. It has a lot of nice,shiny, colors, which is always a good thing. Plus I found something I thought odd on the back:

I think it's strange how it says " Statistical comparison". There isn't really any kind of comparison on the card. If it compared Roger to the average player in 2001, I'd understand. If it compared Roger to his average season, I'd understand. But there's nothing like that. I guess it's just a mystery.

The concept for this set is fine,but sometimes it gets a little odd. For example, how does 5'6'' 160 pound Ichiro have the same legs as 6'2'' 210 pound Hideo Nomo? You can kind of see, if you look hard enough, a discrepancy with the top of Ichiro's legs and Hideo Nomo's underneath.

Tatooine card!By the way, why is Carlos covering 2nd? When he played in the field at all in 1996, he was at 1st base.My best guess is that there was an error and he had to cover 2nd.

I could have included Fred Lynn in the older players section, but I think more of him as a 80s player. 

Now those are some nice names. Boomer is definitely a nickname that I do not want to get. It conjures up the image of exactly what he was, which is not what I particularly what I want to be, though I definitely wouldn't mind being a star pitcher for the Yankees.

Now here's something that confuses me: Why was the 1958 Hires root beer design used in a product called Bowman Heritage? Did they not do they're homework? Did they mistakenly assign an intern to pick out a good design? It's pretty strange.

I semi-collect Chris Sale because he's really good,and has a pretty funky delivery. Too bad he's a Red Sock( that doesn't sound right), but these things happen.Unfortunately he's had a really bad start in 2019. 

I ended up getting 7 Randy Johnson cards, because most of the cards were around 2000, and Randy Johnson was pretty much the #1 pitcher back then, at least in strikeouts. 

I had't gotten a new Mariano Rivera card in a long, long time because they never pop up in dime boxes, which is where I get most of my cards,and I don't want to go too out of the way to get cards of just about anybody. Too bad.

I also got the 2012 Red Sox team set. If you missed the 1st post of this little series, the person who gave me these cards lives in Massachusetts.

I thought it was pretty cool that because 2012 was Fenway Park's 100th anniversary, they had 3 cards depicting Fenway in 1912, when it 1st opened, 1967, and 2012.

    And if  you were wondering if I got a relic card or something, I did. It's nice how he barely had time to settle into the hall of fame before I got a relic card of him numbered to 200.

Anyway, that's all. Thanks for reading and have a happy easter!

Nickel box adventures.

Last Saturday I had 2 baseball games. That is normally a good thing because I love playing baseball, however, it was a very cold day for Texas. I wouldn't have minded that as much, but we lost both games, and I went 0-4 and didn't pitch very well. I also made an error at 2nd.

With all those things, it would have been a pretty bleak day if I didn't have a card show to go to. It had actually been in doubt if the scheduling of my games would allow me to go, but the 1st game was at 8:00 AM so I had time. However, there was good news, and there was bad news. The bad news was that there wasn't a dime box. The good news was that there was a nickel box instead. It was very good too. A lot of them I would've been happy to get for a dime.

I got a lot of those "baseball's all-time greats" set. It's pretty good, and has a lot of players you don't always see, like Maury Wills and Carl Erskine.

I got this 1995 Fleer card 

just for kicks. The only one I had was previously was Jeff Bagwell, who was on one of the few teams that actually had a fairly conservative fronts.

It's always gratifying when I get a card randomly that turns out to be an error card. Jason Schmidt actually had about 1,750 innings, not 1,342.2. I'm not really sure where they got that figure.

There was a decent amount of these Topps Lineage cards.They're actually pretty nice, though they'd be better if there was some stats on the back.

That Tris Speaker card was actually my 1st ever of him. It's kinda too bad when they colorize black-and-white photographs.

Ichiro was the only Topps Lineage  player I got who played after 1992.

This was actually my 1st card of TSC from the 21st century. I've actually never seen one in person before that I can remember so it's kind of funny that I got my 1st for 5 cents.

I count 1980 as the last "vintage" year, so it's always nice picking up cards from that year on the cheap.

O-Pee-Chee!(I've always thought that Sixto Lezcano is the funniest name ever)

I'm sluggishly trying to complete this set, really just because I have a lot of players from it and it's rather cool.

Nolan Ryan looks SO young in that picture! It's always weird seeing him as a Met, but this just doesn't look the 40-year old pitcher I'm accustomed to seeing!

Now THIS doesn't look like Nolan Ryan!

Oddly enough, on Saturday I got 2 cards of a player sucking on an lollipop without realizing it until afterwards! Note: Who has a lollipop while stretching?

And now for the odd-ball parade to begin!

You can't tell, but the Murphy on the bottom left has a crease.

1990 Pacific looks a lot better than 1989. It's actually a pretty nice set.

This Denny's Joe Carter card is really cool. It is pictured next to the Kent  Hrbeck that I got, which turned into a mirror every time I tried to take a picture of it. The Joe Carter was kind of tricky too.

I really love the Swell baseball cards.They always look pretty cool, and generally show players I like, like "Le Grand Orange", who had one of the strangest nicknames ever.

Fernando Valenzuela looks like he's bemoaning the fact that this card sold for a mere 5 cents.

I thought this Sparky Lyle card was a cool card from later in his career.

 I'm trying, in my casual way, to complete the 1993 Ted Williams company set.It has a lot of nice players, like Bobby Brown, and a pretty decent design.

I really love this set because it has a really nice, clean design, and a lot of older players. That Marichal is one sweet card. Sometimes I have a little fun imitating  Juan Marichal's leg kick.

 Seriously, how many times do you see a beach ball on a baseball card?

Just horrible... Who would think that set with rap-based text like that would ever end up anywhere else than a nickel box?

This a really, really cool card. 1)Omar Vizquel is wearing a perfectly horrendeous shirt. 2) He's right by a car, and 3) He has his Gold Gloves on the front of the car. I've shown a ton of nice cards, but there are still 228 cards I haven't shown from the nickle box. And they were all Conlon collection.

Here's a picture of all of them.I like the conlon cards and didn't want to put many back.

As I went up to  the dealer, I  was a little nervous because I thought I had over extended myself ( I had 360 cards). What he told me to do was to count the non-conlon cards, which came up to 119 cards,or $5. So he let me have them all for $5, or about 1.5 cents a card, which was really nice. So I had some money to spend and so I headed over to the table of the person who runs  the show,who is actually Rich Klein, the COMC guy. He generally has some good priced vintage, and a got a couple cards for $5 combined, including this Johnny Pesky, which was originally priced at $6.

The other card was this one. I really like 1969 Topps and so this was a nice pickup. I ended up coming home with 362 cards and a couple dollars still left.

Thanks for reading!