Cards from Kronozio

As I have a relatively small collecting budget, but ambitious collecting tastes, I spend a lot of time scouring the internet for deals. Probably too much time, but it often pays off. A while back, I was looking at cards on the Trading Card Database, when I noticed that there was a link to a trading card site called Kronozio. I had never heard of it before, but decided to look and see if there was any good cards. Though it's a smaller site, I was able to find some very good cards, and I made my first purchase from a store called, oddly enough, Frames, Plaques, and more. 

Though the prices vary on Kronozio, all the cards I got were below the price on COMC, so there are some very good deals to be found if you're prepared to look a little. 

Maybe the most spectacularly priced card was the dual Alley/McFarlane rookie on the right, which set me back a mind-blowing 25 cents! I was also very happy to get a Marvelous Marv rookie for just 70 cents.

This was my first card of Eddie Fisher, a welcome addition to my knuckleballer collection. 

It looks like Topps took a ton of pictures in Yankee stadium back in the day, because it seems like every 7th card features the Yankee Stadium facade.

1965 Topps is one of the many vintage sets I'm accumulating, with 1956, 1957, 1963, 1964, and 1967. You can't be actively working on 7 sets at the same time, so I've decided to accumulate and keep my sanity.

This is a great quartet of cards, notwithstanding the 2 cap-less shots. Any card of Wally Moon is welcome around here, and that Duke Carmel is my first Yankee card of him. 

It's jarring to see a young Tommy John. I just now realized something odd: Tommy John never got gray hair during his career. It seems like all the other elderly pitchers, Niekro and Sutton and all, were all graying before hanging up the spikes, but apparently not Tommy John.

I think 1967 Topps is becoming one of my top-five Topps sets ever, the photographs are just so beautiful.

I was pleasantly surprised to get a sharp, if off-center, Luis Aparicio for just 70 cents. And did I mention how beautiful 1967 Topps is?

The seller also had a nice array of '70s cards, most for 25 cents.

I was very happy to get my first card of Ron LeFlore, and my first card of Dock Ellis as a Yankee.

How could I pass up a 1956 Topps card for 70 cents? 

Dick Groat actually played one season in the NBA for the Fort Wayne Pistons, scoring 11.9 points a game over 26 games. But after he got out of the army, the Pirates insisted he stop playing basketball, and he did.

Though all these cards are great, maybe my favorite of them all is the following card:

The first thing you probably notice is that, instead of one facsimile autograph, there is another rendition of Gamble's signature down the right side. I'm no autograph expert, but it looks to me like it might be real.

Here are some close-ups of the possible autograph, and the facsimile. It seems to me that there are some definite similarities, and I'm not sure why someone would carefully forge an autograph, just to have the card sold for 25 cents. 

If anyone who know more about autographs has any idea whether it's real or not, I'd really appreciate the help.

The Bud Daley was my most expensive card of the order, at a whopping $1.10. I was very happy to get the Larry Sherry for just 50 cents, because it's a high number. Actually, getting under-priced high numbers off Kronozio will be the theme of my next post. 

Thanks for reading, and have a good weekend!

Card show part II: Mostly vintage

 I mostly focused on vintage at the card show, because there was only one table with a dime box, but around 5 good vintage tables. At a card show, you really just have to go with the cards that are available. Also, the same day I went to the card show I finally received my order from baseballcardstore.ca, so I was a bit surfeited with dime cards. Though, as you can tell from the first post, I still got a lot.          

                                           

My dad really likes the Mussina card above, as he's a Mike Mussina fan and was living in Rochester around the time that card was made. 

This pre-rookie card of Aroldis Chapman was a surprise at 10 cents. Aroldis Chapman has fallen off a bit, as age has dimmed his historic fastball, but he still has an OK chance at the hall of fame.

I got a good amount of cards for my dad's collection, because I've been selling some of my dad's vintage duplicates so instead of having 3,000 duplicates, he can finish his sets. I mostly got cards for his 1967 and 1973 sets, as those are ones he doesn't have a ton of cards from. With sets he's close to completing, I figure that it's better to shop on-line than at a card show, because the odds aren't great that I'll find many of the cards he needs.

And if anyone's interested in some 1970s cards, let me know at jiachetta42 at gmail dot com.

1967 is one of my favorite vintage sets. I'm really glad that the boycott of Topps' photographers waited until 1968, as 1967 has a very simple design, and with bad pictures it would be like 1969, where the cards with good pictures are great, but if the picture is bad there's nothing for the card to fall back on, and it's just a bad card.

I can almost never find Hostess cards at card shows for some reason. The Tiant above, which I got for 50 cents, is only the second Hostess card I can remember seeing at a card show. Go figure.

The Terry Crowley card might as well be a Thurman Munson card, which is one of the fun things about the action shots in 1973 Topps. They're so zoomed out that you can see the entire play. And really, I prefer that over the tidy action shots Topps has nowadays. They feel bland compared to the eccentric shots featured in 1973.

I think I'll talk about Vic Davalillo a bit, as he was very interesting. The slightly built Vic Davalillo (5'7'', 150 lb.) was brother of the even slighter Yo-Yo Davalillo (5'3'', 140 lb.) I mean, I'm already taller than either of them were. Yo-Yo isn't even much taller than my little sister. Vic actually started out as a pitcher. In 1959, he went 16-7 with a 2.45 ERA for Palatka, wherever that is. By 1962, though, he was almost exclusively an outfielder. However, he never completely left the mound, as he pitched in 50 more games in his pro career. He played in the Venezuelan Winter League until 1986, playing in 30 seasons total for that league. He led the league many times in hitting in Venezuela, hit .325 career there, and even hit .413 in the 1981-82 season at the age of 42.

It's always fun getting cards of The Barber. He's a favorite, both because he was just awesome, and because he's been a favorite in my family since the '50s.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that Rusty Staub was one of the two remaining cards left for me to complete the 1969 Topps Deckle Edge set, with Willie Mays being the other. As you can see, I was finally able to get a Staub for a reasonable price, as it set me back a mere dollar at the show. Take that, sellers on COMC who overpriced your copies. Ha!

Topps Super cards are always fun. My dad has about 10 from 1970, but none from 1971, so I was glad to get this 1971 Roy White for $2. It's a great looking card.

Hal Newhouser is one of the lesser-known hall of famers, so this 1955 Topps card, my first card of him, was just $3. I have barely any 1955 Topps cards, just 3 including Newhouser, and I think it's because I really like both 1954 and 1956 Topps, and 1955 is just in the middle, not really special in any way. It's still nice though, and I should probably get more.

I also got a little work done of my 1959 Topps set, getting 5 more cards for $1 each.

This Herb Score is one of my favorite cards I got at the card show. It was my first card of Score, who was headed on a hall-of-fame trajectory before hurting his arm. (Getting hit may have contributed to his arm injury indirectly, but probably isn't the reason why he was never the same again.) The picture, with  Score at Yankee Stadium, is pretty great. 

I'm really glad for the facade at old Yankee Stadium, because it allows me to say "This picture was taken at Yankee Stadium," which, to be honest, I can't do for any other stadium.

The Joey Jay is an awesome one. It's featured in The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book, and any card of a pitcher with a bat is a good one in my book. Though I don't track them down with the intensity of some other bloggers. The font for the write-up on the back is also spaced differently than on most cards, which for some reason I like a lot.

Oddly, both the O'Toole and Ricketts rookies have mistakes on the write-up. The O'Toole says he lead the A.A (American Association) in strikeouts in 1958, while he actually led the S.A (Southern Association).The Ricketts shows him playing basketball, but says "Dick was a great all-american baseball player at Duquesne." I'm almost certain they meant to say basketball, as it's pretty obvious Ricketts did well at baseball in college.

Well, I had a pretty good time at the card show overall. I got a satisfactory haul of cards without obliterating the bank, so it's all good.

Extra: I didn't show the pictures of all the cards I got, as that would make the blog post go on for way too long, but I figure I may as well tack on the pictures of the other cards with minimal commentary at the end. That way you can enjoy looking at the cards, if you want to, without looking at your watch and saying to yourself, "When is this post going to end?"

1969 Nabisco

Combo cards with silly names are the best

Just beautiful. Especially at 70 cents each.

A duplicate, but I couldn't pass it up at $3. Available if you're interested.

Mad Hungarian!

Hal McRae looks so young!

Submariner

Hal Reniff's nickname was Porky. You're welcome.

I'm listening to "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis for my first time today, and I really like it. It's more mellow than most other jazz I've heard, but it's good. 

$1 each

Card show!

 Finally, for the first time in almost a year, I got to a card show. The last time I had been to a card show was back in March last year, and I was only able to spend half-an-hour at it, so I'd been waiting a long time to really satisfy my need for a card show. 

Well, going to last Friday's card show certainly satisfied the card show itch for a while. It was a very big card show, and I got plenty of vintage and dime cards. 

I was a bit anxious as I explored the hall, as there weren't many tables with cards I was interested in. I thought there would be more dime boxes, but I only found one out of the numerous tables. With table after table of either modern cards or upper-class vintage, my spirits sank somewhat. But I finally figured out it didn't matter what most of the tables were like; I just needed a couple of dealers with good cards. After this realization I was able to settle down and enjoy the card show more.

The cards above I got from the one dime box vendor I found. His cards had some surprises, like the ones above, which are apparently Walmart exclusives from long ago. They look sharp.

Woah. This is the lowest numbered card I've ever found in a dime box, the next lowest being a Curt Schilling numbered to 100 I got a couple years back. Oliver Perez, surprisingly, is still kicking around in the majors, as he had an ERA of 2.00 in 21 games in 2020.

And this is an Allen & Ginter's code card from 2011, which I think is pretty cool. I'd never seen any of these before in person, so getting one for a dime was a pleasant surprise.

I also bulked up some of my player collections. Dan Quisenberry is one of my favorites, and I'm considering super-collecting him, as most of his cards are very cheap, and he doesn't have many post-career cards. According to TCDB, he only has 231 cards, which seems like a ridiculously low number.

                                               

Randy Johnson, on the other hand, has 13,393 cards currently listed. But I'd much rather get a card of Quiz than one of the Big Unit. Obviously, I like getting cards of Johnson, as he's one of my player collections, but Quiz just seems to have been very nice and approachable, while Johnson -- not so much.

I was glad to get some 1992 Bowman cards, as you barely ever see them in the wild.

                                             

It's hard finding Mariano Rivera cards in dime boxes but it's great when it happens. I'm now up to 68 Mariano Rivera cards.

Now Kellogg's are definitely hard to find in dime boxes, especially ones of hall of famers.

Dime boxes are wonderful things, but I also spent a good amount of time at the vintage tables.

In 1954, Bob Lennon hit 64 homers for Nashville in the Southern Association. Unfortunately, his major league career was not particularly distinguished, as he hit .165 with 1 homer in the majors.

This was the first 1967 Topps Posters I've gotten, and it's pretty cool. It's 4 times the regular size, and is printed on newspaper-type stock, so it doesn't really feel like a baseball card, but it's still fun.

As I got a lot of cards, I'll break this up into two parts. Hope you all can get to a card show sometime soon too!