An ode to 1953 Bowman: Christmas edition.

Every year, for my birthday and Christmas I get most of the Yankees from a certain 1950's set. It's nice because I really like a lot of sets from the 1950's, and most of the cards are definitely out of my price range. Also, my dad has an affection for the 1950's Yankees because they were the team his dad told him about when my dad was a kid. I think the 1950's were definitely one of the best (possibly the absolute best) decades ever for baseball cards, as you might have been able to tell from my Black Friday purchases. This year I got 1953 Bowman, from both the Color and the Black and White set, like the Bob Kuzava above.

I think it's pretty cool seeing the patch the Yankees had on their uniforms because of their 50th year of baseball (1903-1952). Overall, I think Bowman had much the better set in 1953, and I think that explains something of it. In 1953 Topps, because basically all the cards are just head shots, and while they're very beautiful and detailed head shots,  you can't actually see a lot., while in Bowman, there are a lot of really nice pictures where you can get a better sense of the time. Allie Reynolds had his best season the year before, as he won 20, lead the league in ERA with 2.06, and threw 2 no-hitters.

 Interestingly, this card ( Jim Brideweser) was actually the hardest card for my dad to get. He had tried to get it on Comc on Black Friday, but the one he wanted to get ended up being stored remotely, and he had to get it on Dean's Cards.

The big reason I like Bowman more than Topps that year is that the pictures are just beautiful. One card that I really, really, really want to get someday is the 1953 Bowman Pee Wee Reese. I definitely won't get it for a long, long time, but it might happen someday.

Bill James credits Gil McDougald for the defensive success of the 1950's Yankees even  as Casey Stengel shuffled 2nd basemen and shortstops in and out of the lineup. James wrote in his Historical Baseball Abstract that Gil McDougald was around even, per inning, in his defensive win shares with Red Schoedienst, Frank White, and Nellie Fox at 2nd base, and even with Mark Belanger, Dal Maxvill, and Lou Boudreau. At 3rd base he ranked around even with Aurelio Rodriguez, Buddy Bell, and Ken Boyer. 

The Black and White set is also pretty nice, I think. The Color set is a lot more, well, colorful, but the photographs are still really good. Bill Miller traded to the Orioles in the 17 man Yankees-Orioles trade, which also included Don Larsen, Bob Turley, Gene Woodling, Gus Triandos, and many, many more.

RIP, Irv. When I asked my Grandpa about him ( we're on vacation in New York and staying with my grandma and grandpa), my grandpa said that he was very solid as a player, you could put him anywhere in the lineup from 1-3, and he was a very good fielder.

This picture really reminds of the 1957 Topps Ted Kluszewski, even though Hank Bauer was in reality 2 inches shorter and 33 pounds lighter than Kluszewski.

I'll close out with my dad's personal favorite of the Bowman's I got for Christmas. Johnny Sain won 14 games and lost 7 with an ERA of 3.00, and  lead the league in saves with 26 in 1954. My grandpa says that he was glad when the Yankees got him near the end of his career.

Black Friday Shipment #2

The big reason why I only got vintage cards on Black Friday is that my budget doesn't allow me to get them consistently throughout the year. If I spent all of my normal budget on vintage cards at a card show, I'd only get around 15 cards. It's a lot more satisfying to get a couple hundred cards from the dime box, even though I really like older cards. Occasionally, I get some vintage cards from a card shop, but's that's pretty much it.

So I was really glad to get a lot of cards from the 1950's and '60's at bargain prices. Actually, the most expensive card in this post was the 1957 Topps Ken Boyer, which was just 82 cents.

I really like infielders, and getting cards of infielders, and I think these two cards do a very

good job of showing why.

You can make a pretty good hall of fame case for Ken Boyer ( 11 time all-star, 5 time gold glove, 282 home runs, and a MVP award).  Anyway, I thought it would be nice to get a card of him.

I might end up completing the 1957 Topps set some day, as it's a very nice set ( as I have said), and it's fairly cheap. I think the only expensive rookie card is Frank Robinson, which can be had for less than 100 dollars.

The card on the left is Earl Battey's rookie card. He ended up playing until 1967, and was a 4 time all-star, so I think I got a pretty good deal for his rookie card, at 70 cents. The Camilo Pascual was just 70 cents too. Camilo Pascual ended up being a pretty good player too, playing until 1971 and winning 174 games.

I wanted a Bobby Avila card for my collection after reading about him a little in the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Bobby was on the down end of his career by 1957, as he hit .224 in 1956, and retired after 1959. Billy Pierce is kind of underrated as he won 211 games, and was probably  better than Don Drysdale, Jesse Haines, Rube Marquard, and other hall of famers.

Jack Harshman had an interesting career, as he started out as a 1st baseman . He hit 40 homeruns for Minneapolis in 1949, and 47 for Nashville in 1951 in the minor leagues, and reached the majors leagues as a 1st basemen,  but only played 14 games in the major leagues as a position player before he converted to the mound. Clint Courtney was called both " Scrap Iron" and " The Toy Bulldog", which I think justifies the purchase.

I think it's funny how Topps never really decided how to spell Lew ( Lou ) Burdette's 1st name. It was nice how I got two of his cards so that I could compare.

I, for some reason, have always had an odd fascination with utility outfielders who hit .300, walk a lot, and have no power. Elmer Valo definitely as he hit .282 in his 20 year career with a .398 on base and 58 home runs. The only other player I can think of who fit the description is Greg Gross, so it's a pretty select group.

I really like the Christmas colors on the Zack Monroe card. His card is also made interesting as he never pitched in the major leagues after 1959, and that Topps apparently mispelled his 1st name ( Zach). I also like the catcher-outfield-1st basemen designation for Elston Howard.

I'll close out with Pedro Ramos at the start of his career, and 10 years later, and worse the wear after leading the league in losses 4 times.

Anyway, thank you all for reading and have a merry Christmas! Or more likely, considering that I posted this at 8:30 PM central time, have a merry December the 26th!

Black Friday shipment #1

Last Saturday I was very disappointed because I had to miss a card show for a practice speech tournament. The tournament wasn't too bad, but going to a card show is one of my favorite things in the world.

However, the disappointment was lightened by my 1st Comc shipment of cards! It was great going through the cards! I mostly got Topps cards from 1954-1960, but I also got three relatively big cards for me. I'll start off by showing what is now the oldest card in my collection, one of the three "big" cards I got:

I got this 1887 Sweet Caporal card for less than $5! It doesn't really fit in with anything I collect, but it was really cheap, really old, and the background is very interesting. ( I'll show the other two cards at the end)

I really like the towels behind Dusty Rhodes, and I like 1957 Topps. I remember way back when when I didn't like 1957 Topps because it was too boring, but I've come to appreciate it.

I like how it was the 1st set ever with the now standard card size, and, as a baseball statistics nerd, I really, really like how it was also the 1st set ever with complete career statistics!

Another set I like is 1960 Topps. It's nice and colorful, and I think the font is very interesting, as it is in different colors and the letters aren't in a perfectly straight line.

I've always been interested in Eddie Yost, which is kind of funny because I basically never walk in little league. This is my 2nd card of him, and my 1st of him as a Tiger. In 1960 he hit .260, and lead the league in walks with 125, but just spent 2 more years in the big leagues, hitting .215.

Fun fact for the day: Johnny Antonelli was elected to both All Star games in 1959 ( they had two for a couple years back then), getting the win for the 1st one.

I think somebody drew glasses on my 1954 Bowman Tom Gorman, and it has a lot of creases, but I thought it was a good deal at $1.06.

The condition notes for the Mike Garcia card said it was trimmed, but I got it anyway. It's pretty noticeable by a regular '54 Bowman card.

1956 was Johnny Kuck's big year, as he won 18 games, but he never won more than 8 games in the majors outside of that year. He finished his major league career with a 54-56 record.

I really like the yellow background on this 1954 Topps Roy Sievers. And here are two "big" cards, which I've probably been overhyping:

Play ball! I really like Play ball in all of it's 3 years, so these were nice. It looks like somebody carved some random things on the surface of this card, but it's in good condition otherwise, and it was around $5.

The other card was a 1940 Play Ball card of "Buddy" Hassett. I'd never heard of him before I got his card,  but he hit .292 over 7 years before the war stopped his career, including playing the 1942 season with the Yankees. As a bonus, it's my 1st Boston Bee card, because that's what the Braves were called back then.

I still have one more Comc shipment ( explained in my last post), so hopefully you'll be reading about it soon.

Black friday #2: A learning experience.

 
Last year's Black Friday was my 1st time getting baseball cards on Comc, and I'd like to be able to write that after that seasoning I fully took advantage of Black friday this year. Except I didn't. I got a very good haul, including the two cards above, but I also made various errors which  didn't help:

On Friday I didn't know that cards are cheaper when your logged into your account, so I spent significantly more than I needed to. I had planned to just buy all the cards on Friday, but because I didn't get as many cards as I thought I would, I didn't feel quite satisfied, so on Saturday I was looking on Comc when I realized that the prices were a lot lower than on Friday.

After a little experimenting, I realized that it was because I was logged in to my Comc account, while I wasn't on Black Friday. Thankfully, my Dad offered to pay for shipping if I got another order on Saturday, so I was set to get some more cards. And it worked very well except that I unfortunately forgot about getting Bowman cards, which was definitely too bad. But I still got very good deals. A good illustration for how different the prices were was the 1956 topps Roy Sievers, which I got on both Friday and Saturday. The copy I bought on Friday was $1.05, while the one I got on Saturday was 61 cents. That isn't quite a very comparison because the one I got on Friday was in better shape, but certainly not that much better. Here's the two copies side by side, the one I got on Friday being on the top:


Even though I spent more than I had to on Friday, and forgot about getting Bowman cards on Saturday, I still made out very while, and I'm looking forward for the cards to arrive. Hopefully I'll put it all together next Black Friday.

Adventures of a Baseball Card Collector's 1st anniversary.

Well, actually, to be accurate, my 1st post was on November 18th 2018, so I'm off by a week. Oh well.  Anyway, this is my 54th post in my 53 weeks of blogging. In my 1st post I said that I'd try to post at least once a week, so that was pretty close. However, that number was inflated by 17 posts in January, many of them of a below average quality, and I haven't posted more than 3 times in a month since March, so I guess I haven't done that well in quantity.

 However, I really think I've gotten better as a writer since starting my blog. I mean, the 1st thing  I wrote on this blog was " Hello, I my name is John,". That wasn't exactly what I meant to say. Hopefully I'll continue to get better in quality and quantity over the next year.

Anyway, I'd like to thank my 3 followers, Fuji, for being both a follower and a frequent commenter,and thanks to Dan for being my 1st commenter. Also, thanks to my mom and dad for getting me baseball cards and tolerating my (messy) baseball card collection and for just being my mom and dad.

                            And, finally, thanks for reading.

Bowman birthday bonanza.

I turned 13 on Sunday, which produced  13 1951 Bowman Yankees, and some money from my sister. I really like 1951 Bowman, and I always enjoy getting Yankees cards from way back when, so I think I got a pretty good haul.

Joe Page was the 1st modern reliever closer, leading the league in saves in 1947 and 1949, with 17 and 27 respectively. He also finished 4th and 3rd in the MVP voting those years. However, he pitched badly in 1950, and spent 1951 in the minors. He got back to the majors for 7 games with the Pirates in 1954, but was released. I also really love the background on the Joe Page card.

I was surprised when I saw I had gotten a Casey Stengel 1951 Bowman card. I was just reading Robert Creamer's biography of him a few weeks ago, and I liked it. 1951 was just his 3rd year managing the Yankees, with 9 more to come. I also enjoyed getting the Vic Raschi card. He won 21 games that year, and also lead the league in strikeouts, not to mention finishing his career with a 132-66 record.

The 1951 Bowman Gene Woodling is actually his rookie card, although he debuted in 1943. Imagine a thing like that happening now, when everybody who has a 10 major league games to his credit gets a rookie card. Eddie Lopat was the resident junk-baller of the American League at the time, and it definitely worked for him. Casey Stengel said that it looked he was throwing wads of tissue paper, and also said "Every time he wins a game, fans come down out of the stands asking for contracts." He obviously wasn't blowing people away, but Eddie Lopat won 21 games in 1951, and 166 for his career.

For these three I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves, except to point out that Allie Reynolds     (182-107) was just as good as Lefty Gomez (189-102). However, Lefty is in the Hall of Fame while " Superchief" isn't. Allie Reynolds was probably even better. Go figure.

The background for the Bobby Brown card is really nice in person, though it doesn't look as good on the computer. Anyway, these are the last three cards. I really like these '51 Bowman Yankees, and I'm glad that my mom and dad got them for me.  

Thanks for reading!

Note on the title: I couldn't think of anything for the title, so my mom suggested the title I used.I generally like quieter titles, but I don't think it sounds too bad.

More dime box finds.

There was a lot of cards of the new Hall of Fame inductees, and I ended up with 15 different cards of Mariano Rivera. I hadn't got a new Mariano Rivera card for something like half a year, because I can never find his cards in dime boxes.

I only took pictures of 10 different Mariano Rivera cards,  and I can't remember why anymore. 

I now have over 50 different Mariano Rivera cards, my most for any player and 15 more than I have of any other player.

The UD Decade Ozzie Smith is really weird because it listed the wrong batting averages for all his seasons except his last 4. What's really really odd about it is that all the batting were made way higher, marks like .347 and .383. It's like Upper Deck confused him with Honus Wagner. It's strange because if his batting averages were actually that high he'd have a very good argument for being the greatest player ever. I mean, he was a 1st ballot Hall of Famer with a career batting average of .262.

These were two nice looking cards of players from way, way back. I think Rube Waddell is really interesting. He held the single season record for strikeouts in one season until Sandy Koufax. I wonder if he would've struck out 400 batters in 1 season if he just focused on the game.

I always love new cards of Yankees like Joe Gordon and Yogi Berra. 

I have at times considered having Phil Rizzuto as my favorite retired player. He's never actually been my favorite player, but he's still one of my favorites probably a notch above Yogi Berra.

This was one of my favorites of all the cards I got at the card show. I like Wade Boggs, and I love this picture of him joyously squirting champagne. I'm guessing this is from after the 1996 world series.

 I got to see Joe Torre for a second last night defending the Trea Turner call. I personally wasn't totally outraged about Trea Turner being called out at the time, but I could not understand why they put the runner back at 1st instead of 2nd, as the runner would obviously have been at 2nd. It didn't end up mattering as Anthony Rendon hit a homer right after that and the Nationals won anyway, but it could have lost the world series for the Nationals. 

My sister really liked this one. It's also my 1st baseball card with a dog on it.

These are 4 really great cards. I really like that card of Carl Hubbell kissing a baseball, and I'm a fan of both Bobby Doerr and Hoyt Wilhelm. I like all knuckelballers because I think it's a really cool pitch, and I also have the knuckelball in my pitching arsenal, although I haven't thrown one in a game all season yet.

The 2 years of UD Masterpieces are 2 of my favorite sets ever, but sometimes it really annoys me in some ways. For example, Mike Piazza was still playing in 2007, and the card actually says he's an Athletic, but he's pictured as a Dodger, and the season it gives statistics for on the back is from a Dodgers season from about 15 years before. I'd be really, really annoyed about that if I was an Athletics fan. 

I'll wrap up with some free stuff I got. This is a Kahn's Red's complete set. There isn't really anybody I know very well in this set, but it's still kind of cool.

I also got a few Beckett's from the 90's that I liked. There was a lot more content back then, and the price guide didn't take up 70% of the issue back then. 

I also got a nice deck of baseball playing cards. There rather cool, and there was one Yankee ( Steve Sax) and one player I collect ( Randy Johnson) in it. Anyway, that's all the stuff I got at my last card show. My birthdays coming up soon ( I have the same birthday as Bob Feller) so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!