Catastrophe Schmutastrophe

Jeff from Cardboard Catastrophes keeps one upping me. Not only is his blog better than mine in general, I still haven't been able to come up with a better trade post title for trades with him than the one he came up with for trades with me:  Paper Products From a Paper Product.  Brilliant.
Then we sort of worked out a trade where I was going to send him some Red Man cards of Johnny Antonelli.  I say sort of because I actually was just going to send him the cards since I still owed him from our last trade.  I told him not to send anything.  But he went ahead and sent me a bunch of great Ranger cards, and they came in the mail today:

 My first Feliz relic card.  AWE. SOME.

 I'm more excited about this Gaylord Perry 1978 card the more I look at it.  Fantastic vintage.

And there were several current Rangers cards,with several A&G that I didn't have yet, and a couple of great Heritage Minors.  I hear Jake Skole is tearing it up in the AFL.

There were more as well, but these were my favorites.  Thank you so much for the great package Jeff!  I'll keep an eye out for more Antonelli cards!

Some Culture For You Unruly Savages

While you brutes were spending your Sunday watching football, eating pork rinds and sticking your hands down your pants, I was elevating my already refined person by attending the opening weekend of the unbelievable Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

 The front entrance.  That's a metal tree.

And when I say unbelievable, I mean unbelievable.  This place has immediately put Northwest Arkansas on the Fine Arts Map.  It's certainly pulled in plenty of national pub:

Wall Street Journal
NY Times
Time

You get the idea. That is, if you are still reading this post even after realizing it has nothing to do with baseball cards.  Man, if these national outlets think this place is great, I should point them in the direction of Cleve's! 

I'm extremely proud of this magnificent museum and look forward to going often.  We took the kids Sunday morning and spent about an hour there.  The lovely wife and I only got to see about a third of the main exhibits, because we spent most of our time with the kids in the child friendly parts of the museum.  It was a little uncomfortable carrying around the two year old girl in the Colonial exhibit, which held several million dollar works, and hearing her yell, "I NO LIKE THAT!" every time I stopped to take in one of the paintings.   Oh well, the museum has free admission, so we can always go back later.  I am hopeful that one of these days, since this is an American art museum, there will be a baseball art exhibit.   Back to your pork rinds, you Neanderthals.

Etopps Football Tracker 11/13

There have been major problems with the "Pigskin Challenge" over the past several weeks at Etopps.  The Pigskin Challenge is a weekly fantasy game where you use cards from your portfolio to set a 4 player lineup.  Cards can only be used once per season, which encourages trades and purchase of new cards, and was a smart move by Etopps.  Historically, the popularity of the game has helped inflate prices on players who put up big stats, which I think is great, since it helps give value to cards based on how good the players actually are.  I'm thinking the recent technical problems with the game have to have something to do with the ever declining values on these cards.  Again, there is almost always a drop off on the value of the cards, but it usually happens after the season is over.  Here are the values of the cards based on what I could get right now if I sold them on www.cardtarget.com:

Note the Cal Ripken T206 card on the list.  I purchased a Demarco Murray card last week, and based on the odds of this card peaking immediately and dropping later, I traded it for an Etopps T206 Cal Ripken card:

Someone offered this for the Murray, and it was too hard to turn down.  I'm not sure I'm satisfied how I'm reflecting the performance of the trade with the above chart. I'll show the value of the Ripken card against what I paid for the Murray card, but also show the value of the Murray card in the group of cards I didn't purchase.
Being a Cowboys fan, I hope Murray keeps it up, but I think the odds are he falls back, either because that's just usually what happens with Cowboy running backs (see Julius Jones, Marion Barber, Felix Jones, Tashard Choice etc.), or the return of Felix Jones will take away some of his carries.  The Ripken T206 was a safe play, and I might try to trade some of these other Football 2011 cards for other T206 cards before they fall off too far in value.  Or I may just sell them all on Cardtarget.com and buy some donuts.

Checklist Chipaway: Gypsy Queen Inserts

I recently wrote about my desire to quickly build a Gypsy Queen set.  I took a good step toward this goal this week with the arrival of a chunk of GQ inserts:

 Future Stars- 4 Cards- Checklist now at 75% with 5 cards to go.

 Home Run Heroes- 4 Cards- Checklist now at 68% with 8 cards to go.

Great Ones-2 Cards- Checklist now at 50% with 15 cards to go.

My Weekly Trip to Cleve’s Auction Gets Sucker Punched…

I was pretty excited to take in another fun auction atCleve’s Tuesday night.  I drove to Springdale and when I arrived at the auction, I noticed all the parking spots were full.  No big deal, I just parked in the alley behind the store.  That’s where the trouble started. 

Just as I stepped out of my truck, my face was met with a fist.  And not just any fist.  The fist belonged to my Arch Nemesis, who I still haven’t named, and he was out for blood.  It was a total sucker punch and he used it to his advantage, beating me silly for several minutes.  I guess one of Cleve’s customers must have heard something going on, because he came out with his camera and got the whole thing on tape.   I decided I would share it with you.  The action picks up right as my nemesis had started dunking me in a barrel of water and trying to get me to admit he was the “master.”  I didn’t really want to reveal my identity on this blog, but I guess I’ll have to make an exception.   You’ll also get to see appearances from Cleve and, yes, the Lovely Wife.

A few thoughts:

·         I don’t know how this video was able to capture and illustrate the thoughts in my head as I was being dunked in water (perhaps it’s an app for the iPod), but you see that previous words of wisdom from Cleve and the Lovely Wife are partly responsible for the ass that I kicked when I realized that I, in fact, am the “master.”

·         I can’t really explain how I got my body to glow.  At the time, it was great, and helped me overpower my nemesis.  But now that it’s started, I’m having trouble controlling it, and it often happens at inappropriate times.  It’s a little embarrassing when I’m in a meeting at work and it flares up.

·         I’m not sure who the little man was that seemed to be egging on my nemesis.   They apparently have ties.  I’ll definitely keep an eye out for him.

·         I don’t know why he kept referring to me as “Leroy.”  But I’ve heard him call other people that too.  I guess it’s just his thing.

So, the point of this post is that I don’t have any Cleve auctions to show you this week. 

Checklist Chipaway: 2010 Bowman Chrome Prospects

Last week I was perhaps a bit rash in my grade from one of the purchases I made from Cleve's weekly auction:

"Bowman Chrome Lot $4: C-  Sure, it will likely fill some holes in my 2010 chrome set, but I had already dropped that set from my Super Duper Checklist."

I guess I should have looked through the Bowman Chrome lot a little closer, because it contained about 85 cards of the 110 card checklist, and took my completion of this set from a paltry 60% to about 90% in one quick shot.  Between this lot and what I already had, I only needed 9 more cards.  I re-activated the set on the Super Duper Checklist and grabbed almost all of what I lacked off sportlots.com.  They came in the mail today:

I now only need card #84-Yowill Espinal to put this puppy to bed.   I'm sure I'll pick it up on my next sportlots.com visit.  I have a lot left over if anyone else is building this set and needs fillers.

I hereby give myself a solid A- for some shrewd auctioning and displaying tremendous subconscious brain power that led me to snatch up these cards at auction.

2 Brett Eibner Autos

One for each of my eyeballs to gaze upon...

This card was hidden away in the Bowman Platinum set without me realizing it until I stumbled across it on eBay recently.  I haven't seen anyone post about hitting this from any Platinum box breaks or wax openings.  I hope that is because no one has hit one yet, and not because they deem it unworthy of a post. 

I have openly pined after the stud former Razorback without shame and I geeked out after winning this lot of 2 autos on eBay recently for under $5 shipped.  And if any of you folks have this card available for trade, I'll take more.

Conlon Collection Page 2: Good Googly Moogly Indeed…

In the first comment on the first post on this series, Jeff from Cardboard Catastrophes just about nailed it as concisely as possible: “Good Googly Moogly. Those look like they were written by a barely literate, and completely drunk, 1950s ad man.”

That nails it.

Here are cards 10-18  for your viewing and reading pleasure.  

A few thoughts:

•  Despite my having some fun with the backs of the cards, I do want to say the photos on this set are superb.
• My favorite line is the opener for Leo Durocher: “Leo Durocher was probably the smartest manager in game control who put spikes in his walking shoes to ease the pain.”     Were there a whole bunch of managers who put spikes in their walking shoes to ease the pain back then?  
• The story about Dizzy Dean drinking the soda on the train was actually pretty funny.
• I  never knew Lou Gerhig was called "biscuit pants".  I love that at the end of the write up for Gerhig, the writer felt it necessary to answer what clearly was a rhetorical question. “Can you believe he (Gerhig) stole home 15 times as a Yankee?  Well, he did.”  Awesome.

These have been so much fun to read, and the photos are extraordinary!  Can you believe I scanned the whole set?  Well, I did.

Etopps Football Tracker 11/4

Prices sort of held steady this week, with Calvin Johnson lifting me up a little, but Ryan Mallet continuing to plummet. 

My cards are still outperforming the overall set average. up about 7.6% compared to the overall set which is down 5.7%.

Conlon Collection:

Remember the days when there were baseball card stores everywhere?  Even in my hometown in West Texas with a population of 15,000 people, there was a card store for a brief period of time in the late 80s.  It was terrible and didn’t last long, but the point is, card shops were everywhere.  There was one store in Lubbock Texas that was my favorite place in the whole world: Faust Stamp and Coin.  I think they are still in business today, although it’s been at least 15 years since I’ve been there after moving to Arkansas.

I remember how excited I was to go to this store as a slack jawed teenager in the mid 80s.  And I even remember a couple of cards I picked up as I was starting my collection. 

I particularly remember the guy working there selling me on a "Baseball Immortals" 60 card set with showcasing the photography of Charles Conlon.   

The guy (who was not the owner, but was always there) must have had a real good sales pitch because he talked my mother into buying this set for me.  I wasn’t that interested, but she wanted to get me something to help start my collection, and this was what he recommended.  I remember him congratulating us on the purchase as he rang us up.    Even then I thought that was a overdoing it a bit.  But I’ve held on to them all this time and I came across these again the other day as I was organizing my collection.  I doubt there is much demand for this set out there, but I really enjoyed looking over it and reading the backs.  The photography is compelling, and the write ups on the backs are loaded with cheese.  I am going to share each page, front and back, with you over the next week or so.  If you want an excellent overview of Conlon and his work, check out this post from Ryan at This Card is Cool.    Here is the first page from the 1986 Baseball Immortals set.

Sorry for any confusion of laying out one scan horizontally and the other vertically, but I wanted to make the backs easier to read.  And these are riveting reads.  I want to know who wrote this stuff.  Just read the first card about Lou Gerhig.  I don't even know where to begin on that one.  It could be because it's late and my brain is not functioning at it's normal mediocre level, but that last sentence doesn't make sense to me.  "His consecutive-game playing streak -2,130 games- may well have killed him (!!), but it was Gerhig's style- first class."  What???  There's so much material to cover on these cards.  Another gem:  "Mickey (Cochrane) sweated like a pig.... and looked like a stripper...  And he was one smart cookie, too."   Who writes like that?  I love it!

Help Wanted- Gypsy Queen

Now that my Master Checklist has been revamped to actually show the cards I need (duh), I would like to start a periodic feature where I focus with laser- like intensity on a particular set I want to wrap up.  I thought wanted to wait a year and let Gypsy Queen settle before I knocked out the cards I still need, but I changed my mind, as I am apt to do.

So, under the Master Checklist Progress tab at the top is a link to my updated checklist, which has a page that shows the base and insert cards of Gypsy Queen I am seeking.  I am not going to bother going after the stamps, relics, minis or autos.  I already have the key cards I want from those groups.

If you have any of these to spare, let me know and hopefully we can work out a trade.