Trading With an Old Coot

So I see there are all sorts of "Blog of the Year" and "Favorite Blogs" posts going around these days.  I'm not daring to go down that road this year myself, but I will say that if Dustin from Coot Veal and The Vealtones doesn't get some love in these posts, then what the hell are we all doing here?

Sure, I'm probably a little biased right now because he just sent me, again, an amazing package of cards.  Starting with this gem that none of you care about but me:

Dustin seems to be my pipeline for Eric Hinske autos, because this isn't the first he's sent me.  Actually, if we are ranking cards on the excitement scale, I might have to make this my #1:

My progress continues on building a 1952 Bowman set, and this Ned Garver is a very welcome addition.

Actually, it is hard for me to rank the cards he sent because there were a couple of others I was psyched to get:

GU of the Moose and the Straw-man!

Thanks for these wonderful cards Dustin, as well as the fun stack of Rangers, Naturals, Razorbacks and other great stuff that I didn't get time to scan.

Straw Hardware Card

I absolutely freaking love this card.  I've been staring at it for almost an hour this evening.  It's one of those Topps manu-trophy-relic thingies, and it's as thick as a paperback book and weighs about 5 pounds and it is totally awesome.

Man, Darryl Strawberry was such a bad ass.  This card is totally worthy of him!

Sampler Album Week: 1986 Topps

As much as I talk about by Sampler Album, I don't do a whole lot of posts showing the pages that I've completed.  I'll remedy that this week and see if I can alienate a few readers with boring, one-note posts.

Today, I'll show my 1986 page.  This, and 1987are the two years I feel the most nostalgia for when I see them.  I think I have heard a lot of negative opinions on 1986 Topps, but I love it.  I guess because it was the first complete set I ever purchased, after I finally learned that there were dealers out in the world that sold baseball cards as complete sets.  All I knew up until that point was that you had to buy a ton of packs to get even close to building a set.

I think 1986 Topps is very smart:

I know the Will Clark is part of the traded set, but my Sampler Album rules are not hard and fast.  Overall, I love this page.  The Mattingly card is a work of art.  I've got Kirby Puckett on my 1985 page too, and prefer not to have players on back to back pages, so I'll eventually change him out for someone else.  But for now, this page is great and one of my favorites in the album.

A Wicked Strawberry

I miss Wicked Ortega.  Maybe he’s still out there reading the blogs, and maybe one day he’ll come back to blogging.  He had great energy, and some incredible trade bait.

Before his departure, he and I managed a small trade, but I’m giddy over what I got:

 
Daaaarrrrryyylllllll…… Daaaaarrrrryllllllll…..  Daaaaarrrrrryyyylllllll.

This is one sweet card,  and one of the best Strawberry cards I own.

The Wicked One also added a few other cards:

I’m not sure if he thinks I’m a Tigers fan, but the Frank Tanana auto is nice either way. 

If you’re out there Wicked Ortega, thanks for your contribution to the card blogging world and hope to see you around!

Why Can't You Be More Like Your Cousin Jeffrey?

Quick, for $100 what TV show am I sort of referencing?  If you guessed Seinfeld, you might think you are correct, but I was actually not referring to a TV show at all, but to Jeff from Cardboard Catastrophies.  I'm not sure if he's your cousin though, only you know for sure.  But he's my neighbor (he's in OK and I'm in AR), and I'd like to think, my pal. 

He drives me nuts a little though because he frequently sends these unannounced packages that are always awesome.  Recently, he single-handedly knocked my Topps 2012 Archives want list down several notches with a block of about 30 cards that I needed.

I've heard some negative feedback about Archives, but once you put the set together and look at in in an album, it's a really neat set.  I've got all the inserts and now have most of the base.  I'm skipping the SPs.

Here are a few of the cards Jeff sent:

 Yes, I know there is a glut of Mantle cards out there, but this is pretty cool looking.

 I also got one of these Darryl Strawberry's from Night Owl, which is great with me.  It's a beatiful card and I can put one in the Archives album and one with my Strawberry album.

 Thanks again for your generosity Jeff.  I'm looking forwad to finding something to send your way!

The Vealtones Touch My Hot Spots

I’ve traded with Dustin from the highly literate “Coot Veal and TheVealtones” several times now, and he always makes me moist….with perspiration!

He pretty much hit on all my hotsports:  Rangers, Razorbacks and Darryl Strawberry, with many other goodies thrown in.  

This was the main card of the deal on my end:

I have always been an  Al Leiter fan, and enjoy watching his commentary on the MLB Network, especially when he’s discussing the craft of pitching.  I’ve heard he is interested in going into politics, or maybe he used to be.  Sure, I could see it.

Dustin also sent an unexpected bonus:

I’ll always take MY cards….as long as he’s in a Ranger uni.  I don’t want any of him in Phillie uniforms.  I consider him retired.

Speaking of Ranger unis, Dustin sent several current Rangers:

AND a star Congressional witness:

AND cards of a big goober.  An awesome goober, but still a goober.

AND Darryllllll……Darrylllllll…….Darryllllllll

 AND some vintage (love the Jenkins):

AND a couple of awesome Razorbacks to top it off.

Thanks Dustin, and enjoy that new baby of yours.  You should know I intended to pepper this post with lots of parenting advice for you but the lovely wife said that if I actually did like you I would keep my tips to myself and save you from going down a horribly wrong path.

The Elation of a Filled Up Sampler Album Sheet: 1983 Topps

1983 Topps was a very strong set.  Not only was the design attractive, there were some marquee rookies included (Boggs, Sandberg and Gwynn).  I don't yet have the Sandberg or Boggs cards, but otherwise feel pretty good about the representative cards I have on this page.

Darryl Strawberry is part of the Traded set, but there are no hard and fast rules about how I conduct my sampler album business, so I included it.  It's one of my favorite cards ever, and the first "big" card I ever traded for.  I acquired it in high school, begrudgingly giving up a 1986 Jose Canseco to get it.  

Cleve's Auction Night: Daaarryyyyllllll.... Daaaaaryyyylllllll

I only picked up one card again at Cleve's last week, but like two weeks ago, it's one I really like:

Not much to add, other than I really like these pin cards, and wish there was a 2011 Texas Rangers World Series pin.  Stupid Cardinals.  Or even a 2010 Rangers WS Pin Card.  Stupid Giants.

Grade:

Darryl Strawberry WS Pin Card $5 B+:    I love high end cards of Strawberry, and this one stays with me.

Trade With The Dime Box Master

Nick from the prolific blog “Dime Boxes- the Low End Baseball Card Collector’s Journey” will heretofore have his blog referred to as the “Dime Box Master” for short on this post.  Or I guess I could just say "Nick's Blog" for shorter.  Or "Nick's" for shortest.

Anyway, I completed my first trade with him recently, and was able to help knock out some of his Heritage needs.  I was certainly happy with what he sent in return.  The best card wasn’t even one that I was expecting.  I was expecting this Nelson Cruz sticker:

Poor Nelson Cruz.  He will have that misplay of what should have been the final out in the World Series follow him the rest of his career.   If life were fair, people would also remember the walk off grand slam he hit against the Tigers in the LCS.  But life isn’t fair I guess.  I’m still a fan though, and I still remember the LCS grand slam, and my guess is that he will be just fine this year.

Nick also sent a nice group of other players I collect.

 

But the best part was this:

A 1984 Fleer Darryl Strawberry rookie.  I would ask if he found this in a dime box, but I probably don't want to know the answer.  About 20 years ago, I would have gone to great lengths to get this card.  I still love it, and as an unexpected add-in to the trade, it’s an incredible bonus!  That would have been worth the trade on its own.  Very excited about this, and I’m very appreciative of the Dime Box Master.    Keep up the great work on your blog Nick. 

But, I still can’t believe you passed on that 1971 rookie Concepcion for a dime.  That pains me every time I think about it.

Starting Lineup Sundays

Before I started this silly little blog a year ago I spent a fair amount of time deciding if I had enough topics to write about to keep my blog churning.  I didn’t want to write a handful of posts and then run out of things to talk about and fade away.   I knew I had a couple of safety nets to fall back on if I got desperate for material.  One was eTopps, and the other was my Starting Lineup Collection.  eTopps was a great material source because they had new card offerings almost every week.  I’ve also managed to find enough other things to talk about that I was able to keep my Starting Lineups on the bench.

    

However, with eTopps basically shutting down and becoming a non-source of material for me it might be time to call on my SLUs.  And why not?  These things are so cool.  I don’t understand why there isn’t a greater demand for them anymore.  That used to not be the case.  In fact, there used to be conventions centered on Starting Lineup figures.   

They’ve been out of production for years now, and replaced by the larger, more detailed McFarlane figures.  I find the SLUs a far superior collectible.  Maybe it’s because they are similar in size and function to the Star Wars figures that shaped my childhood.   Anyway, my SLUs are all in boxes at the moment.  I tried to get the lovely wife to let me “wallpaper” one of our bedroom walls with the ones I kept in the blister packs, but shockingly she didn’t go for it.  I guess pictures of our children and paintings are OK, but beautiful blister packs of toy baseball players don’t meet some arbitrary standard of taste.   Oh well, she can’t stop me from showing them off on my blog:

 Daarryyyllll...... Daaarrryyyllll..... Daaaaarryyyylllll...

This was the first figure I bought.  The first issue of Starting Lineups came out in 1988 and was mostly regionally distributed.  Some players had a national distribution, and luckily for me I was able to find all of the Mets that were made in 1988 (I can't find my the Howard Johnson, but I have it somewhere).  That was my team back then.    

I had no interest in keeping these in the blister pack, and wanted to display them out of the package in my room.  I had about 20 of these things lined up along my dresser.    I also had a huge cardboard stand up movie poster of “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3” in my room as well.  Man, I was a loser. 

Royals and Winnings

I was fortunate enough to be picked to participate in a clever game at Royals and Randoms a few weeks ago.  It was a hybrid draft/yankee swap game with hundreds of cards to choose from.    I'm not sure how Josh kept up with everything, but he did a great job and is building himself a nice blog over there.  My winnings came in this week, and it was fun to dig through:

These Flair cards were the main thing I was targeting.  I've got a decent handful of these in my own collection, and it's one of those sets I may decide to back my way into completing if I can get enough to get started. 

I also picked up a few Rangers.

 

... and some non- Rangers I collect.  The Biggio card is pretty slick.

To round out my winnings, a have a few misc cards I liked.  The Larkin card is part of a Fleer Tradition set I was building, but scrapped, but may decide to start up again.

Josh also had a "Mystery Pick" wrinkle in the game.  You could, or could choose not to, choose a mystery card as part of your winnings.  Of course I had to take a chance on it.  This is what I got:

It's a pretty cool looking Jeff Gordon card that apparently used to play some sort of audio.  I guess Josh wore it out before sending to me, because when I pushed the play button, all I heard for the next ten minutes were scratchy pained screeches coming out of the card.  It went on and on and I couldn't make it stop.  Josh is now on the lovely wife's sh*t list.  But I still think it's a cool card though.

Thanks for the great contest Josh!  Be sure to check out his blog, it's a lot of fun!

A Cool Deal From Coot Veal- Part 2

One of the great things about getting a large trade package in the mail is that it can be stretched into two blog posts, and requires very little thinking on my part.  I am always in favor of very little thinking.  Today I’ll show the cards of my favorite non Rangers/Razorbacks, courtesy Coot Veal and the Veal Tones:

Darryyyylllllll….. Daryyyllllll……. Darryyllllll…..  Darryl Strawberry was the man.  Period.  Oh, what could have been with that guy. 

A group of cards from two of the smarter players I collect.  At least I know Keith Hernandez is smart.  It seems like Al Leiter is too.    The Hernandez Fan Favorites card is numbered to 199 and is really sharp.

I probably shouldn’t root for Torii Hunter, him being an Angel and all.  But he is an Arkansan, and he’s just hard not to like. 

And finally, some Tony Gwynn.    He was good.

Dustin, thank you for a great trade, and I hope you enjoy what I sent!