Stumbled Across Pack-Pulled Mike Trout & Bryce Harper Pre-Rookies

 

I decided to cheat a little bit on the $50 challenge. I decided to go through the books of cards I've gotten in the last few years to put together a modern shipment for Comc. In my minor league book, I just so happened to run across a couple really interesting cards.

These 4 cards are the big hits from some packs of 2018 Panini Stars & Stripes and 2011 Topps Heritage minor leagues. During the 2010's I would just grab some cheap packs of cards at Target just to scratch the "I want to open cards" itch.

Out of the 2018 Stars & Stripes cards, I hit a bunch of autos and relics. The Masyn Winn is listing at about $40.  I also pulled a Logan Forsythe & Petey Halpin auto that I haven't found a price on. But the Halpin is a x/10, so I think there might be some money in there.

Now, the Heritage was awesome. Looking back, there are a couple of nice cards in there. A Mike Fltynewicz relic, Christian Yelich and Nolan Arenado base. And a couple of the Baseball America cards.  But 4 really jumped out at me.  This Jesus Montero black border and a Matt Harvey Baseball America base both are $10 cards. But the Bryce, which is crisp as hospital sheets I think could be a BGS 9 and rate at about $30.

New Stadium Visit: Croke Park (Dublin, IE) Home of the Gaelic Athletic Association

Stadium: Croke Park
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Sport: Gaelic Athletic Association
Occupant: GAA, Dublin GAA
Home of the All-Ireland Finals

Slainte and very welcome greetings from Dublin friends and fellow collectors.  My partner and Amanda and I are currently in the middle of our first European holiday together.  And I am pleased to share that yesterday morning, while we and our friends were at Trinity College Library, I asked Amanda to marry me, and she said yes.

Well, she said "Are you shitting me?", then after her brain rebooted, she said yes.  It was adorable to watch a very intelligent woman's brain completely break.  It was a well kept secret, and a public thank you to our friends Chris and Amanda and also my new friend Mark from the Kay Jewelers in Swansea, MA (and Belfast native) for all their help in the cloak and daggery that went in to making yesterday a very special day for both of us.  I also want to thank all the other tourists at the library (including the 50 or so Italian teenagers) for not doing the very American thing of applauding and trying to be a part of our moment, and rather seeing a thing happening and fucking off so we could have our moment together.

If you're wondering, the ring was my Aunt's.  Her mother, my grandmother, was an actress here in Dublin in the late 20's/early 30's.  Her name was Kitty Curling, she was a contemporary of WB Yeats, and we believe she was engaged to actor Dennis O'Dea (who featured in several Disney films in the 30's. Kitty was a featured player at the Abbey Theatre, which we will be touring on Friday with a private tour and conversation with the company's resident archivist.

Bottom line, boys, it has been and will continue to be a phenomenal trip.  But, to the point of this post: Croke Park.

Some Exciting Updates

There's been a lot going on here at the corner of Ashburn Alley & Yawkey Way.  Collections wise,
we've been relatively quiet.  I've had a couple returns come in for the Phillies Frankenset that I haven't posted, including Ramon Aviles, who I've been informed has recently passed away. I'm thankful that Ramon took a few minutes to sign some autographs for me.

I've added a few new pieces to my growing Providence Bruins/Rhode Island Reds hockey collection.  I found a cheap eBay auction for some AHL stickers that had a "There's something Bruin in Providence" bumper sticker and a Providence Reds round logo sticker as well as AHL, Philadelphia Phantoms and Sherbrooke Jets logo stickers.  The biggest pick-up though is a Stall & Dean Reds jacket.  It has a Rhode Island Reds logo on the front left pocket, which I would guess is probably a 50's era logo, and on the back is a block print "PROVIDENCE" on a white rocket panel.  Everything is heavy and stitched.  It's a little big for me at a XXXL, but it's nice and warm and will get me through what's been a fairly mild winter up here on the South Coast.

Now, on to the stuff that's kept me off blogger...

Providence Bruins Meet the Team Night & Catching Up

Tonight was Meet the Team night at Dunkin Donuts Center for the Providence Bruins. The majority of the roster was in attendance signing autographs.  The two noticeable exceptions I picked up were Chris Breen and Cameron Hughes.  Hughes we heard was ill and stayed home. Not sure why Breen wasn't there.

We arrived fairly late for session two, but the event was pretty well organized.  Players were sitting two or three to a table around the concourse, and big thumbs up for having not just the team store, but also the Dunkin' in the building be open to sell not just gimmicks, but coffee for the coffee drinkers.

I won't bore you with the details.  But I was able to zip through the autograph lines pretty quickly.  The team also did a very good job of having a pretty big paper stock poster for people to get signed.  The only person on the poster not available to get an autograph from was Hughes, which isn't bad.

So, going in, the plan was to get the team to sign the pennant.  Really nice of the boys to keep their signatures small (and also number tag), so that I could get everybody.  But I also picked up a logo puck with a lot of white space to get Peter Cehlarik's auto.  His signature was small enough that I was also able to get Trent Fredric and Max Legace on there, too. 

So, I've added my first autographs to my Providence Bruins collection.

In the last few weeks I've also had some TTM and fanpack returns.  I'm going to get back on posting more often, but I don't have pics to go with the post, so we'll just tag them in here.

Gene Garber and Dick Groat returned some custom cards that I sent out a while ago.  And fan packs came back from the Arizona Cardinals, Oakland Raiders and just today the Jacksonville Jaguars (BORTLES!).

I am also less than 100 days away from going to Ireland.  We are missing a chance to see an EIHL game just a day or two.  But I am hoping to see SSE Arena Belfast, home of the Belfast Giants while we're there (and will be getting a puck for the collection, because count it).

Set Review: 1990 ProCards Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons

Grades
Quality: B
Design: B
Star Power: C
Collectiblity: B
Intangibles: B
Overall: C
Value: $5

This is the standard bearer set for peak-hobby minor league card design.  The 1990 ProCards set is full of stars and the design hints at some of the classic Topps designs (none the least of which being the '87 woodgrain set).

The full set is littered with stars, including Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell and Bernie Williams.  Of course, none of those big names called Lackawanna County Stadium home...

Mail Day And Also The Time I Did Play By Play for Shonie Carter's Pro Wrestling Debut (With a Tony Atlas Cameo)

I've been on a team set splurge lately.  I'm working on collecting all the Phillies AAA team sets.  It started when I refound my '88 Maine Phillies team set and saw a good deal on the '87 Maine Guides set.  Then I got a really good deal on this lot of 7 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons sets from 1990 thru '94.  There are 3 ProCards sets, and a SkyBox set as well as 3 team issued sets.

I was really excited to get the 1990 ProCards set.  That packaging and design is one of the most iconic minor league set designs ever.  The '92 SkyBox design was also very good.

Unfortunately, the eBay seller decided to dry load the '92, '93 & '94 team issued sets just wrapped in some news paper and put in the box.  Total clown show move.

Since this is an incredibly dry and boring post, I'll tell you the story about the time I did play by play for "Mr International" Shonie Carter's pro wrestling debut.

Set Review: 1988 CMC Maine Phillies Team Set Review

Grades
Quality: B
Design: A-
Star Power: D
Collectiblity: D
Intangibles: C
Overall: C
Value: $3

A subtitle for this review could have been "A Great Design Thoroughly Wasted".  

TCMA/CMC released minor league sets in the 80's.  1987 appeared to be the last year under the TCMA banner and starting here with '88 they're considered CMC releases.  As with previous years, TCMA/CMC (or in this case, just CMC) came up with a base design that was applied with minor color changes across all their team set releases.  

Set Review: 1987 TCMA Maine Guides Set Review (Update)

Grades
Quality: B-
Design: B
Star Power: C
Collectiblity: C
Intangibles: B
Overall: B-
Value: $7

At some point this week I decided that I was going to take a run at collecting a full set of Phillies' Triple-A team sets.  I've been sitting on the '88 Maine Phillies team set since 1988, and found this '87 Maine Guides set on eBay for about $10 shipped.  So, good news, I already have a complete Maine Guides/Phillies set.  I also have 2 Lehigh Valley Ironpigs sets, which just leaves every Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, the Ottawa Rapidz and the rest of Ironpigs sets for the complete set.

So, this is the 1987 TCMA Maine Guides team set.

Biggest Mail Day Yet With TTM Success #19 Tom Qualters Plus Pocket Schedules and Adds to Mike Schmidt PC

Player: Tom Qualters
Sent: 7/6/19
Return: 7/18/19 (12 days)
Ratio: 4/2
Address Source: Somerset, PA address listed on SCF.

Let's start at the top. Three packages in on mail day.  (Well, 4, the Kindle HD 10 that I picked up on Amazon Crash Prime Day came in as well.)  Two of my recent eBay wins cams in as well as a return from Tom Qualters towards my Phillies TTM Frankenset.  Mr. Qualters, who is 84 years old, signed two custom cards beautifully with a black pen and included 2 copies of his '54 Topps (which I guess is a '94 Archives set?). 

Mail Day: Mike Schmidt PC Additions & Schmidt PC Virtual Binder

These are the first cards I've added to my Mike Schmidt collection since 1990.  I won a very cheap eBay auction for 52 different cards, some are doubles, but there were a ton of mid/late 80 Fleer cards, some Kaybee and Score cards that I didn't have.  And for the price, it was worth the addition.

The new cards gave me an opportunity to resort my Schmitty cards for the first time since junior high school.  I didn't put a lot of thought into how to organize them, I was a Topps acolyte in my youth, so I always gave the Big Brand priority seating.  So I stuck with what I knew and sorted by brand then year then subset.  So the binder goes Topps > Fleer > Donruss > Score > Upper Deck > Oddballs.

I've got my eye on a couple other Schmidt lots on eBay, which may give me a reason to resort them by year then brand.  Until then, I did scan all the Schmidt pages in my Phillies' PC binder.  If you want to flip through my "Virtual Schmidt Binder", you can click here.

Personal Collection Update - Mike Schmidt: Most Wanted

Thirty years ago I considered myself a "Mike Schmidt Super Collector" because I had one Schmidt for every year he was a Major Leaguer, including his still highly vaunted Topps rookie card.  Today, being a player super collector - at least on Sports Card Forum - means you have 15% of a player's entire cardography.  For Schmitty that means 15% of 7153 cards (1073 if my math's right).  I currently have 121. So I do have 10% of the 15% I need to be in the 1% of Schmidt collectors.

My Personal Collection Updates

Collecting was so much easier when I was a kid. I go to the local card store (Faraday Traders in Morton, PA) and buy packs of Topps cards and work at putting together the set.  Back then inserts were the All-Star cards. It was, if you'll excuse me as I recline in my front porch rocking chair, a simpler time.

I did build a pretty impressive Mike Schmidt PC.  He was my guy. Then, like all of us out here in grown up baseball card collecting blogger land, I packed the cards away.

Now that I'm back in the game, I was lucky to have found in a box that hasn't been unpacked for six moves, my binder of PC cards, stocked with a pretty significant assortment of my Mike Schmidt collection.  Unfortunately, some of the bigger cards, the Topps rookie for example, have been lost to the sands of time.