Settling in

So I got everything (almost everything) moved from the old place to my new house on Friday.  I had spent the better part of a week taking boxes over, so that my friends could just help me with the big stuff.

I have all my cards in a closet at the moment.  I'm still deciding on a plan for them.  But hopefully they will end up being more accessible than they were in the last place.  I had them under the bed, on shelves in a closet that wasn't easy to get into, all over the desk (of course), and on the floor.

The computer is all hooked up with internet (obviously) and the scanner is ready to go.

And just today I got my first package of cards addressed to the new house.  Feels like home now.

Robert from $30 a week hooked me up with a bunch of missing cards from 2014 Topps.  You've all seen them, so they're probably really only of interest to me.

But he also threw in a couple Angels for me.

I've said before that Topps has overdone the parallel thing.  But I've also said before that I'm a sucker for parallels.  So Mr. Downs is quite welcome here in the (new) land of Junk Wax.  Mark Harriger there never made it out of AA ball, and in fact his name isn't even hyper-linked over at The Trading Card Database.  Poor guy.  At least he has a page over at the BR bullpen.

But the star of the package is probably the 1997 Donruss Preferred - X-Ponential Power #6A Tim Salmon.  (Quite a mouthful huh?)  Its not only die-cut, but its clear too.  And it isn't teal.  I tried scanning it solo - still teal.  I tried scanning it sideways - still teal.  Its actually a shiny, refractory, metally looking card.   Its also card 6a.  6b is Jim Edmonds.  Why didn't they just make them cards 6 and 7?  That's the 90's I guess.

Thanks for thinking of me Robert!

Welp, time to go do some more unpacking.

Oh yeah.  Go ahead and vote in my little poll up at the top right.

Listia wins.... errrr.....sorta

I've been trolling around Listia again.  Searching the lower end of the market for auctions with free shipping.  I did a survey, so I'm playing with free credits.

And I've won a few auctions lately.

Two of them happened to come from the same seller.

This card goes into my Tim Salmon PC, which at the moment is way too small.  And it has a cameo from Salmon's college teammate too (we'll ignore his post career troubles for now).

This card goes into my Topps base card Angels binder.  Both cards also happen to feature my favorite Angel uni.

Like I said, they came from the same seller.  And the seller offered free shipping, so he mailed them together.  That's fine.

They were put into a plastic sleeve and wrapped in a piece of paper.  No hard plastic.  Ehhhh.  I guess I don't really mind that if the cards show up unscathed.  And in this case that didn't cause a problem.

I think the seller was honestly trying to throw in a bonus.

In between the two cards was

This is one of those inserts in 1988 Score.  It happens to highlight Don Sutton's 300th win, which he accomplished while a member of the Angels.

But this thing is thick.

And small.

And I bought lots of 1988 Score, so I have it. 


You probably can't see it in the scans, but there are corner shaped dents in the fronts of both of the cards I actually won.  One is just to the left of Chad Curtis' torso, the other is just to left of Jim Edmonds' face (he's looking right at it).

Once I put them into sheets, they probably won't be visible.

But I'll know.

BuckStoreAngels

I recently sent off an SP from 2014 Heritage to Douglas of Sportscards From the Dollar Store.  I wish I was better at tailoring trade packages, but I'm pretty much a "read the want list, send the cards" type.  There's an art to filling up trade packages and some bloggers out there are artists.  Me?  Left-brained.

At any rate, I was interested in some dupes he had mentioned in one of his posts.

I don't remember knowing about Leaf as a kid collecting in the 80's.  I knew about O-Pee Chee, but Leaf?  not so much.  So these are pretty cool.  It's almost the 80's version of parallels, no?  Johnny Ray seems to be pulling away from Mark McLemore, but what do you expect?  McLemore was out for his job.

I would have been happy with that in trade.  But as the blogging community has shown over and over, there was more.

 

Two needs from my 2012 inserts.  Its funny that I like this set so much.  I hand collated the 1987 set back in 1987 and I want to scream whenever I've pulled the 18th 1987 Topps out of a repack, but I liked this set immediately. (I wonder how Night Owl is doing in getting pages for these produced?)

And of course there was a good stack of about 15 Angels too.

Some Donruss from my time away from the hobby.   I think this set is pretty sharp.  Understated.

Player collections!  Love getting Tim Salmons.  And Mr. Trout is still the best player in the game.  Although, I'm kinda bipping myself with that TFIN insert this year.

Thanx Douglas.

"O" Yes

In my last post I mentioned that Ryan over at "O" No!! Another Orioles Blog sent me a bunch of Angels.  Let's take a look at some of them.

Hope I like the assortment of Angels?  Much like Tim Salmon up top there, Ryan hit it out of the park.  Every card Ryan sent to me was new to me.  You can't beat that.

I had considered a Chad Curtis PC for a long time.  He was the most exciting player on the early 90's teams for his first few years.  But being the father of two teenage girls, I'm not sure I could justify a PC.  Chuck Finley there is in reality the Angels all-time pitcher.  Of course the man just below him might argue.

These Bowman cards are super thick.  I'm sure anybody who was collecting when they came out would know why, but I haven't looked it up yet.   I was kinda sorry to Peter Bourjos go, but i think the Angels needed to make room for Kole Calhoun.  Who is now injured.  Let's just hope the trade works out better for the Angels than the last time they traded an outfielder to the Cardinals. (That might not be fair to Adam Kennedy).

More Bowman.  Those first two are shiny.  They're dark, but not as dark as they scan.   I usually forget that Matsui was an Angel.  The back of the Napoli looks just like the front, except its a Hank Conger card.  And as long as his velocity doesn't keep dropping, Weaver could be in the all-time Angels pitchers conversation eventually.

Another Ryan and Finley pairing.  This particular Ryan gives me 6 of the 9 cards in the Ryan portion of the subset.  I just need 15, 16, and 17.  That night be the most unflattering picture Upper Deck could find for Troy Percival.  I really like the design on the 2009 Upper Deck cards.  clean.

The back of the Erstad takes me right back to the 80's.  There's a 2009 O-Pee-Chee black and a 2009 O-Pee-Chee black mini.  Which is a parallel of a parallel.  I think.

Yes Ryan.  I like my assortment very much.

And 1

Recently I received 2 PWEs from John over at My first blog.  Welp, another PWE showed up from John.  Who doesn't love PWEs?  Seriously?  Awesome right?

He definitely is hitting on the wasteland that is my Angels from the period of my collecting inactivity.  I have to say though, Disney did the Angels no favors with their rebranding.  They switched the team from my favorite logo/color combination the Angels have employed:

 

to that powder blue wing thingy.  The team did have some star power though.  You have the Mo Vaughn signing (bust), Garrett Anderson came up (overrated, but still a good ballplayer), and Troy Glaus there (power).

J.T. Snow is modeling the unis ther for us.  There's a lot going on there in the bottom corner on Darin Erstad.  Stuck in a "metal universe" snowstorm I guess.  Up top there's a Tim Salmon to add to my growing PC.  When I saw the back of the George Hendrick there, I thought "I have that.  Junk Wax, duh".  But no, its a "Topps reproduction" (from the back) of the 1988 card in 2001 Archives.

Thanks again John.  I think I managed to find some more cards from your want list, so keep an eye out.

Great Mail

Today was a great mail day.

0 bills.

4 envelopes of baseball cards.

That's a ratio you can't beat.  2 of the envelopes were eBay wins.  I typically troll for good deals on eBay, put in a bid and get outbid.   No harm, no foul.  I like to look for big lots of "vintage" cards.  (parentheses due to the definition of vintage.  I'm using pre-1980 as my definition).  If I can get a big lot (say - over 200 cards) for 5 cents a card, I'm good.  Lately though I've been picking up Mike Trout cards.

That's the second Panini Prizm I've gotten this week.  I'm a huge proponent of a second MLB license to eliminate Topps' monopoly, but both of the Panini cards have actually looked pretty sharp.

But the real star of the mailday were the two envelopes I received from John over at My first blog.  I reached out a week ago and offered up some Braves cards.  He sent back a bunch of 1990's Angels.

I think that Washburn is now my oldest chrome card.  When did those things start being produced?  And a Tim Salmon there which will go in my Frankenset, which will add a little variety to the very 80's-centric nature of the project at the moment.  You can't go wrong with Rickey in a Halo uni.

I remember when Rod Correia was playing for the Angels.  You had the sense that he was a bench type player, but I rooted for him to be star anyway.  There's 2 new Salmons for that player collection, and they're sharp looking cards to boot.  I like the look of 1994 Score.  Those two cards bring my total of the set up to 3.

That Baylor is awesome.  It'll go with the Grich I got from Dime Box Nick.  Another Rickey.  Even at 38 with a .183 batting average, I think Rickey was a good pickup in 97.  Todd Greene was a slugger that the Angels moved from outfield to catcher.  I had high hopes for him...

I like the Donruss Classics.  Good looking cards.   Those Upper Deck Vintage really are a cross between new cards and 80's cards.  They look like thy're from the 80's (or earlier), but they feel like new cards..almost.

All in all, an outstanding pair of packages.  Thanks John.

Angels, Angels, and even more Angels

I'm pretty sure that anybody who reads baseball card blogs has come across the Dime Boxes blog, but if they haven't, they need to.  Nick has a way of connecting with cardboard of all types and enjoying the cards on their own terms.

Recently I saw a post he wrote and inquired about a card I needed to have wanted to get.  I sent along a couple blue and red parallels and a stack of the blurriest 1982 Fleer I could find.  What I got back was way more than I could have expected (which is quickly becoming a running theme for me).

This is the card I asked about.   I would have been happy with this card alone.  An Angels blogger, who I know has seen more Angel ball than I have lately, has opined that this kid has the enthusiasm that the rest team could use more of.  So I've started a player collection.  This camo version will go next to the base card and the gold parallel I have.  I only need 45 more for the rainbow (I kid...sorta.  There's 14 total I think.  14!?!)

But Nick decided to throw in a stack of Angels.  Over 50 more Angels.  I'll show some of the highlights.

 Player collection needs!  There's a Rod Carew card from his playing days.  I thought I had all those except his rookie card, and assorted OPeeChee cards.  And a Tim Salmon to add to one of my more recent player collections.  But that Bobby Grich is possibly my favorite card of the package.  Underrated player, and he doesn't seem to get much love from Topps in their recent binge of "old players on new cardboard".

1987 "1987 mini" next to 2012 "1987 mini".  And a 1987 for comparison.  1987 Topps was the second set I ever completed from busting packs, after 1986.  All these years later, I still like 1987 better.

A couple of guys who ended their careers in 2012, never having made the majors.  Both made AAA though.  I don't think I'm in the minority when I say that I would given anything to have the chance to play one season in the minors.  Castillo played 7, getting 5 games at AAA in 2011.  Auer played 5 seasons, getting 105 games at AAA in 2010-2011.

Gold parallels, and sparkly parallel.  I'm a sucker for all the parallels I've seen the last couple of years.  Sure, Topps is beating a dead horse, and the dead donkey next to it, by overdoing parallels.  But I still like them.

I have considered starting a Gary DiSarcina player collection.  He was the real reason the Angels collapsed in 1995.  He was hitting .307 in the 9 hole and made the All Star Game in 1995.  Then he gets hurt on August 3rd, missing a month and a half, and the Angels went in the tank.  The Percival and Velarde bring my grand total of 1997 Topps to two (edit - grand total of three.  There was a third one in the package).

And here's the guy the Angels let go so they could sign Josh Hamilton.  So they could pay 5 times as much for less production.  So they could sign a guy with a checkered past and ongoing recovery instead of a clubhouse leader.  (Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing anybody in recovery and definitely not the process itself.   I'm lamenting the presence of the man that got away).


Thanks Nick.

Full names

One of the perks about having this here little blog is that I get to pretend I'm a blogger.

In my new self-titled role of blogger, I headed over to the 2X3 heroes blog and signed up for Club PWE.  Sure enough, I got a PWE filled with Angels the other day.  Ironically it was the day after a post detailing how Jeff from 2X3 and I had sent the same card to Night Owl.

I got cards from just after I stopped collecting cards.  I'm not even sure I knew about Leaf when I was still collecting.  Nowadays, thanks to a Craig's lister from 10 years ago, I have a bunch of 1991 Leaf, but that Sanderson is definitely an addition to my Angels cards.

I also got some cards from when I was not collecting at all.  Any cards I have from the 2000s I have gotten from re-packs or from generous bloggers like Jeff here.  Erstad and Molina were both products of the farm system and key contributors to the Angels only World Series champions.  Guerrero on the other hand is (in my humble opinion) indirectly responsible for the mess the Angels are in right now.  He was a great signing for Arte and won an MVP.  But that has led to the Angels signing more free agents who haven't been as good, which in turn is weakening  the farm system.....

But I digress.

The best card for me in the PWE was this Tim Salmon, which will find a good home in my Salmon PC.  This is from one of the 14 million sets Fleer produced in 1999 (exaggeration I know.  I collected in the 80's when there was three sets and we liked it).  But its a pretty sharp looking card.

Oh and one other thing.  If you sign up for a mailing list........

....full names people.  Full names.


Thanx Jeff

We Care

Really? Really??

I was just reading a blog post last night (I wish I could remember the blog) about a PWE arriving with a cracked top loader inside.  I thought to myself "That never happens to me, I've had really good luck with the good ol' USPS".

Then I opened my mailbox.

And this came out.  What the heck?  Did the mail truck run over the envelope?  Let's see what's inside

This isn't a good start

Doh!

That was a listia win.  But its okay, because there were 6 cards in the lot I won.  I really only care about 1 of them, and he seems to have come out of it all unscathed.