September Vintage Card Show - Joy of a Completed Team Set

Aww yeah. Team Set Wednesday. All ready to post a team set. But wait! I have a request from a reader! Scan all the backs of the cards! Because reasons! But that's a lotta work and I'm lazy. But I've only got about 3 readers left and I don't want to piss off a third of my fanbase. How am I going to get the hell out of this one?

Screw it. Posting a Vintage Card Show pickup instead.

Here's "Eddie" Miller of the Boston Braves Bees Braves. Well, he's a Bee on the card but the Bees were back to being Braves by 1941 when this card was released. Not sure why "Eddie" is concidered a nickname with the guy's name is Edward but Play Ball had a nickname gimmick going on and they stuck to it like glue. This is a pretty nice looking card for one that's 72 years old. If you get to be 72 years old and and you're only a little right of center with a few spots and wrinkles here and there you're doing pretty good for yourself. It does kind of look like he got the sunburn Richard Dreyfuss got in Close Encounters of the Third Kind though. People just didn't know to use high SPF lotion when witnessing alien beings back then.

And look at this! It's card #1! It's the Andy Pafko of Play Ball! Ok, there were two other Play Ball sets before this one but it's the first one in color. There were two Topps sets before 1952 Topps too so there. Eddie was a decent little player back in the day that no one remembers at all anymore. Seven time All-Star and picked up some MVP votes here and there in the '40s. Had some WARs and such if you're into that sort of thing too. Nice pickup, eh?

BUT WAIT THERE'S MOAR

Hey Babe, wanna wrestle? Ok that was inappropriate and I screwed up the quote but I can't help it. Beavis and Butthead have had a signifigant influence in my life. Which explains a lot, actually. But anyway, here's my Babe. Not Ruth, but a Babe nonetheless. It's a little worse for wear than Eddie what with all the creases but when 72 years old you reach, look this good you will not. Hell, I don't look that good now. Babe didn't have quite the career Eddie did, but he had a good 12 year run with an All Star selection for Philly in 1943. He didn't have much of a career for the Braves Bees Braves at all, only playing 44 games with the club before getting sold to the Cubs.

Ah ha, but look on the back! It's the Boston Braves now! Gotta love high series cards! Actually the switchover from the Bees to the Braves came in the middle series* as you can see from the COMPLETED TEAM SET Y'ALL

There's only 6 Beeraves in the set and I got 'em all now SO IT COUNTS. These two cards came as a bit of a surprise. I was actually thinking about dropping this portion of the budget on a single low-priced pre-war card when these two popped up. Just so happened to be the two I needed! Starting to think Roger reads my wantlists.

And here's the backs of 'em all since I scanned them way back when. It's easier to scan the back of one page than it is to scan the back of 30 pages. Pre-war cards should always be scanned front and back anyways.

So question time: You all really want to make me scan dozens of pages again to get the backs or will a list of the card numbers for each set suffice? Tell me quick because I'll need to scan 'em sometime in the next couple of days for the post next week. 

*Note - I'm assuming all this series stuff because the cards were printed on 12 card sheets and there are 72 cards and the last 24 cards are the scarce 'high' series and the first mention of the Braves is on card 25 which would make three series of 24 cards which makes sense even though it's all conjecture and I can't find anything to back it up in other words I just pulled it out of my ass which is the same thing respected journalists do nowadays so that's my story and I'm sticking to it

June Vintage Show Top Ten #6

Real quick one because I'm busy.

1941 Play Ball #24 "Dutch" Leonard

Pre-war, decent shape, TWO BUCKS! blue ink. At least the blue goes with the border.

Did you know there are two Dutch Leonards? At least two... I got the All-Star righty knuckleballer, not the lefty Ty Cobb hater with the .096 ERA. I didn't recognize it when I grabbed the card (basically because pre-war card for 2 bucks) but I already had a card of righty Dutch from the 1953 Topps set. Even though the other Dutch played in the teens and twenties, I happen to have a card of him too... from the 1979 Topps set.

Play Ball - Old and New

Today was a little too hectic to write up my post on the 2003 Play Ball base set, so instead here are some old and new Play Ball cards of some Braves. See if you can tell which are the originals and which are the Upper Deck cards. They're so similar it's SPOOKY.

Tom Glavine - Note that Tom both bats and throws from "From". Also note the hated M-Word on the back of the card.

Chipper Jones - I have literally hundreds, if not a couple thousand Chipper Jones cards, and this is the first time I ever noticed that he is 6'4".

Greg Maddux - 350 wins. Just say it to yourself. Three HUNDRED and fifty WINS. Oh it sounds so damn good.

Andruw Jones - I normally have a nice bit of schadenfreude whenever a player leaves the Braves for more loot and subsequently stinks (see: J.D. Drew), but I really want Andruw to be a Hall of Famer and you ain't getting in the Hall of fame hitting .165. What the hell happened to Druw?

Max West - Slightly above average first baseman for the Braves during The Dismal Period. He was the starting right fielder in the 1940 All Star game and hit a three run homer in his only at bat.

Gene Moore - Another one-time All Star for the Boston Bees. They had to send somebody I suppose. I want to know why his nickname was "rowdy".
Johnny Cooney - Johnny played baseball from 1921 to 1944, and 16 of those 20 seasons in the bigs were with the Braves. He started out as a pitcher, was out of the league in 1931, but returned in 1935 as an outfielder.

Frank Demaree - Frank went from an All Star in Chicago to a backup in Boston. Frank is on the only 1938 Goudey card I own.