Six Years

...I've been doing this. I don't know if I'll make seven. I don't know if I'll get out of bed tomorrow. Honestly this has been a wasted year and I've been some combination of wiped out, sick and depressed for the past four months now. I got a whole big box of cards to scan and post and I JUST DON WANNA DO IT. Maybe the new year will rejuvenate me, maybe it won't. Whatever the case I want to finish just one friggin thing this year if at all possible. Here's the last five cards I got from the May vintage show and never posted. Maybe the last cards from the last show I go to. Pissiness aside, here ya go.

Have a 1949 Bowman Jeff Heath card. Anything before 1950 is relatively difficult to find and this fills out one of the many holes in my vintage Braves team binder. I love the red and blue colors on this card but what is up with the smirk on this dude's face? It looks like he's getting a beej while posing for the photo or something.

1962 Topps Gaylord (snicker) Perry rookie card. While everyone's all in a tizzy about how every single born after this card was printed was a bunch of juiced up cheaters, Mr. Lord took used some different juice to get into the hall. *ptui* This HOF rookie cost me all of five bucks.

First draft of this was deleted for being over the top. The card speaks for itself. There's a reason this is my second-favorite card from the Mars Attacks set.

1971 Thurman Munson! One of the most iconic cards of all time! A card that intimidated me for years and prevented me from collecting the '71 Topps set! Got it for less than a blaster. Haven't bought much vintage since. Still afraid of iconic cards I can get for like, ten bucks online if I just put some effort into it. This is how far I've fallen collecting wise.

The big mamma jamma. Phil Niekro Rookie. And Phil Roof. Fun story: one of the first cards I ever owned was a 1971 Phil Roof that was way miscut that I got out of a junk box when I was about 8 or 9 for a penny. This is the last card I picked out from my last card show. Might be some symmetry there. Maybe not. It's the rookie card of my favorite player when I was a kid so if I do end up riding off into the sunset I'm at least ending on a high note.

Here's to 2013, it can't possibly suck as bad as 2012!

I refuse to make an immature joke in the title of this post.

I got no problem doing it in the body of the post.

HAY GUISE WANNA SEE MAH BALLS???

Of course you do, everyone wants to see my balls. Except my wife. She wants 'em downstairs with the rest of my useless junk. That was like a quadruple entendre there, but I digress. Fuji wants to see my balls, and I want him to give me some pussy, so you're gonna see my balls whether you want to or not.

One of the great collecting feats I've accomplished in my life was getting autographed baseballs from every Brave whose number was retired, not counting Jackie Robinson. This feat has been blown completely out of the water in the past few years since Atlanta is now in the process of retiring the number everyone who was on the team in 1995. But at one point, I had actually achieved this goal. Here's my balls, badly photographed because all my cameras suck ass at the moment.

First autographed ball I picked up ever was this Phil Niekro ball. I was working down in Conyers at the time and there was a little hole in the wall baseball card shop in a strip mall that I would check out from time to time. Lots of cheap Braves singles, not much else. One day they had this ball in the shop for $25. Phil's one of my favorites so I picked it up. I must have gotten this in late '97, since it has the H.O.F. - 97 inscription on it and I left that job that year. I didn't realize until after I bought it that it was an American League ball, but oh well, it's a Knucksie.

In the early '00s I was swimming in money (no kids!) so I splurged on this Eddie Mathews ball. Got this one at BP Sports down in Marietta. It was surprisingly inexpensive for a Hall of Famer 500 home run club auto but still more than I was accustomed to spending at the time. In retrospect, I wish I had taken a tenth of the money I blew on early 'aughts wax and dropped it on stuff like this instead.

The kids started showing up so I was no longer flush with cash. I found this Hank Aaron ball on Yahoo! auctions (anyone remember them?) for $50 and convinced my grandmother to make it my birthday present. The great thing about this pickup is that the card in the plastic case on the right was originally a 1958 Topps Hank Aaron All-Star card. It has since been replaced with the 1994 Topps gold card you see here. These ball stands suck by the way, the card holder broke and it was hard as hell to replace. the ball also falls out constantly unless you scotch tape the holder. Maybe I just got a crappy one, I dunno. The stuff inside the holder was more than worth it though.

Another birthday, another ball. I opted for the Warren Spahn ball this time which was a good thing because Warren sadly passed away the year after I got this one and the vultures came out and jacked the prices up. I also got this one from BP sports. On either the Spahn or the Mathews I forgot to get a COA, but I can't remember which. It doesn't really matter because I can't find the one COA I have anyway. I don't even care anymore because with all the shenanigans going on in the hobby 99% of everything is probably fake anyway. Including the stuff I got signed in person.

Dale Murphy capped off the retired number collection.  I got this one in 2007 for my birthday and was my second to last birthday present that I received from my grandmother. The ball was was purchased from Champion Sports Cards in Kennesaw which is my official LCS. This one is inscribed NL MVP 82, 83. Eventually I will pick up one that reads Dale Murphy - HOF but we'll have to wait for the veteran's committee for that one.

Since I got these balls, Maddux, Glavine, Bobby and Smoltz have gotten their numbers retired. Chipper's gonna get his retired next year. I knocked out these in ten years, you think I can knock out the next five in another ten?

Knucksie Autograph

Quickie post for Fuji, he might take my extra credit point away for this one. I got a splitting headache tonight though and I can't stay up all night writing. He wants to know what my favorite player was when I was a kid. As a Braves fan I had two: Bob Horner for hitting and Phil Niekro for pitching. I honestly liked Horner best. He was a home run hitter (when healthy) and had curly hair and glasses like me. Everyone else could like pretty boy Murphy, Horner was my guy. Then collusion happened and he want to Japan and then to the Cardinals (blecch) and then the knees gave up. I still collect Horner today, but there just ain't that much out there for him. There's a couple of jersey cards (I think I have a patch card), there's a bat card (got that too), I think I have his Fan Favorites autograph and I have a couple of on card autos. I have most of his cards already including the oddball 1978 Coca-Cola card that pre-dated his 1979 Topps rookie. It actually might be a good project to go through my stuff and see how close I am to having every single Bob Horner card ever. A quick look on COMC shows I got most of that stuff already.So nothing really stands out. Sorry Bob, gotta go with Knucksie.

Niekro became a favorite basically due to his 1981 Topps card. I mean, he was a Brave, and our best pitcher and all, but that 1981 card sealed it for me. I probably posted it a half dozen times but I literally have 15 minutes to write this so you'll have to Google it. It shows Knucksie winding up ready to pitch and to a 9 year old who knew nothing of the strange faces pitchers make while in the process of hurling a spheroid at maximum velocity it looked like Phil had a big 'ol smile on his face. Plus the back of the card had a gigantic amount of stats! Phil had more stats than a whole pack full of my other cards! Had I not pulled that Niekro out of a random pack of '81 Topps my favorite Braves pitcher may have ended up being Tony Brizzolara, who knows?

Oh yeah, favorite piece of memorabilia. That's what this post is supposed to be about. Ok, it's right up above. No, that's not a card, although you may recognize the design. More about that in a minute. I got this card about 10 years ago. I don't remember if it was right before or just after my grandfather passed away, but either way my grandmother was moving out of her house to go live with my uncle and she was having a garage sale. Long story short (and because I don't need to be airing dirty laundry on this blog) I was stressed out of my mind, had worked very late the night before and when I arrived early that Saturday morning to help with the garage sale I ended up getting in a huge fight with a family member and stomped off. I drove around for a while trying to cool off (it was easier to do that back when the price of gas started with 1) and I heard on one of the sports talk radio stations that Phil was doing a signing up in Flowery Branch for charity. Hey, why not? My afternoon was clear. I drove from Marietta to Flowery Branch (not a small trip)((I need to cut down on the parentheses)for real) somehow managed to find the place and got two autographs from Knucksie. One on this card and one on a baseball. From what I remember I didn't pay more than about $30 for both.  I got this card here which is about 4"x6" in size, larger than a regular card. The design is based on the 2000 Upper Deck Legends autograph design that he had tweaked a bit and reprinted for his signings. The autograph is fantastic, blue sharpie, strong and readable. Phil also signed a baseball with the sharpie which didn't go quite as well. Who cares? I got to meet Knucksie! A rotten day turned great thanks to a promo on a radio station. Thanks Phil!

Knucksie goes back in time to offer some helpful advice

One good thing about my new found love of sketching is that when things go awry and I can't get a decent post up I can just post a drawing. Here's one I did a few weeks ago about my two favorite knuckleball pitchers. How Phil wearing a late '70s era Braves uniform is giving this advice to a 1968-version Jim Bouton I don't really know. Let's just go with time travel. Phil Niekro is the twelfth Doctor.

Jim:  Oh God, I'm gonna get released. Seriously, what the fuck happened to my fastball?!?
Phil: Dude, try this - trust me

Based on Jim's 1968 Topps card

And Phil's ubiquitous Upper Deck pose

These were done a few weeks ago, so compare with the Mantle to see if I've made any progress. I played it kinda fast and loose with these drawings also. Overall I was happy with them. On the Knucksie I managed to pull off two things that confuse the hell out of me: hands and foreshortening. I'm not as happy with Jim. I really wanted to capture the despair in Bouton's eyes on that '68 card and my eyes lean more toward panic. I compensated by adding some cartoony flop sweat to Jim to get the point across. That '68 card just struck me when I saw it in my Archives binder. I wish Jim had gotten a '69 Pilots card to replace that as his final Topps card. One thing I still can't draw worth a flip is stupid hats. I'm so sick of drawing baseball caps I'm ready to exclusively draw cards from 2010 Topps205.

Card Show Top 20 - #7 Super Chief

Moving right along, the #7 card scrounged at the Freedom card show from several months ago is a three for one special. These cards are bigger so it's only fair. Actually, these cards aren't cards so it's not fair at all. Unfairness in blog posts!!! Actually, true unfairness is everyone and their sister ripping Gypsy Queen right now while my local Target doesn't even have crappy Attax yet. Boooooooo! Speaking of really really unfair, the Braves have 5 short prints in 2011 Roma Royalty. I'll just watch other people have their fun and catch up on the posts while the thunderstorms roll in to kill us all. Normally I would make a morbid joke about how if I don't post again tomorrow you'll know I got wiped out by a tornado but I've been posting erratically lately so I don't want to tempt fate. Or risk anyone not even noticing. Do I have any readers left? Yeah, there you are! I ran off all the weak ones. All you cool people with fortitude, check out the goods:

Knucksie! On a very thin glossy oversized black and white card! Silly person, this isn't a card at all! It's a team promo photo of some type. Or maybe from a team photo pack. I'm not 100% sure and I'm not spending a lot of time figuring it out either. It's a cool old black and white photo of one of my favorite players of all time. Probably from around 1969 or so. How do I know that?

It was in a pile of similar photos including Cha-Cha here. Orlando was only with the Braves for a short period of time so I'll make a wild-ass guess educated speculation that it's around '69. Got this from the same seller with the crazy dollar box with Sertoma Stars and O-Pee-Chee Deckle Edges and Collectible Card Game cards from 1874 in it. (among other things, I'm not nearly finished with that guy yet) The dollar table had piles up on piles of photos, postcards, credit cards (no, really) and Sportscaster cards. Also a tub of photographic slides. Oh, and these photographs. I almost missed 'em the first time I scrounged through his wares as there was a postcard of Spock from Star Trek on top of them. I almost bought that postcard too, actually. Damn I wish I could go back to that table with a hundred dollar bill in my pocket. The stack of Braves photos were mostly of lesser known players but I was able to track down these two Hall of Famers among the scrubs. The  photos were not all from the same year either, I recognized a couple that I got back in the '80s that were leftovers from an autograph signing at a  card shop. Oh yeah, I also got one more...

CHIEF

NOC

-A-

HOMA

I might have to rethink these rankings. This might be the second most incredible thing I got at the show. It's not the best, though. You'll have to wait for that one. If the tornadoes don't get me first!

The Top 20 List:

#20 Reds' Heavy Artillery

#19 Blue MadDog

#18 Lil' Jimmy

#17 Real Fake '52

#16 First Topps

#15 Bogus Boog

#14 V103 Tree

#13 Sertoma Rico

#12 '55 Finishers

#11 Hey Shiny

#10 What the Dickens

#9 '60 Spahnnie

#8 Lonely '53

#7 Super Chief

#6 Original Frank

#5 Hoops Inspiration

#4 Rocket Robin

#3 Wizard Off Kilter

#2 Shenanigans Were Called

#1 The Holy Grail of Commons

6 in 30 - Five Dollar Binder

Every so often Atlanta Sports cards sells binders full of sheets and cards for five bucks that were likely picked up in a large collection purchase. This is just fine and dandy as I am constantly on the lookout for cheap binders and pages. The actual cards are an afterthought with me. Last time I went to ASC on my lunch break (a couple of weeks ago now, I'm really behind in everything) they had a few and I found a doozy. Normally they are filled up with random junk commons or a crummy football or basketball set from 1992, but I found one with about 8 sheets 2/3 filled with vintage commons from 1972 and 1974. They were selling similar cards in their quarter box so the '74s alone would have cost more than the rest of the binder. There was a lot of neat stuff in there actually, some football, some junk wax star cards, a bunch of hockey and even some golf and Desert Storm cards. Here's 6 in 30 to memorialize the binder before it gets cannibalized for my Obak set and Yo Momma cards.

1974 Topps Rookie Infielders

There were a bunch of neat early '70s cards including a couple of Braves and a Frank Tanana rookie, but I didn't even notice this Frank White rookie until my final flip through the binder.

1974-75 O-Pee-Chee WHA Checklist

I've never even seen a WHA hockey card, but there were two of the checklists in the binder. This one is kind of jacked up with the wax stain and the diamond cut, but the other one is GEM MINT baby. I wish I had some WHA cards so I could check it off.

1986 Topps Dave Winfield All-Star

Ever since I got that '76 Winfield from Troll, I've been mildly obsessed with Dave to the point where I've been making a point of checking for his rookie when I hit a card shop. I almost bought a '75 mini Winfield at the flea market last weekend but there was a bad ding on the left side and the guy was talking about book value the whole time I was there.

1987 Phil Niekro

This was the very last card I needed to finish my '87 Topps set. I already had about a half dozen of 'em but they were in my Braves collection (Knucksie is ALWAYS a Brave, regardless of uniform) and not in my set. Silly, no?

1990-91 Topps Doug Gilmour

One of my favorite all-time SportsCenter commercials is where Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick are talking about tough guys in sports while applying makeup in the restroom. "Mark Messier's tough... Doug Gilmour's tough..." This card reminded me of how nice this set is. Maybe I should drag it out of mothballs and see if I can finish the thing.

Topps Desert Storm Canada Sticker

The Desert Storm cards more than anything else dates this binder to about 1991. Only then would people actually put these things in pages. Among the numerous cards of tanks and planes, I got a General Stormin' Norman and a few flags. After pondering deeply (well not too deeply, there was a time limit here) I went with the flag. Gotta love the Leaf.

Just Like a Mini Mall

This was Flea Market Weekend again, and I walked away with a very nice haul indeed. I hit two dealers. The kickass awesome best flea market guy ever who only comes to the market every other month or so and the baseball card museum guy who is there every weekend. I'm going to show off what I got slowly over the course of the week to give you all some breaks from the Gintermania.



Some stuff seen & heard at the mini mall:

My buddy Steve was back at the flea market for the first time in weeks after a long illness.

The Sports Card Alley dealer pulled a Hiroki Kuroda Rip Card out of a pack of '09 A&G. He didn't know what the heck to do with it, I suggested the flashlight cheat trick.

Some yahoo yelling out "Obama Yo Momma!"

The Baseball Card Museum Director showing off a bunch of photos he took during Spring Training 1974 that he took to a one hour photo near the ballpark and got them all signed that same day. I remember Ken Clay was one of the guys who signed, but I can't recall the rest.

One of the other dealers was playing a guitar every few minutes trying to sell the thing. One guy came up to him and requested "Clementine". There was then a five minute conversation with the guy trying to explain to the seller what the heck Clementine was and I wanted to scream "PLAY THE HUCKLEBERRY HOUND SONG YOU DOPE" so bad it hurt.

Another dealer had what appeared to be a complete 1992 The Wiz Yankee Legends set in full unripped perforated sheets. I was too scared to ask how much it was, but I looked at it longingly for quite a few minutes.

A quite impressive vintage poster of Bettie Page.

A dude who sounded exactly like Unknown Hinson. I seriously thought I was going to get to meet the King of Country Western Troubadours but alas, it wasn't he.

Here's the stuff I got from Baseball Museum guy:

More Fleer Basketball Stickers

FleerFan had a request for some more basketball stickers. I think I was able to complete a couple of sets for people today.

I didn't want to just get the stickers so I shuffled around the boxes in the store. There was a non-sports box full of crazy stuff including a Vaughn Bode promo card I wish I had bought now. I found a football grab bag that looked interesting but it's too early for football. Maybe in a couple of weeks. In one of the cases was an autograph of Gil Hodges which looked incredible. I found the 1979 Topps Don Sutton card I need for my set, but it was two bucks and had a crease. Then I saw this in the Phil Niekro section.

It is very rare that I see a Knucksie card that I've never heard of before, but this was one of them. It's black & white (obviously) is playing card size with rounded corners and has the braves cap and logo so is apparently licensed. It's a 1981 First Issue, but first issue what? Here's the back:

It's some sort of game card. this one gets you a double. I'm not sure what the 9 indicates but it probably has something to do with the gameplay. The card has a logo: Batter up! by Frank Daniell. I couldn't find anything about the card or set in my SCD catalog. I also tried Googling and Binging it and still didn't find anything about it. I did find a batting cage in Woodstock I hadn't kn0wn about before so it wasn't a total loss. It's still a pretty cool oddball card though. does anyone have any information on it?

I Hate College Basketball

Here I am, catching up on the blogs and listening to Built For Speed on Album 88, and WHAMMO. Georgia State basketball comes on and ruins my afternoon. No Rockabilly or Funk for Dayf today. Sadness.

Hmm. I guess this post didn't have much to do with baseball cards did it. Ok, now it does.

'76 Knucksie courtesy Matt P. who also sent a bunch of other Braves and a couple American Heritage cards I needed. Thanks Matt!

Card Of the Week 12/01/08

Ok, time for Card of the Week. This is a card I got two weeks ago on the 15th. That was Free Admission Day at the Braves Hall of Fame & Museum. Admission to the museum was gratis and there was a free tour of Turner Field included. Five minues in I really, really wished I had bought a cheap disposable camera because the tour was pretty fantastic. The first half of the tour was basically a sales pitch for tickets as out guide showed off the Coca-Cola Sky Field, the "Used to be Lexus Level but is now sponsored by a Casino" expensive seats and finally a $250,000 a year luxury suite. It was quite luxurious as a matter of fact. After that was the good stuff.

Once we were done with the seating, we headed to the press box. the radio booth was a pretty nifty setup with wires everywhere. The TV booth was about three times the size with all sorts of lockers and equipment. A very large picture of Skip Caray got me choked up a bit. From there we snaked down into the guts of the stadium past the ump's locker into the player's section. Right past the trainer rooms and a tabletop shuffleboard game were the closely guarded lockers. They apparently like games down there, there are supposedly very heated Connect Four tournaments going on throughout the season. The locker room looked amazing, everything is wood paneled. I think the guide said that the wood was the same stuff they made bats out of. Whether that's maple or ash is up for debate I suppose. Chipper's locker is on the right when you look in underneath on of the TV monitors that are installed in the walls. I looked for, but couldn't find McCann's. The guard gave you the stink eye if you leaned in too close and there was a line of people behind me so I got a good look at Chipper's locker and moved on. After that, we got to go out on the field and check out the dugout. We could do whatever we wanted in the dugout and wander around the dirt but the grass was verboten. The guide told us there were snipers up in the bleachers ready to take out anyone messing with the expensive grass. I'm pretty sure I caught a glint off of a scope up in section 316, so I believe him.

The museum is pretty amazing by itself. There's an actual Pullman car used by the Milwaukee Braves for traveling that you can walk through and sit in the seats. Part of the dugout from Atlanta Fulton County is in there too, which features the uniform Rafael Belliard wore when he hit his second home run. You can see in the postcard above the Championship Trophy, a display of Braves in The Hall of Fame and a row of lockers stuffed with memorabilia in the museum. The coolest thing in my opinion is a display of old style uniforms throughout the Braves' history. There's some really odd ones in there like the purple and yellow Boston Bees uniform and the shiny satin unis worn in the 40's. I've never actually paid to go to the museum and tour, but if you're ever in town it's well worth it. I'll be going again myself as soon as I get my good camera working.

You know I couldn't go do something baseball related without getting cards, right? Well, in this case, card. I got this lone 2008 Upper Deck Phil Niekro card at the gift shop. I almost went for the brick of random Braves cards but the 12 dollar price tag scared me away. I still paid way too much for this even though I got something else with it in the package.

Anyone recognize this card? The photo looks familiar that's for sure... The card is from Upper Deck and was released in 2008. Anyone want to make a guess as to what it is? I'll give you guys some time to chew it over and tell you what it came from tomorrow.

Ok, good guesses in the comments. Here's what it is:

Knucksie's got a Corvette! I paid way too much for it (and I didn't get two packs of Upper Deck) but hey, it was free day and I could afford it. Sadly, there was no Chipper Vette but they had Teixeira. Blech. Maybe Chipper will get a Mustang in '09.

78 Topps Cards

Do you like 1978 Topps cards like this one?

Sure, we all do! Wouldn't it be great if there was a place to go to check out all those 1978 Topps Cards we all love? It sure would! I have 129,478 Topps Cards in my collection and I like my 1978 Topps cards best of all. Well, I like my '55 Topps cards (78 of them in all) better. And also my Ernie Johnson 1958 Topps #78 card. Ok so it's not my favorite set but it's probably #9. Maybe 7, 8 tops. Cards are my passion and I have to be honest with you all. I still love those 1978 Topps cards though! Boy I wish there was a place we could go to see all those lovely 1978 Topps cards... hey, what's this in the mail?


Well, I certainly am a pimp... I mean, I used to be before I gave all that up and walked the straight and narrow... But I am an honest (ex-)pimp! I do not take bribes! How shocking that 78 Topps Cards would try to bribe be to promote that wonderful, excellent blog! SHOCKING! SO what was the scoundrel going to bribe me with anyway?


Ron Oester?? I would give up my integrity for an '86 Ron Oester card? Just to promote the best card blog on the net about 1978 Topps cards? Well, sir, I have far more integrity than that! What's on the back of this devious parcel?


Glenn Davis? The center for the Celtics? I'm going to besmirch my good name and promote the best new card blog on the internet that deals with 1978 Topps Cards for a fat center for the Celtics? Inconcieveable! Never, I say never, will I plug a blog that so brazenly trys to influence me with trinkets. Wait, there something wedged in between the two cards:

......

One score and ten years ago Topps brought forth on this continent a new set, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that airbrushing is art's greatest achievement.

Now we are engaged in a great collecting crisis, testing whether that hobby, or any hobby, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great blogosphere for that crisis. We have come to dedicate a portion of that interwebs, as a memorial place for those cards with a "Play Ball" Played by Two game on the back. It is altogether fitting and proper that Andy should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this blog. The brave cards, mint and creased, with their 'fros and 'staches, have consecrated it, far above Topps' airbrushers' poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, because we're just talking 'bout baseball cards, but it can never forget Eddie Murray with a rookie cup. It is for us the collectors, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work of the cards that thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored cards we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these packs shall not have been opened in vain—that this hobby, under God, shall have a new birth of set building—and that baseball cards without foil stamping, without serial numbering, without jerseys and gimmicks, shall not perish from the earth.

Did I go over the top a little bit? Just a little? Go check out 78 Topps cards anyway and exersise your vote.