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?

Card Show Top 20 - #9 '60 Spahnnie

After spending several hours trying to figure out what the heck that Charles Dickens card was, it's nice to show off a card that I know exactly what it is. BEHOLD:

1960 Topps Warren Spahn

This was the priciest card I bought at the show. Ten whole smackers for Spahn. An entire Hamilton for the lefty. This was in the bargain box too. The vintage seller had apparently picked up a pile of Hall of Famers in crummy grade condition and was blowing them out. I had a my eye on a couple in a case full of of the scratch & dent sale cards before I found Warren hiding among a bunch of 1960 Topps cards. You can see it's in perfect shape. Corners round enough to have been made by a compass. All the gloss perfectly buffed and scrubbed off. A nice little crease going perfectly through the face of the black and white Warren photo.  Perfectly awful, but perfect nonetheless.

1960 Topps is one of my favorite sets ever. One of the reasons for this is due to a bunch of '60s I bought when I was a kid. The card shop I used to go to in the '80s had bricks of older cards for sale and I'd usually pick a few up. There were usually a bunch from the '70s and a few from the '60s. Remember, in the mid-'80s cards from 1969 weren't even 20 years old yet. It would be like buying a brick of cards from 1997 today. I built a good chunk of my vintage collection through these bricks of commons. Generally, the cutoff for bricks was about 1964. I got a ton of '64 cards in that brick box. Not so many from '63 and earlier, if any. One time though I found a brick of 1960 Topps in there. There were about 50 cards, Wally Moon was probably the biggest star in the lot and they were all in terrible condition. I friggin loved those cards.

Think of any kind of horrible thing that could happen to a card and it happened to one of those cards in that brick. Here's a partial list:

• Massive crease right in the middle of the card - Wes Covington
• Creases everywhere - Faye Throneberry
• Tear in the card - Dick Hyde
• Hole punched through the card - Ray Sadecki
• Paper loss - Larry Sherry
• Paper stuck to the back - Walt Dropo
• Miscut - Del Rice
• Corner nibbled by mouse - Gary Peters
• Written on, then erased his face - Tony Taylor
• Wax Stain - Chuck Tanner
• Water/Mildew stain - Jim Gilliam
• Unidentified gunk - Glen Hobbie
• Tape stains all over the front - Gene Green
• Run over by a truck - Bob Nieman 
• Dissolved in acid - Jim Coker

The best thing about destroyed cards is there is no disincentive to playing with them. What the hell could I do to these cards that hasn't already been done? I couldn't just play around with my hallowed 1956 cards or the 1972 cards that actually had corners on them, but these things I could fling across the room and actually improve their appearance. Combine this lack of fear with the awesomely colorful design, goofy closeup pictures and sweet team logos and this was the most fantastic set ever. So now, if I see a 1960 Topps card is in crummy condition it brings back great memories. How could I pass up the Spannie?

Here's the back, complete with bonus scuffs. Oh, it's 1986 all over again... I do regret one thing about this card. I didn't realize the comic would be so utterly fantastic.

@\/\/\/\!! 

DEM

BUMS

!

Does anyone have a better scan of this? This might have to be my new title image.

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

The Joy of a Sell Sheet Get

You know how when you look a a sell sheet for an upcoming product, and there's a really kickass card on there, and you really want that card, and then you finally track down that sucker? You know how good that feels?

Yeah, I feel like that right now.

Also: a comparison for comparison's sake

Topps Cereal Box ($9.99)

46 base cards
1 Yo Mamma card
1 History of the Game
1 Turkey Red
1 Lineage
1 Peak Performance
1 Tales of the Game
1 When They Were Young
1 Million Card Giveaway code
1 ToppsTown code
1 Shiny crome refractor bonus
TOTAL: 56 cards

Two Topps Rack Packs ($9.98)
59 base cards
2 Yo Mamma cards
2 Turkey Reds
2 Lineage
2 Peak Performance
1 When They Were Young
2 Million Card Giveaway codes
2 ToppsTown codes
TOTAL: 72 cards

Use this knowledge wisely.


One more thing: the next post on this blog will be the video of my Obak box rip. If I never post again, you will know that I am a lazy, lazy man who has still not uploaded the video.

Ziploc cards

Cardboard Mania has a poll up right now asking what is the best card set of 2008 now that we're at the midpoint of the season. As I looked over the list I realized something: I AM COMPLETELY BORED WITH THIS YEAR'S PRODUCTS RIGHT NOW. A third of the products are out of my price range, a third are flat out ugly and the last third I've been focused on for about 6 months now. I mean, Upper Deck is a great looking set, and so is Heritage, and even Topps is a decent set despite the flaws, but come on already, I'm really starting to get sick of them. It doesn't help that the dollar brand products are almost exact duplicates of base UD and Topps. Oh what I'd give for a Bazooka or a Topps Total or a UD Victory right now. Or, hello? Lets get some Donruss back up in here! I guess Goudey and Allen & Ginter are approaching fast, but right this second I'm wracked with ennui. There is of course a surefire cure for the base set blues and that's ODDBALL CARDS.

Here's a couple of great oddballs to help pass the time. These are cards that were inserted into packages of Ziploc bags. The copyright date says 1992 but the design screams 80's. The three sizes too big corporate logo, the primary colors, the generic font, the three stars for no readily apparent reason... that's a quintessential '80s design there. It's definitely from 1992 though, I remember seeing the packages advertising them in the stores back then. Too bad a broke college student with a dining hall pass had no use for Ziploc bags and no money with which to pay for them at any rate. No worries. I got these two for a buck, which is less than a pack of bags cost anyway.

If I could chose any battery throughout history to start a team with, it would be these two. The Greatest lefty and the greatest catcher of all time. This is where Joe jumps in screaming Johnny Bench. Johnny bench is a great, great, wonderful catcher, but he is not a Zen Master and Spiritual Leader for our times. Yogi called a better game too, he coaxed a perfect game out of Don Larson fer crying out loud. Besides, I'll take this single Geico commercial over all of the Baseball Bunch.

The backs are pretty sweet too, lots of text to read and best year and career stat lines in elegant two color print. Ahhh, so refreshing... Oddball cards, thank you for taking me away from all the new product drudgery!

Card of the Week

Or the month, depending on when I get my act together and post something new.

Cardboard Junkie's inaugural card of the week is the card I've been wanting since I first saw the Distinguished Service insert set in Series 1 Topps, Warren Spahn.

Baseball's winningest lefty almost ended up with a lifetime record of 0-0. After a cup of coffee with the Braves in 1942, Spahn entered the military into an engineering unit. Spahn's unit was involved in the Battle of The Bulge and was instrumental in keeping the Ludendorff Bridge up long enough for US troops to cross it into Germany. The Bridge collapsed after several German efforts to destroy the bridge, killing 28 engineers. Spahn narrowly avoided this fate and was awarded a battlefield commission. Spahn returned to the Braves in 1946 to begin a 19 year run with the team. Spahn would anchor the Braves' pitching staff and lead the team to 3 world series appearances including a victory over the Yankees in 1957.