Just because you are a character does not mean you have character

Fuji's homework assignment for this week is to show off cards with 'character'. Anyone who had followed this blog for more than 10 minutes knows my collection is chock full of character. I got more characters than Game of Thrones. By throwing a meatball like this right in my wheel house I'm wondering if there's some Ian Kinsler 'breaking the wrong way' All Star shenanigans going on with this contest. I'll take an infield hit if it helps me in my quest for a Kitteh card.

Actually this question is pretty darn tough for me since a large chunk of my vintage collection is full of character by design. This Duke Snider is one of the signature posts of this blog. As is my pride and joy, my 1956 Topps Hank Aaron card that is bent and torn and has a hole punched through Hank's eye that you can see over in the sidebar in my Saul Bass inspired logo. So how can I pick out one card out of a collection chock full of Tiptons? Answer: I won't! Since there's no quality in this post I may as well go quantity. Here's a lucky 13 cards that look like they got whacked with an Ugly Stick.

Here's a T206 card of Hall of Famer Ed Walsh. Do you have a T206 Hall of Famer in your collection? It's pure luck I have this one as I bought it when I was 13 out of a pile of old junky T206 cards for a buck a pop. I had no idea who any of these people were and basically picked all the cards I though looked cool. Basically all these cards were a) stapled to an album b) left out in the sun to fade and then c) thrown into a swamp that was flooding. I didn't care, I just wanted old cards. I'd buy those for a dollar!

Don't remember the ACC designation for this one but it's an old strip card of Hall of Famer Red Faber. This was an eBay pickup if I recall correctly. The kid that first owned this card obviously did not own scissors. Rrrrrrrip! That's the most efficient way to separate strip cards!

Walter somebody here (I forgot to write down the name and left the card in my scanner) played in the Cuban league and earned himself a spot in this Cuban league set. The card is paper thin and 70 year old paper very often ends up with rips.

Here's an old Brave from the 1940 Play Ball set. It looks like Rabbit got shot by Elmer Fudd with a shotgun. I got this card in a large package from a reader many years ago. He requested I keep the Braves I wanted and give/trade away the rest. I'm still trying to get rid of all those cards.

The Babe! Greatest Ever! On a Kellogg's card! 3D! Plastic cards don't hold up well a lot of times.

While this looks like a 1933 Goudey card with red marker on the borders, it isn't. It's actually one-fourth of a 1935 Goudey 4-in-1 card. The kid who owned this card did have scissors.

More Goudey. Here's a specimen from the 1938 set. My first and thus far, still only card I have from that set. Yeah, this one looks rough. Round corners, creases everywhere, paper loss. Typical old low grade card. But see the chunk of paper missing on the cap? That happened when I got the card in the mail and accidentally got the card stuck to the team bag it was in while unpacking it. It was not the first time I'd done that and probably won't be the last.

Here's an old one! This card is from the 1886 Allen & Ginter Natives in Costume set. You might recognize the bottom design from the 2010 Allen & Ginter set. According to the auction listing when I bought it, this card and many others were actually nailed to a chest by the seller's grandmother or aunt or something. I've seen plenty of thumbtack holes in cards, not so many nail holes.

I probably showed this one off before but Pinky Hargrave with full Van Dyke and his Goudey bottom trimmed off is too good not to mention again.

Whoops, yes I did show it off before. Too bad, you'll see it again and like it.

OH GOD WHAT IS THAT HORROR. Here's another original Allen & Ginter card. Many of these cards were pasted into albums way back in the day. Not so many of them were pasted into the Necronomicon with glue produced by boiling down the corpses of unbaptized babies under the light of a full moon. Just so you know, the front is as pretty as the back is ugly.

This one might be my favorite of the bunch. Someone decided to 'blind' this umpire card by punching holes through the poor man's eyes. Unfortunely the dude MISSED. This is a super tough 1955 Bowman high series card too of course. That kid couldn't possibly have tried to blind a low number card noooo.

So on this one I was rushing and cut off the scan AND forgot to rotate the photo. Trust me, none of that would help on this one. See that pink square in the middle? That is the death mask of a stick of vintage 1952 gum. This gum refused to go gently into that good night and did the chewing gum equivalent of Chernobyl. The thing completely melted down and infused its sugary glop right into the card itself. The whole card is bumpy and crusty and stiff and utterly disgusting.

I'll bookend this post of cards in horrible condition with another T206. When I bought the Ed Walsh I got a whole mess of T206 cards from the same pile over the course of a few trips to the card shop. out of all those I got this was the lone Boston Brave or Beaneater or Rustler or whatever they were called in 1909. This was actually one of the better ones I got. No paper loss, the color is decent where it isn't all faded to hell, there's a spot of something on his cheek but it kinda looks like a Cindy Crawford mole, all in all not bad for a hundred year old card. What's that? The gigantic vertical crease going right down the center of the card? Oh yeah I kinda did that. I was scanning the card a while back, accidentally dropped the scanner lid on top of it and bent it right in two. Yep, I'm a clumsy moron! Good thing I'm not a stickler about condition, eh?

January Vintage Show Top 20 - #9 '54 Ford With a Beat Up Chassis

Yyyyyyyeeeeaaaaaahhh... There ain't no way I'm going to post all these things before the card show this weekend. I'll just accelerate my pace of one card every 4 weeks. Here's one of the things I love the most: a 1954 Topps card of a Hall of Famer in absolutely dreadful condition.

One thing that '54 Topps did really well was balance the small action photo with the larger portrait photo. That is not the case with this card. Topps balanced TWO action photos beautifully on this card! The large posed color action shot of Whitey about to pitch perfectly frames the small posed black and white photo of his follow through. It even looks like tiny Whitey is stepping off the O in his big color jersey. It's beautiful! Ok, it looks like a middle school scrapbooking project that was done the morning it was due, but that's the true beauty of 1954 Topps. Pretty much all the cards look like that.

Let's parse the back here a bit. First of all "Whitey's" name is put in "quotes" no less than "two" times. Topps could have called him "Edward" but no one has ever called "Whitey" Ford "Edward" ever, not even his "Momma". So if any of you all think "unnecessary quotations" are a "recent invention" then you should "think again".

The stats on the back confused me at first. Whitey Ford had as many walks as strikeouts? A WHIP pushing 1.5? Then I realized this was his first full year as a Yankee starter. This is actually his third year card, preceded by issues in 1951 and 1953.

A few observations about the cartoon. First, in 1949, Whitey played in Binghamton, not Kansas City. He wasn't in Kansas City until 1950, the year of his Debut with the Yanks. The sleazy looking Yankees executive in the second panel may be Yankee GM George Weiss. I thought about making a "Whitey" joke here but thought better of it. Look up George Weiss, you'll figure it out. The last cartoon panel is fantastic. You wouldn't think a baseball on the shoulder and a whoosh line would effectively convey a batter striking out badly, but in this case it somehow does.

I think I picked this one up for five bucks. That's going to be my default price for anything I can't remember since I know I picked up quite a few superstar cards for five a pop. If you think that's not a great price for a card in this crummy condition, check out this:



That sucker is listed for $58.50.  Aww yeah, I did good.

Here's the complete list of Top 20 posts. See if you can guess what cards are coming up!

#20 - Wantlist Fail Part 1
#19 - Dollar Box Gem
#18 - At Least He's a Hall of Famer Now
#17 - Thurman Inaction
#16 - Cocktail Hour
#15 - Kid Stuff
#14 - Clubbed Cub
#13 - Cheapest High Number I Could Find
#12 - '59, Dude!
#11 - Look at the Whistler
#10 - Heartbreaking Taunt
#9 - '54 Ford With a Beat Up Chassis
#8 - King of the Bums
#7 - Joy of a Completed Page
#6 - HOW THE HELL IS THIS NOT IN THE TOP FIVE?!?!
#5 - Oh, because this one is...
#4 - Awwww, come ON.
#3 - Admit It, You Knew This Was Coming
#2 - Wantlist Fail Part 2
#1 - Feat of Clay

1956 Topps Hank Thompson

It's draft folder Friday! Check out this awesome 1956 Topps Hank Thompson card!

I got this card for a BUCK! How the heck can you get a great looking card like this for only a buck??

OH. That's how.

1953 Topps Elroy Face

When I went to the card show my #1 priority was to get as many inexpensive 1953 Topps short prints as I could manage. There were quite a few in the bargain bin for $5 or less the last time they were in town so I hoped to snag a few. Unfortunately the cheap ones were mostly gone, replaced by better looking but more expensive examples. I made the call to pick up as many cheapo fillers as I could this go around and save the pricey ones  for later. Roy here had two different versions of his card. A G/VG copy that retailed at 25 clams, or this one with slight alterations for a fifth of the price. This one has more character anyway. I like how Roy is looking suspiciously towards the now-missing border wondering what the hell happened over there.

That has to be the best cartoon in the entire set.

What is this card doing in a quarter box

1972 rookie card!!!

Of James Rodney Richard!!!!

Oh wait, that's why.

But it just makes it look better!

Random Vintage Brave #4

I've had my fantasy vintage shopping spree, now for a dose of cold hard reality.

Ain't it BEE-YOOU-TEE-FOOL???

I don't know what the hell happened to these things but I bought a whole mess of 'em in the '80s that all looked like this. 80% of the front was washed out, all four corners stapled or something, round corners, dirty, a mess. And out of all of them I got this was the only Brave. I'm not sure if I was too young to grok that Boston - Natl meant the Braves back then or if they stunk so bad I just didn't care. Anyway, Ginger Beumont was the only Brave I got gtom back then and the big crease in the center you see was created by me when I had a mishap with the scanner last year  while getting an image for another post. Whoops. I think it might have gone up a grade though so no worries.

Two things I noticed about the back when comparing them to a 2009 Topps206 Piedmont back. Besides squishing the shield a bit to fit in the legalese and replacing "Cigarette" with "Brand", whoever drew the thing got lazy and didn't do the shadow effect. I'll have to doublecheck a 2002 T206 and see if they did it there too. Also the original is just slightly larger than the newfangled ones. Only by less than a millimeter or so but it's noticable. I wonder if the 2002 minis have this problem? Dammit now I'm going to have to do another post. There are rumors of a 2010 Topps206 set being prioduced for no goddamn reason so there's another back to scrutinize. Fix your backs, Topps! And Bring back Topps Total! I know you're out there, you're following my Tweets!

Strip card

This is a 1923 W515-1 strip card of Red Faber, pitcher for the Chicago White Sox:

Red is a Hall of Fame pitcher who played his entire career with the Sox. Red won the World Series in Chicago in 1917 and played on the 1919 Black Sox team. A case of the flu changed history as Red was a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic causing him to miss the 1919 World Series. As a result, his starts went to Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams. Stupid flu. GET YER FLU SHOTS, KIDS! Don't think Red wasn't up for a good cheatin' though, he was the second to last pitcher to legally use the spitball.

The card is actually in pretty decent shape other than the utterly mauled left edge. Here's another W515 card from one of the coolest blogs ever.

Hrm. I thought I'd have more to say about this strip card. But I don't.

So here's Adam Ant.



What, you expected something different?

The Allen Ginter Project: Card #7 - N4 Birds of America

Here's the seventh card I picked up for my Allen and Ginter Type set, Osprey from the N4 Birds of America set. It's pretty beat up, has a tape or glue stain on the back and a massive crease that broke the paper and caused a large chunk to fall off the wing. I picked it up from eBay seller lakotainc, who has a neat variety of tobacco cards and tags, some knicknacks, gum staler than you could ever imagine, and ancient toiletries including some extremely old condom tins with the original contents. A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.


I wrote in my last post that this card exhibited three desirable qualities.: a) cheap b) cool looking c) available to buy. You can look at it and see it is definitely b. Paper loss aside, it's a really cool painting of a shrieking bird snatching a very surprised fish that's almost as big as itself. It's the very first combo card, featuring a bird of America and a fish of America. There's not really any birds in this set I had to have anyway, an eagle would be nice but expensive, a carrier pigeon would be nifty for the historical value, but there's no falcons or thrashers in there. There is a swallow tailed hawk, but it was kind of goofy looking. Basically any good looking card would work for me as far as this set goes.


When I found the auction no one had bid on it and it was late in the game. This is what I mean by available to buy. It's been my experience that if one of these cards has a bid on it, usually there's going to be more. The people who buy these things are vicious too, I've gone from winning a card with 30 seconds left to watching five bids go through that jacked the price up way out of my range. No bids late or even better - a buy it now card - means this card is there for the pickings and you better get it quick. I left a good looking Charles Vane N19 Pirates card go unsold for 5 bucks because I had just won the one I have. The next go around the bids came pretty quickly and I lost my chance. This card was good looking enough for me to pull the trigger, and I ended up being the lone bidder.

Ok, so I've established b) and c) from my list. What about cheap? How much did I pay for this bee-you-tee-ful boid? See for yourself:


$1.99! That's a pack of retail Topps! For a hundred and twenty year old card! Featuring strength and beauty and mountains and violence! And it's a Tipton too, so I increased my beater card cred! Can you guys see why I'm so nuts over these cards now? Two bucks!