Transmogrified into being: 1958-1972

This post puts the 2010 Transmogrifier to bed. There's a couple of cards I redeemed that I never showed like a 2005 Brian Jordan card, but I don't think anyone's going to miss not seeing that one. Here's the good stuff. The oldy moldy stuff! The stuff I couldn't get to save my life this year! I redeemed three die-cuts, but not one damn card older than 1967. I could trade the die cuts for random commons from 1960, but I'm still trying to get my J-Hey that I foolishly passed up due to greed. Other than the die-cuts (which I admit, are nice) out of 43 cards I've gotten exactly 7 that I actually need. I'm trying to trade some off for needs but it's going very poorly right now. I might need to do a "Take my cards - please" post in the near future. Here's last year's goodies.

I'm pretty much an iconoclast when it comes to card tastes, but I still don't understand why no one seems to like this set. Ok, so it's extremely low-fi and looks like it was created by a 5 year old for a kindergarten art project. That's why it's awesome! DIY! Outsider art! Punk rock, baby*! Besides, it has a bunch of pretty colors and you know how I like those.

This card back reminds me that I need to restart the Cartoon posts. Maybe tonight. This week is gonna be rough.

Rookie star! Me likey 1960 Topps. I think the fact that my financial situation in 2009 prevented me from getting several boxes of Heritage that year might have started my slow card collecting decline. It certainly broke me of the habit of buying up random blasters and repack boxes.

This card was in pretty decent shape for a 1960 Topps card but the back is kinda faded. I've seen this on several other cards from this series though. The cards with white card stock are usually pretty bright with strong ink, but the graybacks get fadey like this. Heritage got this right too. 

1969 Topps. One day I will appreciate this set. That day is not today. Give me the Burlap '68s anyday. 

The backs are really nice though . Strong black with a good  shade of pink (unlike '64 Topps - eeeccch) with white in all the right places so you can read everything. This back is a little waxy, but that just lends some authenticity.

'72 Semi-high number! W00t! This card inspired my Ted Zoolander mashup that I would link to if I had any time this morning.

So classy. Best set ever. Other than 1953 Topps. The cartoon is a little small. '53's got 'em beat there. 

This card I was really excited about when I redeemed it. When I got it delivered, it looked like the UPS truck ran over it a few times. Some of you think I'm about to go into a rant about the condition of the cards Topps sent out as redemption, but I'm not. This card is perfect. It accurately represents just what Major League Baseball did to Curt's career. And Bowie Kuhn is in the Hall of Fame. Curt is not. Neither is Marvin Miller for that matter. Yep, this card is perfect and I love it. 

I think in 1952 Topps bought a billion gallons of red ink and spent the better part of four decades trying to get rid of it. In the Sixties, they got cheap and tried to make it last longer by diluting it. PINK. PINK EVERYWHERE.

Ok, here's the crown Jewel of the entire Transmogifier process:

DON MOSSI. 

Only he can make the 1961 Topps set look good.

Now that's a hell of a cartoon. Stealth perfect game by Don! Because he throws a small ball! I have nothing more to say about this cardboard perfection.

Now back to the drudgery that is the Transmogrifier Mark 2. Someone accept a trade! PLEASE!

*You can't get much more DIY than an 8-bit version of a Minuteman song.

Transmogrified into being: 1973-1980

I'm just about at the point where I'm going to give up on the Transmogrifier Mark 2. I should have not been greedy and taken the offer with the J-Hey card in it for my Strasburg. I'm not buying any more packs now that I have the Diamond Factory set so no more codes for me. I can't even get into the site unless I'm surfing in incognito mode for some reason. I open the site in Chrome and I get the Be Back Soon message. Incognito, I can log right in. Methinks it's time to do some maintenance on the ol' laptop tonight.

I waited until the last possible minute to have my stuff shipped last year and I'll probably do the same this year. I still haven't shown off all the cards I redeemed from 2010, so let's get that out of the way before getting some new cards shipped. The original plan was to show these off individually with condition commentary on each, but that went out the window six months ago. Time to post 'em and move on with our lives.

I might have redeemed this one even if I didn't already need it. Behold the exquisite brilliance of this card.

Astros Orange Rainbow uni - check

'70s hair with sideburns - check

Flapless catcher batting helmet - check

Blue sky with fluffy clouds - check

Bonus unshaved chin - check

Epic 'stache - check.

One of these days I have got to complete this set. I'm not even close right now. Maybe if I took all the money I blow ripping Topps packs trying to pull code cards I would be able to buy a complete set or five. 

I redeemed all the Braves in my collection whether I needed them or not so they wouldn't be lost in the Aether forever. That ain't happenin' this year. I'm half tempted to offer up everything in my portfolio for a '87 Wade Boggs just so I can abandon it. 

Mexican League stats on the back! Gotta love that. This card wasn't in bad shape if I remember correctly. 

La Grande Orange! 1980 Topps is another set I just need to buy outright and quit fussing around with trying to pick up commons here and there. Along with 1981 Topps. And 2012 Topps. 

Colt .45's in the stat lines! Fantastic. I can't believe the Colt .45s are going to be an American League team. So, here are Bud Selig's accomplishments as commissioner in summary:

• Turning an interim Commish job into a two decade gig - Nice one
• Cancelling the World Series - Bad
• Restoring goodwill with the fans after the cancellation - Good
• Doing so by ignoring players getting juiced to the gills inside brand new ballparks with little league dimensions - Bad
• Allowing hallowed records to get ruined in the process - Really Bad
• Letting Congress browbeat you into cleaning up the sport when they had better shit to do - Bad
• Taking it too far with this HGH testing crap - Bad
• Wild Card - Good
• Expanding the Wild Card to two teams one year too late - $@%#!!
• Screwing up the All Star game - Ppppphhhbbbbbttt
• Interleague Play - Good
• Effed up unbalanced schedules thanks to Interleague Play - Bad
• Playing musical Leagues with franchises to position the Brewers in the NL because you're still sore the Braves moved to Atlanta - Eff Ewe, Bud

Fun fact - Barry Bonnell introduced Dale Murphy to Mormonism. If the Hall of Fame won't take Murph, maybe Romney will pick him as his running mate. It'd be better than the last one they picked, that's for damn sure...

Omigosh, is this Barry's rookie card? Hey, he was drafted by the Phillies! I'M LEARNING SO MUCH TODAY!

This one might be better than the Ferguson. 

Horrible red uni with no name on the back- check

'70s hair with sideburns - check

Flapless catcher batting helmet - check

Sea of abandoned stands - check

Glasses! - check

No 'stache. - You were so close, Joe.

Memphis was in the Texas League? Ok, sounds good to me. I wonder who we traded to the Mets for ol' Joe. I'm too lazy to look it up on B-R. You guys do it and report back.

ROWLAND OFFICE ROOKIE CARD!!!!! I need to get on the Diamond site and trade for a couple dozen more of these. 

Red and green back remind me how angry it has made me to see Christmas crap in every single store for the past month. Since before Halloween! Some places before Labor Day!

Best glasses on a baseball card ever. With all respect to Lowell Palmer. I have to get new glasses before the end of the year before my bennies expire, and I'd really like to get a pair like this. They would need to come with a free apartment though because I would get kicked out of the house. Might be worth it. 

"Jim is backup 1st baseman to Hank Aaron"

BUT FIRST IN OUR HEARTS

Happy Birthday Lemmer

Remember when I traded for every single Topps Mark Lemke card in the Original Transmogrifier? Well, I had 'em shipped too. And they've been sitting on my desk waiting to be scanned for several months. Well it's Mark Lemke's birthday today and that means it's time to show off my trading haul. Behold: every single Mark Lemke cards from Topps Base sets.

1989 Topps

The Rookie Card. The Pose that rivals the '52 Mantle. I like the Donruss Rookie better, but Topps didn't give any of those away last year for some reason. This one is pretty perfect too.

1990 Topps

Goodness, 1990 Topps has not aged well. Sophomore Lemmer is stoic inside his frame of moldy green.

1991 Topps

Lemmer would have been the World Series MVP had those dirty Minnesotans not cheated. Three straight years with those yellow stands in the background.

1992 Topps

ACTION LEMMER! Smack that ball! Man, this is such a great looking set.

1993 Topps

This one was a pleasant surprise. Check out the logo on the bottom right corner. For some reason the fulfillment company sent me a card from the Florida Marlin Inaugural Season factory set instead of a base common card. I'm totally fine with this as I didn't already have one. Also note the only appearance of Lemmer's glasses on the front of a Topps card.

1994 Topps

The first Topps base set dripping with glossy coating. Is it just me or have these cards started to yellow over the years like a old timey photo? You could combine the '92-'94 photos on a Sportsflics card to great effect.

1995 Topps

Justice got the homer, Glavine got the shutout, Grissom caught the ball, Wohlers got the save and Lemmer got a ring.

1996 Topps

The cool thing about seeing all these cards all together is that if you flip the '92 and '93 pics you get to see Lemmer smack a triple. A triple that took five years, but that's still faster around the bases than Bream.

1997 Topps

And now Topps finally stations a photographer on the first base side for an at-bat. Even though we can finally see the visiting team's dugout, I can't figure out what team is in there. And that row of turkey drumsticks in the stands... oy gevalt.

1998 Topps

And the last one. Finally we get to see Lemmer playing the field on Topps' first set of the current plastic era. I always liked the looks of this one, even though it sparked a streak of colored borders that got tedious after a while. Even though Topps was not offering traded set cards in the Transmogrifier redemptions anyway, I'm kinda glad there was never a Topps card of Lemmer as a Red Sox. Upper Deck took care of that along with a few other sets and that's enough for my collection. I like seeing Mark playing on just one club for his entire career as least as far as the Topps base set is concerned.

Happy Birthday Mark!

Hey guys, look what I found!

Not even Topps could find this!

Hey Moe! Hey Larry! I got a 1961 Topps Phil Rizzuto MVP card at the vintage show! Wait... That card seems awfully familiar to me. Where have I heard of this card before?

Oh yeah. Here:



And here.



And here. And here. Also here. Not here, but related.

This card was apparently too tough for Topps' fulfillment company to find for the Million Card Giveaway promotion, and it resulted in a bunch of customers having a pretty crummy experience with the Transmogrifier. I just found it in a bargain box for three bucks. From a pretty well known vintage dealer. Someone out there wasn't trying hard enough, or perhaps lucked into a very cheap lot of 1954 Topps commons and figured a way to make the company a little extra profit. I love '54 Topps as much as the next guy (I nabbed a sweet one at the show!) but sending someone a '54 common in place of a Hall of Famer... a Yankee Hall of Famer... a beloved Yankee Hall of Famer... beloved even by fans who HATE the fuckin' Yankees... That... That ain't right, dude. Not cool.

I mean, Bob Turley and Eddie Robinson were pretty good players, but they were never in a Meatloaf song for crying out loud.

Transmogrified into being: My two Dicks

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a very immature post, you should probably just stop reading now. Actually, delete the bookmark to this blog completely, we'll all be better for it.

Back when we could still trade on the Transmogrifier, everybody wanted my Dicks but I wouldn't let anybody touch them. I decided I just couldn't live without Dicks, so I gave Topps some money and they delivered me some fine looking Dicks. Now that I have my Dicks in my hand, let's see how they measure up. Penis.

1969 Topps Dick Bosman

Not in great shape but pretty typical of the cards I own from the '60s. The gloss is scuffed at several spots. All four corners are starting to get rounded. All four edges have at least one ding or nick. There are three small creases, one by his hand, one near his shoulder and one at the top left corner. Centering is off 35-65 on both axis. Even with the flaws it still looks decent as there are no real catastrophic problems with the card. This is your typical garden variety '60s common card.

The back looks great. The orangy-pink is strong, The black ink is bold and there's a kickass cartoon with a racing theme where Dick is driving one of those bullpen carts shaped like a baseball in competitive drag racing competitions. I wonder if Dick drove faster than he could throw?

1967 Topps Dick Kelley 

My other Dick is kinda dirty. All that black schmutz all over Dick's uniform is more wax stains. 1967ers gave a good tip on how to get rid of crusty stuff on your Dick on my last wax-stained post so I pulled out a tube sock, rubbed it off and did a final buffing with a kleenex. Now my Dick is as clean as a whistle. (I warned you right up there at the top but you didn't listen). Even cleaned up - I wonder if this is technically card altering - Kelley is still not in better condition as the Bosman. All four corners are rounded to the point of starting to fray, the edges are dinged, there's a small crease in between the V and E in Braves and worst of all, there's a scuff right on Dick's face. A card can take a lot of abuse and still look good, but paper loss on the player's face is not one of them. It's still in acceptable shape for a card from 1967. I once had a '67 Diego Segui card that had been attacked with a hole punch. That was a sad looking card indeed.

The back is a little dirty and the green is faded, but like the front, it's acceptable. I had this card in my team set already so I was hoping for maybe getting an upgrade. No dice. This one goes in the box with the rest of the '67 commons.

Interestingly enough, both of these cards were acquired through straight code redemptions. I guess Topps just likes giving me the Dick.

Transmogrified into being: 1967 Topps Clay Carroll

I already had this card in my team set, but hey! I might get an upgrade! The card I have has a light wax stain on the front. Let's see how my mogged card turned out.

I have two 1967 cards of Clay Carroll and wouldn't ya know it, they both have gum stains on the front. At first glance it's not a terrible looking card. Corners are soft but not mangled. No creases. Off-center but aren't we all. When you look closely at the gloss on the front, you notice a bunch of little scratches or scrapes. It looks like someone may have grated this card up against something to get that wax off. You have to really look at the card so see it and honestly the wax stains are more distracting.

The back is ok for a card from 1967. It's yellowed a bit like most of the cards from that year that I've seen. Every once in a while I see a really minty fresh card from this year with a blinding white back and my mind gets blown. You mean the backs aren't supposed to be bile green and beige???

Hand Collated kindly took a Red off my hands in exchange for this card. Mr Hand put out a good primer on this giveaway over a month before it went live and he pretty much nailed it. Some of the comments on that post are classics too. I wonder if that kid ever got his Bob Feller?

Transmogrified into being: Team Set Finisher

Here's a nice one for Friday. No crumminess on Friday! I'll save that for next week.

1968 Topps Felipe Alou

Not much to say about the condition of this card. No wrinkles, no creases, no gum, no wax. All the corners while not razor sharp are very nice with no dings. It's slightly off center 65-35, but so is every other card from that year. No other card I received in the Transmogrifier promotion looks as good as this one and that's taking the burlap under a microscope design into account.

This is one of the cards I was specifically targeting while trading because even though this is a low series common card. Ok, minor star maybe. I have had all sorts of problems tracking it down. I couldn't find it at card shops, I couldn't find it at card shows, I couldn't find it a flea markets. I finally was able to swing a trade online for it:

Yep, I traded down from a 1961 card to get Felipe. Why? This is why:

Team. Set. Completion.

Well, technically there's a high series checklist out there with a floaty head picture of Clete Boyer that I don't have (with a variation, of course). I have reached that point in my collecting maturity that I can tell the OCD completist voice in my head to feck off, so it's all good. Team sets are for teams, checklists are for checking.