A Couple Stunners From Card Buzz

Look at this From Card Buzz:

1997 Score Showcase Series #494 Artist's Proof

Is that not one of the most stunning cards you've ever seen?

I sometimesfsometimes that there are some really beautiful cards from the 90's. I tend to lump late 90's in with early 90's cards, blech. But man, Artists Proofs, Museum Collection, and some of the cards from Pacific...awesome.

1994 Fleer Pro Visions #2

I have a love/hate relationship with Fleer Pro Visions. Some of them I really love, and some are just terrible. The 1991 Mark McGwire in front of the American Flag...LOVE. The 1995 Mike Mussina...TERRIBLE. Obviously this one of John Olerud I LOVE.

Trying To Catch Up

Blogging has a been a bit dry lately, but trading hasn't. I've gotten a lot of cards in the mail recently. I've been spending more time on my other hobby, model building, and that has infringed on my time to create posts about trades. I literally have a stack of 13 envelopes of cards I've received from trades the past couple of months. I need to knock these thank-you's out, so I'm combining them into one post. I typically like to show the entirety of the trade but this time I'll need to show only one or two from each trade. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Bump and Run Football Card Blog

Trevor sent a PWE with 13 cards including this 2020 Gypsy Queen Logo Swap of David Fletcher, and this sweet 1995 Pinnacle Drew Bledsoe. He also pulled some cards for my 2009 Upper Deck Set, several more Patriots and a few other Angels.

2. The Chronicles of Fuji

Fuji crammed 17 cards in a single PWE with only one stamp, some kinda new record. The stamp, however, says "Non-Mchineable Surcharge" on it so that probably means it probably cost more that a forever stamp. The Glaus card is a real beauty, the scan does it no justice. There were also other Angels cards and several sweepstakes/info cards.

3. Johnny's Trading Spot

I won a 5-card lot in the May BFG which included this 1989 ProCards Triple A All-Star Game card of former Angel Terry Clark. There were also a few vintage OPC cards as well of players from other teams. Also got another ticket for the big end-of-year game.

4. Johnny's Trading Spot

My June BFG winnings were a 6-card lot of, again, vintage cards. I seem to be a magnet for the vintage card lots. Looking forward to July BFG!

5. The Diamond King

Picked these two Angels cards up from a free-card giveaway that Kevin have regularly. Always fun when someone is offering up free Angels cards I need. Glaus was heavy hitting third baseman for the Halos back in the early 00's, I miss him.

6. Cards on Cards

I think that I picked up this 2016 Donruss Optic Pink from one of Kerry's Free Stuff Fridays. He also threw in a couple other Angels cards in the PWE for kicks.

7. Dime Boxes

Nick had a Free Card Friday as well, and I was able to pick up the magazine card and the Trout card for sure. The Ohtani and eleven other Angels cards were graciously thrown in, and included several Angels parallels, chromes, and refractors.

8. Baseball Cards Come To Life

Bo checked my wantlists and saw that I'm collecting the 1991 Classic Best set. He sent 8 cards towards the set. He also send 6 different baseball cards #444 for that collection as well. Love those #444s.

9. Night Owl Cards

ANOTHER giveaway, but this one was by invitation only. You had to have commented on Greg's blog to get the invite to the free stuff. I selected this 1987 Fleer Game Winners box set, mostly for this Dale Murphy card, but also for the six Fleer Logo Stickers included. I'm collecting the Fleer Logo Stickers sets. There are a few Angels cards in the set as well.

10. Night Owl Cards

Whoop! A 1960 Topps Dodgers card! The 1960 Topps Dodgers team set is one of only two non-Angels team sets I've been collecting. The other is the 1954 Bowman Dodgers team set. I'm also trying to complete this 2012 Topps Pennant Ever Wonder set. These came in a PWE with a handful of other Angels cards, and actually came before the Fleer box set above, as a part of Greg's first mailings in the early days of the Covid scare.

11. The Lost Collector

AJ pulled a few Angels, including this 1995 Topps Cyber Stats Tim Salmon, and several checklist cards, popped them in a PWE with a nice handwritten note, and sent them off to me. The perfect trade.

12. The Collector

Chris goes the extra mile when sending cards. Each of the eight cards in the PWE were in thier own penny sleeve. That works great for me as I was running a little low on penny sleeves. Very glad to have the 1975 Tanana, one of my favorites and the several Patriots cards included. The 1986 Topps Andre Tippett card completes the team set!

13. Cards That Never Were

Jeremy's fat bubble mailer of 46 cards hit just about all my needs: Angels, 2006 Fleer Tradition, Fleer Million Dollar Moments, Topps Ticket to History, checklists, info cards, scratchers, you name it! Lots of great stuff in there. This one will take a chunk of time to organize for sure.

Well, that does it. Took me almost 3 hours to create this post. Glad to finally be caught up.

One Page of Bobby Winkles

This series will highlight "one page" at a time from my binder of correspondence and autographs from former Angels and Patriots players and personnel.

   Bob Winkles Manager California Angels 1973-1974

I sent to Mr. Winkles twice. The first time (top) was sometime prior to 2004, and the second time (lower) in 2005 included the 1973 Topps card. Bobby Winkles just passed away recently in April, he was 90.

Long Overdue TTM From Roland James

Todays mail brings a long lost request home again. Patriots Great Roland James took advantage of Covid home confinement (I'm assuming) and decided to sign and return a couple cards I had sent him in March of 2015.

1989 Pro Set #251

1990 Pro Set #577

For those scoring from home, that's a 1,926 day return.

A 2014 Forever stamp did the trick. Gotta love forever stamps.

Mr. James was kind enough though to also answer a few questions, for which I am very thankful.

You Win Some, You Buy Some

Recent additions from Listia and Ebay.

First up, Listia winnings.

1972 Topps #478b (Large Font)

The difference between the large and small font variations is really hard to tell, but I'm pretty sure this is actually the large font version, even though it wasn't advertised as such.

1986 Burger King All-Pro #12

I ate a lot of Whoppers back in the day in California, unfortunately at the time, these cards were regional to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

1986 Meadow Gold Super Star Series #6

This Beatrice Foods set is completely new to me. Apparently a 2-card panel was printed on boxes of popcycles and ice cream bars, in the West and Midwest. This set is considered one of the toughest regional sets to complete. Very cool.

1985 O-Pee-Chee #63

I don't have many OPC Ryan cards in the collection.

I also won this lot of Dale Murphy cards. These came in an envelope with some pretty cool stamps affixed:

And lastly, an ebay purchase:

This is an oversized promotional card for Topps 1993 Batman The Animated Series cards. You can cut the smaller card if you want, but why would anyone do that?

A super nice addition to the Animated Batman set I'm working.

No Hands In Pockets

Actually it was more like "Get your hands out of your pockets maggot!" When I was in basic training, one of the first things they teach you is that your hands should never be in your pockets. I guess because it might suggest laziness, or idleness, which does not, in any form, exist in the military. In their minds, there's always something that needs to be done, and you should be doing it.

Julie had her second or third Pick Pockets last month, and I was able to get a few cards for my collections, she also threw in a bunch more. So many more that they came in two thick envelopes.

These are the cards I selected from the Pick Pockets pages. I especially like the 1984 Cramer "Bubby" (its actually supposed to be Bobby, maybe Bubby was a nickname?) Cuellar minor league card. The Gulls were an Angels affiliate from 1971 through 1981, then the Mariners. After the '84 season they moved and became the Calgary Cannons.

2017 Topps Rediscover Topps Promo Cards

Needed a few of these for the set.

1994 Upper Deck Fun Pack Scratch-Off Game Cards

This is great because it gets me with one card of completing this insert set. Just need the Astros card.

Julie also sent a large chunk of the 2010 Topps Town set. Though not officially on my want list, this is certainly a nice start to completing this set.

Thanks for the great cards, and for the Pick Pockets!

TTM Returns and Trade Autographs

I don't do a lot of TTM anymore, just a trickle now and then. I saw that Bryan Harvey had been signing cards, and still free, God bless him. So I sent him a couple cards and a nice note asking him some questions about his career and his personal life.

BTW, I will not PAY for an autograph anymore, I don't care how much I might "need" it. I don't blame players for charging for thier autograph, and if the cash is going straight to them, or to a cause that I agree with, I think that's fine. It's when we get into these guys that have contracted with players so that they can get a cut of the signing fee. No. It's taken the fun out of it for me, and the personal correspondance is lost. And that's why I've always collected autographs and sent some questions, for the correspondance with these players. It's just not the same anymore.

I sent these to Bryans home in Catawba, NC and he returned them in 12 days. He decided to not answer my questions, and that's fine.

I used to do a lot of autograph trading on sportscollectors.net but that also had gone down to a trickle the last several years, and actually had pretty much ceased. Another member reached out recently inquiring about an Ed Vosberg signed card he need for his Giants collection. As a result I netted these two cards in the trade:

One of the reasons I stopped traded on SCN for the most part is because, in my opinion, there seemed to be a rash of questionable autographs being traded. I wasn't having confidence that the cards I were receiving were legit, but that they were forged by traders. Again, just my opinion. That's a chance you take with trading autographs, you never really know for sure if they're legit, you have to trust the trader. I'm sure that there are far more genuine traders on SCN (like for this trade) than forgers, I had just started to have some doubts, so I stopped.

Wax Pack Wonderful

I received a very nice, in fact wonderful, trade package from Wax Pack Wonders. The second such trade package from him this year already. It's been an exciting year for trading, but challenging as well trying to keep up with all the packages and PWEs that have been moving. Fortunatley I keep a list of what's come in and what's gone out, so that I'm sure to at least send a return to every trade I get in. I'm about 5 trades behind, but expect to narrow the gap soon.

These are the cards that I found in this oversized package. I had kinda forgotten that he was sending me something that would require oversized packaging, and was very excited when I saw what it was. You'll see a but further down the post.

All new cards for the PCs, no dupes here. Very refreshing to get 9 cards to add to the HAVE list.

1989 Topps SPBA

Two former Angels and a sweet checklist. Perusing the checklist I see many other former Angels. Hmmmm might be interested in collecting a subset of Former Angels from this set.

Two more Fleer Baseball Stickers for immense master set. I never should have starting inputting these into TCDB, because I then realized that there are about a zillion variations MORE that those I had already known about.

Tons of Angels of course.

And the reason the package was oversixed:

1983 Topps Sticker Album, Reggie Jackson

I had only recently put this on my Magazines Wantlist, and bam! Jeff sends me one. I'm still working on the 1982 Fleer Baseball Sticker Album, but now I'm seriously considering trying to fill this one as well.

                                

Here's the Angels page. I'm guessing that's Nolan Ryan over the enclosed Anaheim Stadium. Reminds me of the old Kenner Stadium Stars. Might be tough to decide if I want to cover up this sweet picture with stickers or not. If it is Ryan, he hadn't been with the Angels since they granted him free agency in November 1979. 

And a whole lotta Vladdies. I think I prefer him in an Expos uniform over an Angels uniform.

Very happy with the trade Jeff, Thanks.

One Page of Jerry Casale

This series will highlight "one page" at a time from my binder of correspondence and autographs from former Angels and Patriots players and personnel.

  Jerry Casale RHP Los Angeles Angels 1961

First correspondence received prior to 2005, second correspondence received 10/2009.