Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

I was sorting through a stack of cards, sorting by year so that I can put them into their appropriate Angels binder. The stack was upside down so I could see the year. The year the card was issued is usually in tiny print on the back side of the card.

I saw the photo and immediately though, "Oh cool! A new Jim Abbott card that I've never seen before. And he's at Anaheim Stadium!"

Then I turned the card over to see the front.

I probably have a dozen of these already.

Seen them a million times.

Often I get caught up in the accumulation, the collecting. Rip a pack, pull the Angels and stick them in a binder without paying attention to the beauty of these little cardboard gems.

I need to slow down sometimes and look at the backs of cards, read them, soak them in.

Do you ever catch yourself trying to accumulate what you need and not paying attention to the details?

Jimmy Dean's Backside

Picked up this pack of 1992 Jimmy Dean baseball cards on Listia.
A 3-card pack inserted in packages of Jimmy Dean sausage.
I bid on this item because the seller was smart enough to include a photo of the backside.

See what I see?
That's a Jim Abbott card, and a card that I did not have.
I won the auction for a measly 1,760 credits.

There are 18 cards in the set, here are the three that I got.

Jim Abbott is the only Angel in the set so I just completed the team as well.

I have no interest in collecting the whole Jimmy Dean set, so that means the Chamberlain and Strawberry cards go in the traders box.

It's not a bad looking card.

Would have liked to see a logo or something in that big black field.

Even though the team logos are a no-no and airbrushed out, it's not too obvious.

Good score for me on Listia.

My Jim Abbott Wallet Card

This has been my wallet card for at least the last 10 years, if not 15.  I can't remember what card I had before that, may have been another Abbott, but I know I had to replace it when my wallet got soaked.

I've kept a card in my wallet for as long as I've had a wallet.

I remember it came up at a husband/wife wedding shower once and I won a prize for having a card in my wallet.

I use a money-clip type wallet so the Abbott stays folded in half, usually with a secret $5 or $10 folded inside of it.  Right now however I'm short of secret cash.

The Wallet Card Game that Baseball Card Countdown is hosting is a genius idea.

I'm not going to participate, but I'll sure enjoy seeing where your wallet cards end up.

My Jim Abbott will probably not see the light of day this year!

Oddball Jim Abbott

Reader Mark has been good to me.
From what I can surmise, he obtains complete sets, pulls the Royals teams sets out, then distributes the rest.  I've been the recipient of some pretty cool Angels teams as a result.  I'm talking like slightly off sets, harder to get, not the generic standard sets out there.

At least a month ago, he sent me another package of Angels teams sets and a few misc Angels cards.
Some of those team sets you've seen posts about, "Completed Angels Teams Set....".  And there a several more posts yet to come.

This time I wanted to show the Oddball Jim Abbott cards that came.

1989 Broder?  Pacific Cards?

Not sure.  No distinguishing markings.

But what a great card!

Another 1989 Broder or Pacific?

Different front, most notably the blue bar at the bottom.

But look at the back.

Exactly the same as the one above.

See what I mean?

So while definitely from the same manufacturer, not necessarily from the same set.

I'll have to email Mark to see if he recalls the sets these came from.

1989 Pacific Cards Baseball's Best Five #6

Says so right on the back.

Love these oddballs.

1979 Help And Then Some From P-Town

Tom sent 14 of the 1979 Topps cards I needed (still a ways to go) for my effort in completing this set.

Interestingly,  most those he sentwere Cubs.

2013 Panini Home Town Heroes.

I'm still blown away that Abbott never pitched in the minor leagues.

Strange that Panini would show Abbott in a Yankees, or White Sox, uniform on an Angels card.

Obvious lack of an editors keen eye.

1989 Fleer Tony Armas.

Tony is perplexed.

Smile?

No, don't smile?

Wha?

Thanks for these and all the other Angels you sent.

Listia Cats And Dogs

2012 Topps Update Angels Lot Blue Parallels = 108 credits.

Mark Trumbo 2012 Topps Gold #'d 0990/2012 = 1,010 credits (I overpaid)

Jim Abbott Lot = 810 credits (only showing the cards I needed).

2012 Bowman Platinum Mark Trumbo Cutting Edge Stars Die Cut = 808 credits

1990 Gibson Team Logo Sticker = ebay for like 75 cents.

2009 Topps Nolan Ryan Commemorative Patch = 2,585 credits.

1994 Donruss Tim Salmon Spirit of the Game Jumbo #08928/10000 = 499 credits.

Sports Card Shopping At The Sports Card Shop

Spent about 3 hours at my local card shop the other day.  It really is therapy for me to spend time thumbing through boxes of miscellaneous cards.  These are the boxes of cards that the dealers dont have out but keep underneath their tables.  Stuff they haven't even really gone through yet.  It works well for me to get lost for a few hours in them, forget about my troubles.

I came across a batch of Topps All-Star cards.

The cards in the second batch are actually normal sized cards but when I cropped the picture it shrunk them.

I pick these up whenever I come across them, slowly building up the sets.

I also came across two old 1993 Sports Cards magazines with the card sheets still intact.

SCORE!

This sheet has a Jim Abbott I didn't already have.  The sheet was miscut on the left side, good thing Abbott was in the middle.

TRIPLE SCORE!

Tim Salmon rookie, a JT Snow, and a John Olerud.  Add to that a nice Mike Piazza and this is a really sweet sheet. (say that 5 times fast).

Rarely do I ever cut full sheets apart.

In one of the magazines was this advertisement for 1993 Studio cards.  I cut it out and put it in my Angels binder because if you look closely you can see JT Snows card there on the right.  I don't have this card either, so I'll have to look around for it now.

There was 1989 Upper Deck autographed by Randy Velarde in a box of other junk.

I think this is legit, but it may be an older autograph as compared to those found on sportscollectors.  It appears he changed his signature a bit when he started adding a cross inside the V in Velarde.

There were a handful of autographs like this one on ebay.

Randy played for the Angels from 1996 - 1999.

This 2007 Topps Vladdy All-Star insert card caught my eye.

I really dig the design and the colors.

Found a Jim Abbott I didn't have yet.

Grabbed this slightly mangled 1971 Al Hrabosky rookie.

Hopefully he's still a good TTM signer and I'll get this in the mail to him.

Check Bill Stinsons pink airbrushed cap.

I'm sure he was really pleased about that.

I wasn't sure if I had this card already.  I did.  

I'm usually pretty good at knowing what I already have.  Of the 35 or so cards I bought about 8 turned out to be dupes.  Not bad for a stack of cheap cards.

I passed this one up the first time thinking it wasn't a real card but something told me to go back. It was then I realized it was indeed a real card.

It's an Upper Deck Collectors Choice Draw Your Own Card drawn by Zachary Johnson of Madison, WI.

Nice work on Troy Glaus Zack!

Not sure why I grabbed this 1977 Topps Cloth Sticker of John Montefusco.

Maybe because I dont have any 1977 Topps Cloth Stickers.

This will probably be available for trade.

This one I need help with.

Can anyone ID this card for me?

The front is a 1986 Donruss Rated Rookie of Michael Jordan, but the back is Jordan in a Bulls uniform.

You can see there's no date or manufacturer on it.

Apparently it's a 1991 Fun City card?

What's that?

Is That Jim Abbott?

I'm working on a post about the first Angel player to appear on a baseball card wrapper - this years Topps with Albert Pujols.  But during the course of researching the post I came across this 1993 Topps wrapper I had and did a double take.

I'm sure that this is Jim Abbott.  But Jim is a lefty and this dude is throwing righty.  I know they could have reversed the image to try to get away with using his image without paying him for it.

This same image was also used on the 1992 Topps wrappers.

Abbott was still with the Angels in 1992, but in 1993 he was with the Yankees.  So the date (at least for the 1992 wrapper) fits.  Then they just used it again in 1993.  We've all seen Topps follow that pattern before.

The uniform appears to have a stripe or stripes on the shoulder, which the Angels had on their dark blue practice and Spring Training uniforms since the 80's like this:

But the uniform on the Topps wrapper appears to be a white or gray one, and the Angels only had stripes around the hem of the sleeves on those versions.

My second guess is that it's an Indians uniform, and Jim never played for the Indians.

Is it John Farrell on those 1992, 1993 wrappers by chance?

So that would blow my Jim Abbott theory out of the water when you consider the uniform.

What do you guys think?

Anyone have any proof that this is Jim Abbott?

Anyone have proof that it isn't Jim Abbott?

Anyone know who it even is?