Flea Market Fun

Things have been slow-going for the collection this summer.  No card shows, busy weekends, and erratic work hours have kept us busy.  But we managed to squeeze in a little flea market time two weekends ago, making the trip about an extra 25 mins south of the city to hit a flea market before catching a 1:35 Pirate game on Sunday.

It was overall a bit of a bust for me, and most vendors seemed to be packing up when we got there around 11.  But I found one guy with some sport stuff mixed in with an otherwise random assortment of household stuff.  But nothing was priced!  My one pet peeve.  I was about to move on to the next table when Kate told me to come look at something.

I had no clue what I was looking at, but I knew it looked cool.  They were some kind of matted lithograph, featuring some pretty nice artwork.  And complete with serial numbered coa, since in the early 90's the best way to make things seem official was apparently a number and piece of paper.


In all there were three different lithos:  Jay Bell. Tim Wakefield, and Jaromir Jagr.  The trio ran me a grand total of $5.  Whatever they were, they were definitely worth that price.

A little digging upon returning home unearthed they are from a series of Kelly Russell lithography produced throughout the mid to late 90's.  I have seen some of the more popular ones, including Jr and Ripken, somewhere - maybe a card shop in the 90's?  But there doesn't seem to be any complete checklist to be found online, and the Bell and Wakefield pieces are presumably some of the earlier pieces.  A few quick searches didn't unearth any other copies, though they say there are 10,000 of each piece.  Either way, they come pre-matted, and are perfect to stick in a frame as soon as I can pick up the right size.  Bam, instant art.

The rest of the flea market was a bust, so I doubled back to the same dealer, and asked about a signed baseball he had.  For another $3, I picked up what looks like a BP ball with 6 signatures.

Josh Fogg, Mike Johnston, and Adam Hyzdu

Walter Young, Sean Burnett, John Van Benschoten

I'm not sure exactly where or when this ball came from - Hyzdu and Young were gone from the Pirates organization in 2004 when Burnett, Johnston, and Burnett all made their major league debuts.  Fogg made a couple rehab starts at AAA in 2003, but Burnett spent the year at AA, Young didn't play a game above A ball.  It could be from 2003 Spring Training, when all the players but Van Benschoten, a recent #1 pick, were on the major league roster to start ST.  It's possible he came up to get an inning or two in a split squad game, but the internet doesn't seem to have much info on 2004 these days.  Eithe way, it's a ball showing very nice scuff marks and some nice signatures from a not so great era of Bucs history.

Making Up for Lost Time

Growing up there weren't many times when I wasn't playing with some kind of action figure.  As an only child, there was a lot of time to keep myself occupied, not that I really minded.  A good chunk of my time was tied up in one of three things: LEGO's, my WWF wrestling figures, or Starting Lineups.  

I had a pretty intricate system, at least for a 7 or8 year old.  Teams were drafted with a lineup and 1-2 pitchers, depending on how many pitching figures I had.  The fielders never changed, since it was always tough to find figures in a fielding position.  When new figures would come into the collection, they would have to wait until enough figures were accumulated to field an expansion team.

 Games would take place in our basement, usually while my dad was watching sports at night or on the weekends.  The green carpet, a hideous remnant of the early 80's that is thankfully long gone, was the perfect Astroturf playing surface.  A line of those plastic ice cream helmets lined the outfield wall, with our couch posing as an makeshift Green (or more accurately, a hideous Fuchsia) Monster in Left.

Nine inning games could go on for hours, with scores into the hundreds.  After all hitting a little wadded up paper ball with an action figure bat is considerably easier than the real game.  Starting Lineup Randy Johnson was admittedly not throwing in the 90's.  Strikeouts were rare, and batters were only retired on a hit ball if they hit it directly at a fielder.

My Starting Lineup collection reads like a who's who of 90's stars.  Bagwell, Pudge, Will Clark, Clemens, Bonds.  But all those department store trips and weekend rides with my dad because we knew what day Toys R Us got their shipments never yielded a Pirate figure.  I don't remember exact configurations, but in my SLU heyday from about 1995-1998, I think lesser players were shortpacked, while stars were produced in higher quantities.  And needless to say, the mid 90's Pirates, when they even made it into a set, were in the lesser category.

I've been working on tracking down opened an unopened copies of all the Pirate SLU figures.  And while I have a few of the different Bonds, Bonilla, and Van Slyke figures from the early 90's, the mid 90's lesser names have been tough to track down.  I was just killing some time searching on ebay when I came across this lot - 6 figures: a Clemente/Stargell 2-pack from the late 80's, John Smiley, Orlando Merced (last photo), Jeff King, and Jay Bell in one of my favorite positions turning two.  I won the lot for a whopping $10 dlvd.  Less than $2/figure?  Yes please.

Maybe it seems silly, but there's nothing like recapturing my childhood.  The figures take me back to evenings on the carpet in front of the big screen tv.  During the HR Derby, always a sight to see in the muscle-bound 90's, my all stars would be hosting their own with tapemeasure shots to match.  I was on the carpet for the '96 and '97 All-Star games, and the '97 World Series - at least until my bed time.  My dad must have had saintly patience as this small human continued to jump up and down and run around the carpet in front of the screen while chasing little paper balls.  But me?  I'm half tempted to go get my SLU's out of their big popcorn tin, set up the field, and let these Buccos finally have a chance to play.  

Odds and Ends from the Show

The long weekend has gotten in the way of my posting schedule, but hopefully some odds and ends from last weeks card show will keep the crowds at bay (pun intended).  There's just so much stuff here, it's taken me the better part of my free time this week trying to get cards entered into their respective spreadsheets and hopefully find their way to a binder soon.

I like to think of myself as the kind of guy who goes into a card show without any expectations.  Hit the tables, see what their is to see, and work within your budget from there.  Sure, there are always specific pieces or cards that I want.  But more often than not I need to hit ebay or another online retailer if I'm looking for a *specific* item.

But once in a blue moon, the item comes to you.

Last week I wrote about Jim, my new best friend from Bahston.  He rolled into the show with a van full of small and oddball items, and I ended up scoring some really cool pieces from him.   Everything in this post (and then some) came from Jim's table.

As we were wrapping up our deal on Friday, he asked if I had seen his signed balls.  When he pulled out the ball cube, I had a tough time keeping my tongue in my mouth.  One of the items on my most wanted list has been an '06 All-Star ball.  A signed one?  Icing.

A dual signed ball?  Collector heaven.  When Jim quoted me a price at $20, no haggling needed.  That beauty was coming home with me.   The 06 ASG was a pretty special time for me, coming during the summer between graduating hs and starting college .  But those weren't the end to the all-star festivities.

Though the 1994 ASG doesn't hold such fond memories for me (or any memories, since I think I had just started t-ball that year), I've been coming across a lot of '94 memorabilia lately.  The chance to have an all-star ball from '94 was too good to pass up, even without any autographs on this one.  The ball has some slight yellowing, but the black and gold stitching really looks fantastic in my opinion.

For a couple bucks extra, Jim threw in a '94 all-star hat.  Did I need it?  No.  Will I wear it?  Doubtful.  Jim was quite the masterful salesman.

But some items just sold themselves.  These mini-figures have been on my want-list since childhood.  I still have the team sets for the Patriots, Packers, Cowboys, Chieft, and 49'ers at my parents house from when these came out around 1997.  But all those toy store trips never yielded a Steelers set.  I've seen a few locally, but the price was always more than I was willing to pay.  For a couple dollars, into the bundle!

But the odds and ends didn't stop there.  I picked up two Pirate patches with the old logo, which may eventually find their way into some kind of framing project.  On top of that, I came home with a full array of Pirates shot glasses (I rarely drink, but they always seem to come in handy) and other odds and ends.

Perhaps the coolest of which was this Pirates pin set.  Remember when Blockbuster video used to...exist?  The set is from late 91/early 92, and features the major stars of a post-Bonilla Bucs team, along with rising star Orlando Merced.  Not sure what I'll do with them, but I do really like these pins.  For the time being I'll probably leave them bagged though, for the vintage advertising nostalgia along.

Blogger Mail!

Since joining the blogosphere, my mailbox has been full pretty consistently, and my stacks of incoming cards never seems to go down.  But little of that has had to do with Battlin' Bucs, or any trades I've cooked up.

I've had a few trades here and there, but it's not something I actively seek out.  I write because I enjoy writing, and I write about cards because I enjoy cards.  Simple as that.  Anything beyond that is gravy.

But I got a nice surprise when Duff over at Bleedin' Brown and Gold posted that he had come across some old Topps books at his local library, and he was offering them up free to a good home.  I can appreciate anyone who has a colloquially apostrophized blog title.  And I do love adding oddball Pirates stuff, so I claimed the Bucs book.

Talk about awesome.  The book includes full color photos of the entire team set from each season up through 1987, and a short blurb about each year.

I have a photographic memory, so I'll probably spend a few minutes pouring over the pages before the next card show that will be vintage heavy.  Checklists are great, but I've quickly discovered I am far too unorganized and impatient to be flipping through my checklist every time I see a card I think I might have.  The book is a really cool oddball piece, but still serves some functional utility.  Win-win!




Duff also included a few Bucs cards in with the book, and while my commons needs are becoming increasingly fewer and farther between, he hit a couple nice additions.   The Presley card is my first from 2013 Series 2, though I finished off the team set with a flea market stop this weekend.  the Jay Bell Tombstone card is one I didn't know about, and furthers my belief that cards can still look nice without logos.  It also confirms my suspicion that cactuses and baseball cards do not go together.

I took the opportunity to clear out a few Pads and sent Duff a little thank you.

A Little Bit of 1992 Left in Ya

We're about 10 hours away from the first pitch of the NL Wild Card game, and I think everyone knows the narratives by now.  Most of the civilized world, anyone with a heart not made of stone, is rooting for the Bucs.  Except Reds fans.  And perhaps some spiteful folks in the city of Baltimore. 

I'm going to enjoy this day for what it is, because regardless of whether the Pirates revisit the post season any time soon or not, there will never be another game quite like this.  As one Pirates blogger wrote, your first time is always special.  And this, for an entire generation of Pirates fans, is the first.

But there are some remnants of the heartbroken 1992 team still lingering around Pittsburgh.

Perhaps the most notable is new hitting coach Jay Bell.  Bell was a mainstay at short for the Pirates through most of the 90's, and one of the better shortstops in franchise history.  And that's saying something for a franchise that has some of the best to ever play the position.

It's undoubtedly tough to judge the effectiveness of a coach.  But Bell came to Pirates as a well regarded minor league hitting coach, and the results seem to speak for themselves.  While there have been players who regressed this season, the overall approach of the team at the plate looks more measured and effective than in years past.

Bell is the only 92 holdover still in uniform, but it's not the end of the line.

The broadcast booth carries a pair of 92's finest.

Bob Walk is one of the top color guys in the game, and had a pretty nice season in '92.  His 3.20 ERA  was good for 10 wins while splitting time between the pen and the rotation.

And of course no post is complete without the obligatory John Wehner reference.  Wehner only broadcasts road games, with longtime Pirate Steve Blass calling home games.  His role on the '92 team was fairly limited, and he didn't perform well in his 137 plate appearances.  But...playoffs!

And the honorary mention goes to the guy throwing out tonight's first pitch, former Cy Young winner Doug Drabek.

Drabek was the top of the rotation arm that the Buccos have been lacking ever since. 

I may try to get one more post up before heading to the park.  Win or lose, this season has been awesome, and this night should be great.

Topps Team Set Countdown, 50-46

Installment three of the countdown, and now we're well beyond the terrible sets.  What separates 48 from 47?  Not all that much.  But each set has its perks and drawbacks.

And away we go.

50) 1992 Topps

The '92 set featured some unique photography that largely still hasn't been replicated in style.  I love the dugout shots.  But when you get into the live action shots, the set gets pretty weak.  The photos aren't as crisp as they could be, and the sizing and cropping is terrible.  Add in a less than spectacular design, and the dugout photos and horizontal photography are really what save the set.

49) 2009 Topps

The 2009 set largely gets lost in the sea of late 00's white bordered sets.  There are some nice photos, but the player selection was unspectacular.  The Pirate roster certainly wasn't all that spectacular, but the checklist omitted quite a few players who played significant roles on the team.  Luckily the Heritage release from that season picked up the slack where Flagship left off.

48) 1969 Topps

There's no purple.  That alone moves this set up the rankings.  But the photography makes some nice strides for the time, including some warm-up jacket photos and some more interesting posted shots.  Of course Topps manages to backtrack again in '70.

47) 2011 Topps

The Topps sets from the last 5 years or so really do run together.  They're all fairly similar aesthetically, and the photography has shifted towards using an image service rather than unique photography.

The 2011 set just feels very mechanical to me.  The circular logo at the bottom feels like a cog, and though I appreciate the minimalist text, the baseball logo feels like distracting overkill.

46) 1957 Topps

Our oldest entrant to date, the '57 set isn't a bad set.  But it does pale in comparison to its more colorful counterparts.  The design highlights the photography.  Which would be great if the photos were at all interesting.  This set won't hold its weight on nostalgia alone.

I Love the 90's, An Addendum

I don't always post regularly, but when I do, I prefer the 90's.

My I Love the 90's posts have become a semi-regular feature here, mostly because a large portion of my additions have been 90's cards.  But it's great to see some other blog-love for the decade that gave us Pogs and Furby.  Nick and his wonderful Dimebox wrote up a great post on some of the great cardboard that came out of the 90's.

Aside from my love of all things autographed our collecting tastes are pretty much in sync, so it didn't surprise me to see him write the post.  But I thought I'd delve a little deeper into why many collectors view it as a lost decade, and include some additional points illustrating (pun intended) why they're dead wrong.

One major trend I've noticed among the 90's Deniers is that most of them either fall into one of two camps: either they didn't collect during that time, or they collected heavily and got burned.

The hobby, and baseball as a whole, were in a major transitional phase.  Insert sets blew up in the early 90's, while simultaneously the burst of the investment bubble that had fueled the 80's collecting (read: prospecting) market and baseball's strike drove collectors out of the hobby in droves.  The result is that the hobby quite literally shifted over night, moving from a relatively passive collecting landscape with limited numbers of sets and inserts in '93 and '94 to a boom in both inserts and numbered cards in '95 and '96.  Hot base cards, which had once driven products, were now largely secondary to the insert craze and rare serial numbered cards.


Add in autographs and later in the decade the white hot game used cards, and the hobby landscape had changed rapidly in just a couple short years.  And simply put, some people don't like change.

The business model as a whole changed, with companies moving from producing just a handful of sets in insanely large quantities to the model we see today, where there are more releases printed in much smaller quantities.  Again, some people loved the added competition and added variety, where companies tried to offer something for every type of collector, while others preferred the old "3 sets a year" days.

Some releases, like Metal Universe, were unique approaches to expand the market.

But there were also a lot of one-and-done sets.

Though they gave us some quirky releases, like 1998's New Pinnacle.  Not to be confused with the regular release of Pinnacle the same year.

But we can't avoid addressing the elephant in the room any longer.

Why do a lot of people think 90's cards are junk?  Because they got burned.  Bad.

The mid to late 90's were still largely operating on the shop/card show model, where you could really only find a card if it somehow magically found its way right in front of your face, or if you pulled it from a pack.  While there were collectors, traders, and sellers online, the online card community was very small.

And the cards that were coming out were very rare.  This wasn't an 84 Topps Mattingly, where if you passed on one there would undoubtedly be three dealers with the same card at the next show.  These cards were tough pulls, and they were numbered to tell you just how few of them were out there.

It's hard to fathom, in these days where numbered cards fall out of boxes by the stack.  But you could bust boxes of a product and not even hit a single card numbered to a few thousand.

People paid hundreds or in some cases thousands of dollars for rare cards.  Those cards are still rare.  And they're still valuable.  But those rare cards that sold for $800 at a show in '98?  It might sell for $95 on ebay now.  The growth of the online sales market opened tons of doors for collectors and radically reshaped the way we value (and the values of) cards.  If a card was numbered /150, seeing it at a show was no longer a once in a lifetime buy or pass situation.  Odds were that someone, somewhere would be selling that same card.  And at some point that card would make its way online.

And of course there was a trickle down effect.  It wasn't just the deep pocketed collectors that got burned. 

There were the guys who were able to sell common inserts of star players for $3, or parallels for $1 who just can't seem to admit that those same cards probably belong in the $.25 box now.  You know the type.  There's at least one at every show or flea market, trying to peddle their 1992 Frank Thomas Score cards, Don West style, telling you what a great buy it is for just $2.

To top things off, the entire rookie crop for the decade absolutely imploded.  Maybe that 89 UD Griffey you spent $50 on stings a little, but it's still.  But it's still an iconic card or one of baseball's greatest players.  And you can laugh at that stack of Danny Tartabull rookies you paid $1 each for. 

But that Kerry Wood Bowman Chrome you spent $45 on?  That still burns.  Ben Greive, Karim Garcia, Kris Benson, anyone that came out of '99 Bowman.  The mid-late 90's rookie crops are a virtual prospect grave yard.  And it's not just the prospects that flamed out in AA.  ROY winners.  Guys that spent a couple years fast tracked for stardom and then...poof.  The cards built, and built, and built.  The hype pushed prices up and up for year after year.  And now the cards are worth pennies on the dollar.  It's not that collectors had never been burned on bad investments before.  It's that the 90's burned collectors in ways that I don't think any group of rookies ever had or has since.

And I can't totally blame them (laughing, meanwhile, is a different story. That I can do with ease).  A lot of people spent a lot of money on cards that just weren't nearly as rare or special as they wanted to believe.  Some people just got left in the dust of the changing hobby landscape.  And some collectors, as always seems to happen, just continue to move on to the newest, shiniest trend, considering anything that isn't that "thing" to be worthless simply because it isn't what they want.

So feel free to continue to ignore cards from the 90's.  My collection sincerely appreciates it if you do.  But as they say, don't knock it til you tried it.

I've Been a Bad, Bad Blogger

Apparently it's been a full month since I last posted.  Geeze.  After being gone from Pittsburgh for three years, it's taking even longer than expected to get settled in.  Add in wedding-related stuff during just about every free moment (I spent 3 evenings this week along going to various stores to do registry stuff), and add in that there has not been a single card show in the Pittsburgh area, and cards have sort of moved to the back burner.

Thankfully we're entering the home stretch with the wedding, finally think we found an apartment that has everything we are looking for at a great price point, and of course the cardboard itch is coming back.

Ironically, this all happens while the Pirates are in the middle of the best season in far, far too long.  In all honesty, I'm still adjusting to the idea of competitive baseball.  And with the Steelers looking to be rebuilding and the Pens coming off a disappointing, but successful, season, it seems all the casual sports fans are once again flocking back to the Pirates.  Sadly the stadium hasn't been filled with a new fleet of McCutchen and Burnett jerseys, but rather an array of girls in Victoria Secret Pirate tshirts that appear to be about the same thickness as Hulk Hogan's tear away tshirts and frat guys in backwards baseball caps.  So is the price of winning, I suppose.  But I must say that for all the misery, errant throws into the stands, and botched baserunning over the past two decades, it was glorious to never have to deal with fair weather fans.  The seas were consistently stormy through those years.

But this season has also brought up some interesting connections.  For the team to be historically bad for such an extended period, it will be interesting if the "streak" will be bookended by playoff appearances.  Of course I can't imagine any playoff loss being more heartbreaking than Sid Bream's death blow to the Bucs.

And the team is not without some connection to that '92 team.  Jay Bell joined the team as hitting coach this season, and though I am hesitant to ever put too much blame or praise on a coach or managed, he was a well regarded candidate before getting the job.  Bob Walk was a starter in '92.  Now he's a broadcaster whose Ban the DH campaign has won a piece of my heart.  Even during the worst years, Walk was always good for a laugh with his honest, hilarious analysis.  Watching mlb.tv earlier in the season made my appreciate his style, since most broadcast booths are dedicated to the continuous praise of the parent club, regardless of performance.

Really, the only thing missing is the voice of the team.  Longtime broadcaster Lanny Frattare left the team unceremoniously after the 2008 season.  For most of my life, Lanny was the Bucs.  His voice was the only constant as a revolving cast of characters put on the black and gold. 

This season is only a reminder that "there was nooooo doubt about it."