Adding Two Pieces to the Tower of Jenga

Through a stroke of luck I ran across the find Chicago Cubs blog titled Wrigley Roster Jenga. Anthony's goal is to collect at least one card of every man who played for the Cubs.  This is a terribly difficult goal in my opinion for two reasons:
1. The Cubs are one of the oldest franchises as they date back to 1876.
2. The rosters have been a revolving door the past few seasons, with many players on the shuttle from Iowa to Chicago.

 

 I'm not sure how Anthony handles the OLD vintage, like cigarette cards and the like, but from the looks of it he's got the early 50's covered!  I'm sure the above card was a duplicate to his collection, but it's new to me!

I contributed minor league cards of  Jeffrey Beliveau and Mike Mahoney to his cause, and the 1953 Bowman card of Tommy Brown was part of his return package.  Nice! 

Side note: This is my first look at the back of a '53 Bowman card.  Pretty neat that Brown debuted in The Show at the tender age of sixteen.  Also, I like that the card gives the owner room to pencil in the player's stats from the current year.  That's a little different to say the least.

Accompanying the sixty year old cardboard in the yellow bubble mailer were some other vintage-esque cards.

Whelp, my Heritage needs for 2014 have now been crossed off.

Lastly, there was a mini Albert Almora in the package.  Nice!  Another one for my ever growing AA collection!

Thanks for a great trade, Anthony!  Good luck on tracking down some of those elusive Cubs!

Maybe I can Stop Waiting? (All My Javys)

 If you're a fan of the Chicago Cubs, then today is kind of a big deal. It was announced yesterday that Javier Baez would be joining the big league team in Colorado for the start of a three game series versus the Rockies. 

Who the Cubs are playing and where they are playing is all secondary news in my opinion.  The headline is that Javier Baez will be making his Major League Debut!

Why such much raucous over the promotion of one prospect?  With Javy joining Arismendy Alcantara on the 25-man roster the Cubs fans are starting to see the first wave of new talent. 

Now, we've all been burned by "can't miss" prospects before.  I think every fan base has a Top 5 of prospect regrets, thus I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic about Alcantara, Baez, Albert Almora, Jorge Soler, Addison Russell, and the rest.

But, hey!  It's hard not to get too excited about an elite talent like Baez when your team really hasn't given you much to cheer about in recent years. Hopefully Theo and Jed (President and GM, respectively) know what what they're doing because I'm all in on the rebuild.

And now that the prospects are starting to make their trail to Chicago I'm hoping the count down can begin on when I can stop saying, "Waiting 'til Next Year."

Good luck, Javy!

I Didn't Go To The National

The National, again, was within a day's drive of my house.  Yet, I once again decided to stay home and just play with my cards.  I haven't spent a ton of coin on new cardboard this, but I did just receive a pretty nice haul of cards for about the price of a blaster from Sportlots.com.

If  you're up for it, let's go through the packages...  many pictures... few words!

Since going to Philadelphia and seeing the Phanatic in action I'm been on a huge mascot kick.  I've found myself wasting away the better part of an hour watching YouTube videos of mascots doing their thing.  I didn't have any cards of the The Chicken and I thought it was time to remedy that!

 I love early edition Upper Deck.  1991 was probably my favorite set, which I own, but now I have a couple extra I can put on display.

 Bo knows MJ can't hit a curve.

 More '91 Upper Deck and Pinnacle card of The Kid being a kid.

Speaking of kids...  Max Patkin was a kid at heart his entire life.  

 I was lucky enough to seen Patkin's act at least twice before he passed.

 The back of this 1995 Action Packed card gives a nice rundown of his schtick. Weird that the card information is upside down.

Shawon Dunston with Shawon Dunston, Jr.  . . . Junior is now a Cubs farmhand.  I would love for both them to sign this card, but I doubt I'll ever be that lucky.

More baby Cubs, including the newly acquire Addison Russell. Thank you, Oakland!

The four players above were all sporting USA uniforms, as is his Tino Martinez die cut parallel.

Huh, I think I know a Tino collector out there somewhere.

 Either my camera is having issues or I put in an order for a handful of Marquis Grissom rookies.  I'm sure these will find a good home somewhere in the blogosphere.

Card for my player collections!

 When I can find Ryno's for 18 cents I'm a pretty happy camper.

 I'm trying to get my Kosuke Fukudome collection up to the century mark.  These are numbers 95 and 96.  Four more to go!

My Ron Santo collection is a slow work in progress.  Especially since he isn't receiving any love from Topps since he went into the Hall of Fame.  What gives, Topps?

I'm a Fleer Pro Vision junkie.  The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

I will say this though...  If you fine bloggers would stop posting pictures of Pro Vision cards on your blogs I wouldn't be nearly as tempted!  Stop it!

I'm not sure why I bought a Josh Gibson card, but I found a pretty nifty looking one. 

Some say Gibson was the best catcher to ever play the game.  That's quite a compliment. 

Here's my impetus for visiting Sportlots in the first place.  I knocked out six sets.

I feel kind of silly paying 18 cents for cards from the junk wax era, but I've been chasing down twenty-five year old cardboard for a couple of years now without much luck.  I've discovered that many card stores have purged their junk wax from their inventory to make room for something of value.  I've also been given quite a few raised eyebrows from store owners, "You want '90 Donruss?"

Whatever.  Teenage me can sleep peacefully now that the last five sets from the 80's and 90's have been put to bed.  Everything left on my Set Needs page is now from this century!  Woo-Hoo!

It was no National, but I would consider my Sportlots purchase a success based upon set completion alone.  Finding the other cards to fill out the order and maximize shipping costs was just the icing on the cake.

More Set Help from Nolan's Dugout

I'm just checking in today to show off some set help from Nolan's Dugout.  Supposedly I sent Kyle some cards back in May, which I don't remember, and he sent me bubble mailer to even the score.

Huh.

You know what I think?  I think Kyle is making this up and he's just looking to get rid of some junk wax, but who am I to refuse a package of baseball cards?

On to the cards!

An insert of Mike Hampton, which is my last last Award Winner insert. Oh, and the guy who invented the ESPYs.  Or maybe not.

 Wait, didn't Mike Hampton turn in some horrible years in Colorado?  What award could he have won?

 Seven homers for a pitcher.  Wowzers!  Yeah, I didn't think it was the 5.41 ERA or the 1.581 WHIP.

Next up we have set help in the form of '91 Donruss.  Hey, look everyone!  The Bash Brothers!

The last three cards for my '88 Donruss set!  Woo-Hoo!

Some more elusive 2002 Topps Total.  Still a long way to go on this one.

This was a nice package with some thoughtful set help.  I think Tom Gordon in the above card thinks so, too.  Thanks again, Kyle!

Cards, but no SMack Talk

I was contacted by Jimmy, from S.Mack Talk, earlier this month as he was looking for some Peoria Chiefs baseball cards.  I didn't have much in reserves of the local minor league team, but we were still able to come to a quick accord on PWE trade.

Did you know that you can send 16 cards in a business sized PWE with a 91 cent stamp if you place the cards in the pockets of a 9 card page holder?  I know I've sent about that many cards in a bubble mailer and paid more than twice that in postage.  Lesson learned!

 Hey, some set help!  A Mark Teixeira card from the impossible to complete 2002 Topps Total set.  We also have a trio of Donruss cards that will help me complete sets from my youth.  The Ray Searage card is a replacement card for the gnawed on piece of cardboard that was a placeholder in my set.  My 1987 Topps set can now officially go into storage!

I guess I can put my gnawed on placeholder out to pasture. Sniff, sniff.

Next we have the 2014 Topps Series 2 Cubs team set.  I didn't picture three of the other guys because they are no longer with the organization.  After the Cubs released Darwin Barney last week Starlin Castro and Welington Castillo have the most seniority on the club.  I'm sure a few of the above Cubs will be calling new cities home before too long as well.

I still can't get over that.  Sixteen cards in a PWE?  Craziness!

Jimmy, thank you for reaching out to me and for educating me on the ever growing powers of the PWE!  I look forward to our next trade!