10 Cards from the Dollar Box #9

The craziest thing happened today: there was a flaming ball of fire up in the sky! I could see things without a flashlight even! This meant I could get out in the woods, and Work. It was great. However I spent a big chunk of the time thinking about, Baseball Cards. Let's see some:

Why I selected it: Now there's a Christmas Tree card for ya! I didn't buy this during the holiday season but I had to have this one as soon as I saw it in early-ish 2024. I am not an actual "Lumberjack" but I do work in the woods running a chainsaw a fair bit. Thus a Baseball Card this "woodsy" has to come join my collection. Plus it has an excellent feature that can only be experienced in-hand: an embossed wood grain pattern on the surface of the card. I know I won't want to keep these cards imprisoned in a binder page but the hunt for 8 more of these little beauties is soon to commence.

This card is an insert originally found in a 2019 Panini product I had never heard of, called "Leather & Lumber." That is printed in foil there above Schwarber's head and well obscured by the scan, his head, and the little price sticker my LCS insists on putting on every card in the Dollar Box, to differentiate them from the ones in the 50¢ box.

It is a perfect example of why I try my best to ignore Panini cards. That only partially flows from the lack of licensing, even though that will always be a big deal on their Baseball cards. The deeper problem I fear is very occasionally stumbling into cards like this — cards I want to own, immediately.

Art by Mayumi Seto

Why I selected it: I truly wish I felt I could afford to collect the Topps Living Set. I sort of could, if I simply didn't collect so many other Baseball Cards. But that wouldn't work, to collect just one set.

I do quite like the illustrations by Mayumi Seto that are used in Living Set. She got her start with Topps creating the artwork for the 2017 Gallery release. So I collect that, instead.

Why I selected it: I like Pink Topps Chrome parallels. They remind me of the pink Bubble Gum I used to enjoy with my Baseball Cards.

Previously I have assembled 9 card collections of these. I have been wanting to switch that out to just owning 1 of these for each year they are made. I'm not sure I will be able to meet that goal when I just put these in the "want it" pile immediately upon first glance. Collecting.

Why I selected it: I collect Hank Aaron cards. But, not every Hank Aaron card I ever did see. This one, I probably wanted for the excellent example of an old Braves shoulder patch.

But this one was likely also snagged as a "motivational" card in that I have been wanting some simple sets of simple 20th Century Baseball Cards. This is a 1990 Pacific "Baseball Legends" card, it informs me. I don't know if it was an insert in another product, or just how these arrived into the hands of collectors. It would seem to me likely that this was very early in the history of Pacific Trading Cards, Inc. but there too I am lacking in knowledge.

For a while now I have been thinking about purchasing a set of Swell cards from this time period, but I have been unwilling to pay $13 shipping. The other day I bought a card I absolutely had to have to help complete a much desired checklist. I paid an $8 shipping fee and when it arrived, the postage on the front was $3.20 — thus I get a little over-stubborn on high shipping prices sometimes. I will pull that trigger on the Swell set eventually; the more I gaze upon this card, the sooner that day will arrive.

Why I selected it: I have mixed feelings about this card, but I wanted to explore it a bit more by taking it home with me. It is almost certainly the same photo as used on the Jackie Robinson card 2 years later, in Topps Lineage. This card is a "Legends of the Game" (no-scan foil printing) from 2009 Topps Baseball. 

This photo is zoomed in a whole lot, compared to the Lineage card, but is then cropped quite poorly given the design frame, which has those totally superfluous black bars at the top and bottom of the card, achieving nothing except making the card as a whole far more dark, overall. This isn't something you want with very old photographs, particularly artificially colorized photos.

Nevertheless it is a much better view of Jackie's face that way, and that's a plus. The far more "zoomed out" Lineage card using this photo has other pluses though.

Why I selected these: Once I had the Jackie Robinson card in my keeper stack, it felt natural to add these, despite my misgivings about the design. 

You just don't come across Cy Young cards very often; he has always fascinated me after I was amazed for years and years in my youth by a Laughlin "Baseball's Famous Feats" backing card from a Fleer stickers set, which told me that Cy Young won 511 Baseball games as a Starting Pitcher. A feat which will obviously never be equaled. 

I'm not sure if this photograph of him is the same as the few other Cy Young cards I have; if it isn't then it is the same pose, which is also the one copied by Laughlin for his simple illustration. 

The Cobb photograph I am quite sure is used on several other cards. But since I had never seen these inserts before this Dollar Box excursion, I just grabbed all 3. Still unsure if I will examine this checklist. Maybe.

Why I selected these: More Pink Chrome. Scanning them and blurbing about them a little will help with the struggle. I have to kick this habit. This is the first time I noticed that the player's last name on the 2019 design is printed in Pink on these parallels. Uhhh-oh.

Why I selected these: Ohhhh, how I would like love to collect 1953 Topps. The corners and edges of these cards are completely unimportant to my enjoyment of them. If only I could find more magical boxes of Baseball Cards that serve up 1953 Topps for just one buck, each. Quite the ride, these boxes.

Player Collecting the Easy Way #3

When I headlined a post recently with an Al Kaline RC reprint, I knew it was time to get crackin' on assembling my first display of Al Kaline cards.

The Card That Started It All

2003 Fleer Flair Greats

I pulled that one from some repack product, out of the blue, over 10 years ago now. At that time I hadn't thought of the idea of collecting just a few cards of a player, rather than diving into the deep end of a Player Collection pool concept and starting out with a goal of collecting all of a player's cards.

But I didn't know what to do with that card aside from placing it in my box of Tigers cards. I didn't have any 1950s Tigers cards, where this picture seems to have originated. But I knew I wanted to keep it. When I looked up it's lineage, some definite cheese on the part of Fleer appeared as they had used this same image in a 2002 product called Greats of the Game, on a much cleaner and thus more appealing design. That is only a 100 card checklist that I knew would be enjoyable to collect, but has to be done one card at a time as the original box&packs when it was issued featured one on-card autograph of a Hall-of-Famer per box, placing that firmly in the too-many-Benjamins for me category. If I ever run across a lot of the base cards from that product I could see launching an enjoyable collecting effort from it.

That pleasant daydream would still leave this 2003 Flair Greats re-run quite well orphaned, however. So here on this dreary last Sunday of 2024 I am finally giving the card a proper place in my collection, along with these:

1994 Topps 1954 reprint

One thing I particularly like about that card is that it is slowly but surely increasing my motivation to consider collecting the previous year's reprint of 1953 Topps, though I will have to check out some singles from it first to make sure there isn't a too simple (i.e., blurry) "re" in the "print." Some reprint efforts are better than others, from what I have seen; but I now have several cards from this 1994 version of '54 Topps and they are just exactly perfect for a simple binder page construction project.

2010 Topps Turkey Red "Boxer frame" insert

2019 Topps Archives 1975

Kaline does not quite have a card in 1975 Topps; though he is featured on a Highlights card at the start of the set for reaching the 3,000 Hits milestone at the end of the 1974 season, after which he retired. 

So this was a mostly pleasing inclusion in 2019 Archives; I like how you can see the color of Al's eyes on this one. The '75 style cards in that release had one of Topps seemingly standard go-tos of applying a digital filter to the source images for the cards, which detracted from the enjoyment of the card for most of the 20th century players, and some of the contemporary ones as well. Fortunately that filter seems to not bother this card, at all.

Given that 1974 was Kaline's final year of play one would think that a '75 style card for him would be the perfect place to print his complete career stats, but Topps punted on that idea, even though 1975 cards for a Kaline contemporary such as Hank Aaron didn't cut the stats short.

1972 Topps

Such a pleasant card; Mr. Tiger just chillin' during practice. I like the glove just casually waiting for some activity. 

I do not know which of the 11 other 1971 AL ballparks might be shown here though several can be eliminated from consideration upon first glance. That will be an enjoyable little research project some other dreary winter day in my future.

2019 Topps Stadium Club

Quite a departure from classical Baseball Cards though I don't think this is the first such card Topps had ever made. Kaline remained on friendly terms with Topps in the 2010s and new Kaline cards appeared routinely.

2011 Topps Lineage

2023 Topps Heritage insert

In original Topps, the Highlights appear in the next year's set. In Heritage, they appear with the set of the Topps Baseball style being celebrated.

That card certainly does show Kaline's age, appropriately enough, although that is not a photo from Baltimore on Sept. 24th, 1974 - home uniform in this one. So, close enough I guess, as is this next image -

2014 Topps Update Fond Farewells insert

I normally don't care for inserts clearly designed to show off a "relic" inclusion but then still needing a non-relic version to place in packs. But this one does have a nice enough foil repro of the Tigers logo, and I for some reason like that the card designer drew in the batter's boxes on each side of Home Plate for a touch of authenticity.

That photo might actually be from a post-retirement appearance by Kaline, it appears to me; he remained employed by the Tigers throughout his entire life.

Card Most on the Bubble: Surprisingly enough, that would probably be the excellent 1972 Topps card. But that's because I would rather include that in a nice run of Kaline cards, starting backwards from his 1975 Highlights card, which would be a nice affordable look at the final third of his career.

I also look forward to assembling some pairs of cards featuring Kaline and George Kell, his TV broadcast partner for many years. 

And I also hope to come across a post-retirement card for Kaline that prints all of his stats, from 1953 to 1974, a probably not-overly-difficult project I haven't dived into yet.

The Result

Just, fiddy?

Yup. Only fifty little shiny round Abraham Lincolns. Or, as it worked out at the cash register, just 44 hammerin' Hanks, or somethin'. Let's take a swing and see where it lands:

Why I selected it: I like 1993 Topps. Clean, functional, just colorful-enough. Topps was on a roll there in the early 90s, which makes the late 90s all the more surprising.

I have succumbed to reality on the concept of collecting a Complete Set of 1993 Topps (though I do quite anticipate completing the 2019 Archives take on these). The simple truth is that the set probably holds hundreds of just ordinary Baseball Cards of players I couldn't always remember that well. But it also most certainly has dozens of cards I would still enjoy very much. And, one-by-one, I probably will. Starting with this one.

When I went to scan this card tonight, I had a small surprise -

Woot woot!

A super rare escape from the secret world of Baseball Card promotion, must have fell on the floor during someone's 3 Martini Lunch Baseball Card sales meeting, only to be swooped up by the waitress devoted to her Baseball Card loving son. Yeah, that's the ticket.

If only this had card #000, I could get a couple rectangular George Washington's for this one. For this card, that would only be a couple-three little round ones. Off to a binder page it goes, regardless.

Why I selected it: Maybe, I thought this was Kylo Ren unconvincingly about to try to do something Evil. "Sith Lord," uhh-huhh, sure.

This also wasn't very convincing as a Hot Rookie card worthy of investment either. But, you don't ever see too many In Action Baseball Cards of player without a cap or a batting helmet, so that's unique-y. And, really, I want a page of horizontal Rookie Card cards from 2022 Gallery, and that's likely a tall ask, but you can't hit the Gretzky if you don't take a shot with Rookies. 22 Gallery is a pleasing one to shoot around some.

Why I selected it: I have an absurd fascination with 2020 Update, one of the more absurd sets of the 2020s, though for once, phoned-it-in efforts were understandable right then.

This is one of the better cards in the set, in several senses, even though Proven Closers never usually stay Proven for very long. But that in turn is part of the appeal. Did anyone think that guy wearing street clothes in 1992 Bowman or whatever would go on to the Hall of Fame? Someone has to pitch the 9th Inning, after all.

Devin could have been just a bit more centered in the image I suppose. But overall the best cure for the 2020 overcast design blues was a photo shot in brilliant sunshine. I almost suredly had a copy of this card already, but I couldn't just leave it in the fiddy/44 box to gather dust forever, could I?

Why I selected these: Every Tigers fan needs a set of 1968 Topps Tigers, and it is time to get rolling farther along with mine. Most of their names are still famous throughout Michigan, well sorta. Willie's name is on the back wall at Comerica Park these days - you can occasionally almost even make it out on brand new Baseball Cards sometimes as Topps buys a fair amount of photos from that stadium.

And a Powder Blue batting helmet? Are you kidding me? You don't ever see too many oddball things with DETROIT's timeless uniforms, so now I need another copy of the Horton. 

I woulda snatched these up just as fast in the regulation Dollar Box.

Why I selected it: Huhh. The reason didn't really scan. But that's, a good thing. This one sports one of those completely fake backdrops Topps used for quite a number of years actually, until by peak-fake in 2022 they were running up to a couple dozen a checklist. I in no way expect that in any way hurt their sales of Baseball Cards, as such trivialities are only of interest to enthusiasts. Like, readers of Baseball Card blogs.

Nonetheless I do hope their employees felt gross making cards like this one. In 2024, they seemed to have stopped completely, though I can come nowhere close to seeing every Topps Baseball Card. 2024 Archives will arrive after the New Year and hopefully they stay gone on those new cards, too.

Why I selected it: I much prefer vertical Leader cards. There is zero doubt who Lead the League. That's just so much better than horizontal Leader cards.

However vertical Leader cards are the exception, not the rule. So when I see one, I snag it. I haven't brought 2014 Heritage to a conclusion yet, though that is getting closer to the top of the list. Thanks to this card, which might already be in a ten-years-unopened card box tomb, I will definitely be looking for the rest of its nearby checklist mates. Thus another "motivational" purchase.

Why I selcted it: This isn't even a Rookie Card card and even Torkelson's Rookie Card cards are plunging towards Doom like an Imperial Star Destroyer confronted by a couple little Rebel fighters .01% of its size.

So why would I buy a sad card like this one? This is a great Tigers card. Team color framed, clearly shot in Florida where every Tigers fan wants to be, part of the year (only), and lately I have a thing for seeing (real) clouds on a Chromed card. What's not to like?

Why I selected it: This was (is) a popular design to collect in the 1990s, and in Baseball Cards, whatever went around, comes back around. I'm sure I would enjoy owning dozens of these, from the 90s, and the 20s. But I am just never going to acquire many cards like this by constantly "buying singles," (I have too many checklist-completion desires already) and these aren't easily obtained otherwise. But one falls in your lap for just 44¢, sign me up.

Here I need to detour to a card I do not own, but could conceivably be found in a several-quarters box:

hmmmm

Why I selected it: Ooooohhhh, Sapphire. They let losing-record Tigers appear on these penultimate Topps Chrome cards? I did not know that. 

I do know the Tigers never wear white caps, so this is is either from an every-team-gets-a-Trophy All-Star Game appearance (several of which had honorary Tigers then skipped by Topps on the All-Star cards), or maybe a Spring Training game. So I hads to have it. 

Plus I wanted to see how Sapphire scans; which comes out kinda like an Atomic, which I somehow know despite never owning an Atomic. My Sapphires will be limited to 1/year; this is now the front-runner for the 2020 slot, just in case it is still empty. Forgot.

Why I selected it: Hey, look, it's the 15 Minutes guy from that one World Series. Did he win that one? I forgot. 

But this is his famous Rookie Card card, and it's even with the Brewers, which I also forgot. Thus, Baseball Cards.

But a Rookie giving a Press Conference? Was he -that- good, already? Is this a super-secret super-super-Short Print Photo Variation? Only the Internet will know for sure ... let's go to the tape ...

turns out, this is not an SSP, just a regular SP. If this were an actual everyday RC card, it would be an amazing forecast of his future in the 2020 Post-Season. 

As it is, this one is just worth about what you might expect for a Brett Phillips card, even after a beautiful 2023 Topps card capped his card oeuvre, which is to say, this card is worth just about 44¢.

What can't be seen quickly when not in-hand is that this is a great example of a player wearing The Cross. It is probably up for a long ride in my "Themes" box as I am sure it is my first horizontal Cross card, and I recently pulled 9 cards out of that theme and into a pleasing binder page.

Why I selected it: The reason for this one is held within this old post. Which contains images of some formerly famous Baseball players on some still pretty famous, and very, very old cards.

I am always in a bit of awe that I own these cards, by totally random chance created at a 1970s estate sale where they weren't even purchased, deliberately.

It is clear what I need to do here — track down a Johnny Evers t206 card. 

Keeping this basically boring, overly snazzed up modern Donruss card with the abysmal front s/n stamp, of Tinker, floating around my card desk with nothing useful to do, will actually help me get in gear on this. Next up is sending those two cards into SGC grading for appropriate long-term protection.

Why I selected it: Sorry to whip-saw you back to the 2020s like that. These things can happen in a 50¢ box. I love Chrome prisms. I love Red, White, & Blue Baseball Cards. Will this be my best 2020 prism? Could be.

Why I selected it: I know I will never own an original version of this card. That's, not OK, but there is no way around that. I don't even much care for this way over-glossed reprint version; it somewhat surprises me that Topps doesn't print these on regular cardboard/Heritage/vintage stock like they do for other cards in the very same sets the glossy reprints appear in. Why not drop the print run if necessary for this idea, put them on appropriate, much-better-looking card stock, and make these far more enjoyable (bonus: far better re-sale value, something the customers want). Cheaping out on the thin stock with too much gloss detracts from the Baseball Card history on display here.

Bottom line: this is the best I can get for this excellent Baseball Card. It scans nice at least. Would you just leave a 53 Mantle reprint in a 2 quarters box? Really?

A Topps Toy? Sign me up!

 

I hope you got some Baseball Cards for Christmas. I, did not. And that's OK, because there isn't much on the retail shelves I would have wanted, right now. 2024 Update Purple Paul Skenes lottery tickets (+free pack of actual Baseball Cards!) are temporarily sold out in my little ole Baseball Card gobbling hometown.

I did get a pretty cool old book -

I highly recommend it. I was a little disappointed that Tiger Stadium wasn't in it, but that's probably because Tiger Stadium hadn't been torn down yet when the book was written. This book is making me reach for — Baseball Cards - on the regular, whenever I crack it open.

A little while before Christmas though, I bought myself a Baseball Card present, like all Baseball Card collectors do, on a pretty much year-round Christmas basis.

This one arrived in "Hobby" boxes of 2023 Topps Archives. And only Hobby Boxes. None for you, retail "poors." And also not in those cool "Collector" Boxes with the actual Baseball Player Lunch Boxes, so you could relive being 8 years old, which is of course what Baseball Cards are all about, at a root level. 

I would have been pretty happy to plunk down a Benjamin for either a Hobby or Collector's Box of 2023 Topps Archives, but, alas, I was up in the delightful "Wilds" of the Lake Superior Country, where there are lots of one and two year old Baseball Cards for sale at the one-only-every-100-miles Walmarts, but definitely not any super cool Hobby-only products.

By the time I got home from that expedition to the Baseball Card Wilderness, all the Hobby products were sold out, unless I wanted to pay for the thrill of worrying about some Porch Pirates stealing them from me, which, I never do. Once my LCS sells out of stuff, I'm content with Baseball's ultimate re-assurance - "there's always next year."

That sad tale of woe meant I never got to experience Topps in Three Dimensions last year, via their ultra cool 3D Glasses packed one, per, in every "Hobby" of 23 Archives. 

Until I finally pulled the trigger on just behaving like a 21st Century adult, rather than an 8 year old, and just purchased the glasses online, in a package that would fit in a regular old mailbox, where Porch Pirates still fear to tread, probably due to the Federal Law Enforcement "Eyes in the Sky" spooking them too much, I believe. Firmly.

And I mean, if Topps makes something for me, Ima buyin it, no matter how goofy. In fact, the goofier, the better. I've got a collection of Topps Qbit Stampers -AND- Topps Glow-In-The-Dark Poker Chips to prove it! These nifty new glasses will probably make those widgets look an extra 159% cooler, too.

As an added bonus, I got 4 of the special 3D cards designed to go with these uber cool 3D glasses - or were the glasses designed to go with the cards? I forget.

And as an added added bonus, one of my initial, first-hit's-free-kid, cards was one of Miguel Cabrera. Is that why I finally pulled this silly trigger? Could be. It's Miggy in 3D! Hellz to the Yah, eh! Let's take a look:

Miggy leads the charge!

Back to the cellar, boys!

Now, don't worry, dear devoted readers. I'm not going to leave you hanging, missing out on the whole 3D experience with the same ole, same ole 2D Internet experience; this is the year 2024 after all. That's not how this blog works. No upcharge, or nothin' -

Hmmm.

Might have to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Miggy's "Blue period"

Is it just me, or does Miggy look fat in this?

OK, Ok, ok, this isn't working out like I thought it would. Isn't there, like, a "3D" button on Life now, that I can push whenever I wish? I mean it sure seems that way on Social Media now, where Halloween just isn't complete any more without a 3D Pumpkin on every porch.

Turns out, even better than a 3D panic button, there is an "AI" 3D option. Let's take a look:

I think this is how "3D" worked back in the 20th century, when it was kinda a more DIY deal. I mean, if you move a 2D Baseball Card forwards and backwards, it's now operating in 3, count 'em, 3 dimensions, right? I think there was a Saturday Night Live sketch about this, but that show is on late at night, so, I'm not sure how accurate it is, usually.

Let's try again -

OMG! Miggy keeps gettin' fatter!

Is this what we really want?

Luckily, AI always knows what we -really- want:

The crowd keeps gettin' smaller now.

I guess Miggy is going to beat the throw at First Base, this time.

That can't be real. AI is infallible! We all know that.

Let's give it one more chance -

wait, now I'm starting to feel a little car-sick

I don't know, Base Set fans, I think we might have to wait till the 4th wall arrives to truly experience Topps in 3D all-together-now, over the Internet, instead of in actual, "3D" life, where we take turns with the glasses, or the cards, as fortune might dictate.

And don't worry about lookin goofy with these either. Topps apparel is always completely stylish and they got ya covered with the stylin' frames:

Yes, you will not look like a nerd who never grew up wearing these while you walk out of the Big Box store with the alarm going off because you bought Baseball Cards. This was clearly a job for the 20th century umbrella logo, too, so the deets are correct.

And all these wordy words for only one Baseball Card? Doan worry -

I spent all these George Washingtons to look at a 3D picture of, a Hug? Let's keep our eye on the ball here:

I mean, when I put on the glasses, he catches the ball, amirite?

We'll see. Err, well, I will. You might have to buy your own glasses.

These cards are designed "after" a 1954, iirc, "Tarzan" set.

I bet that was a hoot.

Does MLB today have a Tarzan? 

I think this set needs a Puig, that would work.

Oh, wait. He "retired" to Korea now.

Let's try a Plan B -

I said Tarzan, not "mercenary"

OK, so it looks like I am collecting this one. I gotta see Baseball in 3D, somehow.

That has some good news, and some bad news. The actual name of the not 1954, but 1953 (nerds don't like these details being wrong) set was "Tarzan & the She-Devil," which probably has an explosive three dimensional She-Devil card. And I will be needin' that. At least, now I already have the glasses! #ThanksTopps.

But that's the bad news. The good news is: this 20 card checklist doesn't have a Shohei Ohtani card! How cool is -that- ? That means "they" will be just givin' these cards away. Except, there is a Judge card, so that might actually cost real money. Bummer.

And plus, plus, now it's time for

Bonus Round

You think I blew $4 on a waycool pair of Topps 3D glasses for just 20 cards?

I've got whole bunches of 3D cards!