Okay, now that I’ve established myself as the odd one out in the current collecting landscape – favoring vintage cards and all – it’s appropriate that I showcase some recent “oddballs” in my collection.
This runs the gamut, covering 85 years of trading cards, and some of it isn’t even cardboard.
Let’s take a look:
Sparked by my first purchase of a high number 1960 Leaf Dodger card in Rip Repulski, I decided to grab another one with this Joe Pignatano. It has a few minor flaws (it was listed as “good”, which for me is mostly “good enough”), but it still looks great.
That leaves only Stan Williams to complete the team set. When I landed the Repulski, I received an email saying the Williams was available for a reasonable price on sportlots. But I didn’t jump on it (I’m rarely financially ready to take opportunities) and it’s gone.
Here’s a card – and an owl greeting card – that arrived in response to my last Topps buyback post from 1975. TCDB Member GoldenEagles555aka Steffan, is a friend of the blog and I appreciate his readership and generosity. It’s always exciting to get an All-Star card from this set for my buyback mission. And of course, I’m also quietly shocked that someone stamped a ’75 All-Star card. Anyway, it’s the 543rd card for the set anyway!
I love the 1986 Topps wax box panties more than any other 80’s/90’s wax box panties because they contrast so beautifully with the 1986 Topps set.
I was lucky enough to get 3 of 4 1986 O-Pee-Chee panels from Angus a few years ago. The one I didn’t get is the Bell-Boggs-Brett-Coleman one, but here it is in Topps form! This is my second complete 1986 Topps panel and it came from the BlueSky giveaway a few weeks ago. This kind of thing doesn’t come up often in the thread, so super happy about this oddity.
Okay, there’s not much to look at. That’s how you know it’s strange. This is one of the items that Max showed up from the Starting with nine blogging. He’s sent me countless envelopes over the years, and he rightly called this one “weird than usual.”
Two of the items sent were from Fernando Valenzuela, the postcard at the top, and this Slurpee disk. The 7-11 discs of the 80’s are hard for me to keep track of, they occur over several years and are divided into regions of the country and only a few of them feature three players on one disc – which was all the rage in the mid-1980s. This disc is from 1986, the East region, and features Fernando, Ron Guidry and Bret Saberhagen. I had to stuff it like that to show Fernando.
Max, the most recent of the cards, sent these 50/50 Shohei Ohtani cards from Topps’ online set in honor of Ohtani’s 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases.
This is a fairly uninspired set and is 100 cards in size (one for each home run and stolen base), which is why I’ve never bothered with it. If every photo is actually of that specific home run or stolen base, I’ll take back the “uninspired” part, but I have my doubts.
Ice helmets! Max sent me three Dodgers copies. He doesn’t know why he had three, I don’t know what to do with three. Maybe go around the corner and scam passers-by with the shell game? I’ll think of something.
Finally the oldest card I’ve received – well, probably for the whole year.
It’s from the 1939 Play Ball set. Cookie Lavagetto, that legendary Brooklyn Dodger. It’s a fantastic card, but I admit that my brain gets confused when it comes to cards from before the 1940s and I often get Play Ball and Goudey mixed up. I bet part of me thought I was getting a Goudey card after I ordered this one.
Still, I’m quite surprised at how many Play Ball Dodgers I own. There are still plenty to be had.
And that’s an odd assortment of recent arrivals.
I hope my various collecting interests make this blog more interesting than if I just showed current plate cards. There are advantages to being the odd one out, even if the majority of the population doesn’t understand why I do what I do.
#strange #balls #odd