Pandemic Pretender; or, Cards for Sale!

Hey everyone - well, yeah, it has been quite a few months since I last spoke up in this space, and during that time I pretty much came to the conclusion that my crazed card-collecting hobby had mostly run its course. While I started accumulating before 2020 for sure, the bulk of this hobby was cemented in 2020-2021, which you might remember as a time when there were more than a few "pandemic pretenders" who all of a sudden collected cards.

As it happens, I'm really happy with what I pulled together. It was a blast, and I have a few binders' worth of things I'm definitely keeping and continuing to build upon. But I'm pretty much selling the rest. 

I don't have anything all that amazing, but I definitely have stuff that some folks might be interested in - you set-completers, player collectors and general accumulators. Some vintage, some not. It's really demoralizing to try and get all this stuff on eBay and have it just sit, but I do have a few things there at all times if you want to look there as well. 

The rest is all on the list linked below; if you see something you like, make me an offer by emailing me at thejayhinman@gmail.com, and if it's even close to fair, the answer will be YES. 

Here's the list.

Timmah

When pressed, I tell people my two favorite baseball players of all time are Pablo Sandoval and Tim Lincecum. This is somewhat odd, because neither is at all associated with my youth; both came along to the San Francisco Giants as I was heading into my 40s, and yet both played with some joie de vivre and panache - and helped lead us to three World Championships - that, well, why wouldn't they be?

So there are the two baseball players whom I've decided to collect the "hardest". Just today we had a mail day that brought it two new Lincecum cards. The first is this 2006 "Just Rookies" card that you'd think would be some ultra-rate collector's item, but which I just procured for $1.99 off of eBay. I'm not too familiar with the Just Rookies brand, but there are a million of these on eBay. It is now my earliest Linecum card. I suspect any of the others from 2006 will be a little more difficult to come by.

The other one is a 2007 Topps "Moments and Milestones" card, numbered 02/25. Again, way cheaper than it should have been. In this case, not complaining. I have quite a ways to go before I feel like I'm truly getting there w/ a world-class Linecum collection, but these two get me that much closer.

Still All-In On 1975 Topps Baseball

I suppose I mentioned this once before, but when I first became acquainted with 1975 Topps baseball, the only ones that we could buy at my local (Sacramento) 7-11 - where I bought all my first cards - were the mini versions. Consequently, these minis - which were only available in limited parts of the country - were what I thought 1975 Topps baseball were; a one-year aberration where they decided to experiment with smaller cards. It was only in my non-collecting adulthood that I found out the truth - that those minis were relatively "rare", and that '75 Topps was mostly made in your normal 2.5x3.5 version.

The only '75 packs I grabbed back then in 1977, when I first started buying cards, were leftovers that were sitting unbought. Of course I gave them all away to a neighbor, probably around 1980 or so. Now here I am trying to collect the regular 1975 set, and yeah, it's costing me more than the 25 cents a pack I paid back then. Thankfully there's Ken in Missouri, who recently sent me a nice handful of '75s that I didn't have, including this beautiful if a little chewed-up-in-the-corner Rollie Fingers.

I'm all-in on the 1975s. Seriously one of the great sets of all-time. Here are a few more that came over in the batch from Ken.

Totally Loving These Colors and Contours

If I'm going to make my bed with any sort of hockey card insert series right about now, it's those "Colors and Contours" that come out as a part of Upper Deck's MVP series. They mostly feature stars; they're numbered to /250, and they looks fantastic. They have been doing these for a few years now; what you're seeing here are the 3 that I've procured from the 2020-21 set, and one that I recently picked up from 2021-22. Honestly, those 2020-21 cards are as good as it gets.

There are 100 in that particular set, so I'm 3% of the way there! There are also green and purple versions. Of course, if you have some of these and absolutely hate them and want them out of your collection, please get in touch.

The 2021 Pablo Sandoval Rainbow

You may or may not know that Pablo Sandoval, my all-time favorite baseball player and the guy whom I have the largest PC of, played for the Atlanta Braves during the 2020 season. He did! I remember seeing him pop up in the playoffs that October as a pinch-runner and I was totally delighted, thinking him as being pretty much done with Major League Baseball once the Giants cut him free. 4 plate appearances, with 2 walks for an OPS of .500. He returned in 2021 for 78 at bats at a .178 average. He now plays in the Mexican League. If the Mexican League makes baseball cards - I have not checked yet - I will absolutely be buying the Pablo Sandoval card.

Topps Update put together a "rainbow" of numbered Pablo Sandoval cards in his Atlanta uniform in 2021. I'm not entirely sure why. Believe it or not, there are 27 different versions of this card to collect, including printing plates and whatnot. I don't understand that at all. Someday I shall have those as well. In any case, these are the six that I do have. 3 of these are stamped and numbered, three are not. 

A Tentative Mika Zibanejad Collection

As I write this, the Tampa Bay Lightning are a game away from heading to the Stanley Cup finals by beating Mika Zibanejad's New York Rangers, who until two days ago were the most exciting and inspirational thing about this year's playoff season & who I am rooting for unequivocally. Normally I wouldn't care much about an "Original Six" team, but this is a team that's 28 years removed from their last Cup victory, which came something like 50-some-odd years after their previous one. Now they have an average age of 27, with guys who fly down the ice, crash corners and pop up out of nowhere.

Center Mika Zibanejad is my favorite of the bunch. He's a fast-skating, high-scoring Swede of Persian descent. I'll admit I was only marginally familiar with the guy until these playoffs. He's a first-liner for the Rangers and he's been a total revelation during these playoffs, so much so that.....I bought a bunch of his cards. He was drafted by the Ottawa Senators, played there a bunch to build his game, and came over to New York for the 2016-2017 season.

If he and his team get stomped in Game 6 later today - well, thanks for the memories, Mika. If not - well, the story of the Rangers, "the kid line", Adam Fox, Zibanejad, Igor etc etc will go on for at least another couple of days.

The Curse of Wanting It All

As mentioned in yesterday's welcome-myself-back-to-blogging post, I'm currently dabbling in all sorts of hockey card manias to figure out what I actually like; what's relatively easy to procure; what'll always be too expensive to chase, and so on. I pretty much mastered the baseball card market the past few years, understanding (more or less) what the yearly releases were and where I wanted to spend my time.

The problem I found is that I wanted to spend my time with all of it - or at least most of it. I accumulated more San Francisco Giants cards than I knew what to do with; opened up player collections for at least 15-20 guys; started trying to complete a dozen or more vintage sets; started spending $$ on promising prospects like Joey Bart and Jo Adell who haven't done JACK in the big leagues with their god-given talents, and so forth. It was fun, no question, but then I had to clean a ton of it out to keep my sanity.

With hockey, I think I'm just going to actively go for one player collection: Patrick Marleau. More about that guy in a future post. I can see small PCs assembling for guys like Joe Thornton, Peter Forsberg, Brent Burns and maybe even Mika Zibanejad. As you can see from some of these scans here, I'm also just buying stuff to see what sticks; all of these are interesting cards that came from 2020-21 and 2021-22 Upper Deck Series One and Extended. Now I'm probably going to have to collect all those "Dazzlers", damn it. They're just too great.

I was listening to a new hockey card podcast called Hockey Cards Gongshow (it's a good one), and the fellas behind it were talking about 3 types of card accumulators: "Collectors", "Investors" and "Flippers". While I suppose there's always a part of me that would like to have a buy-and-hold investment in a card I got lucky enough to pull from a pack, that market-based way of thinking about the hobby does nothing for me, and never has - to say nothing of "flipping". The whole breaks, 1/1, what-is-the-market-for-this-card mentality rubs me the wrong way. The Hockey Card Gongshow guys are a little too Wall Street Week-esque at times for my tastes, but their love of the sport and of the players they're collecting overrides all - and hey, I wouldn't be lying if I told you I wish this Ilya Sorokin insert right here was stamped 1/1 on it, or that I'd have loved to get a Trevor Zegras Young Guns out of the packs I bought yesterday.

Anyway, such is the curse of wanting it all. I'll bumble along with hockey cards for a while, trying to complete the stuff on my want list and experimenting with the rest. 

Hey, Card Hemorrhage is Back and "Better Than Ever"

Hey everyone. Well that was a nice little break from "the hobby", now wasn't it? I haven't posted anything since Valentine's Day, and listen, it's not because I stopped collecting or anything. Nah, as I said in earlier posts, I had something of a "reckoning", given that my baseball card collection was starting to overtake my ability to appreciate it and care for it. It was time to reassess and figure out what it was that I truly wanted to collect. Where I ended up was something of a surprise, even to me.

So regarding baseball, my wants and needs were basically whittled down to a few vintage sets - 1965, 1971, 1972, 1975 and 1976 Topps; to two players (Pablo Sandoval and Tim Lincecum); and to various odds and ends that'll let me complete a few things I've started. All of it is on my want list here; if you can help, I've still got plenty to trade.

The only other sport I've really done much with over the years is hockey. I collected every Oakland Seals / California Golden Seals card from the 60s and 70s; I manually assembled and completed the O-Pee-Chee 1974-75 WHA set (maybe my proudest moment in collecting); and I'm nearly complete with the 2001-02 Topps Heritage Hockey set (a few expensive high numbers notwithstanding). 

For a while, I reckoned that was just enough when it came to hockey. Then came my layoff and reevaluation. Now I'm actually over-indexing on the hockey cards, buying stuff at will and relatively randomly, in an attempt to figure out what's out there and what I really like. You can see here that one I'm dabbling in is 2021-2022 O-Pee-Chee Retro, which unfortunately has 600 cards to chase, but damn it, I'm chasing them. I've got a few other sets that are really intriguing as well, and just like any other dork, I'm been ripping Upper Deck packs to try and find some of those "Young Guns", maybe a Kirill Kaprizov or a Trevor Zegras. I started buying some Mika Zibanejad cards because I've been digging that guy (New York Rangers) during the playoffs this year, despite his hockey hair. 

But mostly with the hockey, I'm just buying it all to try and get a sense of it. It's all new and exciting. I mean, I'm going to stay away from virtually all 1980s and 1990s hockey, but aside from that, it's all systems go. I'm glad to be back, and hopefully you're okay with this blog bouncing between baseball and hockey - our two finest sports, right?

Here's Where Card Hemorrhage Currently Sits

Hey everyone - certainly been a while since I made much of an appearance in this space. I'm still collecting the cards, you know, but I had a bit of a reckoning in late 2021 that's sort of shaped how I'm collecting going forward. This hobby, as I'm sure many of you've figured out, can be a bit addicting. One set that needs to be completed begets another set that needs to be completed. One admired player turns into a need to collect that player's entire history of cards. One favored team means that any card from that team needs to be collected. And so on.

Thus, I took stock of it all and pretty much decided to jettison that way of thinking. Here's what I don't collect and accumulate any longer:

• Player collections from guys not named Pablo Sandoval or Tim Lincecum
• Any old vintage card not from the years 1965, 1971, 1972, 1975 and 1976
• SSPC cards
• Cards from the San Francisco Giants baseball team
• Random prospect cards
• Modern cards from dudes I like but that don't serve any greater collecting aim

The focus for me is on those Topps baseball sets from 1965, 1971, 1972, 1975 and 1976. Yes, 1976! I actually added that one, to help make up for all the stuff I subtracted. And I've got a long way to go for all of them. As mentioned in previous posts, I've been inexpensively selling off most everything else in these $5/each packs on eBay - you're welcome to order one or ten here. 

The mania hasn't gone away, though, and I'm okay with that. I recently went to Average Joe's Sports Cards in Buena Park, CA on a trip to Southern California and burned a deep hole in my wallet filling in some 1972 and 1965 wants. So, so fun. I then dialed them up and had them make me a paid care package of 1975 and 1976 commons to get those collections up and running. And I've been sniping Pablo Sandoval rarities off of eBay, COMC and Sportlots at will.

So I'm still very much in the proverbial game, it's just a different game than it used to be. "Sort of like baseball itself". 

25-card Vintage Packs for the People

I reckon that every collector needs to make some adjustments and recalibration to their collecting strategy in order to keep their homes from being overrun and their wallets depleted. For me, that's meant backing off from collecting every card from the 60s and 70s that I could get my hands on; stopping the unending push for prospect cards and to quit collecting the cards of 25 different players in order to truly focus on one or two. 

As mentioned before, this has me unloading some cards in 25-card packs. I think it's a hell of a deal, to be honest. Here's what my "25-card vintage packs for the people" include for a mere $5 plus shipping:

• At least 5 vintage (pre-1978) cards, usually more
• 1 autographed card
• Prospect/minor league cards, including guys who went on to the majors
• SSPC cards from 1975-76
• Modern cards from Gypsy Queen, Topps, Bowman, Topps Heritage, Allen & Ginter and so on
• And more - surprise parallels, small-run food issues etc

It's a great way to get 25 surprise cards spanning the 1950s to today at a low price, including stuff that's pretty tough to find. I collected many cards over the years, and am pruning back my collection this way and making sure they get to a good home. And hey, who doesn't like surprises?

Check out my eBay listing here.

Pruning the Collection - 25-card packs available!

Hey folks - my break from the blog allowed me to figure how I want to proceed with collecting in the new year, and I think I've figured it out. 

My want list has been chopped back quite a bit, and I'm unloading a bunch of cards in 25-card packs full of vintage, autographs, modern and more! Each is only $5, and it's a great way for me to start fresh and focus on 1965, 1972 and a few other things while making sure that some of the cards I've accumulated over the years go to great homes. Take a look!

Check out my eBay listing here.

Not Playing Baseball Scratch Off

I've had a pretty fun time pulling together the 2020 Topps Heritage Minor League set. I completed the base set - even the short prints - late last year, I reckon it was. But collecting being what collecting is, I knew that wasn't really the end of the story. I'd need to try to get at least some of the "Blue Border" or "White Border" variations, just to say I had some, and of course pull together the full set of those 1971 tribute scratch-off cards.

I have several of the real 1971 Topps "Play Baseball Scratch Off" inserts, and in order to get them at a decent price, I've typically bought ones that some child had already scratched off and defaced with a coin. I'm too lazy to look right now, but I think it's fair to say I don't have any in pristine, non-scratched-off condition.

By contrast, all 19 I've procured of the 30-card 2020 Topps Minor League Baseball "Play Baseball Scratch Off" inserts, made in tribute to that 1971 set, are pristine and in lovely shape. Some even feature guys who've already hit the majors, or who are about to. At least one or two is likely to become a superstar. 

I recently picked up a bunch more of these, which you can see pictured here.

Card Show Hemorrhage, Part Four

OK, so I'm getting back to documenting the cards that I was able to procure at the Bay Area Sports Cards & Memorabilia Expo two weeks ago. As I said in a post last year - if you get a bunch of cool new cards, but aren't able to share them on your dorky card blog - did you really get them at all?

The whole morning and afternoon was such a frenzy that I've already kind of forgotten which crevices I dug these out of. So many dealers had interesting stuff to look at - I mean, the ones selling baseball cards, and not overly-priced Zion Williamson "slabs", Funko Pops and Pokemon cards - that I just kind of bumped myself along, table to table, sprinkling very small bills along the way. 

I found three 1959 Topps cards at good prices - stars of the era, even! Robin Roberts, Hoyt Wilhelm and Early Wynn. Is there something to the trope that people typically don't care much about pitcher cards, at least in terms of book values relative to those of hitters? I really don't pay any attention to book values, but that would seem to be the case. All three of these guys are in the hall of fame, and all 3 cards are in pretty good shape. If I paid any more than $3/each, I'd be surprised (it wouldn't be like me to do that).

I was able to find a couple of 1962 winners in a pile somewhere as well:

I had totally forgotten that John Elway had attempted to be a baseball player at one point. The 2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites series didn't, however, and I couldn't resist picking this one up:

Also, these guys. They're Dodgers, but I'll let it slide for 25 cents or whatever this ended up costing me:

I thought these two Allen & Ginter relics were lovely and affordable:

One of my all-time heroes, Juan Marichal, was one of the 24 Topps Baseball Scratch-Offs in 1971. Mine is clearly mis-printed (well, not clear to you, because I edited my scan a little) and was scratched off on the back, so I got it for a song:

Finally, I think this is only the second 1954 Bowman card to make it to my collection, after a Johnny Antonelli I got some time ago. I'm happy that it's Minnie Minoso, a guy whose cards I'm hoping to collect in full someday. That's it for now, until the next batch of scans.