Check Out These KBO Cards

Remember how excited we were that someone, somewhere was playing baseball this year, and how we started watching Korean Baseball Organization games on TV in the middle of the night? (Or in my case, on TiVo after recording them). The KBO had barely registered for me before this year, and while I can't say I instantly became a true fan of it - or that I've kept up watching the games - I will say that I liked it enough to want to collect a few of their baseball cards.

Enter my pal Tim, whom I've known for so long that I've known him for quite a bit longer than I've known my wife of 22 years. Tim and I published underground music fanzines in the 1990s; he played in some very cool San Diego bands; and now he actually works for the Padres (!) and enjoys the same middle-aged card-collectin' pursuit that I've pursued myself. 

He sent me a pack of KBO cards that arrived in the mail today, and I was so excited that I just reckoned I'd blog 'em right up for you here, right now. Now don't get me to try and tell you who these guys are, because I don't know them, and I'm not able to read Korean (yet). They remind me of the Match Attax soccer cards my son was collecting a few years ago, where each players gets a rating, and you can use them to play some sort of a "game". Maybe you folks know how it all works? Here, take a look at some KBO cards.

More Hot Ones Scorching Up The Mailbox

Guess it was a busy card-orderin' week about ten days ago at Card Hemorrhage HQ, because the mailbox lit up like a Rockefeller Center Xmas tree on Saturday, thanks to a trio of received orders from COMC + a couple from eBay. Let's take a look together, shall we?

First, I picked up a handful of those "Tarot of the Diamond" cards one of you blogging rogues was writing about the other day - my apologies for already forgetting whom. I'm following 40-some-odd excellent card blogs in my Feedly feeder-thing, and it's like a daily orgy of card-collecting excitement, except I don't always write everything down. Sometimes I just get excited and start ordering things like this 2020 Gypsy Queen "Tarot of the Diamond" card for Mike Trout.

Now, like Nick over at Dime Boxes said in one of his recent posts, I'm not going totally out of my way to collect Trout cards, but hey, if they can come into my hands easily, I'll make a special spot for them in a box. My Mike Trout cards. This is now one of them. There are 22 in this year's Tarot of the Diamond series. Perhaps you have some extras that you don't want? Feel free to let me know, and we can work something out, I'm certain.

Also picked up a couple from the 2018 Gypsy Queen Tarot of the Diamond series as well. I definitely purposefully collect Ichiro, and hey, maybe I sort of collect Trout, too:

Next, a couple of San Francisco Giants team sets I'm working on got a little closer to being completed. A few weeks ago Fuji sent me my first 2005 Topps Emerald Nuts cards for the Giants, and I was instantly smitten. I picked up a few more of them this weekend:

There are 30 of those in all, and so I'm about a third of the way there now, all told. Someone on eBay was selling a batch of the 2011 Emerald Nuts Giants as well, so I threw down a couple of bucks for those to get me started on the 38-card set:

My, what a team that was - a team that won a World Series the year before, if you can believe it. I've got 13/38 of these, and my math says that's 34.21% of the way there. Next, let's talk about Shohei Otani. I watched his return to pitching yesterday against the Oakland A's, and he went 6 batters without getting a single out, and was then pulled. Not so good, Shohei. But here are a few cards of his I grabbed, all of them featuring him with Ichiro as well:

In my posts on my small sub-collection of hockey cards, I mentioned that I'm actively collecting the entire O-Pee-Chee 1973-1974 World Hockey Association set. The biggest hurdle to get my over the hump on this one were the two "expensive" cards in the set, and with some money having recently come in from someone having bought $100 worth of records from me, I sprung for these two ringers:

Everything else from here on in this set is just a numbers game for me. Can I find some shaggy-haired dude from the the Phoenix Roadrunners whom I've never heard of? Here's hoping I can. 

Also, I'm getting really close to a goal of having the 1970 Seattle Pilots set completed. The high-numbered ones are quite a bit more pricey than I'd thought they would be, no matter the lack of notoriety of the player. Alas, my Bobby Bolin card arrived with a little bit of flair on his upper lip:

Do I replace it with a "normal" Bolin? Or do I live with this bastardization of his card? Here a couple of other Pilots items that arrived this weekend:

Finally, let's end it with this 1970 Kellogg's Willie McCovey card. Such a great series. I'm so glad the kids of the early 70s hung on to these things and they're now making their way into the hands of morons like me. Until next time, folks!

Cards Are Coming In Hot

Why would anyone want to look at a baseball card blog? I'll tell you why. Well - there are those card blogs that run a bit more philosophical and prosaic in their tone, like Night Owl Cards, f'r instance, and of course those are must-reads. But for most of the rest of us, it's about the card scans themselves, am I right? I want to see what you got. You might want to see what I've got. Maybe you'll spur me onto a new set or player. Maybe I can do the same for you.

And why has the spring and summer of 2020 been such a good one, card-wise, for Jay at the Card Hemorrhage blog? I'll tell you why. First, there's Covid-19. It has, uh, focused the mind, as one says. It focused me for a while on doing mindless fun things (like rejuvenating my card collection) to escape the greater noise and misery outside. Secondly, I sold a bunch of vinyl records. I have an underground music fanzine and podcast called Dynamite Hemorrhage that has absolutely zero to do with sports, cards etc., yet which is a complement and adjunct to the large 45rpm 7-inch single collection that I've built up over the years. Now I'm selling a bunch of 'em, and the proceeds from a few of the sales have been plowed into this card collection. We're not talking big money here; I might sell a few records each week and bring in $50, a slice of which goes into my next CardBarrel, Sportlots, COMC or eBay order(s). Fun money.

Yet the cards continue to come in hot! Trades, plus buys from all of the aforementioned. Let me direct your attention to the 1950 Johnny Antonelli Bowman card up top, which is a new purchase of mine, as I seek to collect the entire career of Mr. Antonelli. It's the first 1950 Bowman card I've owned. I cherish it as I would a newborn baby. Here are a few other recent Antonelli card I was able to secure, one way or another, starting with this 1951 Bowman:

This one comes from a 1978 Grand Slam baseball set that I'm entirely unfamiliar with:

...and here's an Antonelli from a 1984 Mother's Cookies set...

...and one from a 1968 Fleer set (!):

I also decided to take a bit of that record money and apply it to some Frank Robinson cards from the 1960s that weren't too expensive. His 1962 Topps card arrived in a protective contraption that I'd never really seen before, but I dig it...! I had to head down to the garage to find the tiny screwdriver that would allow me to free it from its confines. Now it has been liberated, and lives with its new brothers in my burgeoning Frank Robinson collection:

Then there's the array of San Francisco Giants and oddball/cool non-Giant cards that have found their way to me recently. The mother of all trade hauls came to me recently from P-Town Tom of Waiting 'Til Next Year blog. Honestly, I'll be writing about and posting cards from this batch for the next few months, rather than one big "look at what I got in a trade" post. Here's a 1978 Bill Madlock Hostess card that he sent me:

...and a 2019 Topps Heritage "Adrian Beltre" story insert!

So much more to come from the P-Town Tom haul. Finally, let's take a gander at a few other new cards of mine. I added Willie Wilson to my "players I am collecting" list, and came up with this 1987 Sportflics hologram thing whilst cobbling together some of his cards. Can you even see what's going on here? I assure you that you could if I turned it into a GIF:

I kinda dislike anything and everything Yankees - except for The Lost Collector and Jomboy Media, of course - but I'm quite fond of this 2019 Donruss Optic Illusions Aaron Judge card:

Finally, how about a slightly ding'ed 1970 Kellogg's 3-D Superstar card of Mr. Juan Marichal? 

That's all I've got for this installment of a "random cards" post. We'll see what next week might bring.

1971 Giants - Complete!

This was a fun little set to cobble together, and definitely not as easy as I'd thought it would be. To finish my collection of Topps 1971 Giants without spending a fortune, I bought the Willie Mays card you see here. Final piece in the puzzle. It's certainly not in the best shape; it's off-centered a bit, and yet at $8, it was the only '71 Mays I could find that wasn't in the $25+ range.

But hey! The 1971 Giants, your National League West champions, are now complete! I wrote a bit about this set - and that team - here. Mays. McCovey. Marichal. Bonds (Bobby). The whole 1971 NL West Champs. When I was growing up in the late 70s, that was the refracted glow I had to bask in, all the way until we finally did it again in 1987 and 1989.

I had two other cards I had to take care of to complete the set since the last time I posted about my epic quest. The first was Bob Heise (high number card! #691!), whom I'd never heard of before. Turns out Heise played 11 years in the majors, up until 1977, and in his 1,232 lifetime plate appearances, smacked one home run - and it was for your '71 Giants. Here he is, on his one and only Giants card:

Folks, I have to get better with my scanner. Unlike the Mays card above, that really is off-center a bit, the Heise card is that way simply because I'm not so good at using my scanner's software. The other card I needed was the Juan Marichal "Play Baseball Scratch Off" insert. I got it via CardBarrel for really not very much dinero:

I thought I'd scan a few others that I didn't include in the last post. Check out John Cumberland's bad-ass logo-free black hat, and enjoy the other '71 Giants, whose set I may have mentioned I have now completed.

Jo Adell, Prospect and/or Goldmine

I talk a really good game when it comes to collecting cards without any regard to their future value. "Just the players I admire, even if no one else does" - you know? I'm no flipper, just a normal "citizen collector". And yet I'm now collecting the cards of two current prospects whom I've never actually seen play: Joey Bart, and the Los Angeles California Angels of Anaheim's Jo Adell. So yeah. Why collect prospects if not for the potential to "hit it big" with their minor league and early cards, once they become superstars?

I don't think that's really it with me, honestly. How much can my Jo Adell Salt Lake Bees card really be worth, ten years down the line? Say the dude maintains a lifetime .320 average ten years from now, and wins a couple of MVPs over his teammate Mike Trout. Maybe sell the thing for $25 somewhere down the road? Yeah, not really moving the needle for me. And of course, that's not likely to happen, no matter how much hype is buzzing around Orange County right now,

No, I think it's a more primal or goofball need to be on the ground floor of a given phenomenon - in this case,  a baseball player who might end up being a household name a few years from now. Oh hey, I had all his cards when he was playing for the Mobile Baybears! I guess I read about Adell a year or two ago, followed his progress in the minors, and bought into the lore that he's going to be a big piece of the next Angels World Championship team. That's why. Guy seems like someone worth following - and his cards are pretty cheap, too - for now.

I don't even know if Jo Adell is going to make the team for the 60-game season that starts in two days. For now, however, please have a look at 8 of the 13 or so cards of his I've accumulated.

I Guess There Used To Be a Baseball Card Museum

I have an embarrassed confession of sorts to make. You know a few weeks ago, when I wrote about how I was painstakingly, card by card, putting together the 1986 Fritsch Negro League set? I even said something along the lines of how "you can buy the entire 119-card set for $21.95 right now. Go ahead and do it if you want, but me - I'm getting into building this set individually, and I have 40-some-odd cards from it so far....".

Yeah, well, I up and bought the set for $21.95. I did the math on what each individual remaining card would likely cost, even at a buck a pop, and well - $22 sounded a lot better than $75. Moreover! When I ordered the set from Fritsch, they added my choice of a "free gift". I chose an 8-card commemorative set from the "Larry Fritsch Baseball Card Museum" in Cooperstown, NY. How about that?

Best I can gather, this set was something you probably got handed to you at the end of a tour, and/or could order from Fritsch himself. It features some of the world's most famous really old cards - basically the stuff that collectors were drooling over, circa 1988. Anyone out there ever go to the museum? Did it truly exist as a physical place you paid an admission fee to get into, or...?

Anyway, here's what the rest of the cards look like. Pardon my not-so-good scanning abilities.