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.