Plenty Psyched About This Recent Trade

I blind-emailed Daniel over at It's Like Having My Own Card Shop about a blind trade, and pleasingly and most beneficially, he was into it. Even packed 'em up right away and mailed me my batch, and I had them a mere 6 days later. I got some gems, some ringers, some real Card Hemorrhage dillys, let me tell ya.

I'm probably most excited about this 2011Allen & Ginter Tim Lincecum relic. It's a jersey encased in a mini, encased in plastic, wrapped in cardboard. Given how orange it is, it's likely from the Giants' "orange Friday" home games, in which they wear throwback orange-dominated uniforms on Fridays only. It's also a Timmy card I didn't have and had never seen. Thanks, Daniel.

But wait! There was more. I am also now the proud owner of a Topps Pablo Sandoval relic from 2015 that I also didn't have and had never seen. This is card # CHR-PS, and commemorates his .330 batting average in 2009. Sandoval - who just may be my favorite player of all time - was recently picked up by the Atlanta Braves, but I haven't seen anything about him joining them for their playoffs, which start this week. They would be wise to do so, as he may just hit 3 home runs in a World Series Game 1 for them. 

The next-most unusual card in my batch is this 2003 Upper Deck Troy Glaus "game face" relic. Love it. Have never seen these before. Is that Glaus airbrushed onto a piece of baseball? That sure is what it looks like. I may need to uncover more of these game face cards.

Also received a couple of 1970 Topps San Francisco Giants from my want list, poorly-scanned by me here as usual:

...and a few other ballers from either the Giants or the 2002-era Angels. What a great trade. Let's do it again sometime, Daniel from It's Like Having My Own Card Shop.

Another Round of Cards Coming In Hot

That's my dumb title for these posts that end up being excuses to scan and post new cards I've accumulated. I had a bit of quiet period for two weeks as I ramped up at a new job, then had a flurry of activity two weekends ago that resulted in a few interesting cards coming into Card Hemorrhage HQ.

I didn't know much about Jon Mark Owings, whom you see here in an autographed /844 2008 Donruss "Turn of the Century" design - probably because he didn't make it to the bigs. I uncovered this card in a repack I bought at Walgreens in San Francisco for $5, along with a few other decent cards.

I'm pretty fond of the 2001 Upper Deck Decade cards that focus on the 1970s, both from a design standpoint and because they focus on some of the dudes I collect. Not all hall of famers, but dudes. I already had the Willie McCovey card from this series, but here are two from that set that I procured on eBay of Bobby Bonds and Jack Clark:

Next, you might have seen me post about another guy I collect, a journeyman reliever named Matt Carasiti who got hurt this spring. I believe I have exactly one card left of his to find after nabbing his 2014 Asheville Tourists minor league card; it's his 2015 Modesto Nuts minor league card. Can you help me find it?

There were also a few Shohei Otani cards that arrived smoking in the mailbox this past week...

....and a 2019 Bowman's Best Chrome from his teammate Jo Adell....

Check out this 1991 Kellogg's Sportflics Baseball Greats Rollie Fingers I was able to grab:

And then, in the midst of completing that 2002 Anaheim Angels Topps Chrome set, I also grabbed a 2002 San Francisco Giants team card from the same set. You may remember that the two teams met in the World Series that year.

Finally, I've been really digging into Topps Gallery card singles of late, grabbing the ones I like on CardBarrel. I got these four from the 2018 series of Giants guys I felt I needed in the collection - two of whom were bonafide stars, another two of whom barely sniffed the majors. See you next time.

From the Idiot Files

It's time once again for some scans of my recent "idiot acquisitions". As mentioned before, I started pulling together cards of strange-looking players, batters popping up and guys diving out of the way of pitches because Dime Boxes Nick was doing such a great job championing them. It became clear that it was exceptionally easy and cheap to pull together some of the most idiotic cards ever produced, and have a lot of fun in the process. No section of my collection gives me a greater sense of satisfaction when I rifle through it.

The cards we'll be looking at together today were mostly inspired by recent posts on the Infield Fly Rule blog. Whenever I see a bit of idiotic glory like this 1992 Leaf Joe Oliver card, I pounce by dropping yet another $0.18 card in my CardBarrel shopping cart. Once enough idiots and normal needs have been acquired to jack me up past the "free shipping" point - which I think is $30 - I click the buy button. 

Thankfully it's not just Joe Oliver this time, though he's up top here for a reason. I'm also pretty impressed with another one I learned about on Infield Fly Rule, and that's creepy Mike Armstrong on his 1983 Topps card:

I mean, I'm not the first to notice the serial killer vibe on this one, but how do you like the double photos, each as menacing as the other? Jeez Mike, smile much? 

The rest are rather more pedestrian in their idiocy. I'm proud to call them my own. See if you can spot the Hall of Famer in this batch! No, it's not Jose Offerman, folks.

We're Calling These the 1975 SSPC 42, Right?

The other day I was putting my card house in order, and started to organize the 1976 SSPC cards I'd acquired to date. I'd been a little confused about the backs of some of them - how they were in "landscape mode" - but then my organization really took a turn when I realized I had two different #8 cards - one with Frank Robinson as the Angels' player/manager (and with his 1974 stats on the back), and another of the Cleveland Indians' Larvelle Blanks, which references his 1975 season in "portrait mode" on the back - as do the majority of the SSPC cards I have.

So I reckoned as one does that something was up here. I went to my two most reliable blog sources for classic card-collecting what-not, The Shlabotnick Report and Night Owl Cards, and their respective archives both helped a little if not explicitly. It was the Trading Card Database that gave me the good word on these things. These are the "1975 SSPC 42" - a 42-card set, mostly of then-stars and quite a few future hall of famers. It's one of several smaller sets that SSPC put out with a large color photograph of the player on the front, and given the general uncertainty about the date origin of the much-larger 630-card 1976 SSPC set - the one we most commonly refer to as "the SSPCs" - I'd just figured that the cards I had from the 42-card '75 set and those I had from the larger set were one and the same. Now I know better.

Here's what the back of a 1975 SSPC 42 looks like. This is Tommy Davis' card - #7 in the 42-card set. The fact that they used the players' god-given full names is maddening, so you have to think a little bit about who "Herman Thomas Davis Jr." might actually be. Oh - right - Tommy Davis. I know him. Here's the back of Carl Yastrzemski's card:

The good thing, I guess, is that collecting a full set of 42 cards is going to be quite a bit easier than grabbing the 630 I need to complete the 1976 SSPC set. I'm up for the task, wallet permitting. Here are the fronts of the other four I have so far, besides Tommy Davis.

Card Hemorrhage Set Completion Report

2020's been the big year of card collecting for me, my previous dribs & drabs of collecting supercharged by a global pandemic; a temporary job loss (and thus free time for collecting); and a steady stream of Paypal income from selling off a bunch of records. I'll admit that I'd never completed a set before this year, though I'd never actually bought a set in full, either. In 2020, I've done it both the easy way and the hard way - with my biggest and newest collecting goals a long way off.

What you see pictured here is a team set - which counts, far as I'm concerned. It's the 2005 Topps Emerald Nuts San Francisco Giants 30-card set, something I didn't know existed until Fuji sent me my first few cards and I was dazzled by 'em. Look at these. Oh, I know it's hard to truly look at them since I got lazy and took a camera phone photo on a rug, instead of scanning them individually for you - but trust me, they're nice. This particular team corresponds to one of my peak years for "watching the Giants on TV", as we had a toddler and there was a lot of nightly Giants baseball going on while we cared for him. My poor wife. 

Here are the full card sets I've completed this year - and admittedly, it was by buying them outright:

• 1981 Kellogg's 3D Superstars
• 1986 Fritch Negro League Baseball
• 1949 Bowman Pacific Coast League 1987 Card Collectors Co.
• 1994 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes of Baseball

Here are the full team sets I've completed by buying them one by one, or two by two, or by getting them in trades etc:

• 1969 Topps Seattle Pilots
• 1971 Topps San Francisco Giants
• 1972 Topps San Francisco Giants
• 1975 Topps San Francisco Giants
• 1981 Topps San Francisco Giants
• 1981 Fleer San Francisco Giants
• 2002 Topps Chrome Anaheim Angels
• 2005 Topps Emerald Nuts San Francisco Giants
• 2010 Topps Heritage San Francisco Giants
• 2011 Topps Heritage San Francisco Giants
• 2012 Topps Heritage San Francisco Giants
• 2014 Topps Heritage San Francisco Giants
• 2019 Topps Heritage San Francisco Giants
• plus every single Oakland Seals/California Golden Seals Topps hockey card, from their debut in 1967 through their demise in 1975-76. Just nailed my last two cards a couple of weeks ago.

I've also completed a few small Giants Allen & Ginter and Gypsy Queen "sets" - a few other 3-8 card team sets snatched from other series, too - but that's really not quite the same thing as cobbling together 20+ cards. I also bought the 1983 Renata Galasso '69 Seattle Pilots card set in one fell swoop, and I'm glad I did. I have several Phoenix Giants minor league sets from the 1970s and a 1985 Mother's Cookies SF Giants team set that I also purchased this way (and man, they were cheap; if you had told me that they could be had for $5-$8 two years ago, I'd have scoffed and instead paid you $35-40). 

It's the thrill of the hunt, the sense of completion - all the things that make an oddball collector an oddball collector. Wear it with pride. Now - in addition to team stuff I'm trying to complete like the 1970 Topps Seattle Pilots and quite a few other SF Giants sets, my laser focus is now turned to 4 sets I'd absolutely love to complete someday:

• 1965 Topps baseball
• 1971 Topps baseball
• 1972 Topps baseball
• 1976 SSPC baseball

Of these, SSPC seems very attainable, followed by 1972 Topps. It can - and it shall - be done, but it ain't happening this year. The other two goals are barely off the ground; 1965 Topps are amazing, but I have exactly three of them right now. So yeah. That's a bit of a reach. But I know some of you folks have done this and other amazing things with your collection. Maybe tell us all about it in the comments if you wouldn't mind?

2020 Allen & Ginter Is Here, Folks

Love 'em or hate 'em, this year's Allen & Ginter cards are here, and I bought one of them there "blaster boxes" or whatever you call them. I was at one of my local card shops, and the masked fella behind the counter was telling another masked customer that they'd been selling like hotcakes, but he wasn't all that into them. Join the crowd, I guess. 

It's a funny series, the A&Gs. This year it's sprinkled with minis, as usual; has a bunch of long-tail celebrities included, most of whom have nothing to do with baseball; and there's even some inserts of rocks and large world cities like Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. That stuff goes right into the trade box - but good thing 2020 Allen & Ginter has baseball players as well, right? 

I was able to pull a few good ones. Just one Giant - Orlando Cepeda - but I just CardBarrel'ed the rest not ten minutes ago. I got this Bryce Harper insert - "Longball Lore" - that I have to admit looks pretty ace; there are several other tales of power-hitting youngsters as well in the series, but this is the only one I got in my seven packs. I did get quite a few of those rocks, though. Seriously, it's called "Digging Deep" and if you're looking for the Tanzanite or the Jade or the Pink Opal, Card Barrell has them all for 50 cents each here. 

Here are a few of the superior baseball players I was able to grab out of those 7 packs. 

Picked Up a Few of My Guys at the LCS

Yesterday I did something for the first time since the pandemic started: set foot inside my local card shop, Lefty's Sports Cards in Burlingame, CA. (By local I mean the closest to San Francisco, where I live; we don't have a card shop in my city of 900,000 people). I also took a trip down to Peninsula Sports Cards, a few miles south in Belmont. 

Alas, we're not quite back in a world of unbridled card shopping, which I perfectly and 100% understand and am supportive of. Neither store allowed for browsing boxes, so my goal of jacking up my 1972 Topps collection fell by the wayside yesterday. One store had a 15-minute limit for customers, and another only allowed 4 in the store at any given time. Again: I support this 100%. I'm delighted they're open, and I'll continue to support both of them, even in this reduced form. 

There were still cards to check off the Card Hemorrhage checklists. At Lefty's I picked up some new gems for my player collections, including the 2001 Upper Deck Decades Jack Clark you see here. This guy was such a hero of mine that I wrote a school paper in 6th grade about how he was my most-admired human being on the planet. I don't remember the grade, but I'm sure you can see why grabbing any card with him in a Giants uniform is a priority. 

I also loaded up on a few Tim Lincecum card I didn't have yet:

Pablo Sandoval remains "the player with a ton of cards whom I'm nonetheless fixated on acquiring every last one of them". I got a little bit closer to the goal yesterday with these pickups (among others):

Also added a new one to the Joey Bart book, this 2019 Panini with Bart playing for Georgia Tech (!).

More from my LCS outings next time.