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?

Card Hemorrhage Hockey Card Update

One of the reasons I don't really do much hockey cards collectin' - despite being a big fan of the sport - is that I've come to realize that most of the card designs themselves are just hideous. I blame Upper Deck and O-Pee-Chee, sure, but I also blame the lack of imagination of the grand majority of the other brands as well, dating all the way back to the 70s. I mean, look at this stuff. It's the most razzle-dazzle, color-overloaded shiny garbage imaginable, and it's really kept me away from the stuff.

So when I decided to dip a real toe into hockey card accumulation - which I documented here and here - I really only had two major goals: to collect every single Topps card ever made of the Oakland Seals / California Golden Seals - which I did! - and to collect the entire 1973-74 O-Pee-Chee World Hockey Association set. I only have three left of those to track down. 

After, that I was high and dry. Bereft. In need of inspiration - and a set to collect. I said, well - is there such a thing as "Topps Heritage" cards in the hockey card world? Turns out there used to be, and it's a real dilly of a set! In fact, Topps Heritage Hockey 2001-02 is exactly what I was looking for (they did two other Heritage sets, the year before and the year after, but they're not as cool as these). Just so happens around that time - 2001-02 - my hockey-mania was totally off the charts, and I went to 6 or 7 San Jose Sharks game each year; watched every one of their games on TV and followed both the team and the league religiously. 

So yeah, I decided to pick up the entire 187-card set, best as I could. I actually know and remember pretty much every player in the set. Here are a few random others from it:

Now that's what a hockey card should look like, folks. Any modern set that looks vintage and clean like these, I'm all-in. I don't know enough about hockey cards to say for sure....but are there any others this cool? Even small, Canadian-only sets? Let me know and I'll investigate.

But wait! There's a newer set I totally dig as well. 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee Platinum Hockey Retro looks pretty snazzy and it actually has dudes that are playing, like, now:

So I'm going after this 100-card set as well. May take me a while, but they're pretty nice, right? Reminds me that I bought some Topps Hockey cards that year that Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel both debuted; I guess that was 4 years ago...? I didn't pull the McDavid, but I got the Eichel in a pack - and then saw that their rookie cards were going for insane prices on eBay. I put the Eichel up for $85 and it sold in minutes. Wow. 

Finally, there's this related 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee Platinum set. I think I bought a small batch of these by mistake on eBay. It's better-looking than most sets, but I don't think it's really the vibe I'm going for in my hockey card collection. I don't know. Besides, there are multiple confusing variations of each of these cards, all with the same card numbers, and....jeez. I can't handle it. Baseball cards are so much easier to figure out, right? Anyway, here are a few of those. What is Max Jones doing here again?!? See you next time, folks.

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!

Hockey Card Update & Interlude

It's been pretty much all-baseball here at the CH blog so far, with only one hockey card-flavored interlude so far. I'm rolling out a hockey card obsession very, very slowly, and dipping a toe into a couple of sets and personal preferences here and there, just to see what takes.

The one thing I knew I simply had to do was collect complete Topps sets of all of the Oakland Seals/California Golden Seals teams from their inception in 1967-68, through their demise and move to Cleveland (to become the Barons for a mere two seasons) in 1976-77. I never got to see the Seals play, but I did get to once hear an epic rant from my Grandfather, who told me about the time he went to see a Seals game at the Oakland Coliseum and forgot where he'd parked, leading to a two-hour late-night search after the game for his car. If you want to know more about the Seals, this book and this documentary are well worth checking out.

Right now, I've either got in my posession every single Topps Seals card created for their nine NHL seasons, or it's one of the few stragglers still on the way from one of my SportLots orders. Having just "released" my SportLots box this morning, I'll have a complete Seals collection by the end of the week. OMG what a major accomplishment! No single card cost me more than $3, and most were around 20 cents. That there was really my first and only hockey collecting goal....but of course others soon followed.

I saw some of these 1973-74 O-Pee-Chee WHA cards on someone else's blog, and then I got pretty damn excited about completing the 66-card set. 66 cards? I can do that. I've got 32 of them so far, which makes me 48.5% of the way there. I've always been fascinated with failed, defunct professional sports teams, and the WHA had some great ones: the San Diego Mariners, the Phoenix Roadrunners, the Vancouver Blazers, the Michigan Stags, the Cleveland Crusaders and so on. Wayne Gretzky played in the WHA, as did Gordie Howe, Gerry Cheevers and loads of other legends. The cards I have certainly aren't EX/NM, but that's okay. They speak to another long-gone time in hockey - one without helmets, overseas players and a US television contract.

Something I'd never heard of before three months ago - because I had never really been collecting hockey cards - was Parkhurst cards. Now I know it was a top Canadian brand of the 50s and early 60s during the Original 6 era, and I couldn't believe how gorgeous their cards generally looked. Expensive, though - not for the faint of heart. I took a particular shine to the look of the 1958-59 cards, and decided to buy one, whatever it ended up being. Enter one Barry Cullen of the Toronto Maple Leafs for $6, the cheapest decent-condition Parkhurst card I could find from that year. The card says he'd "potted" 16 goals the year before for the Leafs. Wikipedia says he played until 1960 for Toronto and Detroit before calling it a day.

So now that I've got a lone fabled Parkhurst in my collection, maybe it ends there, maybe not - but of course I'll look out for more. The brand, after a several-decade hiatus, continues to this day.

As I was wrapping up my Topps Seals collection, I thought I might poke around online to see what other sort of posthumous California Golden Seals cards might be out there: tribute cards and what have you. Here are a few 21st-century cards put out by In The Game for goalie Gilles Meloche, who is universally thought of as the most talented human being that the Seals ever put on the ice, including a card of his with the Barons:

I'm absolutely going to continue my quest for any post-1970s Seals cards that might be out there. If you've got a line on any good ones, please let me know. Finally, I decided to make a concession to modernity and collect a modern player. I strongly considered Patrick Marleau, who has been my #1 favorite San Jose Sharks player for over twenty years, and still is......yet if I'm being honest, I find the uber-talented Marleau simultaneously both one of the nicest guys and one of the least interesting people in hockey. I just could not rouse myself for the undertaking of collecting his entire career, for some reason. Perhaps that will change. 

Instead, I decided to focus on exciting, short-term San Jose Shark and Hockey Hall of Famer Teemu Selanne, "the Finnish Flash" and probably my #2 favorite hockey player I've ever watched outside of fellow Hall of Famer and non-Shark Peter Forsberg - whom I may collect next, and who in his prime was absolutely the single most dominating player I've ever seen. Here's what little I've got from  Teemu so far. More hockey interludes on this blog as interesting cards filter in.

Uh Oh. I Knew The Hockey Card Thing Was Going To Happen.

As a kid, I was baseball-first, no question about it. When I started buying sports cards in 1976 and 1977, it was Topps Baseball only - and honestly, in Sacramento, CA, where I grew up, I only remember baseball cards being available at the local 7-11. I lived and breathed the sport; read everything I could about it; watched every game on TV; and bought cards with every quarter that fell into my pocket.

We moved to San Jose in 1978, and two things morphed me into an NHL hockey fan: one, my local Quik Stop store sold every kind of sports card, and two, ESPN debuted in 1979, and not only did we have cable TV, but I had a lot of time to watch it.

ESPN showed NHL games early on. The NHL and WHA had just merged. I remember watching the Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, Edmonton Oilers etc. and being fascinated with the teams who were not the Bruins, Canadians, Blackhawks etc. whom I'd read so much about. So where hockey cards started showing up at Quik Stop, I bought pack after pack. This kid Wayne Gretzky was blazing through defenses and becoming so well-known that even some Americans talked about him (I even owned this card, but I'm pretty sure it was purged from my room by my mom when I left for college). Still, hockey really seemed like someone else's game, and it had zero presence in my elementary school nor in the Bay Area's sports pages.

That was sort of what I liked about it, and it presaged my own snobbish positioning of my tastes around alternatives - especially music. You like mainstream pop music? OK, I like punk. You like pro football and baseball only? OK, check out my Winnipeg Jets cards. Both the punk thing and the alterna-sports thing has carried on well into this day, forty years later. I still put together a music fanzine and podcast called Dynamite Hemorrhage, and yeah, I still follow hockey relatively closely. We even have a team here now, maybe you've heard of 'em.

So when I returned to collecting baseball cards recently, I knew that the lure of hockey cards would follow. Baseball's still, and will always be, #1. But I got to thinking about how cool it would be to put together sets of all of the 70s California Golden Seals teams; maybe collect a bunch of the defunct WHA teams from that same decade; maybe pull together some Kansas City Scouts and Cleveland Barons; maybe get a collection going of my all-time favorite player, Patrick Marleau....

And here we are. I'm deep in the "California Golden Seals" phase of the program. It's not difficult at all - they're quite inexpensive, and there aren't that many of them. I suspect I'll have at least all of the Topps cards by this summer, and maybe will move onto some other specialty sets from there. I would not be surprised if I'm gripped by a bit of hockey card mania from time to time, the way I have been with baseball over the past year. I'm not expecting this blog to turn into a joint baseball/hockey card blog, but just thought I'd highlight this weird and totally unsurprising new chapter in my collecting odyssey.