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.

For a Few More Antonellis

As I'm sure I mentioned a couple of times already, the realization that to collect baseball cards once more meant I could find validation in building sets my way - i.e. individual players, teams or Frankensets - was totally liberating. I'd labored under the assumption for many years that card collecting was mostly about chasing the big-dollar cards and/or about completing sets - preferably by buying them in one fell swoop. So I stayed away.

Now that I'm back, one of the guys I'm collecting is Johnny Antonelli. I talked about that a couple of weeks ago. I was able to pull together a few new ones the past couple of weeks, courtesy of a Sportlots order. This one you see here is from 1953, Topps #106, when Antonelli had just returned from two years away from baseball, having completed his military service. His Boston Braves were about to become the Milwaukee Braves, and he would go 12-12 for them that year with a 3.18 ERA. This now 67-year-old card has seen better days, but it sure looks better in my collection than wherever it was beforehand.

Antonelli was traded to the New York Giants in 1954, where he'd go on to win the World Series with young Willie Mays that year. He went 21-7 with a 2.30 ERA, made the All-Star team and finished third in the MVP voting, after Mays and Ted Kluszewski. Here's what his Topps #119 card looked like that year, right before the season was to begin:

The 1955 Bowman set that followed that year was an unusual one, with each player encased in a television set (!). Here's card #124 from 1955 Bowman:

These last two cards are a relatively recent reprint and an artifact. First, a Topps reprint of one of his Braves cards, followed by a 2002 Topps New York Giants "Super Teams '54" card. I think now that I have this one, I could totally use this entire set, and will commence upon collecting it presently. 

Johnny Antonelli - My Dad's Guy

I certainly get more of a thrill out of 50s and 60s cards than I do penny cards from the junk wax era, and reckoned that it made some sense to collect at least one player that played back then. There will be more, but I had to start somewhere, and I started with Johnny Antonelli.

Antonelli was a 5-time All-Star and two-time 20-game winner for the New York and San Francisco Giants, and played from 1948 until 1961. He actually had a chance to play for the 1962 expansion New York Mets, who set the record for futility by losing 120 games that year, but our boy Johnny chose to "retire" at the age of 31 rather than take his talents back to the Polo Grounds with Casey Stengel and the boys.

Johnny Antonelli was also my dad's favorite player when he was a kid and a teenager, just as Jack Clark was mine. My dad introduced me to the sport of baseball in 1976, as I recount in this post of mine on a different blog. So when it came time to figure out which 50s/60s dude I was going to collect first, well - I mean I'm accumulating McCovey cards for sure, but the more affordable way to complete a guy's cards is to begin with someone with a shorter career and much lower price tags on his cards, right? And plus I knew my dad would get a kick out of it (he's still with us, sheltering in place in San Jose, California).

The card you see up top is a 1954 Bowman. Let's take a look at the other four Antonellis I've managed to grab so far. First, a 1956 Topps:

 

1957 Topps:

 

Then it's on to San Francisco.....this one's from 1959 Topps:

 

...and finally this one from 1960 Topps, with the amazing alternating red/black letters:

 

Only one more year in baseball for Johnny Antonelli after that. He passed away just over a month ago (!) at his home in Rochester, NY, on February 28th, 2020. The Trading Card Database says he has 81 cards in total, so my quest is on, and I'll share what I can in this space during the months to come.