A Few Gems from Amongst the New Cards

Hey folks - no real "theme" to today's post, outside of, "check out these new cards that hit the collection in the past week that I'm pretty psyched to have around".

For years I've heard of the legend of Stu Miller being blown off the mound at Candlestick Park during the 1961 All-Star Game. I love that there's a card that commemorates it, albeit without any evidence that it actually happened. There is debate about whether it's even true. 

What is true, and I say this as someone who attended many, many games there, is that Candlestick Park was indeed, in the immortal words of Tommy Lasorda, "a toilet with the lid up". Totally fine for football, and often great for baseball during a rare warm afternoon game, but mostly terrible for baseball, particularly at night. This lovely photo shows the park before it was closed in completely. I just finished reading Lincoln Mitchell's excellent "The Giants and Their City: Major League Baseball in San Francisco 1976-1992". The park comes in for much consternation, and the struggle of the team to stay in San Francisco - which they nearly left multiple times due to the hatred of Candlestick Park and the inability to build a new local ballpark - is the core theme of the book. Otherwise known as "my childhood and young adult years". So naturally I had to order this 2010 Topps Heritage baseball card!

Next up, my two newest Jo Adell cards - one of the two prospects that I collect everything of - both courtesy of Kevin, the Diamond King. What a great American...!

I had found that this 1974 Topps Rookie Pitchers card was kind of eluding me, and everytime I wanted to spring for these 4 nobodies - I only wanted it because of the Giants dude, to complete my '74 team set - it was always like $6 or something. For these guys? Anyway, I gave in. The lure of completion was just too great.

Also burnished the Tim Lincecum player collection a tiny bit this week, thanks to the arrival of my Card Barrel order on Saturday. Alas, the Allen and Ginter "N43" card with the flowers and "field of dreams" imagery is an odd-sized card, something I didn't know when I ordered it. I hate odd-sized cards!

But here's some good news - with the acquisition of this Bryan Harvey card, I've completed the 1994 Tombstone Pizza set that Dave S was so kind to start for me in early February, sending me 29 of the 30 cards! 

Finally, this outstanding Zellers Gary Carter card was immediately placed into my COMC basket a month or two ago when I saw it on Nick's Dime Boxes blog. "Les Secrets du Baseball". Instantly a Top 200 favorite card in the collection. That's all for now folks - more to come later this week!

10 Random Recent Arrivals

Hey everyone. You know, it does feel a little weird to be acting like a bit of "show-off" here on the card blogs. Honestly, most of my posts seem to be of the look-at-what-I-just-got variety. I know that's kind of strange, but you know why I do it? Because those are the posts I like to read the most on other people's blogs. It's where I see how people collect these insignificant pieces of cardboard - the players they care about; the sets that matter to them; the trades they made and so on. I love that stuff. So please forgive me - I'm not bragging about how awesome it was I got a card worth $1.50 shipped to me or anything; I'm trying to give people what I think they want, even if it's just me who actually wants it. 

Hey, check it out, it's a 1968 Topps Willie McCovey! OK, so this cost me a little more than $1.50, but not a ton more. I figured I'd start collecting my 1968 SF Giants team set with a couple of the bigger names - McCovey and Perry - though Willie Mays' card price is still a bit out of reach for me. Mays is going to be a real stumbling block on my path to collecting the 1960s Giants team sets. I'm going to have to buy some of those cards that were put through the laundry of his in order to truly knock out these sets, I'm thinking.

Oh, here's hall of famer Gaylord Perry from the same year:

OK, who knows who this next guy is? Talk about a card that scanned terribly! This is Kenny Lofton, from a 1994 Topps Finest series. I got this in one of those Walgreens repacks I buy every now and again, and it was my favorite pull that day.

Next up, a guy whom I've flirted with collecting but never really pulled the trigger, Mr. Billy Martin, from a 2008 Topps Triple Threads series.

Look, it's world-famous Dodgers prospect Gavin Lux in the new Topps 2020 Update series. My son got me a small box of these for Hanukkah. Why so sad, Gavin? Wishing the Giants had picked you instead?

Speaking of Giants, here's a couple of winners from 2020 Stadium Club:

...and from 2020 Topps Archive, Vlad! The new Vlad. C'mon Vlad, make your Dad proud and win one for Canada. We the North!

I know I got this in a trade/PWE recently but I forgot who was kind enough to send it to me. Thank you, though!! It's a 1984 Mother's Cookies Alan Wiggins of the San Diego Padres.

Finally, our 10th card is Joey Bart, also from Topps Update 2020, card #P-25. One of the players I collect, and I just randomly nailed him in that pack my son got me. See you next week!

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.

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.

Lincecum As An Angel

Always strange to see one of your team's heroes in another uniform, isn't it? Tim Lincecum - a guy I collect - was a Los Angeles Angel of Anaheim for 38 innings in 2016 before he retired. Let's just say his 7.16 ERA over there didn't do him any favors.

I had thought that he probably would have quite a few Angels card variations from the spring of 2016 that I'd need to pick up. On that count, I was mistaken. There's this Topps base card - and many, many colored versions of it with different printing plates - and then there's this Heritage card you see below.

That's it. Tim Lincecum on the Angels. The complete set. Every other card of his is a Giants or a minor league card. Enjoy!

Big Time Timmy Jim

Before 2010 - before the three World Series victories - we SF Giants fans were in the midst of yet enduring another run of frustration, circa 2005-2008. All four were losing seasons, and the only real succor was this kid Tim Lincecum who was on the way up the organization. I started hearing about him in 2006, and then, as he was about to be promoted in 2007, I'll never forget the buzz and energy on KNBR (local sports station and Giants broadcaster) that entire week. Tom Tolbert was whispering "Lin-ce-cum...." at the top of every commercial break. The manchild who would save us and make us great again.

As you may recall, that's exactly what happened. Tim Lincecum won the NL Cy Young award in both 2008 and 2009. He helped us to win our first World Series in 2010. I seriously remember almost weeping with excitement when he came on in relief into an NL Championship game vs. the Phillies on only two days' rest. Of course he was going to blow it by Utley, Howard etc. Of course that's what happened.

I've talked before about how Pablo Sandoval is my favorite player of the modern, 21st century era, and it's why he's my top player to collect. Big Time Timmy Jim is right behind him, though. Just a phenomenal guy to be watching every fifth day for that relatively short period where he was dominating. A fun and hilarious human being - yes, I even had a "Let Timmy Smoke" t-shirt and I think pot is for dopes. (I also had a bootleg "Fuck yeah" t-shirt that I bought for $5 after a game - it memorialized this moment).

This is all by way of introducing my nascent Tim Linecum card collection. I'm just getting going with the guy. I'm happy to accept any relics, parallels, autographs or any detritus Linecum cards you have laying around, and will try to respond in kind. Maybe you hate the dude. Maybe you only liked him on the Angels. It's quite a mountain for me to scale - he and Posey were really our only post-Bonds superstars, with Bumgarner on the bubble a bit - but I'm willing to try.

Here's a bit of what I've got so far.

And finally, a nice crooked no-hitter scan for ya:

Look at Me, I'm a Big Boy Card Blogger

It only took just over a week, but I reckon I've now joined the ranks of the proverbial "professional baseball card bloggers" society. This is thanks to Great American Madding, who helms the Cards on Cards blog and who just sent me my first "trade" cards in the mail in what you folks like to call a "PWE". Thing was, I haven't even sent him a thing yet, either! That's how Great of an American he is. (Don't worry, sir - I'm working up a batch for ya as we speak).

This trading racket you card bloggers seem to engage in is one of the reasons I thought I'd raise my blogging voice in the first place. What a blast. I send you some surprises/wants, you send me some surprises/wants, and everyone's happy playing a low-stakes game of "postage". Madding definitely did me right. Just look at this Big Time Timmy Jim card to your left, a 2013 Topps Opening Day Franchise Flashback to a time when Mr. Lincecum not only rocked a San Francisco Sea Lions Negro League uniform, but also wore a mini-beer belly and the coolest pair of dork spectacles this side of Dick Tracy.

We could have stopped right there, but he also provided me with the following modern Giants gems:

 

 

Even a couple of 2018 Topps Stickers (!), easily the first stickers in my collection since my 1970s Wacky Packages. Hey, remember when Matt Moore almost threw that no-hitter against the Dodgers? That and being the guy we traded Matt Duffy for will always be the two things folks in SF remember about him.

 

Thanks again to Madding for the loot, and for helping me feel as if maybe, just maybe, I belong here.