Filling in Some Kellogg's Needs

My favorite online card emporium CardBarrel announced the other day that they'd restocked a bunch of Kellogg's cards, circa 1978-83, which of course made me more than ready to jump at the chance to load up on some favorite players at a good price. I'd imagine you can do the same, if you haven't already. 

Some of mine have cracks in them; some don't. I'm pretty indifferent either way. These are nice to haves, and they're well-done cards with stats and info on the back. I already have any & all Jack Clark cards done in these series, but I was definitely missing my McCoveys, my Vida Blues, a bunch of George Fosters, a Willie Wilson and some Bob Kneppers. I didn't totally mean to grab Knepper in a Houston uniform, but now that he's here, he's welcome to stick around. 

By the time these cards were coming out, my mom had stopped buying us Kellogg's cereals like she used to, and we were pretty much only eating Cheerios and "Kix". General Mills had obviously done a superior job of marketing the quote-unquote health benefits of their cereals to choosy 1970s moms, and thus, I missed out on all these cards in real time.

10 More Relatively Random New Arrivals

As the cards continue to arrive, whether by trade or by purchase, my ability to document them slips. Not like it matters all that much anyway, but I certainly very much enjoy seeing other bloggers' recent acquisitions and trades, and thus try to float scans of mine where I can. 

Let's start with this Joe Cronin card you see here. I believe I received it in a recent blind trade, and it's certainly not a card from his playing days, and more likely came out in the 1960s or early 70s, as it references that fact that "Joe Cronin is now the president of the American League", a position he served in from 1959 through 1973. Any of you sleuths know what set this card, #14 in the series, comes from?

I found out a month or so ago about a 2020 Topps set called Super 70s that sounded like I might need to investigate. Checked on eBay to see what single cards were going for for the dudes I collect, and found that it wasn't bad at all. So grabbed the Willie McCovey and Frank Robinson cards you see here:

I believe that both of those photos are from the 1960s, but never mind, right? Speaking of legends - this one comes from a 1996 Topps "Mickey Mantle Commemorative Set" set and features a reprint of a 1962 Topps card I simply can't afford right now as I work to complete my '62 Giants set. So I bought this one instead:

Here's #1 Cardinals prospect Dylan Carlson from the 2020 Topps Update #1 Prospect series that came out recently. He looks pretty stoked to be here. He got into 35 games last season and promptly hit .200. Not like I'm gonna do any better!

The consensus choice for card of the year in 2020 was this 2020 Stadium Club Sandy Koufax, and I can't disagree. I made it a must-order in my last CardBarrel pile.

I bought a couple Topps 2020 Update series boxes and pulled this Brett Gardner 15/50 "All-Star Stitches Card" out of one of them.

Also pulled this 2008 Charlie Blackmon prospect card out of a Walgreens "baseball cards" $5 repack box. Guy had yet to hit the majors and to start winning batting titles at this point.

Here's a 2020 Bowman Platinum Eloy Jimenez, just because. 

Finally, I didn't just get this card, and I don't have many Hank Aaron cards to share in any case, but I do want to acknowledge that the guy responsible for my first baseball memory - his breaking the home run record in 1974 - has passed away. I'm bracing myself for Willie Mays. Hang in there, Willie.

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!

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!

A Completed 2019 Allen & Ginter, My Way

Most of my collecting is focused around the San Francisco Giants, as I'm sure I've made more than clear on too many occasions. I'm kind of working backward and forward at the same time - trying to build up complete Giants sets from 2020 on back to appx. 2002 or so, the skipping the 90s entirely, and then going backward again from 1981 all the way to 1969. Why 1969 as a backward stopping point? Well, it starts getting pretty expensive from there, given hall-of-famers Mays, McCovey, Marichal and Cepeda - but I'm going to do the best I can. Right now I'm concentrating much more on the Giants that came in Topps sets this past decade - the Topps sets that I like, which are mainly Heritage, Gypsy Queen and Allen & Ginter.

So a nice "success" for me is gathering a 7-card SF Giants collection from a set like, say, 2019 Allen & Ginter - which I have now done. The only short-print card in the bunch is this Orlando Cepeda card you see here. The other six are relatively easy-n-cheap base cards. Of the 7 cards, only 4 of the guys still play organized baseball, with the other three being the aforementioned Giants legends. Totally cool with that. It's nice to so easily procure a "complete set" and to have these gems to have, hold and appreciate from here to eternity.

1971 Topps San Francisco Giants Progress

I guess I'm simultaneously trying to collect the 1971 San Francisco Giants Topps team set while also trying to collect the entire Topps '71 set as well. Let's just say the former is nearly at hand, while the latter is a long ways off. All I really need from the '71 Giants set is the Mays card and one from someone named Bob Heise, and then this Juan Marichal Scratch-Off and then I'm good to go.

This was a stacked Giants team that finally won their division after 9 years since their previous postseason appearance; it would be another 16 years before they'd get into the playoffs again (losing to the Cardinals in the NLCS in 1987). Not just the 4 hall of famers Mays, McCovey, Marichal and Gaylord Perry, but a phenomenal breakout year from Bobby Bonds, then tagged to be "the next Mays" (one could argue it would be his son Barry instead).

I would have loved to have seen this team play at windy Candlestick Park that season. You can watch the Pirates beat them in the 1971 NLCS here. Alas, I was 3 that year, but when I became a Giants diehard a good 5-6 years later, I schooled myself with the memory of our most recent team in the playoffs, and hoped for more soon. That I had to wait until my junior year of college made it all the more sweet, I guess.

Here are some of those '71 NLDS champs, immortalized by Topps at the start of the season.