About 10 Years on the Want List Then A Conundrum

 I originally pulled my Virdon Want List off of the Beckett website.  Since then I added cards as I found out stuff existed.  One of the original cards on my list was 1962 Swan-Virdon.

Beckett had it listed 15 years ago but Trading Card Database still doesn't know it exists.  I accidently found that it has a back variation.  It is the exact same card only it doesn't have the Swan-Virdon advertisement.  

It took me a little time to find that non advertisement back.  To find it I started searching JD McCarthy lots, and I finally did.  But in the course of looking at JD McCarthy lots I found this postcard.

It was a part of a large JD McCarthy postcard lot selling for like $1000 in one of the big auction houses and I wasn't willing to pay that much for a postcard.  I didn't know what it was but I knew it was a JD McCarthy postcard and he was kneeling in it.  So that is how it went on my want list.  McCarthy Postcard (kneeling).  It tool almost 10 years for one to show up on eBay.  Then oddly enough it took like six months for a second one to show up.

Now I don't have any proof but the fact that both of these were mailed in 1957 makes me think that is when they were produced.  So it is now being moved on my list to 1957 JC McCarthy (Kneeling).

The kicker now becomes what do I do about the 1962 JC McCarthy no add back?  because if you look closer at it.

 It got mailed in 1960 two years before Beckett says that the Swan-Virdon came out.  So was it a 1960 JD McCarthy or does Beckett have the year wrong?  These want list conundrums come up all the time with non postcards and team issues.  There are just no records of them out there so it is kind of fly by the seat if your pants and comparing small things. 

Just a Double I Didn't Remember Having

 It isn't very often a Bill Virdon that I don't have pops up.  So when a 1975 Box Bottom card with a Buy it Now of $4.00 showed up on eBay, I pounced on it. I got it in the mail and after some research, there was not Box Bottom cards in 1975 so I don't know what I got.  

It is obviously hand cut and it obviously had a border at one time.  I thought maybe it was cut from a complete sheet but when I looked for that: 

Uncut sheets have no border so it isn't from and uncut sheet.

I double checked mail in team cards and they have the border. 

While looking for the full sheet I found these Mail in Team Cards.  This is it I went to put it in the Virdon binder and I already had it.  I don't remember it even existing but somewhere along the way I had already grabbed it and forgot about it.  

Trading Card Database lists the Team Card as having a grey back and a white back.  This is a scan of mine with the standard 75 Topps card.  Oddly enough my regular version is almost as crooked looking as the hand cut one.  

Evidently this card has three variations Standard, Grey, and White.  I now have to chase down a grey and a white one.  That is how it goes when you PC an player that doesn't get current cards made of him.  The only things there are to chase is variations. 

A Mail Day First

 I got in shipment number three of my 2023 Team Sets.  One of the sellers was Eastern_Shore_Sports_Cards and I bought the Topps Inception team set from him.  I have never seen Inception before so I didn't know what I was getting.  But what I really really didn't know I was getting was the free Bowman Best team set he sent.  

Free team set, I'll Take It!!  Luckily I had not ordered that team set this year.  Somehow it fell through the cracks because I didn't even have it on my checklist.  With the logo in the background and the kind of snowflake motif these kind of remind me of the Christmas Ornament card inserts' from long ago.  

The inception cards are a surprise themselves.  They are super thick.  Thicker than a jersey card, maybe two jersey cards together even.  They are kind of weirdly repetitive but not repetitive at all.  I think Night Owl would label it the paintbrush and clouds set.  I like the 

Thanks for the free cards Eastern Shore Card Store whoever you are. 

Mail Day Number Two

 My second batch of team sets came in.  It was only two sets but it was the one I was most excited for because it was Topps Flagship and Allen & Ginter.  

One of the reasons I wait until the new year to buy the previous year's cards is so that I don't have to chase each series of team sets down.  So when I buy Topps I buy series 1, 2, and Update as a complete set.  (I always bought Heritage and High Numbers together but I broke from that this year because for some reason that was like three times more money this year)  I am not going to post anything more about flagship right now. Since it is all three series' it has the most cards and I think might just do a card by card post on it; a rehash of the 2023 team if you will.  

Now onto Ginter.  A&G has been one of my favorites since it came out or I should say the year after it came out.  I never saw 2006 Ginter until I started getting it in blog trades.  I always assumed it might have been hobby only and in my little town the only place I had to buy cards was Wal Mart.  In 2007 A&G was available to me and it was perfectly simple.  Silhouette images on a white background (and minis) it was great.  I understand that Topps had to change it up some and it couldn't stay images on a plain white background forever or every year's cards would look the same.  They started out using other old A&G sets as a template but that could only last so long too.  Now each year Topps adds some stuff that they think makes it look old timey.  To me however 2023 was a bust.  This is the worst A&G design ever, it looks so cheesy.  

I said cheesy but I should have said Carney because each card screams elementary school Renaissance Festival.  They say step up to the board and grab a fishing pole, everybody hooks a prize! Just reach in and grab a duck, whatever number is on the bottom is that basket you get to pick from, EVERYBODY gets a prize!  But really nobody does because the prizes are so cheap looking.

Also how does Topps do this?

These aren't image variations either, they used each of these guys twice it the same set.  Yes one is a base and one is a SP but in a way aren't SPs still base cards?  At least that is how I always saw them.  Somehow Topps couldn't find anyone else in the history of the Red Sox to to put in the set one time so instead they doubled up players in the same set.

One of the main reasons I stopped blogging is my scanner.  My old one was so perfect.  I could fill it with cards and when I scanned it asked do you want this as a single image or do you want it to be broken into multiple images.  No matter which I selected one I got perfect scans with no background.  I could scan 9 cards at a time and it would break it into 9 scans with no cropping issues.  My current scanner can scan a full page or it can scan a specified area.  I can say scan 2.5x3.5 but it only scans the exact middle of the top of the page and if I am off any it cuts the card off.  So right now I am using my phone which I know sucks.  The background doesn't bother me as much as the lighting does.  I am going to try and figure that out some work around for the scanner.  I am thinking some kind of template that makes me set the card in the perfect spot but I know it will be some trial and error.  Hopefully I can get something figured out.   

The Last Blogger To Get a 2023 Card

Today I held my first 2023 baseball card.  Five years ago I stopped building current Red Sox team sets.  I didn't stop collecting Red Sox cards (even though my blog activity makes it look like I quit), I just stopped trying to build new team sets.  I switched to outright buying the current year's team sets.  

I haven't been trying to build team sets but every year I cave in at some point and buy a random pack at Wal-Mart or I get one for Birthday, Father's Day, or Christmas. But not this year, I haven't held a single 2023 card until today.  This is the first time that has ever happened.  

While may think of this as cheating it is so much more economical that I can't justify building them anymore.  The extra money saved I can spend on what I really like, vintage cards and Virdons.  There is the added bonus of getting the cards a year late because I can sort of relive the prior baseball year as I binder them up. 

This is the first batch of 2023 cards to come in the mail.  I get about half of my team sets from TeamSets4U and they just so happen to be the fastest getting them to my mailbox.  Actually what came first was my new binder, it came from Amazon and arrived the next day, it's hard to beat Amazon shipping.

This is eleven team sets: Bowman Prospects, Bowman Chrome Prospects, Bowman Platinum, Big League, Donruss, Heritage Low Numbers, Pristine, Pro Debut, Topps All Star, Gold Star, and Holiday parallels.

My process is to go to ebay and start putting the three lowest priced team sets of each brand in my cart for every single brand I plan to buy.  Then I go to my cart and weed out the ones that screw me on shipping.  Sometimes that set that was $8 with $2 shipping is more expensive than the $9 team set that had $5 shipping but free shipping if combined.  Once I weed out the more expensive ones I go to each seller I am going to use and see that else they have available to combine shipping on.  Many times I will find a team set from an older year that I can get for only a couple dollars and free shipping.  Mostly though I end up with more and more parallel sets.  I find random things I never heard of like Montgomery parallel team sets for $5.  

I have fourteen more team sets besides these just waiting to show up in my mailbox.  Living in Phoenix it is about to be stay in the house hot so I will have plenty of time to watch the current year Sox while I relive last years Sox.  

Another White Whale

 It's amazing the things Player Collectors consider a white whale.  If you would have told me as a kid that I would covet the stiffener that someone received from the laundromat I would have thought you were crazy.  Heck, I bet if you told the owners of said laundromat that their stiffeners would be highly sought after they would have thought you were crazy.  But here we are in 2020 where craziness abounds. 

That is a 1964 KDKA Pittsburgh Pirates Portrait of Bill Virdon.  (90% of it anyway.  It is bigger than my scanner's bed)  These were advertisements for the Pirates Broadcasting partners but they were actually issued by Sweet Clean Laundry as stiffeners for men's shirts.  Nowhere on the card does it mention the laundromat only KDKA, hence the name.  My Standard says that these cards are 8"x11-7/8".  Mine is a little bit off.  Mine is right at 12" up and down but across it is 8" along the bottom but closer to 8-1/8" at the top.

I have known that this existed for close to 25 years but had never seen one.  I have only seen a few of the KDKAs on ebay before but never the Virdon.  As soon as I saw it I scooped it up.  What I am going to do with it now is a different story.  It is just the wrong size.  8x11 fits in a binder, 8x12 fits nowhere.  It got shipped to me in a 12x15 top loader which is where it is going to stay for now. Maybe I'll frame it I don't know yet.  That might work if I got it autographed.  

So what's the next white whale?  I don't know.  A few of the Virdon's I do not have are unobtainable.  I know were a few 1/1s are but the guy is a Pirates Collector and isn't going to get rid of them. Most of the rest of my Virdon "wants" are team issues that I can't identify.  Heck I may already own them but can't find a resource that tells me the 75 Astros Team Issued Postcard looks like ____.   

I know that a 1961 Harmony Milk Virdon exists even though the SCBC says that it doesn't.  Something that doesn't exist but does, that may be my next white whale.

Joy of a Completed Team Set Year's Worth of Team Sets

I have ignored new cards for quite a few years now. I don't mean just not buying them; I mean I paid zero attention. I don't think I could identify even Topps base cards between 2016 and 2019. All those other sets, no way. Heck except for the usual suspects like Bowman, Heritage, and A&G I don't even know what other cards were produced in those years. For the last 5 years or so I have focused my collection totally on Virdons and Vintage.  Nothing else even made it on my radar.  Since I started ignoring new stuff my Virdon and Vintage Red Sox have took off.

After ignoring new cards for years I now know all the 2019 Red Sox cards because I have them. All of them. At least all of them that I want to say I collect. How did I get them all? Well I did something I said I would never do. I bought them all in complete team sets. I have bought a few team sets over the years but never all of them. I know, sacrilege right? 

Here's the list of what I got:

Topps Series 1, 2, & U/H
Allen & Ginter
Archives
Big League
Chrome & Chrome Update
Finest
Fire
Gold Label
Gypsy Queen
Heritage
Heritage Minors
Museum Collection
Opening Day

Bowman is out in the cold, I didn't understand all the Bowman sets when I was paying attention every year and I'm not going to go back and retroactively try to figure out 2019.  Maybe I'll go back and add regular Bowman and Bowman Chrome but probably not.

For Topps, A&G, and Heritage I bought Master Team Sets.  Which translates to: includes all the base cards, SPs, and "regular" inserts.  You know the cheap inserts that are treated like regular base cards.

All of it cost me about $120.  I know I couldn't have hand completed them all for $120 and I would have been chasing them for years.  The cheapest I got was Big League.  It was an 18 card set and it ran me a whopping 2.10 AFTER shipping.

Heritage with all it's inserts and SPs cost me the most at $34.  I know from previous years collecting Heritage it would cost me almost as much to build.  Considering I haven't completed a Heritage Team set since it's inception it is safe to say this one would have hung around waiting to be completed for years and years. 

Stadium Club is hands down my favorite team set of the year.  It is a good mix of new and old and the old are not images that I have seen over and over again.

There was a 2 way tie for my favorite: Mookie and Fisk.  That Fisk is a photo I haven't seen before.

My least favorite card was the Boggs signing autographs.  I give it props for being a new image but I don't like cards of players signing autographs.  Yes I realize I am the only card blogger in history that doesn't like my cards to have players signing cards on them. 

I know that most bloggers, if not all, won't even consider collecting like this.  I get it.  I thought the same way too.  But I have to admit this was great!  How many team set builders know what it is like to wrap up a whole year worth of team sets?  I now do and it's wonderful.  Heck I will probably start working backwards and fill in other years I missed out on.   

But really the best part of knocking them out all at once is that I focused on vintage stuff for the whole year.  I completed a truly epic team set this year.  One of those bucket list team sets.  I'll probably post it after I free some cards from their prisons.  (If you read this Hoyle don't spoil it.  I think your the only person that knew I was chasing it.)