The Agony of Defeat

It's been about nine months since I've found an addition to my John Jaha collection. Needing only a handful of cards for a complete run, it's not very often that something comes along that I need. About ten days ago one did: a 1998 Circa Thunder Super Rave numbered out of 25. The opening bid was $20, which is about what I'd expect to pay. I had to exchange a couple of emails with the seller to get them to set up to allow Canadian bids but once he did, I put in a bid of a little over $30. And there the card sat for the next six days.

For whatever reason the closing time was 4:00 AM so I was going to wake up either the victor or stung with a last-second bid. I wouldn't be in lamentation mode if I won the card. But while only one other bidder came along, I think I would have lost no matter what. You see, the seller had a few other Super Raves up for auction. Name-wise, Curt Schilling was the biggest. However he must know that there's a couple people out there building sets because I was shocked by some of the closing bids from lowest to highest:

• Jaha $34.56
• Reggie Jefferson $50.18
• Shannon Stewart $82.81
• Curt Schilling $91.38
• Joe Nunally $100.00
• Delino DeShields $229.49

How the heck can a Joe Nunally card reach three figures? Or a DeShields card for almost $230? I honestly don't know which is more shocking - the $17,000 Strasburg or the fact that a Joe Nunally card reached $100.

What these auctions do show is how frowned upon most of the current low-numbered stuff, including 1/1s, are regarded in comparison to some of the tough-to-find late-90s parallels and inserts. I regularly see generic 1/1s from superstars going for a fraction of these prices.

This was only the second or third Jaha Super Rave that I've seen. Hopefully with that low finishing price, I won't have much competition for the next one that comes along in 2014 or so.

Can Someone Please Explain 2008 Stadium Club Baseball to Me?

All right, so I'm slowly plugging away at my 2008 Stadium Club Baseball set but there seems to be way too many weird things going on. Can someone please correct me if I'm wrong and clarify the base set to me.

Here's what I know:

• Cards divisible by 3 (3, 6, 9, 12, 45, 90, etc.) are #'d/999. Does this hold true for the RC's as well?
• First Day Issue parallels of cards divisible by 3 (3, 6, 9, 12, 45, 90, etc.) are much easier to come by than the rest.
• RCs (#101 - 150) have variations. Are they vertical and horizontal?

Seriously, this is the worst set up of a set I've ever seen. There should be no confusion building a simple base set. And who's stupid idea was it to shrot print every third card? It truly messes up the look when you try to put the cards in a binder.

LIVE BREAK! Going for the Set: 1989 Panini - Three Packs Left, Three Stickers to Go

In the next couple of days I'll reflect on getting back to where it all started for me: 1989 Panini Baseball Stickers. But right now I'll set the stage: I found a lot of 80 packs for cheap. I needed nine stickers to complete the 20-year-old set. I've opened 77 packs and need three stickers including two foils (foils are one per pack).

Will I complete my two decade's quest? Will the album be complete? How many freaking Jose Canseco stickers are in the set? Why is it still snowing outside?

These questions will be answered at 4:30 PM Mountain Time.

Here we go. I'm looking for #37, 400 and 401 to finish the set. 37 and 401 are the foils.

Pack 1:

306. White Sox writing (Foil)
475. Frank Viola
199. Benito Santiago
61. Mitch Webster
124. Tracy Jones
173. Andy Van Slyke

Back in 1989 this pack would have ruled but for the purposes of finishing the set, no dice. The drama builds.


Pack 2

110. Expos logo (foil)
With one foil left and two needed for the set, the journey will indeed continue. Oh, well. Let's see if we get closer.

178. Joe Magrane
288. Brian Downing
87. Dave Smith
400. Dave Righetti
438. Rey Quinones

Weaker pack from a player selection, although the Expos logo will go nicely in my collection. But this is about the wantlist and #400 makes me two stickers shy with one pack to go. What do you think the odds are of finding two foils stuck together? I'm leaning toward slim to none myself.

Pack 3 - The Grand Finale

I'm looking at this one from the bottom and going to work my way to the foil as the regular stickers are now finished.

138. Lenny Dykstra
409. Dave Winfield
406. Mike Pagliarulo
246. Jose Canseco (All-Star, League Leader or something of the like)
180. Tony Pena
174. St. Louis Cardinals logo 

There you have it: the last three packs with three to go. I got one so the 20-year quest continues for #37. Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium and 401. Yankee Stadium. If you're a team/player collector and there's something you'd want from a 1989 sticker set drop me a comment or an email and I'll see what I've got after I've sorted through the nearly 500 stickers.

I've also got 160 packs of 1990 Panini Baseball Stickers that I'll be getting to eventually. Same deal applies if you're looking for anyone or anything. No promises I'll find it. I'll have more on my Panini journey soon, which seems pretty timely all of a sudden given the events of the past week.

My New Pet Rock

Over the years of collecting Montreal Expos, I've always enjoyed getting autographs. I've scaled back somewhat since the team moved to Washington and no longer actively go after autographs of guys I've already got. That being said I made an exception a few weeks back when I snagged this:

 

I know I've already got a couple of Tim Raines autographs but this one caught my attention. Sure it has a white swatch and it's numbered out of 30, but what I'm digging is the addition of his nickname "Rock." It's a simple thing that makes this card much more unique than a lot of the other generic signatures I've got.

Raines was a beast on the base paths 25 years ago. I'm convinced that if Rickey Henderson wasn't a bigger beast, we'd see Rock in Cooperstown eventually. But like his former teammate Andre Dawson, I don't think there's going to be an Expo in the Hall of Fame to join Gary Carter anytime soon.

Lord Stanley is Noble and Shiny

This is a pick-up from a few weeks back that I grabbed while looking for something a little different. I believe I grabbed something I was looking for initially but I'm a sucker for combined shipping deals and often end up grabbing a couple of extras.

The card in question is a 2007-08 In the Game Ultimate Memorabilia 8th Edition base card (I think) of Lord Stanley, aka the guy the Stanley Cup's named after. And while I love the old-time photo mixing with the silver dufex-ish finish, there's a lot to be desired by the overall package:

1. First off, there's no number. What's a base set without a number?
2. Next, why slab a modern base card fresh out of the "pack"?
3. So the slab is serial numbered but not the card itself. Grrrr.

If you're not familiar with In the Game, they're a lot like the Donruss equivilent of hockey. They had a license, lost it went Upper Deck got the exclusive rights yet they've continued to produce cards and survive. Note this card shows how not to get sued: it shows a picture, no logos and a bowtie. No confusion there. In the Game also gets around the rights issue with minor league and international league deals.

That's My Boy! or I'm in BIG Trouble : (

Last week while doing some post-Christmas shopping I found an opportunity to scoot away with my son and grab a couple packs of cards. While I got a swift kick, I grabbed Ethan his first pack of baseball cards from the Dollar Bin - 1995 Topps DIII. I figured he might dig the three-dimensional effects of the cards and he did. From his pack he got a Tim Wallach (nice Expos memories, even if he's pictured with the Dodgers), Denny Martinez (another former Expos great pictured with another team) and Barry Larkin (who wishes he was an Expo, I'm sure). Ethan took an immediate liking to the Wallach so he might grow up to be a Dodgers fan. I can live with that. For the next couple of hours he toted that Wallach around with him sitting in his stroller. He stared at it, he shook it, he tried to eat it. It was clear he caught the bug. My wife's mantra is one card collector's enough. I'm in big trouble.

Well, to confirm his "bug" we made another two-hour trip to the city and went back to the mall. I avoided the kick ang grabbed Ethan two more packs. He was in love still. This time it was Carlos Garcia who got the love in the stroller but when we got home he was all about Bob Hamelin.

I decided that Ethan and I are going to work on this set together and ordered a box. It's a small set so it should keep my wife appeased for the time being until he's a bit older and the cards mean more than bad 3-D effects. Still, it's a start and I'm excited.

He's Ethan clutching his Hamelin, looking all sweet and then showing it off all proud like.

I'm In Love: O-Pee-Chee Edition

It's been probably five years since I've worked on a current hockey set. Baseball is my first love and when it came time to pare down the card buying, hockey went quickly. To add to my disinterest, Upper Deck got an exclusive license. While they're not doing a horrible job, it's made things a little too boring and predictable. When they acquired the O-Pee-Chee brand three years ago I was in shock and disbelief. I'm a sucker for tradition and O-Pee-Chee always belonged with Topps in my mind. I still have a hard time accepting that Upper Deck is now making OPC cards, kind of like I'm not buying TSN using the old Hockey Night in Canada theme.

That said, 2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Hockey has me collecting the sport again. Specifically, it's the no-frills 38-card rack packs I'm finding at Wal-Mart that have me collecting hockey again. With a 600-card base set, OPC is a monster to piece together. That's without getting into the final 100 cards being short prints. But at six bucks a pop, these rack packs make set building fun and managable. My wife doesn't object or even give me a dirty look when I slip a couple packs into the cart - that's how impressive the set is.

I'm making the purchase knowing full well there's no autographs, game-used or buybacks. I could care less. Give me a reasonably priced set with a huge checklist and I'm going to look at building it. Even when the design is merely "M'eh" like this set. I want to track the current rosters, last year's stats and learn new players. I want to sort and organize. I want to enjoy the set. There's a few inserts, but they're pretty mundane and add a simple flash to the packs. And while I normally loath players in one uniform and the logo being another, it's part of the OPC tradition. I think the traded lines would have made the touch even better, but I'm not complaining too much.

What these packs show, though, are just how much we're paying for autographs and game-used. Wal-mart has six-card regular packs with the slim possibility of hits at $3.00 a pack. That's $0.50 per card. The rack packs are 38 cards for $6.00. That's about $0.16 per card. So for a chance at a hit, which in all likelihood won't pay for two more packs, you're paying triple the price. You'll probably get more short prints and inserts, but it's not worth three times the price - at least to this set collector. So there's a little number crunching to show what the cost of hits are - even when the majority are plain white jersey swatches and signatures from average players with little upside.

If, by chance, you're working on the 2008-09 OPC set too, I've got a handful of doubles if you want to send me your list. My wants are still pretty big but can be found here.

 

 

Blog Bat Around: Collection Centerpiece

I posted about my collection centerpiece back in August. It's reprinted here for the purpose of the blog bat around (time's been tight as of late and I think the original post says it all):

Breakfast of a Champion

Sorry, folks, but I didn't read any Kurt Vonnegut over the weekend (I'm working on some Jack London). Rather I'm feeling a little bit nostalgic about Joe Carter and a bowl of Honeycombs from 14 years ago. The details are a little foggy but knowing I was a high school student on summer vacation it was probably just another lazy morning of sleeping in and bumming around before the rest of the day's laziness.

This was a rare era where baseball, not hockey, was king in Canada. Our national hero, Wayne Gretzky had abandoned us for southern California and no Canadian-based team had won the Stanley Cup for a couple of years (nor have they won one since). The Toronto Blue Jays were two-time World Champions. They, not the Maple Leafs, not the Canadiens, not anyone else were Canada's team. Matters were also helped by the fact that the Montreal Expos were the best team in baseball up until the point of that fateful morning.

Memories of Joe Carter blasting a walk-off three-run homer still rang through in the collective Canadian consciousness. It was Game Six against the Phillies. Toronto entered the game with a 3-2 series lead but Philadelphia entered the bottom of the ninth inning winning 6-5. With Phillies closer Mitch Williams on the mound, it looked like a seventh game was in the works.

Williams lived up to his nickname "Wild Thing" right away, walking Rickey Henderson (yes, he was a Blue Jay for a couple of months) on four straight pitches. With one out Paul Molitor hit a single. This set the stage for the most dramatic Canadian sports moment since Paul Henderson scored against the USSR in the 1972 Summit Series. Joe Carter stepped up. I'd been glued to the entire game not walking away to get a drink, snack or even use the washroom. I couldn't wait any longer so I cranked the volume a little, ran across my dad's apartment and hoped nothing would happen. Wouldn't you know, mid-stream cheers ran out from the apartment upstairs. A gasp and a cheer came from the apartment downstairs. I made it back to the TV just in time -- for the replay.


With the count 2-2, Williams shook off a signal from catcher Darren Daulton. He let the pitch fly, Joe Carter swung and it was over. It was like a freeze-frame moment. The swing, the crack of the bat, the hop and fist pump around the bases, the team piling onto the field, a sea of Canadians jumping up and down in unison in the Skydome stands, the rest of the country feeling proud from the comfort of their living rooms. The Toronto Blue Jays were World Champs for the second straight year.

It was also the second year where Joe Carter made the final play of the World Series. The previous year he was playing first base when the Braves' Otis Nixon attempted a two-out bunt in the eleventh inning. Pitcher Mike Timlin picked up the ball and gave it a light toss to Carter who made the force out and history was made.

But it's the 1993 home run to win the second championship that stands out and not the routine play that won Toronto's (and Canada's) first World Series. Let's face it, home runs are more exciting. The moment had more intensity and tension to begin with. To this day it's still replayed over and over. Carter's raised arms have also been featured on plenty of cards as well in the 15 years since. It also made him an instant legend up here in the great and sometimes white North, even amongst though of us who weren't hardcore Jays fans but still felt proud knowing another World Series trophy was residing above the 49th.

So I'm sitting there pouring my box of Honeycomb cereal and I realized it was a new box. An airbrushed baseball card waited for me at the bottom of the box. Like other Post sets, the cards were licensed by the Players Association but not by MLB so you got the superstars but not their logos. As a result they weren't the prettiest cards, but they were still more exciting than the cereal they came with.

My first bite reminds me that I really need to remind my mom that Fruit Loops are far superior in the taste department next to Honeycombs, even without the cards. Just as I did when I was four, I pull out the bag of cereal to see if I'm going to have to dig through the cereal to get my prize or if it was sitting outside the bag on the bottom of the box. I get my answer quickly. Sitting on the bottom of the box is Joe Carter right after a swing, watching a flyball head out to left field. It might as well have been the homerun. Disappointment was the first thing that ran through my head. I was hoping for an Expo or Frank Thomas. As the first glance gave way to a quick inspection I realized that I'd struck cardboard gold. It was the Joe Carter autograph - essiently the grand prize of cereal box prizes that year.

My mom wasn't around so I let out a [EARMUFFS, young 'uns!], "Holy shit!" of the most happiest kind. Instantly it was the coolest part of my collection (it's still up there today). A couple thousand were made and are probably floating around out there but I didn't care. It was the first time I'd "won" something with such long odds (1:3,000 boxes to be exact). It was an autograph of a legend. From a box of cereal. Even if he wasn't on "my team" or he wasn't "my player" it was the coolest thing. My hands shook as I took it out of the box. A smile caked my face and it wouldn't go away as I repeated the story over and over to my sister, step-dad and mom after each of them came home.

I guess my mom figured I was lucky. For the next two months cereal was a steady diet of Honey Combs and lunch was often a second helping. I explained to her that the cards came in other Post cereals as well but it didn't matter. She saw my smile that day. And when your teenager's smiling you want to do all you can to recreate that moment or at least hold it in time. On the bright side for me, I ate enough boxes to send away for the free complete set (plus $4.95 shipping and handling).

I still have the Joe Carter card. The last time I looked at the price, it was listed at $60 in a Canadian price guide (it's not even listed in my Standard Catalog). But that doesn't matter one lick as it's one of the few cards that I'll be able pull out and tell my grand-kids about while they sit on my knee and rub Grandpa's old man whiskers. They'll ask me why it's in a block of plastic like the frozen caveman on that movie. Then I'll tell them it was so that I'd still have it for that very moment when we could take it out together and I could pass it onto to them so they could tell their grand-kids about baseball, home runs and Honeycombs.

Conquering Collectacitis: Getting to the Heart of a Collection

The first cards I had were O-Pee-Chee E.T. cards. I still remember the box sitting on the counter of the grocery store, begging my mom for a single pack, her conceding but only if my sister got one too, the white powder the gum left on my fingers, sorting through the numbers and putting the story together. Then it was nothing more than a treat, something that got tossed aside a couple of days later and revisited every now and again when a new pack made it into the house. The cards don't survive today, likely the victim of a spring cleaning, move or particularly bad day by any one of my particularly bad dogs.

Next up came 1985-86 O-Pee-Chee Hockey. Again, it was a ritual of sorts. On the way home from Beavers (the junior Canadian version of Boy Scouts) on Wednesday nights I'd ask my stepdad to stop at the local Mac's and let me run in for a pack. His relationship with my mom was still in its infancy and I'd like to think he stopped to help the bonding process along. More likely, he'd didn't care, just as long as I was spending my money and not his.

This marked the first time I really got into organizing my cards. I wasn't worried about the set in as much as I focused on sorting them by team one day, by position the next and then back to team. I loved the checklists as I could scour for the names of the five hockey players I recognized - all of them Edmonton Oilers, of course. Just as the pile was entering the "impressive" stage, a fateful visit from my one-time best friend wiped out that collection in one swooped. To this day I still don't know how he got the cards out the door but I liked to think at the time that he shoved them down his pants and got paper cuts all over his thighs (although, in retrospect, O-Pee-Chee cards have some of the softest edges in the business so I doubt that wish came true).

Over the next few years, there were packs here and there but nothing major: The A-Team, Wacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids, ALF and Fright Flicks were all favourites, but I never had more than a handful of each. But in 1989 I got my first case of the fever. It wasn't cards, but rather stickers. Late in the 1988-89 hockey season I became friends with someone who was working on the Panini sticker book. I thought it was cool and grabbed a few. I mapped out my quest to build the set but before I got very far the packs ran dry at the local corner store and I had to wait for next year.

Little did I know of the coming boom. Between 1990 and 1993 I tried to collect every baseball and hockey set that came north of the border. This meant mostly O-Pee-Chee and Topps for the first couple of years and then everything as the card stores started popping up. Somewhere around 1993 I noticed the sets were becoming too numerous and these inserts were getting increasingly difficult to find. So I cut back a little to the sets that caught my attention. While I like inserts and the perceived value they brought to my teenaged mind, I was still a base set collector at heart. The foundation was firmly in place for my primary collecting passion, but as the hobby evolved, so did my habits.

For the next couple of years, I was simply grabbing what I could a) find in Canada and b) caught my attention. I started dabbling in team collecting as I pursued the Cleveland Indian bats of Albert Belle, Carlos Baerga and a happy Manny Ramirez. Frank Thomas was also a monster worth getting from the quarter box, as was Mike Piazza because he was a catcher who could hit. This period was one in which I got into to many areas without focusing. I was throwing my McDonald's paycheques around and building a collection I could never describe to anyone.

Then the Internet arrived. I started the first incarnation of Trader Crack's back in 1996 on Geocities posting wantlists and tradelists. It was a pretty sweet time to be collecting. A new world was opened up to me as all of a sudden I wasn't limited by borders. By now I was focused almost exclusively on baseball. Since it wasn't hockey, it was slim pickings around my parts. But with trading I could have anything I wanted and get rid of my unwanted bits. I opened up a few new sets and began two player collections: Johnny Damon because I thought he'd be a star and John Jaha because he had a cool-sounding name and his cards were cheap.

You see, I'm a completist in a lot of ways. Once I'm in, I'm all in. I liked Frank Thomas but he had so many cards that I wouldn't possibly be able to get all of them. And this was before everyone went hog-wild on the parallels. John Jaha, now there was a guy I could go after. He wasn't a star so he didn't have a ton of cards and not a lot of people going after them. Today my John Jaha collection is about as complete as it likely will. Outside of one-of-ones, I am missing less than 10 of his cards. I've also got a couple of memorabilia pieces and oddball bits. His Topps contract would have been mine last week if the Topps Vault only wanted to make some extra funds and ship outside of Canada.

With the new-found collecting freedom, I got the fever bad. I bought anything and everything, traded for everything else and found a then little-used site called eBay to find everything John Jaha. The problem was I was still buying random packs in bunches and not focusing on anything in particular outside of a set or two and my player.

The fever led to an infection in my wallet that caused massive bleeding of pay cheques. Everything would be gone with my frequent sprees to the shops. Sure, I came away with some solid trade bait but when you're collecting John Jaha you don't need much as people are normally happy to pass their commons on in bulk.

One day I realized my collecting habits were too chaotic. It was time to focus. No more going after anything and everything. No more blowing entire pay cheques (note, I was young, not married, no kids, no responsibilities) and having nothing to show for it other than an Angel Pena autograph and way too many half-finished sets from series that sucked. It was about this time I stopped buying much wax. It was too expensive for getting little in return. A decade ago the Canadian dollar was worth about 50 percent less than the US dollar. This meant I was paying $100 for a box of low- to middle-end products like Stadium Club and Bowman. Instead I started getting singles I needed off eBay and continued trading.

Today, sets are still my main passion, although I limit myself to only a couple per year. I go after a set that catches my eye and, traditionally, Topps base sets. Of course, when something new comes along like Masterpieces I find myself adding to the wantlists, but with the Internet, I'm now at a point where I can build a set through trading without buying a single pack.

I work primarily in baseball and non-sport, with little straying today. I find now my collection is more focused and I'm much happier. I'm a firm believer in gimmicks. I like lots of things about card collecting and am pretty easy to please. So even though I build sets, collect John Jaha, have enough Montreal Expos to write the team's history through cards, set aside Canadian-born baseball players, get giddy over autographs of guys I've heard of and am mesmerized by holograms, most everything I get today has a spot in a specific box or binder. I purposefully keep massive wantlists so that I have a better chance of making trades.

Much of the joy I take from collecting today is in the chase. In the past I've lost sight of what it was I was chasing in the first place. That led to fever and burnout. The simple medicine was simply sitting back and seeing what it was I wanted from a collection. Now that I have that figured out, collecting is fun again.

This is my contribution to the Blog Bat Around. Thanks, Gellman for the wonderful idea.

Filed Under "A Bloody Mess": Missing Cards From My 2008 Topps Baseball Factory Set

Sometimes I hate myself with being obsessed with continuity. Although I'm not a fan of this year's Topps base baseball set, I still felt obliged to add it to my collection seeing as I'm working on a run from 1978 onward. Although I'm missing cards from several sets and am missing several altogether, that's my ultimate goal - the timeline of my life through baseball cards. Having a hole in 2008 would eat away at me later in life.

So I made a compromise. Rather than busting boxes of each series like I usually do, I'd settle on a factory set. It's not nearly as fun or exciting, but it'd get the job done. Or so I thought.

My set arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago but I hadn't had a chance to go through it until last night. If you haven't bought a factory set from Topps before, they come with the numbers mixed up - I assume something to do with the printing process - so some sorting is required. Well, after sorting through my hobby set, I ended up with the expected ten "rookie card" variations, the Fukudome UH1 card that isn't advertised on the box but I knew it existed and 21 duplicates. I was also short 21 cards for my set. And yes, it was factory sealed so there were no shennanigans ahead of time. Apparently you don't get a complete set with a factory set anymore.

Although judging by my dealings with Topps' customer service in the past, they'll make good by sending me the cards I need or a new set or something. I'm more ticked that I have to go through the effort to get my set. The theme I got from 2008 Topps Baseball was no effort. By buying a factory set, I was reflecting the company policy. I just come gimmick free. Now I have to write a letter, ship off the cards on my own dime and get what I already paid for and expected. It's in some ways a small thing, but it's still an inconvenience. Plus I can't add 2008 Topps Baseball to my list of completed sets until those 21 cards are received. Instead the box sits on my shelf of incomplete sets. And rather than plain 800- and 400-count boxes staring at me from said shelf, I've got Mickey Mantle because every current product from Topps has to have Mickey Mantle as the centerpiece. And you wonder why today's game and cards are having a hard time connecting with the youth market? But that's another post possibility.

For the moment, I'm more than a little ticked. Sure, it's over something small in the big scheme of things. But I really didn't want to have to do any extra leg work for such a bland set just to appease my strange obsessions. I do know that if 2009 Topps Baseball is this lame (boring design, questionable photography, gimmicks galore) I'll seriously consider making the switch over to the base Upper Deck set permanently and start a new continuity beginning with this year as I spent a lot more on the UD set busting packs than I did on one factory set.

Screw "tradition" and the crazy things it does to my brain and card-buying.

Goodie for Goudey!

When you're talking dream cards, mine is a 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth. Will I ever have one? Doubtful. But my vintage Goudey collection officially started yesterday with the arrival of this:

171. Charley Jamieson, Cleveland Indians

Sorry for the crappy scans. I'm in the process of switching over to a new computer but my old one still has the scanner hooked up and the old monitor is horrid. Instantly Charley becomes the oldest part of my baseball card collection. I've got a couple of non-sport and boxing tobacco cards that are a little bit older, but not by much. According to BaseballReference, Charley was never a superstar but he was a solid hitter holding down a career average of .301 in almost two decades of playing. In 1924 he hit .359 and finished third in AL MVP voting.

The card itself is in solid shape with no creases. It has been loved over time as the nicely rounded corners show but it was never manhandled. This card was inserted as a Buy Back from 2008 Upper Deck Goudey. I'm not sure what Goudey commons are worth but when I saw the Buy it Now of $8.00 I figured a pretty little piece of pre-WWII vintage was more fun than a random pack or two of the new stuff.

Upper Deck also inserted a card of congratulations indicating this is indeed a Buy Back.

What I find interesting is the language used. 

You have received a trading card that was originally released in a previous product and is now being re-released for your collecting pleasure.

Can Upper Deck not take a couple of extra seconds and state what set it's from? And maybe even go a step further and discuss the history of the 1933 Goudey set? Gasp! One would think that seeing as how Upper Deck has the rights to call the new set "Goudey" they'd also have the rights to point out the origins of the old cards as well.

It's not that I care that much. I'm just excited to have the first of hopefully a handful of cards from this set.

Come to the Dark Side, My Child

If collecting cards and the like is really "the Dark Side" that my wife thinks it is, I'm bringing my daughter with me.

Before I got into cards I collected stickers. My sister and I wrote away to ads for the "Pineapple Club" we found in Archie comics and in the Muppet Magazine. Six to eight weeks later we each had more stickers than we could do with -literally. So we stuck the sheets in photo albums and looked through them regularly comparing what each of us had adn lamenting what we didn't.

A couple years later this gave way to a He-Man sticker book from Panini. Much like cards, you'd buy the album and then grab packs of stickers, building your set and finishing your sticker book at the same time. This was an instance of unfortunately/fortunately. Unfortunately the the corner store ran out of He-Man stickers shortly after I got my sticker book. Fortunately, they got a Transformers one after that. For the next couple of months all of my allowance went towards stickers for that book. I think I may have even done extra work in exchange for more stickers.

After the store ran out of Transformers stickers I got into hockey and from there I was into cards. I credit these Panini sticker albums as getting me into cards in the first place. They were a bridge of sorts from one hobby and into another. Now it's time to get my daughter started.

Like a lot of three-year-olds, Evelyn loves Dora the Explorer. She also loves to get special treats for doing a good job, overcoming a fear or trying something new. I don't like comparing my kids to dogs, but it's much the same as rewarding a dog with a cookie for fetching the paper, going doodie outside or sitting. And just as the tail wags with joy and anticipation, Evelyn comes running when I reach into the closet and pull out a pack of Dora stickers for a job well done.

For the price of five packs of 2008 Topps Baseball I picked up a Dora album from Panini and a box of 50 packs of stickers. So now when Evelyn does a good job with something (right now it's sleeping through the night without screaming about the shadow of the curtain rod that she swears is a shark) she gets a pack of stickers.

What follows is some great daddy-daughter time as we rip into the pack, sort through the five stickers within and put them into the sticker book. Evelyn's already proving to be a regular Joe Collector getting extra giddy when a shiny, sparkly sticker (the equivilent of Dora chrome refractors) pops out. "Oooooo, shiny! Look, Daddy, it sparkles!" We've got about 50 stickers in the album, roughly 25 percent of the set, so far. Yet Evelyn knows exactly which stickers she has and doesn't have simply by looking at them.

"Evelyn are you sure you have that one? It's just Map and a simple background. There's one like that on every page."

"No, daddy. We have it."

Sure enough, I flip to the place in the album where this generic sticker belongs and map is staring me in the face, taunting me for questioning my daughter even in a trivial matter such as this. Doubles are set aside for a friend Evelyn met while visiting our hometown over the summer and kept away from her brother at all costs.

I'm not pushing for my daughter to join me in the wild world of card collecting, but if she sees me sorting through some piles or is curious by a certain card, I'll sit down with her and tell her the story of that card. For every card does have a story and every story should be passed on. And if from that Evelyn wants to join her dad, dagger grins from my wife aside, I'll hold onto every moment we share together ripping packs, sorting and debating whether or not it's a double. I'll just have to remind my wife that it's about the quality time we're spending together and not the extra 400-count boxes the card shelf is accumulating.

The Art of the Autograph

Autographs are not only one of the driving forces of the card hobby, but memorabilia as a whole. Photos, toys, letters, napkins, cars - you can find them all signed by different dignitaries and people deemed significant (or, in the case of Allen & Ginter, dogs and monster trucks count too).

I keep the majority of the autographs I pull in my personal collection. And if I don't I try to trade them for other autographs. I don't know why I like getting the signatures, but it's probably like most everyone else: it gives me a connection to the people I watch on TV and, to a certain extent, wish to be. I'd have loved to have been given the gift of playing baseball at a professional level. Heck, I'd have loved to been a Little League All-Star. Alas, I wasn't so there's probably some part of my subconscious that's jealous and wants to revisit that envy through my autograph collection. Consciously, I just think that scribbled names are cool.

A few days ago I was busting some junk packs I bought cheap in hopes of getting a solid start on a base set. I had no expectations of getting an autograph or some fancy insert. The price I paid was one where I'd have been happy with a truckload of commons. This particular pack: 1997 Stadium Club Baseball Series Two. I'd gotten a lot of about 15 packs and was busting away when all of a sudden I stumbled across an autograph. After about a second it hit me, "This is Stadium Club. The only autographs are Co-Signers." So there were going to be two signatures in this here pack.

Let's see who I got. First I saw the backside:

MARTY CORDOVA! The bold and exclamation points are because I just went in a time machine back to 1996 when this guy was the reigning AL Rookie of the Year and a run-producing machine for the Twins. Set that time machine to today and he's merely a footnote in baseball history.

Flip this bad-boy over and who's next?

RONDELL WHITE! White was another in a long-line of "can't miss" outfielders produced in the Montreal Expos system during the late-80s through the mid-90s: Larry Walker, Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou and Vladimir Guerrero to name a few. White failed to turn into the superstar the Canadian media pegged him at, but he was a dependable bat who lasted as a journeyman until last season.

So maybe neither of them are headed to Cooperstown but it's still an instant addition to the Expos collection. Even though I have a couple of White autographs already, this one's my favorite and there's a couple of reasons why. The first being that it's got too much of a story behind it seeing as how it has autographs from two guys who didn't pan out yet still showed some fire. Second, the design is gorgeous. I do prefer dual autograph cards to have both signatures on the front of the card like Stadium Club opted for in 1998, but the bright side of this design (no pun intended for the holo-shininess) is that you can display White if you're an Expos fan or Cordova if you root for the Twins.

Above everything else, what really makes me appreciate this piece of junk wax gold are the signatures themselves. They're nice (I'd say gorgeous, but that's a word I believe should be saved when describing a member of the opposite gender). And wouldn't you know, I can actually read them:

It's not very often you see such nice signatures from current players. Often it's a scribble and a loop or two and that's about it. While these cards still offer a connection to the player, the asthetics aren't always there.

Combine the legible writing with the sharp, thin-tipped pen and this "common" Co-Signers card is not only a great addition to my Expos collection but it's also an example other signers in all sports could follow, not to mention my doctor.

Breakfast of a Champion

Sorry, folks, but I didn't read any Kurt Vonnegut over the weekend (I'm working on some Jack London). Rather I'm feeling a little bit nostalgic about Joe Carter and a bowl of Honeycombs from 14 years ago. The details are a little foggy but knowing I was a high school student on summer vacation it was probably just another lazy morning of sleeping in and bumming around before the rest of the day's laziness.



This was a rare era where baseball, not hockey, was king in Canada. Our national hero, Wayne Gretzky had abandoned us for southern California and no Canadian-based team had won the Stanley Cup for a couple of years (nor have they won one since). The Toronto Blue Jays were two-time World Champions. They, not the Maple Leafs, not the Canadiens, not anyone else were Canada's team. Matters were also helped by the fact that the Montreal Expos were the best team in baseball up until the point of that fateful morning.



Memories of Joe Carter blasting a walk-off three-run homer still rang through in the collective Canadian consciousness. It was Game Six against the Phillies. Toronto entered the game with a 3-2 series lead but Philadelphia entered the bottom of the ninth inning winning 6-5. With Phillies closer Mitch Williams on the mound, it looked like a seventh game was in the works.



Williams lived up to his nickname "Wild Thing" right away, walking Rickey Henderson (yes, he was a Blue Jay for a couple of months) on four straight pitches. With one out Paul Molitor hit a single. This set the stage for the most dramatic Canadian sports moment since Paul Henderson scored against the USSR in the 1972 Summit Series. Joe Carter stepped up. I'd been glued to the entire game not walking away to get a drink, snack or even use the washroom. I couldn't wait any longer so I cranked the volume a little, ran across my dad's apartment and hoped nothing would happen. Wouldn't you know, mid-stream cheers ran out from the apartment upstairs. A gasp and a cheer came from the apartment downstairs. I made it back to the TV just in time -- for the replay.





With the count 2-2, Williams shook off a signal from catcher Darren Daulton. He let the pitch fly, Joe Carter swung and it was over. It was like a freeze-frame moment. The swing, the crack of the bat, the hop and fist pump around the bases, the team piling onto the field, a sea of Canadians jumping up and down in unison in the Skydome stands, the rest of the country feeling proud from the comfort of their living rooms. The Toronto Blue Jays were World Champs for the second straight year.

It was also the second year where Joe Carter made the final play of the World Series. The previous year he was playing first base when the Braves' Otis Nixon attempted a two-out bunt in the eleventh inning. Pitcher Mike Timlin picked up the ball and gave it a light toss to Carter who made the force out and history was made.



But it's the 1993 home run to win the second championship that stands out and not the routine play that won Toronto's (and Canada's) first World Series. Let's face it, home runs are more exciting. The moment had more intensity and tension to begin with. To this day it's still replayed over and over. Carter's raised arms have also been featured on plenty of cards as well in the 15 years since. It also made him an instant legend up here in the great and sometimes white North, even amongst though of us who weren't hardcore Jays fans but still felt proud knowing another World Series trophy was residing above the 49th.



So I'm sitting there pouring my box of Honeycomb cereal and I realized it was a new box. An airbrushed baseball card waited for me at the bottom of the box. Like other Post sets, the cards were licensed by the Players Association but not by MLB so you got the superstars but not their logos. As a result they weren't the prettiest cards, but they were still more exciting than the cereal they came with.



My first bite reminds me that I really need to remind my mom that Fruit Loops are far superior in the taste department next to Honeycombs, even without the cards. Just as I did when I was four, I pull out the bag of cereal to see if I'm going to have to dig through the cereal to get my prize or if it was sitting outside the bag on the bottom of the box. I get my answer quickly. Sitting on the bottom of the box is Joe Carter right after a swing, watching a flyball head out to left field. It might as well have been the homerun. Disappointment was the first thing that ran through my head. I was hoping for an Expo or Frank Thomas. As the first glance gave way to a quick inspection I realized that I'd struck cardboard gold. It was the Joe Carter autograph - essiently the grand prize of cereal box prizes that year.



My mom wasn't around so I let out a [EARMUFFS, young 'uns!], "Holy shit!" of the most happiest kind. Instantly it was the coolest part of my collection (it's still up there today). A couple thousand were made and are probably floating around out there but I didn't care. It was the first time I'd "won" something with such long odds (1:3,000 boxes to be exact). It was an autograph of a legend. From a box of cereal. Even if he wasn't on "my team" or he wasn't "my player" it was the coolest thing. My hands shook as I took it out of the box. A smile caked my face and it wouldn't go away as I repeated the story over and over to my sister, step-dad and mom after each of them came home.



I guess my mom figured I was lucky. For the next two months cereal was a steady diet of Honey Combs and lunch was often a second helping. I explained to her that the cards came in other Post cereals as well but it didn't matter. She saw my smile that day. And when your teenager's smiling you want to do all you can to recreate that moment or at least hold it in time. On the bright side for me, I ate enough boxes to send away for the free complete set (plus $4.95 shipping and handling).



I still have the Joe Carter card. The last time I looked at the price, it was listed at $60 in a Canadian price guide (it's not even listed in my Standard Catalog). But that doesn't matter one lick as it's one of the few cards that I'll be able pull out and tell my grand-kids about while they sit on my knee and rub Grandpa's old man whiskers. They'll ask me why it's in a block of plastic like the frozen caveman on that movie. Then I'll tell them it was so that I'd still have it for that very moment when we could take it out together and I could pass it onto to them so they could tell their grand-kids about baseball, home runs and Honeycombs.

Collecting the Common Guy - Part 2

Upon embarking on a John Jaha collection, it was relatively easy at first. Although he was a decent slugger, he wasn't great and he played for the Brewers. Although Billy Brewer was getting a workout on the outfield slide every time Jaha knocked one over the wall, there wasn't a lot of collector attention.

I began by trading and trading and trading and trading. Then I traded some more. Autographs were just becoming commonplace and game-used cards were still a couple of years away. It was all about the shiny insert and the base card, both of which I had plenty of to dangle especially when I was looking for a lowly common.

My first trades focused on getting a mix of large base-card lots and a sprinkling of tougher inserts. In 1997 there were still very few collectors trading online so we were a nice little community. We looked out for each other, shared stories and cards. This was great for me as I had nobody to trade with in my hometown. It was all hockey in Victoria, British Columbia. To get a Jaha fix I had to reach for the mouse, type a message or two and head out to buy a lot of stamps.

As more collectors came online, I got more and more Jahas. I was able to compile lists of the existing cards and keep up with the new ones. The hardest thing to deal with was the influx of collectors looking to give me their commons (most of which I already had multiples of) for the hot rookies of J.D. Drew and Pat Burrell. Although not a stickler for book value and Becketts, it was (and still is) annoying dealing with "traders" blatantly going after things they would likely flip over in a sale.

As my wantlists became smaller, my completist side began to show more and more. Rather than getting a daily fix of new Jahas, weeks and even months would go by between "finds". As a result I began to completely ignore the books as to what I should pay. Over the course of my collecting, a couple other Jaha collectors have come and gone. Let's just say in the months where all three of us were overlapping in our collecting there were a couple of dealers who made a killing off of us. We were dropping $10-20 on the 2000 Pacific Prism variations!

Now my Jaha collection is pretty much stagnant. Last week I finally tracked down a 1996 Leaf Gold Press Proof and was ecstatic to land it for a whopping $1.99 plus shipping. I've got all of his base cards, endless parallels, a few fancy inserts, a handful of oddball items and even a couple of pieces of game-used equipment. I'm down to a small bunch of parallels (most limited to less than 25 copies) and a couple of oddball items I don't even know if they exist.

Collecting the Common Guy - Part 1

Back in the late 1990s the baseball card hobby was changing. More sets were coming out with fancier, rarer inserts. Being a completist I had to change my collecting focus. I was a big fan of Albert Belle at the time (he was just too entertaining in a train wreck sort of manner to resist) and realized I'd never be able to track down all of his cards so I retired and searched out a new player to collect. The criteria was this:

1) He had to be a common or very minor star. The big-name guys had too many cards and most were out of my price range. Therefore I had to set my standards a little lower. By collecting a common player I could afford to go after everything.
2) I'm a sucker for the long ball. So I started scouring the leader board. I narrowed it down to a couple of contenders and went from there.
3) Root for the underdog. I don't like being accused of jumping on a bandwagon. So I looked for someone who didn't have much of a chance thus far in their career.
4) Funny names are fun. Yeah, I know. Going after someone because their name rolls off your tongue sounds kind of lame. Maybe it is. But when you've got a handful of choices to go with, you start looking at gimmicks.

With those four criteria I found my player. And with that my collecting habits changed forever. My new guy back in 1996-97 - John Jaha.

I plan on chronicling my Jaha collection over time and will look at how I went about tracking down cards and memorabilia, the joys of the bidding war and the fun of tracking down the last cards needed for a master set (besides those pesky 1/1s).