Catalog of dreams

Good gosh, did you get your catalog yet? If not, you have got to get this thing. It's free, it's filled with pictures of cards you can't afford, and it is the most wonderful time you'll ever have reading a book. That is if you are the card collecting sort of guy or gal.

Mine came in the mail yesterday afternoon. I found out about it at Wax Heaven here. And Mario wasn't kidding. It is awe-inspiring. Drop dead gorgeous.

Robert Edward Auctions is making a whole bunch of historic cards available for amounts of money I will never have. But I do get to look at all the pretty pictures. And there certainly are a lot of them -- 640-plus pages worth of cards, plus all kinds of other memorabilia. It's really the history of baseball cards in one catalog. It will probably take me years to absorb all of it.

But here is just a glimpse of what I've seen in the few short hours I've had this thing. Keep in mind, I know nothing about auctions, and the history of old cards is really better left up to people like dayf. So, the knowledgeable commentary will be at a minimum.

1910 PC796 Sepia Ty Cobb/Honus Wagner Postcard. Cobb and Wagner shaking hands during the 1909 World Series. How cool is this? It drew my eye instantly. Wagner probably wanted to beat Cobb over the head with that bat for being a racist bigot. But this makes for a much better picture.

1909-1911 T206 Sherry Magie error card. One of the most famous and rarest error cards of all-time. This particular card is graded poor-to-fair 1. I like the text that goes with it:

"This is an extremely pleasing low-grade, and therefore relatively affordable
example of one of card collecting's most significant rarities."

The catalog's idea of "relatively affordable" is between $1,000-2,000.

1909-1911 T206 White Border "Florida Attic Find" Collection cards. Collection of 20. I'll let the catalog tell the story:

"In 2002, a European man who recently settled in the United States was remodeling
his newly acquired home in Florida, and while rummaging around in the attic
found an old trunk filled with nearly 350 virtually pristine T206 White Border
cards and a handful of T205 Gold Borders. The man was not a baseball fan and all
the names on these cardboard treasures were completely unfamiliar to him."

Isn't that the way it always goes? The guy finding the rare cards in the attic is never a baseball fan and never has a clue what he found. Meanwhile I have rummaged around in attics countless times just on the occasion that I might stumble across some 100-year-old cards, and I have found absolutely nothing. Not even a 1989 Donruss.

Three 1933 R319 Goudey Babe Ruths. Together in one place. ... Mind. Just. Blown.

1949 Bowman Jackie Robinson. I wonder whether the guy babbling next to me at the card show needed this card to complete his set. He can get it at the auction for between $1,500-2,500. That's all.

1952 Topps "Series 1A" Uncut Final Color-Process Proof Sheet. According to the catalog, these were the first 1952 Topps cards ever printed. "This very sheet literally represents the birth of the modern bubble-gum card."

Honey, fire up the credit card.

1960 Topps Complete Set. Just remember, while you're spending your Saturday in Target trying to complete the 2009 Heritage set, some richy richy dude is forking over $4,000 for the real thing. That's a happy thought, isn't it?

1963 Topps Don Drysdale. Mint 9. I'm interested in seeing how much this card goes for, because I have this card and it's in extremely good shape. It's not a Mint 9, but it's a super-fine "specimen," as they might say in auction land.

1967 Topps Test Stand-Up Collection. These look like very cool cards, but since they are test issue cards from the '60s my chances of owning them are as good as me being struck by lightning while reading the winning numbers off my lottery ticket.

An unopened cello box of (432) 1975 Topps cards. The knowledge that there are 1975 Topps cards out there that have never been busted just boggles my mind. Getting a box like this would take care of more than a decade worth of Christmases for me.

But I'll end up with the usual Christmas goodies because I won't be getting any of this stuff. Instead I'll just have to settle for drooling on the pages of this catalog, and this:

The free refrigerator magnet that came with the free catalog! That's sort of cool, even though I originally thought it was a free card.

Seriously, if you want to stare at all kinds of cool cards from Turkey Red to Play Ball to 1960s Topps to (gack!) cut signatures, you need to get this thing. And if you can afford the stuff in the catalog, I have one question for you:

Will you adopt me?