What's up with me and baseball cards

I've noticed over the years that some bloggers only post when they have something new to relate, either a new card acquisition, or something card-related that happened to them at the hobby shop, or some event in their life.

Even though that's probably the better way to keep one sane, that's now how this blog operates. This ain't Facebook. I try to blog almost every day because I think of cards every day. Daily blogging takes thought, creativity, persistence, and I wish there could be new card events every day but there just isn't.

So I try to find card-related things to offer to fill in the gaps between "look what I did!' Along those lines, I am very close to debuting the 100 Greatest Cards of the '70s countdown. I have just a handful of '70s cards left to review and then I will rank them (the ranking actually doesn't take long) You'll probably see the first post within the next two weeks.

OK, now on to a few card events that have happened recently, because, yup, I do those kind of posts sometimes, too. (You Twitter people can cruise right past this as you've seen most of it before).


1. I am your one-stop shop for Allen & Ginter Anthony Rizzo relic cards

I received my gas mileage reimbursement from work earlier this week. There was just enough there to buy a blaster of something. So, yesterday I nabbed another Allen & Ginter blaster from Walmart because they have been good to me.

Out of the first pack appeared the above Anthony Rizzo relic that you see up top. I've now pulled three relics and an autograph from four blasters since A&G debuted last month. But that's not the weird part. The weird part is I can't get rid of Anthony Rizzo's uniform jersey.

In March, I bought a discounted blaster of 2016 A&G. In it was this:

Rizzo relic #1.


Then, when 2017 A&G arrived on the shelves, I bought a couple of blasters and the first one yielded this:

Rizzo relic #2.


And then, not even a month later:

Rizzo relic #3.


As tempted as I am to build an actual Anthony Rizzo uniform out of my new-found wealth of Rizzo fabric scraps, these are of little use to my collection. I would like to trade them to someone in Chicago who is no doubt pulling a bunch of Corey Seager relics and as thoroughly confused as I am.

I actually have just Rizzo #2 and #3 left in my collection, but, believe me, they are available.


2. The Gene Hackman autograph is en route to a new home

I sold earlier this week the Allen and Ginter Gene Hackman/Norman Dale autograph card that I pulled last month.

I waited a little too long to sell it, but I was busy and I just didn't have the time to get it posted. It sold for $112, which is great for someone who wasn't expecting to make any profit off the blaster he bought. But prices have obviously come down on the Hackman card. There seems to be a few out there. (It's no Kris Bryant 1 of 1).

I mentioned on Twitter than when I pulled it, I knew right away that I would sell it. There are certain autographs that I would never sell, but almost all of them are related to baseball. As much as I liked the movie "Hoosiers," I am not a big movie guy and the meaning of the card is lost on me. Get a signature of a rock singer in there, someone like Rick Ocasek or Shirley Manson or, gracious, Paul Hewson, and that stays with me to the day I die.

I hope whoever nabbed it enjoys it. But I really don't mind if they just bought it to sell it. That's not Ron Cey in that frame.


3. I got to write about a card in the newspaper

Let me reword that:

I told myself I would write about a card for the newspaper.

I run the show in the sports department, which means deciding what goes in the sports section on a daily basis. Of course, I am limited by journalistic objectivity, so as much as I would like to cover six pages in nothing but coverage of the Dodgers, I have to keep it to newsworthy events of interest to our local readers.

Hot dog, I found one of those on a trading card.

In Allen & Ginter this year is a card of a lacrosse player named Lyle Thompson.

If you know lacrosse, then you know who Lyle Thompson is. He is the all-time career scoring leader in NCAA lacrosse (he played for the University of Albany). He won a championship and was named MVP last June in the National Lacrosse League.

He also went to school at one of the high schools we cover at the paper.

As you know, I live in the sticks, so players from our area don't land on trading cards all that often. That alone makes it significant enough to write about, so I whipped up a short 12-inch story and published it in the paper.

Since I am a card collector, I already had the card available to put in the paper and, of course, all that knowledge on what the heck Allen & Ginter is was already in my brain. It was one of the easiest items I've ever written (I could have tracked down Thompson for a quote but that may have taken a few days as he is playing right now and I was in dire need of copy).

It was cool to get something about the hobby in the paper. Who knows? Maybe it will get me to start a blog on our paper's site about collecting (unlike the sports section though, I'd need to get clearance on that).


So, that's what's going on with me and cards lately. You are now officially up to date.

Expect rambling posts about cards that are of no relation to what's going on currently to resume tomorrow.