OK, now that I've established myself as an oddball in the current collecting landscape -- preferring vintage cards and all -- it's appropriate that I show off some recent "oddball" arrivals in my collection.
This runs the gamut and covers 85 years of trading cards and some of it isn't even cardboard.
Let's see:
Fired-up by my first acquisition of a 1960 Leaf high-number Dodger card in Rip Repulski, I decided to grab another one with this Joe Pignatano. It has a few minor flaws (it was listed as "good," which is usually "good enough" for me), but it still looks great.
That leaves just Stan Williams to complete the team set. Upon landing the Repulski, I received an email informing me that the Williams was available for a reasonable price on sportlots. But I didn't jump on it (I'm rarely financially ready to pounce on opportunities) and it's not there anymore.
Here's a card -- and an owlie greeting card -- that arrived in response to my latest 1975 Topps buyback post. TCDB member GoldenEagles555, aka Steffan, is a friend of the blog and I appreciate his readership and generosity. It's always thrilling to get an All-Star card from this set for my buyback quest. And, of course, I'm also quietly horrified that someone stamped a '75 All-Star card. But, hey, it's the 543rd card for the set regardless!
I love the 1986 Topps wax-box bottoms more than any of the other '80s/'90s wax bottoms, as they contrast so wonderfully with the main 1986 Topps set.
I was lucky enough to get 3 of the 4 1986 O-Pee-Chee panels from Angus a couple of years ago. The one I didn't get is the Bell-Boggs-Brett-Coleman one, yet here it is in Topps form! This is my second full Topps panel from 1986 and it came from the BlueSky giveaway thread a couple of weeks ago. Stuff like this doesn't come along often in the thread so super-happy with this oddity.
OK, not much to look at -- that's how you know it's odd. This is one of the items that showed up from Max from the Starting Nine blog. He's sent me plenty of envelopes over the years and he accurately called this one "odder than usual."
Two of the items sent were of Fernando Valenzuela, the postcard up top, and this Slurpee disc. The '80s 7-11 discs are tough for me to keep track of, they show up multiple years and are separated into regions of the country and then for only some of them they include 3 players on one disc -- which was all the rage in the mid-1980s. This disc is from 1986, the East Region, and includes Fernando, Ron Guidry and Bret Saberhagen. I had to prop it like this to get Fernando to show.
The most recent of the cards, Max sent these 50/50 Shohei Ohtani cards from Topps' online set celebrating Ohtani's 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases.
This is a pretty uninspired set and is 100 cards large (one for each home run and stolen base), which is why I never bothered with it. If each photo is actually from that particular home run or stolen base, I take back the "uninspired" part, but I have my doubts.
Ice cream helmets! Max sent me three Dodgers ones. He doesn't know why he had three, I don't know what to do with three. Maybe go down on the corner and start swindling passers-by with the shell game? I'll figure something out.
Finally, the oldest card I've obtained -- well, probably for the entire year.
It's from the 1939 Play Ball set. Cookie Lavagetto, that legendary Brooklyn Dodger. It's a great-looking card, but I admit my brain gets muddled when it comes to pre-1940s cards and I'm often mixing up Play Ball and Goudey. I bet there was part of me that thought I was getting a Goudey card after I ordered this.
Still I'm pretty amazed by how many Play Ball Dodgers I own. There are still plenty more to get.
And that's an odd assortment of recent arrivals.
I hope that my various collecting interests make this blog more interesting than if I was showing off only current slabbed cards. There are advantages to being an oddball, even if the majority of the population doesn't get why I'm doing what I'm doing.
Comments