A less than thrilling start

 

Wow, not off to the greatest start for Year 18 with this blog. Posting is likely to be a bit sporadic the next couple weeks. Nothing unfortunate, just one of those life whirlwinds where a bunch of disconnected things come together to conspire against my hobby.

 

Just as this busy period got started, I was getting my lunch on Saturday when my wife dropped the mail on the counter. The October/November Beckett Vintage Collector jumped right out to me. "Here already?" I said.

 

I turned the pages and there was the second article I wrote for them this past spring.

 

 

I did not expect to see this issue until early October. That was about the time the August-September issue arrived (early August) and -- wham -- a month later I'm discussing my latest article. I'm not used to the magazine world moving so fast! Isn't this "old media"?

 

The cover teases to my story this time, always a little thrill in itself.

 

And speaking of thrills, yes, this article was inspired by a post I did on this very blog. Back in March, during a Joy of a Subset post, I covered the 1959 Topps Baseball Thrills set, going through each subset card, card by card. I did the same thing for the magazine, except more in-depth.

 

I examined each card and tried to figure out whether the photo corresponded with the moment mentioned. I also interviewed a collector, Curt, who if you were on Twitter during the good ol' days, you probably know. He's a Pirates fan  and loves old cards like these '59 greats. He's got the whole set in graded form.

 

It was fun talking to him, like it is with just about any collector. The conversation flies. And I'm always happy (thrilled, even) to land an interview for my story. It really livens up the article, which would be more of a dry recounting of history without those quotes.

 

So that issue should be on magazine racks fairly soon, I think. I just took a picture of the magazine with my misspellings article just a few weeks ago when I saw it at a local grocery store. I was in the store last week and noted that the issue was gone (somebody bought it!). So I guess it really is time for the new one!

 

Per usual when one of my magazine articles comes out (this is my 21st, by the way), I like to expand on it with some other cards of a similar theme. Not a lot of time for that today. So I thought I'd show the follow-up Baseball Thrills set that Topps produced, two years later, in the 1961 set.

 

 

 

 

  

 

The ones I scanned larger are ones that I own -- the Brooklyn-Boston, Hornsby and Haddix cards. I find it interesting that each of them are in a different binder -- the Brooklyn-Boston one in a Dodgers binder, the Hornsby in a random vintage binder and the Haddix in my night card binder.

 

The '61 Thrills set is interesting in that it didn't stick to the 1950s like the 1959 set did. The only '50s moments are Haddix, Mantle and Larsen. The '61set goes as far back as 1904 (Chsebro) and is filled with Yankees moments -- five cards, including Chesbro's Highlanders.

 

I prefer the "of its era" 1959 subset, but both are pretty great and I could only wish for Topps to do something similar today. Possibly the last time they did anything similar and only some of it was baseball was the "World's Greatest Victories" insert set in Allen & Ginter in 2008.

 

I love that I could use the blog to create a magazine article, that's happened a couple of times now and I would like it to happen more often. I don't have any more magazine stories coming up so it's time to formulate some ideas when I get a chance. Maybe I'll go through a blog deep dive.