Just a handful left for my Topps Hank Aaron Collection

I purchased a 1958 Topps Hank Aaron card from a guy in a Vintage Baseball Card Facebook group I am in. I'm not going to lie I was a little nervous about the purchase. 

He started off by listing it as a 1959 Topps Hank Aaron card. It was an auction with an end time. I had the highest bid at the end time, but then the seller posted something like "24 hours left" and I commented that the auction should be over. He didn't respond to my comment, but just sent me a message asking for payment. Okay. Then he says to pay Friends and Family or add $3.59 + $0.60 for Goods and Services. 

I always pay Goods and Services and I assume that everyone will expect Goods and Services unless they say so ahead of time, so it rubbed me the wrong way that he tells me this after I won the auction. But I got a good deal and there is no way I'm sending him Friends and Family, so I paid the extra. I paid on May 9th and the card arrived on May 13th, so at least it was shipped quickly. 

The card is not in great shape, but I'm extremely happy with the condition for the price I paid. After it arrived I realized that this only leaves me needing the 1957 Topps card as far as his base cards go from his playing days. So I put them all out in order and took a picture and posted on Twitter. Unfortunately I missed adding the 1971 Topps because when I grabbed it initially I realized it was not in a penny sleeve inside the top loader so I set it aside so I could add a penny sleeve. Someone pointed it out though and so I took another picture and posted it to Twitter.

Here is that picture.

Someone on Twitter said, now you need to do all of his League Leader cards and I actually looked and realized that I have all of those or thought I did. I am actually missing the 1963 Topps NL Home Run Leaders card. 

Here are all his League Leader cards.

The only Topps playing day cards I need for Aaron now are the 1957 Topps base card, his 1958 All-Star, 1960 All-Star, 1961 All-Star, the 1963 NL Home Run Leaders, the 1964 combo card Tops in NL with Willie Mays and his 1973 All-Time Total Bases Leader card.

Well, this isn't entirely true because I won an auction last night that had two of the cards on that list. So now I am down to just needing 5 cards. I also just put in an offer on another one that I am hoping gets accepted. 

Hard to believe that after all these years, I am getting so close to completing this run. I purchased my first playing days card of Hank Aaron back around 1990 from a card shop with birthday money. It was actually his last cards from his playing days. I got the 1976 Topps base and his Record Breaker card from the same set. Now 30 plus years later I am just a handful of cards away from having every Topps card issued during his playing career.

Time Travel Trade and Trivia

I did a time travel trade with Matt from the Diamond Jesters blog. He had reached out after seeing my post about 1974 Topps Traded and let me know he had a few of the cards I needed available, so I claimed them and sent him some pre-1974 cards and got these three cards I needed. Thanks Matt!

Did you know that Diego Segui pitched for both the Seattle Pilots and the Seattle Mariners? Not only that but in he did so in the first year of each of the franchises. 1969 for the Pilots and 1977 for the Mariners. And not only was he on the team, but he pitched in both of their first games. He got the save for the Pilots and took a loss for the Mariners. 

Just 11 more to go. 

42T Claude Osteen

165T Willie Davis

175T Reggie Cleveland

182T Lindy McDaniel

330T Juan Marichal

348T Pete Richert

373T John Curtis

454T Kurt Bevacqua

534T Eddie Watt

630T Tommie Agee

648T Terry Crowley

OfferUp Trade: Autographs

As part of the OfferUp trade I got these two signed Robbie Ray 8x10's. Robbie Ray had some really nice seasons with the Diamondbacks from 2015 - 2020 and was an All-Star in 2017. Of course his best year was last year; 2021 as he won the American League Cy Young Award as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays. His record was just 13-9, but he led the league in ERA (2.84) and strikeouts (248). He is now pitching for the Seattle Mariners.

The Rise and Fall and the Rise and Fall of the 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas Rookie Card

During my childhood there were plenty of cards that I drooled over while looking at the Beckett price guide each month. I probably shouldn't say each month because I never had a subscription, but it feels like I bought one every few months and looked at them whenever the chance presented itself; like at a friend's house or the library.

I used to love looking through he Beckett magazines checking out prices and then reading all the articles about new sets, error cards, and super collectors. A few years ago, Julie from A Cracked Bat and a Hot Dog sent me a bunch of old Becketts. I look through them every now and then. I used them for this post, so thanks Julie!

Growing up in the late 80's and early 90's there were a couple of players that always seemed to be battling it out for #1 on Beckett's Hot List. My favorite player of all-time; Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas. Both were amazing, but I am biased towards Griffey. For a time I even somewhat despised Thomas because he would occasionally take over that number one spot.

Griffey had the iconic 1989 Upper Deck rookie card and Frank Thomas would make his rookie card appearance just one year later in 1990. Aside from the mythical NNOF Topps rookie card, Thomas's most iconic rookie card was his 1990 Leaf card. 

First off 1990 Leaf was one of the first premium sets out there and the price of the card just seemed to skyrocket. I don't know when it made it's first appearance in a Beckett magazine, but I remember that by the time it was on my radar, it was already out of my price range as a 9 or 10 year old.

Over the past several years I've had my eye out for a nicely centered copy at a reasonable price. During the pandemic, the card seemed to skyrocket in price again and for a time I thought I would probably never own a copy. But about a month or so ago, I came across a copy of the card that seemed to be in nice shape and nicely centered for $23 shipped in a magnetic from someone on Twitter and I jumped at it.

With the card in hand, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the price of this iconic card over the years.

The oldest Beckett I have is from June 1991, so we'll start there. When I reference the prices I will be looking at the high column. So in June 1991 the 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas Leaf card booked at $18. Again, this was way out of my price range as a 10 year old kid. 

Next up is November 1992. In just under a year and a half, the card had tripled and was now at $60. This was just an insane amount to my 11 year old brain.

Pretty big gap between Beckett magazines. The next one is from December 1995. The card had climbed to $85.

In September 1996 the card remained strong at $85. This was $10 higher than the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. card.

February 1998 and still at $85 although by this time the 1989 Upper Deck Griffey card was now at $100.

In November 1998 we see a decline as the card comes in at $60. Notice that the 1990 Leaf Sammy Sosa rookie card was listed at an astronomical $120.

In October 1999 we see that the Thomas was still at $60, but the Sosa had dropped to $75. The 1989 Upper Deck Griffey booked at $160 this month.

June 2000 brings another drop in the price of the Thomas rookie card. It checks in at $40. The Sammy Sosa is up just a bit at $80.

We check in next in October 2001. The Thomas continues to decrease and is at just $30. Sammy took a big drop as well and is at $50.

July 2002 sees the Thomas card check in at $20. Not sure why I didn't grab this for a $20 bill in this timeframe. Sosa went back up to $80 this month which is the same price as the 1989 Upper Deck Griffey rookie card this month.

The Thomas rookie card continued to decline as we see a high of $15 for the card in January of 2003. Sosa remained at $80 while the Griffey dropped to $60.

We are going to skip a couple years as we pick back up in September 2006 and we see that the Thomas card is still at $15. Sosa is still almost double at $25 and the Griffey although it continued to decline as well, was significantly more than the other two at a high of $50.

The most recent copy of Beckett that I own is one that I bought myself. It is from February 2010. We see that the 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas rookie card had dropped even further with a high of just $12.

Over the next 10 years I would periodically look for the card at shops and shows. I browsed eBay during the pandemic, but prices were just too high. If my memory serves me correctly, which is probably doesn't, I think it was selling in the $50 range. I saw an off-centered copy at a card show for around $35, but just wasn't willing to pay that price for that particular version of the card.

Looks like the price has come down once again. Like I said, I was happy to pay $23 shipped for the card I got. How about you? Do you have the 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas card in your collection? When did you get it and how much did you pay for it?

OfferUp Trade: 2019 Topps - 1984 Topps Baseball Chrome Refractors

I'm supposed to be completing sets in 2022 and here I go starting another set. Maybe I can complete it this year as well.

There were a bunch of these 2019 Topps - 1984 Topps Baseball Chrome Refractors in one of the binders from the OfferUp trade. There were also some in one of the boxes. Luckily they are all from Series I, so I have a good start at the Series I set of 50 cards.

I have 35 out of the 50 cards. Not a bad start.

Here are the cards I still need. If you have any and would like to trade, please let me know.

2 - Mike Trout

3- Ronald Acuna Jr.

8 - Kris Bryant

13 - George Springer

17 - Shohei Ohtani

18 - Aaron Judge

20 - Ryne Sandberg

21 - Gleyber Torres

22 - Rickey Henderson

26 -Juan Soto

27 - Buster Posey

33- Jeff McNeil

44 - Jesus Aguilar

45 - Jim Rice

47 - Adalberto Mondesi

48 - Ozzie Smith

I have dups of the following that I can trade.

4 - Javier Baez

5 - Mookie Betts

6 - Jackie Robinson

7 - Corey Kluber (3)

15 - Manny Machado

16 - Christian Yelich

24 - Yadier Molina (2)

28 - Kyle Schwarber

30 - Darryl Strawberry (2)

31 - John Smoltz

49 - Mark McGwire (2)

50 - Cal Ripken Jr.

OfferUp Trade: Binder #2

This binder had one page of 1964 and 1965 cards. No stars or even semi-stars. I thought I had taken a picture of it, before I sorted them out and put them in my Topps vintage binder by year. A couple of the cards were in great shape, but a few were pretty trashed.

This binder also had the 2020 Leaf Draft Baseball set. There was also a bunch of pages of 1991 Donruss. The 1991 Donruss and most of the rest of the cards in the binder were all put in back to back. Not something I would do. I think I've mentioned it before, but trading or buying other collections is a fun way to see how other people collect. I won't be showing off any of the 1991 Donruss.

So we went from 1964 and 1965 Topps to 2020 Leaf Draft to 1991 Donruss. The rest of the binder was 2019 Allen & Ginter and 2018 and 2019 Topps (mostly inserts).

The Kris Davis is a blue parallel, but is severely miscut.

I wish I had the time and resources to collect each Allen & Ginter set. For now I will stick with a page for each year giving me a nice sample as well as saving any players that I collect.

I must not have bought much Topps base these years because many of these inserts were new to me, like the 2018 Hall of Fame cards of Jim Thome, Chipper Jones, Trevor Hoffman and Vladimir Guerrero.

Always makes me scratch my head when relatively young players get tribute sets from Topps as did Mookie Betts, Aaron Judge, and Gleybor Torres.

Lots of the 1984 throwback 35th Anniversary cards, both regular and chrome.

The Pujols is numbered on the back out of 150.

Several nice All-Star Rookie Cup cards on these last two pages. I have the Ohtani in my All-Star Rookie Cup binder, but Soto or Acuna could easily take that spot.

So that is it for OfferUp Trade binder #2. One more to go.

OfferUP Trade: 2020 Leaf Draft Baseball Set

Trading is great because it can net you things that you would never actually buy yourself. Such is the case with this 2020 Leaf Draft Baseball set. I would have never bought this myself because I would rather spend $20 elsewhere in the hobby, but I'm happy to have them in my collection now.

Some big names to start off the 50 card set. Not sure why Fernando Tatis Jr. was included in this 2020 Draft set. Next up is Wander Franco. Then Ronald Acuna. Julio Rodriguez also appears on this page.

Jason Dominguez and Spencer Torkelson grace page number 2.

Not many names that I'm familiar with in the rest of the set. It's still pretty early though, so there might be some players that haven't made it to the bigs yet and will still make an impact.

Let me know if there is anyone here that is on your radar.

OfferUp Trade: Binder #1

Let's take a look at a few more cards from my recent OfferUp trade. These came from a small binder of random cards. These are the keepers for me. 

This Twizzlers Big League Challenge Gary Sheffield card is part of a 10 card set. I did not have this one. This gets me to half of the set. 

There were a few 2002 UD Vintage cards in the binder including this card showing part of "The Flip".

This 1998 Donruss Elite Greg Maddux card is probably the best card from the binder.

This 1997 Fleer Tiffany Ivan Rodriguez is great looking card that came out of this binder, but the Fleer 97 in the top right-hand corner has partially come off.

I added a page of 2002 Bowman cards to my Bowman binder. Not a lot of big names, but definitely some recognizable names that will do for now until I come across some others.

There were a bunch of 2001 Upper Deck Decade 1970's Baseball cards. I already have the set and all the inserts, so if you need any of these let me know.

I've got two other binders from the OfferUp trade to go through.