Am I crazy for giving these cards away? Probably!

Hey there everyone! Just wanted to let everyone here know of a contest I am doing right now through my YouTube channel. @case.loaded (Cases Loaded with Dan Wilson) I'm giving away some pretty awesome prizes, so I wanted to make sure you were all aware and hopefully you'll participate and you might even win one of these great cards!

Check out the video for all the details, but here are the 5 cards I am giving away as prizes. Yes, a Ken Griffey Jr auto! Yes, a Babe Ruth bat card!

https://youtu.be/hBPUaVqO1hc?si=bBzU5SaANMbFnjwt

A trade 11 years in the making!

This week I got a surprise package from Dennis over at, Too Many Verlanders. Dennis and I have been sending cards back and forth to each other for a long time. I checked and it's been over 10 years. The earliest documented trade between us I could find was in December of 2012. That's pretty incredible. 

I consider Dennis a friend and we've never met in person. We've known each other for more than a decade.   I've sent him Tigers cards and he's sent me some awesome D-Backs cards. We also share a love of collecting Ken Griffey Jr. and it was Dennis that sent me the Great Griffey Giving Box back in 2017. That was such a cool project the the Junior Junkie initiated.

Here are the D-Backs cards that Dennis sent me this time. Some older and some newer.

Also included were some of the Pinnacle photos of the Diamondbacks. These come in packs of 8 and there are 16 here, so two packs worth. But what I found interesting is that there are 18 photos per team. Not sure why they wouldn't have done it evenly. 9 photos per pack and it would have been 2 packs for the set. Or expand it to 24 and have it be three packs of 8. just seems weird. But these photos are really cool! I have some of the Mariners, but didn't have any of the D-Backs before this.

Dennis is also on TCDB. I only have a small portion of my collection on TCDB, but he was able to send me some Heritage cards I need to complete a couple of sets. 

Thank you Dennis! Thank you for the cards and thank you for your friendship these past 11+ years!

Junk Wax 2.0 or the greatest thing ever!

I did something recently that I hadn't done in 30 years! I bought cards at Costco. As a kid, I remember going with my parents to the big warehouse stores like Price Club and PACE, which were I think bought out by Costco and Sam's Club, and buying boxes of cards. It's been a long time though. We have a Sam's Club membership, but when I found out Costco was selling baseball cards I had to get myself a membership.

Check out the video and make sure you are subscribed to my YouTube channel. I'm going to be doing a BIG contest on YouTube that you will want to be part of. I'm going to offer up some BIG cards as prizes. I've given away a 1955 Topps Hank Aaron and a 1968 Topps Johnny Bench rookie card on the blog before and these prizes might exceed those, so you definitely want to be subscribed.

Some postcards...wait, no...some Post cards!

I went to my LCS this weekend and they had a couple of stacks of Post cards from 1961 and 1962. No huge names, but I picked out a few to add to my collection.

Here are the 1961 cards. These cards are in pretty rough shape. These cards are all hand cut, but some are certainly better than others, but the Boyer looks like it was cut out by a 4 year old.

Here are the 1962 cards.

The Maury Wills is still a few years before he would get his first official Topps card and 1 year before his 1963 Fleer rookie card, but it's his second Post card.

The Groat and Davis cards are cut pretty decent. I actually don't mind these cards being mis-cut. It reminds me of where they came from. 

Growing up I remember getting cards from cereal boxes, but they were inside the boxes and were in cellophane wrappers. These cards were printing on the outside of the actual coral box. They had to survive the packaging process, then get shipped to stores, then get loaded onto shelves, get thrown into shopping carts, make there way through the checkout process, get bagged and carried to the car and then from the car into the house. A week or more worth of breakfasts and then a child would get the opportunity to cut them out and then do what kids did with cards back in 1961 and 1962. It's a wonder that there are any of these cards in decent condition at all!

Before Pacific there was a 1975 Phoenix Giants Team Set

When I think about Pacific cards I typically think about the Ken Griffey Jr. candy bar from 1989, Nolan Ryan sets from the early 1990's, or a variety of innovative, yet under appreciated brands from the mid to late 1990's. 

Mike Cramer was responsible for the Pacific brand and he just wrote a book about his life and his company, Pacific. The book is called Cramer's Choice. It's available on Amazon. You can buy it by clicking here. (This is an affiliate link, so if you click and buy it, I will get a small commission)

I've listened to several podcasts where they have interviewed Cramer and have been fascinated by his story. One of the things that he shared and it is discussed in the book is the first set of cards he ever produced.

It was a 1975 minor league team set for the Phoenix Giants. Cramer lived in Phoenix at the time and he approached the team and created a set sponsored by Circle K; the gas station and convince store. It's a 26 cards set that is pretty basic by today's standards, but it got Cramer's foot in the door and it also allowed him to advertise a collectors club here in Arizona that he started as he produced a card of himself with information about the Arizona Sports Collectors Association (ASCA).

After hearing about the set, I went on eBay and picked up a set for under $10 shipped.

Here's a look at the set, including the one and only card ever made of Michael Cramer.

Here is the back of the Manager card, former All-Star, Rocky Bridges.

This is the back of one of the player cards. I picked Greg Minton because he had a lengthy MLB career.

Here is the back of the Cramer card.

I need to look into the ASCA and see if it still exists in any form or fashion. Have you ever been a part of a collecting club?

Let's giveaway some baseball cards!

***Contest is closed! Thank you to everyone that participated and congrats to the winners!***

As part of coming back to the blog-o-sphere, I want to do a giveaway. I recently picked up some 1995 Score Platinum Team Set cards from a card show and I want to share them with you all! Truth be told, these are commons, but they are beautiful cards and aren't super common. 

To get the Platinum Team Set you had to collect all of the Gold Rush parallel cards from a particular team and then send them all in with a Platinum Redemption Card that was seeded 1:36 packs. Score would then send you a Platinum Team set back along with you Gold Rush cards.

So let's giveaway some cards. I have 48 cards split between 7 different teams. The first three people that comment below with one of the teams will get up to 6 cards from that team via a PWE. U.S. only. 

Good luck!

Truly, One in a Million

I've had a YouTube channel for years. My channel name was Daniel Wilson. Pretty clever...I know. I recently started talking with my good friend Derek about changing some things up and taking my YouTube channel up a notch. 

I started with a name change. I am now Cases Loaded with Dan Wilson. @cases.loaded Now that one is actually somewhat clever. My friend took some pictures and created the artwork for my channel page.

We then went to work on a video. We started with a YouTube Short about Ron LeFlore. His story was on my mind when I was talking to my friend about ideas and this is what we came up with. Let me know what you think. Thanks!