The kindness of a fellow collector lands me my first Red Man card!

Fist, I've added a card to the prize for my Sparky Lyle contest, so click here to leave another comment and get another entry. I've mentioned before that one of the card shops I frequent; The Batter's Box, holds weekly in-person auctions. They used to hold two on Saturday and one on Wednesday, but because of Covid they scaled back to just on on Saturday along with the one on Wednesday nights. Two Saturdays ago I went to the auction and bid on a few things, but didn't win anything. 

One of the items I bid on was a four card page of oversized cards. The one card I really wanted was a 1953 Red Man tobacco card of Hoyt Wilhelm. As I mentioned I didn't win the item, but it was one of the last items up for auction, so after the auction ended, the winner of the item asked me what I wanted and I told her the I wanted the Wilhelm. She said, you can have it. She wanted one of the other cards; a 1970 Topps Super Willie Stargell. I asked her for a price and she said, "You can just have it." That was super nice of her!

I've long been aware of the Red Man cards, but this is my first time owning one. I know it doesn't have the tab on the bottom. I'm okay with that. 

Obviously I knew that Wilhelm had a great career. He's in the Hall of Fame, but I didn't realize that he had such a great rookie year, as discussed on the card. I also didn't realize that Hoyt turned 30 years old during his rookie season. How crazy is that! Also didn't realize until doing a little research for this post that he fought in Europe during World War II; including in the Battle of the Bulge and was wounded; earning him a Purple Heart.

Here's the card back. I hope the kid that had this card originally got their baseball cap!

Do you have any Red Man cards in your collection?

HOF Class off 2017: Jeff Bagwell

Jeff Bagwell was recently elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and will be inducted this summer and so I thought I would organize my Jeff Bagwell collection.

I have 145 different Bagwell cards.

Here is a breakdown by year. In parenthesis are the number of different cards I have from that year.

1991 (5)

1992 (8)

1993 (8)

1994 (6)

1995 (6)

1996 (6)

1997 (3)

1998 (17)

1999 (13)

2000 (16)

2001 (2)

2002 (14)

2003 (23)

2004 (14)

2005 (3)

2006 (1)

Jeff Bagwell played his entire big league career for the Houston Astros (1991 - 2005). Despite impressive career numbers (.297/449/1,529) over just 15 seasons, Bagwell was just a 4 time All-Star and it took him 7 years to get elected to the Hall of Fame. Fellow Hall of Famers Hank Aaron and Stan Musial; for example, played for 20+ seasons.

Here are my thoughts on my Jeff Bagwell collection.

1) I have 4 different rookie cards and at least 100 cards of the new Hall of Famer. No game used or autograph. Not looking to add any more at this point.

2) In addition to 145 different cards, I have 49 doubles.

3) Happy to have a card from every year he played, in addition to one card from the year after her retired. It has his career totals, but does not show every year, which is a little disappointing.

Let's take a quick look at some card backs and see what we can find out about Bagwell.

So there is a recap of my Bagwell collection as of the day of this post.