The Perfect Dual Jersey Card

I teased it a few posts back, but a couple of weeks ago I got a PWE and a package in the mail on the same day. I showed off the cards from Kenny in the PWE and showed one card from the package from Matt who posted just last month. The cards may have been part of his recent organization project, which he posted about.

Here are all the cards from the package from oldest to newest.

It could be argued that Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson during the 2001 and 2002 seasons were one of the greatest pitching combinations of all-time. They ranked 1 and 2 both seasons in the Cy Young Award voting.

This dual jersey card is nearly perfect. Notice how the jersey swatches match the photos. Such an easy thing to do and yet most card companies struggle with it. Add multiple players and it's an even rarer feet. Well done Leaf. The fact that it's numbered out of 50 is just a bonus.

If you thought a card from Matt numbered to 50 was rare you were right, but Matt upped the Schilling/Johnson card by sending this 2004 Leaf Certified Materials Luis Gonzalez bat card parallel numbered to 25!

Next up is a Randy Johnson jersey card from his second stint here in the desert.

Another dual jersey card featuring one of my favorites Brandon Webb and Chris Young. Notice how the swatches don't match the photos.

Here is a Daniel Hudon jersey card from Allen & Ginter.

This Topps Mini gold parallel is number out of 61.

And the grand finale is a this Paul Goldschmidt auto from Museum Collection numbered to 399. All of the cards are extremely welcomed, but this one absolutely blew my mind!

Did I do good?

"Did I do good?" has been a part of the card collecting community on Twitter this year. A photo of 14 Mega Boxes or 26 blasters would be accompanied by the question "Did I do good?" over and over again. There are a lot of people either coming back to the hobby after years away or entering the hobby for the first time, which is great, but this particular post seemed to take over Twitter for a couple of months a little while back. It seems to have calmed down a bit, but I have to ask, Did I do good? with my recent purchase?

I haven't spent any money on cards in almost 6 months, but recently I came across a deal that was too go to pass up and I splurged. Now when I say splurged, I spent $8 total, so nothing crazy, but it felt really weird after not spending anything for so long.

A guy in a Facebook group was selling a lot of 15 cards from the 1986-87 Fleer basketball set. This works out to about 53 cents per card, which I think is a good deal, especially since these cards are in good shape. Throw in some rookies and I think I got a great deal.

Overall, these cards are in great shape and among the 15 cards are two Spud Webb rookies and rookie cards of Manute Bol and Byron Scott.

I'm currently working no the 1986-87 Fleer set, so I will have to see how many of these I needed. Pretty sure I already have the Bol, but pretty sure I needed the Webb and Scott rookie cards.

What was the last card purchase that was just too good of a deal to pass up?

FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES ONLY

I found this 1990 Donruss Bo Jackson card in a a dime box several years ago and purchased it because of the stamp on the back that says, "FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES ONLY".

Anyone ever seen something like this before? What are your thoughts on what this card was used to promote? Card shop? Dealer at a Card Show? There is no company name on it, so I'm stumped.

If you aren't a fan of Groot you're in luck because I will be retiring him from the blog. I kept him around for 11 posts in honor of my 11th blog-o-versary that I missed in June thanks to Tom's suggestion.

2019 Stadium Club

Another small stack on my desk was of 2019 Stadium Club. I picked these up from a dime box at a card show at some point.

Let's break down the cards as to why I purchased them.

Some player collections. Good thing I still have the Griffey and Piazza binders out. I don't really collect Trout, but when I come across his cards for a dime, I have a hard time passing them up. I remember this being my first Goldschmidt card as a Cardinal. I'll pick up his Cardinals cards for a dime, but I'm not going after anything higher priced than that of Goldy unless he's in a D-Backs uniform.

Speaking of the D-Backs, here are 4 that I found. A quick search reveals that there are seven D-Backs cards in the set, so if you have the Jake Lamb, Adam Jones, and/or Archie Bradley let me know. Otherwise, I'm sure I can find them in another dime box at some point.

Here are a few cards for a couple of mini collections (awards and multiple bats).

And finally, just a few random cards that I liked. Mostly older players. I love the look of old players on new cards.

I've always been a fan of Stadium Club and will continue to raid dime boxes for great looking cards each year for my player collections and mini collections.

Are you a fan of Stadium Club? What cards do you look for if you are picking up singles?

Mike Piazza Update

Yesterday I posted an update to my Griffey binders. Today it's time for my Piazza binders. Like Griffey I have two binders for my Piazza cards. 1992 - 1999 in the first binder and 2000 - current in the second binder, all sorted by year. Not nearly as many Piazza cards as I have of Griffey though.

Out of the 8 cards shown, I was only able to add 4 to the binder. The 1992 Donruss Triple Play In Action card didn't even showcase Piazza. It was Gary Carter.

I did add the 1995 Topps Pre Production card and the 1995 Topps CyberStats card to the base 1995 Topps card, which was nice.

I also added this 1998 Donruss Preferred card to the binder as well. Just like the Griffey from the same set, I think this came from a comc order a while back.

Griffey and Piazza were my two favorite players as a kid and I enjoy looking through the binders every once in a while. With adding these cards to the binders it brings the total to 610 cards unique Piazza cards. Barely over half of my Griffey total. As with Griffey, the binders don't include any rookies or autographs and relic cards.

For those of you that are player collectors, who is your second favorite player and how does that collection compare to that of your favorite player?

JUNIOR

It's been a week since my last post, but this time I have a good reason for the delay. I've been on vacation for the past week or so in California. There were a few things that were closed, but we spent a couple of days at the beach boogie boarding and playing spikeball, one at a lake and I spent another day deep sea fishing, so we kept busy. The best thing though was the weather. Hard to beat highs in the low 70's. We got back last night and today the high here is going to be 116.

Last night after returning I watched JUNIOR, the documentary on MLB Network. Griffey is my all-time favorite player, so I was very much looking forward to watching it. My only criticism is that it was too short. Would have loved it to be longer and have included more archival behind the scenes footage, interviews with other players (not just teammates), touch on his struggles as a teenager, and at least mention his time with the White Sox.

I loved every minute, but just wish there was more.

This morning I thought it would be appropriate to continue to clean off my desk by putting away a small stack of Griffey cards that I've accumulated recently.

I have my Griffey cards in two different binders. The first is 1990 - 2000 (Mariners only). The second  binder is 2000 (Reds only) - current. All cards are in the binders except for anything before 1990 and autos and relics. I'm not going to show all of the cards I was able to add to the binder, but here are a few. 

I have all the cards sorted by year. I added this 1994 card to the 1995 section because it is a 1995 Topps Pre Production Sample card for 1995 Topps. I put it next to the 1995 Topps base card.

Next up is a 1998 Donruss Preferred card. Pretty sure this was part of a comc order a year or two ago.

The majority of the cards I added featured Griffey as a Mariner, but I added these two Reds cards to the binder.

Next up is another Mariners card produced while Griffey was playing in Cincinnati. It's from 2004 Leaf Limited and is numbered out of 749.

Out of the little stack of Griffey cards, only three were dups, so that was nice to be able to add a few to the binder. I counted and between the two binders I am at 1,169 unique Griffey cards.

Have you seen JUNIOR? What did you think?

Happy 4th of July and a long forgotten TTM

Happy 4th of July everyone! Hope everyone is doing well and is going to get to enjoy a pleasant holiday weekend.

It's been a long time since I have sent out a TTM request and when you aren't sending out requests the likelihood of you getting a response greatly diminishes, so I was shocked to see one of my TTM envelopes in the mailbox a month or so ago.

Jim Leyland signed 1/2 cards for me in just under two years. I sent him these cards on June 25, 2018 as part of my 9th blog-o-versary. Writing that, I know realize that I completely missed my 11th blog-o-versay. Darn it! I will have to rectify that soon.

I was looking for a 4th of July themed card for today and the red, white and blue background on the card that Jim Leyland signed seemed appropriate for the occasion.

There are a couple of things that stick out to me about this card. One is the dinged, bottom left corner, which is a calculated risk of sending out cards to be signed through the mail. The second thing is the vertical signature. I know there are a few players that sign vertically verses horiziontally; Steve Garvey and Larry Walker come to mind immediately, but my question is why? Anyone have any thoughts on why players would choose to sign cards vertically instead of horizontally?