New PC Announcement: Jay Buhner

It was recently pointed out to me by another blogger that I am difficult to shop for because there's not all that much I collect.  There are only a handful of players I collect (in addition to the obvious) and no entire teams or sets.  So over the next few posts I will be adding some new player collections to my repertoire.  If you spot someone in these posts you have a bunch of cards for, feel free to send them my way!

Current PC's:

Ken Griffey, Jr.
Will Clark
Chuck Finley
Rusty Staub
Ron Kittle
Vida Blue
Marquis Grissom

New inductee: Jay Buhner

This one should come as no surprise as Jay was Griffey's right-hand man both in the outfield at the Kingdome and in life as you can see here.  He was also a huge fan-favorite in Seattle, a sentiment that continues to this day.

Buhner started as a Yankee, but we won't hold that against him.  He hit a respectable 310 home runs with a lifetime average of .254 in his 15-year career.  Once hit for the cycle during a 14-inning game in 1993.  Jay was as clutch a player as you could find.

Buhner got a lot of nice cards during his heyday with the M's.  His cards remain relatively affordable, but they are by no means cheap as he has a lot of fans out there.

Here are a few bright spots from my collection:

It seems Jay was always doing something funny with his mouth, a characteristic that was only amplified by his trademark goatee and bald head:

He was also the quintessential blue-collar baseball hero.

I mean how cool is this guy?  Don't you want to have a beer with him?

Welcome to the collection, Mr. Buhner.

New PC Announcement: Marquis Grissom

It was recently pointed out to me by another blogger that I am difficult to shop for because there's not all that much I collect.  There are only a handful of players I collect (in addition to the obvious) and no entire teams or sets.  So over the next few posts I will be adding some new player collections to my repertoire.  If you spot someone in these posts you have a bunch of cards for, feel free to send them my way!

Current PC's:

Ken Griffey, Jr.
Will Clark
Chuck Finley
Rusty Staub
Ron Kittle
Vida Blue

New inductee: Marquis Grissom

Rainbow!

I've been an unofficial Marquis collector for some time now.  I've found that somehow his cards always seem to come my way - lots of them.  It's high time I make it official.

Marquis Grissom was a consistent base-stealer and power hitter throughout his 17-year career, not to mention a totally classy fellow.  He got his World Series ring with the Braves in 1995 which is probably where I started pulling for him.  Oh, and he was never formally implicated in the use of PED's.  I got mad respek for Mr. Grissom.

And you can't deny - it's pretty cool that he's one of the very few players to get that hallowed 1990 Donruss Rated Rookie Rainbow.

Now if you look at Marquis' cardboard, he was just exciting enough a player to get some quality cards, but never such a sensation as to make those cards cost a fortune.  Here are a few bright spots from my collection:

He's also got a great scowl.  He had it when he was in the minors:

And he had it in the sunset of his career:

I feel like he always looked angry.  There was a time when I would go out of my way to get cards of Marquis smiling just because there were so few, and yet you see what he's doing on that card?  Signing autographs.  The guy does works with numerous little league teams as well as a charity to help parents in need.  He wasn't angry - he was modest.  Behind that scowl is a heart of gold, my friends.

Welcome to the collection, Mr. Grissom.

WILKommen to the 2 x 3 Heroes 80-cent PWE Trade Post Extravaganza

I got a PWE from Jeff of the excellent card blog 2 x 3 Heroes who found a dealer doling out Griffey oddballs for a nickel apiece!

I'm ambivalent here because while it is clear that the seller undervalues Griffeys, he also let them go for a nickel each much to the benefit of the change-toting Griffey enthusiast.

Check out all the value:

There are actually eight of these that Jeff sent, but I somehow missed one in the scan.  These are from the 1991 Playball set, and I know very little about them apart from the fact that designs within the same checklist vary greatly.

That one on the bottom left is the Gregg Olsen Topps Mini Superstar from 1990.  Junior is in good company with Nolan Ryan here, and in sticker form no less.

Speaking of stickers:

This card of Junior with Marquis Grissom came at a great time as you will see in an upcoming post.  Also I just bought this Glow Stars card from COMC like two weeks ago.  I'm kicking myself.

Thanks a lot for thinking of me, Jeff!  Of the cards in that PWE I needed two for the collection, and the rest are cards I see very rarely or only have singles of.  Excellent pickups, Jeff!  Good eye, good eye.

35,000 Cards or How to Make Your Wife Angry

I have a bunch of unused vacation time at work, and they made me take a week of it even though I had nothing planned.  So I decided to use this time to catch up on household projects I've been putting off - things like repairing the backyard gate, replacing rotten wood, some painting and tiling, you know - man stuff.

One of those projects was to go through the absurd amount of cards I have for trade and weed out all the overproduction era "junk" wax.  Pretty much anything made from 1987 through 1993 with the exception of any desirable parallels, stars, and inserts I came across went into piles on my sorting table.  I also threw in the boxes and boxes of 2013 and 2014 Topps and Bowman my card shop guy has provided to me.  By the time I was finished (it took a solid six hours of work), the table looked like this:

No one photograph can do this awesome pile of cardboard justice, so here are eight more:

Were there such a thing as baseball card porn, that was it.

I put everything into two boxes.  Here they are on the hand truck without which they would be utterly immobile:

That bottom box is full to bursting.  I hate the word "literally," but there is literally not even a cubic inch of space remaining in it.

I would donate them all to the nearby school, but they already have tons of these things (as I will mention in a later post).  Instead, I've listed them on Craigslist.  I'm asking $75 for the lot.  I'm assuming somebody will try to talk me down to $50 and I'll end up accepting $60.  That's no problem.  I just want them gone.

Anyway, when my wife saw all this cardboard at once, she was shocked.  I've always been pretty good at hiding the massive number of cards I have, but the very nature of this project prevented that.  At least she was happy to hear it was all going bye-bye.  Hopefully.

3000th Griffey Contest Results

Here it is, and only six days late.  As you may or may not have seen, my 3000th unique Griffey card was this 2008 SPx American Heroes number.  Here is the unedited scan of said card:

I asked everybody to guess what number this card was stamped according to Price is Right rules (closest without going over).  As you can see, those who went with the low end were a lot closer. 

I expected someone would win with a guess of #1 which Matt of Red Cardboard did, but another blogger gambled with a slightly higher guess and came within thee numbers of the answer.  That blogger was Jeff of One Man's Junk (Wax) with his guess of 29!  Congratulations, Jeff.  It doesn't look like we've traded yet, so I need your deets.  I've got a package of cardboard heading your way.



Thanks for playing everybody!

Cardboard Security: I'll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours

Do you ever worry about your collection?  I never really did as frankly it’s not really worth all that much and would be incredibly unwieldy to take let alone convert to cash.  And yet here we are trading addresses and showing off our collections online.

I would think someone who broke into my house would probably prefer my TV or my somewhat ancient laptop to a bunch of cardboard.  In fact there’s not much in the house that I couldn’t stand to lose or that could be sold very easily apart from a substantial jar of change in my office.  The house is pretty organized, though, so if someone was looking for something specific it wouldn't be too hard to find.

Anyhoo, here’s a little info about how I’ve kept my collection secure (as well as the reason I’m bringing it up in the first place):

All the good cards are locked in a safe deposit box in a bank vault along with a few irreplaceables and my ’89 Upper Deck pack pull.  I’ve taken scans of them in case I need to reference them on the blog, so they’re never at the house.  No worries there.

Obviously burglars prefer an empty house, but I’m lucky in that respect for two reasons: first, I have a wife that does shift work, so someone is pretty much always home.  Second, I have a dog.  She is scrappy and quick; and while she is very friendly I’ve seen her react to unknown people snooping near the house (most recently the meter-reader guy), and she was downright vicious.  It scared the bejeezus out of me at the time, but it also allayed my fears that she would run up to a burglar and lick his hand.

I also live on the same street as five cops and a massive population of old retired couples.  My next door neighbor is a retired gentleman who is also smoker, so he is usually outside keeping an eye on our ‘hood.  He is always filling us in on the goings-on in the area, and he recently spotted that my license plate sticker was expired.  Dude is observant.  Well done, neighborino.

So, why am I bringing up security anyway?  Well, last night I was at Office Depot buying an ink pad for a rubber stamp (you’ll see why soon enough), and I found a perfectly-sized locking steel cabinet on clearance.  I’ve wanted to consolidate things for a while, but here was a way to do just that and add a substantial level of security I never really considered needing.  It cost a little money, but as a storage tool and last line of defense I’m super happy with it.  Plus it makes my card room feel like a bank:

It feels great to have everything in one place and under lock and key.  And I'm also happy to report that since I got everything nice and centralized, I'm able to get tasks done a lot quicker.  I've even been able to trade more often as I'm not moving all around the house to finish one task.  I have a stack of PWE's going out tomorrow.  Cabinet!

There are a few other security-related elements at work that I won’t mention here (cough, lasers).  I was just curious about how others approach this aspect of having a big card collection, or if they do at all.

I hope I didn’t just make you paranoid.

Mr. 3000 - A Milestone and a Giveaway

Today, April 28th of 2014, the latest incoming shipment from COMC put us over the mark.  We have finally reached 3000 unique Griffeys!

Here's the card of honor:

2008 SPx Ken Griffey, Jr. American Hero #KG43 #/725, we salute you.

This guy.  It's no surprise to me that it ended up being one of these 2008 SPx American Hero insert cards.  I've been powering through the checklist when I can find each card I need for a dollar or less.  I'm getting pretty far, too, as you can now see in The Beast.

This shipment brought us to 7,542 total Griffeys with a total of 3,025 unique cards.  That's a duplicate ratio of 2.493.  The stats of the shipment were 84 added, 76 new, and a dupe ratio of 1.105.  That's the lowest yet from a sort.  There were a few stragglers mixed in there with the COMC purchases, so it wasn't a perfect 1.00, but it's still a massive step in the right direction.

You may have noticed that I blacked out the number of this particular card.  That's because in honor of this milestone I figure it's time to have a giveaway.  Winner gets a prize package of cool stuff assembled by yours truly.  Here's the poop:

Guess the serial number of this card.  Closest without going over (yeah, it's one of those) wins.  Hint: the answer is less than 726.

Comment below with your guess.  I'm going to let this one roll until Friday at midnight CST.  If you are venturing a guess and we haven't traded or communicated via e-mail or anything, go ahead and e-mail me at tjv504 at gmail dot com with your deets.  Good luck!

Don't look for an imprint of the serial number here - I checked.  It's clean.