One Man's Junk is Another Man's PC Gold: a Trade Post

While I'm all about trade packages bursting with Griffeys, I get just as excited by those with lots of variety such as the one Jeff of One Man's Junk sent my way.  The guy managed to hit nearly every one of my player collections.

Those two oddball Griffeys up there for example are numbers 1 and 2 of some set that likely has more than two cards in it.  They were both big set needs.  God, I love oddballs.

I'm one of the few people outside of the Angels fan community who collects Chuck Finley because I love supporting my fellow Louisiana boys.  Jeff found two appearances of the Chuckstache, including the infamous '87 Topps shot where he resembles Hi from Raising Arizona.

I get all excited about cards from the 80's which, as a Griffey collector, I kind of consider vintage.  That Fleer is one of those put-em-together half-card combo deals - not a massive miscut.  And how great is that blue sky on the 1980 Topps shot on the left?  Great card.

Am I the only Staubster in the blogsphere?  Is it a Mets thing?  People don't like the Mets?  These are real questions.

I'm seeing yellow!  I know there were a few PC needs here, but until I put together a proper list it's all a lot of guesswork.  Batting practice Grissom is probably my favorite here.

One of my first PC's.  We have an illustration of a bendy ball, and a photo of a bendy bat.

There's a massive sticker project on the horizon.  I don't know what it is yet, but you are all encouraged to send forth your Mariners stickers.  I'll think of something...

Jeff also sent a huge stack of Saints cards which I hoard for some reason.

We really miss Morten.  Here's hoping Shayne Graham gets us back on track between the uprights this season.

That's a Bobby Hebert rookie card in the middle.  I met Bobby a few weeks ago  Super nice guy, and bloody huge.

I've said it before: vintage football cards are the best.

And the rest.  This package was a lot of fun to thumb through.  Thanks again, Jeff!  I owe you some Angels...

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About 1991 Studio *But Were Afraid to Ask

The longer I collect cards, the more I love 1991 Studio.  The logo, the layout, even that ugly mauve border on every card totally do it for me.  I am just bananas about them.

So bananas, in fact, that I bought a whole bunch (pun intended).  I picked up a sealed box of the stuff, and I'm going for the set!

Before we go into the cards themselves, I just have to mention that it's amazing that this product even got made.  In what world does a company put out a set like Studio in the same year as this:

Compared with other flagship brands, particularly one as unspectacular as '91 Donruss, Studio must have been about as alien to collectors as a UFO landing.  I'm guessing somebody had a moment in the Donruss pitch meeting and lightning just struck.  Somehow the damn thing got made, and the result is this bizarrely wonderful set of cards.

My own appreciation for this set probably comes from a deep, abiding love for this card:

You've seen this card.  Heck, your Mom has probably seen this card.  It had collectors chasing it from the moment it hit the market 25 years ago.  Even now it remains one of the most iconic collector cards ever made.  So what's the big deal?  First year of Upper Deck, yeah.  Card #1, okay.  Son of an all-star, absolutely.

Now how about that picture? That up-close and personal portrait of the fresh-faced young star, impeccably photographed and framed?  Portraits had been done before but not like this.  It's intimate, full of personality, and larger-than-life.  Oh, and it's not blurry, an important difference considering the quality of the photography that was adorning some sets around this time.

Donruss took that aspect of a great card and built a set around it.  They even expounded on it by bringing it quite literally into the studio and giving us a real, unfiltered look at the players in stark black & white.  It was the age of Glamour Shots, after all.  They probably had those fancy lighted umbrellas and everything.

The best part about this set is that these are not Hollister models or Hollywood actors - they're ballplayers.  And not just stars, either.  Most of these guys were barely recognizable on your old standard-definition cathode ray tube television in the 90's.  So we ended up with a set of portraits with dozens of big names and Joe Schmos alike that run the gamut from hilarious to heroic.  It's a very fun, often stirring set.

Enough talk - is everybody mentally and emotionally prepared to see what your childhood baseball heroes really look like?

We'll start off easy with the guys who clearly "got it," the cards that this set was made for:

These exemplify what I believe they were going for with the Studio set.  They're not stealing a base or raising a knee in a wind-up, swinging a bat or leaping up a wall.  It's just them.  This is probably how their families see them - I love that.  Just dudes, bro.  Just dudes.

Then again, not everybody's portrait turned out as good as those.

Willie McGee has a striking resemblance to Barney Fife.

Steve Lake and his bird are legend thanks to this set.

Mattingly looks surprisingly into the whole intimacy thing.

Those cards were fun, but some guys showed up with no intention of having fun.  These homies mean business.  Reckonize:

 Shitting your pants yet?  I know I am.  But don't change them tighty-whiteys yet...

Remember that sleep you were planning on having tonight?  Well you can forget it.  Visions of Gregg Olson have been dancing my head for weeks.

Here are some guys who like to have fun.  Gregg Jefferies is all Bobby Teenager captain of the football squad going to ask Sally to the big dance.  And Sammy's all like........actually I don't know what the hell Sammy's deal is.  And this is allegedly before he went insane with steroids and skin treatments.  Yikes.  At least Leo Gomez is there with his comforting grandpa glasses.

Now just when you thought it was safe to look at Studio cards again comes ZOMBIE STEVE FINLEY!

GRRRRRRRR!

Apologies to Finley fans (I know he's got a bunch out there), but this is far and away the scariest card in the set.  Maybe it's the lighting, the sunken eyes, or the stubble, but you can see: there's menace behind that smile.

Now I know we already saw this one, but it needs another look:

Somewhere between the thousand-yard stare and the classic dumb guy glossing-over is Turner Ward and this inimitable facial expression.  I've literally sat in a room with people and tried to make this look happen - it cannot be done.  Turner has a special set of muscles that allows him to resemble a very peaceful potted fern.

Perhaps a towel could have helped.

Don't forget to bring a towel.

There had to have been a towel guy on-set.  There's no way all these guys were leaving the house thinking, "Okay - wallet, keys, giant cellphone.  Hmm - what am I forgetting?  Ah, towel.  Check."

The last card in the set before the checklists, this one of Bud Black and Steve Decker is an anomaly and bears scanning.  I'd like to have seen more of these from Studio.  Think about the great group shots that might have been.  One extremely obvious one leaps to mind....

Even the managers got in on the fun but were relegated to the checklists except for Jimmie Reese who got his own well-deserved card.  That is by far the smiliest I've ever seen Sparky Anderson.

That's it for the set.  Four-card previews of the Studio set were available in factory sets of 1991 Donruss.  There's a little gold sticker on the plastic wrap to advertise this fact.  Take a look:

Of course they don't tell you two important facts.  First, one of the four cards is a "cover" card of sorts that has no player on it - just a description of what the Studio set is.  This should be good:

Cover Card Front

Cover Card Back

Oh, that's actually pretty apt.  I mean the limited quantities thing is a joke as sealed boxes of this brand are less than ten bucks 23 years later, but the description isn't inaccurate.  Sweet punctuation error in the second sentence, and I really like how it says "you now possess" like they're freaking Gutenberg Bibles.

Anyway, the second thing they don't tell you is that you get four (three, really) cards with each Factory Donruss set, but there are 17 in the preview set.  Imagine the guy back in '91 shelling out hundreds for sealed sets only to break the seals to get all 17 preview cards.  I didn't realize this fact when I bought that box for ten bucks at a card show.  I mean, why 17?  That's just mean.

Anyhoo, I just bought all of them on eBay for around six bucks, so that quest is complete.  Moving on...

1991 Studio #112

Griffey's picture says to me that he showed up to the "Studio" and a guy in a beret told him, "Just be yourself," and Junior, being an upstart youngster, just looked at the camera like a goon, snap snap snap, and then he got the hell out of there, probably in a Ferrari.  With so many Griffey cards being light-hearted and full of smiles, this is a very real, gritty look at the Kid.  It's very humanizing.  Plus if Junior is ever having beers at my house I now know to put on some 90's rap.  I'm thinking Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.  The Kid seems like an E 1999 Eternal kind of guy.

As for that box I broke in the beginning of this post?

Sorted.

I ended up 35 cards short of the 263-card set, a hair below 87% completion.  As of this post I have acquired all but seven base cards:

236 Jose Oquendo
217 Roger McDowell
199 Bill Sampen
167 Barry Larkin
149 John Smoltz
98 Hensley Meulens
77 Franklin Stubbs

If one of these cards comes in the mail and the picture is hilarious, I'm going to kick myself for having already put up this post.

That was a long one, but we got through it.  Thanks for reading.  I'm going to leave you with three of my favorite cards from 1991 Studio.  Enjoy:

We all look awesome.

Griffey Mini-Collections: Part One

It's gotten to that point.  I now have Griffey collections within my Griffey collection.  More specifically these are cards which if I see and I don't think I have, I snap up immediately.  There are a lot, so here are just a few to get us started.  Enjoy!

Father and Son

This is one of the most prolific of all my GMC's.  Junior appeared on a LOT of cards with his Dad, especially in the early 90's.  Many of them feature both in Seattle uni's.  This particular one is a little more rare, featuring the pair in their respective uniforms of the time.  Certainly one of the great stories in baseball history right here.

Best Buddies

It's no secret that Griffey and Jay Buhner are good friends.  They, too, appeared on a ton of cardboard together.  A large portion of those are Buhner base cards with Junior playing in cameo.  This one is the opposite: Buhner on a Griffey.  Also it was a bitch to scan mid-heat-reaction, so don't skimp on the looking.

Cameos

I get really excited when I find out about a new cameo.  One of my favorite attributes of the cameo is when the other player is a relative no-name, making parallels, even really cool ones, super cheap.  Yes, I count these as Griffeys in the collection totals.

Errors

Front

Back

These can get expensive, but they're totally worth it.  This particular one has a flip-flopped Junior on the back of a parallel Bobby Abreu rookie.  It was a pretty nice card without the error.  Many thanks to Dime Box Nick for this one (he sent the above cameo, too - man, I owe that guy).

Variations

You've gotta be sharp to spot these.  I can't tell you how many '90 Donruss Griffeys I've gone through looking for variations in the border speckle pattern.  My go-to on these is that pair of dots to the left of Junior's cap that are a little diagonal from each other.  They're not on the card on the right.  Variant!

I've only found a few, and I've seen hundreds of this card at shows and such.  I can prove it, too.  Go to COMC.com, type "1990 Donruss Griffey," click on the loose base card and find one with a speckle pattern like that one on the right.  I dare you.  COMC scans every individual card for sale, so you're looking at the very card the seller submitted for sale.  This also works for the Diamond Kings from this set as well as the three Griffey base cards from the 1991 Donruss set.  The going theory is that the variations are from factory sets.  Makes sense.

Thanks for looking!

I Got Some Booty From Matt at Red Cardboard

I won a contest for sending the most Reds cards to Matt over at Red Cardboard.  His is one of my "must read" blogs as he has a cardboard lust similar to mine (except team-focused as opposed to player focused), he loves the Reds so there is some overlap our collections, and because he is damn funny.

Matt sent me a couple of lots featuring autos, relics, and a bunch of vintage.  Here are some highlights in no particular order:

Contrary to what you might think I don't just collect Griffey.  I get just as excited about vintage as most other collectors.  I just don't have much, or at least I didn't.  Matt's mailer was loaded with stacks of lovely old cardboard.

Of course there were lots of Reds cards.  Here's one of my favorite Joe Morgan cards with an awesome mis-cut.  Say what you want about dead-on-centered cards - this thing has character.  And how great is that bat barrel shot of Hall of Famer Tony Perez?  He was the reason Junior couldn't keep his #24 when he moved to Cincy - it was retired the same year he moved there.  No worries, though.  Mad respect for TP.

I never read anything about Jim Rice anymore.  The was an 8-time All-Star as finished his 15-year career just a hair below .300.  And how about that mustache?  This is the stuff of legend.

It's about as legendary as George's sideburns.  I don't think I've ever seen them cut any other way that the trademark point.

Just some cool old cards.  That Ray Knight speaks to me with the sun glaring off his ear-less helmet.  It's like one of those modern Topps sparkle SP's but, you know, not really, really stupid.  The background of the Johnny Temple is freaking beautiful, and that Brooks Robinson is as Tatooine as they come.

Out of these nine cards I was most excited about that Piniella RC.  As a Griffey fan I grew up watching him manage the M's through the 90's and to their first division title.  I also saw him scream a lot.

I don't know about you, but I cherish old Rollie cards.  And how many trade packages include a 1949 Bowman card?  Wow.  And of Johnny Vander Meer no less.  The guy threw consecutive no-hitters as a Red, and apart from that glue stain this card is in excellent shape.  I can't promise I'd be as generous as Matt with my giveaways....!

I know a lot of you guys do the TTM thing, so cards like this are a common thing.  Me?  I still get all giddy around autographs, even if they're on 1990 Bowman cards.  Hal's H is a beast.

Those Chasing the Dream cards are well put-together.  Peacock's career is off to a slow start.  I think he's an Astro now which frankly isn't going to help anything.  Motte on the other hand got his ring, but he's also off to a slow start since his Tommy John job.

Amazing prize package, Matt!  Really, thanks a ton!  I already have some cool Reds cards lined up for you, including one from this past card show.  I'll send them....eventually.