Is Bigger Better?

I guess it depends on what we're talking about... and our personal preferences.  In regards to trading cards... I appreciate them in all shapes and sizes.

Let's start off with this small tobacco card I recently purchased for my Japan PC:

1887 N9 Allen & Ginter Flags of All Nations #NNO

This one hundred thirty-eight year old trading card has been on my radar for a few years, but I didn't start targeting it on eBay until a year or two ago.  I have seen a few with pretty high BIN prices, but recently one popped up in an auction.

I set an alarm on my phone (the auction was ending towards the end of my 6th period) and quickly entered a bid with about 10 seconds remaining.  A couple of hours later, I checked and discovered I won.

This card might be small in size... but it's a pretty huge addition to my collection.

Next up are a few oversized cards that John over at Johnny's Trading Spot sent me back in early May...

1995 Bowman's Best Jumbo Refractor #89

This shiny Nomo measures 4" x 6" and is part of a ten card set that were individually inserted into specially marked Treat packages.  John sent me the Gwynn earlier in the year... and I'm currently sitting on half of the set.

Next up is this 5" x 7" Jose Canseco:

1993 Stadium Club Master Photo #NNO

There are three different versions of this card.  One is a standard sized redemption card that was inserted into packs.  Topps also produced a 5" x 7" version for their Member's Only sets.  This one is the third version which were distributed two different ways: part of the redemption program or as a box topper.

Topps also produced oversized Master Photo cards for their Dome and Toys R Us factory sets that featured slightly different designs and photos..

The bulk of John's care package were hundreds of Tony Gwynn cards that are in the process of being sorted and integrated into my binders.  I'll show a few of these off in a future post.

In the meantime... there were two 3.5" x 5" cards that stood out from the rest:

1985 Donruss Action All-Stars #19

From 1983 to 1987 Donruss produced these oversized All-Star cards as a separate (oddball) issue.  1985 was Gwynn's first appearance.

The other Gwynn he sent me is the same size (3.5" x 5"), but was distributed as a box topper in hobby boxes of 1994 Donruss baseball:

1994 Donruss Dominators #1

This card celebrates Gwynn for having the highest batting average in the 90's (from 1990 to 1993) and was serial numbered to 10,000:

According to Statmuse, Gwynn held onto that title:

Can you guess who was #2 on the list?  Click the link to find out.  I never would have guessed that player.

Well there you have it.  Five trading cards.  One small.  Four big.  All of them are pretty darn cool as long as you don't get flustered by storing non-standard sized cards.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on small and big cards down below.  I look forward to reading and responding to them.

Until then... thank you John for another generous care package filled with cool stuff for my collection.

Happy Monday and sayonara!

Extra Innings

I wish I would have opened John's care package a little sooner, because he sent me a bunch of Star Wars figures that would have been perfect for my May the 4th post:

It's kind of hard to see from this angle, but you're looking at an army of 2005 Star Wars Attacktix figures.  If you're not familiar with these, they were part of an action figure game with the goal of knocking over your opponent's figures.

Here's a closer look at some of my favorite figures:

These figures were sold in booster and starter packs.  I bought a bunch, but don't think I ever actually played the game.  I'll probably add most of these to my Star Wars shelf in my classroom.  However the next figures will be kept in my personal collection at home:

1977 Kenner Princess Leia

1980 Kenner Lando Calrissian

1980 Kenner Lobot

1980 Kenner IG-88

1983 Kenner Klaatu

The goal is to one day have a vintage Star Wars display like John's.  I do have three shelves in my office dedicated to my Star Wars collection, but one is for my 90's and 2000's action figures.  Another has my collection of 1990's Action Fleet ships.  And the final one has a few of my Star Wars Lego sets.  But one day... I'll have enough vintage figures to fill a shelf in my office.  The bigger... the better.

Planes, Pineapples, and my Pops

Today's post focuses on some recent additions to a small collection dedicated to my father... who has been a role model and someone I've admired and looked up to my entire life.

The first card features a plane my father worked on back in mid to late 60's:

2023 Historic Autographs Flight #52

Due to the classified nature of the project, he didn't really open up about the specifics of his job.  Even my mom had no idea what he was up to.  Years later, a lot of the information regarding the plane became declassified and he was able to tell us his group focused on the INS (inertial navigation system).

I've been interested in this plane ever since... and enjoy collecting anything and everything related to it.  Back in December, Billy over at Cardboard History showed off some singles from his box of 2023 Historic Autographs Flight which features birds, planes, rockets, and drones.

After doing some research, I discovered this card was one of the short prints in the set.  I immediately headed over to eBay and picked up a few copies for a buck each.

Two weeks earlier, Nick over at n j w v wrote a post on the 1928 Players Cigarettes Products of the World set.  This card really caught my eye and motivated me to purchase a complete set:

1928 Players Products of the World #27 

Pineapples were a big part of my dad's childhood.  He grew up on a plantation and his first job was working at Dole when he was thirteen.

On one of our last trips to Costco together while he was still living in Las Vegas, they had a crate of pineapples.  That was the day he taught me how to pick a sweet one (look for the heavier ones that are golden in color and have a sweet smell on the bottom).

Happy Father's Day Pops... and to all of the other fathers out there.  Hope you enjoyed your special day.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

Another Trip Down Memory Lane

What a difference a year makes.  On this day... exactly one year ago... Papa Fuji and I took a short road trip to Capitola for breakfast and then up the Pacific Coast Highway to Half Moon Bay for some clam chowder in a bread bowl.

Along the way, we noticed a gorgeous lighthouse in the distance... so we pulled over and took this photo:

We also walked across the field, checked out the water and view, then headed back to the car where I took this photo of him:

If the photo looks cropped... that's because it is.  Right as we were getting ready to take his picture someone pulled in.

Afterwards, we stopped at the lighthouse... but it was pretty packed.  So I dropped my dad off and let him walk around, while I drove around looking for a parking spot.  I ended up finding one a little north where I snapped this photo:

San Jose and the surrounding cities are indeed congested... but it's nice to know that about an hour away is a view like this.

We eventually made our way up to Half Moon Bay... and it's a trip I'll treasure.

Let's fast forward six months to this past January... and while reading a post on Nick Vossbrink's blog (n j w v), I saw this beautiful piece of cardboard:

1911 Hassan Light House Series T77

I immediately added it to my eBay watchlist.  Several months went by and one popped up with a reasonable price tag.  As luck would have it... it was a COMC listing, so I headed over to their site, made the seller an offer of $5.65 which he/she accepted.  The rest is history.

Hopefully you enjoyed this quick trip down memory lane.  In addition to writing about sports cards, I also like to document important events in my life and this trip was one of them.

However... for those of you who came to see baseball cards... I don't want to disappoint.  Here are a pair of Pie Traynor cards:

1980-87 SSPC Baseball Immortals #55

1972 Kellogg's All-Time Baseball Greats #8

Pigeon Point Lighthouse is located in Pescadero... which is a small farming and ranching town with a population of less than 1,000.  Unfortunately there aren't any MLB players who were born and raised there.  But there is a popular restaurant called Duarte's Tavern that serves one of my favorite desserts:  olallieberry pie.

What about you? 

What's your favorite dessert?

Yeah... yeah.  I know the Traynor thing is a stretch, but that's all I've got.  Unless you want to see a Felix Pie.  I think I might have a card of his laying around somewhere.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!

Chubby Jolly Fellow

This isn't a Christmas post about Old Saint Nick.  Nope.  Today I'm going to show off one of the latest additions to my Tony Gwynn collection.

Back in October, Rod over at Padrographs announced his decision to cutdown his collection to three things: Padres autographs, Tim Flannery, and Tony Gwynn.  The thing about Mr. Padre was he wanted to narrow down his collection to nineteen 9-pocket pages of his cards.  The rest he divided among Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown and me.

He ended up sending a big box filled with a bunch of San Diego Padres cards that included over 300 different Tony Gwynns.  Honestly... I was stoked and overwhelmed at the same time.  I was obviously happy to see so many cards of my favorite player sitting in front of me.   On the other hand, I was a little intimidated by the idea of sifting through my collection to see which of these 300+ cards I needed.

In fact... I pushed it off until Thanksgiving Break when I knew I'd have some free time.  Then Thanksgiving came and went without me touching his box.  The guilt started to eat away at me... so I made a promise to myself to take care of business over Christmas Break.  And that's what I've done since 8am this morning (right now it's almost 2pm).

The past six hours I've been sorting everything he sent me.  After that I went through my three binders worth of Gwynns and checked to see which cards I did or did not have.  Honestly... the most time consuming thing was going through (Gwynn's TCDB pages) and learning about all of the different variations from the Junk Wax Era that I'll write about in another post.

Today's post will center around a card that isn't listed on TCDB, but it's still very cool nonetheless:

2013 PunkRockPaint Old Hoss 100 #61

What you're feasting your eyes on is a custom card of Tony Gwynn created by PunkRockPaint for a set featuring 100 of the greatest baseball players.  If you're interested in seeing who else made the list, click here.

I wasn't familiar with this set until this morning, which totally sucks because I would have loved to have purchased one of these sets.  The card front reminds me of Gypsy Queen or Allen & Ginter... which is totally awesome.

But the back is even more awesome...

Artist Proof (1 of 1)

Charles Radbourn a.k.a Old Hoss... is a hall of fame pitcher who is also known for being the first person ever photographed giving the finger.  He passed away back in 1897.  However according to this card back, he spoke from his grave and described Gwynn as a "demented serial killer living a cover life as a chubby singles-hitting jolly fellow."  

Bet you've never heard or seen anyone else accuse Mr. Padre of being a serial killer.

No way you're going to focus on anything written after this, so I'll wrap things up here.

Thank you Rod for adding such an awesome custom to my Gwynn collection.  And thank you for all of the other cards you sent my way.  Although I'm finished sorting and scanning them, I'm going to hold off on writing about them.  Don't worry, I promise it won't take me another two months to write about them.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!

Hammer Time & A Dynamic Duo

There isn't a single accomplishment in my life that isn't directly tied to something my father taught me or instilled in me.  That's why he's been my hero for as long as I can remember.

The past three years, we've really bonded.  We've helped each other cope with the loss of my mother... the loss of his wife.

One of my father's favorite pastimes is to sit around the table and "talk story".  That's when he shares stories from his life and the wisdom from those stories.

It was during one of these table talks that he mentioned that he took several classes at Marquette University while attending Milwaukee School of Engineering.

1910 Murad T-51 #87

That was new news to me.  Since I can't find any trading cards featuring MSOE, I decided to add this card to honor his time in college.  Based on this card, I'm guessing back in the day, Marquette was known for their "hammer throw" program.

Don't worry... I know most of you could care less about "hammer throw" cards, so in the spirit of Father's Day, here are five trading cards featuring one of the most famous father/son duos in MLB history...

#1:  1992 Alrak Golden Moments #5

This phone card thingy might be logoless, but that doesn't mean it's not cool.  It features some interesting information about the Griffeys on the back:

Based on those numbers, it looks like the Mariners should have started them together more often.

#2:  1991 Star Platinum #61

The sideways photo/text is kind of annoying.  But the photo of the pair shagging balls in the outfield and the bright colored border make up for it.

Not sure if this is legit or not, but according to the back of this card... only 1,000 of these cards exist.

#3:  1990 Topps Magazine #TM27

This is such a cool card.  The design might be a little flamboyant... but it definitely fits the era this card was produced in.

I'm guessing this card predates September 14th, 1990... because it doesn't mention them becoming the only father and son to hit back to back home runs in MLB history.

#4:  1991 Stadium Club Charter Member #NNO

This card honors the father/son duo making history again.

This event took place a few weeks earlier than their back to back home runs... when the two became the first father-son combination to play together as teammates.

#5:  2016 Topps Archives 1985 Topps Father/Son #FS-GG

And rounding out this post is another one of those Topps inserts that utilizes a design from their past.

Topps highlights some of their career accomplishments, but failed to mention their time playing together.  That doesn't really surprise me though.

Happy Father's Day Dad!

And to all of the fathers reading this post... happy early Father's Day to you too and sayonara!