Doubling the Size of my Japan PC

Imagine a forty-two year old man sitting on the floor of his office sorting baseball cards into teams the same way he did it when he was a kid.

That's exactly what I did yesterday afternoon after receiving a 400ct. box filled with Japanese baseball cards from Jason over at Clyde's Stale Cards.

This box of cards doubled the size of my Calbee and BBM baseball card collection.  In fact I ended up adding a new binder to my shelf.  I even had to start putting 18 cards into each 9-pocket binder page, because space is a premium.

But enough about sorting and reorganizing... let's get to the goodies.  First off... I've been Bipped:

1987 ProCards #128

Well... not literally.  But Jason did send me my first Bip Roberts minor league card.  He also hooked me up with 15 cards for my 1986 Donruss baseball set:

I'm also building the first four Marvel Universe sets from the early 90's.  He also sent a few of these as well:

But the bulk of his care package were original Calbee and BBM baseball cards from Japan.  Let's start off with the newest addition to my Fujimoto collection:

2004 Calbee #195

I'm still waiting for a Fujimoto to play in the MLB, so for now... I'll settle for a couple of minor leaguers and a handful of NPB players.  Atsushi played the better part of his thirteen year career with he Hanshin Tigers, where he's currently one of their infield coaches.

Masanori Murakami was the first Japanese baseball player to cross the Pacific and play in the MLB, but it was Hideo Nomo who really opened the floodgates for them.

1991 BBM #202 and #206

Back in the mid 90's... I dove head first into Nomo-mania, but I didn't really start my Japanese athlete PC until I jumped back into the hobby in 2008.

2005 Calbee StarCard #S-03

It started with guys like Daisuke Matsuzaka, Ichiro Suzuki, and Kenji Johjima.  But eventually I discovered these guys had Japanese baseball cards too.  That's when I expanded my collection to include these as well as unopened wax packs.

These days... I collect just about anything and everything featuring Japanese baseball players.  My collection is split into four categories:  Japanese baseball players (MLB cards), Japanese baseball players (NPB cards + packs), Team Japan players, and any non-sports trading cards from Japan.

Murakami, Nomo, and Ichiro will always highlight my collection, because of their impact in the MLB... but I also enjoy some of the lower tier players like Munenori Kawasaki:

2005 Calbee Title Holder #T-10

I love the energy and entertainment he brings to the game.  Another guy I like is Koji Uehara of the Boston Red Sox:

2005 Calbee StarCard #S-42

But my favorite current Japanese player is Yu Darvish...

2006 BBM Fighters #F02 and 2007 BBM FIghters #F088

Hopefully he'll be able to bounce back after undergoing Tommy John surgery.  And finally... I'll leave you guys with two mystery cards:

I tried to research each of these people, but came up short.  It looks like Ayumi Kataoka was the first female manager in Japan.

As for the sweet looking hologram... I can't figure out the player, because it's  mostly written in Japanese.   But I'll go ahead and guess "Mel Hall", who had a monster season for the Marines back in 1993.

Thanks Jason for this generous package.  You're one of the guys who might need to wait a little longer in terms of return "care packages".  You collect very specific players, so I need to see if I can scrape up some stuff for your collection.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

Flea Market Finds #92: End of Summer Shopping Spree

The drought is over!  Wait let me clarify.  California still needs a lot of water, but on a positive note... I finally found some quality cardboard and a few other items at the flea market this past weekend.

Now I didn't find any 1952 Topps hall of famers or tobacco cards that will allow me to retire earlier.  However I certainly hit the jackpot when it comes to my flea market standards in the sense that I purchased a variety of vintage cards, 90's inserts, autographs, and memorabilia cards for what I consider to be very reasonable prices.

There were so many cards that it actually filled up the 660ct. box I bring with me to the flea market each weekend.  Unfortunately... it's going to take me a few days to scan and crop photos, so I'm going to hold off on sharing these goodies for now.  Sorry to be such a tease.

In the meantime, here's a look at the rest of the stuff I picked up at the Capitol and Branham High School Flea Markets last weekend...

Purchase #1:  1989 Upper Deck Baseball Factory Set $10

Last year, I picked up this iconic set for $15 and thought it was a steal. That's why I just couldn't pass up this set when the guy offered it to me for $10.


Purchase #2:  Willie Mays Autographed Ball $8

I know what you're thinking... haven't you been writing about autographed memorabilia and the issues that surround their authenticity?  But my buddy who is familiar with Willie's signature said it looked good to him and essentially... the eight dollar asking price was worth the risk.


Purchase #3:  2015 Topps Archives Blaster Box $3

My buddy busted open another box of Archives and cherry picked all of the inserts, but I was able to grab the leftovers for less than the price of a hobby pack.  This purchase allowed me to cross off six cards on my wantlist and brings me down to needing only thirteen cards for my set:

Purchase #4:  Arnold and Clayton Bobble Heads $5

If you were to journey into my office, you might notice that one of my bookshelves is reserved for a smorgasbord of bobbles.  It's my version of Island of Misfit Bobble Heads.  As you can see... Arnold is more than happy to become the newest resident.

Purchase #5:  Autographed Football $10

Among all of the controversy involving Tristar and their authenticating process at card shows, I found a unique autographed item that was simply too cool to pass up.

It's a ball featuring players and coaches from the 1977 East-West Shrine Game.  At first glance, I only noticed two names:  Eddie Robinson and Tony Dungy:

At the time, Dungy was a quarterback for the Minnesota Golden Gophers... and Robinson was the head coach at Grambling State.

After scouring the internet, I also discovered that the ball also contained the signature of Jack Christiansen, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame:

Back in 1972, Football Digest ranked him among the Top 25 players to ever play the game.  He's also a member of the All-Decade Team of the 1950's.  Unfortunately Mr. Christiansen passed away at the age of 56 back in the mid 80's after battling brain cancer.

Well that's it for now.  As soon as I'm finished scanning the highlights from my  sports cards purchase, I'll write up a summary of my nice cardboard haul.  Until then...

Happy Wednesday and sayonara!

Gwynn's Gettin' Around

According to Mother Nature, there are still a few weeks left of summer, but according to my employer...yesterday was officially the final day of summer.  This morning I headed back into work and sat around listening to administrators talk during our beginning of the year inservice.  Tomorrow we get some free time to go into our classrooms, lesson plan, and set it up.  Then on Wednesday the students arrive.

I can't believe how fast the summer flew by.  But I'm not complaining (too much).  My friend and I taught another successful group of summer school... although this year seemed a little rougher than usual.  Maybe I'm just getting old.

Plus my wallet card and I made the most of our free time...

Newport Beach

Back in June, I flew down to Southern California to witness my uncle and auntie's ashes sprinkled into the Pacific.

Oakland Coliseum

In July, I attended my first Oakland A's game of the season and caught a batting practice ball with the help of my wallet card.

Dave and Busters

A week later, Tony and I went with a bunch of students and staff to Dave and Busters for our final field trip of the summer.  One of my friends donated her power card to me, so I played a few games and hit two huge jackpots which allowed me to purchase nine packs of 2010 Topps baseball.

San Francisco

The next week, one of my TA's, her aunt, and I drove up to The City to go shopping.  Outside of attending Giants games, this was my first time going into San Francisco in five years.

Bowlmor

Each year, I take my TA's out to celebrate another successful summer and this year they chose to go bowling.  I'm pretty sure Tony wasn't impressed with my score of 98.

Mt. Pleasant High School

Obviously Wallet Card Gwynn loves baseball.  But he loves soccer too.  We went to my friend's nephew's soccer game.  Unfortunately they lost a close game... 3-2.

GTS Distribution

Here's a photo of Gwynn accompanying me to the local wholesaler.  I had to buy some supplies, including a case of 9-pocket pages that should last me a decade or so.

Capitol Flea Market

And wrapping our summer up... is Mr. Wallet Card hanging out at the flea market.  It might have been insanely hot, but we actually scored some sweet dime cards, an autographed baseball, and a few other treats that I'll share with you guys later in the week.

Happy Monday and sayonara!

Public Service Announcement

I'm going to preface this post by stating that I support and have faith in companies like Upper Deck, Tristar, Topps, and Steiner.  They're all companies who stake their reputation on their products that includes autographed memorabilia.

In fact five days ago... I purchased this Eric Chavez signed baseball off of eBay for $6.05 (+ $5.95 shipping):

It's one of those Tristar Hidden Treasure balls that come out of those mystery bags you see at card shops and card shows.  Each bag contains an autographed ball, a card with the player's name, and a certificate of authenticity.

And each ball has a tamper proof hologram that has a unique number, so collector's can verify the authenticity of the ball.

If you go to their website and plug in the code, they'll tell you who signed it, along with where and when the signing occurred:

Not bad, right?  Sure... maybe they could add a Polaroid of the athlete signing the specific ball too.  But in general... all of these measures along with a solid reputation was enough to earn my trust.

Well... at least until I learned about some shady stuff last night while hanging out with two of my buddies.

One of them is a guy who makes a living off obtaining autographs at team practices, golf tournaments, and games.  While the other is a sports card dealer that sets up at shows in our area.  Both are veteran dealers who have set up at the annual Tristar Show at The Cow Palace for many years.  And both are acquaintances of a guy who now has me questioning if some of my Tristar autographs are actually authentic.

Let's give this guy an alias and call him Mr. Scam.  He's a guy who lives in the Bay Area and regularly sets up at the Tristar and GTSM card shows selling his autographs.

For years, he's used Autograph Certification Experts (ACE Authentic), which is a local autograph authentication company that doesn't have a very good reputation in our hobby (ex. not allowed on eBay).

However... Mr. Scam has found an even better way to authenticate his fake signatures.  And believe it or not, it's actually something that any of us could do and get away with... which is very, very scary... especially for guys like me who has spent a lot of money on Tristar certified autographs in the past.

So here's the deal...

Step 1:  Mr. Scam buys multiple autograph tickets for a specific player.  We'll go ahead and use Buster Posey as an example, since he was one of the players involved in the scam a few months ago.

Step 2:  Mr. Scam also purchases the Tristar COA's to go along with each of his paid autographs.

Step 3:  Mr. Scam stands in line and gets his items signed by the player in front of a Tristar representative and hundreds of other fans waiting in line.  Let's say that he had Mr. Posey sign two photographs.

Step 4:  After he gets his autographs, Mr. Scam gets into another line and waits to get his items certified.  THIS IS WHERE THE SCAM TAKES PLACE.  While in line waiting, he puts the two signed photographs in his bag, and pulls out two Buster Posey jerseys signed by Mr Scam.

Step 5:  When it's his turn, he hands them the two Mr. Scam signed Buster Posey jerseys which get Tristar holograms attached to them.

Step 6:  Later on, he takes the two photos that Buster Posey signed earlier in the day to PSA/DNA and has them authenticate the real signatures.

In the end... Mr. Scam walks away with two signed Buster Posey photos (PSA/DNA authenticated) and two forged Buster Posey jerseys (Tristar authenticated).

Here's an example of what I'm talking about...

This jersey actually has an authentic signature of Buster Posey that was obtained at Pebble Beach in February.  However since it contains Posey's short signature, JSA didn't authenticate it.  So the owner went to Tristar and pulled off the same "switch-a-roo" trick that Mr. Scam uses and received the Tristar hologram.  With Tristar backing up the signature, the guy turned around and had it authenticated by PSA/DNA too.

Now like I said... this is actually a jersey that Posey held and signed (my buddy was at the same golf tournament and knows the guy who obtained it), so the autograph isn't in question.

It's the authentication process that I'm questioning.

Do you need a little more evidence?  Well here's the thing.  Buster Posey charged $200 to sign jerseys at the Tristar show.  Do you really think that he's going to give his fans the short signature for that price?

Here's what it should look like:

That's the signature fans received when they paid full price at Tristar.  But there's one more thing that's shady about this jersey...

The inscriptions were added by someone other than Buster.  The Sharpie used is obviously different, plus Mr. Posey wasn't standing around adding inscriptions at Pebble Beach.

Now there's actually a fairly simple solution to stopping guys like Mr. Scam and the guy who once owned the Posey short signature.  Tristar needs to attach the tamper proof hologram immediately after the athlete signs the item.  This prevents shady people from switching out their items.

Just in case you're wondering if I've notified Tristar, I sent them a message on their site that includes the same details in this post.  If and when I hear back from them, I'll definitely let all of you know what they say.

At the end of the day... I still have faith in the products I receive directly from Tristar, like stuff I purchase off of their site or things I pull out of their products.  However... this is a huge flaw that needs to be addressed and fixed as soon as possible... otherwise supporters of their products are going to be dealt a major blow in the long run.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!