In case you haven't noticed, posting has been rather scarce this week, and it has been killing me. You see, my wife and I are in the process of shopping for our first home, and it is an altogether exhilarating and exhausting experience that saps up most non-work hours. Anyway, over the course of the week, I got a few great packages from fellow bloggers that I thought I'd recognize.
The first comes from the very generous Mark over at
Mark's Ephemera. He sent me, out of the blue, a few 1980 Topps Tigers that I needed to help fill out my collection.
A lot of good stuff here, including a prospect card of "The Reverend" Al Green, and to-be 80's mainstays Tom Brookens and Milt Wilcox. The team card, with a teeny-tiny little picture of Sparky Anderson's head is a good cap-off. Mark has an excellent blog that does a good job of showcasing some off-beat and vintage items that don't get covered much elsewhere. On top of that, you can't beat a blogger who will send you cards out of the blue and ask for nothing in return but to continue writing blog posts that he enjoys. Given the recent situation, I guess I kind of balked on my end of the deal. Sorry Mark! Anyway, thanks to Mark for the great cards, I am slowly but surely filling my 1980-present team sets. Once I'm done, I'll have to hop onto the "vintage" train.
A second package came from Jaybee, who writes what I believe to be the
single most informative Topps blog out there. He has helped me discover countless cards that I didn't even know existed, and has inadvertently led me on multiple wild goose chases to find cards that I'm convinced are one in a billion (ahem, 2008 Topps TB1 Miguel Cabrera...SHOW YOURSELF!). Anyway, I was able to help Jaybee out with some "hard to gets" of my own, and he certainly repaid the favor. To start, he send a few Tigers from Topps "Hot Button Baseball". Apparently, these cards hate getting their picture taken because they came out blurry every time I tried. I have embedded the picture as a smaller size for the sake of your eyes:
These cards crack me up. Clearly, they are from a game that was out just before I got back into collecting. I'm going to assume we've got a 2005 edition here--Pudge's first and Troy Percival's only year on the team. What kills me about these cards are the labels assigned to each player. Troy Percival has "High Heat" and was sidelined with a season-ending arm injury after a few short weeks. Pudge Rodriguez is "look for a walk" although in 2005 he took 11 walks. ELEVEN the entire season. Wow. "Power Surge"ons Eric Munson (future back-up catcher for the Astros) and Carlos Pena had the ability to live up to their names but really didn't in Detroit. I will say that Pena, when he got hot, seemed like he could hit every single ball out of the park, and do so with authority. He would go on hot streaks, the likes of which I have never seen, during which time he was incredible. However, he was the ultimate Hot and Cold player in Detroit. I'm glad he found his way in Tampa Bay, I always did like him.
Jaybee also made a nice Dent in my 2008 Tigers needs, filling a few key holes:
A few 1998 Topps Opening Day cards fill my set needs even more:
I like the Opening Day cards with a stamp, logo or different color scheme on them. I often got these cards at Opening Day, which made me feel like they were special. I didn't realize that they were an actual set of cards that you could buy cheap, which was rather disappointing. I still think that these cards would work well as a parallel to the regular Topps set, replacing the "first day issues" and the like, but what do I know.
A smattering of 2007 Topps, including a Granderson Generation Now and Co-Signers card were also included, as was an old Mike Henneman Stadium Club card and a Sticker of the old Tigers logo.
I love that logo. Love it. In fact, I spent two years (2005-2006) trying to find a shirt with that logo on it. I finally found one at a shop close to Comerica Park while heading to game 3 of the 2006 ALDS with some friends. I stopped in the shop and said, "I've been looking for this shirt for years, and now that the Tigers are finally good they have one I can get." Well, a few crotchety old fans in the store misheard me, thinking that I said "Now that they're good I can get a shirt" and started ripping into me for being a fair-weather fan and only caring about the team now that they're good etc. I stayed above the fray and ignored them, but couldn't help but notice the mass quantities of new stuff they were buying, while I wore my 1997-era Jersey and a worn-out Cap.
Jaybee closed the package with two GEMS.
I am a big fan of Allen & Ginter, and to have a A&G Justin Verlander MINI rookie card is quite the catch. I love that they make little mini top-loaders for them too. So cool. This is a great card, and may inspire me to try to pursue a mini- mini collection (read that right and it makes sense) of Tigers. Great card.
The other masterpiece is the Black Dmitri Young card from 2006 Topps. This is the first "Black" parallel card that I've ever gotten, and I must say, they are quite nice. The sparkly black border really gives the card a mystique that the regular cards just don't have. As they are low numbered (this one to 55), pulling together a team set would be a daunting (and expensive) task that I'm not willing to take on, so I'll just have to figure out a way to make sure that this beauty of "Da Meat Hook" is showcased appropriately. Thank you so much to Jaybee for these cards, they are a combination of fun, much-needed and welcome additions to my collection.
Last but not least, Steve at
The Easy Life, and I started working on a trade a few weeks ago. When it was all hashed out I ended up with this:
Hmm. You may recognize that last card as the subject of a
rather lengthy post I wrote a few weeks back. Indeed, that "impossible card" has now found a safe home in my collection, and without my needing to harm countless Target blasters in the process. A few Topps cards plug a couple more holes and a Thames chrome and Magglio Black Back SP will be held in reserve if I ever attempt to start collection Topps Heritage (an inevitability, I'm sure). Steve runs a great blog over at the easy life that is well worth a read. He also just pulled a Gold Matt Joyce card from his first 2009 Jumbo Pack, so we might have some more trades to work on in the future.
Thank you to Mark, JayBee and Steve for the Grand Cards. If you haven't gotten them already (I was a bit of a late shipper due to the reasons noted in line 1) your cards are on their way. Enjoy!
