Good Ideas Super Star Action Pop-Ups (1988-1989)

     I caught this a month or so ago in the course of my usual daily eBay Winfield hunt. Having no idea what it was or from whence it came, upon its arrival in the daily post, I plunged deep into the murky depths of the web seeking enlightenment. As happens more often than not, ManOfSteal over at Rickey Henderson Collectibles had the scoop. He’d picked up his 1988 Rickey Pop-Up years before.

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      In 1992,  Original Products, Inc., issued several sets of static decals featuring random Major League superstars and team sets.  You can find more information about the set over at Rickey Henderson Collectibles.  I didn’t even know what these were until a few years ago, but I’ve finally managed to snag the Winfield, in a lot of random oddballs, after a couple of years of not wanting to pay

Continue reading about High 5 Decals and more silk than China (,TX) »

       Over the last 100 years or so, the sports section of various newspapers around the U.S. have featured illustrations or even “baseball cards” of baseball players.  In the 1920s and 1930s, syndicated columnist and cartoonist Jack Sords, in his “Sords Points” pieces, provided wonderful illustrations to go along with his pieces, both historical and contemporary, of all manner of athletes.

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     I picked this one up awhile ago and forgot to post anything for it.  I’d seen several copies on eBay for awhile, but finally found one at a price I liked (under $10) and pulled the trigger.  This is another Hall of Fame Induction Day cover, this time in a series with Kirby Puckett, called Hometown Hero Station.  This is another full size #10 envelope with the art printed directly on the card

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photo from http://bravosdemargarita.com
Bravos con nuevo mánager
      Congratulations are in order for Mr. Meulens as he has been appointed manager of the Bravos after the sacking of Luis Dorantes, manager for most of the season (but who apparently missed three days with the team for organizational meetings with the Pittsburgh Pirates), who led the team to 4th place after 61 games of the 74

Continue reading about Now managing for the Bravos de Margarita….”Bam-Bam” Meulens! »

     An eclectic trio of Winfield goodies showed up today, spoils of the almighty eBay. The first was yet another silk cachet/first day cover/postmarked envelope with a picture on it, this time, Colorano’s contribution commemorating Dave Winfield’s 3000th hit on September 16, 1993.

     This is another that I didn’t even know existed until I happened to catch the auction. I am still hunting

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    If there could possibly be a “white whale” of my Steve Howard collection, this would be it.  As mentioned in the post on the 1986 Chong Modesto card, singles in this set are extremely hard to find due to the presence of the Mark McGwire cards and the the very low (relative to other contemporary sets) print run.  The 2006 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards puts the original print run at 500

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     Now that the Giants have wrapped up their season, while some get to go home, others just get to go back to work, albeit in warmer climes.  While Burrell and Rowland rest their creaky bones, and Renteria goes home to stare at his new trophy, coaches Hensley Meulens and Roberto Kelly will both have to pack their bags and board a plane to Venezuela to pick up their winter jobs, already in

Continue reading about Baseball of Winters Past »

    With the Giants in the World Series, not to mention unleashing 20 runs in the first two games, there is are a new crop of articles about the man that helped make that happen, the San Francisco Giants hitting coach, Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens.

 
The Big Five with … Giants hitting coach Hensley Meulens (NBC Sports)
Former Yankees prospect Hensley ‘Bam Bam’ Meulens is now a Giant hit in San

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     In the very early 1990s, R&N China acquired a license with Topps to produce porcelain versions of many of Topps’ iconic cards from the previous 50 years.  These were marketed by The Hamilton Collection, makers of endless “collectible” nick-nacks as “Baseball’s Dream Team”.  An early advertisement can be found for these cards in this November 1990 issue of Baseball Digest:

     They ran a

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     While you may not see it right away, CheckOutMyCards.com has quickly become one of the best trading sites on the web. What’s that? You can’t trade on COMC? Balderdash, I say! Maybe I can’t trade one card directly for another, but so long as my cards are being traded for other people’s store credit, I can then trade that credit back for cards I want. So there’s a monetary middle-man

Continue reading about Ok, I Checked Out Your Cards….Now They Are Mine! »

     Unfortunately for all of us Brito collectors (read: me) Bernie had no baseball cards in 1984 & 1985.  No team sets for Batavia or Waterloo those years.  But young Senor Brito was a busy man.  In 1984, he must have found his stroke as he went from a .228, 11 home run hitter in 95 games split between Batavia and Waterloo to a .300 hitter with 19 long balls in just 79 games with Batavia in

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After the Mid-Season hiatus, we now return to the Power League UL box break.

Takeshi Hidaka  – still catching for Orix, only now for the Buffaloes and on a part-time basis.  Hit .279 in  79 games this past season and earned free agency for the second time in his career.
Takeshi Hidaka @ NPB Official Website

Hiroshi Gondoh – in 2000, the manager of the Yokohama BayStars.  In 1961, Gondoh was

Continue reading about 2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 7) »

A very eclectic mélange of goodies in the post today.

1989 Phoenix Collect the Stars Baseball Magnetables

I’m not sure why, but Beckett only lists 47 magnets in this set, while the Standard Catalog lists 156. For the 1990 set, Beckett only lists about 17 of a set of at least 115 and the Standard Catalog doesn’t list the 1990 set at all.

1994 Minnesota Twins pocket schedule

There were at

Continue reading about 15 Years of Winfield Oddballs »

      One of the lesser known rarities that the middling player collector must pursue is the mostly uncatalogued season ticket depicting the player with whom the collector is obsessed.  While a few of these have made their way into the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, most of them are still just floating out there, sitting in junk drawers, shoe boxes or the pockets of coats and jackets sitting

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       When building a collection based around players with relatively few actual cards, one quickly nears the point of completion, leaving only the very obscure and rare items unobtained.  Then the eye begins to wander to other bits and bobs floating around radiating the names of those cardboard heroes.  The results are mixed, sometimes delving (both accidentally and not) into custom creations,

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I caught these late last week on eBay, and fortunately, no other Winfield collectors were looking (or cared, is more likely the case) and managed to knock something off my cachet want list as well as pick up one I didn’t even know existed.   I didn’t expect them to be full size #10 envelopes (does anyone know of somewhere that makes 2-pocket sheets that are split vertically?), but it definitely

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Score of the week!
While it’s not somewhere I often search for Meulens loot, I picked up this beauty on Amazon for $9.95, discounted from $15.  I’m not usually one for buying autographs, but how could I possibly pass up a signed photo with Bam Bam (World hitting coach), Dave Winfield (the USA manager) and Juan Marichal (the World manager)?    I’ll have to see if I can somehow get this signed by

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Despite the somewhat lackluster numbers put up by these three youngsters during 1981, in an organization such as Seattle at the beginning of the 1980s, there really weren’t a lot of bright spots to fit the “Future Stars” category. Of the three, after an absolutely blistering Spring Training, Henderson got to spend the most time with the big club as their regular center fielder. Despite winning

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Despite the lack of apparenty activity on the KuboTEN website, Craig is apparently still in operation.  I took a stab at a couple of auctions and brought in a lot of three more boxes of 2000 Epoch Pro-Baseball stickers (90 packs, 900 more stickers) plus sticker album, as well as a couple of lots of Tuffy Rhodes cards from joecool0314. 

Among the three boxes of stickers, the first box gave me

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Bam Bam’s 1st Card
     In 1987, Hensley Meulens gave the world its first real preview of what the Yankees hoped would be the power source of their new youth movement.  He tore into Carolina League pitching to the tune of a .300 batting average, 23 doubles, 103 runs batted in and 28 home runs, breaking the franchise record of 25, set by Lorenzo Bundy of the Alexandria Dukes.  That, despite

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      As a blogger, or any other type of researcher, one has to love Google News Archive.  Especially if one has any interests in Modesto, California in the 1980s.  The Modesto Bee’s archives are there for the scouring, making a wonderful history book of the Oakland Athletics minor league system at the time.  Being a fan of Dann Howitt and Steve Howard, this is especially fun for me, to uncover

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       Not eighteen months out of Cal State Fullerton, a veritable factory of professional ballplayers, Dann Howitt was coming off an impressive first season of pro ball.  In 1986, he’d hit .317 for the Medford A’s, Oakland’s short-season, low-A ball team in the Northwest League, and was all set to move on to bigger and better things.

       Unfortunately, that’s not always how it plays out in

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      Signed by the Yankees, in 1982, as an undrafted amateur out of Panama, Roberto Kelly began his professional career in Bradenten, Florida, playing for the Gulf Coast League Yankees as an 18 year old shortstop.  Interestingly, Kelly played alongside just one other future Major Leaguer on that GCL team, a young first baseman by the name of Fred McGriff.  Probably because the rate of attrition

Continue reading about 1983 TCMA Greensboro Hornets #19 Roberto Kelly »

Yet again, I miss something right in front of my face and Dave Weber is there to save the day.  In 1990, there were FOUR separate team sets for the New York Yankees AAA affiliate Columbus Clippers.

There was the Police/Cracker Jack team issued set (thank you Sailor Jack for your wise words of warning):

 
The team set issued by CMC (successor of the TCMA legacy), which is nearly identical to

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      After another impressive AAA season in 1992, but another disappointing trip to the Majors, 1993 would be the last year for Hensley Meulens to play in the Yankees organization.  The writing was on the wall even in January, as there were rumors of the Yankees dealing Meulens for some extra bullpen depth, and Meulens openly requesting a trade, alas the it wouldn’t happen.  For whatever reason,

Continue reading about 1993 Columbus Clippers Cornucopia of Hensley Meulens »

Just in case you had a stack of random Tuffy Rhodes cards lying about that you were trying to unload, these are the ones I need for my collection.  No pressure, just, y’know….in case

1994-95 Cubs Old Style 3×5 black & white photo card
1994 Collector’s Choice Gold Signature 489
1995 Pinnacle Artist’s Proofs 213
1996 Takara Kintetsu Buffaloes BF-20
1997 BBM Green 365
1997 Takara Kintetsu

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Major score on eBay last week and it finally hit the mailbox today. Thanks to a poorly labeled auction (“1967 NY YANKEES signed DAVE WINFIELD upper deck authent”; it was included in a scan with a 1967 Topps card that was a separate auction), I managed to snag this nugget for just under $5!

As I’ve probably mentioned a time or two in the past, I’m not the world’s biggest autograph hound, but

Continue reading about 2000 Upper Deck Hitterr’s Club Autographs DW »

Thanks to NPBCardGuy over at the Japanese Baseball Card Blog, I’ve been able to fill one more hole in Ye Olde Tuffy Collection, his 2003 BBM Sluggers card:

There is also a sepia tone parallel of this card that I’ve yet to see anywhere online.

I was finally able to put one of those cards I bought from Mr. Angeles to work and traded this 2001 BBM Century Best 9 insert of the legendary Hiromitsu

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Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius: Show and Tell #54: They Were Diamond Kings?: “I received a bunch of Diamond Kings toward my project to collect all the DKs from 1982-1992 from Mike D. When I looked at some of the cards…”

Taking a cue from Matt, I thought it might be interesting to see how long it took Donruss to run through the “usual suspects” for each team when they were choosing

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Filled in a gap in the colección de cachet last week with this one:

As further testament to this being a wide open field for player collectors, with not a whole lot of competition, this went for a whopping $1.99 +$1.50s&h.  Though, at the same time, I missed two of the 1991 Gateway 400HR cachets due to my strict $10 or less bidding strategy for autographed stuff.  I’m hoping it exists

Continue reading about “And they give ya cache, which is almost as good as money!” »

       Once in awhile a non-card item catched the eye of the ever vigilant player collector.  Whether it be a can of RC Cola,  embroidered patch, various and sundry idols and graven images or a stamped and cancelled commemorative silk cachet.  ’Tis the latter that brings together two of the most prominent forces in the collectible universe, that of baseball and stamps.  Though first day covers

Continue reading about Colorful, silky and with quite the cachet of “cool”. »

I picked up this card as part of a large lot of assorted Japanese baseball cards from a fellow in the Philippines, but can’t find it listed in the last two editions Gary Engel’s Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide.

Any ideas?  The front shows Matsui’s first NPB home run, but judging from the back, it’s probably from late 1996 or 1997.  Stadium give-away perhaps?

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…but Ee-Yah!! is forever.

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A big mail day from CheckOutMyCards.com has given a nice 10-card boost to my collection of one of the Yankees most under-appreciated young players. Roberto Kelly, while easily the most accomplished and consistent of the crop of prospects to come up from the farm system since Don Mattingly, Kelly was promptly shuffled off to Cincinnati as soon as Bernie Williams was deemed ready for prime time.

Continue reading about Roberto…er, Bobby…uh, Roberto…um, just don’t call him ‘Joey’ »