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Thrift Treasures XXXVI: The Duke of Earl

Posted in Thrift Treasures with tags , , , , on January 17, 2012 by Cardboard Icons

I’m a treasure hunter.

I dig through the shelves and racks at thrift stores, garage sales and the like looking for something that I can keep for myself or flip for something awesome for my baseball card collection.

One day this summer I discovered a game-used jersey belonging to Hall of Fame Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver.

I tweeted a picture of the uniform, and a few months later, I was asked to write a piece for Beckett Sports Card Monthly documenting the incident, and this extension of my hobby.

The magazine hit my local hobby shop shelves on Tuesday and should be in your stores now.

Whether you decide to buy the magazine or just read it is up to you, but I do encourage you to pick up the magazine and give the article a read. It’ll give you a taste of what kind of success I’ve had thrift store hunting.

Many people see second-hand stores as a place where poor people shop.  I see them as bearers of history and sometimes treasure.

You can see additional Thrift Treasures posts HERE.

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My latest BGS order is a bag of mixed emotions

Posted in Newspaperman with tags , , , , on October 10, 2011 by Cardboard Icons

About a month ago I sent a batch of cards to Beckett Grading for slabbing purposes.  Say what you want about grading, but I still rather enjoy having some of my cards encased in thick plastic and assigned a grade. Keyword: Some.

First off, let me say that I was disappointed that Beckett did not grade three of my cards — 1948 Bowman Bob Feller rookie, 1948 Bowman Yogi Berra rookie and my 1938 Goudey Heads Up Joe DiMaggio XRC.

The Feller and Berra have writing on the front, not unlike my 1939 PlayBall Ted Williams that Beckett Grading slabbed earlier this summer.  I placed a note on each card asking that the card itself be graded and that I knew the “signatures” on the front were not real.  This was a reasonable request based on my return on the Ted Williams rookie.  Both cards were returned just as I submitted them with a note stating that “Service Unavailable.”

Head scratcher for sure.

And the DiMaggio? Check it out:

Doh!  Really?  We’re going to flag this one for restoration?  If you look at the card in hand, you can see someone traced DiMaggio’s head with a dried-out pen.  The markings make the card look worse than before.  Couldn’t we just slab this one a “1″ and call it a day?  That’s all I want. The card is clearly authentic.

Now that the bad news is out of the way, let’s have a look at the en-tombed items.

Yes, this card graded a 1, but if you’ve ever held this card in hand, you’d enjoy it’s true beauty.  Aside from the obvious paper loss, this is a beautiful example of Phil Rizzuto’s 1948 Bowman Rookie Card.  Love that I can now display it in my graded card case.

You might think that 6.5 grade is ugly … not I.  Do you know what I paid for this card? Yeah.  The key here is that this 1985 Nike Michael Jordan “rookie” is authentic.  The only real flaw are the corners, which show some white.  This is a nice win for my collection.

This is a straight cross over from a PSA slab.  I prefer BGS slabs.  I have said this many times.  I got this 2008 Bowman Chrome Draft Buster Posey on CheckOutMyCards.com.  Probably  a bit pricey, but it was a must-own for my collection. Proud to have it in a BGS case. Straight 9′s, homey.

Speaking of COMC, here is a duo of 2002 Upper Deck Premire XRCs that I snagged off the site in raw condition.  How excited do you think I was when I saw that the Prince Fielder and Zack Greinke graded Gem Mint.  Not a rare grade for these cards, but clearly they display well.

And finally …

These are solid copies of some of 1994′s rarest error cards.  These are 1994 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice Silver Signature “White Letter Variation” cards of Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, the two best in the set.  As I’ve documented here before, these cards are much rarer than the basic silver signature cards that were offered one per pack.

I picked up both of these at a local shop and they were priced as basic Silver Signature cards.  The Rodriguez was about $15, and the Jeter was $6.

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A completed set 10 years in the making: 2001 UD Gold Glove “Slugger’s Choice”

Posted in Newspaperman with tags , , , , , , on October 4, 2011 by Cardboard Icons

For 10 years I’ve had a thing for batting glove cards.  We’ve all seen thousands of Game Used Jersey cards, and probably just as many bat cards.  The popularity of these items really has come and gone.  But all along, I’ve had an obsession with game-used batting glove cards.  Why?  Because of the 2001 Upper Deck Gold Glove “Slugger’s Choice” set.

In 2001 one I bought pack after pack of this product seeking something of great value.  In the end what I wound up pulling was a sweet looking, albeit relatively worthless, Ivan Rodriguez batting glove card.

Over the last decade I’ve had a ton of game-used cards pass through my collection, yet the one that I could not barter with was the Rodriguez.  Why?  Because the card has so much character.

The mere existence of this card in my collection set me into a frenzy over the last six months trying to complete this Slugger’s Choice set on the tenth anniversary of this sets release.  The checklist consists of 25 cards, although over the years the official checklist seemed to be a tad unreliable.  Initially there reportedly was a Jason Isringhausen card in this set, but that turned out to be false … even if it is STILL listed in Beckett.

So here we are, in October 2011, and my set is complete.  Some of these are more common than others, and some cost a pretty penny, but in the end they are all part of a completed set that was 10 years in the making.

Andres Galarraga

Alex Rodriguez - Mariners

Alex Rodriguez - Rangers

Bobby Abreu

Brady Anderson

Barry Bonds

Chipper Jones

Edgar Martinez

Gary Sheffield

Henry Rodriguez

Ivan Rodriguez

Jose Cruz Jr.

Juan Gonzalez

Ken Griffey Jr. - Mariners

Ken Griffey Jr. - Reds

Marty Cordova

Manny Ramirez

Miguel Tejada

Neifi Perez

Paul O'Neill

Rafael Furcal

Rafael Palmeiro

Sammy Sosa

Tony Bautista

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Check Out My Cards, Yo!

Posted in Newspaperman with tags , , on January 30, 2011 by Cardboard Icons

I realize I’m a bit behind on this card trend,but I am loving the idea of CheckOutMyCards.com.   Initially I thought this was just another site offering incomplete and mediocre services to collectors while needling them for nickels and dimes here and there.  But the more I thought about it and discussed it with other collectors, the more intriguing it has become.

This is the future of our hobby.

What they’ve done is create a digital market for our physical sports cards.  Sure, eBay sort of offered the same thing, but not like this.  For a fee, the company scans and stores your cards, and then manages the inventory.  It’s pretty genius if you ask me.

For years I’ve been wanting my collection organized in a fashion that I could sort through them simply by clicking the buttons on my mouse.  And to make matters better, once the cards have been uploaded to the site, they are readily available to other collectors for cash transactions.  No more of me spending hours upon hours scanning and making lists.  For a minimal fee, they’re doing it all for me.

And lastly, they’re kind of making Beckett relevant again.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Beckett has been a integral part of the hobby, primarily for the price guide.  The site integrates the Beckett Price Guide, which I think is another genius idea.  Does the value shown really mean anything?  Not really, but it incorporates the idea of the price guide, which can’t hurt because the seller and buyers are the ones really creating the value of the card.

Anyway, the first 200 cards I submitted to the site are now live.  You can check them out my clicking the logo at the top of this post, or by clicking here. Another 500 cards should be up by the third week of February.

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Organizing a collection can be a life-long journey

Posted in Newspaperman with tags , , , , on June 24, 2010 by Cardboard Icons

For nearly as long as I can remember, I have always sought ways to keep my collection organized and cataloged. And for just as long I have failed.

I began collecting at age 7, when prices of packs were a mere quarter. And like many of you, the gum WAS a big draw to the product.

Shortly after I began accumulating these cards, I started tabulating them on a piece of paper. Add naturally that only lasted a short while as I often traded cards with friends and keeping track of them was a nightmare. And of course I was 7 years old at the time, so you know I lost my list somewhere.

I digress. So through the years I tried over and over again to replicate this catalog process. Each time I failed.

And then in 2000 I thought I bought the greatest product known to mankind: the Beckett Collector Connection.

It was a novel idea — to me anyway — to have a computer program where I could maintain my collection. Sure I had typed out Microsoft Word lists a dozen times, but this program looked nothing like that I had ever seen before.

So one day while searching for blasters at a Toys R Us, I decided it a good idea to pay the $20 for a copy of the program and finally get my stuff in order. Yeah, it didn’t work to well.

The program was/is essentially is a spreadsheet format in which you had to input information. At the time I remember what a great idea it would have been if the program actually had all of the cards ever created and allowed you to select what it was that you owned.

A few years later this dream actually came true as Beckett’s website offered this same service free of charge — and like the other program I tried it … and it didn’t work too well for me.

So here I am, now in 2010, still searching for a way to catalog my collection. I keep going back and forth on using a spreadsheet or just sucking it up and using the Beckett system, which only works for me part of the time depending on how often the server decides to time out on me.

Anyone have ideas?

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