Stuff

Here's some stuff.

I have a strange love for Shin-Soo Choo. I like saying his name. In regard to both Donruss cards, I wish the serial number was on the back. I wish that for most cards. It distracts from these two cards in particular. As for the Villarreal, no serial number needed.

Two of my favorite Adams. The Opening Day is the gold parallel, the main difference from the base being the date up top. The Polo Grounds set upper right is one of those deceptive non-short-print short prints. Changing the serial number as well as changing the 'play' gives an effective double-serial-number trick. Whatever. I have three of these somehow. As for Duvall-star, I will always snag as many as possible.

Garbage Griffey inserts? ALL. DAY. I don't appreciate the facsimile autograph up top. It looks kinda real in hand.

More Junior. When Griffey hit his 500th on Father's Day, Senior was in the stands. Certainly not suited up in a Reds uni. Get it together, Bazooka, geez.

Closing with my favorite set of all time: 2008 UD Baseball Heroes. I don't know why, but I love it. This is my second Harang relic from the set, black being the other. If you have any parallels from this set, SEND THEM TO ME FOR FREE. Or I can give you something, I guess.

Go Reds.

The Frankenpages - Page 4

Rolling right along. An entire page of #4's from the ol' doubles pile.

1989 Donruss Chris Sabo DK #4
2012 Topps Museum Collection Green Jay Bruce /199 #4
2014 Panini Golden Age Harry Wright #4
1991 Classic Best Gold Reggie Sanders #BC4
1985 Topps Circle K Frank Robinson #4
2010 Topps RedsFest Brandon Phillips #4
2012 Panini Golden Age Harry Wright #4
2007 Upper Deck Goudey Red Backs Adam Dunn #4
2013 Bowman Cream of the Crop Mini Refractors Daniel Corcino #CC-CR4

Bullets:

• I need to replace the entire bottom row. There's a repeat that is serving as filler as well as 2 cards that are too small for their slots, which is unacceptable
• Since that Bruce is a double of a /199, I officially own greater that 1% of all of these. Huzzah.
• The RedsFest Phillips has both a '4' and a '5/8' as a number on the back. So I'll need that replaced as well.
• Is that an early 90's minor league parallel? Oh yes. Probably worth, like, a million dollars.

Go Reds.

The Frankenpages - Page 3

A.K.A. Making good use of my doubles

Here's page 3:

2015 Topps Heritage Combo Cards #CC-3
2013 Bowman International Aroldis Chapman #3
1970 Topps Darrel Chaney #3
1988 K-Mart Dream Team Chris Sabo #3
1988 Rite Aid Team MVPs Eric Davis #3
1977 Fritsch One Year Winners Joe Brovia #3
1990 Starline Long John Silver's Eric Davis #3
2000 Fleer Mystique Diamond Dominators Sean Casey #3
2002 Fleer E-X Ken Griffey Jr. #3

Bullets:

• I bought the mascot card even though I knew I already had one. It still bugs me.
• Aroldis International is due to poor record keeping and COMC
• 1970 is from trade stack goodness I'm sure
• Sabo/Davis/Davis always pops up in large junk lots.
• I buy quarter Griffeys even though I know I have them
• The Joe Brovia came in a trade package, but I had one from COMC. Dude played in 21 games in his entire career, all for the Reds in '55. Give him a card!

Go Reds.

Terrible Hall of Fame Prediction

Why do I say it's terrible? Because I'm letting my collection predict the Hall of Fame class. Let's see how often these candidates appeared on a card as a Red, or much more likely, WITH a Red. 20,000+ Reds cards in my home. If you're a true Hall of Famer, you would have found your way onto at least 2 of em.

5 Card "Already In With a Bullet" Club

Jack Morris

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1 Card "Already In But One Card Ain't Enough, Kid" Club

Alan Trammell

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0 Card "GTFO" Club

Johnny Damon

Livan Hernandez

Orlando Hudson

Aubrey Huff

Jason Isringhausen

Andruw Jones

Jeff Kent

Carlos Lee

Brad Lidge

Hideki Matsui

Kevin Millwood

Jamie Moyer

Manny Ramirez

Johan Santana

Curt Schilling

Omar Vizquel

Billy Wagner

Kerry Wood

Carlos Zambrano

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1 Card "One and Done No Soup For You" Club

Barry Bonds

Chris Carpenter

Roger Clemens

Chipper Jones

Edgar Martinez

Fred McGriff

Mike Mussina

Jim Thome

Larry Walker

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2 Card "Maybe Next Year" Club

Gary Sheffield

Sammy Sosa

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3 Card "In Like Flynn" Club

Vlad Guerrero

Trevor Hoffman

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69 Card 'Hall of Fame LOCK' Club

Scott Rolen

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There it is. Vlad Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, and Scott Rolen. Take it to Vegas, baby.

Go Reds.

COMC Vintage

Stupid, sexy COMC. Taking all my money in exchange for a few square inches of happiness. Among the latest haul was some team-set-completing 70's goodness. Here they be.

1977 O-Pee-Chee Pete Rose. Yes, yes, and yes. The toughest Red from the set by far, of course. I usually don't like spending a fiver on a single card, but exceptions are made for vintage Canadian Pete Roses, obviously. 1977 OPC Reds team set COMPLETE.

1974 O-Pee-Chee Tony Perez. I'm not even close to finishing the '74 Chee set. They seem to go for more than I feel they should. Must've been a shorter print run. Though this Hall of Fame card was a buck forty-four. Decent.

1977 Hostess Cesar Geronimo, Gary Nolan. Geronimo is the underappreciated starter from the Big Red Machine teams. Gary Nolan was an underappreciated starting pitcher from the Big Red Machine (110-67 as a Red). Plus, I guess the Nolan is a short print, explaining its elusiveness. 1977 Hostess team set COMPLETE.

1976 Kellogg's Clay Carroll. There are two variations of this card. One has a Reds logo on the back. The other has a White Sox logo, since he spent 1976 in Chicago. I snagged the White Sox logo, thinking I had the Reds logo. Nope. Good job, Red Cardboard.

1976 Hostess Tony Perez, Johnny Bench. I don't even need to comment on these. They are excellent. Bonus: The Johnny Bench comes with its own 40-year-old Twinkie stains. 1976 Hostess team set COMPLETE.

Go Reds.

Accidental Rainbow - 2014 Bowman Chrome Prospects Carlos Contreras

I do not hunt for rainbows. Too expensive and ultimately futile with the 1/1s. But parallels of this card kept popping up for cheap. I realized I had a bunch so I've made a slight effort to find more. I kinda like it now, even though I have no particular affinity for Carlos Contreras. He pitched 47.1 innings for the Reds from 2014 to 2015 with a bloated 5.51 ERA. He was only 17 when he joined the Reds Rookie League team and only 23 when he debuted in the Bigs. But we released him after 2015, he took 2016 off, and was last seen pitching in 9 games in a Mexican league. Ah well. His career will live on in my binders.

Here's my collection of 2014 Bowman Chrome Prospects Carlos Contreras.

Carbon Fiber /10

Silver Wave /25

Red Wave /25

Pink Wave /65

Green /75

Bubble /99

Purple /150

Blue /250

Blue Wave

Refractor /500

Base

Black Wave

Base Auto

Refractor Auto /500

Blue Auto /150

For the non-autos I need the Gold /50, the Black Static /35, the Orange /25, the Shimmer /15, the Red /5, the Superfractor /1 and all the plates. So I'm not even close. But I do enjoy the chrome page. And this card didn't appear in the non-chrome Bowman sets, thus making a true rainbow twice as easy. Of course, my cheapness is the real obstacle.

Go Reds.

Senzation

So everybody is in love with Nick Senzel. Drafted in 2016 out of the University of Tennessee, he's been quickly inching his way up the farm system. He played 10 games for the Rookie League Billings Mustangs, then got promoted mid-year, playing 58 games for the Single-A Dayton Dragons. He got promoted again, starting 2017 with a 57-game stint with the A+ Daytona Tortugas, again getting promoted mid-year and playing 62 games with the AA Pensacola Blue Wahoos. I'd like to pause to appreciate the always excellent minor league team names.

Senzel has a nice average of .315 and a nice OPS of .908 over 187 minor league games, including a sexy .340/.413/.560 in his recent AA stint. Rumor is he will make the major league roster in 2018 at some point, thus making the Reds' youngest roster in the majors even younger (he's 22).

Despite not being a "prospector", just someone who plucks any cheap card, prospect or not, I've decided not to turn down any Senzel I find. Which means Senzel has joined the exclusive club of players for whom I keep doubles. This club consists of Ken Griffey Jr., Adam Dunn, and now Senzel. I know. I'm out of control.

Here is everything.

I will start strong. The top 6 are all from a box break of 2017 Bowman Chrome Draft (or Draft Picks and Prospects, or Prospects, or Bowman Draft, or who the hell knows) that turned out fantastic. Four chrome base, one chrome refractor out of 499, and one purple shimmer thing. I also pulled down three non-Senzel autos and a bunch of non-Senzel parallels. The '1st Bowman Cards' were from earlier in the year and I think they came from a 50-cent box at a show.

I think I overpaid for the non-chrome version of his 1st Bowman card on COMC just so I could have one. I'd also like to point out that Bowman released a box topper of Senzel in 2016, which makes this his 2nd card. This upsets me.

These 2017 Bowman Platinums are definitely from COMC during some seller's "I'm sick of this shit" sale so they were too cheap. That is to say, right in my wheelhouse.

All three of these gentleman are cause for minor excitement. Amir Garrett has already made the bigs, and Senzel and Tyler Mahle are right behind him.

These 2017 Topps Pro Debuts were in a quarter box. If there were more, they would all have been taken home.

This entire page of 2017 Heritage Minors was less than a dollar. You know those dudes who bust dozens of boxes of everything for the autos and mojo and can barely be bothered with the base and inserts? Those are my dudes. Dime, dime, dime, all day long.

Go Reds.

The Frankenpages - Page 2

For those who missed yesterday, The Frankenpages are a portion of a Frankenset consisting of Reds doubles in my possession for which an entire page is dedicated to each card number. At least for numbers 1-99, anyway.

Here's Page 2:

1988 Donruss Bonus MVPs #BC-2 Eric Davis Autographed

2003 Fleer Splendid Splinters #2 Barry Larkin

1986 Topps #2 Pete Rose Special

1992 Kellogg's #2 Tony Perez

2017 Bowman Chrome #2 Jesse Winker

2005 Bowman's Best Emerald #2 Adam Dunn 889/899

2001 Fleer Showcase #2 Barry Larkin

1992 Donruss The Rookies #2 Troy Afenir

1991 Fleer All Stars #2 Barry Larkin

Larkin-heavy page. Not surprising. How did I end up with two signed copies of a 1988 Donruss MVPs Eric Davis? I don't know. The serialed Adam Dunn is thanks to COMC. I'm sure I bought it twice form them. I'd love if somehow they could link to TCDB and hide cards I already have. Or at least cards I've purchased from them before. One can dream.

Somehow my favorite card here is the Troy Afenir. I collected the hell out of the big, blue 1992 Donruss base set, so the green is pleasantly jarring.

Go Reds.

The Frankenpages - Page 1

One bit of silliness I've been working on is a Reds Frankenset. Except I only use doubles. Luckily, I have thousands of doubles, coming from a combination of buying big lots, not keeping good records when I'm COMC hunting, people shipping me trade packages, and me buying cards I know I have but they're in a dime box and should be fifty cents or a dollar so I buy them for no reason. This has lead to a cartoonish amount of doubles. So my cartoonish Frankenset is set up as follows:

One full page of each number 1-99 (THE FRANKENPAGES)

Three cards each of numbers 100-198

One card each of numbers 199-801.

I've got some gaps, but it's pretty good-lookin. I replace as needed to create the best page possible, based on absolute nonsense criteria. Here's Frankenpage number 1:

2008 Allen & Ginter Framed Relics #AGR-AD1 Adam Dunn
1985 Topps #1 Pete Rose
1990 Fleer League Standouts #1 Barry Larkin
2012 Leaf The Living Legend #1 Pete Rose
2006 Fleer Ultra RBI Kings #RBI1 Ken Griffey Jr.
2005 Donruss Leather and Lumber #1 Adam Dunn
2005 Donruss Team Colors #TC-1 Adam Dunn 142/800
2005 Donruss Leather and Lumber Great Gloves #GG-1 Austin Kearns 1273/2000
1991 Upper Deck Final Edition #1 Reggie Sanders/Ryan Klesko

Go Reds,

Oh What the Heck, I'm Back... with Super Vintage

Hitting 20,000 Reds cards made me want to start scanning them and posting them here again, along with snide things and general nonsense. In the hiatus I've plucked through thousands of dime boxes, tore up COMC, sneaked some eBay sneakiness, and most importantly, I've finally figured out why in the hell I collect, catalog, organize, re-organize, and re-shuffle all these silly little cards:

It is my zen garden.

So to those of you who hadn't gotten around yet to deleting me from your blogrolls these past 15 months or so, enjoy some sweet vintage pickups.

1935 Goudey 4-in-1 Tony Piet, Adam Comorosky, Jim Bottomley, Sparky Adams.

I've wanted one of these for a long time. So I overpaid. Luckily, I forget how much, so it must not have been too much. I love this card, plus there's some Hall of Fame action, so I declare it was worth it. Quick rundown of the players:

Tony Piet spent 112 games with the Reds over two seasons amid an 8 year career with the Pirates, Reds, White Sox, Tigers from 1931-1938. 717 hits, .277 lifetime average.

Adam Comorosky spent 8 years with the Pirates then two with the Reds 1926-1935. 795 hits, .285 lifetime average.

Jim Bottomley had a HALL OF FAME career with the Cardinals, then spent some time with the Reds and Browns from 1922-1937. 2,313 hits. Lifetime .310 average. NL MVP 1928.

Sparky Adams went Cubs, Pirates, Cardinals, Reds over 13 years, 1922-1934. 1,588 hits, .286 average, MVP votes in 1931

 

1913 Tom Barker Game WG6 #19 Dick Hoblitzell 

I scanned the back as well, because I like the back. This is from a 100 year old table game. I would love to go back in time and play this game in the dugout of a sandlot. My copy has some pencil marks on it. Good. That means someone was playing the game with it, and was so serious about it, they were taking some notes.

Dick Hoblitzell spent the first 7 years of his career with Cincy and the last 5 with the Red Sox, amassing 1,300 hits and nearly 20 WAR from 1908-1918.

1910-1912 Sweet Caporal Pins Art Fromme

Not a card, but allowable nonetheless. These are very tiny. Like 7/8 of an inch in diameter tiny. So I'm sure I now possess the DNA of some child due to clumsy fingers and the oddly thick stabber on the back.

Art Fromme spent 1906-1915 in the bigs for the Cardinals, Reds, and Giants, winning 80 games with a lifetime 2.90 ERA.

1909-11 The American Tobacco Bob Ewing 

This is one of two versions Bob Ewing has in the set. I am in need of the other. The green, purple, pink, yellow background is heavenly. These ghosts of players seem to be playing ball in another dimension. This is easily one of my favorite cards in my home.

Bob Ewing played for the Reds, Phillies, and Cardinals 1902-1912, racking up 124 wins with a lifetime 2.49 ERA.

Go Reds.

20,000

I felt the need to post to my dead blog today, because I hit a serious milestone.

20,000 unique Red cards.

That is too many.

Here's the card that rolled the dials up to 20k:

2003 Topps Gallery #40a Adam Dunn Red Helmet/Sleeves Variation.

I'm glad it was my PC guy. I'm glad it was a short print. I'm glad I have so many Reds cards to flip through. Good stuff all around.

Here's a screenshot of the TCDB page:

A few things:

1) That dollar value is completely meaningless. Half the cards don't have a value listed, including many vintage cards. And the cards that do have a value are submitted by users, so who knows the criteria each person uses while entering values. But we ain't in this for the money, are we, kids?

2) The one basketball card upsets me. It's a promo card of Jack Armstrong from the 1991 Foot Locker Slam Fest, a charity basketball game that they sponsored. So yeah, technically a basketball card, but of a baseball player doing a charity gig. And honestly, it's worth way more than 5 cents. Like 20 cents. Geez.

3) Some Goodwin Champions sets are listed as multi-sport, some aren't. Bothersome.

4) The 12 Non-Sport cards are from the Pacific Eight Men Out set. It features cards with photos from the movie, photos from the original 1919 White (Black) Sox, and photos from the team that beat them in that World Series, which is often overlooked: my Reds. Their first WS title, in fact.

5) Top three individual players: Barry Larkin (887), Adam Dunn (745), Ken Griffey Jr. (579)

6) Top three years: 2002 (815), 2013 (783), 1994 (707)

7) Years that feature only one card in the collection: 1913, 1922, 1935

8) 175 are Dayton Dragons, my favorite minor league Reds affiliate

9) Top three non-Reds teams that sneaked onto a Reds card: Phillies (74), Yankees (58), Braves (58)

10) A paltry 31 are of my favorite player, Corky Miller

11) I technically hit 20,000 a bit ago, as there are a few dozen cards in my collection that don't have entries in the TCDB. But we can overlook that for now.

Onward and Upward.

Go Reds.