RIP - Bob Turley

Baseball and the TTM community lost another gem, as "Bullet" Bob Turley passed away on Saturday. Turley was a Cy Young Award winner with the Yanks, and was always a very generous signer. He resides in my Topps Yankees Collection for 1956.

Happy Easter!

To those who celebrate, Happy Easter! I hope you enjoy the day with your families, and that some cards found their way into your Easter baskets. As a kid, I could always count on a few packs being in there. No so as an adult, but that's ok. It's a tradition I'll pass down to my son.

Happy Opening Day to the Astros and Rangers. Houston, welcome to the AL!

Vintage Trade Game: Round 2

I had fun with the first installment of the vintage trade game last month (link here), which brought on three trades. Several of the cards went unclaimed, so I figured I'd throw them back out there with a few new additions.

As a refresher, claim one (via the comment section) of the vintage cards below, and send me a vintage card in return, preferably a Yankee. However, feel free to send non-Yanks as well. I don't mind at all. Just don't tell me what you're sending. It doesn't have to be exact year for year, just in the same vicinity.

If you'd like to ask me any questions about a card's condition, feel free.

JBF Bombs Away - Part 3

Last but not least, part three of JBF’s package bombs. I claimed the following two cards in a recent post:

But of course he didn’t leave it there. Nope. He had to throw in some sweet cards he picked up on his trip to Mobile. We’ll start with the two autos. Yep, two. First off, Bubba Crosby! Remember when Cashman said that Bubba was going to be the starting CFer? Then signed Johnny Damon out of nowhere. I did not own a Bubba auto, so this is a sweet addition.

Next up, a Steve Howe auto. Seriously?! Freakin’ sweet. The Leaf Signature Series card s signed perfectly on-card. Most of us know about Steve’s rough life and the fact that he passed away at a young age. He was a very talented reliever, and unfortunately fought with substance abuse for the majority of his career.

Well also included a team bag of Yanks, and here are a few favorites. I love any of the mid-90’s Denny’s cards, so this Boggs is money. It actually shows a short clip of his swing instead of just a 3D image.

No words necessary for this guy.

And finally, a random yanks prospect who never made it, and a guy who just participated in the NFL combine.

Wes, thanks again for everything.

JBF Bombs Away - Part 2

Bomb #2 from JBF came as a result of claiming this Quentin Richardson jersey card. I find this card to be amazing. Get ready to have your mind blown. Ok, the photo of Richardson is in a Phoenix jersey, but his card’s logo is a Knicks logo. No big deal, right? That happens a lot. Well, check out the back. The jersey is part of a warm-up worn by Q. Ok, that’s specific. Wait, what’s that? Worn when he was a member of the Los Angeles Clippers?!?! Whhhhhat?! So the card is of him in a Suns jersey, with a Knicks logo, with a swatch from the Clippers. Yep, sounds like Q’s career alright.

I would love to see some Octavio Dotel cards like this, or other journeymen. It could be a pretty fun insert set, and a good way for Topps to dump some old swatches and not call it Turkey Red

Although that Richardson is awesome, this card is even awesomer. A 2005 Prime Patches Nick Johnson jersey/auto. Believe it or now, this is the first card I have that has both a swatch and an autograph on it.

Wes also threw in a few more Yanks. Here are a sampling of Jeters and Mattinglys.

JBF Bombs Away - Part 1

This is a three part series about some bombing JBF recently hit me with. While one was the standard PWE, two were packages. I have a big old stack of cards ready to go to Wes in return, but I’ve been a little lazy getting to the post office. They will go out this week, I promise.

I’ll start with the PWE, which contained six cards. The other packages held some serious mojo, but I’ll start gradually.

Here are the first three cards. I REALLY appreciated and was excited about the Bert Campaneris 1984 Topps. See, I do own this card, but my only copy is signed for my Topps Yankees Project. I’m so happy to have an unsigned version now.

The last three cards were a few from the past few years of guys who had shorts stints in NY. I actually sent this exact card to Chad Qualls for his auto this spring, and he hasn’t returned it. I’m assuming Qualls receives the same amount of fan mail as Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols, so no surprise about the lack of return. Maybe I’ll try him again once the season starts.

HOF add from Listia

I've been dabbling with Listia a bit lately. With my hiatus from eBay, I've been casually dabbing. I've sold a few cards, and I'm still learning what will bring in a lot of credits, and what won't. Some cards/lots that I thought would do well didn't, while some other cards did far better than I would have imagined.

That goes for bidding too. I'm still really figuring out how many credits are appropriate for something that catches my eye, and what is not.

Anyhow, since Yankees don't come up much, and when they do they are often quite overpriced (like 499 for a common 1991 Donruss), I have been looking for some other stuff, including Hall of Famers. I picked up this 1992 Fleer Roberto Alomar to add to my son's HOF collection for 300 credits.

But that's not the only card that caught my eye. In fact, it was this 1995 Studio Platinum insert of Alomar. A while ago, I blogged about the gold Mattingly that Jaybarkerfan sent me. I liked that card so much, I really wanted a Platinum. I'm glad I did. The card is really freakin' cool.

If it was just the Fleer for 300, I would have passed. However, the Studio Alomar made this a must have for 300 credits.

Tino Tuesday #57: 1996 Flair Gold #132

I thought I had been pretty good about picking up Tino Martinez Flair cards, but bloggers keep sending me ones I don’t have. This 1996 Flair Gold parallel comes to me from DHoff over at Coot Veal and the Vealtones. I recently won a contest over there (more to come on that), and Dustin sent me a batch of Tinos in addition to some other stuff.

Growing up, Flair was always a big deal for me. I wasn’t allowed to even really look at it. I remember the card section at CVS (always had a ton of packs), and Flair was off to the side by itself. It came in little boxes, and the price was astronomical compared to the other stuff. I’ll stick to Topps and Score, thank you.

Over the years, I got my hands on several Tino Flair cards. But new ones keep popping up. In later years, that had all those variations, but this one was from 1996. No idea why I didn’t have it.

It’s as thick as a normal Flair card, so that’s a plus. I remember the first Flair card I ever got was a football card. They came one per pack in Fleer’s football set. It was of Willie Roaf of the Saints. I showed my dad the card, and I remember him holding it up and saying “wow, what a nice card that is.” He probably hadn’t held a baseball card since the ‘50s or ‘60s, so this probably was quite a change from what he remembered.

I like the gold background as well. Flair’s design always was very simple, yet sophisticated. It always felt classy, and this card is no exception.

RIP Virgil "Fire" Trucks

I can't say much that hasn't been said already, but I'd like to pay my respect to Virgil Trucks. As a TTMer, he was probably the most generous signer out there. He signed everything, and always sent a card of his own. More remarkable, he sent personal responses, which shows that he took time to read each letter.

I had two separate TTM successes with Trucks. The first, he signed my 1959 Topps, which now lives in my Topps Yankees Project. The second one was last year. I picked up a cheap, beat up 1953 Topps. I sent that to him, as well as a letter telling him about the recent birth of my son, and he included a signed card for him, as well.

Class act until the very last day.