A very tough day

Today is going to be a tough day.

While I try not to get too personal in this space, I did want to share that my grandmother's funeral is today. In fact, when this post goes live, I'll be at the service.

She passed away this past Saturday, July 1. Honestly, it was for the best at this point, as her health had deteriorated over the past year. She was 95 years old. Oh, what she must've seen!

She was a big Yankees fan. In fact, I went to her bedside last week, and she had the Yankees schedule written on a white board in her room at the hospice she was in. A fan until the very end!

She also knew how much I loved the Yankees, and this old card-collecting hobby of mine. While her standard gift for birthdays and Christmas was clothes, she surprised me two Christmases with card-related gifts. It always annoyed my sister that they got clothes and I ended up with some I liked.

I don't remember which year she got me these. There were wooden storage cases with my first named burned into them. I'm sure she saw them in one of her catalogues. While they are clunky, they are very cool, and I enjoy keeping cards in there.

The second is something that means a whole lot to me. For Christmas in 1998, she got me the Danbury Mint 1998 Yankees 22K gold team set.

I remember opening it and looking at her and just going, "Nonna..." I could tell she knew I loved it. I also knew it was expensive. I had seen the advertisements for it. The commemorative binder only had a few of the cards in it, as the rest were set to arrive in installments of three over the next few months. I always enjoyed each month when she called me and told me to stop by, as a few more had arrived.

It's something I treasure immensely.

And I'm going to miss her terribly.

Worth their weight in gold

I’m sure many of us have come across these Danbury Mint 22K gold cards at some point. For me, I was familiar with them at a young age, as there were frequently ads in the Sunday paper for them. You know the ones; they usually came as a standalone ad with all of the other week’s sales. Sometimes it was for a Babe Ruth plate or collectible figure, and others, for 22K gold baseball cards.

One of the coolest items in my collection is a set of these honoring the 1998 Yankees. My grandma got it for me for Christmas one year, although it only came half full, and then she would receive a couple in the mail each month until the binder was full.

Before my eBay spending hiatus (which is going well!), I won a lot of two Tino Martinez gold cards – one from 2003, and one from 2007 (above). I like the ’07 because it has all his career stats.

These cards are deceptive. They seem like they’d be pretty solid, but in fact are very flimsy. The gold must be a very, very small coating. I don’t even know how much gold is actually there. I will say, 1996 Collector’s Choice Gold Medallions play the role a bit better and feel a lot more substantial. Plus, they are one of my favorite parallel sets ever.

 

Still, fun additions to my Tino collection, and cards you don’t come across too often.