Will our blogs outlive us?

I heard about how recently MySpace ended up losing all the old music artists had uploaded to the site back in its heyday. They said it was a server migration error or something, but rumors are they just wanted to free up the space all those files were taking up. It was a bummer for me since I had a couple artist profiles there: my main "band" page, and a secret alter-ego rap/hip-hop joke project. There was also a page for a little wannabe "record label" I started with some online musician friends back then. I know MySpace is essentially dead and those songs probably only got like maybe 1 or 2 real human listens per year, but it was still nice to know they were out there.

And of course when something like this happens, as a blogger you can't help but to think about Blogger (and/or WordPress) and how quickly our blogs and their archives could be wiped away forever, either on purpose or accident. That would suck. Hell, I frequently use my own blog as a resource.. looking up when/how I got a certain card.. what I need.. what I have... stuff like that. And our blogs are basically journals of our collection (sometimes branching out into real life stuff too), and it's nice to think they'll be around a long time, perhaps even tell our stories after we're gone.


Anyways, something to ponder, but that was basically just a click-bait intro to trick you into checking out some new 2005 Topps Retired auto pickups of mine...

This Don Mattingly refractor has a story behind it. When I opened up the package from the seller, there was a David Ortiz stickergraph/relic instead. The seller was apologetic and cool about correcting the mixup. Thankfully the guy who accidentally got the Mattingly was cool about returning it. Chances are he was a Red Sox fan, so the Donnie Baseball probably grossed him out. But it all worked out and the correct cards made it to the correct people.

I had to look it up, but seems Mattingly is still currently the manager for the Miami Marlins. It's a living.

Hall of Famer Monte Irvin was a fun one to get. There's a little story behind this pickup, too. When this card originally popped up on eBay, I made a reasonable best offer that was declined. A month or so later, the seller came back with his tail between his legs asking if he could have a do-over and accept my old offer. I took my time.. even considered making a slightly lower offer than before.. but ultimately took the high road and went ahead and re-submitted the same offer.

Ok, so we've had a New York Yankee and a New York Giant.. time for a New York Met...

This Gregg Jefferies refractor had been sitting on eBay for a while, and I finally pulled the trigger on it with the help from a discount code. Great looking card. Seems even extra shiny.

Casual baseball fans who hoarded hot rookie cards in the late 80s/early 90s often consider Gregg Jefferies one of the game's biggest busts due to how crazy-hyped he was around 1988/89. And while he didn't live up to his "future all-time great" promise, looking at his numbers, he still had a very fine career that pretty much any ballplayer working their way up would kill to have.

Here's a base auto, not a refractor, as you can probably tell by lack of rainbow shine, but still happy to snag this Ron Gant, a favorite player of mine since I first got into baseball back in 1990.

Like Jefferies, not quite a HOF career, but still some impressive numbers on the back of his card.


That wraps up this batch of 2005 Topps Retired autos.
Have a great weekend!

In the crosshairs: 1984 + 1985 Donruss

I've never completed a Donruss set, but now that I've gotten into the groove of being a part-time set collector, I figured I'd go after my favorite offerings from them. I think 1984 has a real nice, simple design (with today's collectors being reminded of it thanks to its inclusion in 2018 Donruss). Though there are probably too many boring headshots, there are also some neat photos in there as well. Plus apparently the print run that year was a bit lower than other major sets of the era, which-- can't lie-- appeals to me.

ARPSmith kicked off my setbuild a few months ago with a little starter lot. Then recently, Larry in Alabama sent me a nice big chunk of the set. Turrdog then came in with a bit of a brick to fill some holes and bring me to a manageable wantlist to officially post.

The Mattingly RC is probably the key card in the set. Big thanks to Larry for taking care of that one for me.

Larry also gave me the Sandberg, with Turrdog completing the trio of sophomore stars with the Gwynn and Boggs.

Thanks again for the trades, Larry and Turrdog!
I'm down to less that 100 cards to go. (Note that I'm not bothering to go after any of the many errors/variations; I'll be happy with one copy of each card number, regardless if it's an error or correction.) My 1984 Donruss needs are now on my main wantlist, so if you think you might be able to help and want to trade, please take a look at get in touch!


And now for 1985 Donruss which I'm working on concurrently. I always thought it was a cool "bad boy" set with its "Knight Rider" design, though I never owned many cards from it. But now thanks to the trading tandem of ARPSmith, Larry, and Turrdog, I'm in spitting distance of finishing it.

Again, Adam got me off the ground with a starter lot, then Larry did some heavy lifting with a few hundred cards, and then the Turrdog topped it off with important needs, including the two biggest rookies in the set, Clemens and Kirby.

It's a nice looking set!

Just 15 cards to go with 85D! (again, unconcerned with variations.) Check my wantlist for the up-to-date needs if you think you might be able to help me out.

Thanks yet again for the trades, Adam, Larry, and Turrdog! I should be able to knock out the rest of these two sets before long.

Think About You

Ah, the 80s.

It's funny how I never felt so good 
It's a feeling that I know I know I'll never forget
Oooh it was the best time I can remember

You said it, Axl.

I've got 3 sets from the 80s that are racing to the finish line thanks to generous trader buds.

Don Mattingly is probably the top card in 1984 Fleer, going by book, and I'm very grateful to Larry in Alabama for hooking me up with it, even though I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for useful cards I can send back to him after our couple other recent trades. But yeah, this is a great card. I think it's my first Mattingly rookie ever. He's a guy I kinda collect thanks to being one of the Springfield Nine.

All I'm missing to finish off '84 Fleer now are Nolan, Rickey, Gaylord Perry's retirement tribute card, and of course, the legendary Milt Wilcox. (j/k; not sure why the Milt has been so elusive).

Larry also hit a couple big names left in my 1983 Topps set, with Ripken and Carew here.

Big thanks, Larry! I've got a stack of cards for you I need to drop in the mail ASAP.

- - - ----o

And I did a quick PWE trade with reader John H. to knock off a few more '83 Topps needs.

And a Gavin along for the ride.

My remaining '83 Topps needs as of this post:
71 Steve Carlton super-veteran
146 Don Sutton super-veteran
397 Pete Rose all-star
406 Steve Carlton all-star
792 Chris Chambliss

I think I might've exhausted all I can from friendly blog readers, and may now have to turn to Twitter if I want to complete these sets ('84 Fleer, '83 and '80 Topps) only by trading. I mean, I'm sure I could nab these final few cards cheap enough on Sportlots or someplace, but doing it through trades is more rewarding, right?

Anyways.. Thanks, John! I'll try to round up something to hit you back with shortly.

-  - - ----o

And last trade to mention today was a dual PWE blast from my buddy Matt at Sport Card Collectors.

A couple nice additions to the Billy Hamilton PC. The 2018 is one of those batting practice jersey SPs. And while I didn't care for 2017 Topps Fire much overall, I really like those shiny Golden Grabs insets.

Some other guys I collect.

And some assorted Padres from the past. Max Fried went to the Braves back in the Justin Upton trade. I think he's fighting for a spot in Atlanta's rotation this spring.

Thanks a lot, SCC! I'll shoot you back some NY Giants or whatnot soon.

Custom or Not A Custom

Time to play America's fastest growing quiz sensation Custom or Not A Custom!

Don Mattingly made his MLB debut in 1982, but the Big 3 card companies didn't bother including him in their 1983 sets. But in this day and age, cardboard wrongs can be righted, and there's a nice trio of what could have been.

Did you guess right? The Topps card is NOT a custom, it's a Topps Archives card. I made the Fleer and Donruss cards.

More Yankees Captains, now with Derek Jeter. This is an easy one: The custom here is the 1991 Line Drive-style card. I thought it looked good with that early photo.

The Donruss cards come from 2004 Donruss Originals. Panini should revive that brand, like as their version of Topps Archives. Current Donruss products pay homage to old Donruss sets with new-but-similar designs, but rarely come right out and use old designs unless maybe for inserts.

Zero-year Vlad sunset card that never was. Yep, it's a custom.

I'm still a little upset the Jays declined to call him up in 2012 despite his success in the minors, effectively ending his career. He could have easily played for 2 or 3 more years, and possibly gotten to 500 HR and 3000 hits.

The "Originals" gives this one away: Not a custom. Kirby's first mainstream card was 1984 Fleer Update. This "What If? card imagines what it might look like had Donruss also put out an Update-type set that year.

My Kirby PC has definitely made good strides over the past few months, and this eBay pickup is one of my favorite cards in the collection.

More Donruss Originals. Got these in my recent COMC order. I just love these "What If?" cards. What if Donruss put out a set in 1980? Might have looked like that Winfield. What if Craig Biggio was in 1988 Donruss The Rookies? Might look like that.

Quick aside, but a few months ago Topps Bunt had some digital Cards That Never Were available. I thought that was super cool at first, but later grew very frustrated. They made the cards super hard to pull, first off. I drained my coin balance on packs hoping to pull one, coming up empty. Topps really needs to ease with the manufactured scarcity with their fucking digital cards! Obviously in real life you can't pull a Koufax or Hank Aaron auto in every blaster, but with fake cards, there's no reason to be so stingy with cool pulls like that. Come on, the whole point of digital cards is you could pull ANYTHING! How cool is that?! But no, Topps gives you 99% boring digital base cards. Add to that Bunt's move more and more into selling digital packs for "diamonds" that can only be obtained by paying real money... and I'm done with the app. Same with the Star Wars Card Trader app. Oh, another thing that sucks about those Cards That Never Were is they ripped off the blog of the same name. Even used the dude's font, but he wasn't involved at all. That seems like a dick move by Topps.

Last one for today.

Yep, it's a custom! Nate Colbert is one of my top guys I collect. I thought is was pretty cool when I came across this photo (even bought the original negative from the Topps Vault). I had never seen a pic of Colbert on the Jays. But as the blurb on the back of the custom states, he was with them in '77 spring training before retiring. So yeah, this is another year-zero sunset card that never was that I'm very happy I could bring into the world. (Seems like a lot of guys I like have their careers killed by Toronto. Vlad, Gavin Floyd, Mark Buehrle, and Nate Colbert. Oh well.)

That's all for today. Thanks for reading!

The Simpsons custom set for Homer at the Bat

A couple years ago, I did a blog series called The Simpsons Fortnight where each day I posted about a player who guested on the classic "Homer at the Bat" episode of The Simpsons (it ended up not lasting the full fortnight I had originally planned, but I did cover all 9 players from the episode). Each post featured a couple junk-era custom jpg's using images from the show. This was back before I was making hardcopy customs, though a while later with the help from a guy I knew, I did make a limited run of magnet cards featuring some (not all) of the virtual Simpsons cards I had whipped up.

Anyways, now that I've gotten the hang of printing out customs, I had been meaning to make hardcopy customs out of these designs. And so that's what I did!

The autographed Simpsons cards from my recent Wade Boggs-centered contest were easily the most popular of the 3 designs I made, based on the response in the comments. It was no surprise when both contest winners chose that one. (That means I still have a couple each of the Cheers card and the Always Sunny card available for trade, BTW.)

The other catalyst for this project came from negotiating a trade with a reader named Josh, who had a couple nice cards I was interested in, and to seal the deal, he inquired about a set of my Simpsons customs. So I've spent a few hours over the past fortnight cleaning up those original digital customs from 2014, as well as creating backs for them, and making them a physical reality.

So without further ado, I present to you The 2016 Baseball Card Breakdown Simpsons "Homer at the Bat" Custom Card Set!

Wade Boggs cards from The Simpsons

Jose Canseco cards from The Simpsons

Roger Clemens cards from The Simpsons

Ken Griffey, Jr cards from The Simpsons

Don Mattingly cards from The Simpsons

Steve Sax cards from The Simpsons

Mike Scioscia cards from The Simpsons

Ozzie Smith cards from The Simpsons

Darryl Strawberry cards from The Simpsons

Cool stuff, huh?

As with most of my customs, these are up for trade. Drop me an email if interested.
(Sorry, but these are not for sale. It's just too much of a headache from a legal standpoint.)

And if you missed out on the original blog series (it didn't get much traffic at the time), here are links to all 9 posts:

Wade Boggs

Jose Canseco

Roger Clemens

Ken Griffey, Jr.

Don Mattingly

Steve Sax

Mike Scioscia

Ozzie Smith 

Darryl Strawberry

Seaver and Mattingly added to my 2004 Retired $etbuild

My self-imposed "innings limit" of not posting back-to-back days in September was a success! It wasn't easy. I'm definitely not at a loss for post ideas, even if most of them are essentially just "look at these cool cards I got recently!" posts, which while the backbone of the cardsphere, aren't super interesting to casual readers. There were some times last month where I had a post drafted up and was itching to post it, but had to sit on it for a day. I'll now go back to posting whenever I want, but I'll try not to get sucked into thinking I need to post everyday. Sometimes time is tight and it can be stressful trying to get a post done by the "deadline," you know?

While my posting may have been a little less frequent over the past month, I was still active picking up new cards. --a bit too active perhaps. These 2 cards I'm showing off today, in particular, really dented my wallet, so I'll be doing my best to cool it on big purchases for a while.

I had never seen a 2004 Retired refractor auto from either of these kings of New York before, and they coincidentally popped up on eBay within a couple days of each other from different sellers. This is the "main set" I've been working on nearly since I re-entered the hobby a few years back, so I had to be aggressive if I wanted to finally check them off the list.

The Mattingly was a Buy It Now with Best Offer that I was able to broker a deal for, but still was a lot of money. The Seaver was auction style. I was comfortably the only bidder at the reasonable opening bid down until about an hour and a half to go before another jagoff or two had to crap on my parade and push it to within striking distance of my ridiculous max bid. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a little bit of buyer's remorse laying in bed that night, melancholily thinking about my life and my choices.

So yeah, I'll need to try keeping my distance from eBay for a while. I'm thinking about liquidating a lot of my non-baseball collection. While I like having a well-rounded collection, I've just never been that into basketball or hockey, and my interest in football is at an all-time low thanks to the unforgivable finish to last year's Super Bowl and the fact that my hometown Chargers are very likely skipping town soon. Might as well clean house a little and focus on my one true love, baseball.

That moaning aside, I sure am happy to check off these 2 big cards from my #1 goal of finishing this set. In fact, including non-refractors, I've now completed all the scarcity groups besides A and B (the big boys). Only 4 cards left, though they will all be very expensive: Ripken, Aaron, Banks, and Musial. My ultimate collecting goal is to complete the set with refractors, so that mission still has many cards left. But that's more of an "icing on the cake" thing.

2004 Topps Retired Signature Edition autograph checklist

Red = Need it

Green = Got it
Blue = Refractor acquired (/25)

Group A: Cal Ripken, Jr; Nolan Ryan; Carl Yastrzemski; Robin Yount

Group B: Hank Aaron; Ernie Banks; Stan Musial; Duke Snider

Group C: Johnny Bench; Yogi Berra; Whitey Ford; Bob Gibson; Dwight Gooden; Tony Gwynn; Don Mattingly; Brooks Robinson; Mike Schmidt; Tom Seaver; Ozzie Smith

Group D: Wade Boggs; John Candelaria; Jose Canseco; Gary Carter; Carlton Fisk; Ralph Kiner; Paul Molitor; Paul O'Neill; Frank Robinson; Ryne Sandberg; Darryl Strawberry; Don Zimmer

Group E: Buddy Bell; Rod Carew; Bucky Dent; Rob Dibble; Dennis Eckersley; Tony Fernandez; Rollie Fingers; George Foster; César Gerónimo; Kirk Gibson; Goose Gossage; Orel Hershiser; Al Hrabosky; Greg Luzinski; Tony Oliva; Dave Parker; Jimmy Piersall; Alan Trammell;

Group F: Davey Lopes

Group G: Tony Armas; Vida Blue; Tom Brunansky; Bill Buckner; Orlando Cepeda; Darren Daulton; Darrell Evans; Bobby Grich; Ferguson Jenkins; Wally Joyner; Jimmy Key; Ron Kittle; Bill Madlock; Jack McDowell; Dale Murphy; Graig Nettles; Al Oliver; Bobby Richardson; Ron Santo; Dave Stieb; Bruce Sutter; Ron Swoboda; Luis Tiant; Earl Weaver; Maury Wills

Group H: Elroy Face

Anyways, how did Tom Terrific and Donnie Baseball fare against each other?

Mattingly was 6 for 14 (.429) with a couple doubles. Looks like Don had Tom's number, which isn't all that surprising considering their overlapping time in the majors. Mattingly was a hot, young player in his prime, while Seaver's best days were behind him, just padding out his HOF resumé with brief stops in Chicago and Boston.

Hardware-wise, Seaver of course got a ring with the 1969 Mets. Mattingly came up dry in his playing career, but now as manager of the Dodgers he's got another shot at glory. Looks like all 3 of those teams are in the playoffs this year. I gotta say I'm pretty excited for the postseason. With the exception of the Cardinals (boo!) and I guess the Yankees (hiss!) there are a lot of long championship droughts there. If my Padres can't be in it, then I basically root for whichever team has gone the longest since winning. Sigh.. The pains of eternally rooting for the underdog.

Oh, here's another Tom Seaver certified auto I just got for less than 0.6% of the price of the other one. Thanks to combined shipping, it was cheaper than the shipping alone on the other one.

Ok, the real signature looks like just a faded shadow of the pre-printed facsimile auto.. (Don't display your cards in a sunny spot, guys!) ..not to mention it's a buyback of probably his worst card ever (well, not counting the airbrushing fail of his 1986 Topps Traded).. but still, a genuine Tom Seaver auto #'d /25 for the price of a jumbo-size candy bar!

Anyways, thanks for reading. See you back here next time.

Oh, and if you'd like to do me a solid, please check out my cards for sale page. I've cut prices on several items, as well as added new stuff. I'd love to unload some of those and raise a few bucks to ease the pain of an expensive month for me hobby-wise!

The Simpsons Fortnight, Day 5: Don Mattingly shaves his sideburns

before The Simpsons appearance

Don Mattingly was arguably the best hitter in the game during the period of 1984 through 1989. By "Homer at the Bat" (early 1992), he was already coming off a couple down years (and in fact would not have another truly great season thanks to a bad back), but Donnie Baseball was still a popular face of the game, and the heart of the Yankees during that era.

Homer at the Bat

Mattingly's downfall in the episode is his "sideburns". Mr. Burns wants a clean-cut team, and repeatedly admonishes Mattingly for not shaving his (nonexistent) sideburns. A justifiably confused Donnie ends up shaving the sides of his head well above his ears, yet still Mr. Burns is displeased and boots him off the team.

Classic Line: "I still like him better than Steinbrenner."

after The Simpsons appearance

Mattingly was able to grind out a few more years with decent numbers, though a far cry from his prime. Back pain forced him to retire after the '95 season, cutting short what was once a sure-bet HOF career. A lifelong Yankee beloved in New York, after being passed up to manage the only club he ever played for, wound up in Los Angeles helming the Dodgers.

Highlights from my Collection:

I never really had many Mattinglys. I first got into baseball/collecting in 1990, his first "off" year, so I guess I missed out on the hype. Honestly, back in the day, he was one of the few guys I disliked. I've since come around to appreciate him and his legacy in the game, though.

Random Filler:

I had to cheat a little with the top custom card. I've been trying to stick to 1990-1992 card designs (occasionally slinking back into 1989), but Mattingly's 1993 Topps is somewhat of an iconic junk-era horizontal card, and works perfectly with the "action shot" screen grab from the show, fittingly a similar picture.

In another funny "The Simpsons predicted it" instance, Mattingly later had a real-life hair controversy where Yankees management forced him to cut his hair, and briefly benched him for not doing so. Many people thought the joke in the show was a reference to the incident, but "Homer at the Bat" was recorded a year before it happened. (UPDATE: More digging into this in the comments below.)

Looks like we got back-to-back Yanks here on the Fortnight, as tomorrow we take a look at the team's second-slacker: Saxy Boy, Steve Sax.