Where do I sign?!

I'm now up to 7 "sign here" cards.

Tino in center is my latest pickup. (Jealous, Lost Collector? lol) The seller first put it up at a hefty Buy-It-Now, but as the weeks went by he dropped the asking price and eventually I got it off him for a fair best offer.

I'm thinking I'll try to add a couple more, then call this quirky collection good at an "even" 9 cards.

Well, this is a short post, so here's some bonus content I may have posted on Twitter already.

Check out this tree in my neighborhood with an attitude problem.

Ruby had a great time out with the family at my wife's birthday lunch this past weekend. She's a cutie but a hellraiser.

Transferring the contents of the old car's glove compartment to the new car is kinda like opening up a time capsule. Found some goodies such as a vintage Kentucky Fried Chicken towelette I've had on hand since the 90s. I've also had that Gwynn since the 90s; Back in the early days of this blog I posted about The Worst-Condition Card I Own. I had forgotten that Tony was even still in the car, honestly! Looks like it lost a chunk at some point in the past decade. I think I'll "retire" the card to my Gwynn PC now before it disintegrates further.

Whoever ends up with my collection after I die is going to have a lot of "WTF?!" moments when they go through it all. LOL

A Completed Page of Wallet Cards

I'll nearly always "like" any social media post that pops up in my feed with the #walletcard hashtag. I love to see meaningful cards out there playing an active part in someone's life. 

I still think of myself as "the wallet card guy", but nearly a decade on, I realize I'm probably alone there and most people today don't make the association anymore. Sure guys were putting cards in their wallets since the tobacco card days, with the most famous example being Bob Costas doing so with a certain Mickey Mantle, but for what it's worth, the "wallet card craze" wasn't a thing in the modern hobby until my post on January 2, 2015, which took off further thanks to attention on social media and was really buzzing for a hot minute there. I had made it into a contest those first two or three years, sending out heavy-hitting cards as prizes to the Junior Junkie and Bo Rosny, but I don't try assume any "authority" over the concept anymore. 

But yeah, I still keep a card in my wallet and am happy to see other people doing so, too. 

It's now been 9 years for me having an annual wallet card. You know what that means: Completed page!

Looks great, fuzzy corners and all!

Tony Gwynn's 1987 Fleer was my co-pilot for 2023, and while it didn't get into a ton of adventures, it does have the distinction of being my first international wallet card, accompanying my wife and I to Greece this past September. I'll go ahead and post some photo "outtakes" that weren't good enough to be included in my big Trip to Greece post recapping the vacation, but are fine for this walletcard-centric post:

lol, I was trying to center the card.

Good times!

As for 2024, welp, I'm back with a 10th wallet card. I decided to stick with Mr. Padre, why not.

What the heck, guess I'm going for a second page!

That'll do it for today.
Are you carrying a wallet card these days?

Tony Gwynn #19!

Following up on the post a few weeks ago where I began logging my Tony Gwynn collection at the Trading Card Database, I'm more or less wrapped up now. Unfortunately I fell short in my lofty goals of either hitting 1k cards and/or cracking the top 10 in the site's rankings. But I ended up with a pretty cool consolation.

Yep, I'm ranked #19 on the site! I will rep this prestigious "jersey number" position with pride. I know collectors sometimes toggle their collections between public and private, and so there could be a shakeup at any time that either bumps me up or down, but I'll hope to stick around at #19 for a while if I can. (...not that it means anything, just a fun little thing to smile about.)

Currently I'm just narrowly above #20 (another guy, like myself, on the cusp of 900 unique TG cards) and about 40 cards from #18. It puts me in the funny position of not wanting to add a bunch of new Gwynns, thereby possibly forfeiting my special rank. But yeah, I would like to eventually hit a thousand cards. Tony is my "top guy" after all. But my hobby funds/interest gets pulled a lot of ways, with me working on those pricey Topps Retired refractor autos, ATFF refractors, and several vintage setbuilds in addition to having a bunch of "PC guys" of varying priority. I wonder if that YoRicha guy at #1 has time for other hobby interests, or if being a Tony Gwynn supercollector consumes his entire experience in the hobby.

Anyways, let's take a look at some more cool Tony Gwynn cards.

I didn't collect in 1995, so when it was time to sort out to this pair of cards, I was sure one must be a parallel. The card on the left has "Extreme Corps" in rainbow lettering, while the card on the right features the same text all in red. But nope, TCDB considers these the same exact card. Turns out 1995 Stadium Club used multi-colored foil that resulted in variances like this but they aren't considered unique cards. Ha, try telling that to a player collector with 2 different looking cards! If I did a "my count" of my Gwynn collection, it'd likely hit a thousand already, counting things that TCDB doesn't, such as the above foil variant, plus a bunch of customs, mods, and other unofficial variations and whatnot that might not be considered "real cards" but are close enough for me.

Logging my cards also gave me the opportunity to "see what's out there", and discovering this "Complements" insert from 1999 Finest on TCDB lead me to search out one. There are 3 flavors of this card: full refractor, or having the refraction limited to either side. I had never heard of a partial refractor before, and as I've been becoming more of a refractor enthusiast in recent years, was compelled to look around for a good deal on one, and lucked into this "Gwynn refractor / Boggs not" in my latest COMC order that arrived a few days ago. I'm really tempted to peel off the protective coating, especially seeing how it's directly over Tony. If I had gotten this for my Wade Boggs PC, I'd feel better just leaving it. Should I do it? Gah, the collector's conundrum.

But when I've got a dupe of a card with a protective film? Then it's an easy call to peel. I pick to peel the one where the text is most obtrusive. The above pair aren't too bad (top half of body unaffected), but I went with the card on the right since the text covers more of Tony.

That looks a lot better. I should probably be less precious with my protective films and just remove them from any "keeper" of mine. It's my understanding that chrome cards all still get manufactured with a similar protective film, but they remove it before packing it out now rather than leave it to the collectors since we can't be trusted to do it ourselves, lol. (But yeah, I get it, if that's how it comes from the manufacturer, then to peel is technically altering the card from its original, packed-out state... if that means anything to you.)

Speaking of altering cards, I think I've found my niche in the "cardart" landscape: Border art.

I've been going nuts making "mashups" or "full bleed" artsy homemade parallels lately. Tony is typically my guinea pig for stuff like this since I have so many dupes of his junk-era cards. I know these are silly (and no doubt some collectors look down on the cardboard vandalism), but it's fun getting creative turning a dupe into something that's no longer a dupe. And sometimes they turn out pretty cool looking!

Ok ok, let's go ahead and peel that '99 Finest.

Ahh! That looks terrific and so much nicer without the tire tracks over Tony!

To close us out, here's a card that just arrived today (actually it's still out for delivery as I draft this post and it feels like I'm tempting fate by typing that I already have it because you never know, but I'll snap a pic as soon as I get it) and it's a big one, hitting multiple bullseyes for me.

Boom! I've been picking up 2005 Topps Pristine Legends refractors at an accelerated clip over the past few months, now nearly a third of my way through completing a refractor parallel setbuild of the 140-card set of past greats. This card was a need towards that project.. plus San Diego State cards of Gwynn are kinda like the closest thing I have to a "focus" in that PC. I showed off my SDSU Gwynns recently, coinciding with this year's Aztecs making an incredible run to the Final Four. As seen in that post, I already had the base version of the card (graced with a faded in-person auto, to boot) and I'm happy to be able to pair that with the refractor now, a whale I had been after. Helps make for a satisfying conclusion to getting my Gwynns logged. #19, Baby! I'll take it.

Puttin' in the Gwynn

I don't expect to ever get around to fully logging my card collection into the Trading Card Database, but I'm adding a little here and there, and my current focus is entering the biggest player collection I've got: Tony Gwynn. My hobby interests pull me in too many directions to ever truly vie for the spot of his #1 collector, but I've got a pretty solid PC, and as I log it, I'm also sorting in the very many Gwynn cards I've gotten in the past year or so from Rod at Padrographs as he narrowed his collection.

Data entry can be tedious-- and often a pain figuring out unfamiliar cards/parallels-- so I came up with some goals to help keep me motivated:

- rank among the top 19 (jersey number) Tony Gwynn collectors at TCDB
- 1000+ unique cards
- get in the top 10
- in the top 5 maybe?

Well, here's the current leaderboard:

Yep, Tony Gwynn is a popular guy to collect! 1500 cards won't even get you into the top 10. I'm not likely to crack the top 5 anytime soon, if ever. As I type this, I've already added roughly 2/3 of the PC and currently rank #30 with 687 unique Gwynns. I'm guessing I'll ultimately settle in around numbers 12-14, but cracking the top 10 could be something to shoot for. For the record, I'm not going to blanketly "add all missing cards to wantlist." But occasionally I've been adding neat Gwynns to my TCDB wantlist, like certain refractors or cool-looking inserts or whatnot, and could see myself going after some cheap low-hanging fruit on Sportlots or something if I really wanted to get my total up.

It's not just healthy competition motivating me, of course, because it'll be great to have a solid idea of what I have and don't have when it comes to Mr. Padre. My memory ain't always great, so it'll be nice to be able to easily check what I've got.

Anyways, I thought I'd feature a few "non-TCDB cards" in this post.. that is, cards that I consider unique in the PC, though for the most part I agree they're not different cards, and were it not a main PC of mine, I likely wouldn't bother treating them differently. Regardless, I think these unofficial variations are more interesting than "real" variations where there's a period missing in the copyright line on the back or something else you likely need a magnifying glass to even notice.

The above HoloGrFX cards seem to be different shades of blue, though that's not an official parallel. Probably just a printing variant or maybe one was displayed in a sunny spot for a while by a previous owner.

Here's another example of the same card looking different. Technically a dupe, but they're both staying in my PC as "dark version" and "light version", respectively. Could be noted there is a "black gold (/499)" parallel to this 2001 Fleer Futures card that I don't have.

These 1998 Skybox Dugout Axcess "Double Header" game cards only come in one flavor, according to the menu, but look at the player name and tell me these are identical cards; You can't do it! The foil-printing machine seems to have been on the fritz for the card on the right-- I don't think Skybox did it on purpose-- but yeah, I'm hanging on to them both, considering one an "inverted foil" printing flaw variation or whatever.

Well, those are what I've taken pictures of so far, and I've got more examples I'd like to document on the blog, but I think I'll call it good for today and then probably do a follow-up post or two once I've finished logging the Gwynn PC. Thanks for stopping by and have a pleasant weekend, everybody.

SDSU Gwynns

I've never followed college sports very closely-- probably in part because San Diego has historically not been much of a factor in college football or basketball rankings despite a few incredible players passing through over the years. Living in Portland now, the Oregon Ducks are the most popular college team in these parts, and I'll casually root for them to win the championship if they're in contention, but I honestly don't really care about college sports.

But as a fellow San Diego State University alum, I love collecting Tony Gwynn cards that picture him as an Aztec. I was happy to hear that the current squad has made it to the Final Four. Winning it all would be a big deal! To help wish the team luck, I thought I'd make a quick post with my SDSU Gwynns.

The college basketball subcollection is a favorite portion of my Gwynn PC. Those 2 autos are especially bad-ass.

And no surprise I also have a few baseball cards featuring collegiate Tony, with little bro Chris also popping in. The bunting one is a custom I made, but otherwise these are all legit.

With Tony having so many damn cards out there, trying to go after everything is pointless and exhausting, so I try to focus on what I like most. I'm sure there are a ton of big Gwynn collectors out there who would put my overall Mr. Padre PC to shame, but at least when it comes to Aztec cards specifically, I might have a chance at ranking somewhere up the list.

Thanks for reading and Go Aztecs!

Oh, the Places Gwynn'll Go!

I threw a few cards in the sun at the beginning of the year as part of my research on fading experiments. The best result was the '91 Fleer that's since made the rounds. But here's another mod that also turned out pretty cool:

The design opens up without the blast of yellow behind the diamond hole.

No surprise, but yellow turns out to be the easiest color to bleach away in the sun. So yellow-forward cards like '91 Fleer and the '88 Topps All-Star subset take to modifying the best.

Here's a side-by-side. This is the only one I've made so far, but would like to whip up some more this summer. (Anybody got dupes they could send me, especially Mattingly, Puckett, Ozzie?) Next time I'd probably mask the player name too so it remains a deep red rather than turn pink (though "National League" is awash in yellow, so can't do much with that).

Gwynn's 1988 Topps All-Star card has some extra significance for me, to boot. I picked it as my first wallet card, and it got its "moment in the sun", so to speak, when the whole wallet card idea then made the rounds online and was a brief sensation.

Now let's segue into a wallet card post...

My 2022 wallet card was a 1988 Score Gwynn. Here it is getting chummy with fancy plants at the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago when I was there this past summer.

If my wallet card could talk, I think it would say the highlight of its year was taking in a Padres victory at Wrigley.

Another random wallet card photo I didn't include in my big post recapping the Chicago trip. This picture kinda makes me dizzy, lol. Paging M.C. Escher!

My only other time out of the greater Portland area in 2022 was a trip to Kentucky for a cousin's wedding in October. The only time I remembered to snap a wallet card photo was during a little family hike one afternoon.

Yep, there's Tony in the crisp Kentucky autumn air.

Will my 2023 wallet card see more action than a ballgame and some shrubbery? I'm not sure. No travel plans locked in, but we might do something in a few months.

One last out-and-about photo of '88 Score Tony communing with nature, taken 12/31/2022, to close out the year. Nothing really interesting going on here, just a wallet card photo for the sake of taking a wallet card photo.. snapped while walking the dog. Ruby stank of pee most of this week-- Lord, this pup!-- but got a bath the day before and is still pretty clean and pettable today.

Ooh, this part is fun...

With 2022 retired to the binder page, that wraps up 8 years of wallet cards. A year from now, the page will be complete. Then I'll have to decide whether I want to start a new page (if so, stick with Gwynn or pick another favorite player of mine?), or pick a "permanent" wallet card to leave in year after year, or heck even just stop putting a baseball card in my wallet in 2024. We'll see how it shakes out.

I picked 1987 Fleer for 2023. Technically '87 Fleer makes an unprecedented return to the wallet, seeing as 2017's card was from the 1987 Fleer Limited Edition Baseball Superstars box set. But yeah, as mentioned earlier this year when I pulled the trigger on a complete set, I remember 1987 Fleer being a big deal when I first went nuts for baseball in 1990, with the Bo Jackson and Will Clark being prestige pieces to show off to your buddies at school if you were blessed to own either. So part of me winces at putting an '87 Fleer card unprotected in my wallet. But thanks to Padrographs Rod bestowing his vast fields of Gwynn dupes on me over the years, I've got over a dozen copies of this card so it doesn't hurt too bad sacrificing one of them. It's a nice shot featuring Mr. Padre giving a subtle smile with his mind on pre-game BP. That sky blue should look nice closing out the binder page. 

Thanks for reading another year of Baseball Card Breakdown. I appreciate it. Happy New Year! Any of you swapping in a new wallet card this year?

Half completed sets abound + Refractor Friday #7 Tony Gwynn Hall Bound

This was supposed to be a midweek trade recap post but I wasn't able to get to it until today, so we'll throw the Refractor Friday stuff on the end.

So Johnny's Trading Spot had a post a couple weeks ago about a vintage trade he did with his Old Card Traders buddy Bob D. Since I'm always jonesing for vintage setbuilding help, I checked out Bob's wantlist and was able to find some stuff for him before sending an email feeling out a trade. I was hoping he had a few '72 high numbers to spare, and though he wasn't able to find any of my needed late-season psychedelic tombstones, he was able to find a stack of 1970 Topps needs and upgrades from my list. Gaylord Perry has some surface wear and a pinhole, but as a semi-high number, he's welcomed into my build with outstretched arms. As far as old sets I'm working on, priority-wise '70 clocks in under '72, '57, and '64 for me, but it's still a multi-series vintage Topps set I'd love to complete someday, ultimately trying for a run of flagship Topps encompassing the 70s and 80s.

-o-

That lot from Bob took me to 49+% complete with 1970, just 1 card shy of the midway point. I knew I had to make a push at getting over the line, and turned to my PCs to try to dig up a needed card.

I found a 1970 All-Star in my Rod Carew PC and loaned it out to the setbuild, officially taking me to over the hump. Of course I'm not actually "halfway done" yet since the majority of what I have are low numbers, and the high numbers are much more work to track down. But the bottom line is my "haves" are now more plentiful than my "needs" for 1970 Topps, so that's something to smile about

-o-

And hey, on that subject...

Got a nice package of cards from Fuji last week that included a bunch of 1979 and 1983 Kellogg's, taking both those back-burning oddball setbuilds over the 50% hump, too. The Canseco brings me to just 5 commons away from completing the '88 Fleer base set. (I think GCA's buddy Stuart said he could finish it off for me? Let's hope he comes through!)

Some PC additions here, including a Bruce Bochy sunset/final tribute from '88 Score I'd been wanting for a while. He spent all of 1988 in Triple A as a player/coach, the beginnings of his prominent managerial career.

Excited to be a recipient of one of Fuji's new blogger cards! Love it.

Thanks, man! I've got a little something to hit you back with soon.

-o-

Fuji deciding to send me a package must've gotten karma on his side, because his guess at last week's Harmon Killebrew refractor's serial number being 134/299 was right on the money. Congrats! Let me know if you see anything in the prize pool that you could use and I'll add it to that next mailing I send your way.

As a little extra bonus for Fuji, I figured I'd pick our favorite Padre to feature for Friday's refractor this week.

Refractor Friday #7 - Tony Gwynn 1998 Topps Chrome Hall Bound refractor

I don't remember what pushed me down the rabbit hole, but I probably saw one of these Hall Bound die-cut inserts on another blog, thought to myself, "yes, I'd really like one of those (specifically a refractor one)," and poked around the usual places until I found a decent deal on one I liked. I ended up with a slabbed Gwynn for roughly what they go for raw. PSA 6 is bad for a modern card, but looks great to me. Maybe the print line on the right knocked it down a little but all the way to a 6? Maybe the PSA person found something else bad under their microscope or whatever. But yeah, no complaints from me. I'll keep it slabbed for now since I'll bet even those of you who are firmly anti-grading can still appreciate not having to worry about those die-cut points getting knocked or caught. (Mr. Padre is my largest PC, and this is only my second graded card of his, pretty sure.)

Regardless, it's a fine specimen of refractive Chrome technology, wouldn't you agree?

Time to finish off with another little contest. Back to the autograph Fuji gave me of himself... It's hand-numbered out of 30 on the back. Be the first in the comments below to correctly guess which number it is and you can win a PWE of a few cards from my prize pool. For a hint, it's less than Tony's jersey number.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, everybody.

Sunlight vs Cards (research on fading)

The dormant Pack War blog by Corky used to do a neat series of "things done to cards (so you don't have to)" or something like that where he'd bury a card in the ground for a year to see what happens to it.. stuff like that.

Along those lines, I wanted to do some first-hand experiments taking a look at the effects of sunlight on trading cards.

Back on 2/28/2021, I placed a duplicate of Tony Gwynn's 1989 Upper Deck in a window that gets a lot of direct sunlight, curious to see how faded it'd get after a year. I took a photo a year later on 2/28/22:

Would you look at that? Old Mr. Sun seems to have bleached away most the magenta and yellow ink, leaving the card black & blue. I think it's pretty cool, and filed away the unofficial blue parallel in my Gwynn PC.

-o-

Not too long after putting the 89UD card on the windowsill, I got creative with another "card in the sun" idea. This time I blocked part of the card to try to limit the sun-bleaching to a certain area. I wanted to make a 1990 Donruss card look like there was a "vision beam" from Tony's eyes. I'm sure there are more interesting things that could be done with this concept (like, stencil out a Padres logo over the card or something?), but hey, it's just a rough test.

Oof. I should have anticipated that baking painters tape for several months in the sun would have an adverse effect on it. Ended up with too much paper loss to consider the experiment a success, but at least now I know not to use tape with things like this in the future. (And yep, I've already got a couple new Gwynn dupes messing around on the windowsill, so check back in a year or so to see how they turn out.) 

The "vision beam" came out alright, though it looks more like it's coming from Tony's earflap than his eyes. ("Hearing beam"? Was the secret to Tony's success that he used sonar to echolocate the ball? lol)

-o-

Finally, I've been intrigued by how the ink on Topps Retired autographs seems to vary with cards on the secondary market. This auto-per-pack product had 3 releases, 2003-2005, and has been a collecting focus of mine for years, as regular readers know. I've busted my share of this product over the years and every "pack fresh" Retried auto I've ever seen features a signature in bright blue Sharpie, though I've seen several on the secondary market that have duller blue ink, often close to black, and sometimes even ostensibly "black ink" autos that have faded significantly. Funny thing is I don't recall ever seeing any faded blue autos (or bold black ink autos), so this effect is most likely due to sun exposure.

Experiment begun 2/1/22 - no difference in ink

I chose 2003 Bill "Moose" Skowron as my guinea pig because it seems to be the cheapest and easiest to find of the Retired autos. Plus I happen to have 2 good copies of it, so one can be kept in the dark as the control. Scientific! It's my hypothesis that the bright blue ink will eventually become darker, likely appearing to eventually "change" to black ink as it fades. The above photo shows identical ink appearance on the 2 autos as of the evening of February 1st, 2022. The encased card is the control and the loose card was put in the window moments after this shot was taken.

[... time passes ...]

Yep, after just one month (--at that, February, a short, cloudy month--), the ink has definitely darkened somewhat.

[...More time passes as this post sits in my "drafts"...]

Wow, not even to the 2-month point yet, but the ink has deteriorated a lot since the previous check-in. Now the ink does in fact look closer to black sharpie than blue, and the last name especially has begun fading away. A rise of sunny springtime days likely contributed to the accelerated impact.

Since the card is toast already, I suppose I'll leave it out indefinitely in the interest of curiosity. By the end of the year, I'd expect the signature to be barely visible and we'll eventually see the rest of the card start to fade. However, all Topps Retired autos are on Chrome stock, and-- scribbled Sharpie ink aside-- Chrome cards seem to be more resistant to the elements than standard paper cards. Keep in mind that when Moose jotted down that particular "on card" signature two decades ago, it wasn't a cardboard surface he was pressing that felt-tip onto, but rather (I'm paraphrasing here, but it's something like) a thin sheet of plastic covering layered ink printed in reverse affixed to a foil layer backing, and some cardboard mixed in and on the back. So I won't expect it to look as "bad" as the earlier '89 Upper Deck Gwynn ended up after a year, but I guess we'll see. (Funny to note that Chrome card technology was pitched to Upper Deck first, but I guess the money wasn't right for them and they passed, but Topps signed on instead and ended up getting revenge for the whole 1989 "premium card" disruption once Finest refractors began heating up the pages of Beckett.)

Wrapping up here, a takeaway from this post is to be careful when displaying cards. Ha, "no duh", but the sun can potentially do a number on them before too long. Even in a place that gets much less sun than a windowsill can still do damage over time. For me, with any cards I'd be concerned about replacing ($$$/low print run/etc), I try not to display for long. Maybe put a nice card on the display shelf for a couple weeks, focus a satisfied glance on it occasionally during its "time in the sun" (if you'll excuse the phrase), and then file it away in the dark for storage after a bit. And just like rotate cards out like that. One idea I've thought of but haven't really gotten around to is to take a photo with some of my best cards laid out, then use the photo as my desktop background pic or something... then you get to admire the cards frequently while the actual cards are safely stored away. Another strategy is to cover up cards on display during the time you're not actively appreciating them, like drape a little cloth over a card when you're not actually hanging out in that area. Humblebrag, but I like to put a pack of sticky notes or something over my Roberto Clemente autograph when heading out at the end of the day when I've got it displayed at my desk at work. It's not in a spot that gets much sun, but still.. don't want that baby fading! (though in that instance, it's a pencil autograph, and the effects of sunlight on pencil seems like a whole 'nother experiment.) 

Thanks for reading... Hope this post was informative and entertaining so those 3 baseball cards weren't "destroyed" in vain! :)