Cheap Books

Books and baseball cards are both pretty cool things.  I like books.  I like baseball cards.  I rarely mix the two things together.  I have picked up a few of the booklet cards over the years, but I can count the number of them in my collection on one hand.  I know a lot of people like booklet cards, but I have a few reasons why I avoid them.  

1.  Cards that do not fit into normal cards spaces cause me pain.  Not a big fan of slabbed cards either.  I find that they linger on coffee tables, sit on top of boxes in my closet, and are occasionally used by son as a fake telephone (Only a graded Miguel Tejada rookie)

2. There are too many booklet cards that are multi player cards.  Not to say I am against multi player cards, but too often they make cards that combine a great player with a bad player or there is just some old mash-up of players.  Triple Threads can be often guilty of these offenses.  

In order for me to consider a card booklet I usually have to get a good deal and really really like the player(s).  I saw a Jake Odorizzi booklet last week for less than $10.  I thought it was a pretty good deal.  So, yesterday my mail......

It looks nice in the video, but the card does have a slight flaw.  Check the bottom left-hand area on the card.  Notice the piece of relic is torn and does not cover the entire space.....

It's not a huge flaw, but I understand why I got a good deal on the card.  I am still happy with the addition to my collection.   Odorizzi was one of my favorite Durham Bulls players and is also from the St. Louis area.  He has not broken out a Cardinals jersey on Twitter, but he is a pretty big Blues fan.  

4 Minute Set- Bowman Draft

#WalletCard Field Trip: NC State Edition

My wallet, a 1991 Topps Geronimo Pena, celebrated one week in my wallet yesterday.  We decided to take a little bit of a lunch break yesterday while I was working on a few things at NC State.  Geronimo needed to see the sites, so we went on a quick 10 minute campus tour.  Think of him like an interested high school kid.  Sure, I got a couple of weird looks taking pictures of a baseball card, in the rain, at different spots around campus.  Here's a look at Geronimo's campus tour:


Stop Number 1- The Bell Tower 

This is the iconic building on campus.  The Bellower was built to honor the NC State students who died during World War 1.  I attended class just a short distance from the Bell Tower and walked by here all the time for the years I attended NC State.  Here is a plaque showing the different stages of construction:

Rainy days are not great days to hang out at the tower, but Geronimo and I are willing to make a return later tonight if our Wolfpack beat those dreaded Tar Heels.  After an important win the school lights the Bell Tower up red at night.

Geronimo enjoyed the tower, but there is much more to being on a college campus than hanging out at iconic buildings.  Since we are at NC State we should probably visit a classroom buildings.  No mistaking us for Tar Heels.


Stop Number 2- Poe Hall 

We do not have enough teachers in North Carolina.  Our state does not really treat them too well, but that's for a different post on a different blog.  Would Geronimo enjoy a career in education?  This is Poe Hall which houses the NC State College of Education.  I own a Masters of School Administration from the school.  So many cool classes to take in this building.  The Psychology Department is in here too.  Back in the day they used to have a really nice leather sofa on the fourth or fifth floor.  It's been too long, but we don't have time to sit down.  Snap a selfie and on we go.....

Stop Number 3- Run with the Wolves 

Geronimo and I found this cool sculpture down the street from Reynolds Coliseum and Talley Student Union.  There are actually three wolves in this little courtyard, but I was not going to take pictures of people smoking with the wolves.  There were no basketball games and we do not go into the student union at lunch.  My tolerance for hungry undergraduates has declined over the years.  Geronimo understood.  This seemed like a good place for another picture.

While we were checking out this cool wolf sculpture we saw this cool sign for Tedx, or Ted Talks.  I am a pretty big fan, but there appear to be no Ted Talks about baseball cards.  If I applied to speak about baseball cards would I be accepted?  Would I be allowed to bring Geronimo?  I better think of some cool math or science connection between baseball cards and something that someone at NC State is working on right now.  Hmmmm......

4. Stop Number 4- Free Expression Tunnel

If you like graffiti and live in central North Carolina then this might be the coolest place around.  The Free Expression Tunnel runs underneath a set of train tracks and also happens to be a place where graffiti is legal.  Here's that the tunnel looks like from the outside:

Geronimo and I tried taking a picture inside the tunnel, but the lighting was hurting the final product. We ended up taking a close up with the cool graffiti wall just outside of the tunnel.

It looks like Geronimo is getting a little bit of wear around the edges and has a little crease going too. Back into the wallet for right now, but we will take a few more field trips throughout the next year.  I am thinking our next field trip might be into work.  How will Geronimo handle a day in fourth grade?

This Was Unexpected

Do you ever see a card that we were not planning on picking up, but then it just kind of ends up in your mailbox? I saw a few of the McGwire cards out of Triple Threads late this summer when Topps released the product, but was not really planning on spending much time or money chasing down a copy of a Big Mac since almost all of his cards in the set feature the slugging first baseman in an Oakland uniform.  Well, then I saw this card on a Facebook auction page.  

There were some people interested in the card, but most of the bidding was hanging out around $10.  Most of the copies of this card were selling for at least twice that amount on Ebay.  Throw in the fact that the person selling the card decided to end the auction in the middle of the day and I decided to take a run at this card.  I ended up snagging the card and found this gem in my mailbox yesterday afternoon.  

My Great Reorganization Project at 20 Months

At some point during March of 2013 I cam up with the idea of reorganizing my cards into sets.  I am a set collector, along with loads of other things, and have basically just sorted my cards the same way forever, because, well that's how I sort my cards.  They sat on a table, usually my desk, until I had completed the set (sometimes just came close) and then were broken into stacks by team and sorted into boxes.

My boxes were organized by team and within the team boxes the cards were kept sequentially by year and then alphabetically by set name within each year.  It was not a bad was to go, but it seemed a little archaic for a person who is really interested in complete sets.  My boxes were often loaded with duplicates and unfinished sets went unfinished.  It all looked very neat from the outside.  This is where we started.....

That the majority of my 250,000ish card collection that started this process.  Along the way I have not offered too many updates, but probably should have done a few more.  It's been a lot more difficult task then I could have ever imagined.  Honestly, I am thinking that breaking all 31 years worth of cards into sets is likely going to end up being a five year project.  Here is a little peak into what I have done......

I have lots and lots of new boxes hanging out in my card room.  These are actually some of the 2001 and 2000 baseball card sets which were featured in my original post.  I have spent a lot of time breaking out years from my team boxes, sorting them out into the sets, and then organizing the cards. Along the way I also break out the inserts, sort them into the boxes with the sets at the end, and remove the duplicates.

In all, I have right at 200 sets assembled and boxed over the last 20 months.  Considering I work a full time job, have a four year old son, and a wife I am doing really well with this project.  Those 200 sets cover 2000, 2001, 2002, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.  That's 7 years out of 31.  I know that I will have less quantity as I work my way through the late 90s and get back into the early 90s and 80s sets.  The may be bigger sets, but I think that 2 or 3 big sets will be far less work than all of the little modern sets.

Actually the hardest part of the process has been working with the duplicates.  I have had some luck trading off player lots, or team lots to some collectors, but I have a high volume of dupes.  If you follow my blog on some of the social media sites outside of Blogger I have posted a few pictures over the past year and half showing some of the stacks of cards that are created at times sorting out boxes of cards.

This is the top of a stack of cards.  A view from the sides of my duplicates mountain......

I still have more duplicates that I need to move onto a new home and will surely add a great deal to this stack.  I have also toyed around with video blog posts before on sets, but have not done them very consistently.  Might have to make those a regular weekly post.  Maybe.

So, at this point I still have a lot of work ahead of me with getting my cards broken down into sets.  It's been an enjoyable process and I have had a great time looking back through all of my cards.  There were always favorites, but I have found several sets along the way which I had not seen in several years.

Hoos Shortstop

 Just finishing out a few cards from last baseball season.  The first time I saw Chris Taylor play baseball was a few years ago while he was playing in college at Virginia.  While Taylor did not show a ton of pop while playing for the Cavaliers, he did hit for average and did a great job of getting on base.  The Mariners picked up the shortstop in the 5th round of the 2012 draft.  All he's done since being drafted is hit .320/.407/.463 with 96 extra base hits and almost 70 steals in three seasons in the minors.  He was also the Pacific Coast League's MVP in last years Triple A All-Star game.

This is my second autograph of the Mariners future shortstop.  I pulled an autograph of him out of a 2014 Bowman box.

I did not open a box of Bowman Platinum cards this year, but I really like some of the autographs in the set.  I love the green backgrounds on these cards and also like the fact that the Taylor autograph is an on-card signature.  Platinum had a good amount of sticker autographs this year.  Many of these autographs are fairly cheap and can be bought for less than $5.  In the case of Taylor, he should be a starting shortstop for a good Mariners team next year.  Pretty good value.

#MyCardMonday

Well, I had an idea of a card to post for my weekly #MyCardMonday entry, but had to shift gears after watching the Duke/NC State game.  The basketball season has been a mixed bag so far for my Wolfpack.  They have had a few good wins, but they seem like they are still trying to find their form. They started conference play fairly strong beating Wake Forest and Pittsburgh, but they had a rough time at #3 Virginia Wednesday night.  Enter Duke.

NC State has actually had pretty good success against Duke in Raleigh recently, or maybe Duke just hates playing in their arena.  Duke has lost their last two games at NC State and they also lost their first round NCAA game to Mercer in that building last year.  As a student, the best game I ever witnessed as a student there was their upset of Duke in 2010.

This year's matchup with Duke ended well for the Wolfpack.  The guards played great and the Pack pulled away from the second ranked Blue Devils in the second half.  Bee Jay Anya had this awesome put back dunk late in the second half:

It was a great afternoon to be a Wolfpack fan.  So, in celebration of the NC State win I am going to post an NC State card as the #MyCardMonday post this week.  

Baseball fans know Carlos Rodon and Trea Turner, but NC State actually had a slew of draft picks in last summer's draft.  Brett Austin spent the last several years catching Rodon for the Wolfpack.  Austin was a high school All-American and was drafted by the Padres using a sandwich pick back in 2011.  He opted to play at NC State instead and was selected last summer by the White Sox in the 4th round.  Austin ended up playing in the South Atlantic League for the Kannapolis Intimidators, but was limited to just 42 games.  

Austin is a switch hitter and has some good pop from the left-hand batters box, so hopefully he will make good progress in the minors this coming summer.  Austin has several very affordable rookie cards including an autograph in the Panini Prizm set.  I spent less than $5 on this card.  Hopefully Austin is catching for the White Sox sooner than later. 

GO PACK!