Buhner Book

Last February I picked up a 1988 Donruss New York Yankees Team Collection booklet that had an early Buhner card. I decided to leave the pages intact instead of cutting out the Buhner card and figured I would chase down a card that had already been cut out. Even though the cards in the guide are the exact cards that were packed out in 1988 Donruss packs people were selling the one from the Team Collection booklet for more. I ended up finding a damaged sheet on COMC that had the Buhner card, so I picked it up. The damage was along the bottom of the sheet, so the bottom row of Roberto Kelly, Rafael Santana and Steve Shields had a huge crease running along it but Buhner was in the top row, so all is good.

I have a slide paper cutter so I was able to cut along the border nicely, though I did leave a slight extra white at the bottom border so I can tell the difference at a quick glance which of the Donruss #545 came from the Team Collection booklet and which was packed out.

Jay Fishing Again

I came across a pair of Jay Buhner cards from 1992 on TCDB that I had not seen before, they are from a 1992 Legends Sports Memorabilia Magazine that were part of a sport fishing release. The set has 18 cards with 9 athletes each having two cards with one card showing the player fishing and the other an action shot in uniform. The backs are the same writeup for both cards just having a different number. This is the second card I own with Jay Buhner fishing, the other is an Upper Deck/Shimano promotional card.

Buhner Book Buster

How do you remove a card from a magazine/team program if the cards are not perforated?

 

Last year I picked up this 1988 Donruss Team Collection book, inside there are three pages of nine cards each and a fourth page that is the entire Stan Musial puzzle. The cards are the same exact card that is in the base 1988 Donruss set, including checklist number, so there is no difference except that the ones I have seen hand cut usually have a little bit of a white border around the card.

My question now, do I cut the card out and put  it to my Buhner box or do I leave the card in the book but still add it to my Buhner PC spreadsheet? I have seen hand cut cards show up, but I bought the book for $3.99 and the card usually run around that price.

Buhner-graph

I don’t have many autographs in my Buhner collection, that really aren’t many to choose from because his career ended before autographs became common on checklists, so when I pick one up it is pretty big for me. The only card I purchased through eBay during the Black Friday weekend was a 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes autograph. This is only my second Buhner autograph so I am excited and it is on-card too.

Jay Buhner con los Lobos de Arecibo

My Jay Buhner PC has been a rather easy collection to build because of the availability of his cards. There are a couple of limited cards but a majority of my collection has been picked up on COMC for under 1 dollar. It helps that his career checklist is pretty much limited to official release base cards and Mariners’ SGA sets, because most collectors consider him a semi-star (To me, most Mariners fans and Frank Costanza he is a super-star) he just doesn’t show up outside of base cards too often.

But every so often an oddball shows up that I had no knowledge of and I go in to full finder mode, not often but it happens. Last year I found out about a card out of Puerto Rico, 1988-89 Blanco Y Negro (BYN) Jay Buhner #A-22 and at the time I could not find any for sale and even worse, I couldn’t find an image so I didn’t know what I was chasing.

Eventually I found a seller out of Puerto Rico who was selling different BYN sets, including the 1988-89 BYN Lobos set with Buhner, but the site was questionable at best and my emails to them were bounced back as undeliverable but when I found out they sold on eBay under a different name I was excited.

Jay doesn’t seem to be very happy to be part of the Lobos de Arecibo organization but when you consider he only batted .189 over 30 games you can understand why he looks frustrated.

A Welcome Care Package

I just received a care package from Jon from A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts, which I very much so appreciate. He was wondering how I was doing and sent some cards and a DVD too.

The DVD is from the 2007 Season Ticket Holder package and includes highlights from the team’s 30-year history. It was narrated by Dave Niehaus, the voice of the Mariners from 1977 until his death in 2010, and just hearing his voice brought back some wonderful memories of watching baseball over the years. A lot of happy memories.

New additions to my Steve Kerr collection, Sonics collection and Mariners’ collections. There were more cards sent but I only scanned about half of the cards.

I have been working on my Edgar mini-pc and now I have my first Edgar relic card.

The Mariners just retried Edgar Martinez's number and in conjunction with the ceremony they did an Edgar Martinez bobble head SGA and his bat has a light on it that works. I am not a bobble head collector and have picked up only a couple of Griffey SGAs but I do plan on picking up one of the Edgar Lights Out bobble heads when they drop down to realistic prices.

It's a light bat (bobblehead)!

Edgar Martinez Bobblehead Night—with fully functioning light bat—is August 11th. https://t.co/hczcHnsOrT pic.twitter.com/q938N0JS3H

— Mariners (@Mariners) June 5, 2017

The last two cards are a Buhner and Edgar 1999 Upper Deck Black Diamond Triple Diamond #/1500. I had the Buhner card on my wants list so that is a number card off the list. I haven’t built an Edgar want list yet, I am making some changes in my collection so I do plan to create one eventually.

A Bunch Of Bone Cards

This year I worked on two other player collections as well as my Griffey collection, Jay Buhner and Ryan Bader both got some love. I didn’t post any goals for this year because most of the things that I had in mind for the blog were essentially what I had for the last two years and focused mainly on actively posting, continuing some serial posts and interact more with other bloggers. One thing that I did want to do was work on my Buhner and Bader collections and top 100 cards each.

 

I hit the milestone with Buhner with a COMC order in June and I will hit the mark for Bader with a COMC order I requested shipment on following COMC's Black Friday sale. Unlike my Griffey collection, where I am hunting all the time for cards I don’t have, I have a much shorter list for Buhner and they are mainly just certain cards that appeal to me like his early cards, special editions and of course autograph or memorabilia cards. There are a couple of ghost cards I replaced in the collection from “The Purge”.

I picked up 6 cards related to his first couple of years with the Yankees, specifically the Columbus Clippers.

1987 ProCards

 

1987 TCMA International League

 

1987 TCMA International League All-Star

 

1988 CMC

 

1988 Columbus Police Dept set

 

1988 Procards

 

In 1988 he was traded to the Seattle Mariners so for part of 1989 he played with the Mariners Triple A team in Calgary.

1989 ProCards

1989 TCMA Team Issue

 

His first cards in a Mariners uniform also showed up in 1989

1989 Topps Kmart

1989 Topps Mini UK release

 

1994 Finest and the Refractor version

 

1996 Score with a Griffey cameo

 

1996 Upper Deck VJ Lovero with his son Chase, a similar photo was used for the cover for the March 18, 1996 issue of Sports Illustrated. The image was recreated 20 years later for the March 18, 2016 Sports Illustrated issue.

 

1997 E-X 2000 Looking like Buhner is about to try to steal a base but in reality he had one of the worst success rates ever, only 20% on 30 attempted steals. So this is one of those cards that shows a unique image.

 

2000 Pacific Just a great shot of Bone is full swing

 

2001 Keebler I don’t know why but this is one of my favorite Buhner pickups this past year.

 

2015 Tacoma Rainiers 20^th Anniversary SGA Team set. These cards were handed out at the Rainiers games between July 22^nd-August 26^th, 2015. Each pack contained two cards of players who went through the Rainiers team on their way to the Mariners. This pack contained Griffey and Buhner (double win) and was handed out at the July 22^nd game.

2015 Prizm Signatures This was the only Buhner autograph I picked up this year

 

A Very Appreciated Care Package

Shortly before I moved Angus from Dawg Day Cards sent me a care package of early 90s Griffey cards, plus one Buhner card with a Griffey cameo on the back, which was very much appreciated but they got packed away quickly before I had a chance to sort them. As I said last week I recently moved back to Arizona, a very quick and emotional move, and now that I am back in Arizona I have taken on as a caretaker for my elderly parents. Needless to say stress has compounded daily and any break away is welcome so thank you Angus.

I finally had a chance to sit down and spend some time just focusing on a hobby that helps clear my mind. In all there were 58 cards that I needed for my collection, including some new to me cards and a couple of ghost cards, and with this bundle I topped 1,100 unique Griffey cards.

Here are some of the more interesting cards:

1992 Fleer 7-11 Citgo

1992 French’s Mustard

1992 Promark

1993 Cartwrights

1993 Fleer Atlantic Collector’s Edition

As well as a couple of ghost cards that disappeared in “The Purge”

1993 Topps

 

1993 Ultra

1995 Upper Deck

1996 Upper Deck Retail Predictor

And of course the Jay Buhner, 1993 SP, with Griffey mugging for the camera on the back