The Kind Of Finds We All Hope To Find

Today I read a story about two brothers in New Jersey, ages 76 and 79 years old, had an attic find from their old baseball card collection that they had forgotten about.

It started with the younger brother seeing a story earlier this year about Heritage’s auction that included a PSA graded 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle selling for $3.5 million. He discounted the story as being an error but when he saw that NFL lineman Evan Mathis sold his PSA 9 Mantle for $2.88 million he decided to go searching for his and his brother’s old collection, which had been stored in their mother’s attic before she passed in 2006 and then moved to the older brother’s basement. 

Besides other cards from the early 1950s, they found five 1952 Mantle cards, that have since been graded and ranged from PSA 5 through an 8.5. They sold a PSA 5 and 7.5 last month ($72k and $200k respectively) and another PSA 5 plus a 7 and the 8.5 all go up to auction later this year. 

Car enthusiast have barn finds, we have attic/basement finds.

Monday Question Day- Is The Dude Really There?

Is it me or does it look like Topps attempted to airbrush out the guy behind Mickey Mantle in this 1957 Topps card?

I guess this would be my Laurel / Yanny moment. I have looked closely at the image in Photoshop and either it was a really bad choice of clothing that day for the guy that matched the background or Topps wanted only Mickey showing.

It May Be True, It May Not But It Take Cajones To Ask

According to Yankees color commentator Suzyn Waldman Yankee 22-year old prospect Clint Frazier asked if the team would un-retire #7 for him. After being asked by ESPN the Yankees GM Brian Cashman said that it was not true.

Considering that Waldman has been covering the Yankees since 1987 you would think that she can figure out truth from rumor when it comes to the inner workings of the team so I am apt to believe her on this one. It may not have been an official request by Frazier but I am willing to bet somewhere along the line the kid asked the club house manager or someone connected to uniform assignments.

Oh man Mickey is having a hell of a month.

Panini's Coup

A couple of weeks ago it was announced that Topps was unretiring the #7 for their checklists and that the contract with the Mantle family has ended. Yesterday it was announced that Panini has signed a multi-year contract with the Mantle family and will be producing Mantle cards including cut signatures and memorabilia cards. The agreement is that Mantle will appear in six Panini releases a year plus he can appear on packaging materials for two releases a year.

Mickey’s sons David and Danny said that the reason for the change was that they felt that Topps was flooding the market with their father in modern day releases. Obviously, this is code talk for “Panini offered us more money” because Panini will flood the market too. Just because his likeness can only be included in six releases does not mean that he will only be included on a couple of cards. Being in six releases will most likely result in hundreds of Mantle cards a year from Panini for the next couple of years and the worst of it all is that without the MLB license Mantle will appear logoless. I expect we will see tie and golf shirt relic cards.

His first Panini card is part of the online exclusive Panini Eternal release, seen above, and became available yesterday beginning at $9.99 each. His first packed out card will be in 2017 Panini Immaculate Baseball in August.

The Autographs To End All Autographs

Being a player collector is very special, there are things that you are willing to purchase that other collectors would look at and completely ignore. In my Griffey collection I have cereal boxes, figures, magazines and a lunch box, these are things non player collectors would most likely never ever add to their collection.

When it comes to collecting your player their items stand above all else on the hierarchy of purchases, that is why only a Ken Griffey Jr. collector would understand why we would prefer to have this version

Over this version

Of course this one would just satisfy everyone

 

In my eyes this 1994 Upper Deck dual autograph card is the pinnacle of all autographs, great simple design of two of the greatest players of the modern age, and I don't have any of them so I am jealous of the owners of any of these three cards. The Griffey version will be on my White Whales Want list soon, I am hoping to get one for Christmas.

A Nice Follow Up

This is a follow up to my "Best Break Ever" post a couple of days ago. I actually thought I hit the Publish button to post it the other day but I must have hit the Save button instead so I am posting it now.

Upper Deck decided to continue building on the popularity of the 2001 SP Legendary Cuts release and came on strong with the 2002 version but with some slight changes. The price was increase a bit, the pack count dropped from 18 packs to 12 packs a box (still 4 cards a pack) and the biggest change was the hits. Now boxes were only guaranteed one, SP Legendary Bat but two different jersey cards were seeded in 1:24 packs so most boxes contained two hits, a bat relic and one of the two jersey cards. The hits were:


SP Legendary Bat (1:8 packs)
SP Legendary Game Jersey (1:24 packs)
SP Legendary Swatches (1:24 packs)
SP Legendary Cuts Cards (1:128 packs)
Plus redemptions for Bat Barrels and McGwire autographs

I was not as big a fan of the 2002 base cards, gone were the sweet designs and in their place was a sepia player image surrounded by mist. The backs used a similar sepia design but like 2001 included the player's name, team logo, short bio, a player write up and career stats. I no longer have any of the base cards, having traded some and donated the rest so I used images from Check Out My Cards and eBay.

When the product was released I had my wife pick out the box hoping that her luck from the previous year would carry over. When we got home we split the packs and started opening. In my stack I pulled a Pee Wee Reese Legendary Bat card, a card that I traded to Greg from Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle last year, along with another Reese bat relic I pulled from a 2006 SP Legendary Cuts box. A Dodger relic needs to be in the hands of a true Dodger fan like Greg.

My wife proved to have the magic once again when she pulled a jersey relic from another Yankee legend...

In two years I (my wife actually) pulled relics from 3 Yankee greats and a Dodger legend from 2 boxes purchased at the same shop. Over 7 years, until I moved back to Arizona, I pulled a nice collection of cards from boxes all bought as this shop. I miss not having a local card shop to visit now.