Christmas time and Computer Woes...

Greetings all.

Well here we are at Christmas time and what do you know, my computer is dead. What we first suspected was the power supply may now be a motherboard problem. Woohoo! This is a $2000 machine that's less than a year and a half old. I think it got zapped by lightning or a power surge last week when my power went out.

So I'm writing this on my parents computer where I'll be until the day after Christmas. Hopefully I'll know what's wrong and can get some parts to bring my computer back to life.

So anyone that's sent me cards in trade and haven't gotten an email that I've gotten them, never fear I'll see them when I get home and find some way to let everyone know.

That's all I've got. Have a great Christmas everyone and good luck for the new year.

Mail day from Joe Collector and MLB Collector...

The generosity of this community astounds me. I've recieved packages from JV at Treasure Never Buried, and the afore mentioned from Stats on the Back among others. My only regret is that in the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty new to this world and don't have too much to offer in return. The fourteen year gap in my collection has meant that I'm essentially starting from scratch on this thing.

I have decided that as much as I'm enjoying myself, 2009 will be the first year that I actively collect a set in fifteen years. I haven't decided which one yet, but my goal is to put together a set by hand and do my best to get into this on line trading more than I am at the present.

Speaking of, two packages went out today, one to MLB Collector and the other to Hand Collated. I apologize for the lateness of getting these out, time has really slipped away from me over the past several weeks.

All that said, over the past several days two packages have come in that have me pretty excited. The first is a huge box from I Am Joe Collector that I haven't even begun to sift through.



Just for an idea of how large this box is, that's a 24 inch wide screen monitor in the background. And yes, that's Kirby from Nintendo fame sitting there peeping out over the box.

Like I said I haven't even made a dent in sifting through this box, but just looking at it something popped out at me. In the sea of white edged cards there were a few browns here and there. Hmmmmm. Being the lover of old cards that I am, those were the places I inspected first. Granted there weren't many of them, but thrown in the mix here and there were a few late 80s Topps. One 88 (Andres Galarraga, one of my all time favorites), a few 89's, but most importantly, one 87. I looked at it and thought "I've never seen this one before."

That's right, I'm now one card closer in my pursuit of the complete 1987 set.



That card is Dale Mohorcic. Mohorcic had a short but interesting career in the Bigs. From April 6th through the 20th of 1986 he appeared in a record thirteen straight games in relief.

Dale's claim to fame, however, came in a 1987 game against the Brewers where he was accused of tampering with the baseball, though the umpire's investigation showed no evidence and play resumed. After the game, however, Mohorcic began to complain of a sore throat and was taken to the hospital where he was found to be bleeding internally from swallowing a piece of sand paper.

The card notes that he attended Cleveland (Ohio) State University, not to be confused with the much more well known Cleveland, Tennessee, where I bought a Big Daddy's Truck Stop hat probably fifteen years ago.

Moving right along.

This afternoon an envelope showed up from Joe at MLB Collector containing a beautiful 1988 Score Andre Dawson.

Readers of this site should be well aware of my grand annoyance at pulling very, very few low numbered cards out of my box of '88 Score. Now thanks to trades and generous readers, I'm 16 cards away from the complete set and don't need many of those low numbered cards. But Mr. Dawson is one that I did need.

Funny thing about this card, is that this will be twice in the past several days that this card has been displayed on a card site. 30 Year old Cardboard wrote about it here.

Since you can see the front of the card there, I'll show you the back, complete with Score's high quality copy writing. The quality of the photography, writing and the general quality of the card stock really make this one of the best sets of the 80s. It's unfortunate that it's so often overlooked.



I apologize for the poor quality of these scans, I'm learning to use the first new scanner/printer/thing I've had in ten years, so it's taking some time.

I've decided that I'm gonna keep this place up and running too, not a daily thing, but I'm having fun with it and I've got a few more posts in me. I still need to get around to posting some cards from the package from Stats on the Back and I'm sure there will be something of interest in this box from Joe Collector.

But that's all for now.

Mail day from Stats on the Back

It's been raining just about non-stop for the past two days. We're under flood warnings and the creek in my back yard is turning into a river. The weather has been strange this year. Last week this was what you saw out my front door...



And today, this is out my back door...



It's in the 60s today, nice compared to last week's highs in the 30s... but it's supposed to snow tonight.

This is the third time I've started this post because the power has gone out twice. It was out for about two hours this morning. Strange strange strange.

Oh well.

So I went down to the mail box today in the rain and what do I find? A package... from Stats on the Back. YAY. Nothing better than flipping through new (to me) baseball cards on a rainy day. Fortunately my other hobby is collecting knvies because this package was a bitch to get into.



The cards and the Benchmade 710 (aka. best knife ever made) I used to open the package.

Also included, as padding so the cards didn't flop around, were a pack of 87 Donruss and two packs of 88 Donruss. I always liked 87 Donruss but never got to open any packs, so it was a nice treat. And I'm sorry to admit this, but I LOVE '88 Donruss. I hope that didn't kill my credibility as a collector.

I'll throw up some scans later once I learn how to use my new super-duper all in one printer/scanner/copier/fax/toaster oven/can opener thingy.

Now to go look at some new (to me) baseball cards. A BIG thanks to Stats on the Back!

1987 Topps

Here's a list of 87 Topps that I need to complete the set (I think, I'm sure I missed a few).

2, 10, 11, 13, 20, 29, 39, 43, 46, 54, 57, 74, 83, 86, 90, 104, 109, 123, 128, 130, 143, 145, 147, 151, 164, 193, 198, 201, 210, 221, 223, 230, 231, 238, 252, 272, 273, 277, 287, 304, 320, 321, 327, 329, 338, 348, 350, 351, 357, 358, 367, 368, 369, 376, 378, 392, 394, 395, 403, 407, 410, 411, 412, 429, 438, 440, 455, 461, 463, 466, 468, 476, 477, 480, 497, 504, 505, 506, 508, 518, 524, 535, 539, 548, 550, 555, 575, 579, 585, 589, 590, 599, 602, 608, 616, 620, 630, 632, 640, 645, 647, 648, 649, 651, 657, 665, 668, 676, 677, 679, 682, 703, 704, 714, 718, 720, 721, 726, 727, 735, 739, 748, 757, 778, 787, 788, 789

I'm in the middle of a trade with Capewood (helping him complete his 1987 set) that should net me four of the remaining 17 '88 Score cards I need. They are 47, 302, 417 and 602.

I've got two boxes full of '87 Topps and '88 Score doubles if anyone else is working on one of those sets, let me know and I'll send what I've got (I'm running out of room).

One last (probably) post...

I haven't written anything here for a while and really didn't intend to, but I figured I'd throw up the final list of what I need if anyone out there's got them.

1 Don Mattingly
4 Andre Dawson
5 Mark McGwire
24 Kirby Puckett
47 Mike Stanley
49 David Cone
107 Fred McGriff
236 Bob Brower
278 Jerry Browne
302 Jim Lindeman
354 Jim Deshaies
361 Sal Butera
417 Danny Heep
602 Les Lancaster
631 Gary Thurman
634 Roberto Kelly
637 Mike Devereaux

If you have any of these and need some '87 Topps or '88 Score, let me know what you want.

Final totals... thus far

Well, I figured I should post a final checklist. Twenty years after I started, I have 446 of the 660 cards in the set.

I'm debating where I want to go from here. Will it be worth it to pick up a second box? I really don't know. How many of these cards are out there to be had outside of boxes? Is it worth my time looking through the online trading sites for the 214 cards I'm missing? Especially when the cost of shipping one card will be four times what the card is most likely worth.

Here is my current checklist (.doc file). If you can help me out here let me know. I don't know what I can give in return, but I'll see what I can come up with... I've got a growing stack of 1987 Topps sitting next to me that I could part ways with.

If anyone else is looking for 1988 Score, let me know, I've got several hundred doubles in my commons box now. I'll try to get a list of those up within several days.

I've started a new site to clean up a few things that I started here and to expand on my thoughts on baseball cards in general. It'll be slow going, but hopefully better in the long run. Maybe at some point, I'll move all of this over there.

Baseball Card Projects

Thanks.

One... what a way to end it.

Pack 36 (+0)
(duplicates are indicated by bold text)
95 Rob Deer
110 Roger Clemens
2 Wade Boggs
220 Mike Easler
112 Ken Williams
128 Tim Teufel
240 Tommy John
245 Ken Oberkfell
260 Sid Bream
347 Andy Hawkins
353 John Habyan
367 Stan Javier
550 Cal Ripken, Jr.
442 Gerald Young
612 Shawn Hillegas
617 Dave Engle
614 Eric Plunk

Isn't this a wonderful way to end the box? I'd hoped for 450 cards out of the set, but fell short at 446. Overall I'm happy with the way the box turned out, and I will be picking up a second box pretty soon. I got bogged down with all the doubles over the past several weeks and because of that my writing here slowed down. Now that the box is finished, I can take a bit of time away from this site and open my other box of '87 Topps. Then when I have a second box of '87 Score, I'll come back here and try to finish the set.

While opening the box of '87 Topps, for anyone that's interested, I'll keep the completion percentage updated.

But before I go, I give you this, the box bottom cards from 1988 Score. It's an 18 "card" set commemorating the 1987 All Star game.