Baseball cards

[Patrick Thistle]

A decent package of cards arrived yesterday taking me up to 544 cards - exactly 150 over my original target!

[Patrick Thistle]

The Topps UK edition sold out on the day of release.

[ursus arctos]

The list of "UK Icons" is intriguing (and exclusively English)

https://uk.topps.com/amfile/file/dow...roduct/289084/

[Patrick Thistle]

Yeah I noticed it was England only.

[Patrick Thistle]

HUUUUUUUGGEEEEE day at chez Thistle. 33 years after buying my first ever packets of baseball cards I have completed the set.

[danielmak]

That's a good feeling. Congrats.

[Patrick Thistle]

Disastrous news at chez Thistle. After spending a good few hours sorting my Topps 1987 set into card pages for the first time, I discovered that I haven't completed the set and am missing one card!

[Patrick Thistle]

Big day on the blog for me - my 200th post and my 500th card.

I think I might clear my backlog of cards by Christmas.

[Patrick Thistle]

OK - after the disaster of thinking I had completed the set only to find out I hadn't completed the set, the chap who sent me the card that meant I thought I had completed the set has now sent me the card that means I HAVE ACTUALLY COMPLETED THE TOPPS 1987 BASEBALL CARD SET! It arrived today and I am very happy. It's a long time since I was that kid buying wax packets of baseball cards in Florida in 1987.

[ursus arctos]

Woo and indeed Hoo

[Cal Alamein]

Congrats PT -- 33 year old gum for purchase.



THE REAL ONE! (Damn you Donruss and Fleer!)

[Patrick Thistle]

A guy in the group recently opened a box of cello-packs. I did warn him not to eat the gum.

[Patrick Thistle]

This was my final card. Check out the stare

[danielmak]

I don't remember Otis doing much in Cleveland but could be wrong. He was excellent with the Braves. I thought he died recently but the story was he went missing. I'll have to look up where he went....

[Cal Alamein]

Remember him as a major stud base stealer --- looked him up and has had some major drug difficulties.

[caja-dglh]

OK - after the disaster of thinking I had completed the set only to find out I hadn't completed the set, the chap who sent me the card that meant I thought I had completed the set has now sent me the card that means I HAVE ACTUALLY COMPLETED THE TOPPS 1987 BASEBALL CARD SET! It arrived today and I am very happy. It's a long time since I was that kid buying wax packets of baseball cards in Florida in 1987.

Yeah, and three days later that your false proclamation. This whole shit would have been better timed round Easter.

[Patrick Thistle]

That's a shame about Otis' travails after baseball. It feels (to me) that baseball seems to have a higher than average number of former players who end up in bad places. I looked up Chuck Knoblauch because he was named on a card with Tony and I thought he had an amusing name, only to find he had a run in with the law after a domestic dispute involving guns.

The card I originally thought had completed my set was of Pete Rose, who has been ostracised from the sport for a betting scandal. Another player I've researched because of the Tony Gwynn link was Ken Caminiti who died from a drug overdose the year after he retired. Tony only seems to have had one vice, chewing tobacco, and even that killed him.

There's stuff going on now with Randy Arozena in Mexico and two Padres players have been involved in incidents after the season ended (one got knifed outside a strip club and the other got busted growing weed).

[Patrick Thistle]

I seemed to have fewer cards in my "to blog" folder than I should have so went back through and discovered that I miscounted as I was blogging. Twice. I'm going to fix it so that I take the duplicate numbers out and reblog them. But, aaargh, it's annoying.

[caja-dglh]

I seemed to have fewer cards in my "to blog" folder than I should have so went back through and discovered that I miscounted as I was blogging. Twice. I'm going to fix it so that I take the duplicate numbers out and reblog them. But, aaargh, it's annoying.

Will buying those bargaintastic 1000 cards help fix that?

[danielmak]

That's a shame about Otis' travails after baseball. It feels (to me) that baseball seems to have a higher than average number of former players who end up in bad places. I looked up Chuck Knoblauch because he was named on a card with Tony and I thought he had an amusing name, only to find he had a run in with the law after a domestic dispute involving guns.

The card I originally thought had completed my set was of Pete Rose, who has been ostracised from the sport for a betting scandal. Another player I've researched because of the Tony Gwynn link was Ken Caminiti who died from a drug overdose the year after he retired. Tony only seems to have had one vice, chewing tobacco, and even that killed him.

There's stuff going on now with Randy Arozena in Mexico and two Padres players have been involved in incidents after the season ended (one got knifed outside a strip club and the other got busted growing weed).

It seems to me that percentage-wise gridiron football players were in the news more when I paid more attention to ESPN/sports talk radio, but it's hard to say for me now that I rarely watch Sportscenter on ESPN and never listen to AM radio.

I had not heard about Knoblauch. He ran into problems with the yips (all of a sudden couldn't make basic throws) but eventually seemed to solve that problem. Caminiti was a steroid user and word is that steroids lead to physical and mental problems (not a user so can't say). Pete chose the one bad habit that was never going to fly in MLB after the Black Sox scandal. On the whole, I don;t know if baseball players or athletes in general suffer from problems relative to the total population. But they are in the news and they do a job that puts eyes on them constantly and those are eyes are live (versus TV actors or film actors who realistically only perform for a crew on a set and can do multiple takes). But, one thing that differs is that all of the players start out as young men and often need to make adult decisions before they are ready. It's no surprise that the guys who have the least problems tend to have strong family support. Again, that's probably true for people in general.

[Patrick Thistle]

Will buying those bargaintastic 1000 cards help fix that?

Sadly not. I don't think that's going to work out anyway. I think the guy who offered that didn't realise what I was looking for and was just trying to shift 1000 random cards. His communication is a bit odd as well which puts me off.

[Flynnie]

Are you collecting all the Gwynn Project 2020s as well?

I've brought 3 (Baller and Chang Mays, Oldmanalan Ted Williams) so far, might get a few more. Some of them are shit, but I really like Sophia Chang's and Ben Baller's, along with some others.

[Patrick Thistle]

I was supposed to be getting a Project 2020 card but it went missing in transit and after many, many months I got my money refunded yesterday.

I might buy some on the aftermarket. There are a few that were very oversubscribed and have not held their retail price, judging by what people are asking on Facebook. There's a guy trying to shift a ton of them and they work out about ?7 each, but he's not had any bites. I think he's trying to sell them in the Topps Baseball Cards UK group rather than the bigger group.

[Flynnie]

I was supposed to be getting a Project 2020 card but it went missing in transit and after many, many months I got my money refunded yesterday.

I might buy some on the aftermarket. There are a few that were very oversubscribed and have not held their retail price, judging by what people are asking on Facebook. There's a guy trying to shift a ton of them and they work out about ?7 each, but he's not had any bites. I think he's trying to sell them in the Topps Baseball Cards UK group rather than the bigger group.

They had a huge surge in interest from about.... Aprilish to July, when the market went crazy because everybody was locked down with nothing to do and there was no actual baseball on. They’ve quieted down since.

That guy needs to sell them off individually. He keeps trying to sell them as a lot, but the problem with the Project 2020s is a lot of them are pretty meh.

[Patrick Thistle]

I've asked him if he'd do the Gwynn card as a solo sale and he hasn't replied. *shrugs*

Got a handful of cards due to arrive soon, plus some on their way from America which may arrive this month.