Thursday, October 15, 2020

An Unexpected PWE: Everyone's Dream

I recently received a PWE from Brendan, better known as Elliptical Man over at A View from the Third Floor. When I saw the envelope, I didn't think I had won a recent giveaway or anything, so I was intrigued. So, what was inside? It didn't take me long to see they were all candidates for my Frankenset, but if there was any doubt, Brendan included a little checklist guide to what he sent.

Eighteen cards in total made their way from beautiful San Diego to the less picturesque Fargo in a 70 cent envelope. Some were cards I already had in my Frankenset, but some were new to me, so I will need to see if they might find a home in the set. 

Dave Stewart the cameraman. Chuck Finley hugging a runner. The Gary Pettis is a great find. He missed the bunt! Hadn't noticed this one before. Some great glasses/sunglasses shots, too. Do you know the guy in the middle? Scroll down for the answer. And Steve Carlton with the White Sox? Just doesn't look right.

Chris Bosio signing some autos. Why is 40-something Carlton Fisk bunting? Tim Raines bunting - makes more sense. Pitcher running the bases. Two legendary nicknames. Love a good bubble gum card. And then you have the Rollie Fingers mustache battling the Justin Turner beard (sorry it's sideways). 

I appreciate Brendan going through my list and finding some awesome cards to fit my Frankenset categories. He's a loyal reader of the blog, too, so I owe him a double thanks! 

The man in the middle on page one was the one and only Jay Buhner. If you got it wrong, you owe me one Ken Phelps card.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Bo Knows Frankensets

As I've alluded to in recent posts, I am very close to completing my Frankenset. Being in the final stages, I've identified my final steps toward completion.

1) Wait for my recently acquired smelly cards to de-stinkify so I can go through the ones I set aside as Frankenset candidates. Hoping I don't have to wait more than another week. I might have to do a fresh batch of baking soda in each box. Stay tuned.

2) File some of my recent acquisitions in their respective slots. (More on this in a moment.)

3) Compile a listing of the cards in Excel (this is mostly complete).

4) Fill in the blank slots with checklist cards (this will probably take the longest of any of the steps). If anyone has created a custom checklist before, I would appreciate tips in the comments below.

After I complete the set, I'll have to decide how to unveil it. I have been posting just my top three cards from each page a page at a time for a few months now, but might go back to the beginning and show each page card by card. Or I might pick a random page to show each time. We'll see. 

I've made great strides in the last couple months on the Frankenset due in large part to Card Barrel, which has a fantastic supply of inexpensive cards from random sets and years for me to choose from. Those people are undoubtedly puzzled each time I place an order, wondering why in the world I would choose the cards I do. 

Sometimes, there are some great Frankenset candidates in the vintage era, and that's where I've sought out other help. Specifically, Bo from Baseball Cards Come to Life and I recently swung a trade for some mostly vintage cards that I would have had to pay way too much for on Card Barrel. Instead, I was able to take advantage of Bo's extensive trade list to nab some great cards for my final push. Behold the beauty:

1976 Topps #639, Fred Kendall; 1981 Topps #541, Steve Swisher

Leading off with a couple "lesser knowns." Both men had more famous sons become major leaguers, Jason and Nick respectively. Bonus points for the Swisher beard. 


1976 Topps #363 Dave Collins; 1972 Topps #284 Ike Brown; 1979 Topps #31 Tom House 

Some solid 70s glasses with some notable facial hair sprinkled in.


1974 Topps #382 Bob Moose

This card checks so many Frankenset boxes. Hair, mustache, facial expression, name. Phenomenal.


1994 Pinnacle #490, Chris Sabo

In a Frankenset where "glasses" is a category, it would be a crime to exclude Chris Sabo's goggles. Bonus points for appearing with the Orioles, for whom he played only 68 games.


1973 Topps #483, Dal Maxvill

A guy named "Dal." I had no idea what that was short for, and I didn't even have to go to baseball-reference.com for assistance. The back of the card has his full name: Charles Dallan Maxvill.


1973 Topps #530 Jim Kaat

An AL pitcher at the plate in a set from the year the DH debuted. Unbeatable. 

So there are nine more fantastic cards for the Frankenset. Bo is a pleasure to trade with and he makes it even easier with his trade list and want lists. Thanks Bo!

Friday, October 2, 2020

Massive Card Lot for $40? Yes, Please.

I haven't posted in a while and part of the reason why is this massive haul of cards:


I regularly search Craigslist and Facebook locally in the hopes of finding big groups of cards for cheap. I've done it before with good results. So even though I really had no idea what was in this lot, I figured $40 would be worth the hunt. And it was, but the lot wasn't without disappointment.

The Bad:

I'm not sure how many cards were in this lot. I planned to try to do a rough count, but kind of lost interest in that early on. Maybe 30,000 to 50,000. That's my rough estimate. In any event, about half the cards basically had to be trashed. I'm not one to throw away cards, but a good number were yellowed and smelled pretty bad due to some combination of dust/smoke/general mustiness. So that was disappointing. The upside of that group of cards is it was basically all Overproduction Era cards, so not a huge loss. 

A decent number of cards in the lot also had some of the stink, but none of the yellowing. Those cards are currently sealed away in boxes with baking soda. I heard this needs to be done for a week to be effective. I hope it works. I snuck a smell (LOL) tonight - after 5 days - and it seems to have helped somewhat. I might do a second week with a new box of baking soda, even though I really want to get at these cards to do more sorting and filing. If anyone has a better tip for exorcising the smell, leave a comment for me.

The Good:

The cards I'm about to show already add up to me recovering my $40, so that's some of the good news. Also, there was a nice box of about 500 Topps Archives cards from 2001, so I should be able to flip those on eBay (they looked like players with last names S-Z, so if you need someone in that range, let me know and I'll take a look for you before I list the cards on eBay). There was also a box of some premium inserts from the mid-90s that have some value. I used some of the Griffey inserts to sell a lot on Facebook, so have already recovered some of the investment:



I'm excited to keep a lot of the cards I found, including a good stack of cards to possibly plug in to my nearly-complete Frankenset (more on that in a upcoming post). There are several hundred of those to go through, so that will be fun. Some others I'm excited to keep are of course, waxy rookies!!!


If you're curious, there wasn't a ton of vintage in the lot (just a few 70s cards), but there were a few hundred early 80s cards. I'll probably ditch the Overproduction Era commons at some point, but will save cards for my player files. So if there's a player you're interested in, as always, let me know and we can work on a trade. Might be a while before I get everything filed though.

Thanks for stopping by!