Pt 4 - When a fourth equals a thousand

Spring Break put me in a 'chilling out' mood, which means I did not keep up my posting during the week. But it is without further delay that I present the final installment of the 'big ol' box of cards' from none other than FlyinLoco (Andrew)! As in the previous post, I will focus on a few cards out of the big stack that made into my collection!

Leading off tonight, the Cover Story is Carlos Baerga. I should have scanned the back of the card, because it looks like a magazine article with a simulated fold down the middle. Very cool effect. That is followed by an Upper Deck SP Baerga. The Shuey is a very shiny Bowman's Best with Chief Wahoo peeking out from behind Paul. I have always been a fan of the 'credit card' style cards. Martinez looks like he is trying to sell you AMEX. Of course, this Studio card is made of card stock, whereas many of these kinds of cards were actually made of plastic with raised letters and everything. Kenny Lofton's Fleer E-XL D-Fence card is the precursor to the UD Masterpieces we see today. The card as a raised border and actually Lofton is part of that diecut border. Yes, another Baerga comes into view. Hey, when you're the featured player on the Cover Story, you've got to be in the mix, right!? Well, this next card is a Leaf Steel. And, yes, it is a metal card. It's a 1996 and there are 77 cards in the set. The Martinez card is not just a regular UD. This one is an early "Electric Diamond" version. The Checklist card features Albert Belle on a Pinnacle Aficionado. I always liked the mix of foil and card on the Aficionado cards. Charles Nagy has been wrapped up by a big ol' snake on his Metal Universe card. Seriously, what were those guys smoking? And, finally in this group, we have Kenny Lofton showing us how to bunt. "Don't worry Kenny, we'll just paste in a baseball where you should be bunting one. It won't look fake. Really."

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I realize I seem to be using only certain players for these photos today, but that's just how it worked out. Martinez appears on a "Global Reach" subset of Aficionado. The Albert Belle card next to it is a Select Certified with the words "Pastime Power" running around the background image. A weird thing about this card is that you have to turn it upside down to read the back. Grady Sizemore makes his first appearance tonight as a Topps Turkey Red card. How hard is it to duplicate that look in something like Photoshop Elements? I would think not very hard. The next Sizemore card may look like an ordinary Topps 2008, but it is in fact the CLE version! And Sizemore is CLE1. Good ol' C.C. (which happens to be my Mom's dog's name with no connection to the pitcher) stands in, representing a UD Game Face. I'd say that's about right. As for Showdown, I never got into the game for whatever reason. I love the cards, but the game itself just never hit me as worth doing. Ryan Garko heads out of the dugout on a 2008 Topps Opening Day Red card. Why are some red and some white? Why don't all red ones have serial numbers? You want to know why kids don't collect as much these days? Too many weird sets and subsets to keep up with. Who has time for that when they are YouTubing, Facebooking, MySpacing, texting, and Wii-ing all over the place? Well, I had to get at least one 'flaming balls' card in here, right? Okay, so the Sizemore is a 'Hot Commodity' and the ball is headed for the outfield judging by the photo. Let's move on to Larry Doby's UD Vintage. Another question: my database says there are 'regular' versions of UD Vintage from 2003 and there are "ALL CAPS" versions. What's the difference? Is this an 'all caps' version because his name is in all caps?

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As we turn the pages near the end of this chapter of trading, we find Einar Diaz doing his best for the girls at Dinged Corners. Bartolo Colon seems to be floating in his Bowman card. Joe Inglett looks a bit weird on the Topps Heritgae card. Specifically, the "Indians" seems to be floating just in front of him. Next, Thome watches a ball he just launched sail striaght up into the air. If I had to guess, I'd say this is an out. The Donruss throwbacks were a bizarre attempt at the whole retro thing. While I do See some of the appeal, I'm not a big fan of these homage cards. On the other hand, the DOnruss Elite (Burks) and Elite "Extra Edition" (Lee) are very cool card. Well, the Lee looks funny because he seems so small and thin on that card. But, the Diamond Kings (Pronk!) are great looking and have wonderful texture for those that are tactile and enjoy the experience of holding the cards in your hands. Bob Lemon seems to have two different shoes on (his right shoe appears to be white while the left one is black. Or is that just me? Well, either way, I wrap things up with a shot of Burks signing autographs. "How do you spell that??"

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Once again, thank you VERY much, FlyinLoco, for the great additions to my Indians collection!!

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Stay tuned for an upcoming post with cards from AdamE and eTopps.

Pt 3 - When a fourth equals a thousand

I decided to try this a little differently for the 3rd installment of cards sent to me by Andrew. Instead of laying out the cards that made the cut, I scanned in a representative offering. I mainly did this so I could talk about certain cards in particular. Before I get to that, though, I wanted to give you some stats. First of all, this stack of cards had 36 duplicates, many of which were cards Andrew included himself. Much like my own giveaways, there were duplicates in the cards he sent. That suits me just fine, because after my last giveaway, I could use some trade items! Yesterday, I had 8799 cards. After going through this stack, I have bumped my collection to 8907! It blows me away that I am rapidly approaching 10,000 Indians cards! That truly boggles my mind. Then again, if you happened to have been involved in PunkRockPaint's Yahoo fantasy draft, you know it doesn't take much to boggle my mind. I'll get back to the draft later.

Meanwhile, this grouping included some very unique cards that I had not seen before (or sure don't remember seeing). The Kenny Lofton Dugout Axcess Double Header is actually a two-dice, two-player game! You and a friend take turns rolling the dice and what you roll determines how things go for your respective teams. When I was in 5th grade, a friend of mine's father showed us a baseball dice game but he made up what happened before the game. Every game was different because the friend's father liked to spend a lot of time at the local bar before coming home to teach us about dice-based baseball. Funny how certain cards can trigger weird memories, huh?

Also included are things like Russell Branyan's UD Star Rookie foil card, an Upper Deck Retro Futurama card of Jaret Wright. I had never seen that weird thing before. In the scan above, it's the 3rd card down on the right. Roberto Alomar's Topps Finest still had the protective layer on it. Notice I said "HAD." Are you a 'peeler?' I sure am. I hate that 'protective' sheet, so I rip those off unless it's a duplicate. I figure if I am going to trade/give the card away, the recipient may not be as 'liberating' as I am.

Lots of chrome, cool inserts and parallels, and even a Sportflics "1987 Team Preview" of the Indians was in this stack! In '87, the outlook was good. Or so Sportflics thought. The card touts the talents of Joe Carter, Brett Butler, Pat Tabler, Brook Jacoby and Cory Snyder. Pitchers include the "ancient Phil Niekro." Ouch. In the end, "It's the Indians turn to win a title..." Ten years later, we came close. And we would have won it, too, if it weren't for those meddling fish!


I received a lot of Thome cards that I needed! Fantastic stuff! I love the Topps Laser cards - like mainstream oddball gimmicks! And, I had never heard of "On-Base Leaders" versions of Fleer Ultra until now. The Ovation series always appealed to me because of the feel of the stitches. I can remember the first time I took one of those to my Dad (and we were both very much adults by then) and we 'oooed' and ahhhed' over these. In fact, the very first memorabilia card I ever got, I took to him and we both reminisced about the 'old' days of card collecting. You know, the BGUE cards (Before-Game-Used-Era).

Bowman left me dazed and confused once again with the bizarre naming of the cards they have: BDP, AFL, etc. I was able to determine that the AFL cards had something to do with AFLAC, though the Standard Catalog made no mention of the set.

I received several O-Pee-Chee's including a very cool Baerga All-Star redemption card! There were a lot of different brands, years, etc just like the previous posts! The Topps D3 Albert Belle is an eye-watering marvel of technology. If you stare too long, your eyes water, like trying too hard to see one of those stereogram pictures.

I have but one lonely stack of cards left in the box that Andrew sent. We shall see what treasures are discovered tomorrow!

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About the draft: I lost out on a couple of Tribers because I was not paying attention to my "Your Team" list that shows you who you've already picked. That's okay, I snagged a few non-tribers for trading or for use when the Indians aren't playing. That's actually funny, because the truth is, I usually set my team and let it ride for most of the season. This time might be different since I actually know the other folks playing. I've warned everyone that I usually fail miserably at these kinds of things. Don't believe me? Well, in my "Cards on Cards" college basketball pick'em bracket, I am currently in 7th place. Which out of 20,000 might be great. Out of 8, however, that's pretty sad.

All I can say is "LET'S GO TRIBE!" Maybe my "Trundles" can become "Trouncers!" Hmm, I'm not sure what word I thought I was using when I chose my team name, but it turns out that 'trundling' means to spin or roll be means of wheels. So, I'll either be hot-rodding or grasping for the wheelchairs by the time it's all said and one. Either way, it'll be one heck of a ride, kid!

Pt 2 - When a fourth equals a thousand

This post continues the eagle eye view of the cards sent to me by Andrew. The photo above isn't even all of the cards that made the cut in this go-round! You will see some of the others later in the post. But, I can tell you that today's winners (and by 'winners,' I mean those that were added to my collection) amounted to nearly the same size stack as yesterday's! And, only thirteen (13) cards were already in my Indians binders this time! That is absolutely amazing to me.

I think what surprises me the most is just how many cards I actually *do* need for my collection. I mean, look, if I had to guess, I'd say there are what - 150,000 or more unique Indians cards that have been made, right? So, my overall collection at this point might represent less than 1/10th of what's ever been produced. But, having someone send me this many cards that I *need* for my collection leaves me kinda dumbstruck.

Like the previous post on these cards, this group includes a rather eclectic look at brands, types, and styles of baseball cards. And it's all made the better because they are Indians cards, of course! There are O-Pee-Chee stickers, Bowman, Bowman Chrome, Bowman Draft Picks, Bowman Chrome Draft Picks, Bowman Future Gamers (and their Chrome counterparts), Topps, Topps Finest, Stadium Club, Fleer Tradition, and on and on and on!

As a side note here, do you remember the crazy trend where the manufacturers were making all these "post-2000" cards *BEFORE* the year 2000? In this case, I came across what I thought were Fleer E-X 2001. Why? Well, stamped on the front, they said it. On the back, however, the date is actually 1998! Leaf did it in like 1993 or something when they came out with their Team2000 series. Frankly, I always hated that trend. Of course, Donruss had disappeared and re-emerged, so they pulled a 180 on the whole thing. They made cards that were "retro" to fill in the gaps. Remember things like the Donruss 1999 which were actually made in 2001 or some crazy thing? (Yes, my dating of these sets may be a bit off. I'm not writing an expose' here. Well, yeah, sorta, but no. Just stick with me, okay?)

I have to say all these future sets, past sets, inserts, chases, etc, could make a collector go berserk and toss his collection into the ring of fire (Johnny Cash's, not that horrid thing Adam did on Idol last week!! Though, his could be tossed in the fire, too.)... Take for example those Black Diamond cards. They *look* like regular Black Diamonds, but in reality, they are the 'special rookie' insert set. Of course, having the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards close at hand helps tremendously...

Had I known before I started writing that I needed just one more card to make this post have a nice round number for the total cards in my collection, I would have pulled out the next card I needed and entered it. As it is, however, my collection currently stands at 8,799 individual, non-duplicated Indians cards. I need to look back and see how many I had when I first started this blog. I'm sure I wrote it somewhere...

Again, thank you so much to Andrew for this box of cards, and a bigger thank you to EVERYONE that has helped me take my little Indians baseball card collection to places I only dreamed it would ever go!

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Crazy 'want' time: While entering cards, I came across a card that I would dearly love to add to my collection (See below). If you know someone that has it, drop me a line and I will gladly find something to trade for it! There were 10,000 produced, but I don't know how many have survived:

That is a 1997 Upper Deck Sister Assumpta Trivia card. I didn't even know these existed until the past few days. If you don't know, Sister Assumpta is a HUGE Indians fan. She began baking cookies for the team in 1986 as a 'thank you' and she has been associated with Indians baseball ever since. There is a very nice write-up (though a bit dated nowadays) about her here.

I'd love to add one of these to my Tribe cards collection.

When one-fourth equals a thousand

The old adage goes something like "a picture is worth a thousand words." Here's my question: What if that picture represents about one-fourth of a total?

That is what I faced today when I sat down to finally get Andrew's "big ol' box" cards entered into my database. What you see above is about one fourth of the cards he sent me. Why only one fourth? Because that is where I had to stop and take a break! I still have three times that many cards to check against my collection, and based on what you see there, most of the cards left to do will find a happy home in my collection.


See, the stack of cards I went through this afternoon only had NINETEEN (yes, 19) that Andrew had sent that could NOT be added to my collection! To me, that is unbelievable. (The duplicates are not shown in the images here. Every image on this post is of cards from this one massive "added to the collection" stack!)


This first group of cards include Fleer Glossy, Ultras, Sportflics, Topps Stars, Upper Deck, O-Pee-Chee stickers, Panini stickers, and so much more. "And that was only one quarter power," (he) said in a tone of awed confidentiality - to quote one of my favorite stories. Know it? Be the first to answer with the author and title and you win something! All I can promise is that it will be game-used.


I have never received such a large box of cards in which the majority appear to be finding their way into my collection! I cant tell you how much I appreciate the time and effort that went into finding these! Thank you so much, Andrew!


And keep reading - there are four more posts to come about the goodies I uncover/discover in this box!