Accidental Bobble Head Collection

It happens to each of us at one point or another in our collecting: someone sends you something that is related to the team/player you collect but isn't a card. I have lots of things that are Indians related yet have nothing to do with my Tribecards collection. I considered fighting it at first, but then realized that was just a waste of time and generally led to inadvertently hurting someone's feelings. So, I have a slew of non-card Indians items. Bobble heads are such things.

I don't really remember how I came about my first Indians bobbler. I can only assume it was sent to me by one of my friends, most likely in the hobby world. I know that Jack (Baseball Dad) has managed to wrangle at least a couple of these from giveaways at Tribe games. 

The funny thing about collecting is that once you start down a path, whether you meant to or not, it's often hard to quit. You see, this small collection of Indians bobble heads (is it one word or two? I never know) has led to a MUCH larger collection of bobbles in general. I will show those off at some point, but today I am focusing on just the Indians:

From left to right:

Gaylord Perry in celebration of Progressive's 75th year.
Grady Sizemore gold glove
Asdrubal Cabrera
C.C. Sabathia celebrating Cy Young Award
Asdrubal Cabrera celebrating his amazing sidearm sweep (I added the card for effect - haha!)
Retro Baseball Kid Bobble - bought when the family saw the Indians in Cleveland
Bob Feller commemorative statue - Okay, not really a bobble, but belongs here anyway.

These little guys watch over me from the top shelf above my computer desk where I do most of my blogging, gaming, writing, editing, collecting... You get the idea.

I've never had a desire to complete the set of Indians bobble heads, though I suppose that little itch (you know, the one that makes you buy packs to feed your addiction) will come to me one day. And in those moments, I will tear out to sites like eBay in search of nodding little fellas waiting to join their friends here.

1976: Bad Year To Be A Brohamer Card

In 1976, I was 7 years old and deep in the throws of my formative collecting years. I've told stories here before about collecting cards and the awful things my friends and I would do to cards in those days. Now, before you start to think back TOO far, we were beyond the days of using cards in our bike spokes. In fact, I'm not sure any of my friends did that - that was before our time.

What we did, however, is probably considered much worse, much nastier. Much. Nastier. You see, in 1976, we wanted to be sure that our collections would be preserved for all time. And so, we enshrined our cards not in mere pocket pages (which I suppose were available, but we knew nothing of them) nor in shoe boxes nor any other kind of protective storage. Rather, we chose to glue our cards into spiral notebooks.

Yeah, read that again. We glued our cards into spiral notebooks. The Jack Brohamer I have in my personal collection is one of the few bits of evidence and artifact of those days long gone by. I could have easily replaced this card with a specimen in much better condition. In fact, I probably have other '76 Brohamers in my duplicates boxes. But, that isn't the point.

The point is, in my head anyway, to have this keepsake to reflect on those youthful days before we knew what "collecting" was really about. In the photos below, you can see (especially the card back) the remnants of my brutality. I mean, sure, it was bad enough we glued them in, but, we didn't stop there. When we were ready to trade or flip our cards, we simply peeled them off the lined pages to which they had been so meticulously glued. This made for rendering most of the cards completely useless. In fact, most of the cards would simply separate the fronts from the backs. As you see, that's mostly what happened to poor Brohamer here.

Though I cannot say I am proud of the way we treated our bits of cardboard heroes, I can also say that I do not regret such actions. For you see, we were kids. We weren't caught up in book value and future collectibility studies. No, we were wanted to have our keepsakes mounted in the most permanent thing we had at the time. Those really were simpler days. Not saying they were better, just simpler.

1974 Capital Publishing

I've tried to rack my brain and remember just how I managed to acquire these two cards from the 1974 Capital Publishing collection. Try as I might, I just can't recall. Generally, that means one of two things: 1) I bought them on eBay (probably as part of a bigger Indians card lot) or 2) They were sent to me by one of my awesome cardboard habit enablers (that would be one of you).

Either way, these are cool "cards." I say that in quotes because these are about 4.5" x 5.5" and feel like postcards. On the left, we have Ray Chapman and the right is Al Orth (Phillies).

The photos are black and white, as you can see, and are evidently taken from VERY old photos that are probably in the public domain (or were at the time these were made).

The backs feature biographical info and stats from the years they played ball. Note: The backs are just the fronts flipped, so they don't match the pictures above.

Apparently, Capital Publishing released several "versions" of these (some folks refer to later versions as reprints, though that could be debatable). One way to know these are the '74 variety (at least in my research) is the numbering at the bottom. Later versions do not include the card numbers. There are 110 cards in the set.

I have no idea why I have the Phillies player in there. Haha! If you are interested, the list of Cleveland players in the set are listed below and there is a link to the full set below that.

10 Russ Christopher
 11 Snuffy Stirnweiss
 18 Sam Zoldak
 24 Don Black
 32 Cy Young
 39 Tris Speaker
 43 Nap Lajoie
 49 Walt Judnich
 66 Ray Chapman
 72 Elmer Flick
 77 Bill Bradley
 96 Jim Bagby Sr.

http://www.teamsets4u.com/checklist/1970s/1974capitalpub.html

A Pair of Packs of Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks

Don't you just love alliteration? I couldn't resist when concocting catchy, captivating titillating title text. Okay, perhaps I should have resisted. And, I digress. Often.

In the last post, I talked about feeding my cardboard addiction and part of that feeding comes by way of two packs of 2014 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks. I thought it would be fun to not only go through the list of players I got, but let's see where they are now**:

Matt Imhof (Draft Class) - Philadelphia - Lost his right eye in a freak accident* in June 2016. He retired at age 23, currently coaching college ball.

Sean Newcomb (Draft Class) - Los Angeles (Angels) - After bouncing between multiple teams in 2015 (including Arkansas Travelers). He is currently in AA ball for the Braves.

Max Pentecost (Draft Class) - Toronto - Has stayed with the Blue Jays organization, had several surgeries, and is now playing A+ for the Dunedin Blue Jays.

Jordan Luplow - Pittsburgh - Has remained a Pirates prospect, currently playing for Bradenton Marauders in A+ ball. In 2015, racked up several awards including All-Star and Player of the Week.

John Richy - Los Angeles (Dodgers) - Was part of the Phillies deal to send Chase Utley to the Dodgers. Still with the Philly organization, most likely on track to find himself in the 4th/5th pitching spot one day.

James Norwood - Chicago (Cubs) - Still with the Cubs club, playing in Myrtle Beach. His 4.75 ERA includes a couple of rough times of 7.00+ ERA outings plus a nasty 13.50 ERA back in 2014 in just 2 innings. As of 2016, he has brought it back down to 3.25.

Mark Payton - New York (Yankees) - Still with the Yankees, he batted .309 in 2016. In several articles, he is referred to as a "sleeper" prospect about to break out.

Malik Collymore - St. Louis - With St. Louis until mid-2015, he now plays for the Brewers organization. He had a very rough 2016, getting sent to Australia in hopes of building his game and confidence.



*Matt Imhof story/update: http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/phillies-prospect-thriving-after-losing-right-eye-in-freak-accident-at-the-ballpark/
**Player info from baseball-reference.com, milb.com, and other sources.

Feeding the Cardboard Addiction

I left the office and headed out to lunch. I stopped at Walmart because I wanted to see if they had the charging/headphone adapter for my iPhone 7. They did not. Our Walmart has a Subway in it, so I figured I would just eat there since I was already in the store. And, you can imagine what happened next, I'm sure. I stopped by the cardboard aisle. I was just looking, though I had half-heartedly decided to pick up a pack of 2017 Topps since I hadn't busted any of that yet. I felt the pang. Do you get that pang? The one that whispers to you, "Hey... Over here... I'm a blaster box... I have cool bits of collectible cardboard in here..." It whispers, at first. Soon, however, it is screaming at you and you're helpless to resist. The cardboard habit pulls, tugs, and yanks at you, your wallet, your sense of duty... Duty? Yes, you see, the habit, the addiction, convinced me that I needed something for a post. "You don't want to write about what your already HAVE," it said. "You want something new to talk about."

I looked and there was a repack box. I loathe repack boxes, and yet my addiction prevents me from resisting them. "11 Factory Sealed packs inside," the label read. And, just below that, the ever-taunting proclamation: "INCLUDING 1 HOBBY PACK IN EVERY BOX!' A Hobby pack!? In EVERY box!? Oh, man... It's a Hobby pack. Do you know how much Hobby packs are by themselves? This was a blaster with 11 packs for $15. That's not great, but it's not bad, either... right?

I snagged one. I was at the checkout with it before I knew what was happening. The cashier, a family friend, commented, "Buying baseball cards on your lunch break, David?" Yes, YES! Yes, I was. And then I was grabbing lunch. And I wasn't eating it there because I figured I could grab the food, head back to the office and have time to bust open a pack before my break was over. Maybe even TWO packs...

I tilted the box upside down and it felt... wrong. Something wasn't right here. It made a different kind of noise. It didn't sound like 11 packs in a box sliding around. It sounded like something else. Something... plastic.. rubbing against foil. I know that sounds weird, but that's the only way I can describe it. I hurried back to the office, found a quiet spot and ripped open the box. Sure enough, a screw-down nestled itself among the packs. I actually thought it was a graded card at first, but the split along the top convinced me otherwise. Before I took it out, I examined the box... Sure enough. On the side of the box, it said, "LOOK FOR THESE SPECIAL BONUS CARDS..." There was Kris Bryant, Mike Piazza, Ken Griffey Jr, Mickey Mantle, and Cal Ripken Jr. Holy smokes.

The box whispered, "See? I told you to buy me. Now, why don't you come look inside?"

I did. The Hobby pack turned out to be Stars and Stripes... Meh, okay.  The screw-down? A 2015 Cal Ripken Jr insert. Look, don't get me wrong here: any Ripken is a good Ripken. But, a screw-down for a 2015 insert? I would bet the holder is worth more than the contents, not that "worth" has anything to do with why I bought the box to begin with. Still.

There are a couple packs of "Babe Ruth Collection," a few packs of "Triple Play," a couple packs of Prizm "Draft Picks," and a few other random packs. Yes, oh sweet addiction, you got me. I have 11 packs, including one Hobby pack. PLUS, I managed to score the bonus card (found in 1 of 4 boxes).

With the first phase of the addiction process over (the buying and initial bust), the next phase just as eagerly calls out to me... "Open us... Open...just...one... Come on, Dave... Just one..."