The Search Is Over

Soon after getting back into the sports card hobby in 2007, I discovered a card set that hooked me once I laid eyes on it.  A then-recently released product, 2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes just had the right mix of elements to get a prodigal collector like me interested.  It had a clean design, one reminiscent of the inserts in early UD sets.  It came in a cool tin that could still be found and was somewhat affordable.  It was a one-pack-per-box product, something that was novel to me and totally different from the card landscape I left behind in 1994.  It came in all sorts of cool colors and variations.  And most importantly, there were five cards of the guy I had my heart set on collecting: Robin Yount.

I remember writing a similar post back in the Thorzul Will Rule days once I acquired all of the blue, green, red, and bronze Yount cards in this set.  They still look really pretty in binders, especially since the first three colors come in a regular, relic, and autograph variation, fitting nicely in rows of three on a nine-card page.  Back when I completed that portion of the rainbow, I knew in the back of my mind that I wasn't really done.  There was still a set of five silver variations, jersey relics-only, that had to be found.  I had some of those at the time, but was short of a true quintet.  Because I can't go back and find the post (Thorzul Will Rule has been wiped from the internet aside from glimpses here and there via the Wayback Machine), I'm not sure what year I "completed" the Yount rainbow.  I'm reasonably sure that it's somewhere between 12 and 15 years ago.  That's how long I've had an eBay saved search ready to tip me off in the event that the final silver parallel I needed went up for sale.  Every couple of years, I would get an alert that there was one available, but it always turned out to be one of the four I already owned.  The same saved search would also hit upon some other pieces of Panini crap that were also limited to 15 copies.  I came to the realization that I would never find that last card.  The Baseball Heroes just came out too long ago, the unopened product has dried up, and all of the copies were in the hands of other collectors unwilling to let them go.  The (admittedly passive) search would go on, day after day, completely fruitlessly.

Until last month.

It came in the mail a couple of weeks ago, but life happened, and I'm only getting the chance to share it now.

2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes #61 Robin Yount Game-Used Jersey Silver Parallel (10/15)

"It's a beaut, Clark!"

What a great card.  Nice pinstripe on the jersey, a perfect photo, and beautiful color.

The only thing now is to find a place in the binder for it.  As you can see below, the other four silvers already fill up a page with the bronzes (#/50), so there's no more room in the inn.  What to do, what to do?

Well, this set is at the very front of a binder holding my Yount collection from 2005-present.  The very first page only contains the five Yount base cards.  I've just kind of left it that way since putting the binder together, not sure why, but now the extra space is coming in handy.  The OCD half of my brain still wishes for a way to fit ten cards into a nine-space page, but the other half rationalizes the reality of the situation.  We will just have to settle for less than perfection.

It's been a pursuit both good and worthwhile.

Bidding Under the Influence #14

 Date: February 16, 2022

Time of Bid: 7:06:43 PM

Cards: 2021 Topps Gallery #146 Robin Yount Printer Proof Parallel

Price: $0.99 (+$0.93 shipping)

What Was I Thinking?:

It's usually the case when I make such a bid that I go after something that just happens to catch my fancy.  It's often not something I am actively chasing, just something I think would be fun to own for a reasonable price.

In this instance, however, the item of my choice fits into my main player collection.  In recent years, I have gotten much less aggressive in my Yount collecting.  Part of it has to do with not liking a lot of what comes out in a given year.  Yes, I'm talking about Panini and its logo-less cards.  They just look like junk, and I refuse to spend money on them.  It's also true that as we start to sneak up on 30 years of post-retirement cards of Robin Yount, you start to see the same images being used over and over.  

While this Gallery card isn't the most memorable, it popped up at the right place and time.  I don't have the regular base card, but buying one on eBay probably isn't a great idea, as those tend to be readily available at shows and shops within a year or so.  It's a nice, clean card, and on the back it includes some biographical information that isn't on a lot of cards, his Lombardi Award for his work done to promote cancer research.

Solid card.

Trade Me Anything XV: #1

We are now ten days away from the start of Card-vent, if you can believe that.  The world has most turned back to normal, barring the small sheets of textiles strapped to our faces while in public.  Seriously, who would have thought that I'd be using the word "mask" fifty times a day?  Just another stupid thing to fight about with 8-year-olds.  Anyway, I still enjoy bringing you the card content you desire, and at this time of year, it's a slow trickle of Trade Me Anything packages.

The first one to arrive came from longtime friend of the blog, Kerry.  

Giving:

#ASG-5 Shohei Ohtani All-Star

Getting:

1987 Fleer Jack Clark, Steve Lake, and Tito Landrum

Back when I first started buying cards in 1986 and 1987, the only cards I could get were Topps.  I've still never opened a pack of '87 Fleer, but I'm about 70% of the way to a full set.

 

2021Panini Prizm #156 Robin Yount 

I have no idea which of the 137 varieties of Prizm this is, but it look really great in person, not so much when scanned.  My Yount collecting has dropped off a cliff recently, but tastes, as they say, can change.

2012 Panini Golden Age #26 Jack Dempsey

The back of this card mentions Dempsey being a part of the first live boxing radio broadcast.  Could there be anything duller than boxing on the radio?

1994 Classic #23 Checklist/Portland Pirates 1994 AHL Champions

We're about two hours away from the start of the Portland Timbers' 2021 playoff campaign.  Let's hope for another Portland championship this year!

 

Great stuff as usual, Kerry!
 

A White Whale Harpooned

A few weeks ago on Twitter I posted that I had acquired a card for my collection that I had been seeking for a very long time.  It the time since then, it did arrive safely.

I started collecting Robin Yount cards in 2007, shortly after finding out that eBay and card grading had made cards I found far too expensive as a child much more attainable.  I got a Yount rookie for somewhere around $20.  Sure, it had a soft corner and the centering was not great, but it was the real deal, something I had only glimpsed in magazines and screw-down holders at shows.

After that, I started buying large lots of Yount cards, many of them oddball stuff from the '80s and '90s as well as base cards of his from sets produced after his retirement.  The ones that really caught my eye were from the 2005 Upper Deck Heroes set.  These were a throwback to the Heroes inserts that began appearing in 1990 with Reggie Jackson and Nolan Ryan.  It was fun to find out that there were indeed five Yount Heroes cards in the 2005 set, and that they came in a rainbow of colors.  On my old blog I shared a partial completion of that set, finishing off the red, green, bronze, and blue parallels, complete with autos and jerseys (with the blue unsigned parallels being particularly tough, numbered to 10).

One of the incomplete subsets of this pursuit was the auto/jersey gold.  Until now.

2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes #63 Gold AUTO/Jersey (03/15)

It's a beauty, isn't it?  And it's even better when displayed with his four brethren.

Over the years, I've been able to get my hands on some of the 1/1's in this set, which come in standard form and with a jersey relic (no autos available).

My Yount collecting has tailed off in recent years for a number of reasons.  For starters, the logo-free Panini cards usually look like garbage, and Topps has had trouble coming up with many new photos for Yount cards.  However, I'll still be on the lookout for new additions to this set.

Trade Me Anything XIII: #4

Coming up is another trade from a long-timer, David G.

Giving:
Opening Day #94 Paul Goldschmidt Red Foil

#US248 Ryan Helsley 150 Years Parallel

#84-23 Lane Thomas 1984 Topps 35th Anniversary

#US95 Nick Senzel

Getting:
Robert Talbott Paisley Tie
Nice try.  I only wear ties when forced.  It stems from having to wear a tie at a near-minimum-wage job during high school.  I've done my time.

San Diego Loyal SC Temporary Tattoo and Belching Beaver Coaster
I would like to try a Belching Beaver, but their locator says that I cannot find it within 100 miles of me.

3-Pack Wine Glass Writer Markers
I stay away from wine, but the packaging shows that these have a variety of other uses.  I will have fun writing jokes on dinner plates.

Brewers Grab Bag
That Yount is one I didn't have yet, so SCORE.  There's two cards in there reporting on Brewer losses to the Dodgers in the 2018 NLCS.  Nasty, nasty.

Beurer 3-in-1 Travelmeister
Looks to be a portable power source for a phone.  Good thing, 'cause my phone's battery has a mind of its own lately.  Hoping it works.  It's German, so it should.

Ken Griffey, Jr. Photo Ball

The Superior Spider-man TPB
A little worn, but looks like it could be a good read.

The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson
This is my favorite item of the lot.  I actually read A Walk in the Woods last year and really enjoyed it.  Can't wait to get started on this one! 

 Thanks for all the cool stuff, David!
 
 

2019 Card-vent Calendar: December 14

December 14, 2019:
2003 Fleer Ultra #37WG Robin Yount When it Was a Game

Kind of a strange design on this Yount card.  Mustard-gold border, with kind of a wood panel television set motif, or maybe a cafeteria tray or cutting board thing going on, a portal to another dimension of cloud-filled grandeur.  But the star of the show here is the name, slightly off-center in the middle of the card in beautiful yellow drop shadow sitcom font.  Yes, Robin Yount would have made a good neighbor on Perfect Strangers, playing the straight man when Balki needed to pop next door to borrow some power tools.  On an endless timeline in infinite universes, this has already happened.

NSCC Fallout Pt. 8: Quarter Box Coma III

The quarter box continues to produce...

 2007 Fleer Ultra Lucky 13 Daisuke Matsuzaka
These Lucky 13's were base set slight short prints in '07 Ultra, and right at the time I got back into the hobby, there was no hotter rookie than Dice-K. It's amazing what twelve years can do, as I'm sure this card was going for $15-20 back then. If I ever decide to make a run at the set, I'll need this one and be glad I got it for a quarter.
   

1974 Topps Tony Perez
I just love those spring training shots where you can see for miles behind the player.
   

1994 Donruss Frank Thomas Long Ball Leaders
As a 1:12 insert, this would have been a special pull back in 1994. I bought a few packs of the stuff back then, but never got any of this insert. I would argue that 1994 Donruss is one of the best looking sets of the '90s, and the Long Ball Leaders, though text heavy, looked pretty good, too.


 2007 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects David Price Gold
The majority of this set, including base, chrome, and gold, is sitting in a box somewhere. I think once I finish something else, I'll put together a want list for it.
   

1977 Topps George Brett / Ken Brett Big League Brothers
Did a quick check after getting home. I had several of these brothers cards, but not this one. Happy to scoop it up.
 

1979 Topps Pete Rose
Wow, already 3,164 hits by this time, and it's not even the '80s.
   

1978 Topps Robin Yount
Another case of a card I already have, plus I've already completed the Topps set. This is something I can put on a table at a garage sale that some old guy will gladly pay $2 for.
   

2018-19 Panini Prizm Giannis Antetokounmpo
King of the city where I live, this card did not show up in the box I bought earlier, but now it's mine.


More to come...

NSCC Fallout Pt. 5: Quarter Box Coma I

My first hour or so at this year's NSCC was spent fulfilling another one of my show goals: Slipping into a dime box-induced coma. Technically, it was a quarter box, but the effects were the same. My blood pressure fell, my REM cycle activated, and I had an erection the size of a Charleston Chew. Well, maybe not the last part, but I was relaxed and content to let the world around me disappear. I'll be recapping my purchases in chunks of whatever fits all at once on my scanner.  

2011 Topps Tribute Yogi Berra Blue (106/199)
The kind of thing that should resell for a few bucks.
 

4 2014 Panini Prizm World Cup Commons
Not too sure about the Froot Loop stickers, but these came from the same seller as all those great WWE cards.
   

1977 Topps Robin Yount
Already have it, of course, but probably don't have one for the '77 set.
   

1993 Leaf Gold Leaf Stars Ken Griffey, Jr. / Andy Van Slyke
   

2000 Fleer Showcase Long Gone Mark McGwire Seemed like a good idea to grab this as a 1:20 packs insert.
 

1974 Topps Ken Stabler I will eventually start trying to build this set, as it's the vintage football set I have the most of. Needed the Snake, good to get him cheap.


 More to come...