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We have a football card thread and a hockey card thread but not a baseball card thread. Baseball cards are the coolest! I don't really collect new issues at this point. I'd be interested to see what's out there, and if someone wants to throw together some information on that I'll edit it in here. Last I heard Topps has an exclusive for MLB cards and other companies were doing player cards with college logos or no logos to try and get around that. Right now my main card focus is dabbling in low grade T206s, a series of tobacco cards made from 1909-1911. The crown jewel of that small collection is a Christy Mathewson dark cap with Sweet Caporal back that I picked up for under $50 raw in the fall. It has some pretty serious back damage from being pasted into an album book, but I was able to soak off the attached construction paper and the paper loss and glue stains weren't quite as bad as I feared. It still only graded out as a SGC 10, but it did qualify for a number grade, and a Matty in a 1 is still a $200-300 card. From the front, it displays more like a 2 or 3 with no front paper loss and no major creases. I don't think I'm going to sell it though, a 101 year old card with bright and beautiful art of one of the greatest pitchers ever is a fun conversation piece. And The Christian Gentleman is one of my favorite deadballers. I'll try and take some pictures at some point. My ultimate collecting goal is to get seriously into 1953 Topps, which is my favorite looking set ever. Every now and then I see a nice looking low grade Mantle and it ends up being juuuuuust a little too much. Some day... I also collect autographs and baseball art to a degree. As one tends to do with age unless you want to be one of Those Guys, I've transitioned more towards collecting stuff that looks cool on display as opposed to chasing random guys to sign baseballs. (This is also why I'm more into cool looking old cards than new issues, probably.) If there's interest I can talk about that whole autograph racket more. Every now and then I pick up a new bobblehead or statue for the desk, but I'm not sure I really qualify as a collector of those. And since this is going to be a popular question: what about all of those rookie cards you have from the late-80s and 90s? They were massively overproduced and are mostly worth under $100, in most cases far under. oldfan fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Mar 12, 2011 |
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Mar 12, 2011 22:11
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jeffersonlives posted:I also collect autographs and baseball art to a degree. As one tends to do with age unless you want to be one of Those Guys, I've transitioned more towards collecting stuff that looks cool on display as opposed to chasing random guys to sign baseballs. (This is also why I'm more into cool looking old cards than new issues, probably.) If there's interest I can talk about that whole autograph racket more. Every now and then I pick up a new bobblehead or statute for the desk, but I'm not sure I really qualify as a collector of those.  Most of the signatures are of second-rate players, but it's always a nice surprise on who you get from time to time. Speaking of signatures though, in this day and age of exclusive autograph deals/signing events, is there still a method to acquire signatures through writing letters? Or are some players contractually obligated not to sign? Has this been a viable method for other Baseball fans?
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Mar 12, 2011 22:20
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Harlock posted:Speaking of signatures though, in this day and age of exclusive autograph deals/signing events, is there still a method to acquire signatures through writing letters? Or are some players contractually obligated not to sign? Has this been a viable method for other Baseball fans? Some guys sign through the mail and some guys don't, and then you get into some other related issues like pre-prints and fees (some guys will only sign through the mail for a charity donation or whatnot). This is a pretty good place to find out addresses and whether a guy signs, what he signs, how reliable he is, etc.
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Mar 12, 2011 22:25
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jeffersonlives posted:And since this is going to be a popular question: what about all of those rookie cards you have from the late-80s and 90s? They were massively overproduced and are mostly worth under $100, in most cases far under. Every dollar I received for birthdays, Christmas, from the tooth fairy, all of it went into baseball cards. At the time I was quite sure that the 1986 Topps "Traded" set was going to be my ticket to a comfortable retirement. Oh those rookies...
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Mar 12, 2011 22:31
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trem_two posted:Every dollar I received for birthdays, Christmas, from the tooth fairy, all of it went into baseball cards. At the time I was quite sure that the 1986 Topps "Traded" set was going to be my ticket to a comfortable retirement. Oh those rookies... Good news: you have a bunch of really cool rookies, including Barry Bonds. Bad news: a sealed factory set of 1986 Topps Traded is worth a whopping $15 even with the Bonds rookie.
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Mar 12, 2011 22:37
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My Jimmy Dean card series have sentimental value.
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Mar 12, 2011 22:42
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I just recently got back into the hobby. A couple boxes worth of 2011 Topps and I have myself my first ever complete set built from wax breaks. Not much, but it's mine.
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Mar 13, 2011 00:26
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I'm still bitter that the bottom fell out of the baseball card market so my cards aren't really worth anything, but I have some interesting stuff that's sitting in my mom's basement right now. (Note that I don't live in her basement, just my baseball cards do). I stopped collecting when I was 15 so I haven't kept up with the last 12 or so years of cards but it was a fun thing for my dad and I to do at the time. My favorite card is a 1996 Donruss Press Proof Gold Ken Griffey Jr. that I pulled out of a pack, they only made 2000 of each card. I have a Cal Ripken Jr. rookie card and an Alan Trammell rookie (might have Lou Whittaker too). I also have a couple of late Willie Mays cards, one of them signed and the other is a 1965 Topps Embossed (I'll upload a picture when I find it, these are awesome cards. It would be fun to go back and try to get the whole set. I mostly bought packs when I was a kid but my dad bought me a few of those single cards for fun. e: Found the embossed picture. How awesome is that? 
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Mar 13, 2011 00:52
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One of the random cool things I have on my desk is the set of Washington Nationals Presidents bobbleheads. The Nationals of course have the president races, and in 2007 did four bobblehead days at the stadium, one for each president. I ended up eBaying the entire set for I think $30. I collect offbeat political nostalgia items too occasionally, so this was right in my wheelhouse:    Not anything worth money, but they're cool looking.
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Mar 13, 2011 01:07
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I would be remiss if I didn't post this, a checker's/rally's free french fry coupon signed by Carl Crawford:  It of course says: "Have a great fries - CC"
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Mar 13, 2011 01:42
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I have almost every season from 1988 to 1996 of Topps. I have a few seasons of Upper deck as well. Still holding onto them in hopes they are worth bank when I am older! P.S. Unopened 
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Mar 13, 2011 04:45
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Regarding autographs, I only have one autographed baseball item. I went to a Cards/Blue Jays spring training game in 1987 and got a baseball autographed by Vince Coleman, Ozzie Smith, Jack Clark, Willie McGee and Whitey Herzog. That was a pretty awesome day. I had no idea what happened to it over the course of my various moves over the years, but my mom recently found it while cleaning out her basement. 
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Mar 13, 2011 05:21
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I have a bruce chen autographed braves hat from when I was 15, my first major league game
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Mar 13, 2011 05:24
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 The bat was gifted to me by best friend. I'm told it's an actual game used bat. I have suspicions on that. Ball is signed by Chase Headley and Will Venable. I got that on my recent Spring Training trip. He also has a mad stash of baseball cards in which I might request to acquire.
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Mar 13, 2011 05:54
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I might be able to help...post a picture of the entire bat, a closeup of the handle, and the knob and I can do a little digging to see if they're style matches.
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Mar 13, 2011 06:01
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Knob: (he was #3 for the Tigers so that leads more credence that this was a game bat. However, I took it at as bat length/weight difference like a 30/33 is a 3, also) Bat: (another thing that had my suspicions, is his name on it. I don't know if that's akin to Roy Halladay having his name stitched on glove.)  Grip: 
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Mar 13, 2011 06:21
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Bats have players' names on them and most have their jersey number. That writing is consistent with the style that Trammell wrote his number on bat knobs for much of his career. The bat type more generally fits Trammell's bats - he used that shape of handle with no tape and that pattern of tar. The bat appears to have low to moderate use. The actual marker signature looks good. Trammell mostly used Louisville Sluggers during his career, but he was also known to use Worths, LLS, and, wait for it, SSKs. Trammell actually endorsed SSK equipment in the mid-80s. He used their gloves for more of his career, but there's at least a few pictures floating around with him and their bats. So, it's the same thing with any game used bat. It's a consistent style match. Unless you can find a photo of that particular bat in Trammell's hands or have great provenance, you can't be sure that it isn't a game model that was used by someone else, or a BP bat. It's almost certainly not a fake, because it's an awful lot of trouble to go through to forge a bat that might sell for $150-200 at auction.
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Mar 13, 2011 06:42
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Most of my stuff is hockey but I do have a couple of baseball things I am particularly happy about. One is a baseball signed by (among others) Harry Kalas and Dale Murphy. Kalas, of course, for being in the pantheon of broadcasters and Murphy for being one of the nicest guys in the history of sports. Plus his signature is gorgeous, especially compared to some of the scribbles you get anymore. My other favorite item is a jersey card that Jose Canseco signed for me at a Syracuse Skychiefs game a week before he retired while he was playing for the Charlotte Knights. He was one of my absolute favorite players but that was the only time I ever got to see him play in person. Even at that point in his career he still had a ton of people interested in him and signed a ton of autographs at that game.
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Mar 13, 2011 10:00
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Scoobi posted:I would be remiss if I didn't post this, a checker's/rally's free french fry coupon signed by Carl Crawford: This never fails to make me laugh. I'd love to have it framed on my desk to look at every day.
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Mar 13, 2011 15:37
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SAVE_US.CHR
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I've got a few things sitting on my desk in front of me. I've got a couple of balls signed by Ted Simmons, Ed Figueroa, and Kevin Maas (lol), along with signed pictures from Tom Seaver, Ron Blomberg, and Bobby Murcer. e: the Seaver autograph is of course, a fake. My dad sent away for it when he was a kid, and it was probably signed by a clubhouse attendant. MODS CURE JOKES fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Mar 13, 2011 |
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Mar 13, 2011 16:14
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I recently started collecting cards again, but I am only really interested in older Topps sets. I decided to start with the sets I collected as a kid and work my way backwards, so I started with 1990 and I'm at 1983 now. I'm taking a break from buying new sets for a while though since CPA review courses are expensive as gently caress. Of course, I probably have no chance in hell of ever getting 1950s or early 1960s sets unless I get rich someday. Maybe I should lower my goals to something more realistic and just shoot for Cardinals cards from each year or something
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Mar 13, 2011 18:06
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Big time collector here, great stuff all around. Anybody here post on Net54 or the CU forums? Great folks to make some trades/transactions with. I was a modern collector until about a year ago then started delving into vintage tobacco stuff and now 50s Topps. Working on a partial 59 Topps set and want to get all the Topps/Bowman issues of Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford for an office project (when I move it's going up on the wall). Project's moving slowly though! Only have the 54 Topps Ford and 59 Topps Ford. The 53 Berra I'm hoping to land at the Chantilly, VA show next week. It's one of a few cards I'm willing to spend the extra money on for a solid 6 or 7 grade. Raw VG/EX sell for 75-90 bucks, I'd go up to 130 I think for a decent 5 or 6. WE shall see.
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Mar 13, 2011 18:29
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WillBBC3 posted:Big time collector here, great stuff all around. Anybody here post on Net54 or the CU forums? Great folks to make some trades/transactions with. I lurk on Net54, GUU, and occasionally CU. I should probably be active in the trading communities, but I tend to skew more towards looking for the occasional super-bargain find instead of paying fair market price and those people all know what they're doing! Once every couple of months you find a ridiculously low eBay BIN or something too cheap at a flea market and it feels much more cool than paying wholesale market.
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Mar 13, 2011 18:44
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It's crazy to see what happened to the card market just from when I started collecting (like 1995). We've gone from having all of these companies in the market: -Upper Deck -Topps -Donruss/Pinnacle -Pacific -Fleer/Skybox/Flair -Score down to basically just Topps, thanks to MLB basically telling Topps that they are the only ones allowed to produce licensed trading cards. Upper Deck is hanging on by a thin thread at this point, having lost the ability to do much beyond license college stuff. Tristar also makes some minor league stuff that isn't licensed, but it seems like they keep making cards of the same players. As a result, we've gone from the days of Topps releasing 5 different card sets a month, to maybe one every two months.
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Mar 13, 2011 18:59
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jeffersonlives posted:So, it's the same thing with any game used bat. It's a consistent style match. Unless you can find a photo of that particular bat in Trammell's hands or have great provenance, you can't be sure that it isn't a game model that was used by someone else, or a BP bat. It's almost certainly not a fake, because it's an awful lot of trouble to go through to forge a bat that might sell for $150-200 at auction. Tangent: When I was about 8 years old I found a baseball that was signed by lots of well known players. Signed by Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Gene Tenace to name a few. Not knowing what I found, grabbed my bat and started to play ball with it. I destroyed probably at most a thousand dollar baseball into rubbish. Not a single signature was legible. Go me! 
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Mar 13, 2011 19:11
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FlamingLiberal posted:Tristar also makes some minor league stuff that isn't licensed, but it seems like they keep making cards of the same players. In The Game, which up until now has done excellent hockey-only products, just came out with a baseball edition of Heroes and Prospects. http://www.itgtradingcards.com/products/1011_hpbase/1011_hpbase_c.html There are some absolutely insane patches and 1/1's and other crazy stuff there, plus a ton of guys who could hit it big someday.
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Mar 13, 2011 19:24
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JediGandalf posted:Yeah I tried to find some photos of the bat being used in game but I'm turning up nothing. Trammell would have used hundreds and hundreds of bats over the course of his career so you probably won't be able to photomatch it. JediGandalf posted:Tangent: When I was about 8 years old I found a baseball that was signed by lots of well known players. Signed by Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Gene Tenace to name a few. Not knowing what I found, grabbed my bat and started to play ball with it. I destroyed probably at most a thousand dollar baseball into rubbish. Not a single signature was legible. Go me! Given the time period and that those guys were all A's, there's a very high chance that it was actually a stamped souvenir ball and not real autos.
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Mar 13, 2011 19:39
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ElwoodCuse posted:In The Game, which up until now has done excellent hockey-only products, just came out with a baseball edition of Heroes and Prospects. At this point I only buy cards to get signed in person or through the mail.
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Mar 13, 2011 19:51
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There was this comics shop near my house that had boxes and boxes of I think 1989 Topps NHL cards which I picked up for really cheap. So for a while I pretty much had an endless supply of that set's common cards like Jody Hull before they were eventually destroyed (me being a kid and all). I think I also picked up a lot of either '93 or '94 Upper Deck cards, it was this really slick set that looked very fancy at pre-teen me. The weird thing is both of those sets along with NHLPA '93 for the SNES strongly informed my worldview of the NHL for the next five years. It'd be like, "I know Tom Chorske! Why isn't he a bigger deal!" Gave up on collecting long ago but I still have my Micro Machines, Simpsons memorabilia, and various Marvel Comics-themed figurines lying around somewhere. God what a collossal waste of money.
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Mar 13, 2011 19:56
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Kim Jong Il posted:Gave up on collecting long ago but I still have my Micro Machines, Simpsons memorabilia, and various Marvel Comics-themed figurines lying around somewhere. God what a collossal waste of money.
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Mar 13, 2011 20:04
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I used to collect hockey cards and Starting Lineups. I have a whole bunch of unopened SLUs, some as far back as 1993 when they started doing hockey, some fairly rare as well, like promotional items, but the market pretty much tanked on SLUs as a whole, it seems. They're back home, otherwise I'd take photographs. I have a lot of hockey autographs, too.
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Mar 13, 2011 20:06
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shyguy posted:I used to collect hockey cards and Starting Lineups. I have a whole bunch of unopened SLUs, some as far back as 1993 when they started doing hockey, some fairly rare as well, like promotional items, but the market pretty much tanked on SLUs as a whole, it seems. They're back home, otherwise I'd take photographs. I have a lot of hockey autographs, too. The last valuable Starting Lineup figures are the rare 88 or 89 football players. There are some guys who were only sold in their local market and now set builders will pay hundreds for them.
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Mar 13, 2011 20:24
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I still have all my old commons from the 70's Topps sets from all 4 major leagues. It is fun to go through them every once in a while. I think I could still put together a few sets if needed. evilwaldo fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Mar 13, 2011 |
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Mar 13, 2011 20:31
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My brother has a signed 8 by 10 headshot of Ron Gant that we can't remember where it came from. I have an autographed Lou Brock ball and a bunch of Mark McGwire 1998 memorabilia that I'm sure has declined in value.
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Mar 13, 2011 23:49
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Is there a difference in signability between the $3 Rawlings balls and the $19 ones? If I mailed one off, would it be less likely to get signed than the official MLB one? I had a signed rookie card for Luis Gonzalez. He drove in the winning run for the Diamondbacks in game 7 of the 2001 World Series. I heard about his used chewing gum going for insane prices afterwards, so I'm sure the card could've gotten some money, but it had personal value.
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Mar 14, 2011 03:06
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DrBagpipes posted:Is there a difference in signability between the $3 Rawlings balls and the $19 ones? If I mailed one off, would it be less likely to get signed than the official MLB one? The quality of the leather is hugely different. The official ROMLBs sign much nicer and last much longer. You can get a case of 12 for in the $140-150 range online. Target usually has them cheapest of the brick and mortar stores, $15 or so. I'd only send balls to guys who are known to sign larger objects through the mail since between the cost of the ball and the cost to mail it twice it's not an entirely insignificant expense. Never hurts to send an initial letter asking if you can send a ball.
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Mar 14, 2011 03:15
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jeffersonlives posted:The quality of the leather is hugely different. The official ROMLBs sign much nicer and last much longer. You can get a case of 12 for in the $140-150 range online. Target usually has them cheapest of the brick and mortar stores, $15 or so. Yeah, after reading some more the durability of the official balls is cited as the best thing. Apparently signatures fade on the cheaper ones. The SCF address database thing you posted does mention a few guys signing baseballs with no problem, so I'd feel confident in sending one to, say, Mariano Rivera based on it. Not a bad idea to send letters ahead of time to other guys, though. Of course, since I live in Florida I should maybe just get off my rear end and go to a game.
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Mar 14, 2011 03:29
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Mariano has bizarre TTM habits. It's like playing the lottery, obviously he gets a shitload of mail and once every homestand he picks up a pile and starts signing for a little while. And then he stops and presumably dumps the rest of it. I'd probably aim a little lower and send him an 8x10 or a magazine or something like that instead, which has the advantage of being both cheaper and sticks out more.
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Mar 14, 2011 03:33
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Groucho Marxist posted:My brother has a signed 8 by 10 headshot of Ron Gant that we can't remember where it came from. I have an autographed Lou Brock ball and a bunch of Mark McGwire 1998 memorabilia that I'm sure has declined in value. I bought a bunch of 62! St. Louis Post Dispatches on eBay. I recycled them a few months ago.
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Mar 14, 2011 03:37
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A couple of years ago (probably longer), my fiance came to me when I was watching a game on TV and told me to close my eyes. I was skeptical, but I don't get gifts or surprises very often so I went along with it. She puts a plastic cylinder in my hands, and since I'm really dense I have no idea what it is. She tells me to open my eyes, and this is what I see:  "What the gently caress? You bought me a bat? Why would you do that?" She told me to shut up and just look at the drat thing. Upon further inspection, it looked to be pretty loving cool (even if it was a little bit out of left field).  Supposedly that's Hall of Fame 3B Eddie Mathews autograph on a baseball bat. My jaw about hit the floor when I actually saw who it was, and I had no idea how she'd get her hands on something like this (we didn't have a lot of free funds at the time). She went on to tell me that one of her painting professors was a gigantic baseball fan/collector, and that he supposedly had a room full of this kind of stuff. She'd bullshit with him every class session about baseball, and he'd tell her all of his awesome baseball experiences (watching Ted Williams play as a young boy, living in California and watching the Dodgers, Willie Mays, etc.). It was like something straight out of the Sandlot, and hilariously enough the guy is actually the spitting image of James Earl Jones too. He asks her how she got into baseball, and she tells him it was through me. So this guy just gives her an autographed baseball bat by a HoF 3B to give to her fiance, whom he has never even met or spoken to. Even if it's a fake (I've got no certificate of authenticity, and I'd feel like a tool/rear end in a top hat asking him if he had one) I still think it's a pretty cool story, and a very nice thing to do for a fellow baseball fan who you've never even met.
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Mar 14, 2011 04:56
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