Last time 1962 held on for a 5-4 victory. Who will win this time? Joe Cunningham gets the under-the-brim, avoid the logo look. Topps would take this photo of each player in case they got traded in the offseason. In Cunningham's case, the Cardinals' veteran outfielder, who was an All-Star in 1959 when he hit .345, was traded after the 1961 season to the White Sox for Minnie Minoso. Cunningham had a good year in 1962 but got hurt in 1963 and was never the same. Overall in 1,141 games for the Cardinals, White Sox and Senators, he hit .291 with 64 HR and 436 RBI. After his playing career he retur ..read more

RIP David McCarty, who played eleven years in the major leagues. He shared his thoughts on baseball cards with this blog in 2009.   I got quite lucky with an eBay seller with a bunch of 1933 Goudeys. I ended up with 9 for $27, a very good price considering there were three Hall of Famers. They are all missing the red bar that says "Big League Chewing Gum" but are still wonderful pieces of 90 year old cardboard. In person the colors really pop. Sam Byrd was one of two Yankees I picked up. The back says he was on the "Yankess". It calls him "one of the best golfers in professional baseball ..read more

I worked out a nice big trade with Jerry Straniero of OBC. I sent him a few hundred 1970s cards. Here is what I got in return. Starter sets for three Topps Heritage sets. 2023 . . .  . . . 2022 . . . . . . and 2005. These sets tend to have much better photo selection than the regular base sets. Jerry surprised me by throwing in a whole lot of really nice vintage too! Eight 1965 Topps Embossed, largely Hall of Famers. Some 1960s needs. A dozen from 1960. Late 1950s. Mid 1950s Topps.. The 1955 Bowmans have certainly been coming in lately. Finally a couple of 1954 Bowmans. "Larry" o ..read more

 Weekly Greg Morris winnings continue to be fun. Some big names at pretty low prices. This may not have been my best purchase. I paid $15 for a 1966 Aaron. It's a thinner cardstock, which by itself is not completely a red flag, there was a lot of variety in '66 cardstock and I have others this thin. However the back is blurrier than other '66s I have. I should probably have looked closer at the photos in the listing. I'm just going to assume it's real as I don't have definite proof that it's not, put it in the set and not think about it. There was another eBay seller who had 1968 Atlant ..read more

Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown has relaxed his condition requirements on his 1970s setbuilds, so I was able to send some cards his way to help him on those. In return he sent me a really fun mix of vintage cards. Starting off with 18 cards from 1980 Kellogg's. Some big stars there. I'm not concerned about the curling, these get packed tightly in a box and straighten out eventually. 1983, the last year of Kellogg's cards. I don't see cards from this set very often. Some 1970s Kelloggs. Lots of big stars. 1963 Fleer cards don't come around all that often. Too bad they didn't last longer, th ..read more

When you think of baseball's Wizard of Oz, you probably think of Ozzie Smith. But it looks like Ozzie Virgil was also known as "WIZ". We get a nice helmet rack shot for Sparky Anderson's card. #9 was Fred Lynn. #19 was pitcher Doyle Alexander, so it is a little strange that he had a helmet. Maybe it was a spring training game in an NL park? If the photo was from 1986 it might be Darnell Coles's helmet (in which case #9 was Doug Baker). Juan Castillo, #3 on the Brewers, appears to have the bat of Hall of Famer Robin Yount, #19. Luis Medina is holding bat #65 in this spring training shot. Whe ..read more

This was by far the most unusual newspaper in the stack of papers I bought at the flea market last year. This was an English-language newspaper for Pinang, one of the largest island provinces in Malaysia. The audience was primarily English, Australians and Americans who were living there. This newspaper, which as it's title indicates was a merger of two separate papers, operated from 1946 to 1972. Two weeks earlier, the capital city of Kuala Lumpur was rocked by widespread violence, with post-election tensions between Malays and ethnic Chinese leading to riots, leaving hundreds dead. Pinang sa ..read more

A few incoming cards this week.  Starting with a PWE from a very nice trader on TCDB, someone whom I've traded with before and would do so again. I am keeping him nameless this time, to show how pointless some of the things are people do when trying to "protect" cards in a PWE. The cards arrived in a nine-pocket page with the superfluous cereal-box cardboard on either side. I find the cardboard doesn't add extra protection (that is what the plastic pages are for), but the corners of the cardboard are great at poking holes in the thin paper of an envelope. The sender also stamped "Photos ..read more

Once again we have a spring training shot . . .   . . . with a dubious date.   On Tom Seaver's card the photo was exactly the same time as his 1973 base card. For Simmons, the photo is different but was clearly taken at the same time. You can even see the same bats in the background. Simmons was in Series One in 1973, so this card was certainly out already by April 3, 1973. My guess is that the photograph was April 3, 1972. Maybe in the Topps photo archives, the date was written on the photo but not the year, and whoever was editing the deckles assumed all the photos they were using ..read more

Looks like a jewelry store. Mandell's operated several jewelry stores in the Spokane area for 65 years before closing in 2001 due to the retirement of its owner. Greg Harris came up with the Padres in 1988 and was great in his first four seasons, going 27-22 with a 2.34 ERA in 152 games. Unfortunately, his career stalled at that point, due to injuries and subsequent malpractice (for which he later won $6 million in a court case). Overall in 243 games (109 starts) for the Padres, Rockies and Twins from 1988 to 1995, he went 45-64 with a 3.98 ERA. He is now a youth baseball coach for Rawlings P ..read more