Stan the Man's Sunset Card Makeover

The Trashed set is a little light on some years, so I was happy to get this stack of well used 1963s.  I love that the seller rounded them up altogether and included several defaced cards with several really beat up cards and let them stand as a group.  Always nice to start off with a simple moustache.

I'm not sure what is going on with Gary Bell.  It almost looks like he has tattooed tears and a gang tag on his chin, which really seems odd for 1963

They ran over Bobby Bragen with some kind of toy truck wheels and give him an almost robot look like Bond Villain Jaws.  

It went all the way to the back of the card too. 

I'm not sure about these two.  They are just on the cusp of being trashed, not just Poor or set filler, and duplicate numbers to boot.  

The idea is not to just have well-loved or low-grade set like some do.  I'm trying to find the worst cards at each number, something that no one else would put in any kind of set no matter how desperate they were for a card.  For now, I'll consider allowing them in the back door, so to speak.  I've been experimenting with reverse numbers for times where there are dupes.  I have 2 cards #116.  So, one of them is slotted in at 611.  If I come up with a bad card #611, I have to replace the reverse number.  But I don't have to actively look for it.  So, Casey Stengel #43 can slot into the blank #34 and the Rookie Parade card #54 will go into slot #45.  I've actually done this with a number of cards across all sets that I had dupes for and Ive even had the necessity to replace a Reversed number card with their actual numbered counterpart.  In some ways this is a set that will never be done as long as I keep an eye out for worse cards.  But if I finished it somehow, I'd probably just start a new trashed set with my dupes and keep it going, maybe adding some new twist.  Like only guys who have nicknames as their first name.  

But I digress.  To sunset this blog post we have Stan the Man's sunset card. I love the addition of eyeliner Curley Qs on his eyes, but I'm puzzled as to what exactly is going on around his mouth.  

Looking closely, it looks like maybe someone was trying to lightly rough out the outlines of a Mario and Luigi mustache.  Or someone was trying to draw a giant earthworm across his upper lip.  

They even drew in a dimple.  I suppose I should photo shop it with the mustache colored in to see how Stan would have looked if someone hadn't smacked the pen out of this kid's hand.  I, for one, feel a great sense of loss that this cardboard Rembrandt was interrupted and deterred from his masterpiece.  

Another example of me buying people's literal garbage with real money.

 I got a stack in the mail from a recent Lot from eBay.

Mostly 1959s and a few 60s, to go with a smaller stack of '64s that I too quickly bindered up before getting the pictures

For some reason there are a lot of 1959-60 low grade poor condition cards out there.  The cards from a few years earlier seem to have been a different card stock that tends to be brittle and snap off rather than crease (I'm looking at you '57).

I don't know why the cards from a couple years later seem to crease differently, more in lines rather than the Lysergic Spiderwebs on these.

But the card somehow holds together. 

At first glance this 68 has fewer creases taking hold, almost fighting against them. 

 But the one deep crease in the corner caused a ripple on the back of the card and started to separate fully from the front.  

There are probably scientific papers to be written on the study of the different types of cardstocks and printing technology over the years that resulted in or prevented the damage you now see today.  And I'm not gonna lie, I might very well read them, after I finish Bill James phonebook sized greatest players according to his win shares system.

Ultra rare 1965 Clemente Eye Patch parallel + has anyone seen Harman Killebrew and Mike Trout in the same room together?

 

First off, who does this to Roberto?  

And what kind of degenerate card collectors start a bidding war that pushes this to almost $40 instead of turning up their nose at a defaced and rough around the edges card instead of turning their nose up at it and allow the purest type of collector, ME, to obtain it for $3.  

I've gotten several offers recently on mid level HOFs cards in bad shape with ridiculous prices.  They all happen to have involved Harmon Killebrew.  First off I noticed this and thought it might be a nice addition for a few bucks.

 $205, that's Two Hundred and five.  That's as much as an actual slab might run and certainly way beyond what this card should be. An Equation: A (HOFer) + B (old Card from 1955) / C (condition that is beyond Poor with a negative grade number possible) does not = $205.  I hesitate to go as far as saying that removing the zero and making it $25 would be fair, but I'm new to this high end game.

That card brought my attention to this card.  

A little better shape, but has been defaced.  I suppose some mad man might pay something for it thinking they could remove or erase the mustache but even $100 seems high for a card that looks like it was used to roll a joint, or really several joints, a lot of them really.  That's probably the genesis for putting a mustache on him and just a simple little line across the lip and it makes the card more desirable. To discerning collectors such as myself.  It sort of makes him look like Mike Trout pasting a mustache on in order to be "anonymous" in some sort of Candid camera show.  

I guess one HK card leads to another and another by the algorithm.  And that is how I found this mold infested 1959.  

It was originally graded a 7 and looks to have been a nice card, but something got into the casing, according to the seller, who is asking the lowest price (of these 3) at $75 for the card that is most heinously damaged because nobody wants to change black mold getting into their collection.  I don't know if the graders guarantee watertightness in their slabs, but if they do, they should be on the hook for this one.  And it makes me wonder just what they were doing to introduce some kind of filth into the process.  If I had more time on my hand, I'd look up the cards with serial numbers that are 5-10 above and below and find out if there was something that was graded at Poor -1 with slime smeared all over.   Say caramel or cracker jack sticky from one of those mid-century sets that got stick residue on their hands to transfer to some other schmuck's card. I don't actually have the time to do that so let me know the results if you do. 

The reason all these sub brand offshoots make me so very happy

 Sometimes it turns out all these different brands that Topps, et al. are pushing turns out to be a blessing.  I wanted to add this Kyle Isbel to the Action Parallel (AKA Floating Balls in Sparkles) Frankenset.  It's got the Bat and the Ball floating, which so nicely ties the two themes up.  

I was all ready to pull the trigger on this, all but sure that there is no card at #220 that I couldn't replace with this one.  

Until I got to slot #220 and found it was the Randy Johnson  All Black.  

His last card, in which he is doing god knows what kind of dance move on a plain black feild with the ball floating away as if he was trapped in the great void of interstellar space.  So that is a no go.  I thought about adding Isbel as a back slide parallel.  Sort of a parallel to the original Parallel card that I often do to avoid a Sophies Choice.  At some point I may have 2 full Frankensets in every binder because of the front and back thing.  But Isbel deserves to be front and center and it would be disrespectful to the very card to give it also ran Status.  

But in looking at the cards he had I came to understand that the same image was issued in the Chrome Set with a DIFFERENT number.  

Now we're cooking with gas.  

I'm not a huge fan of the Chrome series.  I generally avoid the base cards which look flat and lifeless despite their shininess.  The Refractors are better, but they still have the outline on the ball and bat and such that takes away a bit from the image, but hey, this refractor is purple, so it's an even better parallel than a plain refractor.  I do somewhat prefer the flat cardboard parallels.  So, I did more research. Turns out there is yet another number on this image from the 2021 Topps UK edition.  #178 to be exact in black, blue, gold, purple and union jack!! borders and each SNd.  

So far, no luck on replacing it with a UK card, but if you have any of the UK #178 parallels, I'm inclined to give up a lot for it.  Don't care which one.  I probably could go buy the one on ebay for $5, but trading is so much more fun.  So, make me an offer.  

New Partially authentic Nolan Ryan + Thurman Munson RCs

 A seller on Ebay goes by RedBirdOctober and actually has some good vintage many of you might dig but doesn't meet my, uh,  "standards".  He did have a couple things that I acquired and will talk about later when they arrive, but he also showed me some really great things that he has come across.  

A 1970 Munson duo RC on a '67

Nolan Ryans 1969 RC reimagined on some scrubs 1968

I suppose this kid was mad that their RCs were duo headshot cards that Topps cheaped out on and wanted to remake cool action poses with these, which almost kinda works somehow.  We all know how much their actual RC go, but I have no idea what these new and improved versions would fetch.  I would love to send them in to be graded and slabbed.  If they were sold on eBay at Market value you'd have to send them to eBay for "authentication" which I imagine would cause the grader to stroke out. 

And I have no idea what is going on with scribbling Elliot Maddux name over Richie Allen in 1967

Luckily, he was not looking to sell them at this time.  And I'm not suggesting you all start a petition demanding that he sell them to me.  I personally would never stoop to ask for cards from a personal collection, and I hope that you would not pressure this nice man by starting a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds to make it impossible not to sell these cards.  That is totally not what I am about.  I don't engage in such pettiness because I'm too busy considering such conundrums as does Munson get filed into slot #189 or #48? Does Nolan Ryan go into slot #231? What did this kid have against Elliot Maddux to rename his Richie Allen card? And why did all the cards suddenly start calling him Dick on his cards mid-career.  

King Kong and CSI Von

 My sometime-trading partner Mark (TCDB mzentko) sent me some stuff out of the blue that I certainly appreciate

Gotta love a well love double oh like the Kingman All Star card.  

And the Tony Armas is pretty shabby too.

I do love it when a card gets jammed in on the middle of the edge but does little damage to the rest of the card.  It always makes me wonder what happened as I run my fingernail over it.  And the Von Joshua card has so much going on.  He looks like he stepped off the set of CSI to investigate how he got that unibrow.  Plus, it's an ATF card with that Marlboro billboard.  I'm thinking its Yankee stadium.  

Now looking at Don's cartoon back I'm stuck by the thought that I have never run into one of these cartoon cards with cartoon glasses or mustaches drawn on.  They only did them like this for a year or two.  Did they have to stop because of reports from parents that these cards encouraged artistic juvenile delinquency? Thanks Mark.  

And if you have trashed cards you want to get rid of email me and I'll figure out something cool to send back in trade.  

Floating Balls in Sparkles has been cleaved in half, or maybe two thirds (part 2)

 Here's a couple pages of the Vertical binder in which all cards are of the Portrait orientation. 2/3s of the collection of Action Parallels stayed here but it opened up a lot of slots, especially on pages that were already filled in the old binder.  Here's a couple pages of the Vertical binder in which all cards are of the Portrait orientation. 2/3s of the collection of Action Parallels stayed here but it opened up a lot of slots, especially on pages that were already filled in the old binder.  

Here on the first page, you might not notice that we lost our #1 card, which was a Cal Ripken silver Sig on UD.  I do have at least one Horizontal alternatives on my want list.  I think there is a Chipper Jones Red or Gold foil on Stadium Club from about 10 years back that I'm trying to hunt down without eBay, but if you come across a candidate for #1 that has parallels, please let me know

See, #1 was really actually #10 Archie Bradley the dancing bear Orange Sparkle SN /25 showing thru the empty slot. But it is amazing that there are so many different angle shots of Ozzie's balls floating in mid-air all within the same 2 pages numerically.  

This is a random page a little further into the binder that I think spreads out the shots a little more evenly.

I've got so many cards that many of the numbers have more than one card.  I've been experimenting with doing 2 sets at a time.  Basically, putting dupe numbers in the back slot of the binder page.  

Some pages have only 1 or 2 but many pages are filling up close to full.  I figure I can build two set simultaneously.  to some degree I've been doing this on all the sets, the Trashed, action set going both ways, I've even got a 1996 Metal Universe set that I have been putting the Platinum parallel on the back of each page.  That set was the first I laid out this way and was one of my early experiments with the manipulation of the numbering for my own amusement.