Gee Willikers, A Swell Package From P-Town Tom

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I made a comment on one of Tom's posts (Waiting 'til Next Year) about taking any extra Cubs Swell cards off his hands after he found a box for cheap at a card show. I had completely forgotten about it until a few weeks ago when he posted again that he was doing a multiple box break of Swell cards.

For just a few bucks, including shipping, I got complete Cubs team sets of 1989, 1990 and 1991 Swell and 1990 Pacific Legends! Not to mention a few extras from those sets and another set that will get another post later.

I didn't have a single one of the six cards from 1989 Swell above. But where's Ernie Banks? Or Fergie Jenkins? Billy Williams looks a little lonely with his solitary Hall of Fame shield.

The Billy Williams was the only one in this group that I had previously from a lot I picked up a little while back. There's Ernie, but why is Robin Roberts here? He's a Hall of Famer for his 14 seasons with the Phillies not his 11 games with the Cubs. The sepia toned Billy Herman is a little out of place among the colorized photos but nice to see a new face. Still no Fergie?

Yay, finally a Fergie!The Don Kessinger was the only one I had in this group and one of my favorites with the ivy backdrop. Is Banks bunting or just really, really choking up on a two strike count? The Herman looks like a re-used, zoomed in version of the previous year's photo. Since they did go out of the color era with Billy Herman, it would have been nice to see some of the Hacks (Wilson or Stan), or maybe Phil Cavarretta.

This might be the first complete run of Cubs cards I have from one single brand and I did it in one fell swoop thanks to Tom!

I was a little surprised that the number of Cubs represented in 1990's Pacific Legends set only amounted to four. This must be the Pacific "Color Photo Era" Legends set. Either way, nice to have this set complete. I think my Don Kessinger collection may have doubled with this haul as I don't have much from his playing days.

Thanks again for the break, Tom!

Sandberg Sunday - Cut to the Chase Coaster

Early on in the blog when I wasn't entirely sure what to write about, Sandberg Sundays were used as a crutch to help start off my week. It has been a while since I whipped one out but thanks to P-Town Tom from Waiting 'Til Next Year, it was time to dust the concept off. And not just as a crutch, but to show off a really neat piece of Sandberg memorabilia. I can't be entirely sure, but it might even be a 1/1!

A while back Tom posted a crafty project that turned a regular baseball card into a functional part of the mancave, a coaster. I don't consider myself a crafty person so even if this is easy, I would probably go through a packs worth of cards to make something a tenth as good as the one Tom sent me. And he used a die cut insert card of my all time favorite player to boot!
 

Ryne Sandberg Coaster

It even has a felt backing so my fancy schmancy Ikea mancave furniture doesn't get scratched. And even though I'm not a glitter guy, it does give it a nice touch and comes up all sparkly like. I wouldn't mind pulling one of these as an insert!

Now the only decision is do I actually use it as a coaster? Or display it Han Solo-in-carbonite style ala Jabba the Hut? Hmmm...

Thanks again, Tom!

2013 Baseball Fantasy League Final Tally

Sorry so blurry...

With the baseball fantasy season now over, I thought I'd give everybody who didn't participate a recap and hopefully entice a few more of you to come out next year. For those that need a refresher, I setup a Yahoo Fantasy League at the beginning of the season with a $15 buy-in. The prize pool included seven different 2013 blasters split among for the top 3 placers and for the team with the best record at the end of the regular season. The blasters were distributed as follows:

1st Place - Pick One
1st Place - Pick One
2nd Place - Pick One
3rd Place - Pick One
1st Place - Pick One
2nd place - Pick One
Best Regular Season Record - Gets what's left!

The blasters included Topps Series 1, Topps Series 2, A&G, Bowman, Heritage, Gypsy Queen & Archives. The season long winners of each of the ten statistical categories will also be taking home a repack ($5 value).

But before I get to the prizes, I'm going to set the scene a little bit because there were some pretty exciting matchups once the playoffs rolled around. Participation was pretty good among fellow bloggers but a couple of offline friends/coworkers signed up to help me fill a few spots and their lineup changes were a little more sporadic. That showed up in the standings though as all six playoff spots were filled by bloggers.

At the end of the "regular season", Larry (unclemoe) from My 2008 Topps Set Blog entered the playoffs as the top seed. This earned him a first round bye and guaranteed him one of the seven blasters no matter how he finished.

Second seed went to Roy-Z of plain gray swatch fame (among other blogs), who also earned a first round bye. Tom from Waiting 'Til Next Year wrapped up the third seed and took on sixth seed, Ty from League Leader in Italics. I qualified as the fourth seed and Brian from Play at the Plate won 9 of his last 10 matchups to be my first round competition as the fifth seed.

No offense to Ty, but Tom took him out pretty easily in the first round, winning 8 categories to Ty's 2. Brian on the other hand, took me all the way to the tie breaker after splitting the 10 categories with 5 apiece. Unfortunately for him, the tiebreaker was who had the better record head to head over the course of the season. During our three weekly matchups, I went 17-12-1, winning the tiebreaker and advancing to the next round.

Roy dominated the offensive categories this season winning 4 of the 5 over the course of the season. But Tom, who is taking home three repacks for pitching categories, put up another dominating week, earning a finals birth with an 8-1-1 victory over Roy in the semifinals.

My matchup against unclemoe was just as tight as my first round matchup. The final score was 5-2-3. With those three ties, that could have been losses and knotted us up at 5-5, I would have lost the tiebreaker as unclemoe beat me 7-22-1 in three regular season meetings. Yikes! But with a guaranteed blaster for the season's top record and three repacks coming his way for category wins, I don't feel too bad!

So if you've been doing the math (4 repacks for Roy, 3 for Tom and 3 for Larry), you'll see the top three seeds wrapped up all the category wins. There's probably some correlation there...

If you thought these matchups were close, wait until the finals and consolation finals!

With the top two seeds knocked out, they still had a shot at third place, which also means a blaster.

The pitching categories were pretty clear cut but check out the offensive ones! One run difference, tied in home runs, one RBI. Luckily for unclemoe, he would have won a tiebreaker, too had things gone a little differently. And don't feel too bad for Roy because he'll end up with more cards than anyone with 4 repacks for his category wins. Granted they're repacks, but still, he gets his buy-in back plus a little more.

And now the finals. Two Cubs fans battling it out for the Fantasy League title. Maybe Tom and I can get a meeting with Theo and let him know which direction the Cubs should go?

This matchup was like any good playoff series, it went down to the wire. Unfortunately for me though, the final score was Tom 6, Me 4.

To Tom's credit, he led the whole week and the final score probably shouldn't have even been this close. I started four pitchers on Sunday, netting 0 Wins. I was hoping I could catch him in Wins and ERA or WHIP but I didn't foresee a Henderson Alvarez no hitter when it came to adding/dropping players for Sunday's games. D'oh!

Thanks to everybody who participated this season. Packages will go out sometime this week. Hopefully, with enough interest we can do it again next year and even add a few more players which could mean bigger, better prize packages. While I already know what boxes the winners have selected as their prizes, I can't wait to see what they get for cards!

Final Prize Summary:

1st Place (Tom) - 3 Blasters

2nd Place (Matt) - 2 Blasters

3rd Place (Larry) - 1 Blaster

Regular Season Best Record (Larry) - 1 Blaster

Runs - Roy

Home Runs - Roy

RBIs - Roy

Stolen Bases - Roy

Batting Avg. - Larry

Wins - Larry

Saves - Tom

Strikeouts - Larry

ERA - Tom

WHIP - Tom

A Chi-Town Package from P-Town Tom

A couple weeks back, P-Town Tom from over at Waiting 'Til Next Year posted his Kerry Wood checklist. After going through my dupes, I found a couple to send his way. I really didn't expect anything back, but as is the way of the blogosphere, Tom was quite generous in return. As he noted in his post, it is not always easy trading with a fan of your own favorite team. 

First up, we have a little tit-for-tat as he sent some Kerry Woods back my way. There were more than just these two, but the others were real shiny and didn't scan real well.

I had several Cubs cards from this Fleer Game Time release but the Wood has so far eluded me. The Talking Sports is an oddball as you may have noticed the lacks of logos and team name. Usually, with two teams in Chicago, they will refer to the Cubs as Chicago (NL), but for some reason, this card has a  C in parentheses. I guess for Cubs? 

Protip: If you type (C) in Microsoft Word, the copyright logo shows up instead. You can (R)egister your (TM) too, FYI.

But I digress. I found the back of the Talking Sports card interesting too.

The card is from 1997, when Wood was still in the minors. The last line of the blurb mentions that Wood started both of his teams's no hitters. Is a minor league no hitter like kissing your sister or something? Are they truly about developing the pitcher and don't care that you have a no-hitter going? I know there have been a couple of multi-pitcher no-hitters in the Majors but usually that involves an injury or a lot of walks. Once maybe, but getting pulled twice? Seems odd. I have questions.

Tom also threw in a couple of autographed cards. Bob Dernier played for the Cubs when I first joined the bandwagon and aside from Ryne Sandberg, has always been one of my favorites. And while I didn't start collecting sets until a couple of years later, 1985 Topps were some of the first packs I remember walking down to the gas station to buy. 

Dave Otto probably spent more time announcing the Cubs than he did playing for them, but since he did radio and I was outside the Chicago area, I remember the player more. Here, Otto is shown with the Tacoma Tigers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A's at the time. 

But wait, there's more!

How did this South Sider get in the package? Tom must have checked my Want List at the top of the page because Adam Dunn was one of the cards I needed from this long forgotten set from 6 months ago. I have to wrap this set up as any Cubs fan knows at this time of year...we're just a couple months away from next year!

Thanks Tom!

Not "Waiting 'til Next Year" for this trade...

I don't know about you but I've always found it a little difficult to trade with another Cubs team collector. As I a kid, I wouldn't trade away my Cubs even for future Hall of Famers. No Jody Davis for Nolan Ryan trades going down. No Dwight Smith for Rickey Henderson.

As I got older and more and more cards were produced, I learned to let go (at least of duplicates) to build my collection even bigger. And now that I have a blog, I've found a couple other Cubs collectors that are willing to trade!

Tom over at Waiting 'til Next Year made the whole trading with another collector of your favorite team one of the easiest trades yet. If you haven't checked out his blog yet, you should. Don't worry. Despite his blog title being a saying synonymous with Cubs fans, his blog isn't limited to that. He just made a 7 games in 7 days at 7 ballparks roadtrip. Who hasn't wanted to do that?!? He's got a pretty neat bobblehead collection and posts one every Monday. His posts have been increasing as the year progresses so I'd bet a few more followers would encourage him even more to keep going!

As for the trade, Tom asked for a few Archives and Reprints to help him complete his set. I had also just finished my Topps Series 2 break so I threw in a bunch of Cubs from that as well. At the time, I was in the middle of a few trades and my Want List wasn't as up to date as I wanted it. So as a fellow Cubs collector, I just asked for some Cubs dupes he had. I primarily collected Topps before so I was lacking in a lot of the other brands from the '90s and '00s.

I had no idea Tom would send as many as he did and I am grateful! Apparently, I missed out on some good stuff between sticking to just Topps and my hiatus from the hobby. Here are some of my favorites from the stacks he sent:

The only card to feature the infield fly rule??

Pretty sure every kid my age wanted a Starter jacket like this back in the day.

Who I still think of anytime someone mentions the current Jose Bautista.

Who doesn't love an old clunky cell phone picture?

Horizontal card of a laid out catcher and he caught it? Nice!

Sandberg? Check. Gold? Check. Winner? Definitely!

Newly signed #1 Draft Pick Albert Almora

This is probably less than 5% of the whole package because there were easily 150 cards.  I think he hit just about every brand from the past 20 years.He sent Bowman. Donruss. Fleer. Upper Deck. Score. Pinnacle. Stadium Club. Fleer Ultra. Leaf. O-Pee-Chee. SP Authentic. Finest. A&G. Fleer Tradition. Heritage. Bazooka. 

Don't forget to check out his blog and see if you can't help him out with some of his set needs!

Thanks for the great trade, Tom!