1989 Prince William Cannons

Last week I did a post about part of the Craigslist lot I picked up and went through a couple of factory sets. I have compiled my Want List for those three sets as a Tab above (Junk Wax Wants). Even if I was lucky enough to find a dime box, buying singles for these would probably cost more than buying a brand new sealed set outright so any help would be appreciated!

I also hinted at something I thought was pretty cool when I went through the box that had 1990 Bowman.

My local minor league team, the Potomac Nationals, is the Single A affiliate of the Washington Nationals and have been since the Nats came to DC in 2005. Prior to that, they were affiliates for the Cincinnati Reds (2003-04), the St. Louis Cardinals (1997-2002), the Chicago White Sox (1994-1996), the New York Yankees (1987-1993), the Pittsburgh Pirates (1981-1986) and the Seattle Mariners (1979).

Notable alumni include Bobby Bonilla and Barry Bonds during the Pirates era, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada with the Yankees, Magglio Ordonoez with the White Sox, Albert Pujols with the Cardinals and Joey Votto with the Reds. And of course, many of today’s Nationals came through Potomac as well.

My find has to do with the team when they were known as the Prince William Cannons and were affiliates of the New York Yankees. In case the title of this post didn’t give it away, tucked in the Bowman box was a Star team set of the 1989 Prince William Cannons. Well most of one anyway. There were 24 cards from the 29 card set. After a quick eBay search I found a team set and discovered the missing five cards were two players, two coaches and the manager. I also found that the set could be had for $6.00 shipped or a different seller was offering singles for $12.99 plus shipping for singles. What?! I guess I’m okay with a partial set…

But what makes this set even cooler, in my opinion, is that many of them were autographed! In theory. I guess I can’t be 100% positive but why would you fake autographs for a Single A baseball team back when the Yankees weren’t even that good?

Enough talking, here are some scans with a little commentary after doing some research.

Jason Bridges, Dennis Brow, Andy Cook

Neither Jason Bridges or Dennis Brow made it past Single A. Andy Cook would keep advancing through the ranks and pitch 5 1/3 innings over 4 appearances for the 1993 New York Yankees.

Bob DeJardin, Pedro DeLeon, Mike Draper

Bobby DeJardin would get as high as Triple A with bothe the Yankees and the Orioles but never punched through to the bigs. Pedro DeLeon spent 1989 between Single and Double A but was out of baseball after that season. Mike Draper was taken in the 1992 Rule V draft by the Mets and made 29 appearances in 1993 for them.

Rob Ehrhard, Ken Greer, Jeff Johnson

Rob Ehrhard advanced one more level but was done after the 1990 season. Kenny Greer was traded to the Mets for Frank Tanana and was 1-0 after a perfect relief inning that included two strikeouts in a late September game. He was granted free agency and signed with the Giants where he went 0-2 in 8 appearances. Jeff Johnson spent parts of three season with the Yankees from 1991-1993 compiling an 8-16 record and 6.52 ERA.

Pat Kelly, Jeff Livesey, Mark Harris

Pat Kelly is the first one I’ve actually heard of and remember him being a top prospect for the Yankees back in the day. I thought he ended up a bust but he got 9 Major League seasons under his belt, mostly with the Yankees. Neither Jeff Livesey or Mark “Moose” Marris made it to the show.

Bill Masse, Gerald Nielsen, Mark Ohlms

Bill Masse made it to Triple A Columbus Clippers but had a decent career as manager for most of early 2000s. Gerald “Jerry” Nielsen was drafted 6 different times between 1986 and 1988 and compiled a 1-0 record in 30 appearances with the Yankees and Angels. Mark Ohlms made it as far as Triple A with Toronto.

Vince Phillips, Bruce Prybylinski, Frank Seminara

Vince Phillips and Bruce Prybylinski advanced to Double AA. Frank Seminara had a 12-9 record with the San Diego Padres and New York Mets from 1992-1994.

Don Sparks, Don Stanford, Wade Taylor

Both Don Sparks and Don Stanford had long minor league careers (9 & 7 seasons respectively) but never got their break. Wade Taylor, the only other one I’ve heard of, went 7-12 in 23 games for the 1991 Yankees. I can actually picture his 1991 Topps card.

Dave Turgeon, Hector Vargas, Tom Weeks

And in anticlimactic fashion, neither of these final three, Dave Turgeon, Hector Vargas, or Tom Weeks went on to live the big league dream.

There was one more notable among the missing five, Gerald Williams. He would go on to have the most success, playing for 14 season in the Major League among six teams.

I found these rather interesting but they don’t hold any special meaning to me. So if any Yankees, minor league or autograph fans are interested, I’d probably offer them up for trade.

I hope you enjoyed that trip down memory lane and we should be back to your regularly scheduled Cubs post tomorrow.

Asking for trouble

This guys feels my pain.

This gif comes from yesterday's broadcast while the Cubs were in the midst of blowing a 3-run, 9th inning lead during the 100th anniversary/birthday of Wrigley Field celebration. It's not easy being a Cubs fan, but as luck would have it, that's usually the worst thing I've got going for me right now.

I should have knocked on wood I guess.

I decided to take a little break on the Cubs lots and poke around in the Craiglists lot I picked up last weekend. I haven't really looked at the big boxes yet, but tried tackling some of the smaller ones.

I was kind of excited to pick up some junk wax in hopes of putting together some sets that would cost more to ship than buy. But I'll admit, these first couple of boxes were a little frustrating.

The 1988 Score factory set was missing about 60 cards. All of the lenticular cards were there which is cool, though. But who cherry picks 1988 Score? It'll probably cost me more to pick up the missing cards than just buy another set out right.

The same goes for the 1990 Topps set, although this one was missing 70 cards. I forgot that factory sets weren't sorted numerically when you first open them up so to add to the frustration, I had to sort them all to figure out if and what I was missing.

And finally, I have 1990 Bowman. This looks to be an attempt at a hand collated set since the box is one of the generic white ones. And there are 50 cards missing from that one, too.

I never thought I'd ask for non-Cubs junk wax, but I'll put up want lists sometime this weekend if anybody thinks they can help. So yeah, I'm probably asking for trouble. I have the numbers of the cards I need but I'm going to match them up with names and see if I find them amongst my repack spoils before I ask though.

There was a nice little surprise at the end of the Bowman box that might interest some Yankees fans, but it'll get its own post one of these days. Nothing valuable (I don't think), just interesting.

Slippery Slope

I consider myself a pretty frugal person even if I don't go out of my way to shop at yard sales. But since I joined the blogosphere, I've heard tales of wondrous yard sale and flea market finds. About two or three weekends ago, when the weather started turning nice, yard sales started popping up. Last weekend, we had snow flurries. In April. And I'm not up north, I'm in Virginia.

I'm going to be doing some yard work in the coming weeks that required some tools I didn't have. Before heading to Home Depot to buy them new, I decided to check Craigslist first. One of the first yard sales advertisements I came across was actually an estate sale. In the fine print of the listing, they mentioned sports collectibles.

Huh.

I didn't follow up on this one but I quickly became sidetracked and started searching for other people selling baseball cards. Slippery slope.

There were quite a few former collectors with overvalued junk wax or $100 "hits" that could be found in the $2 bin of the last card show.

I did stumble upon one that I thought was too good to be true that was listed two days before I saw it. There's no way this could be still be there, right?

Approximately 35,000 sports cards - baseball, football, basketball, hockey. Cash only - $50 OBO.

This is like an instant dime box starter kit. Times twelve. Yes, it is probably all junk wax, but to be honest, I've been looking at going back to put together runs of complete base sets anyway. As long as the cards were in good shape, this sounded like a steal for 35,000 cards, no matter the sets.

As you may know, I've been on a lot buying kick recently so I shot off an email asking if it was still available, assuming it had been snapped up already. But to my surprise, I got an almost instant reply saying they were still there.

Slippery slope.

I made arrangements to stop by on Saturday morning to take a look. I took the lids off a couple and confirmed they were all in decent condition and mostly full like the pictures showed. And the boxes themselves are in great shape too. There were also a couple of 800 count boxes that weren't pictured so I didn't bother trying to haggle the price down any further. If the 35,000 count is close to accurate, that's like 7 cards per penny.

I have a feeling these are pretty picked through as far as rookies and stars go but I will probably look at how close I am to completing some of the sets and break up the rest of the stuff into team lots. I haven't had the chance to go through any of them yet but I can tell you I have no interest in the football, basketball or hockey cards. Hopefully, they don't make up too much of the lot.

The other Cubs boxes are taking priority but I needed to throw this post out there to buy me some scanning and cropping time between posts. I might be able to get through the summer on these posts alone. I hope so anyway, because my hobby budget is now officially tapping out.