2(sday) x 3 Heroes Mailday

It seems like every time I get complacent in not blogging, JediJeff of 2x3 Heroes fame manages to lure me back in. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but he's one of the good ones.

Last summer, I noticed that the Cubs were featured on a regional cover of Sports Illustrated. In the good ol' Land of Lincoln, and probably a slightly larger area, fans were treated to this fantastic shot of Kris Bryant's walk off home run.

And don't forget Pedro Strop!

I think in my neck of the woods, we had a Serena Williams (tennis?!) cover.

I couldn't make up the following story if I tried.

The issue date of this magazine was August 31, 2015. The walk off depicted (#12 of last season's incredible 13) was Monday, August 24, 2015. Less than a week later, while this issue was probably still on newsstands, Jake Arrieta no-hit a playoff bound Los Angeles Dodgers team.

When I heard such a regional issue existed, I shot Jeff an email asking if he could procure such a treasure for me if he happened to see one in his area. A few weeks later, I fall off the planet again.

Fast forward to about two weeks ago and all a sudden two copies of this magazine have become a "burden" and possibly a "curse" to his home (despite his Pale Hose also owning a fine start and division lead). A little on the dramatic side if you ask me.

He confirms my address hasn't changed and a week later, they show up in my mailbox. What happens next? That's right. Jake Arrieta promptly throws another no hitter.

Jeff, when the Cubs land the cover again, I think you know what to do....

But JenerousJediJeff doesn't just stop at gifting me an awesome collectible magazine and a pair of no hitters. He throws in a some cards like he's Billy Freakin' Mays.

We've got some great horizontals:

2003 Topps #252 Joe Randa

2012 Topps #461 Victor Martinez

2015 Topps Stadium Club #282 Fred McGriff

2007 Upper Deck #418 Khalil Greene

Is this Khali Greene an Ivy card too? Hmmmm.....

Speaking of Ivy cards, we've got those too:

And even some interleague Ivy cards:

I see you sneaking a South Sider into my collection...

Aaaaaaaand North Siders! My Cubs collection is a bit of a mess right now because of storage situations but I was using Zistle prior to my hiatus. And according to that record, some of these are new and some of them are upgrades.



2006 Topps Chrome #261 Greg Maddux Award Winners



If any body ever figured out how to scan chrome cards nicely while I was gone, let me know.

2012 Bowman Prospects Silver Ice #BP75 Dillon Maples

2013 Panini Pinnacle Looking Back #LB2 Starlin Castro

And pretty much everything 2015 was going to be new to me.

These Cubs were dupes, but I haven't even started looking at the Cubs portion of my horizontal collection so they'll slide over for the time being.

1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #284 Jose Vizcaino



2010 Upper Deck #545 Wrigley Field



And for that extra extra extra bonus, Jeff threw in one of my first 2016 cards. And its a numbered relic to boot!

2016 Topps 100 Years at Wrigley Relic #WRIGR-RP Rafael Palmeiro

With a mailing like that, no wonder I came back just to show it off!

Thanks, Jeff! By the time this posts, there should be something going back your way.

My Frankenset(s)

It seems like most bloggers jumped on the Frankenset bandwagon while I was away. I’ll admit I had aspirations myself before taking my hiatus but I didn’t have much time to think about what I would do.

The first one I remember seeing when I started following blogs a couple of years ago was $30 a Week Habit's Serial Insanity, though I don't think the term Frankenset came around until a little later. If somebody could point me in the direction of its originator, I'd love to give someone credit.

In terms of Cubs bloggers, P-Town Tom of Waiting Til Next Year snagged a good one with making a giant Cubs set. Paul of Wrigley Wax decided to do uniform numbers, which also turned out pretty good.

So what’s a Cubs fan to do with two good ideas already off the board?  Well, I looked at the two mini collections I had going already and decided to make Frankensets out of both!

As a refresher, my two mini collections are posted in the right hand column under the “Niches” headline. The inventory under those links are a little out of date but they'll be updated shortly. The Horizontal Cards mini collection even resulted in a separate blog (that needs to be dusted off once I get the hang of this one again). The goal of that blog was to find the best horizontal card for each team by pitting two against each other every month and letting the readers decide.

For this particular Frankenset, I’ve decided to cap the set at 630 cards. That’s 30 cards for each of the 31 teams from my lifetime. I’m doubling down on the Expos and Nationals since I grew up with the Expos but at 10+ years now, the Nationals probably deserve their own spot, too. I’m hoping to find base set cards (though I may allow parallels) from as many different brands as possible.

I imagine it will be easy to get it started and then tough to fill in gaps. But that’s what makes this fun, right? Maybe once I get to that stage, that Horizontal Card Challenge blog will turn into a battle of making it into the Frankenset!

The second Frankenset will involve cards that feature the ivy covered walls of Wrigley Field in the background. This one won’t have a set number of cards from each team as it’ll be tough to find American League teams at Wrigley. As with the horizontal set, I will try to get as many different brands as possible. I don’t know if I’ll put a cap on this set as I have to go through what I already have.

I guess I have a reason to include some Cardinals cards in the collection. Ugh. I love this shot of Bill Sampen in the powder blues with his full nameplate and number showing. That ones a keeper!

Both of these Beltrans have a home for now but I'd like to bump one out eventually for variety sake.

I will always chase Cubs cards for my overall collection, but for the purposes of this set, unless I want some place fillers, I’m also going to try and avoid using Cubs cards like the Dave Smith below.

Upper Deck has some great ivy shots on the backs of cards but this one will probably be filler as well until something better comes along.

Before my hiatus, I had a box of cards that I’ll be going through shortly to scan and catalog so stay tuned. I’m excited to get to and figure out haves and needs. And hopefully putting it out there for the world to see keeps me accountable when I don’t feel like organizing…

And I'd like to give a big shout out to Jeff at 2x3 Heroes for the cards above that arrived in a PWE while I was away on my trip. He dropped some PWE's on me while I was away too and nudged me back in the direction of this blog on more than one occasion. Thanks for the support and cards, Jeff!

Jeff stunned me with his generosity with one final card in the envelope and since it doesn't fit this theme, it'll get its own post sometime next week.

More from 2x3 Heroes

Late last week, I mentioned a bubble mailer from Jeff of 2x3 Heroes fame when I broke down one of the ivy cards from the package. Today I have the rest. 

I used to collect pocket schedules back in the day and have a monster box full of them somewhere. I keep meaning to cull them down to just the Cubs and their affiliates but they are out of sight and out of mind. I believe Jeff sent me one or two of these last year, the Cougars' first season as the Cubs Class A affiliate.

Not only did Jeff find the Paul Runge ivy card from last Friday, but he threw in these three as well. The first two should easy to break down as Topps gets their images from Getty but I look forward to trying to find out more about the Hal Morris pop fly card.

But ivy cards weren't the only niche in the package. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these end up on the Horizontal Card Challenge, especially that front Royals card of Jay Bell.

Jeff also tossed in some cards of the newest Hall of Famer, Greg Maddux. There's always room for the Professor in my collection. As the card on the right says, Winner!

I'm not sure about these, but Jeff seems to think I should add the brick wall cards that indicate Wrigley as well. I could probably do that with these older cards but now that Citi Field in New York has brick, it's not always a gimmee that it is Wrigley. There's probably a distinct difference that I'm missing though.

How about a father-son combo? Too bad Jr. plays in the outfield and not second base. Could you imagine a the Dunstons turning two? 

I think one of these Andre Dawsons may be a duplicate. If that turns out to be true, I may go ahead and actually pop these up for display. I grew up in the "cards are investments" era of the late '80s and early '90s so I don't think I ever did that with these cards.

Last but not least, a Chef Boyardee Ryne Sandberg card. This I definitely have in my collection already but I know for a fact that this will be an upgrade to the one I have, despite the horrible crop job.

Thanks, Jeff for another great package!

Card Show Part 1: Supplies and Niches

I have good news and some less than ok news. The good news us that I got all of my scans done from the card show. Yay! The less than ok news is that I still have some cropping and file naming to do before I can show too much off. Boo! I'm going to break the show up into four posts to give me a little time to catch up on that.

As you can see in the title, today is dedicated to supplies and niches. Tomorrow will be my non-dime box pickups. And the last two posts will be split between the vintage dime boxes and the contemporary dime boxes but I haven't decided the order yet.

Supplies were at the top of my list this time around as its tough to get decent prices on that stuff online because of shipping. I had an Andrew Jackson specifically designated for that. Yesterday I showed this picture:

The box itself was my first pickup of the day for $2. The contents look a little haphazard, but I set them like that on purpose for the photo. The different stacks represent the different tables I visited as I originally planned to do a post on each one. Until I decided it would flow better with the groups I mentioned above. In the top row on the left are five packages of team bags (100 count each). I've got some packages that need to go out and these will definitely help with that. I'm thinking about trying to sell some lots on eBay too but we'll see how that goes. 

Dividing the different cards/tables in the box are twenty packages of penny sleeves for my Cubs collection. Speaking of which, when all was said and done, I added about 125 new Cubs cards, with about as many "other"cards to go out in trade packages. Not a bad haul and I can't wait to show off individual stuff.

For now though, I'll leave you with a four cards I picked up for my niches, even though I said I wouldn't be adding to them through purchases. I'm sure I passed a bunch of cards that had ivy in the background but this trio caught my eye as I was thumbing through rows and rows of cards.

Spoiler alert, there will be quite a bit of 1984 Donruss showing up in a later post. I couldn't resist the new Hall of Famer in Glavine. And why not get a North Side-South Side rivalry card into the collection? Thirty years between that 1984 Lea and the 2014 Dunn. Man, am I getting old.

I'm not a big vintage guy so there are a ton of non-Cubs cards I've never seen before and this is one of them. Gary Matthews was one of first favorite Cubs in the mid 80s. Probably because my first name is his last name (without the "s") and my last name (Major) is a rank like his nickname (Sarge). The things we latch onto as a kid, right?

So when I came across this in the vintage dimebox, I snagged it without a second thought. It really contrasts with the zoomed in, super close cards of today's Topps. Third base coach McNamara seems to be throwing his hands up in exasperation, wondering why Matthews is sliding and not rounding the base as there doesn't appear to be a play at the bag. And this card is in great shape. Not for a 40 year old card, but for a card in general. That helped make it a no-doubter for the Horizontal collection.

OK, back to cropping so I can show off more cards!