Ramblings of an old collector

 Random thoughts about baseball, baseball cards and maybe a little bit of life. 

* I was able to attend the March Dallas Card Show on Saturday. Boy, was it crowded. If people say that card collecting is going away, they haven't been to the Dallas Card Show. There are about 700 tables there and the aisles were packed, to the point, it was hard to move around. Plus, there were lots of deals taking place. 

* I subscribe to two or three different newsletters, YouTube channels, etc...pretty much whatever I run across that interests me about card collecting. One of the people that I follow is David Gonos of Happy Hobby Sports Cards. He had a drawing for reaching 500 subscribers to his newsletter and I won!

Obviously off-centered but still I nice looking 63 year old card. That makes 3 graded cards in the collection. Now, I have to decide what to do with the card. Do I keep it, crack it, or flip it to get a different card? Decisions, decisions.

* I completed my 1990 Topps set through TCDB trades. My goal last year was to complete sets and guess what? It didn't happen. This year my goal was...I don't think I made a goal...anyways, got another one done.

     

     

     

            

I like this set. It looks really good in the binder with all of the colors. Some of the pictures are grainy, but overall, I think its a decent set.    

* Trying to rework the card room again. When you have limited space, its difficult to find a set up that is functional and not crazy cluttered. I'm not a fan of cluttered. 

* Have you ever had a card or some cards that you know you've got, but can't find? That's where I am right now. Wears me out. I think this summer, I'm going to have to take time to do nothing but look for those missing cards. 

* Opening Day is upon us. Ready to see what my Rangers are going to do this year. 

* I saw somewhere that a question was asked that I thought was interesting. Have the Dodgers replaced the Yankees as the evil empire? My answer to that is not yet. Maybe it's because the Dodgers have too many likeable players like Ohtani, Freeman and Betts. I know that the Yankees of old like Mantle and Berra, though part of the evil empire, aren't really thought of as evil. However, the Yankees did become the hated Yankees. Maybe, it's just the team and not the players? I don't know.

* Finally got my first round of 2025 Topps! I like the design, but not as much as some others. I do get frustrated with those names that are in black and are extremely difficult to read.

Seth Brown's card is a great example. I have to hold that card in 50 different positions before I can actually read it. Frustrating to say the least.

* Speaking of 2025 Topps...each year, I pick a subset that I like and collect it. This year the subset is the Call to the Hall insert set. I'm not sure what drew me to it, but I really like it. Needless to say that I've got a long way to go, but that's the one for this year.

* I've been teaching high school for the last 25 years. Coaching baseball for the last 5 years and now in the middle of my first year as the head coach. I say all of that to say that this isn't my first rodeo. I've been working with kids my whole life. This current generation is so self-absorbed and self-centered. The hardest thing that I've had to do is try and teach these kids about the importance of teamwork and selflessness. Putting the team before self. What a battle. A battle, I fear, I am losing.

* I got to watch my 4 year old grandson play his first T-Ball game last night. For a 4 year old, the boy was locked in. As you would expect, there were a lot of little ones just playing in the dirt or chasing butterflies. Not my grandson, he was ready to play ball. It was fun to watch the smile on his face and see the joy of just playing baseball. 

* I was able to attend another, much smaller, card show that was actually on my side of town and only 10 minutes from the house. There were probably 75 tables or so, but only about a half dozen or so with sports cards. The rest were Pokemon or gaming cards. I did pick up 5 cards for my '75 set and a nice '72 Bob Gibson. 

I guess that's a wrap for this ramble! Hope everyone has a great Opening Day! Go Rangers! 

Peace, 

Michael

Isaiah 40:31

5 Questions for Collectors

 I've been writing this blog now for a little over 2 years. When I started I wasn't sure how long it would last. I had hoped to develop some dialogue with other collectors and I have. During the 2 years I have "met" some amazing people who collect cards. People that I've never met face to face, but definitely are my friends. I hope the feeling is mutual. 

One of the things that I noticed once I started writing was how much I enjoyed people commenting on my blogs. Made me realize that I need to do that too. I know there are several of you out there that do the same thing and I want you to know that it's greatly appreciated. The thing is, the ones who comment are the ones that the friendships come from too. I'm always looking for people to talk cards with. The more the merrier. 

To maybe open some dialogue with more collectors, I thought I'd ask some questions and see if people would respond. For some of you, some of the answers I may already know, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't respond. I may have forgotten, I am getting old!!

Question 1:

How would you describe your collection? 

For me, Topps Baseball sets 1972 to present. Texas Rangers. Playing days Topps cards of my favorite players, one or two insert sets from the more recent years, dabbling in Topps Heritage and Stadium Club. Oh yeah, one more...my favorite players that I don't collect.

Question 2:

Graded or ungraded. That is the question! 

I am not a fan of graded cards. It just doesn't make sense to me. Especially, being on a tight budget, I can't see spending the money to grade a card. I do have a couple of graded cards, but those were gifted to me. I haven't bought one and I really don't see me doing that any time soon or ever.

Question 3: 

 Do you have a grail card(s) that you want? If so, what?

Just so that we're all on the same page, a grail card is that one(or two) card(s) that you really want to have for your collection. Now to be realistic, I'm not talking about the Wagner or '52 Mantle...any card that any collector would relish having in their collection. I'm talking about that card that you really want that you don't have.  

For me, right now, its a '57 Roberto Clemente and 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout. Had a shot at the Clemente several years ago at a card show. Did the unthinkable and said I'd come back and when I did it was gone. 

The Mike Trout is from that time in my collecting career when I was just randomly scavenging  for cards and never got it.

Those are the two cards that I always have my eye out for.

Question 4:

What is your main source(s) for adding cards to your collection?

I guess it really depends on what I'm looking for. I guess number one would be buysportscards.com. It's pretty good for picking up low-end singles to complete sets or add to my player collections. 2nd on the list would be a tie between Ebay and Walmart. Ebay for the cards I don't find on buysportscards.com and Walmart for the new stuff. 

Another source for cards for my collection is card shows. There has been an explosion of card shows in the DFW area. Every other month is the Dallas Show that has over 700 tables. If you haven't been, it's a sight to see. Outside of that, there has been at least 1 or 2 shows every month in the area. 

My last source of cards is TCDB trades. Trades have slowed the last few months. Probably because I haven't had the time to invest in them. 

Question 5:

 

If you had the chance to revisit a time in your life before you started collecting cards, which year would you choose and why?

For me, it would be 1972, the year the Rangers started in Texas. I only have a handful of 1972 cards. With the high numbers and the large amount of cards to get, it keeps getting pushed down the list.

Well, there's the 5 questions and my 5 answers. I hope everyone will respond.

Peace, 

Michael

Isaiah 40:31

Ramblings of an old collector

Wandering thoughts of an old collector.

* Baseball season is here. Spring training has started with games right around the corner. It's that time of year that always gets me excited about baseball! Right now, no matter who your favorite team is, they all have a chance at winning it all. Okay, there are a few who don't, but for now, the optimism is at an all-time high! 

* '25 Topps is out. I still don't have any, but I will really soon.

* I've still got to finish my '24 Topps sets for my grandkids. I've struggled with staying focused on finishing them. I think it will be easier when they get a little older and we can do it together. 

* I've noticed that my YouTube baseball card watching has declined. I think it's because the videos seem to be on repeat. Everything seems to be the same. It's gotten boring instead of informing.

* Went to the local Goodwill store and not a single card in sight. I keep hearing about people finding all kinds of cards at Goodwill, but I've never seen cards there.  

* My youngest grandson was at the house the other day and was looking at the piles of cards on my desk and asked about his cards. I had an extra Evan Carter sitting on top and gave it to him to take home...he thought about it for a second and then tossed it back on the desk(it was in a top loader!) and was done. Maybe one day...

* Shout out to Johnny's Trading Spot! I got 4 envelopes stuffed with Rangers! 

 

Nice additions to my Evan Carter collection.

 

Love all of these 582 Montgomery cards. I think now I'm going to try and get the rest of the Rangers.

 

I really appreciate the Holiday Nice List cards. I bought one and was gifted one of the Holiday balls and didn't get any Rangers in them. 

 

Several of these fit nicely into the collection. A couple are dupes but they fit right in the Rangers collection.

* Do you know what drives me absolutely crazy? When I know I have a card, or cards, and it's not where it's supposed to be and I can't find it. 

* I've been updating TCDB with my player collections and found the rankings link. I'm in the top 25 of Corey Seager (Don't think I'll ever catch Night Owl!), #13 of Wyatt Langford, #3 of Marcus Semien and #2 of Evan Carter. Not that it matters at all. I've got to be very careful about checking it now that I know about it. I'm too competitive and will try way too hard to win and I can't afford that. 

* Speaking of my player collection, I've had them in top loaders and stored in boxes, but I've decided to change and put them in binders. Right now, I've only done Seager, Semien, Carter and Langford and they are all in one binder. The plan is for each to have their own, but I want different binders than what I put my completed sets in, but I don't know what I want.

* I keep seeing that there are more cards being graded than ever. At the same time I keep seeing more and more people say they are done with grading cards. I think graded cards will be around, but I'm pretty sure it won't be as prevalent in the future or at least a lot different than it is now. 

* I'm still looking for that sweetheart deal at a garage sale or estate sale. So far, no luck.

* Still working on my "Players that I like but don't collect" posts. It's really harder to do than I thought it would be. I do think that I'm limiting each team to only 9 players. 

* I have officially completed my 1986 Topps set. After a trade with bkrementz on TCDB, I was down to two cards. Off I went to buysportscards.com and picked up the last two cards for my set for 25 cents each. Now they do have a $3.00 minimum so I grabbed a couple of Clayton Kershaw's and an '82 topps Garry Maddox for my '82 set. 

All of that to say that I couldn't have completed the '86 set without the help of several trades over the last year. Now I'm looking forward to see what else I can complete.

For a bunch of ramblings, this turned into a much longer post than I anticipated. I guess it's time to call it! 

Peace, 

Michael

Isaiah 40:31

My favorite players that I don't collect: Yankee edition

 It doesn't take much from me to figure out that I do not like the Yankees. I'm not sure where this dislike comes from. Maybe it's because they kept knocking the Rangers out of the playoffs early on. Maybe it's because they were always winning and they weren't my team. Maybe it's because one of my best friends was a Yankee fan and was always rubbing it in my face when they won. 

Whatever it was, it worked...I'm definitely not a Yankees fan. 

However, being a baseball fan there's no way you can leave out the Yankees from your collection. So, I decided to start my "Favorite players I don't collect" collection with the Yankees. 

My goal is to get one card of my favorite players that I don't collect on a regular basis. I want it to be a playing days card, but it some cases that just won't be fiscally possible. In that situation I'll find a reprint or one of these modern cards that have become pretty popular showing these old school guys. 

I'm going to do the Yankees in two posts. I will probably do teams that have several players in two posts. 

My first Yankee that I don't collect but want at least one card from their playing days is Mickey Mantle. Mickey Mantle has always been larger than life for me. He's definitely the guy that I ignore the fact he was a Yankee. He moved to the Dallas area and that is probably why he first came on my radar when I was a kid before I became a baseball nut. 

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what card of Mickey's I want to have. It changes quite often. 

Right now, I've narrowed it down to these four cards for my Mantle card. 

    

    

My guess is that when I find the one that I like that meets my budget will be the card that I settle on. 

My next favorite Yankee (Man, that's hard to type "favorite Yankee"!) has to be Yogi Berra. Yogi is most famously known for his Yogi-isms like "He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious" or "Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical". I think those are my two favorites. 

What most forget is he was pretty good at baseball too. A 3 time MVP, 18 time All-Star and 10 World Series winner. A career .285 hitter. Yep, pretty good at baseball. I think the Yogi Berra card that I want would be the '54 Topps.

I really like the '54 card because it features him as a catcher and I love the background shot of him swinging. The more I look through the '54 Topps cards, the more I like them. Like Yogi said, "You can observe a lot just by watching". I don't think I'll ever go after a set like that but I do think I'll own a few one day.

Next on the list is The Sultan of Swat, the Colossus of Clout, the Great Bambino, Babe Ruth. Now, I'm sure that I'm going to upset some baseball purists, but I don't have The Babe as the greatest of all-time. That title, for me, goes to the Great Willie Mays. That's a whole other post and discussion. 

There is no doubt that Babe Ruth is one of the absolute greatest. His feats during his playing days helped build the game to greatness and what it is today. For that reason, he's one of my favorites. If I had the opportunity I'd choose the '33 Goudey or the '48-'49 Leaf for my Ruth card.

     

Maybe someday. More realistic for me, my Ruth card of choice is the '61 Topps #401

Such a cool card. So far, I don't own any Ruth cards other than those in a Stadium Club set or some insert, but to me, those don't really count. The '61 card is pushing it, but at least it's 60+ years old. 

Lou Gehrig is next on my favorites from the Yankees. I think his playing story of taking over for Wally Pipp is one of my favorites. I love the fact that he didn't take a day off for 2,130 games. You know as well as I do that he had those days of being sore, tired and just not feeling well, and played anyway. As a coach, that's something that I wished this generation of ballplayers had just a little bit of. Probably why I'm such a Marcus Semien fan. 

 My Gehrig card, of course it's way out of my price range, would be the '34 Goudey.

I love this card. Simple. The smile. Just a great card. The only way this happens for me is if I fall into a attic find somewhere. I'm probably going to find a reprint of this card (might just do the same with the Ruth too!) for my collection.

The last player for Part 1 of my favorite Yankees (there's that funny taste in my mouth again!) is Joltin' Joe DiMaggio. He was a .325 hitter, 2,000 hit club, 361 home runs and of course, the 56 game hit streak. How crazy is that? You'd figure in 56 straight games there'd be one 0 for 4, or an 0 for 2 with walks, something! I know if I was pitching during that streak, I'd pitch around him. Way far away around him. Just like I'd never throw Barry Bonds a strike either.

I'm struggling with what card to do for the Yankee Clipper. Obviously the '41 Play Ball is out of my price range. Maybe a reprint though?

Maybe the '83 TCMA #10. 

I like this card. He looks relaxed and I love the ballfield in the background. Yep, I think this is my choice for my DiMaggio. 

Looks like I've got some cards to put on my want list. 

That's it for Part 1 of the Yankees. Part 2 to follow soon!

Peace, 

Michael

Isaiah 40:31

Ramblings of an old card collector

 Wandering thoughts about card collecting. 

* It drives me nuts when people say opening packs isn't worth it. Would I be wrong in saying that if everyone abided by that thought, there wouldn't be any singles to buy???

* 2025 Topps release is right around the corner. 

     

I like the design. I think the team name down the side is a little difficult to read, but I like the team color aspect and actually like the position dots. It's different. I will say that I don't love the design like I did '24, but overall, its not too bad. 

* Still working on my favorite players from each team. It's a little harder to do than I thought. I'm sure that it will evolve as I go along. 

* So sad that we lost another great one in Bob Uecker. He loved the game and had the best sense of humor. So many great stories. 

* HOF voting is starting to come out. Ichiro should be a unanimous pick. 

What an unbelievable talent. Not only that he did it for quite awhile without much regression. I just remember every time he came to bat against the Rangers I would say just go ahead and put him on and save time and pitch count. I don't think he gets the attention in the card collecting world like he should. I know he hasn't in my collection. 

* I did manage to complete another set. I made a trade on TCDB and when I was putting the cards away I decided to look and see how many more cards I needed and I was down to 8. I went on Buy Sports Cards dot com and picked up the rest from one guy. I can now check my 1996 Topps set as complete. 

     

     

     

These are just a few of my favorites from the set. I really like the simple design of the cards. There are some cool shots like the Henderson, Jeter and Chipper Jones cards. Who doesn't love tribute cards in a set like the Mantle and Ripken cards. 

* I've reached the point that my current card room set up needs an adjustment to become more worker friendly. Just like about everyone else, there is limited room so I'm going to have to be creative. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I've got to do something. 

* I'm over all of these so called collectors who want absolutely nothing to do with base cards. I'm big on collecting what you want, but literally, discarding them completely and looking only for the inserts is something that I can't wrap my head around. Okay, that sounded really bad. They aren't so called collectors, they're collectors. They can send me their base cards though! 

* Question: What are your thoughts on the PED players, those that were actually caught, getting in the HOF? I'm of the thought that they don't get in because they cheated the game. I don't know that I'll feel that way forever, but that's where I'm at now.

* Speaking of cheating the game, Jayson Stark wrote in The Athletic That "voters are not looking at the Astros' infamous Bang the Can Slowly scandal as a This Dude Must Never Enter the Halls of Cooperstown kind of "crime"." I think that's worse than steroids. Okay, maybe not worse, but just as bad. Pretty sure that if I had a vote for HOF Carlos Beltran wouldn't get mine. 

* Back to my non-voting for the Hall this year, I think the only ones that I'd vote for if I had a vote would be Ichiro, Sabathia and Wagner. I'd probably vote for a few others to keep them on the ballot, but that'd be it. 

* I've heard that there's a lot of baseball card people moving to Bluesky Social. Any of you on Bluesky? I just downloaded it and thought I'd give it a look. 

I think that's it for now. Hope everyone has a blessed day!

Peace, 

Michael

Isaiah 40:31

     

Ramblings of an old baseball card collector - New Year edition

*Happy New Year! Okay, okay, I know it's already almost a week into the new year, but time is a precious commodity during the holiday season and there just wasn't time to write. I did start a post before Christmas, but never got it finished. Started another one before New Year's Day and that one didn't get done either. Well, I least I got this one done. 

*My Rangers re-signed Nathan Eovaldi. If deGrom is healthy that's a pretty powerful 1-2 punch in the starting rotation. If either Rocker or Leiter pan out, or better yet if they both do, that would be the best rotation the Rangers have ever had. 

*For the first time since I've started putting together Topps sets for my grandsons I didn't get them finished by Christmas. Still need to get that done. Good thing is they are both so young they won't notice. 

*The golden at bat rule that Rob Manfred mentioned has got to be the worst thing that could happen to MLB. I will say that the other rules, save one, have been good for baseball.

*I had a goal of completing more sets...failed! I did manage to complete a couple of subsets though. 

  

Covering the Field inserts is one of my collecting successes this past year. I'm not sure why I decided to collect this subset. Maybe it was because I had acquired a good number of them opening packs. I do really like the spray chart on the cards though.

*Just read that Rangers are on the short list for Roki Sasaki. Man, wouldn't that make the starting rotation hot!

*Had another goal of writing a post every week. I did pretty good at the beginning of the year, but the new responsibilities of head baseball coach was overwhelming. It's better now, but still failed on the posting to the blog.

*Quick update on the new head coaching job...They never tell you about all of the paperwork and hoops you have to jump through besides the coaching baseball part. I still really love coaching the guys and sharing baseball with them, but if I could just find someone to do all of the other stuff... 

*I've managed to pick up a couple of autographs of a couple of Rangers. I'm not a big autograph collector, but both of these came really cheap and they are two of the young guns that the Rangers have.

When the Rangers acquired Josh Smith and Ezekiel Duran, I told everyone that Smith was going to be the star of the trade. It didn't start out that way. Everyone thought it was Duran. I knew that once he got the chance he'd prove it. I love the way this guy plays. 

This is my second Carter auto. I really like this one more than the other one. The Topps Chrome auto is a nice looking card.

*Back to Manfred and the rule changes. The one rule that I'm still not a fan of is the pick-off rule. After two attempts it's almost like a freebie out there. I don't know if there is a magic number of attempts, but I'm not a fan of three.

*The other subset I managed to complete is the All-Topps Team.

I really like the design of these cards. I didn't hurt that there are two Rangers in it too!

I think that's all for this post. I hope each and everyone had a Merry Christmas and I hope and pray that everyone has a blessed New Year!

Peace, 

Michael

Isaiah 40:31