Baseball Card Thread, Relaunched

[seawolf17]

Weird to start this thread with an MFY image, but I thought this was freaky - I saw it on a baseball card board I visit.



That's a 1994 SP Holoviews Carlos Delgado card (when he was a catcher!), with a hologram in the bottom right corner... of Don Mattingly. Theoretically, that's supposed to be of the same player; the hologram is freaky enough as is, but it's just bizarre when it's the wrong player. The correct card:



Error cards are funny.

[metirish]

I saw this card in person.....

[Guest Edgy DC]

Not that I'm seeing much in that hologram, but what I'm seeing looks like Carlos Delgado.

Looks dark-skinned. Looks to have a colored v-neck jersey, looks like a Blue Jay logo on the cap.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Maybe you're only seeing the second of the two cards, Edgy. The first card has a hologram that's clearly Don Mattingly.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Yeah, I'm just seeing a big break between the first two paragraphs. I guess there's an image there not loading for me.

[seawolf17]

Relinked the image... perhaps better now?

[metirish]

Relinked the image... perhaps better now?[/quote:3del09gj]

nope,I still see Donnie baseball...

[Guest Edgy DC]

Nope. My browser is clearly configured so as to block images of the alleged Hit Man.

[Guest Kong76]

I got these 86 TCMA postcards during the summer. I don't know the history
behind them ... were they a Shea giveaway? There's 40 of 'em ... anyway,
here's Davey ... the dot on his head is one of those defect spots ....

[stevejrogers]

Those were made by TCMA and were the semi-official postcards of the Mets for a couple of years in the mid-80's. Later years they were done by a fellow named Barry Colla and now actually are done by the Mets, and given away at some function they do for the Starlight Children's Foundation.

Anyway, those TCMAs were not given away at Shea, but advertized through Met publications and such, essentially send-a-ways. These days the sets will pop up at card shows and the like, the set isn't rare by any stretch.

Distinguishing feature of the 1986 set of course is a very blue rendering of the 25th Anniversary logo on the back of all of the cards.

[Guest cooby]

I don't remember what year we got ours, but we have a Mackey Sasser and a Jeff Torberg postcard, received after we wrote letters to those two Mets.

Mackey's doesn't have a personal message (to my daughter) but Susie Torberg wrote me a nice note on the back of Jeff's.

So they were also used by the players as correspondence.

What year would that be, around 1991?

[Guest Kong76]

Thanks for the backround info.

I knew they weren't rare ... the bozo that I bought them from had a whole box
of them and charged me five bucks for a pack when I knew he gave two packs
to a friend of ours for free. I probably would have bought 2 or 3 packs if I didn't
know that and probably still should have.

[Vic Sage]

my daughter is now getting into collecting baseball cards. She got the Topps 06 complete box set for xmas, and has put them into 9-card sleeves in a binder (organized by team).

i never really collected cards (i was/am a comic book junkie), so i don't really know the ins and outs, and i don't know how to advise her.

i've suggested she stick to Topps, because they're the "real ones", as far as i'm concerned. Obviously, i know rookie cards are valuable, and i know she's going to want to get as many Mets cards as she can. Is there a preferred internet source for well-priced old mets cards? rookie cards? annual sets? Is there a preferred style of storage, organization, etc, to which i can refer her?

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Vic, I don't the answer to that, but as a kid the most enjoyable thing about baseball cards was that there was no "right way" to treat them, organize them, whatever.

Let her do what she wants with them. I used to build forts with mine.

Oh, btw, here's a pretty interesting bb-card blog:

http://cardboardgods.blogspot.com/

He can write some.

[seawolf17]

Topps is kinda the "old guard." They're still generally the most approachable from a young person's standpoint; the basic set is relatively inexpensive and easy to find (everywhere from hobby stores to Target).

As far as online sources go, I'm a member of The Bench, which is a baseball card discussion board where we do a pretty good deal of trading (I've been a member for a year, and I've made almost 200 trades). I've picked up a lot of cards that way, both Metly and not.

My advice for new collectors would be to pick something and stick with it. There is an enormous amount of variety, both price-wise and idea-wise, in the market right now. I collect three things: cards of my favorite players (Kevin McReynolds, Keith Hernandez, Pete Harnisch, Wright and Reyes), Topps base sets (1976 - my birth year, 1980-88 - the years I was a big-time collector as a kid, and 2006+), and Mets Topps cards, as a fun history-type project to build with Miniwolf some day.

I'd advise her to do the same. If she wants Mets cards, tell her to go for it; eBay is a good start, as I've picked up a lot of things there also. If she needs help, shoot me an e-mail or a PM and I'll help her out. She can use me as a reference on the Bench if she'd like. (I don't know how old she is; there are a good number of kids on the board, but not really anyone younger than high-school age.)

I'd also advise her to register at beckett.com -- they have a free "My Collection" tool where she can catalog what she has, and she can easily see the values of her collection. If she wants to pay, she can get the full online price guide, but I don't know that it's worth it; you can generally figure out what you need from the My Collections pages. (It'll give you the total value of each folder, but not individual values -- but if you move cards around between folders, it's really easy to see the value of one card if it's in a folder by itself, or if you move it out of a folder, you can just do the quick math to figure out the difference in the price of the total folder.)

As far as storage, I keep my sets and my player collections in binders, and my extra cards that I use for trading in 800-count boxes. Storage can actually get pricey if you want it to, but you can pick up storage boxes cheaply at your local baseball card shop.

I'm very willing to help if need be, or if you or she have specific questions. Let me know. My site is linked on my profile here, as well as at the Bench.

edit: JD's right. There's no "correct" way to do it. Just tell her to do what she wants to do with them. My ten-year-old cousin collects, and has some relatively valuable cards (game-used relics, gold parallels, etc.) just jammed in with everything else. I cringe every time I see them, but ultimately, it's his collection, and he can do whatever he wants with it.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Our forts were seven stories tall. I have a picture somewhere.

[seawolf17]

And all you fort-building folks who have boxes of 1976 Topps laying around the house, please stick them in a box and send them to me. Thanks.

[Vic Sage]

thanks, wolfie. that was helpful.

and of course there's no "correct" way... i asked if there was a "preferred" way.

as a kid, i "preferred" to play "colors"... its like war with bb cards, matching colors would win. we also "flipped" cards.

[Methead]

When I first discovered ebay, I went nuts buying a lot of cards I wanted as a kid but couldn't afford.

When I lived in Brooklyn, I focused on Dodgers cards from the 1950's. My favorite set is the 1952 Bowman. They're awesome.

For example, I've got this Gil Hodges card...


As well as this Pee Wee Reese.

[stevejrogers]

my daughter is now getting into collecting baseball cards. She got the Topps 06 complete box set for xmas, and has put them into 9-card sleeves in a binder (organized by team).

i never really collected cards (i was/am a comic book junkie), so i don't really know the ins and outs, and i don't know how to advise her.

i've suggested she stick to Topps, because they're the "real ones", as far as i'm concerned. Obviously, i know rookie cards are valuable, and i know she's going to want to get as many Mets cards as she can. Is there a preferred internet source for well-priced old mets cards? rookie cards? annual sets? Is there a preferred style of storage, organization, etc, to which i can refer her?

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

[Guest Kong76]

Dave Berman! I was in that 'club' and used to get newsletters. The checklist
books were great for people obsessed with completing different facets of Mets'
collecting.

He also used to sell stuff, at kinda ridiculous prices, but he had everything
Mets you could want to collect. Haven't got a mailing in years, figured he re-
tired from it or grew ill or something.

OE: I pc'd your post and glossed over your link (which looks interesting) and
that there is a computer data version of the Berman checklist?

[stevejrogers]

Dave Berman! I was in that 'club' and used to get newsletters. The checklist
books were great for people obsessed with completing different facets of Mets'
collecting.

He also used to sell stuff, at kinda ridiculous prices, but he had everything
Mets you could want to collect. Haven't got a mailing in years, figured he re-
tired from it or grew ill or something.

OE: I pc'd your post and glossed over your link (which looks interesting) and
that there is a computer data version of the Berman checklist?[/quote:2oe3bbiz]

I don't think so, I think it's just whatever the person(s) has images of as opposed to an organization of Met memorabilia

I found the site in 2005 here as Edgy found it looking for an image of Larry Bowa that was from the 1991 Wiz "Every Met To Ever Play" set, and it does not appear to have been updated since

[Guest Kong76]

I think we're confusing each other. Forget about the site, you said you have
a CD (a year old) of something ... is it by Berman's Mets Memorabilia club?

[stevejrogers]

I think we're confusing each other. Forget about the site, you said you have
a CD (a year old) of something ... is it by Berman's Mets Memorabilia club?[/quote:1aebgvuk]

The CD is Berman's. Also up to date since 2005

[Guest Kong76]

Huh, maybe I was blackballed. I just stopped hearing from him/them (what-
ever) and never knew why as I said earlier.

[seawolf17]

Saw this on one of the baseball card boards I visit:



That's five different Marcus Giles cards, all produced by Upper Deck, combined to make a neat tableau.

[Benjamin Grimm]

That second one looks a lot like those 1971 Topps cards that I love so much.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

2 and 5 are the only ones not hideously overdesigned

[Frayed Knot]

The sequence should show him morphing into a Padre

[Benjamin Grimm]

2 and 5 are the only ones not hideously overdesigned[/quote:39x4v4bb]

I don't object as strongly to number 1 as you do. That doorknob thing is a little weird, though, but I wouldn't call it hideous.

Numbers 3 and 4 are, exactly as you say, hideously overdesigned. I think that cards that look like those are a big part of what keeps me from rekindling my long dormant interest in baseball cards.