Blog, Batta, Blog!

I did mention in an earlier post that my friend Tom has a collection of cards of the Yankees who have had their numbers retired.

I always thought that was a cool idea, and as a guy who's collection began with Yankees stuff and slowly moved in a different direction, I thought it would be a cool and worthwhile addition that wouldn't take up too much time or become too expensive.

The Yankees have retired the following players' numbers, in order: Billy Martin (1), Babe Ruth (3), Lou Gehrig (4), Joe D (5), Mickey Mantle (7), Yogi (8), Bill Dickey (also 8), Roger Maris (9), Phil Rizzuto (10), Thurman Munson (15), Whitey Ford (16), Don Mattingly (23), Elston Howard (32), Casey Stengel (37), Jackie Robinson (42), Reggie Jackson (44), and Ron Guidry (49).

Before long, I would anticipate adding Derek Jeter (2), Joe Torre (6), Paul O'Neill (21), Mariano Rivera (42), and Bernie Williams (51).

Acquiring just one really nice card of each of those players would make up a really nice little collection.

And adding in a collection of Dodgers' retired numbers, which I intend to do sooner or later, would make it nicer. The Dodgers have retired the following numbers: Pee Wee Reese (1), Tommy Lasorda (2), Duke Snider (4), Jim Gilliam (19), Don Sutton (20), Walt Alston (24), Sandy Koufax (32), Roy Campanella (39), Jackie (42), and Don Drysdale (53).

Anyway, I went shopping almost as soon as I decided to do it, and bought two cards: a PSA 9 Mattingly Rookie (Donruss), and an SGC 92 1967 Topps Elston Howard.

Once I started talking about it with friends, I received a care package from my friend Frank, who has the coolest collection and is a super-nice guy. Inside I found this:



Kind of a cool gift, perhaps to ease the guilt of slaughtering my team in Simnasium baseball on a regular basis.

Anyway, that's one of the two new offshoots that I added to my collection. The other, I'll blog about soon, after I accumulate a few more cards.

Hope you had a nice T-Day.

Got some great stuff on the way. Life is good, and the Thanksgiving holiday was very nice to me, as far as cards are concerned.

Got some more '38 Goudeys for sale this week, along with an N172 Tim Keefe that I upgraded.

Picked up a few cards amidst the drama this week.

I decided to start a New York Yankees Retired Numbers set this week, in honor of my friend Tom, who does the same thing. Started off by buying a nice shiny 1984 Donruss Mattingly in a PSA 9 holder that looked like it would cross to SGC, and a 1967 Topps Elston Howard in an SGC 92. If the Mattingly doesn't cross, I'll find another one.

Then I decided to start a Lena Blackburne player collection. Lena was a weak-hitting nobody who discovered Lena Blackburne's Baseball Rubbing Mud, the stuff they rub on baseballs prior to every major league game, as well as most minor league ones. Harvested from a hole on the Jersey side of the Delaware River, the Rubbing Mud is really cool - looks like chocolate mousse. I started with a Topps T205 Buyback of Lena, and will try and pick up each T-card back combination as well as the few other cards of Blackburne that are out there.

Also upgraded my N172 Keefe - hope to have the new one before Thanksgiving.

Sold off 13 of my 15 PSA Goudeys and got very strong prices on most of 'em. Sold off all my W502s (the reason this blog started in the first place, heh) but a few. Still to come - two more Goudeys and my old N172 Keefe.

Happy Thanksgiving, if I don't talk to you.

After nearly a year of whining, I crossed my 1938 Goudey set to SGC.

It was liberating, even though 15 of my 48-card set did not cross. I'll just keep looking. As Rob Lifson told me, "You can always buy them again." He's right - and once I got it out of my head that I'll never see cards in as high a grade as the ones I'm getting rid of (even though in some cases I won't), it actually felt good.

Because I know I'm getting rid of cards that don't meet my standards.

Anyway, here's a preview. You can see the entire set in the 1938 Goudey section of this website.

Even I fell for it. For a day.

Now it's pretty clear. This company is dead, or pretty close to it. Anyone trying to convince us otherwise is just hurting their own reputation at this point.

Buh-bye.

Looks like they were just moving.

We should have known that, because it's entirely normal to just shut your phones down, take your website offline, stop returning phone calls, and not address internet rumors of your imminent demise when you're moving.

Sigh.

Big disclaimer up front, in case you didn't read the home page: the company where I work does marketing for SGC. So statements I make about grading companies may be viewed as being biased.

That said, my presence here is as a collector, primarily of graded cards, and not as SGC's ad guy. The things I post here are my own opinion, and this post is no exception.

Several people have mentioned over the last few days that, if in fact Global is going out of business, that is bad for the hobby.

My opinion is that Global going out of business is decidedly NOT bad for the hobby. In the world of graded cards, nothing could be better. They might be the nicest guys on earth, but that doesn't absolve them from the myriad of mistakes that they've made, costing collectors confidence and money.

Nothing about this company has been "good for the hobby." They can't go out of business fast enough.

Virtually all my collecting life I've owned T206s. When I was a kid, maybe 10 or 11, I used to go to a card shop in Ridgewood, NJ. The owner kept a shoebox full of cards for me - 1951 and 52 Bowmans, and T206s. The Bowmans were fifty cents, the T206s were a dollar. I'd buy a few of each with my allowance money every week.

Since then I've always picked up T206s whenever I could find a bunch of them cheap. And last year I started working on a T205 set.

After looking through my collection this weekend, I've realized that lately I've been dumping a good portion of my collection, but keeping the T205s and T206s. And the more I look at them, the more I enjoy them. The art, the poses, the detail, the ads on the back. Thankfully I haven't gotten to the point where I need to have these in high grade (if I do, shoot me), but they're an awful lot of fun to have around. I can't see myself buying these one at a time yet, as I'm still too far from completion on either set to make it worthwhile, but it's an awful lot of fun to latch onto a big slug of them at auction, and then go through a big pile.