Non-Random Team Review: 1977 Topps St. Louis Cardinals (Plus Weigh-In #77)

I’ve been reviewing some running themes that I’ve had during the 11+ years of this blog and I was surprised that it’s been over a year since I did a “Team Review” post.  I usually pick a team at random, but in this case I wanted to feature a team set from 1977.

For those new to this long-running (and clearly long-neglected) series, I take a completed team set from my collection and highlight players and cards which fall under certain categories.

The 1977 Cardinals went 83-79, finishing in 3rd place, 18 games behind the division champion Phillies… but showed an improvement over the 90-loss 1976 Cardinals team under Red Schoendienst.  Vern Rapp was at the helm for that improvement, but his disciplinarian tendencies did not go over well with the team’s veterans and he was fired after a 6-11 start to 1978.

In 1976 the Cardinals were one of the teams who would wear ‘pillbox’ caps as part of the National League’s centennial.  The Pirates, of course, are famous for sticking with that cap for a number of years but the Cardinals also wore those caps a fair amount in 1976… I’m going to point out some examples of that as we go along.

BEST POSITION PLAYER
Ted Simmons is one of two Hall of Famers in this team set and was also a 1977 All-Star.  He lead the league with 25 intentional bases on balls and lead the team in homers (21), RBI (95), Slugging % (.500) and on-base % (.408)

If you look closely you can see that Simmons was wearing a pillbox cap that day.  His uniform also includes a sleeve patch for the National League’s 1976 centennial.  Also remember that this was 1976, so he is NOT checking his phone.

BEST PITCHER
Bob Forsch had 20 wins against just 7 losses and his 3.48 ERA was tied for the best among the team’s starting pitchers.

Forsch and his brother Ken also appeared in the “Big League Brothers” subset.

SECOND BEST PITCHER WHO’S ALSO WEARING A PILLBOX CAP
Eric Rasmussen lead the team with 120 strikeouts, 11 complete games and 3 shutouts.

BEST ROOKIE CARD
Garry Templeton was a 1977 All-Star and may be best known in St. Louis as the guy they traded to San Diego for Ozzie Smith (although there were other players involved in the trade).  In 1977 Templeton lead the league with 18 triples and lead the team with a .322 average. As you can see by the trophy on the front of the card he had been named the shortstop on the 1976 Topps All-Star Rookie team, meaning that this is one of those cases where the rookie card came after the rookie season.

MY FAVORITE CARD
Lou Brock is the other HOFer in this set. During the 1977 season he would pass Ty Cobb for the career stolen bases record. I can’t fully explain why this card is my favorite from this team set, but the “pillbox helmet” doesn’t hurt. Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

AS A METS FAN I’M OBLIGATED TO INCLUDE THIS CARD
Keith Hernandez lead the team with 41 doubles, so I can rationalize his inclusion that way as well

BEST NAME
Mike Tyson was a regular with the Cardinals and Cubs… And oh yeah, there’s also this boxer who came along later and has the same name.

MOST NOTABLE AIRBRUSHING
It was years before I realized that this card is airbrushed, but John D’Acquisto pitched for the Giants in 1976, and the Topps artist carefully colored the uniform numbers and name-on-back, airbrushed a Cardinals cap and the sansabelt waistband and striping on the pants. Artistry!!!!

BONUS 1977 O-PEE-CHEE CARD
O-Pee-Chee apparently didn’t care for the shadows across Pete Falcone’s face, so much so that they took a 1975 photo of him with the Giants and airbrushed the cap.

FATHER OF A MAJOR LEAGUER (AND PILLBOX CAP!)
Tom Walker is the father of infielder Neil Walker (who played in the Majors from 2009 to 2020). Dad didn’t pitch for the Cardinals in 1977, instead he was released near the end of spring training, hooked up with the Expos and over the summer he was claimed on waivers by the Angels and put in his final Major League innings.

BEST CAMEO APPEARANCE ON ANOTHER PLAYER’S CARD
That’s catcher Joe Ferguson’s back on Bobby Murcer’s card. Interestingly enough, both players were airbrushed into other uniforms in 1977 O-Pee-Chee… Murcer got traded to the Cubs, Ferguson to the Astros.

BEST IDEA THAT I COULDN’T FOLLOW THROUGH ON
I was going to include a card listed as “Best 1977 St. Louis (Football) Cardinals Card In My Collection”, but I have fewer 1977 Topps Football cards I’d realized and I don’t have any Cardinals from that set.  Oh, well.

THE REST OF THE PILLBOX CAPS

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And now it’s time for my belated quarterly Weigh-In.  For those wondering what the deal is with a “Weigh-In”, here is my official Mission Statement:

Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

Changes in the 4th quarter of 2022 (from 10/2/2022 to 1/14/2023):

Net change in the collection: +802 (1,012 added, 210 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: +295 (1,157 came in, 862 went out)

The 2022 Topps factory set I bought was more than offset by the 850 cards which were given out at Halloween… but I bought some other stuff on top of that, so overall we’re still on an upward trend.

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 16,272
Net change to the collection, to date: +8,041

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 56,200
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -12,691

One of these days I’m going to make a Goodwill donation run and these numbers will look a bit better.

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 73,915
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 11,987
…which means I’ve got at least 85,902 cards in my collection

Money spent on cards:
This does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc.

1st quarter, 2022: $57.19
2nd quarter, 2022: $224.46
3rd quarter, 2022: $31.79
4th quarter, 2022: $172.72

Average per month for 2022: $40.51
Average per month for 2021: $35.64
Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016. In 2016 and 2017 I didn’t go to many card shows because there weren’t any local shows, and I made the 5 hour round trip to a regional card show only once or twice a year.

I’m still well below my spending from 2018 – 2020, but part of it is me feeling a bit lost in where I want to take my collection going forward.  Since receiving a COMC shipment in mid December there’s been very little going on with my collection.

Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 1,044 set definitions and 259,365 card definitions (An increase of 12 sets and 2,931 cards since the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; Although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

Acquisitions From 1976, Plus Weigh-In #76

Recently – which, in my current hobby situation means “within the current calendar year” – I picked up a number of cards from 1976.  Because of Weigh-In #76, which makes up the 2nd half of this post, I had been looking for something with a 1976 angle to write about.  I went through a few ideas I crumpled up and tossed aside and finally just went with the tried-and-true “just pick a bunch of cards and start writing” method.

So…

There’s been a bit of talk lately about the “toxic fandom” of the New York Yankees, which got a knee-jerk reaction of “So what else is new?” from me. I’ve been mocked, belittled and generally lorded over by Yankees fans for much of my baseball-loving life.  It doesn’t happen as much since I left Long Island in the 1990s, but the resentment will always be there.

But I try not to go too hard into thinking this way for two reasons. First, I know plenty of Yankees fans who don’t get caught up in the “We’re awesome, you suck!” mentality.

But the second reason is that I’m a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and I’ve discovered that there are plenty of people who view Steelers fans with a similar disdain.

The thing is, though, that I became a Steelers fan in the early 1980s… After their run of four Super Bowl wins, and I had to wait over 20 years before I got to witness my first Super Bowl win in 2005.  But the thing is that I *did* watch football in the 1970s, I just didn’t follow the Steelers.  Because of that, I remember Franco Harris as an exceptional running back, but he was never really “one of my guys”

It makes for a kind of weird situation for me, because now I enjoy picking up vintage Steelers cards even though I had no particular love of them at the time.  A big part of it is having an excuse to pick up vintage cards.

When I was a kid I liked the local Giants and Jets but I also liked the Vikings, partly because I liked Fran Tarkenton… and I think I liked Tarkenton because I had a Scholastic “All-Pro Football Stars of 1976” book which had Tarkenton on the cover, plus I also had his 1974 and 1975 Topps cards which featured cool-for-the-time photos that had been taken during games.  The purple uniforms went a long way too, I’ve always been visually-oriented.

Moving on to another 1976 set, I picked up a number of 1976 SSPC cards as part of my slow, slow crawl towards a complete set.  Even though this card of Dave Chalk isn’t the greatest shot in photographic terms, I really like it.  I have a thing about American League players photographed at Shea Stadium (home of the Yankees in 1974 and 1975)… Well, to be completely honest, I have a thing for cards which show the Shea scoreboard in the background.

Chalk is one of those forgotten players of the 1970s even though he was a 1st round pick and a two-time All-Star. According to Baseball-Reference, In 1976 he became the last player to get 500+ at bats without hitting a homer or stealing a base.

This is one of the checklist cards from 1976 SSPC and it features Maury Wills and John Knox, an infielder who played 124 games over four seasons.  Don’t know why these two are paired up, but it’s still cool.

I was just looking at Maury Wills’ stats, and while I knew he set a record with 104 steals in 1962 , I didn’t realize that this was very much an outlier season for him. He stole 35 bases the year before, 40 the year after, and while his second-highest total was 94 in 1965, it drops off from there. On the other hand, he *did* lead the league in SBs from 1960 to 1965.

Quick fun thing to share just because I noticed it: When Wills lead the NL with 40 stolen bases in 1963, the runner up was Hank Aaron with a career-high 31.

Hall-of-Famer Joe Morgan at Shea, but it’s the batter’s eye in the background rather than the scoreboard. When this card was issued, Morgan was the reigning NL MVP and was about to have another MVP season.

Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt, most likely at Shea but there’s no telling from the photo. Schmidt’s back-to-back MVP seasons were a couple of years away (1980 – 1981).

Kind of a crappy photo of Hall-of-Famer Steve Carlton, which might speak a bit to the non-descript season he’d had in 1975. Lefty went 15-14, wasn’t an All-Star, didn’t get any MVP or Cy Young votes, and didn’t lead the league in anything and didn’t finish in the top three in strikeouts. When you’re Steve Carlton, that’s an off year.

And to wrap up the SSPCs, Duke Snider looking odd in an Expos uniform. He was a broadcaster and a part-time hitting instructor for Montreal.

OK, that’s all I have as far as 1976 cards. And now…

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All of this was leading into my quarterly Weigh-In.  For those wondering what the deal is with a “Weigh-In”, here is my official Mission Statement:

Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

Changes in the 3rd quarter of 2022 (from 7/2/2022 to 10/1/2022):

Net change in the collection: +142 (377 added, 235 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: -392 (257 came in, 649 went out)

All of the stuff going out was cards being mailed out to other collectors, which is where must of the incoming cards came from.  I bought very few cards in this quarter.

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 16,062
Net change to the collection, to date: +7,239

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 55,338
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -12,986

One of these days I’m going to make a Goodwill donation run and these numbers will look a bit better.

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 71,635
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 11,591

…which means I’ve got at least 83,226 cards in my collection

Money spent on cards:
This does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc.

1st quarter, 2022: $57.19
2nd quarter, 2022: $224.46
3rd quarter, 2022: $31.79

Average per month for 2022, to date: $34.83
Average per month for 2021: $35.64
Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016. In 2016 and 2017 I didn’t go to many card shows because there weren’t any local shows, and I made the 5 hour round trip to a regional card show only once or twice a year.

The entirety of my spending in the 3rd quarter was a single blaster of 2022 Bowman that I found at Target in July. I’ve tried to be better about organizing my collection instead (and I’ve already spent more this month than I did in the 3rd quarter). There’s also a sizeable amount of me asking “What am I trying to do?” while I go through my binders and boxes.

Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 1,032 set definitions and 256,434 card definitions (An increase of 5 sets and 1000 cards since the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; Although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

A Different Kind Of “1975 Mini” (Plus Weigh-In #75)

Like many of my stupid ideas, it came from merging two separate thoughts in a fairly ridiculous way.

For years I’ve been meaning to write some sort of post on vertically challenged Major Leaguers, seeing as I’m a bit on the short side myself (5’9″ since you asked nicely).

I was recently looking to come up with an idea involving 1975 Topps, and somehow the idea of “1975 Topps Minis” and short players conflated in my head… and here we are.

And with no further delay, I present the subjects of 1975 Topps cards who are my adult height or less… Starting with the famously short Freddie Patek.

(NOTE:  All heights come from the backs of these 1975 cards, so if you have issues with the listed height then jump in your DeLorean go back to ’75 and take it up with Topps)

Freddy Patek: 5’4″
Freddie was the Royals’ starting shortstop and a three-time All-Star; his 1975 slash line is .228/.291/.308

Fred Beene: 5’8″
1975 was his last Major League season, he pitched in 19 games and had a 6.94 ERA.  He was one of four players the Yankees traded to Cleveland for Chris Chambliss, Dick Tidrow and Cecil Upshaw.  The Yankees definitely won that trade (Sorry, Fred)

Rich Coggins: 5’8″
Coggins got ROY votes in 1973.  After the 1974 season he was traded with Dave McNally to the Expos for Ken Singleton and Mike Torrez (another lopsided trade) but he split 1975 between the Expos and Yankees, batting .236/.276/.299

Enzo Hernandez: 5’8″
The Padres starting shortstop, he lead the league with 24 sacrifice hits and when he wasn’t sacrificing he hit .218/.275/.265

Al Bumbry 5’8″
The 1973 AL Rookie of the Year and (as of 1975) was still pretty early in his 13 year run with the O’s, Bumbry hit .269/.336/.364.  He was inducted into the Orioles Hall of Fame in 1987.

Larvell Blanks 5’8″
The Braves’ starting shortstop – notice a trend here? – Blanks hit .234/.292/.293.  After the 1975 season he part of a trade with the White Sox, but was immediately flipped to the Indians

I’ve got a properly-cut version of this card, but the miscut was already scanned, so…

Denny Doyle: 5’9″
During the 1975 season Doyle was traded to the Red Sox, hit .298/.329/.412 for the season, got some MVP votes and would play in the World Series.

Ramón Hernández: 5’9″
Pitching entirely in relief, Ramón had a 7-2 record with 5 saves and a 2.95 ERA

Mike Tyson: 5’9″
The Original Mike Tyson played short and some 2nd and 3rd as he hit .266/.316/.342

Sandy Alomar 5’9″
Sandy Sr. was the starting 2nd baseman for the Yankees and hit .239/.277/.305.  Topps dropped the ball on this photo… The Yanks acquired him in July 1974 but Topps couldn’t send someone over to Shea to get a photo of him in pinstripes during the second half of the season?  (The Yankees played home games there in 1974 and 1975 while Yankee Stadium was undergoing extensive renovations)

Larry Lintz 5’9″
ONe of the more famous cards of 1975 Topps is the Herb Washington “Pinch Run.” card.  That particular experiment ended with the 1975 season, but for 1976 the A’s acquired Larry Lintz and used him in a similar way:  he appeared in 68 games, scored 21 runs and stole 31 bases despite just 4 plate appearances.

As for 1975, he split the season between the Expos and Cardinals, hitting .207/.324/.213

Rudy Meoli 5’9″
Served as a backup infielder with the Angels, and would play the 1976 and 1977 season with the Reds’ Triple-A team before resurfacing with the Cubs in 1978.

Jim Wynn 5’9″
They didn’t call him “The Toy Cannon” for nothing!  Wynn was an All-Star in 1974 (as you can tell from the card) and would make the All-Star team again in 1975.  For the season he hit 18 homers, walked 110 times and went .248/.403/.417.  Wynn is in the Astros Hall of Fame and his #24 has been retired by the team.

Gene Clines 5’9″
Clines was acquired from the Pirates in October 1974 (hence the airbrushed cap), would play the one season with the Mets before being traded to Texas for Joe Lovitto (who would get cut in 1976 Spring Training and then retire from baseball).  For the Mets in 1975 Clines would hit .227/.269/.286

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So all of this was leading into my quarterly Weigh-In, which has been 1970s themed the last few times out. This is Weigh-In #75, and that’s why I’m featuring 1975 Topps.

For those wondering what the deal is with a “Weigh-In”, here is my official Mission Statement: Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

Changes in the 2nd quarter of 2022 (from 4/7/2022 to 7/1/2022):

Net change in the collection: +431 (473 added, 42 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: +582 (656 came in, 74 went out)

As I’ve said over the past two years, my acquisitions have slowed down pretty well since the hobby changed, but a lot of it is me attempting to make sense out of my collection. I’ve got too much stuff.

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 15,827
Net change to the collection, to date: +7,097

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 54,689
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -12,594

One of these days I’m going to make a Goodwill donation run and these numbers will look a bit better.

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 72,761
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 11,591

…which means I’ve got at least 84,352 cards in my collection

Money spent on cards:
This does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc.

1st quarter, 2022: $57.19
2nd quarter, 2022: $224.46

Average per month for the first half of 2022: $46.94
Average per month for 2021: $35.64
Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016. In 2016 and 2017 I didn’t go to as many card shows because there weren’t any local shows, and I made the 5 hour round trip to a regional card show only once or twice a year.

It’s somewhat telling that I spent more in the 2nd quarter of 2022 than I had since… the 2nd quarter of 2021. The reasons were largely the same – I found a bunch of retail blasters (which evaporated before very long), I went to a small card show and I bought some cards online.

Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 1,027 set definitions and 255,434 card definitions (both the same as the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; Although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

1974 Topps Cards That Should’ve Had A Rookie Cup (Weigh In #74)

OK, so this post is two things:

• A summary/expansion of something that I wrote over multiple posts 10 years ago
• The 74th entry in my “Weigh In” series, something that I’ll explain in a moment

Since Weigh-in #71 I’ve been sharing cards from the year that matches the weigh-in number… 1971s for Weigh-In #71, 1972s for Weigh-In #72, etc. This time around I am featuring the 1974 Topps cards of those players who were named to the 1973 Topps All-Star Rookie team. Just for fun, I’ll also compare the Topps All-Star Rookie team to the Baseball Digest All-Star Rookie team. Who knew there were competing All-Star Rookie teams?

Oh, and I should point out that in 1974 Topps did not include the Rookie All-Star cup on the cards of the 1973 All-Star Rookie teammates… That’s the main point of interest here.

Before I get into the Weigh-In aspect of this post, I’ll share the infield of the 1973 All-Star Rookie team:

1st Base:  Gary Thomasson – did not get any votes in NL Rookie of the Year voting
Thomasson batted .285 with 35 runs and 30 RBI. He was not Baseball Digest’s choice at 1st, as we’ll see in a moment.

2nd Base:  Davey Lopes – tied for 6th in NL ROY voting
Lopes batted .285 with 77 runs and 37 RBI. He played 135 games at second, but also put in appearances at 3rd base, short, center field and right field.

Shortstop:  Jerry Terrell – did not get any votes in NL Rookie of the Year voting
Batted .265 with 43 runs and 42 RBI, playing the majority of his time at short but also playing games at 2nd and 3rd… Weirdly enough, Topps listed him as a 2B-SS but he played more at 3rd than 2nd in 1973 and split his time pretty equally between SS, 2B and 3B in 1974.  He was not the Baseball Digest selection at short.

3rd Base:  Dan Driessen – tied for 3rd in NL ROY voting
Driessen batted .301 with 49 runs and 47 RBI. He also 87 games at 3rd and 36 at 1st, which gave Baseball Digest an opening to select him as the *1st baseman* for their Rookie All-Star team

We’ll be back with more after this “commercial break”…

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For those wondering what the deal is with a “Weigh-In”, here is my official Mission Statement: Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

Changes in the 1st quarter of 2022 (from 1/13/2022 to 4/6/2022):

Net change in the collection: +211 (225 added, 14 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: +411 (414 came in, 3 went out)

No cards came in to or out of my house in January and February, as I was working organizing my collection. The logjam broke in the middle of March when I found a blaster of 2022 Topps Opening Day. I also bought a blaster of Heritage plus a few random packs just to have something to open

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Let’s resume the All-Star Rookie team with the catcher, lefty and righty pitchers

Catcher: Bob Boone – tied for 3rd in NL Rookie of the Year voting
Batted .261 with 42 runs and 61 RBI. He was not the Baseball Digest selection at catcher.

RHP Steve Rogers – 2nd in NL ROY voting
Rogers went 10-5 with a 1.54 ERA and 64 strikeouts in 17 games. He was not the Baseball Digest RHP. In 1974 Rogers would accomplish the interesting feat of being named an All-Star *and* being tied for the league lead with with 22 losses.


LHP Randy Jones – Did not receive any NL ROY votes
Pitching for a Padres team which lost 102 games, Jones went 7-6 with a 3.16 ERA and 77 strikeouts in 20 games. Fascinatingly, Jones was the pitcher who tied Rogers for the National League lead with 22 losses in 1974, but he’d turn things around and win the Cy Young Award in 1976.

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…and now, a brief message from the fine folks at “Weigh-In”…

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 15,785
Net change to the collection, to date: +6,666

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 54,615
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -13,176

This was a good quarter for organizing, but it wasn’t great for streamlining my collection. Still, it was time very well spent

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 72,543
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 11,591

…which means I’ve got at least 84,134 cards in my collection

Money spent on cards:
This does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc.

1st quarter, 2022: $57.19

Average per month for 1Q 2022: $19.06
Average per month for 2021: $35.64
Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016. In 2016 and 2017 I didn’t go to as many card shows because there weren’t any local shows, and I made the 5 hour round trip to a regional card show only once or twice a year.

It wasn’t until April that I bought *any* 2022 baseball cards; I didn’t find any in the stores, but I also didn’t seek any out through other means. I’ll spoil the surprise and tell you that I’m over $150 spent in April and May.

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We now return you to the 1973 Rookies, already in progress.

The Outfield of the Topps All-Star rookie team has a bit of scandal, as we’ll see in a minute.

Gary Matthews – The NL Rookie of the Year
Matthews batted .300 with 74 runs and 38 RBI. His 11 votes were well above 2nd place Steve Rogers’ 3 votes.  This is one of my favorite 1974 cards… The action took place at Shea Stadium, the 3rd baseman is the Mets’ Wayne Garrett and the 3rd base coach is John McNamara.

Johnny Grubb – tied for 6th in NL ROY votiing
Batted .311 with 52 runs and 37 RBI.  He’d be named to his only career All-Star team in 1974.

Rich Coggins – 6th in AL ROY voting
Coggins got one ROY vote after batting .319 with 54 runs and 51 RBI. He was not part of the Baseball Digest outfield.

So we’ve gotten to the end of the Topps All-Star Rookie lineup, and some of you may be saying “Hey, what about the AMERICAN LEAGUE Rookie of the Year?”

What about him, indeed. We’ll find out more… after this:

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Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 1,027 set definitions (up 20 from the last weigh-in) and
255,434 card definitions (up 5,648 from the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; Although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

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We now return you to the exciting conclusion of our blog post!

Al Bumbry was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1973, his 13 votes easily outpaced 2nd place Pedro Garcia (who we haven’t mentioned yet). Baseball Digest had Bumbry as their Rookie Right Fielder, but as we already mentioned Topps went with Coggins as their 3rd outfielder. Oops. Bumbry lead the league with 11 triples, plus he batted .337 with 73 runs and 34 RBI.

Other notable 1973 rookies who didn’t make the 1973 Topps Rookie All-Star team…

2B Pedro Garcia finished 2nd in AL ROY voting. He batted .245 with 67 runs and 54 RBI, and lead the league with 32 doubles. He’d never hit more than 17 doubles in any other season of his 5 year career. He was also an original Blue Jay, having signed as a free agent before the Jays’ inaugural 1977 season.

RHP Steve Busby tied for 3rd in AL ROY voting, went 16-15 with a 4.23 ERA while striking out 105 batters.

RHP George “Doc” Medich also finished tied for 3rd and was named the Baseball Digest rookie RHP. He went 14-9 with a 2.95 ERA and 145 strikeouts.

C Darrell Porter also also finished tied for 3rd in AL ROY voting, and was the named the Baseball Digest Rookie catcher. After “cups of coffee” in 1971 and 1972, he batted .254 with 50 runs and 67 RBI. He’d also be an All-Star in 1974, not that any of the 1973 voters would’ve known that.

RHP Elias Sosa finished 3rd in NL ROY voting after pitching 71 games (70 in relief), going 10-4 with 18 saves and a 3.28 ERA. He struck out 70 batters in 107 innings pitched.

3B Ron Cey finished tied for 3rd in ROY voting with Johnny Grubb and Davey Lopes, plus Cey was the Baseball Digest rookie third baseman. Cey batted .245 with 60 runs and 80 RBI.

OF Richie Zisk finished 6th in NL ROY voting. He had the unenviable job of playing right field for the Pirates after the death of Roberto Clemente, and after an experiment with Manny Sanguillen in right didn’t pan out. Zisk batted .324 with 44 runs and 54 RBI.

In addition to the players who got votes…

Rich Troedson is an interesting choice as the Baseball Digest Left-handed rookie pitcher. He went 7-9 in a mix of starts and relief for an awful Padres team, had a 4.25 ERA and would not pitch in the Majors past 1974.

…and finally Tim Johnson was the Baseball Digest rookie shortstop. He batted .213 with 39 runs and 32 RBI and played a career-high 136 games in his only year as a starter.

“Team Airbrush” For 1973, Plus Weigh-In #73

Since Weigh-in #71 I’ve been sharing cards from the year that matches the weigh-in number… 1971s for Weigh-In #71, 1972s for Weigh-In 1972, etc. This time around I am featuring cards for a goofy idea I had that centers around my Statis Pro tabletop baseball game.

One of the seasons I have Statis Pro player cards for is 1973, and one of the ways I’ve been distracting myself over the past two years is to come up with different ways of ‘drafting’ teams using my Statis Pro seasons. Some ideas get implemented, but many of the ideas are stupid and I know they’re stupid (i.e. a team of Richards – Richard, Rich, Richie, Rick, Ricky and Dick) but I think them up anyway.

The latest stupid idea was to select a team of players who have a card in 1973 Topps that was airbrushed.  Just to make this clear, this would be the best lineup I can make out of the players who got airbrushed, not the best/worst airbrushing jobs. This is something of a rarity… a stupid Statis Pro idea that may become something of a reality, even if it’s just a few games.

In this post, mixed among the weigh-in stuff, I’m going to feature my starting lineup… Starting with pitcher Andy Messersmith, who went 14-10 with a 2.70 ERA in 1973:

Messersmith was part of the blockbuster November 1972 seven-player trade between the Dodgers and Angels, a trade which also sent Frank Robinson from the Dodgers to the Angels.  Another player in this deal who made Team Airbrush was Angels’ starting pitcher Bill Singer.

I’ll scatter the rest of the “Team Airbrush” starting lineup throughout this post, but before I wander too far from the Weigh-In aspect…

For those wondering what the deal is with a “Weigh-In”, here is my official Mission Statement: Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

Changes since the last weigh-in (from 10/1/2021 to 1/12/2022):

Net change in the collection: +116 (200 added, 84 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: -971 (407 came in, 1,378 went out)

The cards coming in came from COMC and from a few blasters which showed up at my local Target. The cards going out were largely cards given away at Halloween and mailed out to other collectors.

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Catcher Earl Williams, a Rookie of the Year two years earlier, was part of a six-player November 1972 trade between the Braves and Orioles.

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Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 15,771
Net change to the collection, to date: +6,455

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 54,612
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -13,587

I’m hoping to make more progress on reducing the number of cards in my collection in 2022. After spending much of 2021 trying to organize things, I’ve given more cards and sets the side-eye, wondering “Why do I have that? Would I ever miss that if it were gone?”

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1st Baseman Hal Breeden was acquired from the Reds at the beginning of the 1972 season, but I guess Topps didn’t get any photos of him between April and September.

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Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 72,057
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 11,591

…which means I’ve got at least 83,648 cards in my collection

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2nd Baseman Davey Johnson was an All-Star in 1973 and came to Atlanta in the same deal that sent Earl Williams to Baltimore

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Money spent on cards:
This does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc.

This quarter: $112.26

As you can see, my average spending per month in 2021 was less than half of what it was in the previous three years… Will that change in 2022? Time will tell.
Average per month for 2021: $35.64
Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016. In 2016 and 2017 I didn’t go to as many card shows because there weren’t any local shows, and I made the 5 hour round trip to a regional card show only once or twice a year.

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Shortstop Eddie Leon was traded from Cleveland to the White Sox for Walt “No Neck” Williams. Shortstop was the weakest position of the bunch and if I included airbrushed rookies, I might’ve gone with Mario Guerrero who appears on a “1973 ROOKIE SHORTSTOPS” card with two other guys

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Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 1,007 set definitions (up 3 from the last weigh-in) and
249,786 card definitions (up 615 from the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; for example, although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

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3rd Baseman Graig Nettles was part of a 6-player November 1972 trade between the Indians and Yankees that, long term, didn’t work out so well for Cleveland

Left Fielder Frank Robinson is a bit of a cheat because he was a DH for most of 1973. He came to the Angels in the trade that also involved Andy Messersmith.

Center Fielder Bill North was traded by the Cubs – you can see a little bit of “CHICAGO” at the bottom of the photo – to the A’s for pitcher Bob Locker (who’s a reliever on Team Airbrush)

Right Fielder Oscar Gamble came to the Indians in a four player deal with the Phillies. His inclusion is also a cheat because he was more of a DH than an outfielder, but my game, my rules.

A couple of more comments about “Team Airbrush”…

In the original search for players I included guys without caps and “Guys looking up” who may or may not have been airbrushed… For example I don’t think Félix Millan was airbrushed in this photo; The Braves wore pinstripes up to 1971 and I believe they wore their 1971 jerseys and pants in 1972 spring training as well.

I ultimately left out anybody from the “Looking Up” and “Capless” camps. The most notable players excluded from “Looking Up” are Larry Hisle – who I could include if I decided that guys who were mainly the DH should not play the outfield – and Millan.

There were fewer capless photos than I would have expected… I came up with just Danny Cater and Joe Decker, and neither one had a 1973 season good enough to make my team.

One other thing that was moderately interesting: There were more than a couple of guys who appeared airbrushed in 1973 Topps and did not play in 1973 (or, in some cases, ever again). Denny McLain is the biggest name of the bunch. The Braves gave up on him in 1973 spring training and his career would be over. The only other example I can remember off the top of my head is José Arcia, who was a regular with the Padres in 1969 and 1970, but would remain in the minors from 1971 to 1976.

1972 High #s And A Waaaaaaaay Late Weigh-In #72

In my last “Weigh-In” post, which was #71, I shared a bunch of newly-acquired 1971 Topps cards… and I figure this time I’d share a bunch of 1972 Topps High #’s that I recently got in a COMC shipment… cards like this one:

Denny Doyle was the Phillies’ starting 2nd baseman in 1972, and his younger brother is Brian Doyle… but not to be confused with Brian Doyle-Murray, older brother of Bill Murray

For those wondering what the deal is with a “Weigh-In”, here is my official Mission Statement: Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

Normally I try to do these soon after the “end date” of the quarter being covered, but this post got kicked down the road a dozen times.

1972 was Rooker’s last year with the Royals before being traded to Pittsburgh for Gene Garber

Changes since the last weigh-in (from 7/8/2021 to 9/31/2021):

Net change in the collection: -511 (143 added, 654 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: +109 (140 came in, 31 went out)

All of the cards coming into the house basically comes down to two retail purchases, mostly 2021 Heritage.  The rest of the numbers are almost entirely from me reorganizing my 1991 cards and removing a whole lot of unwanted cards from my collection.  The 31 cards going “out of the house” were unwanted 1991 Donruss and 1991 Fleer cards which went from my collection to the recycling bin.

“Mary! Mary, don’t you know me?” This Jimmy Stewart played 6 different positions for the 1972 Astros

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 15,687
Net change to the collection, to date: +6,339

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 53,234
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -12,616

Since I still collect current cards, I suppose that the collection growing by 6K cards over 10 years is not surprising… but the goal is still to make the collection smaller, so I’ll have to work on that more.

Chuck Brinkman was the 3rd catcher on the Chisox roster and the 2nd Brinkman in the Majors — his older brother Ed would win a Gold Glove with the Tigers in 1972

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 72,000
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 11,591

…which means I’ve got at least 83,591 cards in my collection

1965 AL ROY Curt Blefary told the A’s “Play me or trade me”… so he was sent to the woeful Padres in May, 1972. Be careful what you wish for.

Money spent on cards:
This quarter (does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc): $42.05

As you can see, my average spending per month is still significantly down from the past few years…
Average per month for 2021 so far: $35.04
Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016. In 2016 and 2017 I didn’t go to as many card shows because there weren’t any local shows, and I made the 5 hour roundtrip to a regional card show only once or twice a year.

I would not be surprised if I spend less in 2021 than I have in any year since 1995 (when, as a reaction to the lost 1994 World Series, I bought just a hand-collated Topps set and nothing else)

Reliever Phil Hennigan would be in his last year with Cleveland before being traded to the Mets for two young pitchers… one of whom, Brent Strom, recently became the Diamondbacks’ pitching coach after 8 years with the Astros.  Check out the original Yankee Stadium in the background!

Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 1,001 set definitions (up 6 from the last weigh-in) and
247,290 card definitions (up 130 from the last weigh-in).

My database currently contains 1,004 set definitions (up 3 from the last weigh-in) and
249,171 card definitions (up 1,881 from the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; for example, although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

I haven’t bought much new product this year, so I haven’t yet bothered entering sets like 2021 Stadium Club into the database… but they’ll get in there sooner or later.

Don Mason played just 9 games for the 1972 Padres… but check out the old school Padres cap!

General comments

This isn’t normally a section in my weigh-ins, but I figured I’d throw it in because I’m noticing a shift in my thinking which hasn’t yet been borne out in my numbers… I’ve realized that when I go through cards and ask myself “Do I need this in my collection”, I’ve become much more likely to say “Nah”.  I think part of it comes from not having many cards coming in, so I’m spending more times organizing the cards I already have.  Even when I’m collecting many cards from a set, I find I’m OK with not chasing the entire set.  For example, most of the 2021 cards in my collection are Heritage, but I’ve realized that the majority of those cards are the base cards.  I’ve come to realize that unless the player on the card falls under a team or player collection, I can do without the In Action, Boyhood Photos, League Leaders and Postseason cards.

Alan Mitchell Edward George Patrick Henry Gallagher was also known to some as “Dirty Al” due to wearing the same unwashed uniform every day of a 25-game hitting streak

A Well-Loved Nolan Ryan, Other 1971s and Weigh-In #71

At a recent show I made some unexpected progress towards a two goals involving 1971 Topps baseball.  I made a little bit of progress towards the set, which is a long-term goal at this point because I’m only about halfway done with the set, and I want to complete 1972 (90% complete) and/or 1970 (85% complete) before I get any kind of serious about 1971.

Before I get into that too much, I’m going to admit that a decent chunk of this post is dedicated to one of my “Weigh-Ins”, which tracks my progress in organizing and streamlining my collection… but I’ll get back to that.

At the show I also made unexpected progress towards my goals of completing vintage Mets team sets.  For at least a year or two, all four of my Mets team sets from 1968 to 1971 all had the same status:  “Got everything but Nolan Ryan”.

So I was pleased to run across this card at the show:

It’s got surface wear, it’s got dinged-up corners, it’s got something written on the left-hand side – possibly “AUGIES” – but on the other hand it was under $20 and I don’t care about the rest.

It also goes well with my Steve Garvey rookie I picked up about 10 years ago…

So now that I have completed my 1971 Mets team set, I only need the 1970 Nolan Ryan card to finish off my run of 1970s Mets Topps sets. The 1960’s is a different story between Ryan, Seaver and those tough 1966 high numbers.

So aside from featuring these 1971 cards, I also wanted to go public with a Weigh-In… and it wasn’t until I started writing this post that I realized that this is Weigh-In #71.  I never intended to feature 1971 cards in Weigh-In #71, but it’s a theme I might have to go with going forward… I’ll have to start thinking of 1972 cards to feature for #72.

So here is my official “Mission Statement” for these posts: Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

…and here’s the first of several other 1971s I picked up at this show…

Changes since the last weigh-in (from 4/10/2021 to 7/7/2021):
Net change in the collection: +343 (354 added, 11 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: +466 (522 came in, 56 went out)

My second quarter of 2021 fell into three phases:
1) April through mid-May: Yay, I can find retail! Oh, wait, it’s gone again
2) First card show in 16 months!
3) Organize, organize, organize.

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 15,033
Net change to the collection, to date: +6,850

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 53,203
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -12,725

In my last weigh-in, I said there would likely be an upward trend in cards leaving the house, but that still hasn’t happened. 3rd quarter for sure!

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 71,430
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 12,491

…which means I’ve got at least 83,921 cards in my collection

Money spent on cards:
This quarter (does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc): $244.38

As you can see, my average spending per month is still significantly down from the past few years…
Average per month for 2021 so far: $45.56
Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016. In 2016 and 2017 I didn’t go to as many card shows because there weren’t any local shows, and I made the 5 hour roundtrip to a regional card show only once or twice a year.

Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 1,001 set definitions (up 6 from the last weigh-in) and
247,290 card definitions (up 130 from the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; for example, although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.\

Weigh-In #70: Lots Of Organizing, Few Acquisitions, Vintage Steelers

(I’ve been procrastinating a post where I recap the progress I’d made in organizing my collection during the first quarter of 2021 — That’s January through March — and I figured a holiday weekend is as good a time as any to put it out there)

It’s just as well that I found almost no retail cards for the first quarter of 2021.

Yeah, there were times when I wanted to open some packs but there was nothing to rip.  Even my “emergency stash” got used up, and I opened the last pack of *anything* I had in the house… which was, for the record, a pack of 1998 Dart Flipcards “Mr. Bean” cards.

Much of what I did do was organize my binders and my cards… One of my main projects was to streamline my 1991 baseball cards.  Before I started I had well over 3,000 cards from that year, which is way too much for any year that’s not one of great personal significance.

They say that a good way to determine what you don’t need is to gather everything like it – clothes, books, etc – and go though it all at once so you can see what you’ve got and what you don’t need. I’ve done this before with a particular year’s cards, and recently gathered all of my ’91s together to see what I can easily live without… for example, I have over 10 different 1991 cards of Ryne Sandberg, a player I don’t collect who played for a team I don’t collect.  Gathered all together, I found I had 10 Ryne Sandberg cards just from 1991, and I honestly don’t need 10 1991 Rynos… I’m getting to the point where I’m questioning whether I need more than 4 or 5 cards of any particular player for a given year.

…But this is all to give background on what I did those three months. Organize, organize, organize. It was also good to spend some “quality time” with cards I’ve owned for 30 years and hadn’t paid much attention to lately.

As for this weigh-in, I’ll spice things up with a bunch of vintage Pittsburgh Steelers cards I’d acquired at the most recent card show I’d been to (February 2020)… Steelers like this 1957 Bowman of Bob Gaona who played from 1953 to 1957 (this is his only football card)

I’ll also kick things off with my “Mission Statement” for these posts: Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

Changes since the last weigh-in (from 1/6/2021 to 4/9/2021):
Net change in the collection: +150 (243 added, 93 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: -30 (171 in, 201 out)

“Net change in the collection” went up because a lot of the organizing involved going through my overflowing “in box” and officially adding past acquisitions into my collection by entering them into my card database and filing them away in the appropriate binders and boxes.

A blaster of 2021 Topps Series 1 makes up the bulk of the inbound cards, but I also bought some cards online from the Tri-City ValleyCats (formerly NY-Penn, currently in the unaffiliated “MLB Partner” Frontier League).

1959 Topps Frank Varrichione, 5-time Pro Bowler with the Steelers and Rams

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 15,022
Net change to the collection, to date: +6,507

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 53,147
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -3,191

Now that I don’t have to hide in my house for months on end, there should be an uptick in cards leaving the house… if nothing else, I’ve got a backlog of cards to donate to Goodwill.

1960 Topps of Pro Football HOFer Ernie Stautner

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 71,171
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 12,491

…which means I’ve got at least 83,662 cards in my collection

1961 Fleer Jimmy Orr, who was with the Colts that year and a Pro Bowler in 1965

Money spent on cards:
This quarter (does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc): $28.95

Again, my spending was that blaster and the minor league cards from the ValleyCats.  (Coming attractions:  There will be a big upswing in spending for the 2nd quarter)

The following will put things in perspective: My spending for the first three months of 2021 was less than the monthly average of any year since I started tracking my spending five years ago.

Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016. In 2016 and 2017 I didn’t go to as many card shows because there weren’t any local shows, and I only made the 5 hour roundtrip run to a regional card show once or twice those years.

1961 Topps Junior Wren, who jumped to the AFL’s New York Titans that year

Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 995 set definitions (up 14 from the last weigh-in) and
247,160 card definitions (up 2,596 from the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; for example, although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

1962 Topps Buddy Dial – He was drafted out of Rice by the Giants in the 2nd round, didn’t make the team, was picked up by the Steelers where he make the Pro Bowl in 1961 and 1963

State Of The Streamlining? Purge? De-cluttering? (Weigh-In #69)

I’ve actively collected baseball cards every year since 1974 when I was a wee Shlabotnik.  There have been years I went nuts buying cards, there have been years where I cut way back on my acquisitions, but needless to say there’s never been a year like the one just passed.

For me it was sometimes hard but it wasn’t completely bad.  The sudden downturn in incoming cards allowed for the opportunity to look around my cluttered mess of a mancave and think about what I’m trying to do and where I’m going.

For the nine year’s I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve stated that I want to reduce the size of my collection.  Thing is, I’ve never had a straightforward plan for how to do that.  I’ll admit I envy those people who can make wholesale changes along the lines of “I’m going to get rid of everything but ________” or maybe “I’m ditching anything that was issued after I hit puberty”.

I do have some bits of strategy, though.

One thing I’ve decided on is that I’m sticking with the amount of shelf space that I currently have, and I’m not going to get any more binders than won’t fit in that space.  I can upgrade bindes or change binder size, but I can’t go on just adding binders.  There are binders I haven’t pulled out in years, and what’s the point of having binders if you never look at them?

I’ve also been pulling out some of those binders and realizing that “Hey, I haven’t looked at these binders in years and I didn’t miss a lot of these cards”.

I’ve also started using a variation on a decluttering technique.  They say that instead of going through your clothes in your closet and then going through the clothes in each drawer that you should instead pull all of your clothes out and then put them back, because that’s the only way you’ll realize that you have 527 concert t-shirts (or whatever).

I’ve discovered the same is true for card sets.  I might look at my 1991 Upper Deck cards and say “Well, I don’t collect Wade Boggs but the dude’s a HOFer so I’ll keep the card where it is”, and then later I look at 1991 Bowman and 1991 Leaf and 1991 Stadium Club and say the same thing each time.  It’s only when I pull out all of my 1991 cards and go through them as a whole that I realize “Holy crap, I’ve got seventeen 1991 cards of a guy I don’t collect!”

I’m doing this with a couple of years so far, most recently with 1991 (341 cards removed so far) and 2005 (721 after the first pass).  Not earth-shattering, but it does help me get rid of cards where I wouldn’t otherwise realize the redundancy in my collection.

So that’s what I’ve been doing… As for *how* I’ve been doing, let’s get into the “Weigh-In” numbers for the 4th quarter of 2020.  To visually spice things up I’ve added in some random cards I got at my last card show which, sadly, was a year ago this month.

So let’s kick things off as usual with my mission statement:  Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

Changes since the last weigh-in (from 10/11/2020 to 1/5/2021):
Net change in the collection: -11 (779 added, 790 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: +684 (777 in, 93 out)

Having my collection reduced by 11 cards might not seem like much to you, but this was exciting to me. It’s the first time this number has gone down in a while.

Year-end numbers for 2020:
Net change in the collection: +279 (1,905 added, 1,626 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: +2,113 (2475 in, 362 out)

My “In/out of the house” numbers are stunted because it’s only showing cards sent out in trades and junk wax cards which have gone into the recycling. I normally give away cards at Halloween, but that didn’t happen this year. I didn’t send any cards to COMC because they suspended the cheap procesing option I normally use (I don’t sell many big $$$ cards). I also haven’t dropped any cards off at Goodwill because I just haven’t.

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 14,929
Net change to the collection, to date: +6,357

Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 52,946
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -13,161

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 71,003
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 12,491

…which means I’ve got at least 83,494 cards in my collection

Money spent on cards:
This quarter (does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc): $66.54

This quarter’s spending consisted of a 2020 Topps Factory set and a handful of retail packs. Almost all of my hobby time has been spent organizing.

Average per month for 2020: $76.66
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016: $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016.  The spending for the first two years is lower because there weren’t any card shows local to me at that time.

One thing that’s very telling about my spending this year… I spent more in the first quarter ($271.71 spent at two card shows and on still-available retail) than I did the whole rest of the year ($188.23)

Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 981 set definitions (up 14 from the last weigh-in) and 244,564 card definitions (up 3,316 from the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; for example, although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

The More I Organize, The Worse It Seems (Plus Weigh-In #68)

Because we have a maintenance plan with an HVAC company, and because the HVAC tech scheduled for today has to get to the attic by walking through Shlabotnik World HQ (the spare bedroom I took over), I spent part of this weekend cleaning up the large piles of crap that have accumulated.

In cleaning up a bunch of used padded envelopes, I picked up one that didn’t feel empty… and it was from COMC and had a postage date of December 2018. With a sense of dread I looked in the envelope hoping to just find empty toploaders but instead found a small COMC shipment that I’d forgotten about.

This goes both ways emotionally. One on hand, it’s a fun discovery, like putting on a jacket for the first time since last spring and finding $20 in the pocket.

On the other hand, these cards had been forgotten for nearly 2 years, which just depresses the heck out of me, organization-wise.  Every time I think I’ve turned the corner with the organization of my collection I run across a 22 month old package to let me know that I’ve got a long way to go.

Anyhoo, I figured I’d try to make the most of it by making a post out of my newly-rediscovered collectibles (some of which had appeared here when I originally received them), and throw in one of my quarterly weigh-ins because I’m due for one anyway.

I’ll start off with this Japanese 1993 BBM card of former Giant & Angel Max Venable.  Max Venable’s legal name is William McKinley Venable, which makes me wonder if he was named after the 25th president of the United States.  At any rate, this was a cheap Japanese card I couldn’t walk away from.

I’m not much of a collector of recent hockey cards, but five years ago I was watching a college hockey game when this freshman named Jack Eichel caught my eye.  Eichel is currently the captain of the Buffalo Sabres and is probably as close as I come to having a favorite NHL player.  This 2017-18 UD Canvas card was too nice to pass by.

I’m something of a Brian Roberts collector because my wife is a big fan of his (she’ll still make a point of watching Orioles games where he’s part of the broadcast). This 2012 Topps Sticker was filling in one of the gaps in my collection. I think that, excluding relics, autographs and parallels, I was only missing a couple more major issues of his… I guess maybe I should finish that off someday.

I’d already featured this card about 20 months ago, but I’ll share it again because it got the biggest “Oh, that’s riiiiiiiiiiiiight” out of all of these cards. From what I’ve seen on YouTube, Miki Nishimura has an interesting approach, her backswing brings the ball almost directly over her head.

This is my fifth card of a professional bowler, which I think ties it with Cricket in the overall “standings” of sports represented in my collection. Hmmm, maybe I should do a post about that. The top three would be Baseball, Hockey & Football but then there’s a huge dropoff after that. I’m guessing Basketball would be next, but I don’t think I have more than a couple of binder pages of hoops (and that’s counting Harlem Globetrotter cards).

Two more that I’ve already featured in this blog… 1974 Topps Stamps. I was very excited about these at the time, but now it’s kind of “Yeah, I should chase the set at some time”.


I wasn’t prepared for how tiny these are.

OK, one last thing before I move on… Last week I was looking at a local big box retailer to see if they had 2020 Topps factory sets. I didn’t expect to find any and I didn’t, but I was greatly surprised to find jumbo packs of 2020 Topps Archives. I don’t have a huge interest in Archives, but since it had been two months since I bought any sort of baseball product and three months since I bought anything more interesting than Topps Album Stickers, I decided to pull the trigger.

I will admit that they look a little bit better in-hand than they do online. I’m still not a fan of the set in general, but I’m a little more open to pickup up cards from the 1974 “subset”. I only pulled commons from my pack, but here’s my favorite of the bunch.

One of many admittedly picky issues I have with Archives is that the originals are generally very colorful, but something about the way Archives is printed – or maybe it’s the cardstock? – leaves the bright colors very muted. From top to bottom these are 1974 Rany Jones, 2020 Max Scherzer, 1974 Chris Speier, 2020 Brandon Crawford.

OK, I think that’s about all I’m going to say about 2020 Archives here.

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On to the Weigh-in part!  Posting updates on the organizing and streamlining of my collection gives me a look at the big picture, keeps me honest and helps with motivation and/or guilt.

I’ve been doing this for *nine* years! I didn’t fully realize it’s been that long.

Changes since the last weigh-in (from 7/6/2020 to 10/10/2020):
Net change in the collection: +102 (320 added, 218 removed)
Net change to the # of cards in the house: +132 (289 in, 157 out)

If I had another week or two, this number would be much better…. I’ve got a couple of hundred cards which I need to sit down and remove from my database, but I haven’t had a chance to do the clerical work yet.

Totals since I started tracking on 10/16/2011:
Total # of cards purged from the collection, to date: 14,139
Net change to the collection, to date: +6,368

Totals to date:
Total # of cards which have left the house, to date: 52,853
Net change to the number of cards in the house, to date: -13,845

Size of the collection:
Number of individual cards tracked in my Access database: 70,841
Number of cards that make up the sets flagged as completed in my Access database: 12,491

…which means I’ve got at least 83,332 cards in my collection

Money spent on cards:
This quarter (this does not count money spent on show admission, shipping, supplies, etc): $40.90

$40.90 over the course of three months is as low as my spending’s been in years. If you take out the two shows I went to in January and February, my 2020 spending averages out to $20.98/month, which is minuscule for me.

Average per month for 2020: $65.57 so far
Average per month for 2019: $80.38
Average per month for 2018: $79.03
Average per month for 2017: $43.63
Average per month for 2016:  $36.11

I didn’t track my spending before 2016.

Size of my MS Access card database:
I track my collection in a Microsoft Access database of my own creation. There’s quite a bit of work involved in keeping it up-to-date, so I like to satisfy my own curiosity by finding out how much information is currently in my database.

My database currently contains 967 set definitions (up 12 from the last weigh-in) and 241,248 card definitions (up 2,954 from the last weigh-in).

It’s important to point out that this is merely the number of sets and cards which are represented within my database; for example, although I have no cards from 1949 Bowman, that set represents 1 set definition and 240 card definitions.

One more card from that COMC shipment… THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!!!!