Favorite Cards of 2012 #1 - A Great Man

Being the wild guy that I am, I was in bed by 9:30 on New Year's Eve and, despite not having to work today, was up at around the normal time, 4:30.   Not much on the agenda today, other than to cook up a batch of black eyed peas for luck in 2013 (It's a southern thing.) 

So, finally, we come to my favorite card of 2012.  It is also one of the last I acquired this year, a 1954 Topps Jackie Robinson.   It isn't the most expensive card I have ever bought, nor does it have the highest "book value."   My reasons for liking this card follow logically from the previous entry.

That entry, the 1940 Play Ball cards of the Waner brothers, appealed to me because of their age and the opportunity they presented for me to consider, quite speculatively, their path through history to get to me.

This card is special to me not because it passed through history, but because it is history.  Baseball Reference indicates that 17,943 individuals have appeared in a major league baseball game since 1871. Many of them never made a career of baseball. Fewer still were ever stars.  And it is a very exclusive club of players who continued to be widely known and admired a generation removed from their playing days.  But, it is a very small group of players that not only changed baseball, but the very arc of world history.  I suppose you might make a case for Jim Bunning, the Hall of Fame pitcher turned US Senator. But, politics are in the eye of the beholder, and most politicians will have a mixed legacy.  Jackie Robinson is the only baseball player I can think of that figured prominently in the advancement of society as a whole and will have an uncontroversial legacy as time advances. While we still have a long way to go to achieve a truly integrated, color-blind world, we have advanced quite far over the past few decades.  Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball was a great step forward in that trajectory. But, for him to become one of the all-time great players while maintaining a preternatural grace and dignity cannot be underestimated.

Jackie Robinson changed the world.  And it is for that reason this is my favorite card of 2012.  And, to be perfectly honest, I have a hard time imagining any other card ever being as valuable to me.  It is, at this moment, and for the foreseeable future, my favorite card of all time.

With that, please accept my best wishes to all of you for a happy and successful 2013.

December Card Show - Splurging

Having met my goals for the show, and having the pleasant surprise of making some progress on a couple other sets, I still had most of my funds left.  I could have left a happy man, but as you have probably surmised by now, I didn't. I mean I did leave happy, but not right away.  Thus, this third post.

I decided to take a look at another discount box and for a Jackson took a chance on a couple of autographed cards. 

This card looks better in person than it does in the scan.  At some point in the next few years (probably 2014), I'll start on the 1972 set. I figured why not have at least one autographed card in it.

This is a 1992 Sporting News Conlon collection card presumably signed by Marty Marion. I have to admit some reservations about this card now.  The signature doesn't look like other Marty Marion autographs you can see on the internet. This one is far less intricate and Marion normally dotted the "i" in his last name with a small circle rather than a dot. I have a hard time thinking someone would take the effort to fake the signagture of a minor star from the 1940s and it may be that the paint pen used to sign this card was too wide for him to sign his normal signature.  But, I have to admit that my concerns are enough to steal away a bit of the joy I initially felt at finding this card.

Moving on, I stopped by Bill Spillman's table to see what he might have had. He had just sold a 1975 Topps starter set of a little less than 200 cards to someone for $20.  I would have been all over that, given the chance. He had someone thinking over the purchase of a 1958 Ted Williams for $150.   He offered me the back-up position if the other person decided to pass.But, it was more money than I had left to spend, so I turned him down. But, good golly, it was in EX/EX+ shape and awfully tempting.

I did manage to get a couple of smoking deals from Bill, though.

A 1959 Stan Musial!  I am a little torn about one thing though.  Not the card itself.  As you probably know, Stan Musial is still alive.  He has a place where you can send in items for autographs. I am sorely tempted to send this card in, but at $125 for an auto it would put me on a collecting hiatus for about a month. I am struggling with what to do.  Can I go a month without scratching the collecting itch in exchange for an autographed playing-days card of one of the games legends?

I also got this from Bill:

1954 Topps Jackie Robinson. This may very well be one of my favorite pickups of the year.  As you can see there are some color issues with this, but is otherwise in stellar condition for a card that is nearly 60 years old.

It is cards like that affirm my decision to forgo collecting modern sets.  Spending several C notes a year on flagship and Heritage just doesn't compare to holding history like this in your hands. You can keep your Bryce Harpers (or whomever is the current Flavor of the Month.)  This is what I really enjoy about the hobby.

And that brings the card show posts to an end. We will now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.