I still haven't been to a card show this year. I ended up skipping the March show as it was the same weekend I was leaving for the CONEXPO-CONAGG trade show in Las Vegas and I needed to get some things done at home before I left.
I didn't take a lot of pictures this year as the trade show was huge and I had specific things I wanted to achieve. But, I couldn't pass up the opportunity take a picture of this Komatsu WA700 loader staged as if it was dumping a load into an (also Komatsu) HD605 70-ton haul truck. The company I work for predominately uses Caterpillar products in our operations, but we do have similar Komatsu equipment in our fleet. Anyways, on to the main topic.
It is only a quarter of the way through the year and I've already completely messed up one of my goals for the year, though not necessarily in a bad way. One of my goals for the year was to almost finish the 1967 Topps baseball set. Almost in that I wanted to get the set complete except for the high number Tom Seaver rookie card. However, in a turn of good fortune the company I work for gave out bonuses and, for once, I didn't have any adult obligations laying claim to the windfall. So....
I won't deny that I was a bit sick after placing my bid as it was for a price that makes the third most I have ever spent on a card. The centering is off, but I've never been a centering absolutist. As long as there is border all the way around, I am fine. It isn't obvious from the image, but there is border along the bottom. I put it at 80-20 centering top to bottom. I probably won't change my goal from almost completing the set. I need 53 more cards and 51 are from the sixth semi-high series and seventh high number series. Lately, they have been getting really strong prices, and I am not confident that I can pick up more than one or two at a time. But, I am pleased to have this one out of the way.
What I am listening to: Blind by Korn (Believe it or not, I had this teed up before it went viral as Mason Miller's entrance song)
I am struggling to get back in the swing of collecting again. It isn't anything financial even though my dishwasher just died and I had to get a new one. I think it is more a case of having lost my muscle memory, as it were. There is a card show in OKC at the end of the month, and I currently plan to attend. It is the same weekend I need to fly to Las Vegas (Ugh!) for CONEXPO, an every third year conference combining the aggregates, ready-mix concrete, and construction industry. If I do get to the card show, it will be a week short of a year since the last show I attended.
In the meantime, I looked over my want list and decided to knock off 1970 Topps football. I only needed 7 cards, mostly commons. I overpaid a little bit, but I really wanted to get something done. I was thinking of doing a post of my favorite card fronts and backs from the set and even went so far as to go through the set noting the likely candidates. The time needed to scan and write looked to be more than I had available. Then I noticed that the same card was on both lists. So, here it is: my favorite card from 1970 Topps Football.
I have no idea what is up with this image, but it is glorious.
Grayson had numerous business interests' post-career, so I have to assume he wasn't working as a carhop. I haven't been able to find much information to fill in any blanks, but there is enough information out there to see that he was an interesting fellow.
Originally undrafted out of college due to his small size, he was signed briefly by the Dallas Cowboys in 1961, but Tom Landry didn't think he was large enough for the NFL. On the recommendation of Gil Brandt, Hank Stram signed him to the AFL Dallas Texans.
He played 4 years with the Texans and their successor organization, the Kansas City Chiefs. During those 4 years, he made 3 Pro Bowls and 2 AFL All-Pro teams.
In 1961, he returned an interception 99 yards for a touchdown against the New York Titans. He was also a kick returner, and, in 1963, he returned a kick 99 yards for a TD against Denver.
In 1965, he was traded to the Oakland Raiders for cornerback (and later actor) Fred Williamson. It is with Oakland that he really came into his own.
In 1965, his first season in the Bay Area, he intercepted 3 passes returning two for touchdowns. In 1968 he intercepted 10 passes and scored 1 TD. The following year, he picked off the opposition 8 times and contributed 1 touchdown.
He retired from football after the 1970 season. In 6 seasons with Oakland, he made 3 Pro Bowls and 4 All-Pro teams.
During his 10-year career, he missed exactly one game. That was the first game of his rookie season in 1961. How is that for consistency?
He is the all-time AFL interception leader and was named to the AFL All-Time team. He is the only defensive back on that team that is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He had a number of business interests in his post career life, and his son Dave Grayson Jr played 5 seasons as a linebacker in the NFL for Cleveland and San Diego.
What I am listening to: So Much Trouble in the World by Lucinda Williams & Mavis Staples
I started working on Tristar Obak in the spring of 2012, my second year back collecting. Today, I am quickly approaching my 15th year in the hobby. And still completing 2009 Obak still eludes me. I started 2025 seven high number cards short of completion. In April I located three of the seven. Last week, I found another. Normally, I would only look for base cards and not serialized parallels. But this card was a bit more than $3 delivered. So, I am down to 3 cards to finish this set
Under normal circumstances, I would look for a song from a musician that was featured in a post, but Lachey was in the boy band 98 Degrees. And boy bands were not, and are not, my thing.
What I am listening to: More Than This by Roxy Music
It is Christmas Eve day and I have the day off. I already have big plans for the day. I'm assembling an Ikea display cabinet for my wife. We recently recarpeted and repainted the master bedroom and are taking advantage of the empty room to get rid of a lot of the crap that had accumulated over the years and to better display my wife's glassware collection. Additionally, I am cooking Christmas dinner today. We have tickets for the OKC Thunder-San Antonio Spurs game that is at 1:30 on Christmas Day and afterward we are going to drive around some of the swanky OKC neighborhoods and look at Christmas lights. So, dinner is today. I figured I could do a quick year in review and look at my goals for 2026. I also figured that as long as I was at it, why not do a quick post of how I have started back collecting again. So, here we go.
2025 was a lost year. I put collecting on hold in March and have only started dipping my toe back into the water after Thanksgiving. That is it. No sets completed. Only two cards added to my Fleer project.
As far as my recent activity, I discovered WhatNot. If you don't know what it is, let me explain. WhatNot is what I can only describe as a rapid fire, live action auction site. My wife has been on it regularly buying marbles for her collection. There are plenty of sports card sellers on there as well. It works like this. The seller shows a card on video and starts a counter which is usually 10 to 30 seconds for initial bids. After that time expires any additional bid will add 10 seconds to the counter until bidding stops.
It works well for how my wife collects. But it doesn't work for me as a vintage set collector. There are a number of vintage sellers, but the way they run auctions is.....odd. The sequence of cards auctioned off are random. A mid 60s Roger Maris will be followed by an early 80s Rickey Henderson. No rhyme or reason. There is no way to know what is next and no time to figure out what a card should be worth before bidding starts and ends. Consequently, it was my observation that the winning bidder often overpaid relative to the cards value. Example: one seller decided to auction off a graded mid-1960s star card (I don't remember who, unfortunately) and talked about how much it was worth. He started the auction at $2,500 and someone bought it (I also don't remember the final price) I looked the card up at PSA and the average of recent auction prices was $1,800. To be sure, 99.9% of the cards that are auctioned there are not high end cards. That is just the one example that came to mind.
Since the format didn't work for how I collect and the site process invites overpaying, I deleted the app from my phone and left it quickly behind. I did get a few things. Nothing fancy, but I did end up buying a binder of 1970s hockey cards. It appears to have been a dealer's binder since there were only common cards included and there was massive duplication. I mean like 5 copies of an individual card level of duplication. I'm still working my way through it, but I have finished sorting through the 1970-1971 Topps hockey set. In the end, I had half of the 132-card set and I've already put together my want list.
I have a couple observations. First, unlike baseball, the Topps hockey set is actually smaller than its OPC equivalent. The 70-71 OPC set is 264 cards. Second, the set is not organized randomly but rather by team.
I am not sure why Topps did this, but it seems odd. Though they did set it up so that each team appears in the 132 card set and also shows up again in the second, OPC only series. So, an American collector would have gotten cards for each team but may not have gotten his favorite player who was only in the OPC second series.
To be sure, the orderliness of having similar card designs grouped together has an appeal. But, it also leads to messes like cards 23 to 25.
Both Bob Baun and Pete Stemkowski were traded by the Red Wings early in the season prior to the cards release, so Topps airbrushed the Detroit logo off their jersey's changed the team's name at the bottom of the card. Done and done in Topps usual slapdash way. With their baseball sets they at least chose photos and/or airbrushed so that it is not completely obvious the player is in their former teams uniform. They didn't even put that much effort in here and it is made worse because teams are supposed to be grouped together.
Anyways, the binder includes small groupings of cards for each set from 1970-71 through 1979-80. I'll be deciding which I want to build and getting my want lists together in the days ahead.
Speaking of the days ahead, now that I am (hopefully) clear of all the adult things that stymied my 2025 collection, I feel ready to set some goals again. And here they are. My 2026 Goals:
Get my hockey cards and want lists in order.
Add at least one card each to my signed 1960 and 1961 Fleer sets
I'd like to finish 1967 Baseball, but that Tom Seaver high number RC is still out there and is going for over $1,000 even in mid-grade condition. I'll be happy if I finish the set except for that card.
Finish 2 of these 3 football sets:
1969 (126 Cards left but all commons and minor stars),
1970 (7 cards)
1974 Football (55 cards)
I hope to have another post before New Years, but we'll see. Happy Holidays!
What I am listening to: Take Five by The Dave Brubeck Quartet.
I finally broke my hobby drought. After nearly 8 months of not adding a single card to my collection, I just bought what will be the 74th card in my signed 1961 Fleer project. It isn't a particularly noteworthy player particularly considering that I have 14 Hall of Fame players among the 20 players I need to get through before I arrive at number 74. But it is a significant addition in that the player in question, Hippo Vaughn, died in 1966 and the version I bought is the only one I have ever seen available. I am aware of a second copy in a friend's collection. But that is it. I am sure there are more out there but given the short time between release and his passing, there probably aren't that many. The price was actually fairly reasonable but high enough that I am going to go back into hobby hibernation until after the holiday season.
Anyone who has read my blog for a while (and there may be as many as a dozen of you) know that I live just outside of Oklahoma City and my wife and I are fans of the OKC Thunder. We have a quarter season (10 game) package. We generally make it to 8 or 9 regular season games each year. The nice thing about the package is that we get a crack at playoff tickets for the early rounds before they go on sale to the general public. So, this year after the Thunder romped through the regular season, we decided to attend one game per round. We had to buy tickets for the Western Conference Finals at the same time as the general public but were able to snag a pair.
The NBA Finals were a different story. The worst tickets, and I am talking about horrible no-good seats straight behind the basket and the last row of the upper bowl were over $700 each. There is no way we were going to pay that. So, we watched at home as the Thunder became NBA champions.
Not long afterward, we started getting solicitations for NBA Champions memorabilia. One was for Panini Instant mini sets of cards. I ended up buying three: one for opening, one for saving, and one to send to a friend. And that is the subject of this post. Talk about burying the lede. It took a while to get here.
I had bought a new high speed scanner in order to digitize a lifetime of family photos. It scans cards without damaging them, but it doesn't do a very good job scanning cards. It works as intended, but it automatically crops images to the edges. That is fine for photographs, but not for cards where it doesn't really show the edges and corners. And you know how us card collectors like our edges and corners.
That said, these cards do nothing to change my general disinterest in modern card offerings. The front design is fine though not particularly attractive. And the back is completely uninspired.
There was a total of 30 cards in the set. I won't show them all, but I will show my favorite players.
Lu Dort is my favorite player and my favorite type of player. He is one of the best defensive players in the league and draws all the toughest assignments. Lebron James? Put Dort on him. Giannis Antetokounmpo? Put Dort on him. He can run hot and cold on the offensive side of the court. But his defense is always on point.
Alex Caruso actually started his pro career with the Thunder's G League affiliate before moving up to the NBA with the Lakers and Bulls. He is another defensive standout. But his value is that he is one of those players that just brings energy to the game.
A veteran presence, Kenrich Williams is the second team anchor. He knows his job and he goes in and does it. No drama. Just a solid player.
Ajay was a rookie last season and played will though his season was hampered by injury. He has been getting significant playing time this season in the absence of Jalen Williams (J-Dub) who is still recovering from an off-season wrist surgery. He has been playing well with the opportunity.
Just a nice shot of Chet Holmgrem from Game 7.
I'll be back next with another signed 1961 Fleer card of a Hall of Fame player. It probably won't be until after Thanksgiving since we are going back to visit family. It has been years since we have traveled for the holidays, but the stars aligned and we were able to arrange boarding for our dogs and a farm sitter to take care of our horses. So, to all of you, have a Happy Thanksgiving!
My last post was a reaction to hearing about the death of Bernie Parent, a star hockey player of my youth. I guess it was a bit of foreshadowing as my mother passed away less than two weeks later. She was 88 and was independent and active up until earlier this year. She continued to live on her own terms even as her health issues mounted and it was only over the last few months that it became obvious that she needed a higher level of support than my sister could provide. We had moved her into an assisted living facility in August and, even then, it seemed clear that her time was short. I didn't expect it to be quite that short, but we don't get to choose these things, do we?
I haven't done anything hobby related in a while, though that has been a familiar refrain. I did have a nice little hobby exclusive arrive that I ordered quite a while back. I'll try to post on that next. But my plans to go to an October show were obviously set aside and with the holidays ahead I don't expect to go to another show until after New Years. Since the last time I did anything at all with my main collection was March, I am starting to wonder if I really am collecting anymore.
I mean, I am still a collector. Just on an extended hiatus, I guess.
Our next subject in my signed 1961 Fleer set is Hall of Famer Jessie Haines.
What can we learn about Jesse:
Jesse was born in 1893 outside Dayton, OH. He quit school after the 8th grade to take work as a well driller and played ball on town teams. Raised by religious parents, he had to hide his uniform in a neighbor's corncrib in order to play on Sundays.
He graduated to industrial leagues as he grew older and was eventually invited to pitch a game for the Class B Dayton Veterans. Twirling a 10-inning complete game loss was the start of his professional career. He had a typical minor league career from 1914 to 1918, punctuated by a one game, 5 inning appearance for Cincinnati. He was on the Detroit Tigers roster for two months in 1915 but never appeared in a game.
He finally graduated to the majors in 1920 after then Cardinals manager and team president Branch Rickey borrowed $10,000 from a local bank to sign him.
He developed a knuckleball early in his career as a way to stay in the league as his fastball, and his effectiveness, began to degrade.
Throughout his career, Haines was effective if not spectacular. Today, he would make a solid 3rd or 4th starter.
His best season was 1927, when he pitched to a 24-10 record and a 2.72 ERA, which was good enough for 8th in the MVP voting.
He was one of the stars of the Cardinals improbable 1926 World Series victory over the Yankees. He made 2 starts and 1 relief appearance, notching a 2-0 win-loss record and a 1.08 ERA. Taking the start in Game 3, he pitched a 5 hit complete game shutout and contributed 2 of the Cards 4 runs with a two-run home run in the bottom of the 4th inning of Dutch Ruether.
His advancing age began to get notice in 1930 when the 36-year-old Haines only had a 13-10 record with an astronomical 5.71 ERA. He bounced back the following year with a 12-3 and 3.02 performance in an injury shortened season.
1932 saw him shift to a spot starter/relief pitcher role. Through the end of his career, he was a solid contributor with modern sabermetrics showing him contributing between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR in 4 of his 6 remaining seasons.
In his final season (1937), in the 10 days after his 44th birthday, he pitched two complete game victories, though the remaining 6 appearances that season were less noteworthy.
For his first and only post playing days season, he was the pitching coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers under manager Burleigh Grimes. Incidentally, Grimes was the very first signed 1961 Fleer card in my collection.
After that single season as a coach, he returned home to Phillipsburg, OH and served as the Montgomery County Auditor for 28 years before retiring for good.
Elected to Cooperstown by the Veteran's Committee in 1970, his enshrinement is now somewhat controversial. Chaired by Frankie Frisch at the time, it is known that Frisch used his influence to have former teammates, like Haines, Dave Bancroft, and Chick Hafey elected despite an otherwise lackluster case.
He died in 1978 at the age of 85 and is buried in his hometown of Phillipsburg outside Dayton.
What I am listening to: The Sound of Silence by Disturbed
The dean of the (dwindling) population of card bloggers, Night Owl, has been musing recently on topics that derive from the advance of time and our position in that flow. He and I are of the same generational cohort. My 60th birthday approaches rapidly, but I cannot really wrap my mind around it. I am healthy, active, and at the peak of my professional career (which is a source of great satisfaction.) I don't feel 60 and I don't expect I will in a few short weeks when that number becomes reality.
But there are events that give me pause to consider the advance of time. Today brought one of those events: the death of Bernie Parent.
It has been a while since I followed hockey. But, following it was part of my childhood, and it was mostly driven by collecting NHL stickers that were given away at my local Loblaws grocery store in 1974 and 1975. Bernie Parent was 80 years old. I struggle more that he was that old than I do with my own age. I suppose it may have something to do with having moved my mother into assisted living recently and seeing the recent decline in her health. Anyways, before this post becomes even more maudlin, I'll sign off.
What I am listening to: Landslide by Fleetwood Mac
