A Card 'o da Day So Cool I Didn't Have to Write About It...

Today's CT Card o da Day comes from 1963 Topps baseball, card #138 to be specific. Over the years I have made over 700 posts and have probably written close to a million words about the cards I own and the cards I want. This is a card that I own and a card that I have wanted for some time now. It is a card that is SO awesome that I wouldn't do it justice by blabbering on about it, so here it is: The Pride of the N.L.. It features 2 of the GREATEST players ever to play the game on ONE AWESOME CARD!!! They also happen to both be in the starting line-up on the ALL TROLL team. Enjoy! By the way this is the 81st 1963 Topps card to go into the binder. The list is of course up to date, check it out! Go Rays! troll out...

Tomorrow I Will Be the Proud Owner of a Kennedy Tool Chest!

So this is an update on my last post... The story ends with me getting the tool box! I am taking tomorrow night off from work. The box is a few hours away and I have a paper due, so it makes sense...
I owe a HUGE thanks to my wife, the Legendary Esther Gin N Juice for making it happen... She took an hour off of work, set up 2 laptops in front of a 3rd computer and hit refresh every second for an hour. The box went up over $200.00 in the final twenty minutes and she hung for every bid. She went past the limit ($30.) that she set and made it happen.
I am pretty freaking happy right now... I will take photos of it at work next week. This huge purchase does mean the scanner will have to wait, but for me it is worth it. I can always use the neighbors scanner AND I have 100s of unposted cards...
Go Rays! troll out.

Does Anybody Else Use eBay For Stuff Other Than Cards???

I am sure at some point here I have mentioned my occupation. I am a machinist. I am also a college student and hopefully someday (in a decade or two) will become an engineer, but I am actually quite proud of my trade and wouldn’t mind being a machinist for the rest of my life.
It carries over to this hobby a little bit, too. Just as I collect baseball cards, I also collect tools. Of course I use the tools, but I am addicted to buying tools and I love the cool vintage, Made in the USA stuff. I spend a lot of time and money searching for tools on eBay. Cards, too...

Anyway, just like you keep your cards in a binder, tools are kept in a box. In my profession, the best binder (box) you can get is a Kennedy. I have owned several Kennedy boxes over the years, but when times have gotten tough I have had to part with them. I generally get them back. They hold their value well, they are a great investment and I have been lucky to always sell them for more than I have paid and been able to quickly replace them. Lately, they have been more difficult to find. It has been a few years since I have had a Kennedy rolling cabinet. I do have a Kennedy box, an 8-drawer journeyman cabinet, but I have it on a shipping cart. I REALLY want/need a rolling tool chest.

The big difference between hunting eBay for cards and for a tool box is that the box weighs a couple hundred pounds and need to be shipped by truck IF the seller will ship. Most require local pick up only. I check Craig’s List and eBay daily looking for a local Kennedy rolling cabinet and have had no luck. When I have, they always sell before I can call, or I don’t have the $$$ or something.

There is a point to this story, believe it or not. I have found a rolling cabinet. It is local and it is awesome. It has 16 hours to go and is at $450. That may sound like a ton of money, but for this type of cabinet, it is a great deal. In this condition they can go for $1,000.

I want this box bad! Imagine the feeling that you get when there is an hour left on an auction for an autographed 1/1 of your favorite player and it only has 1 bid and sits at $5.00. You know you want it, you know you can afford 5 bucks, but you have no idea how high that 1 single bid is. It can drive you crazy!!!

If you want to see what an awesome machinist’s tool box is, here is the link. I actually stole a pic to add to this post… Since my at-work injury I have fallen down the Totem Pole at work. It would feel really good to show up at work with this thing… Plus I actually have many tools that I don’t bring to work cuz I don’t have a place to put them. Yeah, I want this box bad!!! Wish me luck…

I listed some items (tools, not cards) tonight to raise some extra funds. You can check them out here.

Damn, I want this tool box!!! This area is one hour away and I now have a car and can easily take a quick road trip…

Need to go to sleep, but I can’t stop thinking about this damn toolbox! Go Rays! Troll out.

An Accidental 2007 Mini...

I have a paper due. A lengthy research paper. It’s on the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. A FANTASTIC piece of literature. For some reason I just don’t feel like writing. Go figure…

Today’s CT Card o’ da Day is card #228 from 2007 Allen and Ginter, mini, black bordered version featuring Jack the Ripper. I had bought a lot of 50 2008 A and G minis online. Got ‘em for a good price, but it turned out to be 20 from 2008, 25 from 2009 and a couple from 2006 and 2007… I was a little pissed, but they were cheap and the off-year cards were pretty freaking cool. Something about a black bordered card of a murderer in the middle of neo vintage baseball card set… I really wish I had a scan of the back. Someday soon...
Go Rays! Troll out.

Thanks, Links, Want Lists, Dribble... What Else Can I Post Without a Scanner?

Before I start this post I will say despite the title I found some pics to break up my dribble. Okay... So last night I had a long talk with my supervisor at work… The result was he understood my need for overtime and approved my shift working Saturdays for the rest of the month… For a card blogger whose PayPal account is at zero and bank account is over drafted, this is GREAT news… My wife picked up 2 extra shifts this week, too. Things are looking up for the Troll Clan.
We made a list of things we NEED to pick up this weekend. Beyond the boring groceries, we decided we could seriously benefit from a printer and scanner combo. With the wife’s approval, the scanner is as good as mine.
I can’t wait cuz I have some really fancy cards that I want to show off. I received my first package since announcing that I was back… It fits in well with a couple others I had got recently…
Here are 3 small (this is a mini reference, ha) reasons that I need a scanner:

My new best friend Chris from the Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz card blog hooked me up with 7 Allen and Ginter minis that go from rare to RARER and consequently I was able to update my Ginter needs list for the first time in 8 months.
Thanks to him I am about halfway done with the Team Orange set, which I LOVE and I got to scratch off 2 more from the super tough World’s Icons set. My Ginter needs list is getting smaller and smaller… BTW - These images aren't the awesome cards from Chris, but they are genuine Ginter minis in my collection that I have never posted before...
Speaking of 2008 Allen and Ginter – I would never even have got started with it without the help and support of my favorite Ohio blogger Duane from the Democratic Roadkill blog. He has sent me 100s of GREAT Ginters that I NEED to show off. A few of them can be found in this very post...
I don’t limit my mini madness exclusively to Allen and Ginter; I am in pursuit of the 2011 Topps minis. There are 50 cards in Series 1 and I thought I had no chance at all until Ted from the Crinkly Wrappers blog tore my needs list to bit… He sent me 34 different Kimball minis!!! I need just 4 more minis. I really couldn’t believe it when I opened that package and saw that many different minis. Blogger generosity seriously blows me away! If you happen to have any spare minis from this one, all I need now are 20, 21, 25 and card #43 of Pee Wee Reese to finish it all off….
I am really psyched about the potential of picking up a scanner. This blog would look a whole lot better with some pics…

I owe a HUGE thank you to these 3 super bloggers for the super cool tiny cards… I owe thank yous to a whole bunch of people… Send me an email to remind me if I haven’t thanked you for a package you have sent this past year… Oh, one more thing… There are a few of you out there that I have owed a package to for a LONG time… Captain Canuck – it’s going on a year and a half, and Jonathan at RGB Cards, it’s been nearly that long. With her extra shifts the super wife has promised to lend me the dough to finally get these international card packages in the mail. I think you guys will be happy. The benefit of taking a year to ship a package is that I have been adding to your piles for over a year…
Of course my want lists are up to date... In fact: Tony from the aptly named Collector From Across the Pond - A Giants fan in England… and I are working out a deal to whittle my 2010 Topps Heritage needs list down to nearly nothing…. I need just 14 more short prints to finish this one off. A huge thank you to Tony for getting in touch. This is a trade I can’t wait to pull off…
I LOVE this hobby!!! Hit me up if you wanna trade and keep your eyes on the mailbox cuz I have about a dozen domestic “thank you” packages that are slated to go out next week.
Thanks for reading! Thanks again to Ted, Chris, Duane and everybody else who has kept my mailbox full of goodies!!! Oh... Worried about this being a boring post without any pics, my neighbor scanned a couple of the Kimball minis from Crinkly Wrappers for me. AWESEOME!!! Go Rays. Troll out.

5 Posts in 5 Days, I guess I am Back...

A couple of years back when I got back into ripping packs I didn’t really have any direction. I liked to buy packs, random packs, whatever caught my eye. I would hope and pray to get an auto, or a relic, or a refractor, or something cool with a serial number, or a card of my favorite player or at least my fav team… I just ripped randomly. If I got something good it went in a penny sleeve, if it was really good it then went into a top loader… if it was really really good it found its way into a screw down… if it wasn’t good enough to deserve a penny sleeve it just went into a box. You can’t throw away a baseball card, but I ended up with a lot of cards that I really didn’t care about. They were saved, but generally would never be looked at again.

When I started trading, that changed a bit. Suddenly pulling a Braves card, or a Dodger or Cardinal or Red Sox or Rangers player was cooler. It meant that it could be shipped away to someone else and would soon magically become a card that I cared about. The worst thing I could pull was a checklist. These were USELESS. I did actually throw these away. I didn’t want them and I couldn’t trade them. They were worthless, waste of cardboard. When you were plunking down 5 bucks for a pack with 4 cards in it and you pulled a checklist, you weren’t happy, you felt ripped off. I felt really ripped off…

Of course, this has all changed a bit for me… I stopped ripping packs. For now at least cuz I am physically unable and financially handicapped. I will probably start ripping again soon, but… Basically my collecting priorities have changed a lot. I stopped doing the player collector thing… (Except for Danny Tartabull, Jared Sandberg and Buck O’Neill – I will chase those 3 until I have every last card ever made of them!!!) and I have soured on team collecting for the most part. Now I am strictly a set builder.

Now checklists have purpose. Now I wish for them, I have them on my want lists; I use them to build my want lists. I buy them, I trade for them and I value them… When it comes to vintage, I really like the ones that are marked up, that show the original owner’s progress with regard to building the set. It shows that I was not the first person to chase that set or to use that checklist. I like that. Because I am obsessive, I do like the marked up checklists, but for the sake of looking good in the binder, I try to get a clean checklist, too. I keep the marked up list in the binder at the end with the clean checklist in its appropriate spot in the binder…

So, since y’all now that I like checklists, I use them, I collect them, I need them, I like owning them and I find them useful and valuable… With all that knowledge I am now making a checklist the CT Card o’ da Day… Yep, from 2010 Topps Heritage, card #437, the 7th Series short printed checklist. It has a little picture on it. I like that. It adds to the checklist which can be boring. I like that Topps did that. I prefer it when they picture a player or team that I like or at least don’t hate. I mean really, Topps, don’t you already feature the Yankees enough? Do we need more freaking photos of the New York Freaking Yankees??? I had no idea that Captain Intangibles and Co. were included on card #437 when I placed it on my want list. I merely knew it was a short print and I needed it. Well, now I no longer need it, but since I now have it I was able to use it to add names with numbers on my 2010 Topps Heritage want list, which is up to date and can be found right here. Incidentally, I only need 33 cards to finish this puppy off... Feel free to help me out, I aint too proud to beg...

On a slightly different note, I am watching the Cubs vs. Cards game on TBS and just saw Carlos Pena in a Cubs uniform. I don’t like it. It could be worse; he could be a Yankee…

Thanks as always for reading and enjoying the Collective Troll’s Card of the Day. Go Rays! Left handed hunt and peck Troll out. (After about 35 minutes…)

He Wore #23 on the South Side of Chicago... My 750th Post!!!!

Going back in time to remember the good ole days before I became a blogger, when I was just a guy who ran out of money while still needing 30 more short prints to finish 2007 Topps Heritage. This was actually before I knew that there was such a thing as short prints. I just thought the collation was that bad. I didn’t understand why I had 24 copies of one card, but still needed others. Well, I turned to Google for answers and Google pointed me to a blog called the Cardboard Junkie. My life was changed forever. I won’t get into all of the angels singing and clouds separating on that magical day, but I discovered card blogs and I realized that these folks also tried to collect sets and were willing to trade. I sent an email to this Cardboard Junkie fellow and waited for his reply. Within my boxes of duplicates I had many cards he needed for his set AND he had a few that I needed, too. A week passed with no reply, so I wrote him again. This time his reply was immediate and so began a wonderful e-friendship.

As this friendship has progressed, Mr. Junkie has sent me some pretty awesome and amazing and surprise packages of goodies. A couple of weeks ago I got one of these surprise packages. Along with a card of my favorite Rays employee, Raymond, and some original artwork which was immediately thumb tacked to the wall, there was a stack of vintage cards. Beautiful aged slabs of cardboard with just enough wear around the edges to let you know that these had been handled, read, studied, flipped, traded, enjoyed, celebrated and cherished. These cards were beautiful AND they all just happened to be cards that I needed in my quest of completion regarding 1963 Topps Baseball cards.

Yeah, the super great thing about Senor Card Junk is he is not only one of the biggest names in card blogging and one of the most creative minds on the web, but is also one of the funniest people you will ever encounter. As a blogger he is a legend; as a collector, well, it is pretty darn easy to be jealous of him. Once again, as a blogger he is one of the best… I remember how excited I got the first time a comment appeared on my blog that was attributed to dayf13, the handle of Mr. Junkie. Yeah, as exciting as it is to know he is reading your dribble, it is even more awesome to get a package in the mail from the Junk Lair in Gawja… All this stated about his legendary status, the dude is really freaking thoughtful too! I had JUST decided to collect 1963 Topps and I had just made a list of my needs and BLAMMO there is a package from the Junkie with guess what? Yeah, a bunch of ’63 Topps in it…

From that package comes today’s CT Card O’ Da Day… From 1963 Topps Baseball, card #66 of White Sox pitcher Mike Joyce… I would be a horrible liar if I told you that I had any idea who this guy was. I didn’t. I wondered if he might be of some relation to the Matt Joyce, the Rays outfielder… I am still wondering, but I don’t think so. Basically if you want to know everything about Mike Joyce’s major league career, you could learn it from reading the back of this card. Joyce was a Michigan Wolverine and signed with Chicago as a 21 year old. In his first pro season he jumped from A to AAA to Chicago. He made his first and ONLY big league start on the road in New York against the Yankees. It was the second game of a July double header.

Joyce pitched 4-2/3 innings allowing 2 runs. He was also 2 for 2 at the plate. The White Sox would win that game, but Joyce was lifted one out away from getting the decision. He would never start again. He did pick up a couple of wins out of the bullpen and he finished 1962 with a 2-1 record.

In 1963 he started the year in Chicago’s bullpen but saw little work and returned to AAA where he was 13-11 in 24 starts. I am guessing at some point there was a pretty serious arm injury because in 1964 his effectiveness dropped off a cliff. He began the year in AAA, but dropped to AA and finished with an 0-13 record with a combined 7.09 ERA in 15 starts, spanning only 80 innings. He would return in 1965, but ended his career after only 5 innings.

I would love to know a little more about his career, what happened. How he went from a 21 year old big leaguer starting at Yankee Stadium to being winless in the minors 2 years later. Either way, as a big leaguer he won twice as many games as he lost AND in 7 at bats he had a career .429 batting average! Not too shabby. Plus he will always have a place on the 8th page of my 1963 Topps binder with a pretty cool looking card…

Thanks again to the blogging legend known as dayf for the hook-up and the blog fodder and thanks to y’all for reading. Thanks to Mike Joyce for throwing a baseball so many years ago... I love this hobby! Oh, this card o' the day happens to be from a set that I am chasing. I don't need this card, but I do need a bunch... Find my list HERE! Roller derby is back! Tomorrow night, June 5th: Bradentucky Bombers vs. Gainesville Roller Rebels. Be there!!! Go Rays! Troll out.

One Thousand Words to Say One Thing...

So I have me a quandary… I LOVE to blog. I love to collect baseball cards, I love to trade baseball cards, I love to talk about them and write about, I love to read other people who also love baseball cards. I have a blog. It is about baseball cards and my love of them. I have had it for over 2 years now. I used to write on it A LOT. A LOT of folks used to read it. Then I got too busy, and then my favorite player chased the all mighty dollar and abandoned ship, left town and joined the enemy. Then a bunch of other folks followed him out of town. Then I took this personally. I felt betrayed by the players I collected. I didn’t want to write about cards anymore. This lasted a while, but then something happened. I missed collecting cards; I missed talking about cards, trading cards and writing about cards. I decided that my love of this game (baseball) and my love this hobby and my love of writing (typing) about it was far greater than any one player…

Unfortunately during the time it took for this epiphany to strike me my scanner died out, I ran out money (and postage ain’t cheap!) and broke my right hand. I tried to recoup some money by peddling away the cards of my favorite player who left my favorite team but I realized that no one wanted them as badly as I did. In other words I was the sucker who would drop 20 bucks for a shiny autographed card that normal people would only pay 8 bucks for… This got depressing and I gave up on that mission, plus cards are hard to sell without pictures of them. People don’t just take your word that the card you are selling is in fact a real 1 of 1. So here I am. I have this blog and it has 156 followers and I have a head chock full of stories. I have 2 rooms in my house with stacks and boxes and binders and piles and more boxes filled with cards on the floor, on the shelves, on the desk, on the table and the chairs. I have a broken scanner and a broken hand and a busy schedule and no money and more excuses than a 15-year-old late for curfew… Like I said, I have a quandary…

I have shut this blog down and started it back up, I have quit collecting a dozen times, but I keep on coming back, I keep finding new things to collect and new reasons to love this hobby. I keep on posting occasionally and realizing that people are reading and that makes me want to post more. That makes me want to ignore that I have a broken scanner, a broken hand and more empty pages than full ones in the many half empty binders on my dining room floor. I love this hobby and I love to write about it. I have an addiction and I like it. I don’t wanna quit. I am a baseball card junkie, I am hooked on blogging. I don’t really want help.

I know I can’t post like I used to. I worked hard to create a following and I am pretty happy that a lot of different people have stumbled upon this blog; I am happy that so many stuck around, read a bit, maybe left a comment, maybe traded with me… A lot of folks did this and it made me pretty happy. I don’t wanna lose that. I want that back again. Each time I have left and came back I have made promises to post often. I have promised to update my other blogs. I am not gonna make any more promises. I have an idea. I tried doing a theme blog. I tried to blog about the 1978 Topps set. I think I made it to card 11 before I gave it up. I tried a vintage card of the day thing. It was cool, but there are more than 4 days in a month: I just couldn’t keep up. I tried to blog about my team’s journey in the postseason. By the time I got around to it, they were eliminated… They had a good run. Then they were dismantled. I took it pretty hard…

I never said goodbye (formally) to CC, Jason Bartlett, Fernando Perez, Matt Garza, Carlos Pena, Rocco Baldelli, Dioneer Navarro, Gabe Kapler, Willy Aybar, Rafael Soriano, Joaquin Benoit or Grant Balfour or any of the guys who were Rays the last time I blogged about the Rays… They aren’t now. I miss them. I really liked those guys. I still hold a grudge about Aki, Gomes, Kaz and Delmon. I am slow to forgive. The team is getting by, pretty good actually. I never welcomed Manny to the team, never said goodbye either. I am glad he is gone, I am glad I missed that episode. I am glad if ANYONE is reading this. I am glad I am getting better at typing with my left hand. I think I will be doing this more often. Maybe not this, but blogging.

I think I am back. I want to be back. I am gonna say it, the long and winding road has hit many dead ends, but it always leads back to my love of baseball cards and I can’t help but write about it. I am gonna say it straight up, I AM BACK!!! The troll is back, but he is out for now. Yeah, troll back, troll out.

(By the way, the one lone card in this post is the LAST card I scanned before the unfortunate death of my scanner. It came from the Cardboard Junkie. He rules. He knows that everybody loves Raymond… Thanks! I love this hobby. I love being back. I am back. I am out.

A Troll Health Update For My Homies...

Confirmed from my doctor on Wednesday - I am healing WELL and I will NOT require surgery on my hand!!!! This is GREAT news! The doc said he was really shocked with how well the breaks were settling in. He compared the X-ray from when it happened nearly a month ago with the one yesterday. He said, "you hand was messed up, but it is falling back into place really nice, it looks like it happened 2 months ago". Basically I am healing better than expected. I am really happy with how well the broken bones are getting back to normal. I am concerned about the tendon damage, but Doc assures me that if I wait it out patiently, I can skip surgery and start physical therapy in about 6 six weeks and I can start using my hand in 8-10 weeks. I should be able to type within 2 months, but I am likely 3 months away from hand writing with my right hand. Still bummed and impatient, but I really couldn't wish for better news... Go Rays! Left-handed troll out.

The CT Card of the Day; This Could Be a Baseball Player, Could Be Your Uncle or Neighbor, There is No Way to Tell...

I have been singing the praises of my new favorite set, 1963 Topps Baseball, an awful lot lately, I decided to collect this set last month with only a handful of cards in my collection. I now own over 60 cards from this set get more into it with each and every card I get my hands on.
That said this set isn’t perfect… Topps made the same mistake within this set that they had been making since the early 1950s, the same mistake they continue to make now in 2011. They had their photographers snapping pictures of players without hats AND they published these awful photos and immortalized them on cardboard and included them in their annual baseball card set.

Like I said, they did it in the 50s; they did it in the 60s and 70s, 80s, 90s and have continued to do it over the last 2 decades.
Ballplayers tend to be focused on the game they are playing, more focused on that than how they looked and most of them weren’t all that good looking… It becomes convenient that their occupation requires them to wear a hat, allowing them to hide their balding heads, goofy ears and sometimes goofier faces… The ball cap is integral to a player’s “game face”. It is integral to their job and a requirement to do it.

All these things mentioned are great reasons why Topps should photograph the baseball players that they feature in their sets wearing their uniforms, their complete uniforms…
This is a really long set-up for today’s Collective Troll Card of the Day, from 1963 Topps, card #575 of Pirates pitcher Don Cardwell.

Cardwell had a pretty great career. He spent 14 years in the big leagues where he won 101 games. He topped 200 innings in a season 4 times. He hurled 17 shutouts and completed 72 of his 301 starts. He tossed a no-hitter in 1960 as a Chicago Cub, in his first start with his new squad. He was a part of the starting rotation on the Amazin’ Mets of 1969 and won a ring with that team. He had a pretty impressive resume.

Unfortunately all I see is a goofy looking guy on this card… A picture taken WAY too close with a player missing a very important part of his uniform… A picture that one has to assume is of Don Cardwell, a baseball player, but there are zero visible clues to this...
I love this game! I love this hobby! Go Rays! Troll out.