What Do I Collect?

A simple question with an oft changing answer.  The oft changing answer is the bigger part of the problem, as I have a tendency to acquire items which are often neat in the moment, but not in the long term.  Nonetheless, I've tried to summarize my collecting goals, if for no other reason than to give me some additional structure in my acquisitions.

T206 Cards

This is where it all started for me again, with one Orval Overall leading to a tobacco collection of 457 unique T206 cards.  My goal is to collect the set to 518 and given the progress I've made in the last two+ years, I think this is a fairly attainable goal.  Most of my purchases are of the lower grade variety, in the trimmed/poor to good range.  To push me toward finishing the set, I've tried to pick up not only the commons when I find them, but to seek out the more difficult cards on the journey up front, since you never know when you will find them again at an affordable price.  I've picked up a substantial majority of the hall of famers, including the four Ty Cobb cards and managed to get most of the shorter print cards to 518 with the exception of the Elberfeld Portrait Washington card, which always manages to elude my grasp.  Now, collecting to 518 means no Wagner, Plank, Magee, Slow Joe Doyle NY National, O'Hara St. Louis or Demmitt St. Louis, but I can live with that.  The cards I own still have a sense of history and are stunning pieces of art, even though they are stunning pieces of art used to stiffen cigarette packs and encouraged people to smoke more.

Nonetheless, I am always happy with my T206 cards and they really are the core of my collection.

Orval Overall

Who is Orval Overall?  Well, in terms of sports greatness, he was a very good second or third starter for the Chicago Cubs around the last time they were viable World Series contenders.  His claim to baseball fame is that he won the last game of the 1908 World Series for the Cubs. 

My interest stems from some research about 10 to 12 years ago, when I wrote some of the biographies for Stars of the Deadball Era, National League.  While his life after baseball is what most people would call pedestrian, such as being a banker, I still find I have a strong connection to him.  Given the timeframe and the cards available, it became a natural for me that I would collect his cards beyond the T206 set.  There are a decent number of caramel and other tobacco cards, silks, discs, pins and even west coast candy cards to collect.  His popularity is not so great that his cards are prohibitively expensive, like chasing Ty Cobb or Christy Mathewson cards from their playing days.  That being said, the variety is nice, while not having too many exotic cards which I would have a slim chance of owning, due to the small populations available.  

Mike Scott

Growing up, my favorite player was Mike Scott.  There is something about a pitcher who comes out of nowhere, to dominate for a few seasons, which lures me in.  Especially once you put in the orange uniforms, split-finger fastball, false accusations of scuffing and complete and utter dominance of the 1986 Mets in the NLCS. 

Collecting Mike Scott cards gives me a great appreciation of how many oddball series were created in the 1980s.  I have heavy bronze cards, disc cards, bakery cards, fire prevention cards, coins and all sorts of other random cards which have crept into my boxes over time.  I am always on the lookout for a new Mike Scott card I've never seen before, so I can add it to the growing stack of orange and white cards containing an often bespectacled man. 

Other Collections

I also from time to time, pick up cards which fit into these categories.

Late 1980s and early 1990s Pittsburgh Penguins, such as Paul Coffey, Tom Barrasso, Ron Francis and other non-Lemieux and Jagr players as cards become available.  I'm especially a sucker for any relic cards for these players.

Non-Sports Tobacco cards.  I have a fairly decent sized collection of non-sports tobacco cards.  I especially enjoy cards containing pictures of flags and animals.  I managed to complete the entire T59 Flags of the World set, which makes is likely the only time I can mention Saxe-Coberg-Gotha and card collecting in the same sentence.  T29 Hassan Animal cards are my set in progress, as I have about 45 of the 80 cards in a binder directly behind the Flags of the World.  I also have my strays which I pick up at card shows and antique stores, which include Silk Flags, World War I picture cards and Franz Liszt. 

Deadball Era players on Post-1960 Cards.  Topps has done a great job in putting out cards containing Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb over the last few years.  They even put out cards for less famous members of the Deadball Era, such as Kid Elberfeld, Willie Keeler, Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown and even George Davis (who is both a Hall of Famer and possesses quite possibly the coolest, most apocalyptic background found on a T206.).  I am such a sucker for these newer cards, that I almost always buy up these cards at shows when I see the guy who has the "new" Topps cards for sale.  Quite possibly, the card from this era at the top of my list is the 2011 Topps Ty Cobb driving a car card.  I'm sure you've seen the picture and somehow a Hall of Famer driving an open top car in 1910 or 1911 is begging to be in my modern collection. 

I probably also pick up cards of Astros in technicolor orange uniforms and I am working on a low grade 1973 Topps set which has fallen by the wayside, but left me with about 250 duplicates sitting in various boxes near the binders.

So, I think that covers what I collect, which is far broader than I hoped it was.  I'm sure more of these cards will be showing up on this blog soon.  

Welcome to Classic Card Collector

As a small child, I spent a fair amount of time collecting cards. Baseball cards, football cards, basketball cards, even the occasional hockey or wrestling cards as well. And sports stickers, did I love sports stickers. However, as I got older, I ended up losing interest in cards.

Actually, for many years, the last cards I bought were a box of 1995 Topps retail from Costco, which is when I learned the difference between retail and hobby and that retail boxes were inferior to hobby, despite having the same cost structure. With that lesson in mind and getting older, I moved away from sports cards, collecting other items, finishing college, getting a job, all sorts of fun things.

Being a native of New Jersey, I ended up at the mall on day about a year ago in early June, which was holding a sportscard show. One of those big, weekend shows with thirty or forty dealers, filled with tables of assorted cards and other sports related items. I went with a specific purpose in mind. I wanted to find a 1973 Topps Steve Busby rookie. While the real Steve Busby was a tremendous talent who flamed out early, the Steve Busby I always think of was a star in a simulated baseball league I used to run and still participate in.

I found a Steve Busby and gladly paid a dollar for the card. While at the show, I looked at many of the other dealers' wares, seeing all sorts of shiny cardboard or cards from the 50's and 60's laid out in glass cases. Towards the end of my tour, I found a dealer who had even older cards. Cards from before World War II and even World War I. I found a dealer who had tobacco cards at the mall.

As a small child, I had a real interest in these cards. I remembered the famous T206 Honus Wagner, Eddie Plank and even the Sherry Magee error card which is purported to be exceptionally rare as well. Well, in order to have really rare cards, you need to have a more common base of cards. A set as it were. And here, for the first time in my life, I was face to face with tobacco cards I could purchase.

Being a large fan of the Deadball era and the players of the period, I took a walk around the mall, deciding whether I wanted to open the Pandora's Box that was the case before me. As you can guess from the title, I agreed to open the case and look within. I carefully sorted through each stack of cards, being awestruck by the colors and the players available.

Not knowing a lot about the cards or the current prices, I managed to limit my thoughts to four possible cards: a Christy Mathewson black cap in poor to fair condition, a John McGraw portrait with no cap with a beautiful, almost flawless front, combined with a nearly skinned back, a Ty Cobb bat off shoulder, which was covered in shellac, making the card a brittle brown and an Orval Overall portrait, which was clearly trimmed and missing some of its border.

Given my limited knowledge, I thought long and hard about some of the greats of the game and thought how amazing it would be to own one of their cards, but at the time, I could not bring myself to spend in excess of $150 for the Mathewson or the Cobb as a quick hit and the McGraw, while beautiful, was very flawed and at the time, couldn't see myself buying a card without a back, since it was part of the history as well. So, I settled for the Orval Overall, having written his biography for Deadball Stars of the National League and for $12, I was on my way to a new hobby and collection.



Having reached the halfway point in the T206 set since that day, learning a great deal about the history and the hobby, I thought it would be best to share my cards and my stories about collecting, especially, as it has led me into other avenues of collecting as well.

Most of the content here will be about the my chase for the T206 Set, but I do enjoy opening modern packs from time to time and will post about those as well.