The Great Garage Sale Discovery

For the first time in weeks - perhaps since the beginning of 2018 - the wife and I had ourselves a free weekend.  No family get-togethers, no friendly shindigs, no extra work commitments, no surprise apartment fumigation (yes, that's happened this year)... nothing, glorious nothing.  With such a wide open itinerary, naturally, we took advantage of this unfamiliar situation and enjoyed doing absolutely nothing.  I must say, it was quite nice not trying to hurriedly pack up our Kia or frantically shop for a last minute birthday gift, for once.

During this downtime, I was able to sit down at the coffee table, grab a cool beverage, and flip through my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection binder for the first time in months.  It's my favorite cardboard endeavor, the linchpin of this entire blog; however, the behemoth requires a significant amount of free time to page through.  Thus, I was kind of excited to dust off the cover of my marquee, six-inch three-ring.

While idly flipping through these Ultra-Pro pages, I noticed something about this collection that hadn't registered with me in a long time and had gone pretty much entirely undiscussed here on Wrigley Roster Jenga.  This story involves one of my greatest garage sale finds of all-time, an oddball set of trading cards, and flashback to more than a decade ago:

Sometime in the middle part of the previous decade, I was a broke teenager, sans job, who was just launching his CATRC project - the 2003 "Why Not Us?" Cubs had recently re-ignited my passion for our nation's pastime and it's trading cards.  While I did pop into my LCS on occasion, it was during these cash-strapped days that I began mining thrift shops, flea markets, and garage sales for good deals on previously discarded cardboard.

Unsurprisingly, with my previous collecting period having occurred during the tail end of the overproduction era, my pasteboard holdings focused heavily on the 80's and 90's, while new acquisitions began to fill in gaps with the current club.  Vintage cards from the 60's and 70's were well out of my minuscule price range and were never seen outside of the sliding-glass display cabinets of the card shop and players from before that might as well have been ancient relics from Mesopotamia.  In short, nearly three-quarters of the history of my favorite franchise was almost non-existent in my then much smaller binder.

That is, until one glorious Saturday morning.

As I've mentioned on this blog before, my favorite local tradition is our village's annual Garage Sale Day, where residents are invited to lay their wares out for sale in their driveway or lawn without need of a permit.  Since the days of my chasing Beanie Babies in the 90's, I've never missed this Saturday morning festivity and, honestly, it's one of my favorite days of the entire year.  You just never know what you're going to find... maybe there'll be a giant Red Bull cooler, or a super cheap Keith Magnuson autograph,  or a long sought after LP... it's a community-wide treasure hunt!  During one such quest, circa 2005, I happened upon the box you see above.

I might not remember the exact year, but it was at a house on Lawndale Avenue that, hidden among the strewn about junk, I happened upon a complete, reprinted box set of the 1951 Bowman checklist.  I couldn't grab that sucker off of the folding table fast enough.

Back in the late-80's, a company known as Card Collectors Company jumped into the burgeoning baseball card market by reproducing iconic sets of decades previous.  Colloquially referred to as CCC for short, the group recreated highly-priced and treasured tobacco/bubblegum cards for collectors on a budget, including '51 Bowman in 1988.  Fast forward a little bit to 2005-ish and I was a collector on an extremely tight budget, whose blossoming collection of all-time Cubs contained a massive vintage blackhole.  In short, this set was basically meant for me!

If I recall correctly, this bad boy only set me back about five dollars, as well; the seller appeared to have once been a big investor in the trading card boom and was looking to rid himself of the clutter.  Although created as a cheap alternative to real, super vintage, these reprint sets still often change hands for upwards of thirty bucks and are rarely broken up into affordable singles.  Thus, this was an absolute steal of a deal on product already designed for those with light wallets.

Thankfully, this discovery came near the end of the garage sale tour because I recall fighting the urge to immediately dig into the contents of the box.  Surely it was going to be a significant boon to my burgeoning Cubs All-Time Roster Collection.

Not only were my lofty expectations met, they were far exceeded!  From just one transaction that cost me nothing more than a meager Abraham Lincoln banknote, I added what had to be nearly fifty new names to my All-Time Roster tome.  In just one purchase, the decade of Elvis Presley and Sputnik went from nearly completely absent to more than halfway complete.  I don't have any recorded statistics to back this claim up; but, this has to have been the greatest one-time addition to my CATRC throughout it's existence.

This massive boost was aided by not only the Cubs team set - as showcased by Bill Serena, Wayne Terwilliger, and all those shown previously - but also by Cubs of a different color.  By that, I mean future/former Cubs shown in other uniforms.

After all, since day one of this project, I've accepted such cards as placeholders until a properly-attired card can be acquired.  Furthermore, in many cases, several such players never received a genuine Cubs card or only super duper rare regional issues; so, in the interest of completion, I welcome the colors of other clubs to this very day.

During the ensuing decade and a half, many of these cards have since been upgraded in my collection by actual vintage or by cards printed in the more traditional, standard size.  I must admit, though I would never have turned down this find, I do have an inherent bias against mini cards, be it modern Allen & Ginter or authentic Bowman dimensions.  Even still, a hefty amount of these CCC reprints still rest comfortably in my CATRC accumulation, including all of the cards featured in this post.

 

All of these years later, a total of 18 Card Collectors Company recreations are still included in my marquee collection.  Even if that total represented my initial acquisition, that would still divide out to just over 25-cents per card, an investment which I would easily pull the trigger on right now.

Sadly, this isn't an entirely happy story.  While I have no qualms about breaking up the set, I no longer have the fancy-pantsy box that originally stored the brick of cardboard (I lifted that image from Ebay, in all honesty).  As a matter of fact, I no longer have ANY of the cards which lacked a connection to the North Side franchise.  After initially sorting through my Garage Sale Day bounty, in a short-sighted move  I re-packaged all of the non-Cubs into that box and immediately tossed them in the trash.  Hell, I didn't even use the damn recycling bin.  All of that glorious cardboard, wasted to the great landfill of time.

What a nitwit!  At the very least, they would have been fun to include in various trade packages; of course, this was well before I had any communication whatsoever with other collectors. 

Oh well, how typical of your average American teenager.  At least I was able to hang onto to all of the rest of these oddballs!

All in all, I think I can say, unequivocally, that this box of 1988 CCC '51 Bowman reprints was my greatest Garage Sale Day find of all-time.  This five-dollar purchase from 2005 (or thereabouts) continues to provide a significant contribution to my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection here in 2018.  With that in mind, I know I can't be the only cardboard collector on the blogosphere who has an unbridled love for garage sales.  So, I have to ask, what is the best secondhand discovery that you've ever come across at such an event?  Please feel free to share in the comment section below.

In the meantime, my lazy weekend has officially run out - it's now Monday morning and it's time for work.  And if that wasn't joyous enough, we have a coating of snow to go with the beginning of the work week dread.  Thank goodness I was able to unwind with my big ol' binder this weekend!

National Scrabble Day

I've always been a big fan of board games. Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Battleship, checkers... you name it, I'll play it. Maybe it's because I enjoy the strategy. Maybe it's because the stimuli keeps my overactive imagination occupied. Maybe it's because I relish the opportunity to gather round a table with family and friends for an evening of enjoyment. Heck, perhaps it's all of the above reasons. However, one thing is for certain - I will never get bored with board games.

One particular game that holds a special place in my heart is Scrabble. When my sister was a colicky infant - up all night and crying uncontrollably - my father, brother, and I would sit on the living room floor and test our vocabularies for hours while dad simultaneously rocked the baby. I mean, it was too loud to sleep and we needed something to distract our minds from the raucous sobbing. This little bit of family bonding meant a great deal to me and I'm pretty sure I can thank my baby sister for my school district spelling bee championship in seventh grade.

The reason I bring this all up is that, apparently, today is National Scrabble Day. The Hasbro trademarked creation has been around since 1948 and is sold in 121 countries with 29 different language versions. Why we have a national holiday to honor the crossword-based game is beyond me, but I'll sure as heck take any excuse to bust out the board after dinner tonight.

But, what does any of this have to do with baseball cards? This is a baseball card blog, right?

    =  29

Longtime Cubs hurler and current Giants disabled list resident, Jeff Samardzija, is famous for his tremendously difficult to spell surname.  Lord knows I can never confidently press "publish" on a post which makes mention of the Notre Dame product without cross-checking Baseball Reference.  I can only imagine what fits he put the editors at the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times through.  With that, Jeff - while better known as "Shark" - was often nicknamed as "Spellcheck" or "Scrabble," in reference to the random jumble of letters that is his last name.

Out of curiosity, I decided to see just how many points "Samaradzija" would earn in the game of Scrabble.  Of course, since it's a proper name, it would not be a legal play; but, in theory...

With the coveted "Z" and "J" tiles generating most of the oomph, the name generates twenty-nine points.  That's not bad at all; although, if one were to play the names of former Cubs players, Samardzija would not be the highest earner.

  =  29

Another former Cubs moundsman, Fred Baczewski (9 games, 1953), actually ties the "Shark" with twenty-nine tallies and with less letters, to boot.  Another "Z" is found, but the wealth is spread out a lot more here, with three, four and five-point tiles making appearances.

Now, I couldn't stop going down the road at this point - I had to figure out which player in Cubs history would have the most valuable last name in the game of Scrabble.  In the franchise's loooooong history, lords knows that they have had some mouthfuls on their active roster.

  =  13

  =  13

Here's another pair of hurlers whose family names have twisted the tongues of Cubs fans in the past.  Unfortunately for them, neither Pisciotta nor Tiefenauer combine for much in the way of scoring.  Thirteen is definitely not an embarrassing score for a turn in Scrabble, though it's hardly anything to write home about...

...much like the Cubs tenures of journeyman Bobby Tiefenauer (6.08 ERA in 13.1 innings for 1968).

= 21

Hargesheimer has the second longest last name in Cubs history; but, unlike the three men tied ahead of him, it's much more difficult for the human mind to figure out how these syllables form a pronounceable word. His lone season in the Windy City came in 1983, one year after Harry Caray shifted from the South Side to the North Side... someone please tell me that video exists of everyone's favorite drunkard struggling to pronounce this mish-mash!

For all his trouble, though, all Mr. Caray would earn from his struggle would be twenty-one points.  Good, but not great, and still behind a handful of other Cubs.

 = 26

  =  26

Tied for third most in my far-from-comprehensive research are yet another pitcher and, finally, a position player.  Apparently, those that man the mound are more naturally inclined to have peculiar names; is it a competitive advantage in distracting hitters?

Joe Schaffernoth might get points through the shear amount of letters on his name tag; however, sometimes less is more.  It's tough to beat Matt Szczur (pronounced "Caesar," somehow) and his two "Z's"... especially since in the real game you only get one such tile.  We'll suspend that disqualification though, since proper nouns aren't legal plays anyway.

  =  28

The hat-less Vic Roznovsky edges out Szczur and Schaffernoth by two tallies, on the strength of yet another "Z" and some four and five-point letters  This ranks him second on the list of best Cubs Scrabble names of all-time... or at least of my half an hour of semi-distracted research.  Speaking of which, Topps might be trying to tell me that this is an Orioles card, but they can't distract me from the fact that Vic is clearly wearing a Cubs uniform in this photograph; the blue and red trim on his color give it away.

Alright, it's all come down to this, which Cub has the highest scoring Scrabble name?  Drumroll please:

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The all-time, Scrabble king is Zizzer-Zazzer-Zastryzny - another two-Z technicality.  How appropriate that this quirky title should fall upon a lefty reliever?

With that, we've reached the end of my little exercise, inspired by National Scrabble Day.  Out of curiosity, what names from your favorite franchise's history would be best to drop on the game board?  Am I the only person who's brain is wired like this?  Will my wife kill me if I try to play "Roznovsky" in our game tonight?  So many questions begging to be answered!

Happy National Scrabble Day, everybody.

Yearly Factory Inspection

While I certainly pay some attention to every new release, the drop date for Topps' factory team sets is circled, in red ink, on my calendar each and every year.  Marketed towards casual collectors and kids, these pre-assembled sets offer a healthy sampling of both the new edition of Flagship and the roster of your favorite team.  While some may see them as a lazy rehash of the already circulating Series One and redundant bloat in an already engorged hobby, there is still plenty for me to like about these blister packs.  Thus, I have grabbed one off of the rack at my local card shop or big box store  since 2014, when I discovered what set them apart from their twin brethren.

So, why not just collate a team set of Series One and be done?  First of all, in order to draw extra intrigue and motivation to purchase, these factory team sets usually include one of two of the featured team's big off-season signings or trade acquisitions that came in too late to be included in the S1 checklist:

In any other normal off-season, Yu Darvish would have likely been making his Cubs uniform debut in this product.  However, with the sluggish pace of transactions during the 2017/18 winter, the ink on the ace's contract dried well after the deadline for both S1 AND the factory sets.  Thankfully, Brandon Morrow signed back in November and the new Chicago closer debuts in Cubbie Blue in Yu's stead (Photoshopped though it may be).

This maiden Morrow now Cubgrade the late-inning arm's representation in my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection binder.  This may make some collector's skin crawl, but I have no apprehension in breaking this team set up in order to meet my individual needs and goals.

Moving on, it's not just entirely new players to the organization who pop their heads into these blisters; additionally, there's yet more uniformed personnel who don't yet appear in the 2018 Flagship roster:

  

 

  

These cards serve as previews for who may be included in the forthcoming Series Two and Update sets later this summer and fall.  Or, heck, they may not show up in anything else whatsoever - I guess we won't truly know for certain until this October.  Either way, these factory sets offer a greater glimpse into the roster construction of your favorite club.

Also, can we all just agree that, no matter how you feel about this waterslide design, that Zobrist card is a piece of art?  A leaping grab on a beautiful summer day, set against the lush, green ivy of Wrigley Field.  Paging Once a Cub - this horizontal hero would make a wonderful addition to your Ivy Frankenset!

One further characteristic that distinguishes the factory team sets from the rest of Flagship are the usual photo variations.  Every year, there's a few cards which feature different pictures than their standard counterparts:

Although, at least for the Cubs, this year's plastic pack only contains one photographic switcheroo, courtesy of Willson Contreras.

The factory team set version is on the left, while the the Series One take is set to the right... personally, I think that this change is a serious downgrade...  I'll take a jubilant athlete over a generic batting snapshot any day of the week.

Lastly, the rest of the team is, in fact, filled out with cards that are basically duplicates of their Flagship equals.  Some may feature slight variations in cropping or positioning; but, for all intents and purposes, they are merely copies of the originals.  Although, as illustrated in the WillCo side-by-side above, the factory team set cards lack the foil found on the Topps logo in the upper left corner.

 

 

Like I said, there's not much here that distinguishes these cards from their pack-pulled brothers, other than the lack of foil.  However, the ability to instantly acquire a team-set of my favorite team (plus the benefits included above) heavily outweighs this slight let-down.

One further difference is found on the back side of each card.  As you can see, in the upper right corner, these factory set singles have their own numbering system, which technically makes them entirely different cards, even if they convincingly ape Flagship.  So, dedicated team and player collectors can count of these blister packs for yet another variation.  On the plus side, the fact that Topps included a specific "team set" notation under the numbering, removing any question about one is holding in their hand, is a nice plus.

Also, since including social media handles on the rear of their cards now seems to be a set thing for Topps, they went ahead and included Twitter and Instagram @'s on the back of the FTS, as well.  Last year, while the account info found it's way onto Flagship, the factories featured a generic hashtag promoting Topps' own social media instead.  In 2018, they appear to be fully committed.

All in all, the new players and the further fleshing out of the team roster make these blister packs a worthy purchase, at least in my opinion.  The prices on these puppies can range anywhere from five to eight bucks, at least from what I've seen (I've found that big boxers usually charge a tick less than your local card shop).  Thus, I can certainly see where other collectors would see these as a simple redundancy and a waste of cardboard, time, and money.

What's your opinion on Topps' factory team sets?  Please feel free to share these thoughts in the comment section below!
 

The First Call-Up of 2018

It's only the second week of the young season and we already have our first Cubs roster move of 2018.  Since the beginning of the season, Anthony Rizzo has been dealing with some stiffness and soreness in his lower back and it's only been exacerbated by the unseasonably cold weather in Cincinnati and Milwaukee.  Perhaps these issues are the reason behind Rizz's unusually slow start to the campaign: .107/.219/.214.  The man hasn't had a slash line that weak since he traded in his Padre Brown for Cubbie Blue!

After a few days of "will he or won't he" play, the Cubs finally decided to place Anthony on the 10-Day disabled list in order to afford him the proper rest.  Hopefully a few more days of uninterrupted rest will assuage his pains; however, back problems are notoriously tough to shake.

In the meantime, in the de facto captain's stead, Ben Zobrist and Victor Caratini will likely spend a majority of the time at first base.  Although, for a little added depth, the Cubs also went ahead and called up another infield bat - Efren Navarro, a bonafide first baseman.

I would be absolutely flabbergasted if Topps actually documented this menial roster shuffling with a Now card; thus, I decided to take up the mantle myself and create the first Efren Navarro Cubs "card," borrowing the design of this year's season-long documentary set.  Thankfully, Getty was able to capture a few images of the newest Cub during spring camp for use in this endeavor.  How does it look?

Speaking of spring, Efren came over to the Cubs this off-season as a non-roster invitee.  The 31-year old was drafted by the Angles in the 50th (!!!) round of the 2007 draft and eventually spent time on the Major League bench in four separate seasons for the Halos.  After a stint backing up Miggy Cabrera in Detroit for 2017, Navarro's career stat line reads.243/.306/.334.  As you can see, he's not making the club for his batting prowess; but, still, not bad for a 50th round draft selection!

Anyway, despite how happy I am with how my custom Topps Now creation turned out, I'll still need an authentic trading card to represent Efren in my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection binder.  Having been far from a blue-chip prospect and never seeing much extended action in the Show, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there are few options for the latest man to don blue pinstripes:

As far as Major cards go, there's exactly one choice:  an unattractive, floating head rookie card from 2012 Heritage, shared with three other freshmen.  Otherwise, Efren has been documented in a handful of minor league team-issued sets.

Both of these options present some issues.  First off, while I prefer Major league cards for my marquee binder, I also prefer non-shared cards for representation.  Furthermore, singles from those team sets available in minor league gift shops across the country are generally overpriced and under-stocked on my usual cardboard sources.  Therefore, it may be a while before I obtain a proper Efren Navarro card for my CATRC.

 via GIPHY

I know... first world problems, right?

Unless Mr. Navarro comes up and does something spectacular enough to earn a authentic Now card, I highly doubt that my options are going to increase.  If he's up in the Majors long enough to earn a spot in the Update checklist, something terrible has gone wrong with Anthony Rizzo and the Cubs' 2018 season.  These are literally the cards that I've been dealt in this quest.

At any rate, this situation has afforded me the excuse and opportunity to create a re-usable template based on the 2018 Topps Now design, something I'm now bound to use again throughout the season.  I know that during my brief blogging absence, many other scribes declared their intentions to create their own season-long, documentary sets.  While I don't intend to be quite that bold, I may now use this template to do a few such cards, here and there.  We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, welcome to Chicago, Efren Navarro.  Go earn yourself a bonafide Topps Now card!

The Mainstream

At this point in my everlasting quest to collect at least one baseball card of every man to suit up for the Chicago Cubs, I've pretty much permanently deviated from the mainstream.  Now, that's not saying that I've become whatever the cardboard equivalent of a pretentious hipster is... at least not on purpose.  By that, I mean that, in order to fulfill my vast and all-encompassing goal, I've had to mostly turn away from the likes of Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Panini, etc.  Now, that's not because these card companies aren't hip... or whatever the beards are saying these days... it's due to the fact that the obscure players of the past that I have left to search for were not covered by their offerings.

As much as we collectors would like a checklist that covers every ballplayer to don a Major League uniform in a given year, can we really blame the gum companies for ignoring journeymen?  Even back in the day, I highly doubt kids were gathered 'round the playground, hoping to pull a card of a guy who appeared in a total of two MLB games during the entirety of his 12-season professional career...  guys like Tony Jacobs:

Until recently, Mr. Jacobs was the second-to-last player left from the "modern era" (aka, 1951 to present), that still resided on my want-list AND was documented by one of the big bubblegum companies. 

In fact, I'm curious as to why Topps chose to include Mr. Jacobs as one of their horizontal heroes in 1955, although I'm certainly not complaining.  Going into that season, the hurler hadn't sniffed the Major Leagues since 1948, a full seven years previous and ancient history to your average cardboard-hoarding kid. 

Maybe it was because, as is notated on the back, Tony was named the International League's Most Valuable pitcher in '54.  Nevertheless, it was never anticipated that he would serve as anything more than bullpen depth and, in the end, he barely did that.  He snuck into one game, against the Cubs, that April and surrendered four earned runs in just two innings out of the pen; that performance put the final period on his MLB biography.

Interestingly, it was appropriate that his farewell appearance should come against the Cubbies, seeing as it was with the Northsiders that the moundsman made his Big League debut back in '48.

After serving in the Marines during World War II, Jacobs was signed by the Wrigley-helmed club going into 1946 and rocketed through three levels of the minors before ascending to the Windy City.  On September 19, 1948, the young prospect made finished out and 8-1 loss to Brooklyn, tossing two innings and allowing one earned run.  Unimpressed, the club sent him back to the bushes, where he stayed until being claimed off of waivers by the rival Red Birds. 

 This appears to be the original head-shot used for his '55 Topps card.

These were to be the only two MLB appearances of his career.  According to Mr. Jacobs himself, it was politics that limited him to so few opportunities in the major leagues, despite excellent minor league stats.

All in all, not a particularly notable or interesting tale - however, there is one more note about Mr. Jacobs that caught my eye.  According to the back of his card, the ballplayer made his home in Blue Island, IL, which just so happens to be the town next door to me.  Additionally, he was born just down the road in the south suburb of Dixmoor.  It's always cool to find out that a local guy made the Majors, especially with my favorite club!

For years, I had no idea that the hometown hero had a baseball card issued in his honor - I foolishly assumed that a player with such an abbreviated career would not have been deemed worthy of a checklist and never even thought to check the traditional sources for his name.  Thankfully, I stumbled across a cheap copy on Ebay after a few months of searching.  You know what they say about when you assume.... you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me." 

With the addition of Tony Jacobs to my Cubs All-Time Roster Collection binder, I've acquired 1,544 Cubs out of the 2,075 men who have suited up in Cubbie Blue, good for a 74.41% completion percentage.  Slowly but surely, I'm creeping up on that three quarter mark, a milepost that I once thought was completely unobtainable.  These are exciting days for the collection, indeed.

Also with Tony's addition, there are only two cards from Topps and the rest of the big boys that would help me towards that mark - Taylor Davis' multi-player rookie from 2018 Heritage and Norm Gigon's multi-player, high-number rookie from 1965 Topps.  One of these two cards is going to be significantly tougher to track down that the other; I bet you can guess which one that is.

Otherwise, it's off the beaten path and out of the mainstream for me.  I guess it's time to grow a ridiculous beard and dedicate my life to following Arcade Fire on tour.