Response to Comments...then Good News, Bad News

A quick note before I have to get ready for work.

REJ, the guy who writes both the 20th Century Topps Baseball and 21st Century Topps Baseball, suggested that Allie, the lady in South Carolina who is looking for the perfect gift for her sports card collecting husband, find (if she can) the book that has pictures of all the Topps cards from their first 35 or 40 years called Topps Baseball Cards: The Complete Picture Collection, a 40 Year History, 1951-1990 by Frank Slocum, Red Foley, and Sy Berger. Which would be a great idea.



Not too many copies of this out there, but if you can find one, it would make a heck of a birthday present. It's a shame that Topps didn't make one for their 50th anniversary in 2001 or even a 60th in 2011. Yes, it would have made the book extremely heavy...maybe if they did it by decade (I know they made books that showed every card in the 50's and 60's and probably the 70's too).

Personally, I like this book as well:

Classic Baseball Cards: The Golden Years 1886-1956 by Frank Slocum. I have both books, and needless to say, yes they're huge, but great references for cards from the past.

Now, on to the second segment on today's post. Good news. I have my 2013 Allen & Ginter's set. I even have the five regular-sized insert sets whose subjects range from planets, to castles.forts, to ancient civilizations and even warriors. One problem was that the 10 card Martial Mastery set only had nine cards in the package. Normally, I'd be on the horn to the seller to ask if he had a spare card (I was "missing" the Spartans card). However, I did buy a couple of packs of this year's set before taking the plunge for the master set, and sure enough, one of the inserts was the Spartans card. So positive feedback was left, I am done with new cards (until 2013 Topps Update Series), and all is right in my world.

Well, almost.

The bad news is that my computer crashed. It isn't the first time this has happened. And in the past, I've had no problems getting everything back. But this time, everything in my C: drive was erased. All my back up drives are fine (my E: storage drive is now D:, my F: drive which has all of my baseball simulation stuff is now in the E: drive, and my G: drive is now the F: drive.). Sadly, there was no B: drive created, which means all of my devices, and many of my really important spreadsheets (like my checklists, my bank, and other things) are gone. Now, I do have some of these spreadsheets in my flash drive, but obviously, for things like my bank spreadsheet, it's far from up-to-date.

This also means that devices like my scanner, my printers, would have to be re-installed. No problem. But I also have to find a way to get the internet back up and running. That's going to take a while. So until then, unless I hook up my scanner to the laptop (or the second computer upstairs), I will be stealing images from my favorite card website, the Baseball Card Cyber Museum when talking about cards. This also puts a bit of a monkey wrench into the Random Cards of the Day.

Have to go. Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama

Coming This Week...A Review of The Enthusiast by Charlie Haas

Last week, I received an e-mail from a gentleman named Charlie Haas. Not the wrestler from WWE, he is a screenwriter (credits include Gremlins 2 among other projects I didn't immediately recognize) turned author, who just had his first book published called The Enthusiast. He wanted to know if I would be interested in reading his book, reviewing it on the blog, and possibly recommending it to others in the Hobby. I agreed, and last Friday, I received the book in the mail. By Sunday, I finished it (speed reader I'm not, but the book was too good to put down).

It is the story of Henry Bay, who for most of his adult life, was the associate editor for many magazines that catered to the interests of different people (from teas to throws, from mountain climbing to kite buggys, from spelunking to...you get the idea). While working on magazines catered to it's own enthusiasts all over the country, the story is about his journey finding what his enthusiasm is.

I can tell you immediately that it's a good book, and while it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sports cards, there is plenty that we as Hobbyists can relate with in the story. Before I give my final review (which I will have by Friday), I'm going to go over the book one more time, just to make sure I get my facts straight when I do my second book report on the blog.

Also, I will be doing a post on the seventeen players who were exclusive only to the Topps Gold Sets from 1992-1994. These players did not appear in the base set, but because Topps did not do gold cards of their checklist cards, they were replaced with prospects. Who were they? Did any of them make an impact in the big leagues? You'll just have to wait and see.

Finally, I'm hoping to get more packs (if not the full set, or at least a couple of boxes) of 2009 Topps Series 2. I do know that there are cards coming in the mail. If and when they do, they'll be posted here and the senders thanked profusely.

Stay tuned. It's going to be a fun week.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama

A Book Report on The Card

I posted here last month that I found a book at the library that I had been wanting to read if I ever had the chance to find it. I finished reading the entire book a couple of weeks ago, and just went over a few chapters just to refresh my memory and so that I knew what I wanted to write about.

Let me say first that when it comes to the heavy Hobby matters, I can come across as quite naïve compared to those who've been in it for years. There are a lot of things that I enjoy reading and looking at, and I do keep things in a positive perspective. That said, ever since I saw my first Mastro Auction catalog, I wanted to learn more. The clear pictures of every card, from graded Topps cards, to older cards that I had never even heard of before, were beautiful. The descriptions for each lot were very well written. It was more like reading a history textbook than an auction catalog. I learned many things about the cards and other items that were put on auction that I have them on my bookshelf as a reference when looking up older cards.

Then I read this book: The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card by Michael O'Keefe and Teri Thompson. It is the story about our Hobby's number one card. It's the card that everyone has heard about, read about, seen pictures of, and to outsiders of the hobby, is the absolute representation of what sports card collecting is all about. A 1911 T206 Honus Wagner. It's the story about the prestige, the story, the rarity, and the history of this one card. Significantly, and specifically, the best conditioned example of the Wagner card. The one that Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall bought for a then incredible $451,000.00.

Because this book was sold and marketed to those who don't know much about the hobby, there are chapters that discuss in length topics outside of the card. The book talks about the man himself, Honus Wagner, from his playing days with the Pirates, to his later years as a resident in Carnegie, PA. There is a quick history lesson about the baseball cards, from the tobacco days in the late 19th century, to the gum cards in the 30's and everything in between. And then the modern era, from the Bowman vs. Topps war, to the present day, where many companies vie for the Hobby dollar. The story goes into great detail about some of the important collectors and dealers in the Hobby, from Jefferson Burdick to Frank Nagy to Mike Aronstein.

There is a chapter on PSA, the grading company that gave the Wagner card its Nr-Mt 8 rating. I didn't know that the Wagner card was the first card PSA graded as a company. Anyway, that chapter talks about how PSA got its start, the struggles for acceptance, their eventual success, their competition, and even questions surrounding the company and their practices.

There is even a quick chapter on the MLBPA, and union head Marvin Miller, and how he, "inadvertantly initiated the beginning of the end" of the innocent days of the hobby when he convinced the players that they had the right to get more for their images on a Topps baseball card.

It is after these chapters that the book finally gets into the heart of the story. From the card's mysterious beginnings and how Bill Mastro acquired it, to the Sotheby's auction where a bidding war ended with Gretzky and McNall winning the card, the tone of the story takes a dark turn, where many questions about the authenticity of the card are left unanswered. Was it trimmed? Is it real? Was it altered? There is a lot of mystery surrounding this one card.

The story continues after the card is sold by Gretzky to Treat Enterprises, who along with Wal-Mart, used it to "save the hobby." And to an extent, they succeeded as 30 million packs of cards were sold during the course of the sweepstakes.

There are profiles of every person who has sinced owned "The Card", From Patricia Gibbs, who won the Wal-Mart sweepstakes and subsequently sold again at a Christie's auction because of the taxes, to Michael Gidwitz, a former friend of Mastro. Then to Brian Seigel, who wanted to put the card on display at ballparks and conventions everywhere. He then sold it to an anonymous (meaning, even Seigel won't say) collector in a private transaction for a price between 2.2 and 2.4 million dollars.

All the while, the questions about the authenticity of the Wagner card continued to surface. Is the card trimmed? How was the card graded if it was trimmed? Did the people doing the grading know it was trimmed before grading it? So many questions. So many answers going both ways. It's enough to make even a collector's head spin.

The only reasons why I am not going into too many details about the book, are because:

1. I am not going to say one way or another what I think about the controversy. Obviously, I've never seen the card, so I can not pass judgment. And there is so much evidence in the book for both sides of the arguement that what I feel about it is not only irrelevant to my book report but can be argued to death by those who know more than I do. My position about what I think of the card is clear, and my opinions about the people involved in one way or another I will keep to myself.
2. I want people to go out and get the book. Read it for yourself, and decide for yourself what you think about the card. I know I have.

It is a great read. Cardboard Junkie's dayf commented after I announced that I was reading the book that "If you aren't cynical now, you sure will be..." He was right, to a point. I am not totally cynical, but let's just say that I'll be reading my Mastro catalogs a lot differently now after reading this book.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama

I'm Doing Some Serious Reading...

I just found the book "The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card" by Michael O'Keefe and Teri Thompson at the local library yesterday. I've read many strong opinions about this book so I thought, "why not read it when you have the chance."

I'm only three chapters into the book, and already I'm getting that same stomach turning feeling I did when I read Pete Williams' "Card Sharks: How Upper Deck Turned a Child's Hobby into a High-Stakes, Billion-Dollar Business. Most of the positive feelings I had about the Hobby before reading the Card Sharks book went out the window after reading it. Both books devote a lot of time to the history of the hobby, before hitting hard on the main story, which I like.

A book report, something I have not done since high school, will be written as soon as I'm done reading it (give me at least a month to digest it all).

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama