Sunday Edition

Ramsey, New Jersey

These four cards were sent by frequent and regular contributor Max, of Ramsey, New Jersey.  I'm pretty sure it's the first time anyone as ever included 1953 set needs with the Wallach cards they send.  I won't complain if it's not the last time.   The Wallach's weren't run of the mill either.  They were both of the "Rediscover Topps," variety.  My lack of enthusiasm for this sort of gimmick is pretty well documented, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend I didn't notice either.  I also recognize some people are very into it, I assume the same people who get excited about autographs and refractors, and individually serial numbered cards, you know, extremely young children.  And I'm all for any goofy gimmick that gets kids back into the hobby.  I feel gum worked well for many decades, but what do I know?

Here's a close up of the stamps on the Wallach cards.  The '84 has a bronze stamp, and the 1993 has a red stamp.  I know that means something, but I really don't care enough to look it up.  Somehow adding some bronze foil to that card Topps made in 1984 makes it a 2017 card.  Arguing with this absurdity is like talking politics on Twitter, so I'm just going shake my head, tally it in my collection on move on.

Thanks for the cards Max.

Updated Totals:

2017 "Rediscover Topps" 1984: 2

2017 "Rediscover Topps" 1993: 2

Speaking of moving on, I had two individual non-Wallach cards show up this week.  Apparently I've been under a rock the last year or so and had no idea there was an "explosion of interest" in baseball cards.  I was casually strolling eBay for some vintage and about fell out of my chair at the prices.  How did an 1986 Fleer Larry Bird go from the $5-10 range to $50-65 range seemingly overnight?  I'm not sure what's going on, but I'll be putting a lot of stuff on eBay to sell, and will wait for this little cycle of high prices to pass (as it always does) before I dive back into picking up my low end vintage.

This 1971 Topps Joe Greene rookie card is pretty solid example of the sort of "low end" vintage I love to collect.  In the case of Joe Greene, I sort of feel like any one of his cards that doesn't look like this is sort of illegitimate.  My collection of vintage football currently resembles what my vintage baseball collection did 25 years ago, before I started building sets.  Just a random assortment of rookie cards.  I'm okay with that, and happy to add Mr. Coca-Cola to my assortment.

This 2015 Kris Bryant is decidedly not vintage.  But it does allow me to mark off the 2015 set as complete.  I held off buying it for a long time because (as I mentioned recently on this blog) I know I had multiple copies of it in 2015.  I'm pretty sure I gave a couple away to friend's kids who liked the Cubs, and I may have stashed a couple "someplace safe" in case it ever cost $5-10 bucks some day.  Well that sort of forward thinking ended up costing me $8 to have this one shipped.  I have no idea what "safe" place my others are in.  But this one is in the binder and the set is complete.