Tuesday, May 30, 2023

This is a 100 Dollar Bill*

*or equivalent

First of all, yeah, I know.

I've been busy for a minute.

Anyway, there is a story behind this Mantle card I'm giving away. I'm documenting it here so I can make sure I communicate complete thoughts, and not just produce tweet-induced fragments and then forget what number I'm on in my own thread.

I've had this 1967 Topps Mickey Mantle #150 since late 2006. I know this because the top loader I bought it in still has the price sticker(s) on it. My LCS at the time had a habit of dating their stickers so that they could track their own price adjustments, as well as show customers how (usually) more affordable an item became over time.


Luckily for me, my girlfriend literally lived across the street from a LCS. I started to frequent this shop because the staff were friendly, prices were good, and it was an easy way to spend 45 minutes while I waited for her to get home after work if we were planning for me to visit. That shop only lasted a couple more years after 2006, by which time they reduced their sports card footprint to a quadrant of busted up asphalt at the off-downtown weekend flea market.

This LCS was unusual, in that it did more than dabble in both sports cards and comic books. They regularly had new wax behind the counter, and new books on the racks every week. This was during a quiet period for #TheHobby, well past the JWE but no new boom on the horizon, and for comic books the MCU was still two years away from even getting started.

I participated in in-person box break events at the shop back then, where everybody who bought in opened their product right next to everybody else at the same time (often termed a "rip party"). It was a good opportunity to swap with other collectors on the spot for players, teams, or mojo hits. Since smart phones didn't yet exist, conducting an unsatisfying and alienating web conference streaming app to crack wax was still years away.

Sometimes these events would be styled as a pack war, where someone who opened the first/most/best cards could win additional door prizes from the shop. This LCS only had one playing-days Mickey Mantle the the whole store.

This one.


I could see that he was a bit wrinkly and fuzzy, but not beat, and still had strong eye appeal. Even then, it was evident that the shop's original list price of $249.99 was basically a low NM price guide estimate. They had put their initial counter-price sticker on it, and as it sat inert for months, they did lower the price to $99.99.

Month after month, rip event after rip event, Mick's big ol' face stared at me from under the glass.

The LCS shop owner knew I was a vintage guy, and at every visit, he let me know that Mick was still there. Finally, after I had received a bonus at work, I decided to throw Mick in with a purchase of a bunch of other stuff. I got my frequent visitor LCS discount of a few bucks, and I remember leaving the shop thinking, "Well, at least Mantles will never go *down* in price."

Little did I know I would be right, but more like hobby-monkey's-paw kind of right.

My fuzzy little Mickey still presents well (that's what she said), but if it were ever to get graded, receiving a solid PSA 2 is the best that could be hoped for. 


There also appears to be a tiny bit of staining on the back, right around the RBI total for 1963.


When I unearthed Mickey from within my own crypt a couple of years ago, multiple thoughts popped into my head, in succession:

1) I found that what I paid for this Mantle card in 2006 is worth about the same, SEVENTEEN years later, easily verified on Bay.

2) On the surface, it appeared like my Mantle at least did not decrease in value.

3) Unless you consider inflation. Technically, the cumulative rate of US inflation between 2006 and 2023 has already eaten my original purchase value down to $66.46 (a decrease of ~33.5%). That'll teach me to HODL a MNTL.


4) Getting it graded and slabbed is a waste of money and effort--even in a PSA slab.

5) There are a LOT more playing days Mickey Mantle cards out there than we realize. It makes sense that among all the cards that got thrown out, especially in the 1960s when his popularity was well-established, his cards would be the most likely to be physically over-loved, yet held onto the longest.

6) The worth of a sports card is always a estimated range, until it is realized by a legitimate transaction price--every time, each time.

As I looked into Mick's mildly bemused image, he seemed to be asking "So, what are you going to do with me now, dingus?"

I could always sell it. 

Get what I get. 

eBay or whomever gets their cut of whatever.

I live very comfortably amidst the Dark Matter of The Hobby, in that space between caring a great deal about the expected monetary value of any particular sports card, and a collector's total lack of caring about ROI and profit and maximizing every possible transactional opportunity.

Even though I think Marie Kondo is monumentally overrated and weird, I realized that, over seventeen years, I've already received nearly my full measure of joy owning this particular Mantle card.


Just over the course of my term of ownership, Mickey would be graduating high school next month.

Indeed, what would spark my last bit of joy out of my wrinkly Mickey?

1) On Twitter, I have NEVER seen anyone give away a vintage Mantle for free, in any condition. I could be the first, as far as I'm aware.

2) I can pass on this particular Mantle's joy to someone else, no questions asked, and refill that karma bucket.

So, off Mickey will go, and I already feel good about the whole thing.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

*sigh*


The pain continues for the San Jose Earthquakes (and me). After a tough 3-2 loss on Wednesday to the Chicago Fire on the road, the Quakes currently are losing 1-0 to the New England Revolution mid-way through the second half in Foxboro.

It's great that the Quakes could claim USMNT regular fixture Clarence Goodson to shore up the oddly error-prone San Jose defense, but the team probably won't see him until maybe just before Labor Day, depending upon his national team and other commitments.

Seeing this list makes me realize how easy MLB players really have it, in certain respects. When major leaguers groan about World Baseball Classic duty, at least it doesn't directly affect your own team's chances in reaching the post-season or not.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

What? Soccer?

Yes, soccer. Or more specifically, MLS, and in particular, the San Jose Earthquakes.

Growing up, I was always in a soccer-first family in terms of physical activity, but of course baseball-first and football-as-a-close-second for spectator sports. Back in them thar days, the only regular soccer on TV was on the local PBS station on weekends, with Soccer Made in Germany (skip to 2:22 for the appropriate bits).



I always did like its colorful, 1970s Sesame Street-style countdown of the number of players on a side.

Admittedly, this also was where I learned that the world-famous team is not pronounced "Bay-yern Munchin'', as well as getting learning to pronounce Karlsruhe (carls-roo-uh) pretty close to correctly.  Knowing these facts ended up helping me in a very dramatic spot once, much later in life, but that story will have to wait for a future post.

However, today, this is the MLS that has teams that commonly exceed so-called "big four" pro sports individual game and annual attendance averages, and frankly, is on more meaningful sports broadcast channels than the NBA or the NHL.

[soapbox alert]
The lockout-crippled NHL can barely be mentioned in the same group anymore. Really, it's more like the "giant two" (NFL and MLB, only because each baseball team has 162 regular games in a year vs 16), and then pretty much it's anyone else hitting each other with whatever yardstick suits them best.

MLS has better attendance! *whack*
NBA Finals are still on a major network! *thwack*
NHL is still #1 in Canada! *whackamackthwakbackbrackadack*
(sound of everyone else hitting the NHL)
 [/soapbox alert]

Anyhow, I saw a few Quakes games here and there in the early 2000s, and then the team was basically hijacked to Houston where they promptly won two MLS Cup championships in a row with our guys. Since the expansion's return to San Jose, I have been a season ticket holder. It's fun, affordable, and soccer is a great spectator sport.

At least until the league has it out for your team.

Here's the lineup vs. today's game vs. the Chicago Fire

Who's missing?  Let's see:
- Chris Wondowlowski (US MNT duty)

2013 SGA Set - Chris Wondolowski #8
- Marvin Chavez (Honduras MNT duty)
- Victor Bernardez (two-yellow 1-game suspension)
- Shea Salinas (after-the-fact disciplinary committee 1-game suspension!)

2013 SGA Set - Shea Salinas #6

Nothing against the guys filling out the Quakes today, but Salinas' suspension is pretty dubious. It's ridiculous for the MLS disciplinary committee (no, they don't deserve capital letters) to cherry-pick as much as they do for suspensions, in particular for plays that did not evoke a yellow card at the time of the incident.

It even undermines the credibility of the league's referees (as if that were even thought possible), and only supports critical comments about the officiating, about which the DC United coach was fined this week as well.

It is my opinion that these mid-week after-action review disciplinary actions are as politically motivated as they are supposedly objectively concerned with rule enforcement. When there's a player like Salinas, a class act by any standard, who receives a suspension in a tussle with a known on-the-field hoodlum rapist like Robby Keane, it raises eyebrows.

Of course, I mean "hoodlum rapist" in the best possible context, as Keane is a world-grade talent, pairing a deft, finesse touch on the ball to go with his elbow-to-your-philtrum manner of play.

This is a philtrum. It does not suit elbows well.
See the altercation that earned the suspension for yourself, and see what you think:



It seems that the Earthquakes are often fighting the league office as often as their own on-the-field mistakes, dating back to the end of last season. The Quakes took the lead versus the eventual champion Galaxy in the first game of the initial home-and-home round of playoffs. The second game in San Jose was a disaster, and one I'm sure the head office wanted to avoid at all costs.

To paraphrase Wikipedia, for the first time in league history, the championship was not held at a previously selected neutral site (like an NFL Super Bowl). Instead, the match was held in the home stadium of the finalist with the best regular season record,  naturally, MLS League Office Comfy Chair (aka Home Depot Center) in Los Angeles. If the Quakes made it that far, the increasingly-prestigious MLS Cup championship game would have been held at 10,000 capacity Glorified Sardine Can Buck Shaw Stadium at Santa Clara University. That would not show well on TV.

The Current "Before" Picture

Although the Quakes' own mistakes, and Galaxy's superior play that night automatically nullifies even the die-hardiest(?) conspiracy theories, it was not hard to imagine a bunch of old white dudes clinking champagne glasses and laughing in nondescript accents over the result.  I guess when the Quakes get their new stadium running next year, we shall see if the league politics will remain the same.

Artist's Conception of the Soon-to-be "After" Picture

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Black and Orange Cat-Foot

A panda bear's scientific name is Ailuropoda melanoleuca.

It means "black and white cat-foot", and yes, I just copied and pasted that from Wikipedia. So, if I attempt to translate Pablo Sandoval with Giants colors into Latin, my best guess is that it might be (as the title of this post suggests) Ailuropoda melanofulvus.

Unless of course, we prefer Gastropoda melanofulvus (black and orange stomach-foot).

Addendum to tactic #4 from yesterday: Bochy, give your talented hackers carte blanche to swing away the entire game.

2009 eTopps, just before Sandoval received his ursine identity
I was very happy to see that it looked like that nearly all of the Giants were working along the lines of the tactics I thought about yesterday. Watching Angel Pagan force Verlander into more than one at-bat over seven pitches was a sublime and subtle thing of beauty.

However, I was even more pleased to see Pablo Sandoval do what he does best. Forget tactics, strategy, or even conscious thought. I am perpetually entertained and fascinated with players like Sandoval and Vladimir Guerrero (He Who Hits Without Gloves), whose idea of plate discipline is knowing when to wash the dirty ones in the kitchen.

Guys like Sandoval have supremely gifted hand-eye coordination and world-class bat speed. These guys in their prime are among the most fun to watch. They must be so hard to pitch to; you can't out-think someone who's not playing mind games back at you.  They'll swing at nearly everything close to the plate (high and down the middle, low and inside, low and away, for starters), and all too often, they'll get a piece of it, if they still don't get all of it anyway.

The sad part is that these supreme hackers, as they age, start to quickly lose that near supernatural ability on which they've become dependent. Watching Vlad's brown-out of power preclude his now presumably quiet exit from major league ball, is a little sad. It's like watching your favorite old cat just not be able to catch prey like it once did.

However, Kung-Fu Panda's ability to tag anything in the zone is exactly the recipe required last night. A bamboozled and incredulous Verlander was worth every second of footage on the Phantom Cam.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

How to Beat Justin Verlander at Tetherball

One of my favorite Justin Verlander rookie cards is from 2006 eTopps. The photography in the 2006 baseball set from eTopps has a wide variation in quality. They range from nifty in-game action shots, to the outright laughable, such as this gem:

"This guy's angled tether ball attack is unbeatable."
At the time, the eTopps message boards called this the "tetherpole rookie". It looks like Topps hired one of those pony-pictures-with-kids guys to catch Justin at the Extended Stay America® after spring training practice. Luckily, they seem to have just missed the torrential rain that always seems to hit Florida daily around 3:30 in the afternoon.  Apparently, Curtis Granderson caught a ride back with Justin that day, too.

Some of the other photography winners in 2006 eTopps include "Field of Dreams" Jorge Cantu, Matt "High School Dance" Garza, and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" Jon Lester.

So, after striking out eleven Athletics twice over five games last week, the Tetherball King is set to take on the Giants tonight.  Do the Giants have hope?  The answer is yes.

Even though much of the roster is different than the 2010 Team Of Destiny Giants, that team of two years ago faced a season-perfect-game-then-postseason-no-hitter Roy Halladay and the Phillies in the NLCS, no less daunting than the situation today. That team wasn't afraid of Halladay (particularly Cody Ross), and there's no reason why the 2012 Giants need to be afraid of Verlander.

So what do the Giants do tonight?

1) Be patient early. What pitchers hate, above all else in the universe, is having to throw more pitches than they want to. The Giants will need to take pitches, even if that means that they may give up an initial strike. If they can get Verlander to 90 or more pitches through the fifth inning, that may help open up the chance for Verlander to make a mistake.  That's an average of only six pitches per out (not even per at-bat!) up to that point. If the Giants can make Verlander work for his outs early, then they have a better chance to see somebody else pitch to them later.

2) Be selectively aggressive later. The #1 commandment tonight I'd suggest is, "Never take a called third strike." An obvious truism is that a team, as a practical matter, will (almost) never score by leaving bats on shoulders. Up against a third strike? Anything even close, they should swing at it. They just might get a base hit. A foul ball at least helps extend tactic #1.

3) Lay off the (high) hard stuff. High strike zone fastballs from Verlander will (very possibly in a literal sense) kill you. They seem juicy, and then leave you thirsty. Wait for low zone stuff and hit it down. Station-to-station base hits can be enough. Building off of tactic #2, a hopefully somewhat tired Verlander will become lulled by getting so many first pitch strikes. After the fifth, unleash the best Giant first ball hitters, and be selectively aggressive at anything low that's at the right pace.

4) Determine patterns early. Pitchers rarely throw their repertoire in equal parts. It often works out to throw mostly whatever's working best that particular night. Good movement on the fastball? He'll throw that 80% of the time. Curveball really biting? He might throw that 70% of the time. Figure out from the first two innings which pitch is the foundation for the night, and ignore those. Wait for the change-of-pace pitch (change up, maybe?), and kill it when it arrives at the right spot.

I certainly don't have all the answers, but I did watch Game 5 of the ALDS against the A's at O.co Coliseum. The Athletics certainly stepped up to be aggressive at the plate, but often looked like they were Britney Spears trying to hit a fly with a golf club. A little more patience and tactical thinking may have made more of an offensive difference.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

My Blog is Laughing at Me

This blog has been looking at the back of my head for a year, daring me to put another post together before another year elapsed. As you can see from the date, I didn't make it.

That is why my blog is laughing at me. I guess it doesn't matter much, since nobody reads it anyway.

In any case, since I'm here, I might as well make my time worthwhile. I noticed that today is, according to some people, "Star Wars Day".  As in, "May the Fourth be with you."

While I was gathering breakfast yesterday morning, not long after I read that little calendar fact, this caught my eye on the fridge:

Although cute, I don't mean Squirt from "Finding Nemo".

This Star Wars magnet has been on my fridge for roughly four years. I remember buying some 2007 Topps Star Wars 30th Anniversary packs from Target back then, and I got this little flexible magnet chase card in one of the packs.  It feels a lot like the freebie magnets I got from cereal as a kid, and the kind  you can get now from dentist offices, restaurants, and sports teams.

Turns out, in 2011, boxes of the 30th Anniversary set are not terribly easy to come by. As of this writing, there aren't any on eBay, and a deeper web search will net you results ranging from $125 to $170 per box (Amazon and Blowout seem to have them the cheapest), though you also can find 8-pack retail blasters for about twenty bucks.  eBay also currently doesn't have any of the magnets from this set listed as singles either. It seems that they are a little tougher to find than I would have expected.

It got me to wondering, we've seen a lot of attempts at innovation with sports cards lately, including bulky video cards, giveaway websites, and augmented reality cards. With all that effort, where are the easy-peasy to make magnets that I would love to put on my fridge of some Giants or Oakland Athletics? Just even make them look like the base card, and I think collectors will be falling over each other to get them.

Here's to the future. May the Fourth be with you. Even if it's practically the Fifth.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Mos Eisley es Mas Fina

As the day winds down, I was trying to come up with a novel way to mark Cinco de Mayo this year.

How about a little 1977 Topps Mexican Star Wars action?


How about another margarita in the cantina, Luke?  Yeah, he doesn't like you, either.

Too bad about the droids.


They don't serve their kind there.

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