TTMCast Preview
Les Wolff joins us to talk about the upcoming National Sports Collectors Convention. Drew and Arron talk All-Star Village in Atlanta, upcoming show and signings, and wade through their recent TTM scores.
You can listen to this month’s show here.
Recent TTM Successes
Carlton Fisk
Last year, Hall of Famer Steve Carlton was my biggest mailout from a busy week of overtime pay, this year it’s Carlton Fisk. At $50 per sig through the mail, he’s not a cheap ‘graph, but it goes to an excellent cause, supporting the Cancer Support Center which helped him and his family a lot when he battled prostate cancer in 2005.
These came back to me in three weeks via his Florida home.
Mark Stuart
Four days younger than me, Stuart was a defenseman for the Bruins, Thrashers, and Jets. He also captained Team USA at several levels, including leading the country to gold medals at the U18 and U20 World Juniors, and also wearing the C at the 2011 World Championships. He’s now a coach for the back-to-back Western Conference Champion Edmonton Oilers.
He signed these for me in about two months with my request sent via the Oilers.
IP Report
To completely steal from the great Steve Buffum, “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug, and sometimes you’re the bug on the windshield that is flattened by a steamroller during a hailstorm in a pool of molten lava while William Hung sings in the background. Sometimes you’re just the bug with a more aesthetic soundtrack.” You be the judge on where this falls…
The Arkansas Travelers came to Frisco for only a three-game series– leaving me to choose between Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for a game. I picked Wednesday in order to meet up with a member of the Ballpark Graphers group on Facebook as he and his dad came to see their Orioles play the Rangers, then to swing up and visit Frisco for a game.
The graphing was far from stellar, and on-and-off rains– while much needed in this area and which helped keep the air cooler– made an already tough day tougher. Players ignored us at the batting cages, while the three position players I asked pregame said they’d get us afterward. Just as I went to go for some pitchers, the rains hit one of those “on” stages, ending just as the first pitch was thrown.
Pregame, I got my one card of Charlie Beilenson signed and that was it. Fortunately the rain missed it.
Postgame, Arkansas lost so they really were in no mood to sign. Lazaro Montes (MLB #29, SEA #2) skipped most of us, signing for one or two people in Mariners hats. I missed Michael Morales and Adam Seminaris, while Axel Sanchez avoided the crowd even though it was small. Fortunately Dylan File signed the card I had of him, and recent call-up from High-A Michael Arroyo (MLB #65, SEA #6) signed two of my three cards.
My attempts on Frisco weren’t much better as I’m running out of cards on them, for better or for worse. Sebastian Walcott booked it past us to the parking lot, and the only other player I had any cards left on was Ian Moller– who, fortunately signed the last two I had of him.
Brutal.
At least I got to meet up with Kevin and his dad. Corpus Christi and San Antonio are the next two teams coming in. I may skip Corpus since I already saw them once, but we’ll see. I am planning on seeing the Missions though.
Fun With Phantoms
Last weekend my boss gave me 20,000 cards. Like many of us, he bought a lot of cards in the 80s and 90s hoping to eventually sell them to pay for his kids college. And, like many of us including myself, he ended up sitting on a pile of junk era commons. As a TTMer though, this is just more hobby fuel for me.
While sorting through them to put into the rest of my alphabetized super monster boxes, I came across a card I had never seen before. I’ve TTMed former punter Rich Camarillo a couple times so I’d like to think I’m pretty familiar with his cards. But when I found his 1991 Pro Set Spanish card, I paused. Most of the cards in the Spanish set were near-direct parallels to the base English counterparts, just with different numbering and language. But the Camarillo card is not in the main set.
Behold: the phantom card!
Any collectors of 1970s through 90s O-Pee-Chee and Topps hockey are probably familiar with the fact that the Canadian set often had more cards in it, resulting in around 200 cards that were shared by the sets but another 60-70 that only went to our friends north of the border.
A similar thing happened in baseball on a smaller scale. Due to O-Pee-Chee’s later release dates, they often had corrections added (1987’s Dennis Lamp card has a “Now With Indians” notation that Topps lacks; irony being that the Tribe cut Lamp loose at the end of spring training, never playing an official game for them) and even complete photo changes (compare Rick Cerone’s 1977 Topps card to his 1977 O-Pee-Chee card). Sometimes the corrections were, well, incorrect: Roger McDowell’s 1989 card says he was traded to the Indians in December 1988, mistaking him for the similarly surnamed but completely different Oddibe McDowell.
In the 1988 set, the phantom cards included Expos draft picks Nate Minchey and Delino Deshields, and Blue Jays draft picks Alex Sanchez and Derek Bell.
1992 was a big year for phantom cards. O-Pee-Chee put in a five-card Gary Carter tribute, and removed Topps’ All-Star cards in favor of 17 players who didn’t get a regular Topps card. While one might expect these to be mostly Expos and Blue Jays to appeal to Canadian collectors, it was a smattering of players from multiple teams.
Meanwhile, Topps introduced their Gold parallel, for better or for worse. Smartly, the company did at least realize that no collector wanted their one-per-box gold card to be a checklist, so they were replaced by players who only had a Gold card and no base. This tradition continued through 1994 when Gold came to an end. 1995’s Series One CyberStats parallel replaced the checklists with Luis Alicea and Darryl Strawberry, who had cards in Series Two.
Why do I bring these up in a TTM column? Simple: it can be nice to break out cards players don’t see often when TTMing. I’m sure John Ramos sees plenty of his 1992 Score, Fleer, and Donruss cards. But that Topps Gold card is an affordable rarity that probably doesn’t find its way into his mailbox quite as often.
And it’s not just baseball either: 1993 Topps Gold football features one of only two cards that Bucs’ defensive back Milton Mack ever got in his career, the 1992-93 hockey set has the only nationally-released card of Rob Robinson, and David Wingate has phantom Gold cards in both the 1992-93 and 1993-94 basketball sets.
So dig deep: seek out those oddballs and rarities that you might not have even known existed. You’ll enjoy seeing them and I bet the players will too.
If you have any graphing questions, you can reach Drew via email at DFWGrapher@gmail.com
