The beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega.

 You probably aren't expecting a post about Charlie Morton. that is what it is though. Initially I was upset the Braves let him get away. Not so much anymore I kind of got over it. Was still stinging on the Max Fried getting away especially to the Damn Yankees, lol. Mix in the rumor mill regarding Chris Sale. UGH!

The Braves drafted Charlie in the amateur draft right out of high school in 2002. You can tell with 2002 Upper Deck Prospect Premieres card. Just a kid.

He bounced through the farm until 2008 when he made his debut on June 14, 2008. Charlie is looking a little (not much) older on his 2008 Bowman Draft Prospects card. The Braves traded him off to Pittsburg for Nate McClouth. That didn't work out as planned. Charlie remained a Pirate from 2009-2015 (only 1 winning season 2013). 2016 found Charlie in Philly. Then off to Houston where he would have his second winning season (and a World Series ring). After the 2018 season he'd be heading HOME to Tampa where he would stay put for 2019 & 2020 as he was contemplating retirement. The Braves came and scooped him up where he would gain another World Series ring. Do y'all remember him that post season.... trying to remain in the game after breaking his leg. That is a trooper, and that kind of determination is why I kind of felt bummed to see him go.

Here we have Charlie on his 2024 Braves Topps card. The last (or should be) but you know how Topps is I wouldn't be surprised if some 2025 cards has him in a Braves uniform instead of the Orioles. Who knows right now. 

I put together some interesting tidbits regarding Charlie. As of right now he is the highest ranking active pitched with hit batsmen. He ranks (tied) for the #7 spot all time. The swooping curve ball especially to lefties is a doozie. He has 186  HBP on record right now, the next closes "active" player is sitting at #55 on the list. In fact Charlie has hit the #1 spot for a season 4x, 2nd 3x, and 3rd 3x too. he also is up there up the charts for most allowed triples (by season) he had the #1 spot for that a lot.

His best years have been the last 8 years. Current record 138-123. You could always count on him for strikeouts. He currently has 2,047 K's under his belt with 1,991 hits in 2,125.2 innings.

I wish Charlie luck (unless he's pitching against the Braves). There you have it, the beginning and then end of Charlie Morton and the Braves.

Have a great night.

Wacky Wednesday

 Now that the initial phase of re-starting this theme has come and gone it is time to normalize it. Okay maybe normalize and Wacky shouldn't be combined.

Back in the day I would have cropped the cards individually, but my current "editor" doesn't allow for that and I ain't above to scan individual cards for this theme when there are literally thousands. IE: the Gwynn would've been better rotated.

Have a great night folks!

Just a quick one tonight. INCOMING from Kevin and Mark

 A week or so back, I got two gifts from fellow bloggers.

The first came from Kevin (TDK).

Kevin held a give away (the one with all of the Skenes rookies), and a puppy. Well there are two puppies on the Judge which I claimed so that my grandson who loves Paw Patrol can have one to match his grandpa. The Whammy I had commented on another of his posts and wowzers here it is along with a MLB refractor of Matt Olson. I really like the Whammy cards, and the older Marvel cards with super stars on them. These were a treat. 

The second package arrived from Mark (San Jose Fuji) with a few Braves inside and a note that I probably have them already (I did), but Mark included an Ebay gift card which completely blindsided me (he does that every now and again). Well, I used the card and 4 of the 5 sets of Star Wars cards that I did not already have came in yesterday, and the last one came today.

FIVE sets....complete sets three 1-100, one 1-90, and 1-80. I try to be shrewd even on Ebay and I was. Happy to boost my TCDB non-sport count by nearly 500 cards in a snap. I now need to re-arrange one of my bookshelves. Gonna have to move the 12 years of Pokemon to a shelf of it's own. They have been sharing a shelf with the Stars Wars for 2 years now and they certainly need their own shelf and it will be full and needing another shelf too. 

That reminds me that I need to be working on a Star Wars section in my house so that I can group all of my stuff together, cards, toys, figures, games, puzzles, and whatever else that fits. I am considering a corner in my living room that is being occupied by an end table with tow statue busts of Napoleon and Socrates and a lamp of course. I'd have to find a new home for a painting hanging there too. I guess I need to go shopping to look at possible ways to display the collection. If my garage wasn't filled with "extra" cards I could easily set something up out there. Now I'm thinking to much. Have a good night everyone!

Big thanks to Kevin and Mark!

It's another Manic Monday: Clearwater card show

 Alrighty then. Now that I have cleared the scans from the Tampa show we can move right to the one and only post from the Clearwater show. I didn't know what to expect in reality as I had learned that the promoter from the St. Pete show took over the Clearwater show. I guess I was thinking there wouldn't be much of a change. I liked the Clearwater show. To get right at the bottom line.... I probably won't be heading to that area anytime in the near future. 90% of HIGH END Pokemon cards and the little remaining was only half baseball and most of those were the glass encased cards or slabbed cards. Not my thing. Not at all. No Justin, nor Jesse, nor Bob & Val. It didn't take me too long to realize that I had wasted the gas driving 2 hours to get there. I did do a complete walk through twice to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I stopped by one seller that was usually there and hit up his dollar and up boxes and his 3 baseball fifty cent boxes grabbed some stuff and asked what he wanted, his said one thing and I offered a few bucks lower and he took it the deal. Here is what I brought back.

The complete Don set. (they were in a team bag) in the dollar plus box. I got lucky at picking the TCPA trio too as I need all of them for my set build.

The puzzle back.

I got super lucky picking Braves I thought I might need, because I did. The Waldrep relics I knew I didn't have the rest were pure guesses.

That Japanese card I picked up for Mark and I am actually mailed his "stack" off today along with a slew of others. Several boxes now en-route, and a ton of PWE's.

The Ted Williams playing football card is a real gem. I wasn't aware of that insert in his sets. 

I scooped up a few orange cards  and a few Liberty cards too.

A pair of b/w parallels, a pair of New Yorkers', and a pair of Monte Irvine birthday cards to close out. I left spending either $23 or $27.00 can't remember exactly at this point. There were also a handful of other PC guys that I didn't scan. I knew that I was going to have to hit up Ormond after not bringing a bunch of stuff home. I also knew that The Villages show (was this past Saturday) was a shot at adding some cards to the kitty, but I didn't buy a single card there either. I bought two magazines an August 1970 Sport magazine with Hank Aaron on the cover. That was $5.00, and the other was a 1958 edition of the Dell baseball records for $3.00. That was it. Sudden Sam McDowell was there hawking his goods. (He tends to do a lot of card shows here in Florida). Hung out for a bit with an old friend (Mike) that visits this show and made arrangements for my brother and I to visit him (he lives in The Villages) have lunch at Beef's and let him demolish my brother with Sports trivia in a week or two. Mike needs some one pocket pages so I am taking him the nearly full box I have. I did get a lot of stuff when I went over to Ormond this past Wednesday, but not enough to knock out a month's worth of posts like usual. So I think that I will have to hit up the card shop in Leesburg and the one in Gainesville in this week and next.

There you have it. See you on the backside!

Helping the kids.... What was in the binders?

 As I mentioned previously a couple of kids that were at the Tampa card show where their dad was set up as a seller was trying to pawn off a couple of binders. They were wanting $50.00 each. No sellers were taking. When they got to Justin, he looked at them and said he wasn't interest either. Justin asked me to "value them". I went through them both quickly and told Justin they worth about $25.00 retail, so a seller would be stretching it paying $20.00. He said that was he thought too. I told the kids I'd give them the $20.00 each, and they took me up on it. I will say this... i could have easily found the cards in dime boxes or at most quarter boxes. But hey it helped the kids out. I scanned the highlights only as the rest not worth the time to scan.

Okay, so some of these might be sitting in dollar boxes, but a quarter maybe a little more is where I hit the buy button.

I took the cards out of the pages and threw the pages away. The binders were those zipper type, nice but not my cup of tea.

These were the only Braves that I needed. Like I said not something I normally would buy because I could have bought online all of those scanned for about $10.00 give or take. I spent less than 2 hours at the show (which apparently was all that was needed to get me sick). I skipped the St. Pete show the following week, as I just don't like the set up of the show itself. I did go to the Clearwater show last weekend which the show promoter changed from the previous month and is now run by the same guy as the St. Pete show. I'll have more on that show in a later post. I am hitting The Villages card show (I consider local) tomorrow in the cold. They only do 4 a year and it's tomorrow, I gotta go.

Have a great weekend!

TAMPA SHOW (DECEMBER):

 The third purchase I made at the show was with Justin. He didn't have any "cheap" boxes out, just 4 monster (3 row) boxes of dollar cards. One for baseball, one for basketball, and two for football. I needless to say only went through the baseball. I grabbed up 2 or 3 hundred, and paid him roughly a quarter a piece.

Highlighting some of them here tonight.

Other than the two SP's (last two cards above) these should have been in his quarter boxes to begin with). And you bet I told him that, lol.

Same goes for these as well.

The 3 to finish the above scan were in the right box (but I still only paid a quarter).

The red back Ichiro was a nice grab.

Now for some needed Braves cards.

This will wrap what I scanned from Justin. The last purchase came while I was at his table. I mentioned last week about those kids trying to unload a couple of binders. I will close out the week with the highlights from those binders.

Florida snow short lived

 Short lived indeed. Check out the Welcome to Florida sign yesterday. Go to the 2nd set of pictures and scroll right to the 2nd picture there too.

Welcome to Florida

It is Wacky Wednesday some areas got 9+ inches yesterday, so far nothing here (writing this in the early morning). The records show this is the worst in Florida. Although I remember very well driving from Valdosta to Florida in 2019 and it seemed to be just as bad and it snowed all the way to Gainesville (city just north of Ocala). Home of the Gators. Temps are still right for snow here, and plenty of moisture in the air too. It rained all night and with the Low cloud cover probably kept the white stuff from hitting the ground. I said short lived, as before the weekend is over we should see the 70's again. 

Now for this weeks Wacky Wednesday cards.

I do still have a section of my Wacky binders dedicated to broken bats, and I'm sure all of these cards are already in the binder, but they were in that stack that I moved from the entertainment center to a bookcase. Still haven't put them or checked the binder though. I'm lazy. Nah, just have so many more projects ahead of that. Love the surf boards and t-shirt shots too.  

Back home from Ormond 6:30 pm, still no snow here....maybe in a day or two but not looking like I'll get any.

Have a great night folks!

I be dawg gone

 Well before I kick off this main portion of this post I wanted to make a comment regarding this current "artic blast". Most of you know that I live in central Florida, north central to be more specific. We are actually expecting at least an inch of snow tomorrow. Okay that tidbit of amusement is over. I am planning on driving over to Ormond (hadn't been in a while and the card show this past Saturday was a total SUCK). Keep in mind this is the one show in that area that I liked. But last month the show promoter from the St Pete show took over the Clearwater show. Not good for me. 90% HIGH End Pokemon. Yeah Pokemon, and the 10% that wasn't was predominantly slabbed stuff, again nope. I did manage to dig through a few boxes so that I didn't come home empty handed. I spent $20.00. I'll get to those eventually. Tonight, I am picking back up where I left off on Friday..... The Tampa show that got me sick. The 2nd deal/purchase or purchases.

I like stickers. This dealer had 6 of these boxes for $6.00 each. I bought 2 of them figuring I'd complete the set. NOPE, Wish I had bought all of them. The set has 198 card backs for the set, but in reality there are 784 counting the front sticker variations.

Box one got me 148/198 and 213/784. 27%.

Box two got me up to 175/198 and 318/784. 40%

This dealer had some odd ball stuff.

My scans uploaded in reverse (thought I'd let you know that).

he had a bunch of Santa Clause cards.

I got more for that binder for sure.

The timing of this post wasn't planned, but he had a deck of Trump cards I hadn't seen before. The pics above are the only ones in the deck so I just showed you those. The rest of the cards were normal playing cards. 

That was deal 2. Like the first deal I was satisfied with the gets. 

I also bought some stuff from Justin (BTW) he came to my house last week, and talked me into selling him some cards from the garage. He spent a good bit, but it didn't put a dent. Can not even tell I got rid of anything. Anyways, I bought a bunch of cards he had in his dollar boxes and got for a quarter. I'll do them on Thursday. I also bought two binders of mainly crap from a couple of kids trying to unload the stuff, but none of the dealers were giving them the time of day (they were helping their dad at HIS tables). I gave the kids a little for the binders and I'll post up some of those highlights Friday night.

Be safe (I'll try to drive careful in the snow....lol).

Martin Luther King Jr day.

 I don't have much regarding MLK, in fact I could only find one of the items I have. I know I have a couple of trading cards but they weren't where I thought they were.

What I do have is vintage 1968 vintage. 

The front cover basically a 3x5. 

The back cover.  

The inside. 

In case you didn't notice the slot on the left side in the first scan. It holds a pen.

MLK was a mighty fine American, and I am glad he has a day for people to remember him for who he was and what he stood for....died for. 

I know that today was also inauguration day and does in and of itself have historical and meaningful purpose especially for me, nonetheless I am still giving way to MLK as this day January 20th doesn't usually fall MLK day. It does from time to time as MLK day is celebrated on the third Monday of January (his birthday was 1/15). 

May the entire world be a better place.

Tampa card show in December.

 I'm pretty sure I'll not be attending the Tampa show anytime in the near future. The last two visits to that Holiday Inn show got me sick. It is a really big show and this last time wasn't "crowded" and I was only there for less than 2 hours, but sure enough I got sick.

I will be heading to the Clearwater show tomorrow. Fingers crossed all goes well and I find some good stuff. With that being said I did find some good stuff at the Tampa show. I'll break it up into three posts. Starting with the surprise I got that I didn't know until i got home. (You'll see at the end of this post).

I paid $40.00 for everything you see in the box above.

Those are all Star Wars toys.  99 of them. This was the best deal of the day easily with just the toys them selves. When I went through this box I found that surprise I mentioned in the bottom of the box.

From the same dealer another box of stuff that I paid $20.00 for. the stuff above and below was in this box.

Not bad for all of that stuff for $20.00. Not as good as the 100 toys for $40.00 (plus the surprise). But, still not bad.

That is one heck of surprise to find after getting home. Really great condition too.

I am going to have to come up a different way to display all of the Star Wars stuff I have. Right now it is scattered an several places and that isn't a good thing. 

The LOST SLOTS PART TWO

 SLOTS, that is my shorthand for Sport Lots. With that said here is the rest of the highlights from that order that took a little extra time getting to me.

I was really excited to land these 2024 Topp 206 mini's. I think that I still need a few.

I forget at the moment, but I believe those 2 Ginters finished the team base set. As for the TSC chrome, pretty sure I am close there too.

Refractors.

These are the kind of Braves cards going back to the beginning of them that will help me to get that NUMBER 1 spot.

Tomorrow I'll lead into the weekend with the trip to Tampa. Well, the first part of it anyway.

Enjoy the night!

Wacky Wednesday

 Wow, the last 7 days flew by. Seems like only yesterday I posted the Wacky Wednesday. Seriously....zoom, and a week is gone. Glad I put a couple of months worth in the files.

Here we go!

I had to put my Domingo Ayala (Bryan Resnick) cards in with the Chicken....it just felt right.

The rest are 8x10's

Autographed 8x10's that is.

The last two might be the same photo, but the signature is in different places and in different color. To me that makes them different. As you can tell I love me some Chicken, although I must admit I prefer my chicken fried and a little on the spicy side. I won't say no to some good baked boneless skinless BBQ chicken breasts either.

Have a good night people!