Mystery Vintage Cards

Here are the rest of the mysterious vintage Cardinals cards found in my laptop bag. There other five were Cardinals team cards. Let’s start at the most recent and go backwards…

1969 Lou Brock World Series Home Run

1967 Curt Flood

1961 Curt Flood

1960 Curt Flood

1959 Curt Flood

The Flood streak ends with a 1959 Ken Boyer

And the stack ends with a 1952 Enos Slaughter!

Not a bad haul for $11.53! I just wish I could remember where I got these so I can go back on my next trip for another raid.

Mystery Vintage Team Cards

Ever find a stack of cards and wonder where they came from? I found a dozen vintage Cardinal cards ranging from 1952 to 1969 in my laptop bag and can’t recall how, when or where they came from. Well, that’s not entirely true, they were in a snap case with a generic receipt totaling $11.53 and an April 2010 date. According to my expense reports, I was in Atlanta GA, Wilmington DE, Phoenix AZ and of course here in St. Louis that month.
Anyway, the stack had five Cardinals team cards…
1960

1961

1962

1964

1968

1968 Springfield Cardinals

I bought a 2010 Springfield Cardinals team set for Isaac at the Winter Warm Up in case he wanted to get autos of some of the AA prospects. As you can see, the team set is a nice interpretation of the 1968 Topps design. The team circle has been appropriated with a dedication to Stan the Man… you really have to look for the “Springfield Cardinals” in that logo.
While you’ve already seen a few of the AA Cardinal Prospects in our Winter Warm Up posts, I thought I’d post a card of a non-prospect featured in this set… El Presidente!

While we’re at it, here are a few of the ‘68 Cardinals we have. In this case, few = almost all. Have other 68’s for trade if anyone has spare Cardinals of that vintage though.

Winter Warm Up 2011– Day 2: Wally Moon

Forgot to include the Wally Moon auto’s in this morning’s post. He was at the Warm Up promoting his upcoming book. In addition to signing in the autograph room, he was also in the vendor room at his own booth signing cards depicting the book cover.

Red Back / Blue Back Retros

Love the Topps 2010 Red & Blue Back retail inserts this year and have picked up a few recent retros of the same lineage… ok two. I’m looking at the 1951 checklist to see if I can put together a Cardinal team set for a reasonable sum. We’ll see….

1968 Orlando Cepeda Game Insert

2005 Albert Pujols Bowman Heritage Mini

2010 Stan Musial Wal-mart Blue Back Insert

The non-Cardinals 2010 inserts. These are up for trade for the Dizzy Dean, Rogers Hornsby, George Sisler, or Albert Pujols inserts.

March Card Show Love

I’m still not comfortable letting Isaac loose at a card show, particularly one infested by Missouri Tiger fans as yesterday’s was. Still, if I have one piece of advice for anyone going to the St. Louis monthly show, its “Bring A Kid.” This was our third show and the same guy always calls Isaac over, asks him what his favorite sport is, and hands him a freebie. The first time it was a Longoria X die cut card. This time, he reached into a stack of top loaders and handed three cards to Isaac: a ‘61 Nuxhall, a ‘63 Torre, and an 07 Goudey. Isaac’s reaction? A "Thanks!” followed by “One hall of famer and one future hall of famer!” Kids today…

Isaac also finished off his 2009 Series One set and most of Series Two. He left U & H for a later date. I picked up a few cheap mini’s while he was set building.

We made one last stop and I bought Isaac a 2009 Series 2 jumbo pack and a 2010 Series 1 jumbo to open on the ride home. His hot streak continues... he ended up pulling these:

1952 Red Schoendienst Redman

I've been meaning to post about this card since I won it off of ebay a while back. The post isn't really about the card though, that its in great shape despite missing the tab, that the man pictured on the card is still an active part of the Cardinal Family. No, this post is about the note attached to the card.

The seller included the following thank you note and while the top half is certainly just a form letter, albeit one I'm not used to receiving after my ebay transactions, the bottom half is what makes baseball and, by proxy, baseball card collecting great.

If you can't read the hand writing in the pic...

"Hope you enjoy your "Red" Schoendienst 1951 Redman Baseball Card. I used to live in Belleville, IL (where my family lives now) years ago before transferring to Kansas City with TWA. I have followed the St. Louis Cardinals since I was a young boy in the '50's. Good Luck. Art"

Now how cool is that? I remember placing a low bid on this card thinking we'd never get it at that price. Sure enough, the cards aligned and Red and this note arrived a few days later. With all the talk about the MLBP and UD, notes like this help Isaac see how cool the hobby can be and that we're lucky to be fans of sport and franchise with so much history and, more importantly, good will... reinforcing the importance of writing thank you notes doesn't hurt either!

1958 Topps

More from the Not Topps Million vintage haul in lieu of a couple of jumbo packs. I don't know much about these vintage sets but its tough to argue with Ken Boyer. He may be my next vintage target behind Brock and Gibson.

1957 Topps

Rather than spend $10 on a 2010 Jumbo Pack to get a Topps Million code card in hopes of winning some cool vintage, I cut out the middle man and spent the $10 to get back into the vintage swing. These will join the Hoyt Wilhelm '57 card.

Flea Market Finds: Baseball Punchboards

Found these at the Flea Market today. Both are minty fresh, unpunched, vintage baseball punchboards. The 1 cent board (8in x 8in) is innocent enough and geared towards kids; prizes are pieces of candy and every hole is a winner. With its cash prizes, the 5 cent board (7.5in x 10in) has got to be for adults. I'm assuming that there have to be some "outs" on that board, otherwise that's a money loser for the house.

Helmar Brewing Series Three Set

Unlike the first series (I do not have the second and cannot comment on it), this series focuses exclusively on baseball subjects. Players and managers from the Negro Leagues, the Majors, and Japan, among others, are featured in the set. Sorry for the fuzzy thumbnails - they're not resizing correctly in blogger. Click on each image for the larger high resolution scan.

Helmar Series Three

I finally had a chance to open the box of Helmar Series 3 cards last week. As in my posts about Helmar Series 1 (here and here), I’ll follow up this St. Louis centric post with one displaying the entire set.

While the first series was available in packs, Series 2 (release in 2006) and 3 (2008) were only available as complete sets with Series 2 being short printed by comparison. I’m trying to track down a Series 2 set now that I have the others. Unlike the first series, this one focuses exclusively on baseball.

The Box

Contents

St. Louis related cards:

Nice to see the folks at Helmar have a sense of humor. They’ve included a “corrected” card for an error from the first series.

Pics of the complete third series coming soon...