Old School Dust - Ty Cobb in a pool of dust

I'm having some turbulence at work.

I have to move upstairs to my old office and you see, packing 2 PCs, 3 monitors, lot of cables, and so many papers...I'm getting dizzy!

So, that's the reason I've been absent from reading and posting.

But after the cloud of dust settle down I hope to get back to be more active on the hobby again.

Well, at least reading and writing.

Now getting back to the point of the post.

The other day I was surfing on Pinterest and found this great photo.

Yep it's Ty Cobb leaving a trail of dust behind.

Well it's not quite dust.

It's more sand itself!

It seems like in those days they played in a pool of sand.

But look at this beauty.

Imagine it in a card.

And it could be with the Panini's Cooperstown design.

Yep.

It would be the Prima Dona of my Dust-is-in-the-air collection.

Miklós Fehér - Extra Inning

This is not an happy post.

Is a never-forget post.

To honor one player from my club who died age 24 during a game back in 2004.

Miklos Fehér died January 25th 9 years ago.

It was live on TV.

He just collapsed on the field with a heart failure.

He died with a last smile.

Until today he is remember in every game and every year in his death day.

S.L.Benfica retired his number #29.

It was a first. We don't have the costume to retire numbers so this was the first time for my club and for any other club in Portugal.

To the Eternal #29 who will always be remember.

O-Pee-Chee Premier 1992 - Where is my Molitor's card!?

Right now I'm completely frustrated because after opening the all 36 '92 OPC Premier packs I just couldn't pull this Molitor card.

My Karma is so bitting the dust in no time!

O-Pee-Chee Premier 1992 - More packs

Opened more packs and then I noticed, that there are two kinds of packs.

Some little details that I like so much. It makes me keep at least an sample of the different packs.

And by the fifth pack I got the card that made caught my attention.

The Mark Whiten card live in person is soooooooooooooo even more better!

I think I lost all sense of grammar in the above sentence but the card is truly a beauty!

I prefer to see the players face, but in this case the photo of the back is just the perfet angle for the photo.

You can almost feel like being Whiten himself sliding to the base and make all that dust fly into the air.

And now I'm quite torn between giving the first place of my Dust-is-in-the-air collection to this card or keep the '87 Topps Kevin Mitchell card on top.

I think I might let Mitchell keep the first place just because the dust cloud is bigger.

And if I was happy having the Whiten card by the 5th pack I got a duplicate right in the next pack.

But his pack is simply great!

If I'd opened this first I'd be falling of my chair on the spot.

None the less I almost did.

Simple love Williams and Justice in-the-middle-of-swing photos. And then got Mattingly and DeShields.

This was the best pack until now!

And just because I was getting so lucky I opened more packs, and by the 10th I got an other of the cards I introducing in deciding or not to buy the box post.

The second-upper left corner card.

Mike Bordick double play. And some little dust.

Then I noticed this Biggio card.

He seems like having abscess in the moth.

Ohhh it's just tobacco or gum.

But that looks weird man! Like you were punched in the face.

O-Pee-Chee Premier 1992 - First Look

Yesterday arrived on the mail my 1992 O-Pee-Chee Premier box!

With 36 packs and without any insert sets and with a base set not reaching 200 cards (here says it has 195 cards but here shows 198 cards), I really hope to complete it!

If I don't get all the set I might and kick off my Karma out of the window!

Ahhhhhhh smells like '90s.

I had only time to open a pack and here what I got:

If you remember my previous post about buying or not this box I showed some cards that made me like the set and thinking in get it.

Just in the first pack I got two of them! The Will Clark and Albert Belle cards.

My Karma is starting to be nice with me.

Will be opening the rest of the box in the upcoming days and would probably just post my favorite cards.

Harry Potter Trading Card Game - Extra Inning

Today the cards I'm showing are not sport cards.

No...They are not the Dragon Ball cards yet. I'm still trying to get them all processed...

It's Harry Potter time!

A few years ago I was so into HP that I'd buy anything that would have something to do with HP. All kinds of merchandising.

But what concern the trading cards I only bought a few packs because it was a bit difficult to find them on stores.

None the less I got a few I like.

Would have like it better if I could get more Harry/Hermione cards.

Yeah.

I belonged to one of those 'ships'.

HMS Harmony or my favorite HMS Pumpkin Pie.

Loved the fandom. Great time...

Well! Back to the cards!

I'm torn between liking this card and being afraid of it.

I like because it's Ana Abbott. Not because I care about her but just because she has my first name. Even spelled the same way!

I'm kind of afraid because she looks like a ghost!

I must say that scanning this kind of card won't do any good to it, but taking a photo it gets quite cool because you can see the phantom-chromium character on the card. Just like seeing it in person.

What I quite can't stand is that they are not in English.

I appreciate the effort to make it easy for kids to understand what is written and make the translation. The problem is that what is written on the cards is not quite  Portuguese.

Well, following the Internet schema is not Portuguese(Portugal) but Portuguese(Brazil).

Sorry but it's too bad to see that they don't mind if it's not well written in the true language of origin.

There are different words and grammar structures.

But the same thing happens to Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon and other trading cards. No one, or almost no one, cares about translating to Portuguese here in Portugal. So we have to take the Brazilian things.

Nothing against in Brazil do what is right which is translate to...how they speak. What bothers me is not having the same thought by the merchandising companies here in Portugal.

The cards are the normal for trading cards games.

Here we have the Lessons cards that work as mana.

Then we have Creatures cards with the damage they can make and the health points too.

Here are the Objects cards. These are like the artifacts cards.

Here are the Enchantment cards. Work just like the normal concept of it.

More Enchantment cards. Got lot of green spells. If they were Magic cards I'd be pretty happy! My Magic decks were always built based on Forests (green mana).

You can see that here we have the usual quote line in some cards. I love that. It brings us closer to the story. In HP case it makes me go back and remind some famous and iconic moments and words.

Ending with red Enchantment cards. And also my favorite card: the top right corner. Yep, it has a Harry/Hermione draw.

I for sure didn't bought the cards for the game. I did for the drawing.

I had some other HP merchandising with these draws too and when I knew the cards pictured them also I new it was a win.

Nothing against cards picturing film photos, I like those too, but these draws are so cool that I prefer.

And it gets more closely to my book imaginary than the real deal with true people photos.

True people photos make me think of fanfiction and it's whole different perspective ^_-

Keeping warm - Extra Inning

Winter is getting pretty cold.

Go Yankees!

1991 Fleer Ultra - pack 9

Back to my 1991 Fleer Ultra collection.

Today I'll post about a pack and I'll be missing an other 2 and then it's finish the recap of my set.

Lets see if I get something interesting like dust falling from the pack.

I like Toronto bird logo more than other teams bird logo. Maybe I just like because it's blue.

Now the cards.

#1 of 10 Barry Bonds OF@PIT - An other insert card for the 'Ultra Team' set. And not only is the card #1 but also a Barry Bonds card. Pretty cool.

#2 Jeff Blauser IF@ATL - When the card states the player as an 'Infield' I tend to think he just played a few games and in almost infield positions to fill holes. Not the case for Jeff at least looking for his '90 states.

#40 Jeff Reardon P@BOS

#66 Ryne Sandberg 2B@CHC -  I think I've seen you before..But a nice photo is always welcome.

#100 Paul O’Neill OF@CIN - Card #100! I like round numbers. O'Neill here with the Reds in the year he would have his first All-Star call. After that is History...with my Yankees!

#123 Mike Henneman P@DET - They seem to like him a lot in Detroit.

#125 Dan Petry P@DET

#138 Mark Portugal P@HOU - WoW! What a moment! A player named after my country!? I've tried to find any clue if he has luso-ascendancy but found none information about that. One thing is for sure, I'll add Mark to my Pitchers collection.

#153 Jeff Montgomery P@KC - Has an entry in the 300 Saves list and the Saves Champions list.

#160 Kal Daniels OF@LAD

#168 Juan Samuel 2B@LAD

#181 Bill Spiers IF@MIL - Ok! Stop right now! And there is dust!!! Shame the diving player (Tigers player I think...) has the head cut out. Probably because of the Fleer Ultra logo not get in the way of Spiers head. Favorite card so far!

#196 Kevin Tapani P@MIN - WS champ in the house!

#260 Darren Daulton C@PHI


To sum it up, I like this pack a lot! The Portugal and Spiers card made it an A pack. Would have I get a Yankee player and it would have been an A+.

eShopping - What Women want

I'm quite tempted to buy a box of 1992 O-Pee-Chee Premier Baseball just for this single card.

#178 Mark Whiten

There is a perspective you usually don't see in photos and there is a slide to the base with *lots* of dusty clouds in the air!

But there are other cards with funny photos like this:

Great hope-for-homer-photos like this:

Great swing action photos:

Double play photos:

And of course have this card:

So I'm jsut a click away of buying a 1992 O-Pee-Chee Premier Baseball box with 36 Packs to make me smile and be happy.


ETA: Just to say I already order it! Cannot wait to get it!

Best town to live

First of all...Happy New Year!

Now that is all done and set let get back to what it's important.

Baseball!

And Cards!

These passing days I've been trying to get me up to date with all your new posts.

You all have been quite active even during Holidays. I decided to get to other hobbys of mine.

I've played in my electric guitar since a looooooooong time ago!

Once learned never forget. Like riding the bike.

After this interlude in collecting I'm back to business.

I must say that all bloggers I follow got pretty good presents!

I envy you...

So much packs and most...so much choice!

I got yesterday my package with my 2011 A&G blaster box which I hope to talk about in some future posts.

So I cannot say I pass this Christmas without getting cards. They just arrived a week later.

But one thing caught my eye. Big time!

This:

Panini's Cooperstown cards.

First there is this special aura around Cooperstown.

You see, here in Portugal we don't have quite the same sport culture as in the USA.

Each club has its own museum with their history. And each club usually participate in different sports.

We don't have a museum for a sport alone. Like a museum for football or basketball.

That's a shame.

Because apart from a club's history, some moments are mainly a sport's history.

I love the Cooperstown concept.

I got pretty curious about this set just for this reason alone. But then I saw the cards.

They are a beautiful thing.

Don't you think?

Panini sure did a great job trying to pass the vintage greatness on this design.

You almost can touch the greatness of these players through these cards.

I've read in many other blogs that there is the issue about the 'avoid-showing-any-license-thing' going on because Panini does not have the MLB license.

Yep. They sure look like they bumped with the head against some painful wood cardboard.

Do you mind?

I truly don't!

If you collect for the team. I understand this set might not get must credit.

If you collect for players this is a great set!

A great player plays well in any team.

A great player is bigger than the team.

A great player is transversal throughout the sport he(and she) plays.

A great player is great none the same even if I cannot see all his cap in the card photo.

This is a player oriented set.

And that's the second reason I love this set.

I also posted before about liking black & white photos. And liking of seeing more of those in sets.

So there is the third reason.

From what I read, the base set is composed of 170 cards and the last 20 are the only ones with RGB photos.

They look great!

And that is once more to show that Panini did such a good job with the card design that it doesn't matter if the photo is on full colour, B&W or in vertical or landscape mode it looks simply gorgeous!

I envy every single one of you lot who already got some Copperstown cards.

Now looking at the card back:

It has an other photo!

And from what I could see they are not the same as the front one. Bonus photo is always welcome!

And look! A one line stats and lots of info to read!

Lots of collectors are way into stats and I'm not saying that I don't like having a players stats, but I truly like the trivia things and career milestones in text format.

It's different kind of piece of history in a card.

And I'm already with four reasons to love this set.

The set is not only composed by the base set but like in other products there are inserts.

I tend to like inserts in the usual flagship sets.

And from what I saw I like the Cooperstown inserts too.

Of course I've read many criticism about the inserts mainly because they feature a lot of text.

Cards with text usually are checklists. And those I'm the first to say I like them in a team photo for instance.

But these are different.

Maybe because I'm eager to learn about baseball history.

Ok...I know that at least a small photo could go here. I give you that. Like a bus pass like photo.

This as well could have a photo of the player batting the exactly homer it is described.

But then I found this particular insert:

Right from Nick's blog Dime Boxes -- The Low-End Baseball Card Collector's Journey.

This post.

You got awesome cards!

And you are right, this ballpark cards are just great examples of what baseball is.

In the very moment I saw these cards I remember the Phil Rizzuto's Baseball National Pastime set.

Specially these cards:

There are 6 or 7 ballpark cards.

These cards are all chromium which makes them great looking.

The Coopertown ballpark cards are normal cards but look equally great!

Why?

Simply because you can feel the energy you can only get from going on a ballpark assist a ball game.

I only went to stadiums to assist football matches but I think they feel the same.

So...all in all...I'm waiting to see if some of the eBay sellers from which I usually by cards have a box of Panini's Cooperstown.

I'll buy it in the moment!



Note: Got all the pictures from Google search so they might be from other bloggers. Thanks.