New vintage Bobby Thomson for the collection

Hi Folks.

A few posts back I wrote about a new card I picked up. I was very excited to get the card and wanted to show it off immediately so I used the scan from COMC and give it a little write up. Well yesterday the package arrived and I had the card in hand.

The card on the right is a sweet looking 1949 Bowman Bobby Thomson. I'm very pleased with the overall look of the card and was very surprised to how much better it looked than the scan from COMC.

The back of the card is interesting too.

Notice the lack of stats that you would normally expect to find. It also makes mention of his military service, which is interesting to see. There's also a small bit about his minor league and rookie year. They don't mention much about his 1948 season other than he slumped to .248 average. At the bottom of the card is an offer for a baseball ring. All you needed was three wrappers and 15cents and you would have been able to get an adjustable, durable metal ring with a white plastic emblem. I wonder how many of these rings are around now? Has anyone seen one?

Enough about the ring, back to Thomson. 1949 was a great year for Thomson. He had career highs in RBI's and BA. But no-one knows that stuff! I had to look it up online, thank you wikipedia. The Flying Scot is remembered mostly for one thing and that is the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World'. I'm sure you all know the story so I wont go over it again.

The picture at the top also features two other Thomson cards. On the left is the 1953 Redman that I wrote about a while back and the middle is a 1958 Topps that I picked up a few months ago. The reason I choose this picture is to show off the different sizes of the cards. The Redman is a Giant compered to the other two. The 58 is a standard size card and the 49 is tiny. I'm glad that cards nowadays aren't as big as the Redman because its a pain to store and takes up more that its fair share of the box its in. I'm a big fan of smaller cards so I quite like it but I'm not a fan of the shape, its too square as opposed to the regular mini cards from Ginter and T206 that have a more rectangular shape.

Overall the Bowman is cool! And its also the oldest card I own.

Some new pick ups

Hi Folks.

This post is a little premature since I don't actually have the following cards in hand but I don't care, I just want to show them! I mostly set out get some cards to trade so I hit the forums, Ebay, COMC and other blogs to see if there was anything out there that I would consider a good deal. I wont bore you with the trade bait that I picked up, well not until a later post when I have them in hand. I just want to show two cards that I picked up from COMC. I stole the scans.




1949 Bowman Bobby Thomson. Who doesn't like vintage? Not quite his RC but only a year removed. Sure it looks a little rough around the edges and a little faded but it will be the oldest card in my collection and will look great next to the other Thomsons. I have a few other Thomsons from the 50's but they don't feature him in a Giants uniform and in my opinion don't look as good so I doubt I'll ever post them.

Secondly a JT Snow 1994 Signature Rookies Draft Picks Signatures numbered to ONLY 7750! This card in my opinion was an absolute steal at only $2! JT snow was the Giants first baseman when I first got into baseball and at the time my favourite player. He is also the first player auto that I ever owned. An auto that I picked up from the Giants store in San Francisco. Its on an official NL MLB ball and I loved it! In fact I still have the ball and its actually displayed in my house much to the dismay of my wife. I was thinking of putting this card with the ball but my cat goes for the cards so it will have to stay in a box.
Thats it for now although I still have credit on COMC so I might pick something else up.

Thinking about a new collection. Welsh Major leaguers

Jimmy Austin, Ted Lewis and Peter Morris all played baseball. They also have another thing in common. These three players all came from Wales and are the only Welsh men to play in the major leagues. I'll highlight all three of these guys in future posts and I'll start with Jimmy Austin.
All the information I have gotten for these players have come from Wikipedia so don't hold it against me if there are any discrepancies!

Jimmy Austin (1879 - 1965) was born in Swansea and went to the States in 1887. He eventually started to play baseball around the mid 1890's and made his professional MLB debut in 1909 for the New York Highlanders, now the Yankees. He was 28, which by today's standards would probably be to old to begin a major league career. He spent only one year in New York before being traded to the St Louis Browns, now the Orioles. He spent the rest of his career there playing until 1921 and also making a brief appearance in 1929. He also coached and briefly managed the Browns during this time. You can find his stats here.

There is a very famous picture of Jimmy Austin and Ty Cobb.

That's Jimmy avoiding the spikes of Ty Cobb.

Now back to the title of this post. I thought it would be cool to have a card of each Welsh player that played in the Majors. I have tracked down a few of Jimmy's cards on the bay and some of the prices are just within my budget. Actually they stretch my budget but I might get lucky.

Ideally this is the card I'm aiming for.

I'm not looking for one in this condition as it sells for over a $1000 but cards in a more 'played with' condition are around $60. He does have other cards out there including some more modern ones from the Conlon collection. He is also featured on pins and chips, which I'm not familiar with so I don't really want to go down that road.

This is something I'm going to give serious consideration and it will probably take a long time to track down the card in a relatively good condition with a price to match. There are a few other obstacles in my way in obtaining this card. The card is fairly rare in raw form, most cards from the early 1900's have been slabbed. Also the ones that I have found for sale on Ebay come from sellers that use my favorite term in an auction 'Will not ship internationally'. Sarcasm does not translate well written down but trust me that was sarcasm. Its a shame that a lot of people wont ship overseas but I understand why. There are extra costs to sellers, it will take more time to send the card due to waiting in line at the post office and having to fill out customs declarations and also some buyers from overseas are less than honest and will claim they never received the item which means the seller loses the card and has to refund the cash. Buyers who do that make it harder for honest buyers, like me, to buy rarer cards. Lets not forget the possible extra shipping charges and Her Majesty will probably want a cut too, I love import taxes! That was more sarcasm.

This is going to be a challenge and I may have to settle for the 1992 Conlon card rather than one of the vintage cards. We shall wait and see.

Favorite cards part two

My second post on my favorite cards features a fellow Brit. Born in Glasgow before moving to the states at a young age this player hit one of the most famous home runs in baseball history.

Every baseball fan knows the story of the "shot heard 'round the world" which occurred in 1951 between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Thomson hit a walk off home run off of Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca at the polo grounds which allowed the Giants to win the pennant. The Giants went to the world series only to lose in six games to the Yankees.
The card above is a 1953 Red Man tobacco card. Issued in pouches of tobacco, I think the last time a card was issued in a smoking product. The card was part of a promotion in which you had to remove the tab at the bottom of the card and send them in to receive a baseball cap, which a lot of people did and so making it a little harder to find the card in a complete form with the tab intact. As you can in the picture above, my card has the tab intact.
Considering the age of the card it is still in great condition. The corners are a little rounded and there are a few wrinkles on the card but overall the card is awesome!
This card was brought to my attention by another UK collector who trades on the sports card forum under the name 'Hairylemon'. He was aware that I was trying to put together a Bobby Thomson collection and thought that this little gem would fit in nicely, he was right. I picked this up from Ebay for about $12 shipped to the UK. I think this was a fair price and I was very happy to get it.
The card was much bigger than I expected it to be, I thought it might have been around the size of a typical early 50's card and was surprised to see that it was even bigger! Due to its size its a little bit hard to display and so unfortunately it stays in a box out of sight, living with a few other cards from the 50's that I have.
It should also be noted that Bobby Thomson was inducted into the Scottish sports hall of fame and had a baseball field named after him in Glasgow.

Up next is another Adam Lind card.