Vintage Racing?

[Beansballcardblog]

Eddie,

You already saw, but Oldfield is one of the three left that I need. Truth be told, when it comes available, we should talk. No need getting into a needless bidding war. I know it’ll be awhile, but another will eventually come available!

Originally Posted by Bored5000

Kin, I sent you a PM.

Are you making any more progress on your T36 set? Do you already have a Barney Oldfield T36 card? I have been looking for an Oldfield T36 for a couple years now, and he never seems to show up on eBay. Edit: I just looked at your gallery. You are looking for an Oldfield also. LOL

I actually decided to create a gallery for my STP cards because I was talking about the set on a message board with other racing fans, and a couple posters were intrigued by the cards because they were stick and ball card collectors, but were not familiar with the STP racing set.

[Bored5000]

Originally Posted by wvu_class_of_2001

Eddie,

You already saw, but Oldfield is one of the three left that I need. Truth be told, when it comes available, we should talk. No need getting into a needless bidding war. I know it’ll be awhile, but another will eventually come available!

Oh, I won't get into a bidding war over it. I know you are working on the set. I kinda wish I would have went harder at the T36 set that sold at Huggins and Scott earlier this year., but there are a bunch of things on my want list.

[Bored5000]

Racing lost one of the best dirt-track drivers in the country Saturday night when Sprint Car driver Jason Johnson was killed in a horrific crash at Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.

Johnson, 41, was a five-time American Sprint Car Series (ASCS) 360 champion. He also won 12 career World of Outlaws features including two this season. But Johnson is most known for his thrilling win in the 2016 Knoxville (Iowa) Nationals. The Knoxville Nationals pays $150,000 to win, and there is no bigger dirt track race anywhere than the Knoxville Nationals.

Reactions from around the racing world:

https://nesn.com/2018/06/racing-worl...jason-johnson/

Johnson was just the second World of Outlaws driver killed in the past 20 years. This is almost too hard to believe (and just absolutely awful), but Johnson's wife, Bobbi, was the fiancee of racer Kevin Gobrecht when Gobrecht was killed in a World of Outlaws race at Greenwood (Neb.) in 1999.

Here is a very sad, hard to read, article that talks about Johnson's widow dealing with the death of Gobrecht back in 1999. The couple has planned to marry in November of that year, but Gobrecht was killed on September 24.

https://www.kevingobrecht.com/tribut...eyJackson.html

Everyone who has grown up around racing knows that racing people are the best, The official GoFundMe page that the World of Outlaws set up for Johnson's wife and five-year-old son has received over $37,000 in donations in just 24 hours.

https://www.gofundme.com/JasonJohnsonForever41

Here it is: This is the biggest win of Jason Johnson's career -- the 2016 Knoxville Nationals. Even if you have never seen a Sprint Car race, check out the five-minute highlight video of the race. The closing laps featured Johnson and 10-time Knoxville Nationals winner Donny Schatz exchanging slide jobs while trading the lead back and forth. This video is definitely worth watching, one of the best dirt-track races a fan could ever see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-nseJnSul0

[Bored5000]

A couple more great articles about Jason Johnson beyond his accomplishments on the track:

https://sprintcarunlimited.com/jason...nd-and-person/

Here is an Australia-based website that talks about Johnson's rise through the ranks. Journeyman World Of Outlaw Sprint Car driver Steve Beitler gave the 17-year-old Johnson a chance to help out on his crew, even though Johnson had never wrenched on a Sprint Car before. Beitler related the story on Facebook yesterday about Johnson going from not even knowing how to mount and dismount tires to winning the biggest dirt track race in the world with a self-owned team over the course of 20 years.

https://www.speedcafe.com/2018/06/25...-johnson-dies/

[Bored5000]

I just wanted to give a heads up on here to an outstanding racing book that I finished reading a few days ago: "J.D. The Life and Death of a Forgotten NASCAR Legend" by Brock Beard.

https://www.amazon.com/J-D-Forgotten...=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I am not affiliated with the book or anything like that; it's just a fabulous read. Initially, I thought how interesting can a book be about a guy who ran 653 Cup races and never won (J.D. McDuffie) ? But after a reading a few of the Amazon reviews, I decided to buy the book. There is a reason the Amazon reviews are what they are for the book; it is outstanding. The book really makes me think differently about McDuffie and all the independent Cup racers of that era. About half the book is about McDuffie's overall racing career and his struggles as racing in the Cup series became increasingly expensive in the 1980s, while the other half of the book is about the fateful weekend at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) during which McDuffie lost his life. The book also touches on the hardship of his family following his death and what so many of the people involved with his team did in the decades since.

When I look at what the Cup series is now, McDuffie's story seems like it happened a million years ago,.

Among the things that really stood out to me:

* McDuffie had difficulty reading and writing (something I also learned about Rich Vogler after reading John Sawyer's book about him many years ago), and he rarely if ever allowed anyone else to drive his "Old Blue" ramp truck to and from the races.

* He typically allotted himself one stogie for each 100 miles of a race. A good day was when he smoked all five cigars during a 500 miler because it meant that he finished the race.

* The book also contains a great chapter of close McDuffie friend and fellow independent Jimmy Means. Means was involved in the Watkins Glen accident that killed McDuffie. After giving a shellshocked interview with Ned Jarrett following the crash, Means was so distraught that he immediately left Watkins Glen that day.

* I had known about McDuffie winning a match race in a Late Model at Shangri-La (New York) Speedway among various crew guys the night before the Watkins Glen race, but the night at Shangri-La is really fleshed out in the book. McDuffie drove the car of track points leader Tom Schwarz that night. For the first time in decades, McDuffie felt what it was like to have the best car in the field; he started last in the eight-car field that night and took the lead on the second lap. In Victory Lane, promoter Dale Campfield gave McDuffie a handshake with a $100 bill in it.

The next morning at a local diner for breakfast, McDuffie, still beaming from the night before, grabbed the breakfast check, pulled out the $100 bill and said simply "Winners buy." The ragtag crew that helped McDuffie typically paid for their own meals because they knew how tight money was for the driver.

At the Watkins Glen drivers meeting on the fateful Sunday morning, McDuffie's win at Shangri-La the previous evening was brought up. Ernie Irvan, who would win the tragedy-marred Cup race, joked with McDuffie, "You've been holding out on us all these years, J.D."

* One of the further tragedies of the McDuffie accident was that a North Carolina scammer by the name Jeff Tobias Bennett posed as McDuffie's brother and was given the driver's uniform and other effects he was wearing that day. Bennett then sold McDuffie's uniform to a hobby shop for $150. The bubble goggles McDuffie was wearing that day and the tire that broke off his car to cause the accident have never been seen since.

* McDuffie's family received the $30,000 driver death benefit from NASCAR's insurance policy, but the family had to repeatedly fight for the $15,000 car owner benefit.

* His family remains deeply troubled by NASCAR's insinuation that McDuffie died because he was driving junk. He obviously raced used parts, but he did not use stuff that was worn out because he knew it was his life at stake.Since the tire and attached suspension parts disappeared shortly after the accident, it was impossible to ascertain exactly what broke on McDuffie's car -- not that NASCAR was much into thorough investigations prior to Dale Earnhardt's death.

* McDuffie's "Old Blue" ramp truck hauler was purchased at auction in 2013 by Ken Schrader. The truck is now owned by a Late Model team in Michigan and serves as a functional shrine to McDuffie. The truck still contains the issue of "NASCAR Illustrated" that was current at the time of the Watkins Glen race, several smoked cigar butts in the ashtray and the "Winner's Buy" diner receipt that McDuffie stuck above the driver's side sun visor after purchasing breakfast for his crew.

Again, the book is far greater than I expected a book about J.D. McDuffie to be, It is unfortunate that there aren't guys like that at the highest levels of racing anymore.

[Bored5000]

Sorry, double post.

[Bored5000]

I had previously known about the McDuffie death car being sold for profit after the accident. The book does not really go into the sordid details of the car being sold without the permission of McDuffie's family, but the book lays out how that came about. A man by the name of Marty Burke had been helping McDuffie and was in the process of buying the car from McDuffie in hopes of starting his own career in ARCA. Burke made the final of five payment installments shortly before the race at Watkins Glen. Burke did not have a bill of sale saying he owned the car, but did produce five canceled checks signed by McDuffie.

The death car was turned over to Burke mere hours after the fatal accident and was subsequently offered for sale in a ghoulish 1995 ad mentioning the car was "not cheap, serious buyers only."

Here is a famous 2001 Ed Hinton article in which he talks about McDuffie's death car being sold to a random ghoul. The car has never been seen again.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/...nascar-elisa/4

Here is a 2013 article that talks about McDuffie's widow finally selling off his husband's race shop and her husband's belongings that were inside, many of which had not been touched since his death in 1991. The "Old Blue" ramp truck that was purchased in the article by a John Parsons was actually a straw buyer for former Cup driver Ken Schrader.

Even 22 years after her husband's death, Ima Jean McDuffie cried about the car her husband was killed in being sold by a a crew member who J.D. trusted.

https://erinarmbruster41.wordpress.c...-finally-sold/

"That’s what hurts hurts so bad. J.D. trusted those people, and that car don’t belong to whoever’s got it,” Jean McDuffie said as tears ran down her face.

[Bored5000]

Sorry, double post.

[smokelessjoe]

Hoping to get some thoughts on this cooler I have had for several years. I hate that it has the black paint on it, but you can actually see the "speed 180 something" when you are in front of it. I did not realize that it was not visible in the photo. Pick it up at an estate sale years ago in a barn out back.

1. Did this belong to the Lloyd Racing team?
2. Any kind of value?

Thanks in advance for any opinions,

Shawn

[smokelessjoe]

Double