August Pickups
 

If one of these threads already exists, apologies, but let me get it started otherwise, with this amazing acquisition from yesterday!

Heck of a way to lead off August, Carl.
Very nice card.

Brooksie
 

Love the Brooksie card!

Nice B. Robinson pick up. I will eventually get me one but for now I am concentrating on my Johnny Bench set. Here is my latest additon.

Gibby's last stand
 

I've been looking for this for a while. For some reason, Bob Gibson's 1975 Topps card is hard to find centered with sharp corners. Happily, I was able to add one to my collection. It is ever so slightly off centered left to right. About 47/53 at center. But this should still be at least an 8 if I send it in to PSA.

http://imageshack.com/a/img538/502/z0PGzh.png

By the way, nice cards, guys.

jb, it looks like you're doing the same thing I'm working on with Robin Yount.

http://imageshack.com/a/img633/4192/kKJ7zQ.png

Are you doing only the Topps cards? Or are you going for his base master set, with the Donruss, Fleer and Upper Deck, too?

I'm planning on doing them all eventually, but the Topps will be first. I'm going to do the same with Clemente, just his base cards. That will take a while longer, though.

Nice Gibson Bill!

Bill,
I am doing the Bench basic set (which includes Fleer and Donruss) and will then probably move to the Topps set. No interest in the Master set for me even though I may pick up a few of the items. Nice looking Yount set you have going. Are you going for the master set of Yount?

Thank you, Steve. I was very happy to get that one.

Jb, I'm not sure yet, as that would include All Star cards, team checklists, highlights, etc. I think I'll do the basic sets, That's 20 Topps cards, of which I now have 5 graded in a PSA 9 (I added his 1976 Topps second year last night).

My goal is to get the basic Topps set for Yount and Clemente both done. I'm making progress, slowly but surely. :p

Good luck on the journey and beautiful cards! I have been working on my player set for 7 or 8 years now, so I can understand the slowly but surely thing.

Beauties and master sets
 

Thanks for the nice words on the Brooks card, everyone. I think I got a pretty good deal on it and it's just one of those cards I want to stare at all day. :)

And great pickups - awesome Gibson - tremendous color on those borders. ANd the Bench and Younts are fantastic. In fact, you guys are inspiring me to pursue graded Fisk cards.. suddenly my old cards that I collected since 1985 are starting to look a little weak...can't beat the sentimental value of those cards I tracked down one by one at shows and flea markets back in the day, but it sure would be cool to also have nice, pristine copies too! Hmmmm....

Chris,

Slowly but surely is fun, but I've been going at a crawl for a while, and I'm about to start hitting it. I've been working hard on build my savings back up for the last 4 months or so. I am almost at my target benchmark, then I'll just keep adding to it a little more each month.

I just added a PSA 9 '76 Yount beauty last night (perfectly centered), so I've got '76, '78, '79, '80 and '81. The later ones will be pretty easy. The '77 is tough to get as a 9. I'm looking at about $300 for that one, and probably a little more than that for the '75 mini. The standard '75 in an 8.5 will probably be about $500.

Clemente I've got two really nice ones, his '73 and '71. So I'm going to start working on him.

My most recent Bench pickup! Was not planning on getting this one so soon because it is not part of the Bench basic set but I justified it since I will be working on the Bench Topps set after I complete the basic. Never hard to find a good reason to purchase a card of your favorite player.

Here's the '76 Yount, just came in today. This thing is beautiful, and I love the new PSA cases.

http://imageshack.com/a/img673/3258/4P476y.pnghttp://imageshack.com/a/img538/6508/IQPAEh.png

Very nice Yount, Bill.
I have not focused on/looked at the '76 Topps set very much, but this card makes me want to jump in. Well done.

What a fantastic baseball card that 76 Yount is. The cloudy background takes it to another level.

Bill,
Outstanding 76 Yount both front and back.

Fresh from PA, probably a 1970's internal "team" item from Topps:

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps124093c7.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps38bbc75b.jpg

The 1976 is very under appreciated/rated. It's rare to find a 1st ballot HoFers 2nd year card so cheap.

Nice Yount, Bill! I don't see any flaws in that "9". It could be a 10 if the grader got lucky the night before!

So true Zach, I'd love to see a 10 next to that, there would be no visible difference. Nice pickup Bill.

That is a thing of beauty. Nice score!

Thank you, everybody.

I agree, Brent. I've been looking for this one in particular for a while, and when I saw it for $60 delivered, I had to jump on it. It's simply sublime.

I would agree with you both. I looked at it again tonight under my 10 x loupe, and to be honest, it really looks like it could be a 10. But it doesn't matter to me, really. My Yount cards will all be 9s except for the '75, which I might start off with an 8.5 on both the regular issue and the mini. There are too many other cards I want to own, and a half point isn't going to cost me sleep at night. :D

August Pickups
 

Another nicely centered '58 Topps all star received today.

Attachment 155761

Loving '75
 

After getting Mr. Gibson in the mail, I was reminded of just how colorful the '75 Topps set is. So, I've decided to start working on the set. I already have this nice '75 Topps Yount. Only the teeny tiny little surface scratch on the upper right hand corner kept this card from being a pretty high PSA grade. Otherwise, the edges and corners are pretty much immaculate. Without that, this is probably a PSA 8, and higher if it weren't for a slight top to bottom centering issue. Still, this is a nice card for the '75 Topps set. When I get my PSA graded card, that will just go in the safe deposit box.

http://imageshack.com/a/img742/2398/9y3Lxt.png

So now to a few new cards. I picked up my first group of '75 Topps, and they arrived today. I'd like to share them. They're exquisite. I'm going to try and build the set as close to near mint as possible. The Winfield and Yastrzemski were sold as EXMT+. I think the Yaz would grade a little higher, but think the grade for Mr. Winfield is spot on. There's a surface scratch on the upper right corner, and as far as I can tell, that's primarily the reason why this was graded the way it was. Once I've completed the set, I'll go back and look at the cards to see which ones need aesthetic upgrades, as the entire set will be displayed on my website. For now, it's a nice card, and gets me one step closer to 660. :D

http://imageshack.com/a/img912/33/GPUGZH.pnghttp://imageshack.com/a/img540/4514/1QqfwV.pnghttp://imageshack.com/a/img661/145/2laEtu.png
http://imageshack.com/a/img661/6383/fWwrDk.pnghttp://imageshack.com/a/img910/8444/9iEzN1.png

I think I have a pretty good idea what at least two of my next few '75 Topps cards will be. :cool:

Nice Bob Friend, Bob. :D

There are a couple National League pitchers from the 50s and 60s I've always felt were overlooked when it came to discussions of star pitchers. Bob Friend and Lew Burdette are on that short list. I bring them up together quite often, and people are surprised to learn that they combined for 400 wins. 197 for Friend, and 203 for Burdette. Two great pitchers from my favorite two teams of that era.

Dave,

Where did you find that? That's a cool piece. I'm guessing that was awarded to the employee who came up with the idea of the '75 Topps mini set. :D

Good start to the month, guys. Let's keep it hopping!

75s
 

Hi Bill, i'm a big fan of 75s too, check out this Brett I got as part of a set buy (sent it to psa for grading):

http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps40d0979f.jpg

Patrick, that is a very nice Brett card. Let us know how the grade turns out!

Hey guys, nice stuff this month! This is my first time posting to the post-war pick-ups. I've been concentrating on pre-war the past couple of years but have gotten bit by the post-war/vintage bug recently. I won these two Pirate issues that I didn't have last night in the Sterling auction. I also picked up a couple of "freaks". I'm normally not into them and am not sure if there's a market for them like there is with the T206's, but I just thought the matching pair was pretty neat and I couldn't resist for some reason:

Great stuff Guys:

Jason - Great looking Clemente Stand-up. That is a set on high on my next to complete list.

Patrick - awesome Brett, please share your grading results with us.

Bill - the '75 sets are a ton of fun to build, not hard to find any card and with the minis in particular, due to the dealer (his name escapes me now) who hoarded the cases in his basement for years, it's not too difficult to put a high quality set together. Centering was the biggest challenge with my high grade set (Claudell Washington) but still there are plenty. I've always loved the Dick Allen card from the set.

I wish I had a nice card to share, but it's been a slow month on the post war side for me.:(

Down to two!
 

At the national I finally got a Koufax rookie. I am down to just the Mays and Snider for set completion.

I also had SGC authenticate my 1961 Topps Koufax auto. It was a gift in high school, 1994, from my parents. It looks great holdered!

Here is the auto...

Evilbay....got lucky. I think Bad was good in this context LOL :D

Great item for me!
 

I have to bore most of you with background information so you can appreciate how excited I was about this. The Pittsburgh Post gazette has been holding annual dinners in Pittsburgh for I believe about 60+ years. Each year they honor a local sports personality (usually A baseball, hockey or football player). They issue a program which is distributed to the attendees and usually features an image of the honored player. As it is a regional dinner, the suspected quantities that have been printed in the past is very small. The number that survive even smaller.

I collect Roberto Clemente. Clemente was featured on 3 of the programs - 1962, 1967, 1972. The 1967 program has been the "easiest" of the 3 to find, followed by the '72. The 1962 program I have only ever seen twice in 25+ years of collecting. I bought a run of the programs a few years ago and included with a number of them were ticket stubs to the dinner! Really cool accompanying items. The '62 Clemente in the collection was one that had a stub - I was blown away as I had never before or since seen stubs from the dinner.

I happened to be browsing ebay the other night and found an item that was freshly listed with a bin of 14.99. I was extremely excited to be able to grab it. See photo below. Thanks for your patience with the background.

Here's the program it goes with
 

This was already in my collection

^^^^^ great find, Howard! Way cooler than a card or autograph, IMHO. :D

I really like both of those items especially for us mainly single player collectors. Thanks for sharing the pickup and the background story; love it!

Congrats on the find! Thanks for sharing.

The Clemente stand up is sweet as well as the ones above!

Really nice pieces Howard; that program is sweet (and poignant).

A couple for the Dodgers collection came in today.

Attachment 155892

Attachment 155893

Howard, stories like yours are not boring. Quite the opposite, actually. As much as I love a great baseball card, postcard, or ticket stub, the stories about them add that personalized touch that make them even more special. As a fellow Pirates fan, and Clemente nut...er super fan, I think it's great that you were able to add this ticket to your collection. I've had that really excited feeling a few times while checking out on EBay. It's a great boost of adrenaline, isn't it?

A couple more Exhibits and a nice Jenkins rc

Been having real fun seeking sneaky hidden jewels in the low to mid grade space lately. It's like a treasure hunt and the lower the grade I can find with eye appeal the more rare and special I feel the card is for its value.

Had always wanted a PB Joe with centering and focus, an Aaron where the side borders start out evenly sized on top, and a 59 Mick that wasn't washed out color wise. Should have a new batch in today for scanning...

http://www.collectorfocus.com/images...l-joe-dimaggio

http://www.collectorfocus.com/images...-hank-aaron-rc

http://www.collectorfocus.com/images...-mickey-mantle

http://www.collectorfocus.com/images...-mickey-mantle

Picked up this Aaron that I already had. I couldn't help myself. It's the one card I remember seeing in my dad's shoebox before he sold them for $50.
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/08/10/uveneqe4.jpg

Well done Matty C. Those cards are outstanding for the grade!

Love the reason behind that Aaron pickup; I think we all have a card or two that connects to a good memory or moment like that.

Thanks JB!

Knew I had to pick this up the second I saw it. Been doing an early Ryan run through 77 and was amazed at how tough the 73 is to find with eye appeal. Auction just ended seconds ago, so the scan from ebay here is a bit crooked; will take a scan with it sitting flush in holder upon arrival...

http://www.collectorfocus.com/images...pps-nolan-ryan

Well done MattyC....exactly how i found my Aaron Rc...I am currently working on something in a trade deal for some of my Mantles i am selling.

Thanks Chris for selling me this fine looking Home Run Derby card of Harmon Killebrew!