Best Pick-Up of 2012

[ValKehl]

Fantastic cards everyone! My co-best pickups of 2012 are:

(1) This E222 A.W. H. Caramel blew my collecting budget for 2012, but I just can't resist scarce/rare cards of Virginia League players!

(2) This easy-on-my-budget T210-1 Old Mill card of "Oyster Joe" Martina thrilled me because I didn't know it existed until I stumbled across it in a Huggins & Scott Auction. One of my (far too many) collecting focuses is cards of the players of the 1924 Washington Senators World Series Champs, and I am striving to obtain at least one card of every player on this team; until I saw this card, I had thought that the only existing card of Martina is his 1924 Diaz Cigarettes (a scarce Cuban issue) card, which I've never seem and probably never will see!

Joe Martina was fortunate in that, at age 34, he was part of a championship team for his only year in the majors - he had a 6-8 won-loss record for the Senators during the regular season, and he appeared in one 1924 W. S. game, pitching one scoreless inning. But, amazingly, Martina pitched for 21 years in the minors, between 1910 and 1931, during which time he won a total of 349 games against 277 losses.
Val