Brooks Robinson and the Baltimore Orioles

[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by Mark70Z

Jeff,

Start sharing your Paul Blair items. I’m sure there are a few cool Blair items through the thread. I’m sure these guys on here could post more.

I came to have a Paul Blair PC by a fairly mundane process. I grew up a Yankees fan, but had a Wilson Paul Blair model fielders glove. I had put collecting aside as a young kid, but got back into it as an adult after reading about, and reading, the 83F blog about a persons quest to get build an autographed 1983 Fleer set. I decided to dip my toes back in and build a set of Paul Blair trading cards. I figured there was about 15 to 17 cards from his playing days. A quick trip to eBay disabused me of that notion. My first acquisition was this 1999 Fleer/SI Greats auto card:



The seller was local to Oklahoma City, so I arranged to pick it up at a card show. Roger Neufeldt was also at that show, and I managed to pick up a half dozen or so Topps cards from his playing days.

I think my favorite card is this 1994 Nabisco All-Star Legends:



You may be familiar with this set as a 4 card set issued through the mail which featured Bob Gibson, Duke Snider, Frank Robinson and Jim Palmer. The Blair card was only issued in person at local card shows and is quite a bit rarer than the 4 mentioned above. I can count on one hand the number of these cards that have shown up on eBay in the last 8 years. When they do, they seem to sell for $100 or more.

I actually have three, one of which I saw amongst a lot of 9 autographed Blair cards. The listing was poorly written and didn't detail out what individual cards were in there. So, unless you actually caught a glimpse of the Nabisco card in the image, you never would have known it was up for auction. I ended up winning the entire lot for $36 delivered.

EDIT: This was part of the 1994 Nabisco set, not 1993.