My First Al Kaline Vintage

Vintage Tigers have been on my mind lately, due to some excellent trades, and to some upcoming Coot Veal amazingness. Yes, Coot Veal will be appearing to jam out with the Vealtones very soon. You'll have to keep checking back to find out what I'm hinting at.

In the meantime, let's get to this Kaline business. Drew from Drewscards sent me a nice pile of cards, and the highlight of the trade marked my first vintage Mr. Tiger card.

This card is in surprisingly great shape, decent centering and corners. I would've been happy with a beat-up Kaline. This card commemorates Kaline's initiation into the 3000 hit club, but really he's in the 3007 hit club, which is 7 hits more special. He was one home run shy of 400 at the end of his career and had a career .297 batting average. That's one hell of a Tiger.

But that's not all! Drew also sent over some 2011 Topps Town goodies for my player collections:

Wow, those are some dark-blue shinies.

Rounding out the trade, Drew sent a 2011 Topps Heritage Boesch, who is one of the few Tigers swinging a bat right now. Next, a 2010 Vintage Legends Ty Cobb, and below, another Cobb from 2011. This is my first Kimball mini, and I have to say that these cards are as cool as they come, one of Topps' best inserts in a long time. Oh, sorry, Raburn Diamond shiny. You're cool, too, but I like mini retro better than blinding bedazzlement. The 1977 Topps Fidrych is much appreciated. Who says curly locks and one good season doesn't make a career? Maybe best of this bunch is the 1971 Topps Mike Kilkenny, which just makes me think of this:

You bastard.

O No Another Trade Post

If no one's used this title yet, I feel clever, but I'm sure someone has because everyone wants to trade with Ryan over at "O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog. He's a very generous trader and really pays attention to the old want lists.

Here's a few cards he sent:

I'm always up for trading for rookies. I know there's a lot of unappreciation of rookie cards out there, but I'm old school. Before jerseys and bat chunks and shoes stitchings and autos and stamps and  shinies and refractors, there were rookie cards, and it was good. Francouer and the Royals are having a surprsing start. Nice to pick up his 2002 Bowman RC. Prado 2005 Topps RC was also a nice get. And Peralta's RC was very needed, since he'll be sticking around Detroit for a while. We're glad to have you, Johnny.

Next, we have some great inserts of the Tigers of Olympus: 2011 60 Years of Topps Al Kaline and 2006 UD All-Time Legends Ty Cobb. Ryan sent this chrome-tacular Austin Jackson RC and also a non-featured Brennan Boesch 2010 Bowman RC. I don't remember when the Tigers last had so many exciting offensive youngsters. Austin is having a slump right now, but Boesch seems to have snapped his slump from the second half of last season.

Finally, now I can say I have some 2011 Topps Heritage. I love the Cabrera's Power card. I didn't post the others Ryan sent, because I'm already sick of looking at blogo-tized versions of these cards and I'm sure you are, as well. However, I'm very happy to own these cards, since I don't by any packs until they hit the clearance shelf.


Thanks, Ryan, for the sweet trade.

I'm not Down

I haven't posted in a while, due to a crazy last few weeks at work. And just after this week closes, I'm approaching the end of the semester, which means final grades for the classes I teach and final seminar papers due for the classes I take. It's an endless cycle of busyness, and around this time I feel about ready to spontaneously combust. Or, better, to use a baseball card-related simile, I feel like this:

This has always been my favorite Frank Thomas card. My friends and I used to giggle about the pose here, what appears to be Frank the Tank scowling and flipping the bird. I still think he's flipping it, but logic tells me Upper Deck would have edited that out as quick as Billy Rip's bat. Frank just looks so damn mad here, and, thusly, represents my frustration. Thanks, Frank, for relating.

But I need to stop complaining. I love my job, even when it's stressful, even when my students just refuse to use the address comma when they're writing dialogue no matter how many times I explain. And it's been a good week of receiving trade packages, which I'll be posting soon. I've even been able to watch a few Tigers games, so life is good. Really, I thrive on being overwhelmed. Yeah, that's what I'll tell myself. I'm not down, right, Mr. Strummer?

Perhaps best and most exciting of all, I've had an encounter of the Veal variety.

I'm just going to mention a teaser here, but one of Coot's family members found the blog, and it looks like we might be getting some very cool Coot posts soon. Keep checking in, though my posting will be slow for a few more weeks.

Contest-tacular

There's a great contest going on over at It's Like Having My Own Card Shop. It's getting bigger and bigger every day, so go get in on it now.