Vintage Chicle Tigers: Tommy Wishes the Tigers Luck

The Tigers are headed to the World Series, and I couldn't be more thrilled. They looked crazy strong against the Yankees. The only thing I could have to complain about is how much focus the Yankees got for getting swept. All the world seems to want to talk about is how terrible the Yankees offense was. But there's much less talk about how amazing the Tigers' starting pitchers were. Fister, Scherzer, and, of course, Verlander, have been on fire. The Vealtones extend a nod and a hat tip your way, boys.

To honor these great pitchers, I'll show off a recent cardboard acquisition of another WS Tigers pitcher: Tommy Bridges.

Beauty of a card, right? From one of my favorite vintage sets: Diamond Stars or Chicle or whatever you want to call it. This one is pretty beat up and darkened, but still awesome. Especially since Tommy was the shit. He played all 16 of his seasons for the Tigers, and helped the Tigers win their first WS in 1935, winning 2 games in that series. So, here's Tommy tossing some luck Verlander's way. Like he needs it! Ha!

And here's the back, in case you're interested, which looks like some piece of ancient parchment Indiana Jones might've pulled from a tomb. Diamond Stars' backs look pretty boring, but if you've never seen one, instead of stats they write lessons for young ball players. Pretty unique.

I snagged this card off of the ol' eBay for right around $5. A steal, really, for these cards in any condition. I'd love to finish the Tigers team set someday, but it'll be tough with players like Hank Greenberg, Mickey Cochrane, and Charlie Gehringer. For now, Tommy here will join my other Tigers card from this set:

And I'm hoping the Tigers add another WS win to their history. Go Tigers!

Jo-Jo and Dizzy: eBaying for Vintage

I lucked into some swell vintage on eBay recently, and for a decent price. First off, another addition to the vintage Bowman Tigers team sets.

Dizzy Trout is looking pretty nerdy here, and this may be one of the worst backgrounds for a posed card ever. It looks like they caught Dizzy just turning away from the bathroom urinal. And all that awkwardness makes this card all the better. I got it for around $2 shipped, and it's not in terrible shape, despite the tape marks.

Pretty typical Bowman card back here. Some crammed stats. Signature Bowman sentence fragment.

The other vintage card I recently picked up I'm even more excited about.

This one ran me $6 shipped, which is a hell of a deal for an original Diamond Stars card in this kind of condition. I found this as a Buy It Now, and that took me about a minute to make my decision to click. I absolutely love the design of this set, the art deco backgrounds, the primary colors, the comic book-looking players. I'd love to go after the Tigers team for this set, but there are some cards in there I'll probably never be able to justify spending.

One of the coolest elements of this set is the card back. Rather than stats, Diamond Stars opted for mini-lessons on playing baseball, geared toward children. Remember when cards were for kids? They still are for me. Collecting brings out the twelve-year-old inside of me. Here we get a lesson on sliding, discussing Jo-Jo's "kicking slide." And Jo-Jo was pretty successful at stealing in his career, being top ten in the league for steals three different seasons. I love what they say about the kicking slide: "This is not recommended to boys, for the reason that even ordinary types of sliding are dangerous unless carefully practiced." You can tell they were a little worried about liability here. They didn't want little Timmy's mom to sue them after he snapped his shin.

So, pretty nice work on the eBay vintage here, eh? Has anyone else snagged any Diamond Stars deals online? It's such a great set, but hard to not break the bank collecting it.

Bryce Harpukkah: Day Six, Diamond Stars Are a Collector's Best Friend

Day six continues my Harpukkah spendings outside eBay. This card was also picked up at my LCS:

This is the real thing, not a reprint, not a 2010 re-envisioning, but an actual Diamond Star card of Sam Leslie. I didn't even realize my LCS had a box of these next to their vintage Bowmans which I'm always so enticed by. And I was surprised to find a few of these in my price range. This one was $6, and it's in pretty great shape. The reprints I've come across of these just don't do them justice. The colors on the real thing are bold and bright. The art deco design makes this about the coolest pre-'50s set out there. The stands in the background are a perfect example of the style. And Sam's portrait, too, is interesting. He looks shiny as a glazed ham.

Here's the back:

You see the usual pen-writing of these vintage cards from my LCS, the reason they're so cheap. Another thing I love about this set is the weird text on the back. There's very little noted about the player, minimal stats. What we find is a lesson on fielding first base. I think that's just a cool idea and obviously shows these cards were marketed to kids with lessons on how to improve their game. You just wouldn't see that kind of thing on a modern piece of cardboard.

I really new nothing about Sam Leslie when I picked up the card. It looked cool, and the Dodgers were a great franchise, but the ink noting "manager" also interested me. I was wondering if Sam's career spanned past his playing days. Apparently, he never managed. Though he did hit an inside-the-park grand slam, which just sounds impossible in today's game, and he also hit for the cycle once.

So this is a pretty sweet bit of vintage, in my book. But there's an even better vintage card to come. So, how am I doing so far? Wouldn't you take an original Diamond Star card and a bunch of other cool stuff in trade for a Harper card?