Freehan without a Plan

Do I need a reason to post a great Tigers autograph card and say almost nothing about it?

 

 

Nope.

 

Almost nothing: this set me back under $3 shipped on eBay.

 

Do I deeply desire to crack this from its uncirculated plastic tomb? Indeed.

 

Card Show-Off: Hard Luck Houtteman and the Bargain Boxes

I didn't find a ton of stuff at the most recent mall card show I went to, but I did run into some nice vintage bargains.

This was my favorite find. For $3 I knocked a need off my vintage Bowman Tigers want lists. I didn't know much about Art Houtteman, but apparently he was a decent starter who spent 8 of his 12 seasons with the Tigers. He had the nickname "Hard Luck" for a number of horrific reasons: car accidents, noise headaches, baby death, and so on. Art's hard luck will now be remembered and appreciated against a green brick backdrop in my collection.

Here are some Tigers bargains out of the quarter and dime boxes. I had all of these before besides the Wertz, which was a steal. The rest were upgrades. I sure love me Tigers team cards.

Rounding out my Tigers finds are two Freehans and a Northrup. Those are big names for us vintage Tigers collectors. The Freehan in the middle is a 1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp. I really know nothing about this set, but I dig oddballs. I wonder if Dennis has this one.

It's not vintage, but it cost a dime and this is one of my favorite insert sets. I'm slowly moseying away at collecting this set. These cards are chunky as a thick hunk of Swiss cheese with just as many holes.

Last up, here are the modern treasures I found out of the dime and quarter boxes. All of these are numbered except for the Pill Ice parallel. Pretty great stuff. Probably most of it will find its way into trade packages. Always looking out for my blogging bros.

Next post, I'll show off the best of the bargain vintage.

Trade Post: Pudge + Freehan = Collector's Crack

The Cynical Buddha sent me some cards to help me toward my enlightenment of Pudge-rvana. If you don't know what Buddhistic cynic I'm talking about, you should go head on over to Collector's Crack. I had some Brewers and some Big Hurts, and he had some Pudges, and thus the trade began.

This was the card that got the trade started. I had a 2008 Heroes Corey Hart GU that was getting no love, and he offered this hunk of Pudge's bat. I had the base version of this card already, and I'm thrilled to add the wooden version to the collection.

But he didn't stop there. Cynical Buddha had a lot of Pudges apparently.

These are just a few of my favorites. Pudge in catchers gear. Pudge in a Tigers uniform. Notice how much more he smiles when he's wearing the old English D.

I'm a big fan of the early T206 sets, and now I have a bunch of the various poses from this set. Actually, he sent 3 or 4 of most of these, to the point where I almost felt Bipped. Bipped in the best sense possible, since these are the kind of doubles that induce internal peace and move my mind toward a state of cynical bliss.

Here were the worst two cards of the giant stack of Pudges. Somehow, in the '90s, Ivan managed to be captured in some extremely awkward photographs. Not sure what's going on in the Zenith card, why Pudge's shorts need to be so short, or why he's doing Jazz-Hands! And then more short-shorts while Pudge attempts to stop a green boulder from crushing his head, all while wearing a toothy grin.

There were a ton more Pudge cards, and it was a truly generous trade package. But I want to save space for my favorite card of the trade, a card that Cynical Buddha mentioned only as a side note addition to the trade.

I was so excited about this card. An on-card auto of Mr. Freehan, a Michigan native, a Tigers lifer, and one of our all-time best catchers. I was a fan of Freehan before, and I know most Tigers fans are, but now I love this guy even more. I was reading up on him again for this post at baseball-reference.com and found out some new awesome bits of Freehan history. He was "a master in getting hit by the pitch, leading the league three times." OK, that's cool, a skill that I wouldn't consider one being able to master. Also, Freehan holds a record in catching for 325 of Mickey Lolich's starts. That's the highest number for any pitcher/catcher pair, and that's just seems like one of the most seminal catcher records a catcher could hold.

So, Freehan's cool, and this card is awesome. Thanks so much, Cynical Buddha. I'll be looking for Brewers cards for you. And all of my half-dozen readers should check out his excellent blog, though I'm sure you're all frequenters.